'Meet the Press' transcript for June 22, 2008

SEN. GRAHAM:  (Unintelligible).

MR. WILLIAMS:  But had that been the McCain campaign, wouldn't it have been just as easy for them to, discovering this potential gold mine on the Internet, have made this same decision?

SEN. GRAHAM:  Well, I think John has proven that he'll make decisions for the good of the country.  John supported campaign finance reform and paid a heavy political price for it as a United States senator.  The public financing system that we all are touting here today as great has been abandoned by one candidate, and that wasn't John McCain.  It's been abandoned because of political expediency.  He's a calculating politician.  The bottom line about, about Barack Obama, whatever the position, whether it be Iraq, campaign finance reform, public financing, he's going to take a tack that allows him to win.  He wants to win beyond anything else, even more than keeping his word.

SEN. BIDEN:  I'm not sure this is the place this debate should go, but if you talk about flip-flopping, you've got John McCain all of a sudden deciding now we should drill in 600 million acres offshore that he adamantly opposed before.  You've got John McCain changing his position on Iraq.  He started off talking about how they were going to be accepted and greeted with open arms and how we'd have a lot of money to pay--oil to pay for this war, etc.  You know, you talk--so I'm not sure that's the place is--the bottom line in campaign financing, Barack Obama said major interests, lobbyists, major influence, corporate influence would not be involved in affecting his decisions as president because he would not accept funding for them.  He has kept that commitment, whether it's been in the context of the Federal Funding for Presidential Elections or not, is, is, is an issue, but it's not about the essence of him keeping his promise.  And lastly, the idea that he's going to sit there and go through what, what John Kerry went through, these independent finance organizations where the candidate running says, "Oh no, I had nothing to do with those swiftboaters, I really don't agree with them." But they're spending tens of millions of dollars against them, something the Democrats have not had, is not something that's reasonable for him to say, "I'm not ready to take that charge."

MR. WILLIAMS:  You don't think we'll see swiftboaters on both sides of this election cycle?

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, I, I, I, I, I think we will, and that's part of the problem.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator Graham.

SEN. GRAHAM:  Here's the question.  "If you are nominated for president in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forego private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?" Obama:  "Yes, I have been a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests." November 2007.

SEN. BIDEN:  Important...

SEN. GRAHAM:  Wasn't worth the paper written on.

SEN. BIDEN:  Important point, as a means by which to "reduce the influence" of big money, he has kept that commitment of reducing the influence of big money in his campaign, unlike, unlike other campaigns.

MR. WILLIAMS:  The words of Senator Hillary Clinton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 17th, 2008.  "My understanding is that Senator Obama said he would take public financing and that now he's saying he won't.  So I think it raises some serious questions about what it is he stands for." Her words, Senator Biden.

SEN. BIDEN:  I understand her words.  She was competing against him.  Were I, were I still in the race, I'd probably be raising it.  But the essence, the honest to God truth is, he's kept his commitment of keeping big money, individual influence, out of his campaign.  If you notice, the end of the quote that, that Lindsey read, he said that's why he supported public financing.  That's the effect.  And so the idea that anyone's going to be able to go say that 70, almost 80 percent of his contributions are 100 bucks or less, how much influence do they have on him?

MR. WILLIAMS:  But you heard the line of argument, Senator Biden, from Senator Graham this morning.  This has been something we're seeing, especially in print this past week.  David Brooks, op-ed page New York Times:  "Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today.  On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now.  But then on the other side, there's Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who'd throw you under the truck for votes." It goes on.  Associated Press:  "Barack Obama chose winning over his word.  ...  He tarnished his carefully honed image as a different kind of politician--one who means what he says and says what he means--while undercutting his call for `a new kind of politics.' ...  So much for being a straight shooter."

Senator Biden, what do you think we're seeing here?  Are people realizing that Barack Obama is, by the way, a politician?

SEN. BIDEN:  I'm--I think what you're seeing is two things.  One, Barack is a politician, an honorable politician.  What Barack Obama said, and he's kept his commitment, he would keep major influences out of his campaign and out of his presidency.  It didn't fit within the matrix of public financing as we talked about it, but that was the purpose of public financing.  That's the rationale.  Put it another way.  If everyone in America agreed that 80 percent of their contributions for House, Senate, and president could only come from people making contributions of $100 or less, we'd have a pretty darn good system.  The influence of money would be gone.  He was able to do it because people recognize something incredible about this guy.  He is a tough politician.  He is also Dr. Barack, as you said.  He's a high-minded guy. But he's a guy who knows--he knows how--he'll know how to govern.  The very things that people are looking at him now, they call him naive on the one side about being able to govern, and yet they talk about him being a hard-nosed politician on the other.  The truth of the matter is this guy's a realist who's keeping his promise of keeping influence out, big money, big influence, out of the decision making process.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator Graham, you heard that it turns out he's keeping his promise.

SEN. GRAHAM:  It'd be news to everyone who listens to what he said, and this is just really sad for the country, for somebody with this much ability, this much talent, to, to fall this far this soon.  The idea that we're going to change this country and do things that are hard and tough and keep one's word is music to the American people's ears.  Well, let me tell you, what he did by breaking his promise is reinforce every bad thing wrong with politics.  And you can talk about it, Joe, till the cows come home.  This guy wants to win. He'll do anything to win, and the reason John McCain's going to beat him is because John's put the country ahead of the desire to win for himself, and that's going to be the defining issue in this election.

SEN. BIDEN:  We haven't even gone to John's flip-flopping yet.  Wait till we get to oil.  Talk about big influence, talk...

MR. WILLIAMS:  We're going to--we're going to get to oil drilling...

SEN. GRAHAM:  Let's get to oil.

MR. WILLIAMS:  ...by way--by way of--by way of Canada first.  We're going to talk about NAFTA.  John McCain gave a speech about NAFTA in Canada.  First of all, is there a short, short laundry list that both of you can agree on? Let's call it what's broken about NAFTA.

SEN. BIDEN:  I think two things are broken about NAFTA.  No environmental protection whatsoever, allowing them to pollute their own people and drive down the cost of manufacturing at an unfair advantage to Americans.  And two, not giving the workers in Canada--excuse me, in Mexico, I'm talking in particular--Canada's not bad.  But in Mexico the ability to work for very little wages without any protection, giving another advantage that hurts not only the Mexicans, but hurts American workers.  So it's environment and labor.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator...

SEN. BIDEN:  So it's environment and labor.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator Graham, can you sign on to that?

SEN. GRAHAM:  The whole idea of a presidential candidate telling our neighbors to the north and the south that, "I'm going to unilaterally renegotiate a deal American entered into" is a continuation of a past problem, you can't trust him.  I want my country to be trusted.  I don't want anybody running for president telling the unions what they want to hear at the expense of the credibility of the United States.  The reason he's taken this position is because the unions want to repeal NAFTA.  He's running in a primary, he says what they want to hear, and it hurts the United States for us, somebody in his position to be telling our neighbors, "We're going to withdraw from this deal." American doesn't do it that way.

SEN. BIDEN:  I want to be--I want a president who'll look out for American interests.  Every treaty we sign has a provision that a president of the United States, if he or she concludes that it's no longer in the interest of the country, can, in fact, should, in fact, step back from it.  This is nothing to do with unions.  This has to do with middle-class jobs.  This has to do with the idea that there's an unfair advantage that was--no one fully appreciated of them being able--for example, we have a Chrysler plant in Delaware.  In order to continue to have a paint plant in Delaware, they had to spend tens of millions of dollars to mitigate against the pollution in the air.  Same plant goes to Mexico, they don't do any of that.  They pollute their own people, they drive down the cost of being able to do business. That's not in the interest of our people nor in the people of Mexico.

Gov.  RICHARDSON:  Fortune magazine this past Wednesday:  "Obama says he doesn't believe in unilaterally reopening NAFTA.  ...  `I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally.  I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.'"

Now we go to the debate--same debate, Cleveland, Ohio, February 26th, 2008.

(Videotape)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY):  I will say, we will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate it.

SEN. OBAMA:  I will make sure that we renegotiate in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about.  And I think, actually, Senator Clinton's answer on this one is right.  I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced.

(End videotape)

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator Biden, the "hammer of a potential opt-out."

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, sure, that's what renegotiating is about.  Do you think Mexico's going to sit down and renegotiate with us if we say, "By the way, we don't like the way things are working," unless they know there are consequences if they don't sit with us to renegotiate?  That's what you call negotiation.  He didn't say he was pulling out.  He said he wants to renegotiate NAFTA, renegotiate NAFTA.

MR. WILLIAMS:  Senator Graham, let the record reflect, if the camera does not, you've been smiling through all this.

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