'Meet the Press' transcript for August 17, 2008

GOV. KAINE: Well, David, let me, let me talk about this issue because it was mentioned in Reverend Warren's church last night. And here's the distinction between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. Senator Obama believes abortion is a grave moral issue, that we can do things to reduce unwanted pregnancy and abortion but that we shouldn't criminalize the health care decisions of doctors and women to fight abortion.

Senator McCain, on the other hand, says he wants Roe vs. Wade to be overturned and that will be a step toward criminalizing the decisions of women and doctors with respect to abortion. We can reduce abortion and unwanted pregnancy in this country. We've shown it during the Clinton years. We can do it by--without making women and doctors criminals if they engage in abortion, in that procedure. And we shouldn't use the criminal laws of one instrument against women and doctors in this way. We can reduce abortion through access to education, access to contraception, abstinence-focused education, all those things can help us reduce abortion.

MR. GREGORY: When do you believe...

GOV. KAINE: But the criminal, the criminal law is not the way we should do it.

MR. GREGORY: When do you believe human rights begin?

GOV. KAINE: Well, human, human rights, broadly, my church teaches and I do believe that human rights begin early in life, at conception or shortly thereafter, and that is my personal belief. But I do not believe the force of the criminal law should compel others to necessarily follow that to the greatest degree. And that's why the strategy of Senator Obama is reduce abortion through education, health care access, point out the grave issue, support reasonable, common-sense restrictions on abortion, I think that's important. But you shouldn't be talking about overturning Roe vs. Wade or criminalizing women and their doctors.

MR. GREGORY: All right, we are going to leave it there, the debate, to be continued. Governor Kaine, thank you very much.

GOV. KAINE: Thanks, David.

MR. GREGORY: Governor Jindal, thank you.

GOV. JINDAL: Thank you.

MR. GREGORY: Coming next, insights and analysis from our political roundtable this morning with Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd of NBC News, and Josh Green of The Atlantic.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY: And we are back. Welcome all. A lot to get to here, and a busy week in August. Last night, these two candidates sat down for a forum in California with the evangelical, very popular preacher Rick Warren, and they had an exchange that got to the heart of their foreign policy distinctions. Let's watch that.

(Videotape)

PASTOR RICK WARREN: Does evil exist? And if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, do we defeat it?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Evil does exist. I mean, I think we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur, we see evil some--sadly, on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children.

PASTOR WARREN: Hm.

SEN. OBAMA: And I think it has to be confronted.

(End videotape)

(Videotape)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): Defeat it. Couple of points. One, if I'm president of the United States, my friends, if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. I will do that and I know how to do it. I will get that done.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Andrea Mitchell, that's a pretty clear contrast.

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there was the crisp, immediate, forceful response by John McCain, clearly in a comfort zone because he was with his base. And Barack Obama, taking a risk in going there but seeing an opportunity. And a much more nuanced approach. The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that--what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: He seemed so well prepared.

MR. GREGORY: Well, you talk about this issue and the crisis that's in Georgia, nuanced doesn't work for Democrats. And here, Obama's been criticized this week for the idea that there should be restraint on both sides when the administration, you hear this morning, is out with very tough language against Russia.

MS. MITCHELL: In the long run, though, if you look at the analysis and how this all started, nuanced may be a better approach than this get tough approach. But clearly, as a sound bite in a political campaign, going after Russia, going after Putin is a much more appealing approach. But when you, when you talk to people who really know the issue, Georgia did things and Ossetia is not a clear-cut case. I mean, there is a lot of, of depth here. But what Obama is trying to--how he's trying to frame it is not as easily sold on the campaign trail.

MR. GREGORY: Chuck Todd, let's talk about the tone in this race and the attacks against Obama from McCain and some consternation about that within the McCain campaign. John Weaver, who was formerly running the campaign and a top adviser to McCain going back in 2000, told Texas Monthly this: "[Former McCain adviser John Weaver] made no effort to conceal his disagreement with the current strategy of attacking Obama. `They want to get Obama's negatives up, but the country doesn't want to hear it,' Weaver said. `If we run that kind of campaign, Obama could win by a landslide.' ...

"In contrast, Weaver [said], `I would go another month without mentioning Obama's name. The bigness in John McCain is'" the "`best quality. This election is ideally suited to him. He won the nomination because he was the right Republican at the right time. He is the'" only "`guy who will take on spending and mean it. He should honor Obama as the first'" American "`African American nominee, not attack him, except on policy differences.'"

MR. CHUCK TODD: I tell you, the McCain campaign--the current people running the McCain campaign, they have swagger right now. They listen to that and they laugh and they say, "Hey, everybody told us we were going to be down double digits this summer going into the conventions. Everybody said this guy was going to overwhelm us financially. All we've done is stay dollar-for-dollar with him financially. All we've done is brought this race even." They, they are, they are borderline cocky right now in how they feel. They feel like they have brought Obama down a notch. They feel that they've--this celebrity stuff has been so effective against Obama that they've already, they've already beaten down the hype of the Denver speech. The fact that he's moved it to a football stadium, they already feel like they, they--"See, there he goes again, Mr. Rock Concert Guy, Mr. Rock Star." It isn't--they, they already feel as if they've lightened up his persona and, and really softened him up. So I think it's got Democrats a little--look, you talk to some in the Obama campaign and they'll say, you know, "Maybe we haven't been tough enough on McCain. McCain's been very tough on us. We haven't gone out and gone after him enough."

So right now, you know, the McCain camp will look at what John Weaver's saying and say, "You can back seat drive all you want. Look at the numbers. And the numbers say this race is a lot closer now than a lot of people thought it would be."

MS. MITCHELL: And what Rick Davis said when we asked him about that very thing was that's why John Weaver has no role in the current campaign.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: This is also why a lot of the Obama people are suggesting now they really want an attack dog in for vice president when we get to that...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: ...because they want someone--clearly, Obama is not comfortable going on the attack personally. They want someone who can go after the Republican vice presidential nominee in that debate.

MR. GREGORY: And we will get to that.

Josh Green, this is related to this. You're reporting this week a fascinating piece in The Atlantic where you collected internal memos and e-mail within the Clinton campaign and really deconstructed what went wrong. This is how you reported it: "[Sen. Clinton's] advisers couldn't execute strategy"--the headline being "The Front-Runner's Fall"--"they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly" they "she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire. ...

"Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence - on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to `do the job from Day One.' In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles' heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton's loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many" that "she did not make."

MR. JOSHUA GREEN: And, and that pretty much sums up the Clinton campaign. You know, we saw this on the outside as the campaign was unfolding, there was a lot of chaos. These documents and memos we got, you know, you can go online now and read kind of contemporaneously what these people were thinking and saying. And they were fighting with each other. And the most remarkable thing about these memos is that Clinton as the executive never stepped in and fully committed to one strategy or to another strategy. And I, I think you even see that tendency in the after-effects of the campaign and the way that she's tried to unify with Obama not as, as, as consistently and forcefully as, say, somebody like Mitt Romney has gotten behind John McCain.

MR. GREGORY: And, and, and Chuck, is there a unity problem right now in the party? You see that piece in The New York Times this morning, complaints that Obama's not being specific enough, quoting Ted Strickland from Ohio, the governor who endorsed Hillary Clinton. Is unity still a ways off?

MR. TODD: I think it's a small problem. I don't think it's as big as the Amtrak corridor would say it is. I mean, we, we forget sometimes, Clinton's biggest supporters are great sources of media inside the, the New York, Washington corridor.

But one thing on Josh's piece that I think was interesting is I think you're seeing that the McCain campaign almost as if they got a hold of those memos before you did and they've decided we aren't going to be undecisive about how to attack Obama.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. TODD: We're going to go right at him and be a little too negative, maybe.

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