'Meet the Press' transcript for August 31, 2008

MR. BROKAW: Mike, as you heard, I asked Governor Pawlenty about creationism vs. evolution. He said they ought to be taught side by side in schools, local school districts should decide. How does that cut with the independents?

MR. MURPHY: It's trouble. Again, if we get into a social issues debate with those particular swing voters, we're in big trouble. I believe that McCain cannot win in this environment without ticket splitters, people who vote for him for president but vote Democrat down the ticket. He may need as many as one out of five of his ultimate voters to be a ticket splitter. So the question is in a bad base year for Republicans, if we get caught on pure base issues--I agree, the evangelical vote loves her, but I, to the point I said earlier, I'd rather have lukewarm evangelicals and a whole lot of voters...

MR. BROKAW: Right.

MR. MURPHY: ...than delighted Goldwater-sized crowds and a completely delighted 45 percent of the vote. So if Sarah Palin the reformer, corruption fighter becomes who she is, she can help. If she gets trapped in the other stuff, I think she's an anchor. And we don't know yet how it's going to play.

MR. BROKAW: David, we've been talking about the, about the importance of the Rocky Mountain West in this election. Obviously this is a woman who will have some appeal there. We'd just like to share some of her sayings and some of the sayings of her family as well. "When [Alaska's gubernatorial] candidates were asked their favorite meal ... Palin nailed it best," according to Vogue magazine. "`Moose stew,' she said, `after a day of snowmachining.'" And then when Vogue went to her parents' home, "Buoys of all colors hung from the house and outer buildings. On the back of [Palin's parents'] 4x4 a bumper sticker read, Vegetarian--Old Indian Word For `Bad Hunter.'"

MS. MITCHELL: Yeah.

MR. BROKAW: "Even before McCain picked [Palin], people outside Alaska were beginning to notice the young governor with the bright smile" - the "runnerup in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest--whose good looks spawned a bumper sticker that read: `Coldest State. Hottest Governor.'"

Is that going to work in the West?

MR. GREGORY: Well, I think a lot of it does. And as you know better than anybody, you talk to people like Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, who--and he will attribute his success as a Democrat in Colorado not to social issues, but to issues like the economy that began to turn more Republican-leaning independents and even some Republicans in the state his way. I think the economy is a huge part of this. A lot of the working-class voters in states like West Virginia or Ohio, where she was debuted, or Pennsylvania were Democrats primarily for economic issues if not social issues. Obama still has an advantage there, even if he hasn't grabbed the issue completely. I think Sarah Palin helps John McCain get it.

MS. MITCHELL: Yes, I agree with that.

MR. GREGORY: That's the attack line from Obama that he's out of touch. She's got some working class roots, the hockey mom thing.

MS. MITCHELL: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: A union husband, a husband who's in the union. So I think she may help deliver that to independent voters in the West and elsewhere for whom this is going to be a big issue, the economy.

MS. MITCHELL: I...

MR. BROKAW: Let's talk about Obama for just a moment, who had a big, successful Democratic convention last week. When I was getting to the airport yesterday in Bozeman, Montana, one of the security guys says to me, "Wow, that was some speech. I hadn't been paying much attention this year, but that was really something." And then he paused and said, "My God, he promised everything." So did it work for him?

MS. MITCHELL: I think it worked in terms of being an attention-getting huge event, brilliantly executed and a speech that had a great deal of passion. I think if you look at the laundry list, it's not paid for and, you know, despite the claims, and you can make the argument anyone can go after those specifics, but one doesn't expect that in an acceptance speech. He has to fill in those details. Giving a list of promises is not filling in the details, giving people the meat on the bones that they've been waiting for. But in terms of showing his inspiration, his historic role, I think it was extraordinarily successful. I think it's one of the reasons why leading up to it, anticipating it, why John McCain felt that he had to match history with history, he had to break through and get people to pay attention to the fact that John McCain now with Sarah Palin, is attempting to also cross a barrier, an historic barrier.

MR. BROKAW: But did they take experience off the table by choosing Sarah Palin?

MR. MURPHY: I don't know if they totally took it off the table because president vs. president is still the main event, as opposed to VP vs. VP. But it's a lot harder. It's harder for McCain to say what really counts is being ready on day one to walk into the Oval Office when he's 72 and his vice president may be higher on charisma and lower on experience. I think what you're going to see here at the convention is less grinding on experience now because a lot of that issue I think is out the window, and more grinding on fiscal stuff. The point Andrea made. You had 25 minutes of promises and two sentences of how he was going to pay for them in that speech. Republicans are going to drill down into that. They're also going to go after the runaway train of Pelosi and all the pent-up kind of liberalism in the Congress getting ready to rip, plus a Democratic Senate, plus a Democratic president, the one party, one way to go and try to make that kind of a scary consequence of Obama.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: You know, I--I'm sorry.

MR. MURPHY: No, no, go ahead.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: I think that equally important to this speech was the way the whole convention laid out. I mean, I think what it showed was a certain strength on the part of Obama. Everybody was saying the week before, he looks weak. He's allowing those Clintons to assume so much of the public stage. In fact, I think by giving them their moment in the sun, it let the resentments go away to some extent. It allowed them to go out as winners rather than losers. At the same time, he choreographed the whole thing perfectly. He had those early nights of biography. They probably were not too much, even though it seems so, as long as in the speech in the end, he counterpunched to the Republicans. And everything was on time. I mean, it wasn't like McGovern at 2 AM or poor Harry Truman.

MR. MURPHY: Tremendous discipline, I agree with that. It really was.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: He spoke at 2 AM. You know, Harry Truman was great. He was speaking at 2, it went on so long at 2 AM, they had these doves in the ceiling that were going to come out flying as doves of peace.

MR. BROKAW: And they fell asleep.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: They were cooped up so long--no, worse than that.

MS. MITCHELL: Did they fly?

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: By the time they came out, they came floating down and they bit the delegates on the heads. But everything was timed.

MS. MITCHELL: You're going to see more of Hillary Clinton now, also.

MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: I think that the campaign knows--the Obama campaign knows that they need to use her to counteract Sarah Palin and to try to show that you can explain her views are not mainstream women views, they will argue. It's going to be hard, though, going after Sarah Palin. The first day there was a disconnect where some of the people within the Obama campaign took her on and then Obama said, "No, we don't want to do that." She was not mentioned in Obama's and Biden's big appearance yesterday on the road.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah, that's a very key point. They're very afraid of gender. I talked with top Obama's strategists who was like we've got to be very careful about this because they're expecting the press to go make Sarah Palin famous in a bad way and they'd be very happy with that. Maybe not approach...

MR. BROKAW: Maria Bartiromo in New York, when she made her announcement the other day, as I understand it, she wrote in the speech a tribute to Geraldine Ferraro and to Hillary Clinton. Fred Barnes, in writing in The Standard this past week praising her social values says she is not a feminist. Is Sarah Palin a feminist by virtue of the fact that she ran for governor as a woman against the odds and has talked about some of the indignities that she's had to suffer as a result of being a woman? Or would she describe herself not as a feminist?

MS. BARTIROMO: You know, I don't think she would describe herself as a feminist, but I think that she would describe herself as a champion for women. You know, her comments when she accepted the role from John McCain that, you know, "We're not done. We have more work to do," I think were very telling. In my interview, she praised Hillary. She said, "You know, I'm looking at Barack and I'm looking at his choice and I'm thinking, jeez, why didn't he choose Hillary Clinton?" I mean, this was her quote. She said, you know, she's not--she was very savvy about this. She said, you know, "She's not what I would like to see represented in the White House, but she ran an awesome campaign," is what she said to me.

You know, she, she is trying to be a champion, I think, for women, and talk about breaking through the, the glass ceiling, but not coming across too strong, and using words like awesome, really trying to appeal, I think, to, you know, being a regular folk. I think the point David made was, was right on in that she really is attractive to the working class. Her husband works for BP, an oil company, up on the North Slope, and is called a Sloper, you know. And then she referred to him, which I thought was really cute--she referred to him as the first--Alaska's first dude. So she comes out with these references that, that sort of immediately unnerve you and--putting herself in, in with the masses. But no, I wouldn't call her a feminist.

MR. BROKAW: She, she has that--she has that Alaska candor.

Mike, final question.

MR. MURPHY: Mm-hmm.

MR. BROKAW: If there is something unexpected in the international arena, will it now cut both ways? The conventional wisdom was it would help John McCain, but with Sarah Palin and no foreign policy experience as his backup, would it also raise questions about whether that ticket is ready for it?

MR. MURPHY: I believe it would. I think she is very strong in charisma, but as a strategic pick, she's very fragile.

MR. BROKAW: Mm-hmm.

MR. MURPHY: One bad gaffe, or two in a row, I think maybe a pile-on starts, and she's in big, big trouble.

MS. MITCHELL: Yeah.

MR. MURPHY: So McCain made a big bet on her. If she can exceed expectation, she could be really good. A couple of bumps along the way, and a crisis could be that bump, if she has a gaffe, could be devastating.

MS. O'DONNELL: I agree with that.

MS. MITCHELL: And he doesn't know her. He met her briefly, twice. He does not know her. This was not a real job interview. He's going on what he's been told about her and on her reputation.

MR. BROKAW: Well, I can't think of a more appropriate metaphor for the beginning of the Republican Convention than Hurricane Gustav. I mean, that really sums up what we've been through here in the last 20 months or so in this country, and we'll see how it plays out here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, in the course of the next week.

Thanks very much, everybody. We'll be right back with MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. BROKAW: That's all for this week. Don't forget to tune in to NBC News and MSNBC all week for coverage of the Republican National Convention here in St. Paul. And of course, we will be constantly updating the track of Hurricane Gustav, which will have an impact on this convention. But our hearts and thoughts go out to the people on the Gulf Coast today. We hope it'll all turn out pretty well. Last report was the indication is that the storm is weakening somewhat, but it is still very dangerous.

I'll be back from Washington next week, because if it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.

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