'Meet the Press' transcript for Oct. 5, 2008

MR. MURPHY: The fact that it’s McCain’s barn that is on fire. McCain is defending states like North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, that he has to win. You don’t want to fight the close war on your turf, you want to be on offense, taking a Wisconsin or formerly a Michigan or a Pennsylvania away from the other side. So that’s the problem McCain has 30 days out. I think McCain can win, but the fact is, the election were held today he’d lose, and I think he’s on a losing path. I think the McCain campaign has to look in the mirror now and decide, “Do we need to change up the strategy?” They’ve been running the grinding campaign on Obama. There’s a lot of good things to attack Obama about. People have a lot of doubts about Obama. But they’ve got to fix McCain. McCain has to connect to voters on the economy, he’s got to get ticket splitters, get out of base Republican issues, and get people who are worried about the economy and health care over, or, in this anti-Republican environment, this trend line is very, very bad.

MR. BROKAW: Mr. Begala, throughout the course of this long campaign one of the things that’s been striking to me is that the hard core of Obama supporters are besotted by him, and they sometimes think it’s just an easy road from here. As they look at that map today, is that a danger for them?

MR. PAUL BEGALA: It is. You always worry about that in, in a campaign. Although, yeah, talk to the high command in that campaign and they, they’re—even when they were down, and now that they’re up, I think they’re a reflection of their candidate. He’s a very low blood pressure guy. You know, he doesn’t get too high, he doesn’t get too low. But what they need to do is they need to, like, take Murphy’s advice. They’re flooding the zone. They’re going into places where Democrats used to never dare go. Indiana, I cannot believe we’re sitting here 30 days before an election talking about Indiana, a potential toss-up state? Or North Carolina and Virginia? Barack Obama will be the first non-Southerner from my party to carry a Southern state since JFK, which was before I was born, before Barack was born. That’s—this is an incredible map. But he’s got to keep pushing his advantage here. And I suspect he’s putting on a bunch of body armor for that debate you’re going to moderate on Tuesday night, because I suspect he thinks McCain’s going to come at him hard.

MR. BROKAW: Well, they’ve already signaled that they’re going to come out pretty hard on attacks on what they call his “absence of character” and his “absence of leadership qualities.” In fact, there was a story in The New York Times just in the last couple of days about his association with William Ayers, who’d been a member of the Weathermen, who was a radical group in the 1970s. He’s now a school reformer in Illinois. But the McCain campaign has seized on that already, and Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, in an appearance in California yesterday had this to say about it. We want to share that with our audience.

(Videotape)

GOV. SARAH PALIN: Evidently there’s been a lot of interest in what I read lately. Well, I was reading today a copy of The New York Times, and I was really interested to read in there about Barack Obama’s friends from Chicago. Turns out one of his earliest supporters is a man who, according to The New York Times, was a domestic terrorist and part of a group, part of a group that, quote, “launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol.”

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: That’s Sarah Palin.

Mr. Begala, listen, this has been below—just below the radar for some time now. It’s not entirely clear how close their association is. Obama has condemned those acts at that time. Would it have been wiser for him, however, to get at that much earlier than now, when--30 days before the election?

MR. BEGALA: Well, no. Obama was—he was asked about this in a debate in a primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there; George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it. He pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when, apparently, Barack Obama was eight years old. And, and I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back—I’ve written a book about McCain. I had a dozen researchers go through him. I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization. It was the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. It was an ultraconservative right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, the parent organization, which ADL said, “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and Anti-Semites.” Now, that’s not John McCain. I don’t think he is that. But, but, you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain’s record better than Governor Palin, and he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

MR. BROKAW: Mr. Murphy, one of the defenders of William Ayers in Chicago is Rich Daley, the six-term mayor of the city, who has said that, in fact, Mr. Ayers has been very helpful on school issues. Isn’t that going to be an effective counterstrike against anything that the McCain people try to do here?

MR. MURPHY: Maybe. But Ayers has kind of gotten off a little easy in Chicago. A lot of people say what a good guy he is. The problem is the one person who hasn’t really condemned William Ayers enough is William Ayers, and I think that’s a real problem. And Obama, while, he’s clearly not the same. He still also has pulled his punches, I think, a little bit about it. And this will be a kerfuffle, it’ll do a little damage to Obama, but fundamentally this campaign’s going to be about the economy.

MR. BROKAW: Yes.

MR. MURPHY: So Obama will take some damage on this, but then it’s going to pivot back to real life, and that’s where I think McCain has to connect.

MR. BROKAW: That’s not even in the distant future. In fact, the Obama campaign is launching a pre-emptive strike tomorrow with this ad, in which they’re talking about the subject that you just raised, the economy, the economy, the economy. Let’s share that.

(Videotape)

Narrator: (From political ad) Three-quarters of a million jobs lost this year. Our financial system in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in the crisis, out of touch on the economy. No wonder his campaign wants to change the subject, turn the page on the financial crisis by launching dishonest, dishonorable assaults against Barack Obama. Struggling families can’t turn the page on this economy, and we can’t afford another president who’s this out of touch.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: (From political ad) I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: Mr. Murphy, it seems to me that one of the things that’s happened in the last 10 days or so is that this race has been crystalized, in a way, about Main Street vs. Wall Street, given all the confusion about the bailout and everything else, and Main Street will always be in favor of the Democrats.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah. I—I’m not sure that should be accepted as a premise by the McCain campaign. I think they have to prosecute that all the way. That’s a smart ad by Obama. If McCain lets him get away with that, he’s going to have trouble. I think the Obama campaign wants to run economy vs. character. I think what McCain ought to pivot to is, one, connect himself to middle-class worries and squeezes. He is a reformer who’s going to change the way Washington works. That’s built into his DNA. And second, bring up the issue of the concept of a runaway liberal one-party train here in Washington. You know, just no checks and balances at all. McCain, a partisan, can-do pragmatist vs. the idea that everything in this town being run by the Democrats with no restraint, no balance, no control, and that’ll affect the economy in a bad way. I think that’s a better prosecution for the McCain campaign than these character attacks or these dubious association, you know, background issues and Obama. They’re hurt him, but I don’t think that’s the key when everybody in the country, at least the swing voters that are going to control the election, are very much worried about the economy. That’s where all the interest, focus and worry is.

MR. BROKAW: Should the Obama campaign just be driving the economy as hard as it possibly can between now and November 4th?

MR. BEGALA: Well, they should, but, of course, I believe in counterpunching, too. I mean, I don’t like just—you know, there’s this myth in the Democratic Party that it should be rapid response. Why don’t we have a rapid response. How about rapid attack, right? How about ads like that, that, that show the president of the United States, who has a job approval rating of 26, standing with John McCain? And this is where McCain has made a huge strategic error. He should have run McCain 1.0 that he ran when Murphy was running his campaign in 2000, which was stridently anti-Bush. It’s like, when the country loved Bush, McCain hated him. Now the country hates Bush, McCain loves him. And it’s hard in the last 30 days to reinvent yourself as someone who knows something about the economy and will be a break with the past. And that’s a problem. People have never—never have I seen a mood for change like this, and Obama is change incarnate. And, you know, McCain just looks like status quo incarnate.

MR. MURPHY: I can’t let Paul totally get away with that. John McCain’s very...

MR. BEGALA: What, praising you?

MR. MURPHY: Well, no, I’ll take that anytime, thank you. But the fact is that John McCain is very different from President Bush on a lot of issues, be it climate change, be it, you know, campaign reform, campaign finance reform. You look at any piece of bipartisan legislation in the Senate that got done in the last five years, John McCain’s been the quarterback. And that needs to be put in the center here for the close of the campaign, that McCain is a guy who can get things done in Washington with two parties, he can provide balance as opposed to a runaway Democratic train.

MR. BEGALA: See, that...

MR. BROKAW: I don’t want the two of you to get away without sharing with you some excerpts from the vice presidential debate the other night and then getting your reaction to it. Let’s begin with Governor Palin and a couple of the things that she had to say, and then we’ll hear from Senator Joe Biden.

(Videotape)

GOV. PALIN: Say it ain’t so, Joe. There you go again, pointing backwards again, though. You prefaced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future.

Let’s commit ourself, just everyday American people, Joe six-pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say, “Never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again.”

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: And now let’s hear from Senator Joe Biden, who late in the debate, took on the whole issue about is John McCain, in fact, a maverick in Washington?

(Videotape)

SEN. JOE BIDEN: He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against—he voted against including another 3.6 million children in coverage that—of the existing healthcare plan when he voted in the United States Senate. He’s not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college. He’s not been a maverick on the war. He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: Mike Murphy, let’s begin with Governor Palin, if we can. I don’t think there’s any question of the fact that she probably helped her own self-image. But did she move anybody across the aisle, and did she demonstrate to this country that she’s qualified to be one heartbeat away from the presidency?

MR. MURPHY: I don’t think the vice presidential debate, despite all the interest, had a lot of attention. I guarantee you that, backstage, both campaign managers were there with a bottle of whiskey and a revolver, terrified, because you had two titan-class gaffe machines out there. Either of them could have done a lot of damage, and neither did. So I think now it goes back to the main event. So I think Sarah Palin, who was in trouble before—and I have to admit, I’m a Republican who’s been somewhat critical of the strategy of that choice simply because, for all her attributes and charm, which there’s a lot of, she was—in my view, anyway, and I’ve been wrong before—a base pick. And I think it’s not a base Republican election. But I think she did do herself some good, and, and going forward she’s credentialed enough now to go out there and make a middle-class mom economic argument, where she can do some help for the ticket. But fundamentally, we’re back to the main event Tuesday night with the two presidential candidates. That’s where the race will be decided.

MR. BROKAW: Sarah Palin make you nervous in any way as an opponent in this 30 days that we have to go?

MR. BEGALA: You know, George W. Bush used to say he was always advantaged when people misunderestimated him, and I think that’s part of what some of the left did with Governor Palin. It—Richard Nixon said this when the Democrats destroyed Spiro Agnew and he went on to win that election in 1968, Nixon later said, “You don’t shoot down in presidential politics.” And watch Joe Biden in that debate. I thought he was great because he shot up. He was neither patronizing toward the governor of Alaska nor bullying. He focused his fire on John McCain. Contrast that with Governor Palin, who did a good job of rehabilitating her own image, but there were lots of moments where she was throwing John McCain under the bus. It looked to me like this was a candidate who thinks this race may be over, she’s starting to run in 2012. She did not do a very effective job of attacking Barack Obama or defending John McCain. She did quite a good job of rehabilitating Sarah Palin.

MR. MURPHY: I’ve got to throw one penalty flag on Biden, who I thought did a solid job. He totally demagogued McCain’s healthcare plan in an absolutely shameless way, and he deserves tremendous criticism for that.

MR. BEGALA: Oh, please.

MR. MURPHY: It’s not a tax increase, and that’s out for people.

MR. BEGALA: We, we need to litigate, we need, we need to litigate that, Mike.

MR. MURPHY: The Washington Post said so. They gave it a Pinocchio, and Pinocchio means lie.

MR. BEGALA: We need to...

MR. MURPHY: I just want to...

MR. BROKAW: I’ll let the two of you go off to our green room here and fight that out.

MR. BEGALA: Yeah, we will. We will.

MR. BROKAW: We’re going, we’re going to move on, if we can. Thanks very much for being with us.

Coming next, insights and analysis on Decision 2008 from our political roundtable. And we have a full table this morning: David Gregory, Gwen Ifill, Peggy Noonan, Chuck Todd and David Yepsen from The Des Moines Register, next only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. BROKAW: Our political roundtable after this brief station break.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Feb. 7: Brennan, Paulson, Greenspan, roundtable Jan. 31: Axelrod, Boehner, roundtable Jan. 24: Jarrett, McConnell, roundtable Jan. 17: Clinton, Bush, Shah, Keen, roundtable Jan. 10: Kaine, Steele, Schwarzenegger, roundtable Jan. 3: Brennan, Chertoff, Hayden, roundtable Dec. 27: Napolitano, Gibbs, political roundtable Dec. 20: Axelrod, Dean, roundtable Dec. 13: Romer, economic roundtable Dec. 6: Clinton, Gates, McCain, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: