'Meet the Press' transcript for Oct. 19, 2008

MR. BROKAW:  Andrea.

MS. MITCHELL:  I--also, I should have said that Sarah Palin is a major factor, clearly, in Colin Powell's decision.  And that is increasingly with the conservative commentators, with Peggy Noonan and others who have written out, Chris Buckley, are really concerned with the choice of Sarah Palin, what it says about John McCain's judgment and what it says about her being, you know, able to step into the presidency on foreign policy, on national security and commander in chief issues.

MR. BROKAW:  All right, let's, let's talk, if we can, about the map that we just saw from Chuck Todd, summarized by The New York Times just this morning, "There was a feel of a political world turned upside down on Saturday as Senator John McCain found himself defending North Carolina and Virginia, while Senator Barack Obama was greeted by huge crowds in Missouri, which Republicans had also considered safe just months ago." That's Michael Powell and Michael Cooper writing today in the, in The New York Times.

You, you've been through campaigns before, Joe Scarborough, you're a keen student of what's going on.  McCain is beginning to run out of some options, but we've been there before with him.

MR. SCARBOROUGH:  We have been there before with him.  A year ago John McCain's political career was pronounced dead on arrival.  Remember, he had that bloated campaign staff in the summer of '07, and then of course as we got closer to, to the executioner walking out on stage and finishing it, John McCain came back.  And McCain always closes strongly.  I, I just--I, I want to offer a warning to the Barack Obama campaign, which I'm sure they won't listen to, but I would say go to Florida, go to Ohio, get out of North Carolina.  You don't have to win 350 electoral votes.  These campaigns always tighten up.  We are not a 60-40 country, we are a 51-49 country.  And maybe this year it's 51 Democratic, 49 Republican.  But it's going to be close in the end, and he may regret spending time in North Carolina.  It--maybe it looks like he's going to win now, but I'm telling you, as we've seen, these national polls, when they tighten, all these state races close.  I would just be concerned about getting too clever by half.

MR. BROKAW:  And, David Brooks, I want to read something that you had to say about John McCain recently in your column on September 26th.  "What disappoints me about the McCain campaign is that it has no central argument. I had hoped that he would create a grand narrative explaining how the United States is fundamentally unprepared for the 21st century and how McCain's worldview is different.  McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don't add up to more than the sum of their parts."

We do know that Barack Obama, with all the money that he has, is going to go on national television for a half an hour, and I suppose it's going to be his...(unintelligible)...for why he ought to be elected president of the United States, try to close the deal.  Does Senator McCain need to do a half-hour speech to the country and be different Senator McCain...

MR. BROOKS:  Well...

MR. BROKAW:  ...than he has been?

MR. BROOKS:  Well, he could show the Al Smith dinner, which was a big New York dinner than happened this week where McCain was himself.

MR. BROKAW:  Right.

MR. BROOKS:  He was enjoying himself, he was hilariously funny, he was graceful.  That's the McCain a lot of us all know and, and see.  What happened to the McCain campaign very early on, they made a decision.  There were a couple advisors, including a frequent guest on this program, Mike Murphy and John Weaver, who wanted a different McCain or a different Republican Party. The maverick, the uniter, post-Republican, really a fusion candidate. Somebody who would have directed right at Colin Powell.  The campaign really got rid of those two guys and went in a different direction surrounded by much more orthodox Republican consultants and ran a very conventional campaign and essentially tied themselves to the deck of the Titanic, a party that was going down.

I'd love to see him give that speech, but they should have given it a year ago.  They--he--and the reason why he behaved the way he did during the financial crisis is he didn't move on from the Republican Party where they are right now.  And that was something that he could have done a year ago.  The books were out there, the ideas were out there.  He didn't take advantage. I'd love to see him, but it may be a little late.

MR. SCARBOROUGH:  But we do have to say this though, David, Steve Schmidt's program was working.  I mean, let us remember, Sarah Palin, we can all laugh at her now, but Sarah Palin, those attack ads, a conservative orthodox approach took him from 10 points behind to two, three, four points ahead.  It wasn't until this economic crisis came, and McCain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong, that everything switched, turned on a dime.  I understand what you're saying, and a lot of Republicans agree with you, but that approach was working until Wall Street melted down.

MR. BROOKS:  Well...

MR. BROKAW:  Andrea, I want to share with our viewers a piece of tape, and I think we have it ready.  And, obviously, the Obama campaign has been trying to tag John McCain as a third term of George Bush.  And he really didn't begin to respond until the debate, then he talked about it again over the weekend.  Can we take a look a that?

(Videotape)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ):  I said it at the last debate.  I'm not George Bush. It's--if, if Senator Obama wants to run against George Bush, he should have run for president four years ago.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW:  And here's how Barack Obama responded to that, with faint praise, I think it's fair to say.

(Videotape)

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL):  In the debate this week, McCain felt the need to inform me that he's not President Bush.  Now, I knew that.  In fairness, I don't blame Senator McCain for all of President Bush's mistakes.  After all, he only voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.  So there's 10 percent of the screw-ups that Bush did on his own.  But that other 90 percent, McCain was right there with him.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW:  Can they continue to tag John McCain with George Bush?

MS. MITCHELL:  They can, and, in fact, they're doing it with a remarkably negative ad.  I mean, we talk a lot about the negativity on the Republican side.  But the fact is that Barack Obama has so much more money, and some of these targeted ads, one that they unveiled on Thursday and Friday of this week and it's on national television, has John McCain in his own words saying, in another interview, in another context, "I voted, I supported George Bush 90 percent of the time." So they've got him on videotape.  And the fact is, that this ad is running and running and running.  This money advantage, the fact that they've announced $150 million in a month, it is extraordinary, three times what some had predicted they'd be able to do in closing months.  And new contributors.  They have now bought up all the remaining time that is available.  So you talk about a half-hour speech.  Right now, John McCain would be hard-pressed to find the time.  The networks would have to make some kinds of, you know, equal time decisions to get him on because all the time has been bought up.  And they're running these ads over and over again.  Yes, the robocalls are reaching hundreds of thousands of people, the negative robotic calls from the Republican side.  But these ads are reaching millions and millions of people.  Another thing, West Virginia.  We talk about some of these states where you're trying to catch up.  I was told that they're going to spend--Barack Obama's going to spend $5 million on the ground in the closing days in West Virginia, knowing the size of that state and how much that money can affect the turnout in the race.  We are seeing an extraordinary amount of money in this race, and that's a question that has not really been addressed in terms of the imbalance.

MR. BROKAW:  Jon Meacham, we have not talked yet about John Lewis, who compared John McCain to George Wallace and the division and the hate, as he described it.  He then backed off, in a manner of speaking, from some of that. But do you think that that might have driven some people who were kind of on the margins to think more about race and think about it in a negative way as they go into the voting booth?  They say, "If he's going to invoke that, I'm not sure I can vote for a black man."

MR. MEACHAM:  I, I don't.  I think Congressman Lewis is an American saint. He's a martyr in the tradition, literally, of St. Stephen, bleeding for, for the cause of justice.  I think that the remarks at the Republican rallies, the feel of the campaign, as General Powell told you, feeling that it was "narrow," I think in the past seven, 10 days, at least before Thursday, was beginning to turn the campaign into something that we all feared would happen, that race was becoming, as you suggest, more of a factor.  What was interesting to me this week is about five minutes after the debate, the old John McCain seemed back--on David Letterman, at the Al Smith dinner.  And I think a very interesting question for the next 16 days is going to be which John McCain finishes this race?  Will it be the John McCain who wants to--who has long fought for causes larger than himself, as he puts it?  I was talking to our friend historian Michael Beschloss, who pointed out that at the point Vice President Mondale realized there was absolutely no way of winning in 1984, he was advised campaign the last couple of weeks as you want your grandchildren to see you.  And I wonder whether that'll happen with Senator McCain.

MR. BROKAW:  All right.  We want to put up the cover of Newsweek for this week.  I know you'll be grateful to hear that.  "How a President Obama Might Govern a Center Right Nation."

We'll, there are your friends at Newsweek, they've already elected Senator Obama, Joe.

MR. SCARBOROUGH:  They have.  And they've got it right.  It is a center right nation, which is fascinating.  You may have a Democratic Congress owning the House, having 60 in the Senate, which I really do believe could happen, and having a Democratic president.  This will be the first time, I guess, since 1938 that one party had such dominance.  But it is a conservative country. Not the type of conservative country that the Republicans have been talking about in the past several weeks, but on economics in particular.  That's why you're talking about how McCain will campaign in the end?  I think we're starting to see the shift.  William Ayers goes to the side, but they start talking about economics, income redistribution, get--you know, taking from the most productive members of society and giving tax breaks to people who don't pay taxes.  This is what we're going to see.

MR. BROKAW:  David Brooks, how would you like...

MR. BROOKS:  They could nationalize the banks...

MR. BROKAW:  How would you like to be a Democratic president facing an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, most of whom are very liberal and have been waiting now to get their due piece, as they see it?

MR. BROOKS:  Well, it's misery, actually.  And I was thinking, they could nationalize the banks; but unfortunately, we already did that.  So...

MR. SCARBOROUGH:  Oh, yeah.  Yeah.

MR. BROOKS:  ...the socialism's already happened.

Obama's going to face a choice, and the Democrats are going to face a choice, if he wins.  We're going to have a deficit of $7 trillion--$750 trillion--billion.  Is he going to magnify that, or is he going to try to balance the budget?

MR. BROKAW:  All right, thanks very much David Brooks.  We have to leave it right there.  Thank you all.

And Jon Meacham, we're going to see you back here in three weeks.  You'll have the debut of your new book, "American Lion:  Andrew Jackson in the White House." I've had a preview of it, and it's sensational.  It's history come alive for all of us.

MR. MEACHAM:  Thanks.

MR. BROKAW:  Especially at this time.  We'll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. BROKAW:  That's all for today.  If you missed any of our interview with Colin Powell, you can watch a rebroadcast tonight on Joe Scarborough's channel, MSNBC, at 6 PM.  Or download our netcast this afternoon at mtp.msnbc.com.

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

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