'Meet the Press' transcript for Nov. 9, 2008

MR. BROKAW:  Speaking of the future of the party and some of the issues that we've been discussing here, Bobby Jindal, who is the governor of Louisiana, rising star in your party, had this to say:  "[Republicans] need real solutions.  It's not enough to be just against single-payer health care, for example.  We've got to discuss how we provide private coverage, to apply our principles to the issues that affect people's lives." Is there going to be in the next two years within the Republican Party a real struggle for the identification of the GOP?

SEN. MARTINEZ:  No question about it.  And we have to.  We have to modernize. There's a great meeting of Republican governors taking place in my state next week, and that is a laboratory of ideas.  That's where we got a lot of the resurgence of our party on conservatism.  The fact is that there's a lot of bright stars of our party.  Mitch Daniels had an excellent day.  On a day when the Republican ticket lost Indiana, he won re-election overwhelmingly.  That's because the kind of governor he's been and the kinds of things that he has done.  These are governors who have not been governing as partisans but who have been governing as getting things done for the people.  And the ideas that are germinating in our states, I think, are very exciting and, I think, will give rise to the future of our party.

MR. BROKAW:  Congressman, you have been personally witness to so many changes in this country in your own lifetime.  Here you are the third most important Democrat in the House of Representatives, a leading spokesman for your party. You represent a congressional district in South Carolina, a part of the old South.  At 11:00 Eastern time this past Tuesday night, when all the networks announced that Barack Obama would be the president-elect of the United States, what did you think to yourself?

REP. CLYBURN:  I was a bit numb when the announcement first came.  I was in a group of 1500 people, standing on the stage with my family and friends.  And when I turned around and looked at the monitor, I looked right into the faces of my three daughters and two grandchildren, and tears were streaming down their faces.  And it struck me that this was really intergenerational.  And those of us my age who went through the sit-ins and all of that, we really have felt that we have been lucky to live to see this.  But those were tears of hope.  They were tears of vindication.  Those of us who stayed with the system, worked within it, the John Lewises of the world, I, I said to myself, "We have been vindicated."

MR. BROKAW:  And finally, your colleague Rahm Emanuel, who, who was a real spirit carrier in the House of Representatives, leading the charge for the Democratic Party, is now going to be the chief of staff in the White House.  A lot of Republicans kind of have their dukes up already saying, "That's not the best signal to be sending.  This is a guy who only played hardball with sharp elbows."

REP. CLYBURN:  Look, the chief of staff manages the White House on behalf of the president.  I think we would make a big mistake if we confused governing with managing.  Those are two distinctly different things.  Rahm Emanuel is a good manager.  He's--he knows policy.  He knows the president-elect very, very well.  He will--he was an excellent choice.  He will do well in that job.

MR. BROKAW:  I can tell by the expression on Martinez's face.

SEN. MARTINEZ:  No, I, I tend to agree.  I, I think you need someone in that job who you can trust, who's going to cover your backside, and who's smart and can run the trades on time--the trains on time.  So I differ with, with Leader Boehner.  I think that Rahm Emanuel for Barack Obama's a good choice.

MR. BROKAW:  All right.  Thank you very much, Senator Mel Martinez of Florida.

REP. CLYBURN:  We got agreement.

MR. BROKAW:  You leave--we found something to agree on here.

SEN. MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

REP. CLYBURN:  Very good.

SEN. MARTINEZ:  Absolutely.

MR. BROKAW:  Moving to the center right here on MEET THE PRESS.

Coming up next, insights and analysis on Decision 2008:  Beyond from our roundtable.  Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham and Mary Mitchell all here only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. BROKAW:  We're back and joined by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Mary Mitchell of the Chicago Sun Times, and Newsweek editor and author Jon Meacham.

Welcome to all of you.

Mary, you have been covering the Obamas from the beginning, up close and personal.  Here's what you had to write this past Thursday in your column in the Sun-Times.  "The Obama family will be the face of leadership of the most powerful country in the world.  For too long, black families have been disparaged as being dysfunctional and the root of America's problems.  But Obama and his wife, Michelle, have presented an image that speaks to the strengths, rather than to the weaknesses, of black families."

What do you think their impact will be on the black community and in those neighborhoods where there are dysfunctional families?

MS. MARY MITCHELL:  Well, let me tell you, this morning I did a radio show, and the callers were up at 5:00 this morning talking about how excited and inspired they were, how they were going to go back and, you know, take this victory, not just, not just celebrate Obama's victory, but celebrate the community.  Get the guys off the corners, get the kids in the school, encourage the kids to go to school.  I mean, they were talking about basic things they could do right now today to improve the quality of life in their own neighborhoods.  And I think that's a result of all the inspiration they've gotten from President-elect Obama's campaign.

MR. BROKAW:  Do you think that that will be an active part of his presidency, that he will continue to remind families, as he did during the campaign, of their responsibilities?

MS. MITCHELL:  Yes.  I, I, I definitely think that when you, when you look at the messages that he sent out, he was always calling for African-American families particularly to take responsibility for their families, take responsibilities for their children, you know, value education.  Because what his story tells African-American parents is that, you know, you don't just have the role model of the athlete.  You don't have the role model of the, the rappers.  You have someone who did what he was supposed to do.  He got a good education, he married his sweetheart, he's a father for his children.  That's the kind of image the African-American community needs right now.

MR. BROKAW:  All right.  We have some other issues to deal with, obviously, this new president does.  Here's what Steven Pearlstein wrote in The Washington Post on Friday.  He's the Pulitzer Prize winning economics reporter.  "Now comes the hard part.  Come January, President Obama will inherit the weakest U.S.economy in 25 years, with output shrinking, unemployment rising, the federal deficit out of control and a financial system on government life-support.  The new president will probably spend his first year in office careering--or careening from crisis to crisis.  The job will feel a lot less like a ship's captain and a lot more like that of a triage nurse.

"Parallels have been drawn to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, two presidents who came to office in the midst of economic crisis and wound up reshaping and redefining American capitalism for the ensuing generation. Obama now has the same opportunity, along with a strong mandate to pursue it. His immediate challenge is not to allow himself to be trapped by his victory."

What lesson should he take from Franklin Roosevelt?

MS. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:  Well, I think the first thing that you take from Franklin Roosevelt is the awareness that great crises also creates great opportunities.  You know, Abigail Adams once said at the time of the Revolution, "These are the times when a genius wants to live." So that there's a great possibility for a transforming presidency for him.  But, like Franklin Roosevelt, you have to figure out timing, you have to educate and shape the country for it.  You know, the election of Roosevelt in '32 was not unlike the election in '08.  It was more a repudiation of Hoover than it was telling where the change was going to go.

So Obama's challenge now is to educate the country as to where he wants to take them.  We saw landslides in 1964 for Lyndon Johnson.  It got undone by Vietnam.  A landslide in '72 for, for Nixon, it got undone by Watergate.  You can't predict history.  Roosevelt became great because of what he did.  So the challenge will be he's got a mandate, he's got a majority, and he's got a program.  Progressive goals are out there, he's going to have to learn like Roosevelt did in the, in the World War II, even more than the New Deal, move step by step to educate the country, but don't give, don't give up on those progressive goals.  This is a mysterious cycle in events that we're going through.  Just like Roosevelt said, "We have a rendezvous with destiny." It's a pretty exciting time.  And my hope is that he doesn't let that go.  LBJ did it in '64 and '65.  It's one of those moments in history, you got to make use of that moment.

MR. BROKAW:  Jon Meacham, you've got a new book out on Andrew Jackson, who was a powerful and dynamic figure in the early part of the 19th century.  And then you got five ideas for the new president.  You say, "Find people who will tell it like it is.  Turn weaknesses into strengths.  Speak to the electorate. Keep church and state separate.  Always have a backup plan." You know, every administration is determined, every president is determined, "I want somebody who's going to get in my face and tell me," and then they step into the Oval Office and all that resolution fades away.  They're--it's Mr. President...

MR. JON MEACHAM:  "What a lovely tie, Mr. President."

MR. BROKAW:  Right, right.  Exactly right.  That's as far as they're prepared to go.

MR. MEACHAM:  That's right.  I think Jackson was particularly good at this. Jackson was a candidate of change.  He was the first self-made president. There are many parallels, I think, between '08 and 1828.  He came to rule after the unpopular son of another president and was someone who believed that both the financial system and the political system needed fundamental reform. And he had--to go to Doris' point--a kind of mystical connection to the people.  He believed that he was their tribune, that he was the enactor of the popular will, and he never wavered in his faith that if he were honest with the people that they would support him.  And he saw that as a covenant of modern democracy, that he was going to be straight with them and that they would support him.  You saw the beginnings of that in Grant Park.  I thought one of the most remarkable things about that speech that Senator Obama gave--President-elect Obama, was he said, we, we--"I will tell you the truth, particularly when we disagree." And that's, that's a key part of democratic leadership.  Jackson was the first great democratic president, lowercase D.

MR. BROKAW:  He does have the power of political oratory on his side.

MR. MEACHAM:  Hm.

MR. BROKAW:  You say speak to the electorate.

MR. MEACHAM:  Yeah.

MR. BROKAW:  Should he do that on a regular basis, an FDR fireside chat basis?

MR. MEACHAM:  I think so.  I...

MR. BROKAW:  Or big speeches?

MR. MEACHAM:  I--well, you know, they worry too much about the big speeches and the celebrity and all that.  I would say leverage your strengths.  He is, interestingly, a--the personality is, is fascinating, because there, there could be a vice there.  I mean, perhaps he's too much of a rock star.  I don't think so.  I think that the country, with due respect to President Bush in the last eight years, I think the, the country is not--is willing to hear some eloquence and I think is prepared for a kind of clarity of expression.  Both Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan were very clear about what they believed, and communicated it quite, quite brilliantly.  He has a special gift, and to quote Winston Churchill, "There are things afoot in the world right now that will be spoken of as long as the English language is spoken in any corner of the globe."

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Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: