'Meet the Press' transcript for Dec. 21, 2008

MR. GREGORY:  Our political roundtable on a busy week in politics right after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  We’re back and joined by Michele Norris of NPR, Erin Burnett of CNBC and Carol Marin of the Chicago Sun-Times and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

Welcome to all of you.  Carol, of course, also with our affiliate in Chicago, WMAQ.  So good to have you all here.  We have a lot to get to here.

Erin, I want to start with you.  The headline in The New York Times yesterday on this auto bailout was this, “Bush Aids Detroit, But Hard Choices Wait For Obama.” What are they?

MS. ERIN BURNETT:  A couple of very big choices for Obama.  As we all know, they’ve got this loan, but he can change the terms, and there is something big in there about labor.  It says, guess what, U.S. automakers, you have to get your costs down to the same as the foreign automakers by the end of 2009. Labor doesn’t want that, they want that taken out.  Barack Obama is going to have to decide whether he wants to take a stand against big labor.  He’s made a point of saying, “Look, labor, I’m not going to go against you.  Labor shouldn’t take the burden.” But if he actually stands up to them, that would be significant.  And I think that’s the biggest thing in there for him.

MR. GREGORY:  We’ve seen so much activity with the Fed cutting interest rates now to historic lows here to try to encourage people to buy homes.  At the same time, Michele, the stimulus package takes shape and gets bigger even before he gets to office.  It’s now approaching $850 billion.  Now the goal of, of producing close to three million jobs.  They’re worried about unemployment.

MS. MICHELE NORRIS:  They’re very worried about unemployment.  And that stimulus package could actually get even bigger over time.  I mean, this is a, this is their, their—they’re putting a lot of stock in this, this infrastructure plan.  And that’s the plan to create jobs, to build roads and bridges and schools and hospitals to try to keep that jobs number down.  I mean, we’re looking at the possibility of 10 million jobs lost over the next year.  I mean, this is a big problem for them.

But to just speak to something that Erin said about the auto bailout.  I mean, this is—he will have to determine what it means to be “economically viable.” That’s a lot of power for this president.  Is it based on the business model? And in doing that, he’s got to make sure that places like Detroit and Ohio feel whole in this, because they’re looking toward 2012 also.  And for communities whose identity and pride is wrapped up in the auto industry, there’s a lot at stake in this.

MR. GREGORY:  We’re talking about March 31^st of 2009.  That’s that deadline for the companies to demonstrate that they have profitability going forward, which will be...

MS. BURNETT:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...a tall order.

One, one more question about what the Fed is doing, what’s called quantitative easing, where they’re basically buying up...

MS. BURNETT:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...all of this debt in the hopes of incentivizing people to go out and buy homes.  Is that enough?  Is it going to work?

MS. BURNETT:  That’s—look, in a short answer, probably not completely. They’ve only just started to do some of those things where they’re buying mortgages and they’re buying everything they can buy, but we really are starting to get to a point where we have to have a very serious conversation. All the stimulus, this spending on roads...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. BURNETT:  ...we’re spending on this, we’re spending on that.  But if you’re not attacking the core problem, which is the people’s number one asset, their home, is dropping in value, it doesn’t matter how many roads you build, you’re not going to have an economy that’s strong on the other side of it.

MR. GREGORY:  Change the psychology.

MS. BURNETT:  Psychology.

Ms. NORRIS:  Consumer confidence.

MR. GREGORY:  All right.

MS. BURNETT:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  Let’s turn to politics and Illinois.  Carol Marin, this is remarkable.  So the governor, Blagojevich, Rob Blagojevich, facing criminal charges.  Has not been formally charged, there’s no indictment yet...

MS. CAROL MARIN:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...which may explain why he’s coming out publicly.  He’s got that room to maneuver.  He came out Friday and this is what he had to say.

(Videotape)

GOV. BLAGOJEVICH:  Now, I’m dying to answer these charges.  I am dying to show you how innocent I am.

Now, I know there are some powerful forces arrayed against me.  It’s kind of lonely right now.  But I have on my side the most powerful ally there is, and it’s the truth.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  You have covered politics in Illinois for a long time.  What is he up to?

MS. MARIN:  He believes what he says.  And you know, he loves to fight.  This is the son of a steelworker, his mother was a CTA ticket taker.  He loves the combat of it.  And in his universe he believes what he’s saying.  You know, he quotes Churchill, he quotes Willie Nelson, he quotes Hank Williams, he quotes Rudyard Kipling, and he believes.  He believes.

MR. GREGORY:  And he sounds like he is preparing for an indictment, because he talked about answering the charges in a court of law.  He’s certainly got a defense team that’s prepared to go to court.

MS. MARIN:  Well, and the U.S. attorney, in declaring these charges, started the clock.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MARIN:  Because when you formally charge, but you don’t yet indict, you’ve got 30 days, maybe another 30 days to bring it to indictment.  So he is certainly going to be indicted.

MR. GREGORY:  And, Andrea Mitchell, this was Blagojevich’s lawyer, one of his lawyers, Sam Adam, talking about the question of whether he would resign and what would actually be a trigger for that.  Let’s watch.

(Videotape)

MR. SAM ADAM JR.:  If it doesn’t work, if it is too hard, if the people of Illinois suffer, he will step aside.  If that happens, if the people of Illinois are suffering.  If he—if we cannot govern, he’ll do that.  But I know this governor, and he has worked his entire career fighting for those that are poor, those are disenfranchised.  And if he thinks he’s hurting them, he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure they get good governance.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  So he’s not hurting the people of Illinois right now?

MS. ANDREA MITCHELL:  Well, his critics clearly say that he’s already hurting the people of Illinois.  Look, Illinois is not going to have a senator. There’s no question that when Congress reconvenes January 5^th, January 6^th, there won’t be a senator from Illinois when all of these decisions are being made which affect critical issues that, you know, Erin and Michele have talked about, about the jobs being lost in the auto industry, which of course, affects Illinois as well.  Not only the suppliers, but the auto industry in Illinois.  So this is already affecting Illinois, but I cannot imagine a circumstance short of indictment where he is going to define himself—and I think, Carol, you would agree with that—as having hurt the people of Illinois.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. MITCHELL:  He is going to fight this through.  And, as you have just, you know, discussed, he defines his role very differently than the rest of the political world.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  And he says he’s done nothing wrong.  And what, what supporters would say is that what we’re hearing on the tapes, the “best of,” there’s a lot of talk, but nothing that’s provable in terms of action, as far as we know.

MS. MARIN:  But dial back.  This is a 76-page criminal complaint.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MARIN:  It dials all the way back to five years worth of federal investigations...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MARIN:  ...that have already grabbed 13 people, either in indictment or in conviction.  The irony and the craziness is he still could appoint a U.S. senator.  And Mayor Daley just yesterday...

MS. MITCHELL:  Right.

MS. MARIN:  ...suggested—and maybe I’m hearing echoes here—he said, you know, he doesn’t want a special election, he believes there could be a person of impeccable character, a businessman.  I’m thinking, does that sound like Bill Daley, former, former commerce secretary?

MS. MITCHELL:  Commerce secretary.

MS. MARIN:  And Obama, you know?

MS. MITCHELL:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  Let’s talk about the impact on Obama.  So he was asked this week about, you know, when is he going to reveal what contacts he’s had.  We know that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, did talk to the governor’s office, which on its face would not be unusual.  Here’s what the president-elect was asked and what he said this week.

(Videotape, Wednesday):

MS. CYNTHIA BOWERS:  You ran on a platform of transparency.

PRES.-ELECT BARACK OBAMA:  Yes.

Ms. BOWERS:  How difficult is all this having to wait to release your inquiry business when the American people expect transparency?

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA:  Well, it, it’s a little bit frustrating.  You know, there’s been a lot of speculation in the press that I would love to correct immediately.  We are biding by the request of the U.S. attorney’s office, but it’s not going to be that long.  By next week, you guys will have the answers to all your questions.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  While he’s in Hawaii, probably put out a piece of paper showing what the contacts were.

MS. MITCHELL:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  Is there some exposure here, politically, for Obama?

MS. NORRIS:  It’s been—it’s a difficult situation for them having been made by the Obama team in part because, at the outset, when he said, “My team had no inappropriate contact,” it may have been better to say, “Of course we were speaking to the governor.”

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS:  “Of course someone was speaking to the governor” because it would be unusual, very unusual if someone on that team, Rahm Emanuel sits on the Senate seat that was once held by Rod Blagojevich.  So they said that there’s no inappropriate contact.  What people heard there is “no contact.”

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  The Obamas have done—the Obama team, as far as we know, has done nothing wrong, but it’s a question of perception.  And then by backtrailing, by—in that document it becomes clear and looking at the tapes it becomes clear that Rahm Emanuel is cited on the tapes 21 times, then it makes it look like there’s some discrepancy.  When from the start...

MR. GREGORY:  Or is there a discussion or a debate, in other words, if there’s a discussion which says here’s a list of acceptable candidates, that’s one thing.  If there’s a back and forth about any one of these candidates, that’s something else.

MS. BURNETT:  Right.  What, what defines the word inappropriate?

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. BURNETT:  What does that mean?  I mean, you chose that word.  Was it a loaded term or not?  I mean, “I did not have sex with that women.”

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah.

MS. BURNETT:  I mean, terms mean something.

MS. NORRIS:  It’s not quite there.  I mean, it’s clear that, that there’s no smoking gun here.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  It’s not that they’ve done anything wrong.

MS. BURNETT:  Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS:  But the difficulty is that if you engage with the governor at all, it could have been a neutral conversation...

MS. MARIN:  If the governor did something wrong, if the governor is extorting, if the governor is suggesting that he needs 15 million for a 501C4...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MARIN:  ...do you hear that as the person having the conversation with him and saying, “I think maybe I ought to report this to someone.”

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MITCHELL:  Right.  And there’s a suggestion now, Willie Brown, who talked to the governor, he’s suggesting that it could be that they were, that he was initially proposing Lisa Madigan, the attorney general in Illinois, a potential future competitor...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  This is a former mayor of San Francisco and head of the Assembly suggesting this.

MS. MITCHELL:  ...and suggesting that it could be that they were discussing with the Obama team Lisa Madigan.

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah.

MS. MITCHELL:  And that was one possibility that was not acceptable.  I think 21 contacts between the governor and Rahm Emanuel would not be surprising.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MITCHELL:  They’re in a transition, and they’re going back and forth. But the question will be how will those transcripts be interpreted?  And the other factor is that the U.S. attorney was not prepared to go public with this, but had to.  His hand was forced by the Chicago Tribune, which was about to publish.  So his case was not ripe, and he probably or possibly does not a prosecutable case on these issues...

MR. GREGORY:  But he may have on some of the other.

MS. MITCHELL:  ...because he had to move.

MS. NORRIS:  David, I just want to say one thing.

MR. GREGORY:  I want—yeah, go ahead.

MS. NORRIS:  I mean, one thing that the Obama camp may be helped by is the campaign that he ran, which was really about a new style of governance.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS:  And he’s helped quite a bit by all of those statements that he made on the stump.

MS. MARIN:  But he’s an incremental pragmatist to the sense that whether it’s Rezko or Jeremiah Wright, he releases a little and then releases more, and, as the questions rise, he releases even more still.

MS. NORRIS:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  And is that consistent with his, with his promise as a candidate for transparency...

MS. MARIN:  Right?

MR. GREGORY:  ...is the question.

I want to move on to Caroline Kennedy, another very interesting story politically this week.  Reporters saw her, the public saw her beginning to campaign in upstate New York, getting into an SUV there, and not having a lot of contact with reporters.  She was also at—in Harlem with the famous Sylvia’s Restaurant, with Al Sharpton, meeting with political figures around the state.  And she answered questions, Andrea Mitchell, in a rather unorthodox way, written questions submitted by several news organizations that were answered by her spokesman.  The Politico reported it this way, I’ll give you some examples.  “A Kennedy spokesman drafted seven written answers to eight questions submitted by Politico to the 51-year-old attorney, author and electoral novice.” Here’s an example.  “Question three:  What priorities would you set for restructuring New York’s financial services industry?” “At this time, Caroline does not have a specific plan to fix New York’s financial services industry.  But, if selected, she will work with President-elect Obama, Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Chris Dodd to pass laws that protect investors and working families across New York and the country.”

“Question 8:  Do you think Israel should negotiate with Hamas?  Do you agree with Israel’s Gaza Strip embargo?  Would you support an Israeli airstrike on Iran if they felt Tehran’s nuclear program represented a threat to their survival?” “Answer:  Caroline Kennedy strongly supports a safe and secure Israel.  She believes Israel’s security decisions should be left to Israel.”

MS. MITCHELL:  First of all, third person in, in these sort of anodyne answers?  And one really big pitfall for her in these answers that she gave, and a very smart question from Politico, was, “Would you support the Democratic nominee for mayor?”

MR. GREGORY:  Hm.

MS. MITCHELL:  And she demurred on that.

MR. GREGORY:  Of course, Mayor Bloomberg’s been a big supporter of hers.

MS. MITCHELL:  Mayor Bloomberg is a big, you know, private adviser.  Kevin Sheekey, his key political strategist, has been helping her.  And so she’s not about to say that she would go up against Mayor Bloomberg, who is not a Democrat, running again, and running possibly against Anthony Weiner, who is a strong Hillary Clinton person.  So this furthers the divide that has been talked about, at least, between Clinton people and Kennedy people.  So the—there are pitfalls here.

Here’s their problem:  They don’t want to seem to be campaigning because Governor Paterson keeps his own counsel.  They don’t want to offend him by seeming to be too overt.  So for her to go out, hold a news conference, speak more publicly other than on street corners, you know, in Harlem, for instance, when she was with Al Sharpton, would seem to be campaigning too overtly.  So that’s what they are trying to do, and not only protect her but not seem to be campaigning rigorously for this.

And then, of course, there’s Andrew Cuomo.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MITCHELL:  And the Cuomo supporters are leaking things.  I mean, there are tabloid reports that she didn’t vote in past elections, that she wasn’t always registered in New York.  When she was a student at Harvard, she was registered in Massachusetts, as you would expect.  So there’s going to be, I mean, this is New York politics.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MITCHELL:  And Cuomo is already saying privately that he regrets that he was not more aggressive in going after this.

MR. GREGORY:  It’s interesting, this question of—from some critics, about a sense of entitlement.  Charles Krauthammer wrote about this in his column in The Washington Post.  He writes, “No lords or ladies here.  If Princess Caroline wants a seat in the Senate, let her do it by election.  There’s one in 2010.  To do it now by appointment on the basis of bloodline is an offense to the most minimal republicanism.  Every state in the union is entitled to representation in the Senate.  Camelot is not a state.” Michele:

MS. NORRIS:  Hm.  You know, both, when we’re talking about New York and Illinois, both of these stories seem to energize the GOP.  It’s interesting because they really do sort of get them going.

MS. MARIN:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  One of the things this story shows is that politics has become a family business.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS:  I mean, think about all the characters here:  Andrew Cuomo, son of the governor; Caroline Kennedy, daughter of a, a former president; and Governor Paterson, whose father, Basil Paterson, has long been involved in politics.  If she wants this seat, she’s going to have to run for it, and she’s going to face the kind of criticism that she’s never faced before.  One of the questions I have that is interesting is, “Where are the Clintons on this?” Another dynastic family.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  And where Hillary Clinton is in this and how much she will help her by running interference or by, behind the scenes, trying to prepare her for this.

MR. GREGORY:  Back people up.

But, you know, Erin, what’s interesting, with so much focus on bloodline and family ties, what about money?  People don’t pay as much attention to the...

MS. BURNETT:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...some people who are in the Senate because they were able to put a lot of money behind their own efforts.

MS. BURNETT:  Oh, it’s true.  And that’s one of the, the—on Wall Street everyone’s talking about this.  You look at Jon Corzine, when he got his seat, or people talk about Mayor Bloomberg and what—now they look at this and say, well, it’s the same.  You can either pay for it or get it through your family. You know, that’s the joke they actually make about Blagojevich.  They say, “Well, really, what did he do that’s all that different from anyone else?” And obviously it’s a joke.  But there is a little point there to your point...

MS. MARIN:  The answer is, he raised...

MS. BURNETT:  ...to your point about it’s money and family.

MS. MARIN:  He raised $52 million across two gubernatorial campaigns.  It was money.

MS. MITCHELL:  But the bottom line is that these are, to Charles Krauthammer’s point, sorry, but this is an appointed process...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. MITCHELL:  ...in both Illinois and in New York.  You can say that it smacks of being anti-democratic, small d, but that is the way the law is. That’s the, the way the Constitution is.  It’s the 17^th amendment to the Constitution.

MS. NORRIS:  But it is going to require someone who does have a lot of intestinal fortitude, because...

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah.

MS. NORRIS:  ...they’re going to face two rapid...(unintelligible)...elections.

MR. GREGORY:  And it is interesting that even her—one of her big backers, Mayor Bloomberg, did suggest that that appointment process should actually be changed going forward.

I want to stay in New York and something else that has rocked Wall Street beyond the economy, and that is Bernard Madoff.  Big money man, investment man who was the darling of Wall Street for many, many years.  Now it turns out he ran a giant Ponzi scheme and billions have been lost, from the small investor to, to Jewish organizations and, and philanthropies across the country.  Steve Pearlstein, who writes about the economy for The Washington Post, wrote this: “With the Madoff story, it is now revealed that the masters of the universe aren’t just too clever by half—they’re not that clever at all.  For years, they not only allowed themselves to be bamboozled by a con artist but also willingly and enthusiastically served as his market agent, offering friends, relatives and favorite charities the opportunity to invest with their good pal, Bernie Madoff.  (So much for the idea that wealthy individuals and ‘sophisticated’ institutional investors don’t need the protection of government regulators.)” Was anybody watching?

MS. BURNETT:  It, it is incredible, because there had been credible complaints brought to the SEC that said along the lines of, “This is too good to be true.  You don’t get these sorts of consistent returns.”

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. BURNETT:  And they didn’t do anything about it.  But they’re—you know, I was talking to Mort Zuckerman, the New York real estate man, earlier this week, and he had lost $30 million in one of his charities that was invested with Bernie Madoff.  And he said, “I didn’t even know who the guy was.  I had given my money to somebody else who actually”...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. BURNETT:  ...”entrusted the entire $30 million to one guy, a guy I’d never heard of, and then I get a letter finding out that it’s completely gone.” So you’re talking about some very sophisticated people who were completely duped, and maybe some of them should have been doing more due diligence.  Some of them were trusting that role to others...

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