'Meet the Press' transcript for Jan. 18, 2009

MR. GREGORY:  We are back and happy to be joined this morning by David Brooks, Tavis Smiley, Tom Brokaw, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Chuck Todd.

Welcome to all of you.  A special edition of the program, a special time in Washington as we look toward history on Tuesday.

Doris, this is in many ways a day and a few days that's more about poetry than prose.  How do you capture this moment for the country?

MS. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN:  Well, you know, the most important thing I think now is that all inaugurals have a certain emotion connected to them.  It's a sacred renewal for our country.  You feel like America can change suddenly because there's a new president there.  But this one has an even more special moment.  There's the high drama of the fact that we're in crises, so it's one of those inaugurals that's likely to be remembered.  There's the fact that it's the first African-American being elected as a president.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. GOODWIN:  Which will be so much bigger even than I think we know, when that moment takes place.  And there's the fact that he's got literary capabilities.  Very few inaugurals are remembered when you think about the speeches, except for the terrible ones like Harding.  Mencken said they--it was so horrible that it was glorious.  So all those things together make it possible that this is going to be the most exciting in our memory.  JFK is exciting after the fact because of the literary moment and because of Camelot that, that came after it.  But I'm not sure at the moment that you had people all over the country, as is going to be happening here, in, in little living rooms, in diners, in bars watching this, taking the day as a sacred day.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. GOODWIN:  So I think we should all feel good that we're living in this moment.  You always want to live in a moment of high drama.  This is one.

MR. GREGORY:  Tom Brokaw:

MR. TOM BROKAW:  Well, I think more than anytime than I can remember in all the years I've been doing this, the country is paying attention.  The phrase I've been using, "The nerve endings of the country are exposed." And now, after the election and given the magnitude of the problems that we're facing, even Republicans are cheering him on.  They want this to work and they're willing to set aside, you know, a lot of what we've been through for the last eight years and beyond that in terms of the ideological food fights.  And they're saying, "Look, we've got to get through this together." There is going to be some pain.  The economic conditions, the objective reality is they're very, very difficult.  And you can't even find a model that fits, in our lifetime, for what we're facing now.  And what we've learned in the last four months, just when we think we've gotten to higher ground we go off the cliff again.  And I think that has meant for the country not just a crisis of confidence, but sheer terror on the lot of a lot of people, and with good reason.

MR. GREGORY:  Tavis Smiley, tomorrow's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

MR. TAVIS SMILEY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  He would have been 80 to see the inauguration of the first African-American president.

MR. SMILEY:  And you can't escape that.  What a, what a, what a 48-hour run it's going to be, celebrating the person who I regard as the greatest American we've ever produced, my own assessment, Dr. King; and then Mr. Obama's inauguration the next day.  There have been so many King-Obama comparisons as, as evidenced by your question.  I think, though, it's important to state that Obama's election is a down payment on King's dream, it is not the fulfillment of King's dream, and that's a crucial, I think, and critical distinction we have to make.  A significant down payment to be sure, and King would certainly be celebrating this moment.  But the closest thing in King's lifetime to this Obama moment was the election of the first black mayor of a major American city, Carl Stokes in Cleveland.  King went to Cleveland and, if I can paraphrase it this way, talked about this notion of black faces in high places.  And while that's something to celebrate, there is work to be done and we have got to keep the focus on the issues.  And where Mr. Obama is concerned, while black America and all of America will certainly celebrate this, because King is, again, not just a black leader, he's the best of what America is all about.

But while we celebrate this moment, we have to also, I think--back to Doris' point, and what this speech is going to bring--I'm looking for how Mr. Obama's going to challenge us to invest, to spend this, what I call an engagement dividend.  The public clearly has been engaged here.  How do we spend that dividend?  How do we use that surplus to advance the cause of America?  So I want to hear what he has to say about how all of us are going to be included in this progress, in this process of moving America forward.

MR. GREGORY:  And the drama of the day has been built up by the way that the president-elect and vice president-elect have been spending it, a whistle-stop store--tour, rather, down from Philadelphia to Washington, harkening back to the same path that Abraham Lincoln took before his inauguration in 1861. Here's a--just a portion of what the president-elect told crowds yesterday.

(Videotape, Saturday)

PRES.-ELECT BARACK OBAMA:  While our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not.  What's required is the same perseverance and idealism that our founders displayed.  What's required is a new Declaration of Independence not just in our nation, but in our own lives; independence from ideology and small thinking, independence from prejudice and bigotry, independence from selfishness, an appeal not to our easy instincts, but to our better angels.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  Chuck Todd, is he previewing a little bit of what we'll hear on Tuesday?

MR. CHUCK TODD:  I thought that--when I was there yesterday, that's what it felt like.  It felt like he was testing out some inaugural--either they're phrases that have been discarded and they say, "Oh, we'll use them in the speech," or they are, they are some--and one thing I think we've learned about Obama is that he does do that, they do test--they do test out phrases...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. TODD:  ...and they start--and suddenly, you know, if you follow his speeches closely and, and you get to a big one, you'll say, "Oh, OK, I've heard that phrase and that phrase," and they've woven it together.

But I want to go to Tavis' point; I think that that is what I'm going to be curious about Tuesday.  When he did his speech for the stimulus package last week, I thought it was one of his surprisingly weaker performances.  It was very dry, it didn't ask for any sacrifice from the, the country, it was all about government.  And it was an odd thing, because it was supposed to be a speech that was to the American people, getting them--buy in on this, and he didn't ask for any buy in.  Now, maybe they were waiting till the inaugural address to do that, but I think that that is the number one thing a lot of Obama's supporters on the intellectual side of this are all wondering; "OK, Bush didn't do this after 9/11.  We're counting on you to do this.  How are you going to do it and how are you going to make that real?"

MR. GREGORY:  And, David Brooks, I go back to the question I asked Rahm Emanuel, which is what the president-elect has said, the importance of capturing the moment that we're in.  How does he describe that?  What is this moment about?

MR. DAVID BROOKS:  Well, in Philadelphia I thought the key phrase there was the independence from ideology.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROOKS:  In 1961 there was a book written by Daniel Bell called "The End of Ideology," we're going to move beyond the brutalizing politics of the '50s, McCarthy era and all that.

Unidentified Man:  Oops.

MR. BROOKS:  And it was, it was a very popular book.  Then the '60s happened, we had 30 years of ideology, of pulverizing politics.  Barack Obama, born in 1961, I think really sees himself moving beyond the politics that really grabbed this in the '60s and never let go.  And the way that plays out practically is a stimulus package that's going to run up the deficit in the next couple of years, but then in 2010 I think he's seriously committed to tackling entitlement reform:  Medicare, Social Security.  That's where we all sacrifice.  The pension benefits, the health care benefits, we are going to have to sacrifice.  And if he can do that, if he can put the country on a fiscal balance after the current explosion, then he really will be a great president.  And I think he's already thinking in that arc.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

Let's talk about the comparisons, Doris, to Abraham Lincoln.  The New York Post this week on the cover had "Abe-Bama." That was the image.  There it is. This is how Bloomberg News talked about the comparison:  "For most of the 144 years since Lincoln's death, presidents of all political persuasions have tried to enlist Lincoln's reputation for honesty and courage in support of their own ambitions.  ... Still, the election of America's first black president, from the same state as the leader who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, gives Obama a stronger claim than most predecessors to Lincoln's legacy, says Tom Schwartz, a historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.  There's a `very clear thread that connects the two,' says Schwartz, who describes Obama's history-making election as `a kind of bookend to Lincoln's legacy in the Civil War.'" How so?

MS. GOODWIN:  Well, truly it is, in a sense.  He's the one who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, started us on a journey, which we're now taking a giant step forward with the election of the first African-American president. But I think you can't have a better mentor than Lincoln, as long as he doesn't grow a beard.  I can take the stovepipe hat and everything else.  But I think the great thing about Lincoln is not only what he did--which Obama has also tried in some ways to emulate by putting powerful people around him who are going to argue and question him, so he's going to get a lot of options--it's who Lincoln was.  There's no better person to summon the spirit of than somebody who had the emotional intelligence of Abraham Lincoln, and I think we see hints of it in Obama:  not wanting to demonize the opposition, bringing people like David Brooks and other people around him to--and Reverend Warren in, who may not agree with him on all occasions, but wants to listen to them.

MR. GREGORY:  Rick Warren, who will be doing the invocation at the inauguration.

MS. GOODWIN:  Who will be doing the invocation.  Being willing to look at the past and say, " don't want to focus my energies on the past." His whole dealing of how he's going to deal with Guantanamo and the torture issue, "I'm going to stop it how--now, but I'm not sure I really want to look back," and have the whole country brought up in the momentum of that.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. GOODWIN:  Being able to deal with people, create loyalty within your inner circle.  His team has been incredibly loyal.  And more importantly, being able to engage the country through your literary talents...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. GOODWIN:  ...through your plain speaking, to follow what you're doing. If you can follow Lincoln on those things, you can't be--you can't have a better person.  I think to become concerned with history--maybe it's because I love history so much--it makes you bigger, it enlarges you.  I felt every day, living with Lincoln, as I woke up with him in the morning, went to bed with him at night--metaphorically, anyway--that I was becoming a better person.  I mean, weird as that sounds, everybody who's studied Lincoln feels that way. That's why there's 14,000 books.  Ida Tarbell once said there's no one more companionable than Lincoln.  Let him be companionable for Obama, we'll be in great shape.

MR. GREGORY:  Is the question, Tavis; here he is, Obama, as a champion of the left in many ways, particularly on the war...

MR. SMILEY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  ...and yet he's emerging as a president who's a moderate.

MR. SMILEY:  Mm-hmm.  It is fascinating for me.

But I want, I want to go to Doris' point here about, about Lincoln.  I don't know if--you're the historian, not me, you may disagree with this.  But in my study of history, great presidents aren't born, great presidents are made.  I want, as we all do--to Tom's point earlier about even Republicans cheering for Mr. Obama to succeed; 58 percent of Republicans, David, who supported McCain, are--want Obama to do well, and they're, they're excited about what, what this, what this next four years will mean.  So the country wants him to do well.  That said, while we want him to be a great president--and Doris makes it very clear he has all the requisite talent to become a great president--because they're made and not born, presidents, I think, have to be pushed into their greatness.

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