'Meet the Press' transcript for Feb. 15, 2009

MR. GREGORY:  And we're back, joined by Gene Robinson, Ron Brownstein, and Kim Strassel and Roger Simon.

Welcome to all of you; especially Kim, new to the program, a fresh face.  Glad to have you here.

MS. KIMBERLY STRASSEL:  It's great to be here.

MR. GREGORY:  So let's get right to it.  Winners and losers this week according to the AP.  Liz Sidoti writes this:  "The Winners:  Obama:  The new Democratic president used his popularity and bully pulpit to get the notoriously sluggish Congress to work through the huge package in relatively short order.  The Losers:  Obama:  He spent weeks preaching of bipartisanship and spending political capital but reverted to combative, buck-stops-here talk when Republicans rebelled at the cost and scope of the plan."

Gene, how do you sort it out?

MR. EUGENE ROBINSON:  In my opinion, you have to say that Obama is a winner this week because he got through an, a, a huge, complicated, almost $800 billion spending rescue bill in record time.  I mean, this doesn't happen in Washington.  And, and you know, sure, the beginning of an administration is the time when you really want to spend some political capital and, and, and, and those chips, but wow.  I mean...

Offscreen Voice #1:  Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON:  ...this is, this is the biggest spending bill of this kind ever passed, and it happened...

MR. GREGORY:  And it's interesting.  Frank Rich in, in the Times this morning talks about the fact that, yeah, in Washington and in the echo chamber a lot of people were writing him off, and yet he maintained his popularity around the country.  Even though there was lagging support for the stimulus at points, when Obama was attached to it, it was still popular.  John Harwood also writes this in his piece in the Times:  "The bright spot for Mr. Obama is that the communications and social networking strengths he and his team demonstrated during the campaign may fit the task of preserving presidential initiative.  ...  `Leaders with projects and an electoral mandate keep people with them by mobilizing, educating, and persuading,' [Pollster Stan] Greenberg said.  `It has actually been a long time since we've had a president with that kind of momentum that has carried through to pass major elements of the reform agenda.' With enactment of the stimulus package, `Obama will now have done this' in less than a month, Mr. Greenberg added.  `Now he has to keep support for much tougher measures.'" Ron:

MR. RON BROWNSTEIN:  Yeah, , I think it's really kind of silly to compare the victory of the week and the bumps of the week.  I mean, as Gene said, the magnitude of the--this bill was a presidency in a box.  He achieved more of his aims in this single legislation than many presidents will achieve in an entire term.  I mean, there is more new net public investment here on things the Democrats consider essential for long-term growth--like education, scientific research, alternative energy--than Bill Clinton was able to achieve in two terms.  And there are--I mean, there are other aspects of this, as well.  If you go back to 1993--first of all, Bill Clinton didn't pass his economic plan till August, Ronald Reagan until the end of July.  When Clinton's plan passed, 41 House Democrats voted against it, and six Senate Democrats.  So the other side of the Republican unity against this was the incredible Democratic unity for it.  Only seven House Democrats, no Senate Democrats voting against it.  What we're seeing here I think in party by--in this House--the difficulty you talk about in winning Republicans is a fundamental long-term change in our political system.  Both parties are more unified than they were a generation ago.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  And I think in some ways this is a wake-up call for Obama that there is a limited number of Republicans who have electoral or ideological incentives to work for him, and he may have to try to build a broader definition of what it means to have an inclusive and bipartisan presidency.

MR. ROGER SIMON:  People didn't really vote for bipartisanship.

MR. GREGORY:  Hm.

MR. SIMON:  They voted for an end to gridlock brought upon by hyperpartisanship.  I don't think it was such a bad thing for President Obama to reach out his hands to the Republicans and have those hands slapped away. Here's a party shattered after two congressional elections in a row, whose only unifying principle is that they're against Obama.  In the end, that's not a winning hand for the Republicans.  With just Democratic votes and a very few Republicans...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. SIMON:  ...President Obama is being seen to get things done.  Now, if those things succeed, and that's a big if, that's a huge victory for him and a huge defeat for the Republicans who turned their backs on him.

MR. GREGORY:  Kim, do you--what do you think this GOP opposition was about? Do you think it was purely principled, or was there a calculation made at some point to say, "You know what, there is much to be gained here politically from being unified and opposing this president"?

MS. STRASSEL:  Look, I think it was both.  But what was interesting about this stimulus debate is that I think you saw the beginning examples of how the Republicans are going to attempt to deal with this bipartisan question that the president's put out.  And you saw it two ways.  One, you saw it in terms of saying, "We're happy you're coming to us, reaching our your hands.  We want to work with you, too.  The problem is your party.  Are you going to do something about them?  They wrote this bill, we weren't included.  Are you going to try to put them in line?" The other thing I think you're going to see Republicans trying to do is talking about how they want to define bipartisanship.  And they're going to say, "It's not enough to come visit us on the Hill, it's not enough to have us come over for your Super Bowl party."

MR. GREGORY:  Hm.

MS. STRASSEL:  "You have to make some ideological concessions.  Those weren't present in this stimulus."

MR. GREGORY:  OK.

MS. STRASSEL:  Now, the, the question will be whether or not the public thinks that's true.  But that's what they're going to be doing.

MR. GREGORY:  Here's what's striking is that the president of the United States got up in his press conference on Monday and said only the government can fix this economy.  That is a profound, ideological position that divides.

Offscreen Voice #2:  Yes, it is.

Offscreen Voice #3:  It is.

MR. GREGORY:  Gene, you wrote something about what Republicans were up to this week that was pretty tough.  You wrote this, Republic on Tuesday: "Republicans are using this debate as a branding opportunity, positioning themselves as careful stewards of the public purse.  This is absurd, given their record when they were in charge.  It's also cynical.  They know that some kind of stimulus will get passed anyway.  If it works, they'll claim their principled intransigence made the plan better; if it doesn't, they'll say, `I told you so.'"

MR. ROBINSON:  Yeah, I'm, I'm sticking with that.  I think, I think that's going to--I think that will happen.  And I do think they use it as a branding opportunity.  They used it to, to rally the Republican base not just on Capitol Hill, but, but in the country as well.  You know, that's a smaller base, both on Capitol Hill and out in the country.  And that's the essential problem.  By, by kind of going with the, you know, low tax, low spending ideology that the party has hewn to for, for decades now, you get the base. But, but that's a shrinking base and you don't win elections.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  You know, you don't even have to look back to make the point that Gene is making.  During the Senate debate, 36 of the Senate Republicans voted for an alternative that would have cut taxes over the next decade by 2.5 trillion, reduced the top marginal rate to 25 percent.  For John McCain to talk about--who voted for that alternative of a $2.5 trillion tax cut over the next decade--to talk about generational theft, I mean, pot, meet kettle.  I mean, essentially the best argument that Obama--one of the best arguments, if not the best argument that Obama has in this debate at this point is that Republicans by and large are offering a continuation of the policies of President Bush.  It is a tax cut-centered vision of how you revitalize the economy.  And the reality is, I mean, if you want--I, I think if the Republicans want to bring a referendum to the country on whether to continue in the direction we have been in the last eight years, you know, we kind of had that election in 2008.  And in many ways, I think that is the weakest position that they are offering.  They are essentially saying to continue the same economic strategy as Obama says.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  Well, and, and, and, Kim, David Axelrod just said that Republicans are hypocrites for now saying--standing up and saying we should be stewards of, of our--not just the economy, but of our spending, and that we should be deficit hawks.

MS. STRASSEL:  Well, the thing is, is--I mean, to make the argument that the vast majority of Americans out there think that tax cuts are responsible for today's economic mess, I'm not quite sure that flies.  If you go out and ask a lot of Republicans, a lot of independents, a lot of moderates why they lost faith in Republicans, it was because they spent too much.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. STRASSEL:  So I think it is a bit odd to have an administration that again and came in and said, "Well, they spent too much, so now we're going to spend too much as well, too." And this increasingly is going to be a story about the deficit.  People are talking about the fact that when you add in the stimulus and you add in the bank bailout, we could be moving into a deficit as a percentage of GDP 13 percent.  Now, to put that into context, people were howling back during the Reagan years when it was 6 percent.  So this is going to be the focus going forward.  And it, and it could constrain Democrats as to what they can do on their agenda.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Well, Kim, Kim, can I just--I mean, that is obviously a troubling number.  And Obama, if he is going to maintain support from especially the red state Democrats, is ultimately going to have to demonstrate some commitment to, to long-term fiscal restraint.  They're going to have their fiscal summit at the end of February, the day before his speech to Congress.  But how do Republicans have credibility to talk about fiscal discipline when they vote for a $2.5 trillion tax cut that would reduce the top marginal rate to 25 percent at a moment when the economy has already--when the government is already facing a trillion-dollar deficit?  How does John McCain get up and talk about generational theft after endorsing a plan that would so severely deplete federal revenue?  I mean, what, what is the, what is the basis on which to make that complaint at that point?

MS. STRASSEL:  Well, the thing is Republicans aren't in charge anymore.  The focus is on President Obama.  And they came in claiming fiscal responsibility. And, and this is going to be the big question.  We're talking about uncertainty in the markets, by the way, too.

Offscreen Voice #4:  Mm-hmm.

MS. STRASSEL:  A lot of uncertainty out there among investors about how are you going to pay for this down the road?  It isn't just a lack of details in the bank bailout plan, it is a lack of details about which industry is going to get taxed, who's going to get hurt, what's going to happen?

MR. GREGORY:  And, and--but there's--and, Roger, there is a, an economic reality right now, which is as the ratio of public debt to GDP increases--now, of course after World War II it was 122 percent of GDP; you know, a huge, huge figure.  But the reality is that the Chinese are not servicing our debt in the way they have, their economic problems mean it may not be sustainable for them to do that going forward.  These are real issues.

MR. SIMON:  They are real issues, and the deficit is a real problem and the deficit as a percent of GDP is a real problem.  But it is not the chief problem facing America at the moment.

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. SIMON:  And the president recognizes that.  If you worry--if you, if you become a deficit hawk now and say we've got to pull back, then you're going to go off the cliff.  That's what the, that's what the president is saying.

MR. ROBINSON:  You--I, I, I think the...

MR. SIMON:  You got to spend now to get out of this problem.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MR. ROBINSON:  The way to sum it up...

MR. SIMON:  Worry about the deficit later.

MR. ROBINSON:  The way to sum it up, there are no atheists in fox holes. There are no deficit hawks in unemployment lines.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MR. ROBINSON:  And, and, and right now we're worried about the economy.

MR. GREGORY:  Let, let, let, let's pull back a little bit and talk a little bit about what we've learned about Obama's approach to policy, to his agenda and what comes next.

Ron, you were one of the columnists who interviewed him on Friday on the way to Chicago, and your column in the National Journal speaks to this.  Here's a portion of it:  "[Obama] was insistent that a president's responsibility is to resist the daily (if not hourly) scorekeeping of the modern political and media system and keep his eye on the horizon.  `My job is to keep the country--is, is to help the country take the long view.  ...  We're going to with--work with anybody who wants to work with us constructively,' he said at one point--and open to adjusting his own course to bring others along or simply to respond to evidence that his ideas aren't working." But he also maintained that he--his clarity about...

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  ...his goals.  What have we learned about Obama's approach to leadership?

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  Well, I think, I think he was saying very clearly, on a variety of subjects, the common theme was that he is focused on ends, not means.  He has very clear places he wants to get.  He said his bottom line on every issue, "Is it going to expand opportunity and security for average Americans?" but that he will adjust his course on how to get there.  And he said--you know, we talked to him quite a bit about the--what he--the lesson he took from this first round of trying to work with Republicans, and he said, "Look, I'm going to continue to reach out.  I believe that I am open--I want to be open to good ideas from any source." But then he also said something quite striking, David.  He said, "I am an eternal optimist, but that doesn't mean I'm a sap." And what he was saying was, you know, we can do this in a cooperative way or in a more confrontational way; that he wants to find ways to work with Republicans.  And indeed, not only with Republicans per se in Congress, but with a broader range of interests that don't always talk to Democrats, or the Democrats don't always work with.  But that if Republicans continue on, on a, on a course that he views as more confrontational...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. BROWNSTEIN:  ...that he's prepared for that, as well.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 22: Senate roundtable, Brinker, Snyderman Nov. 15: Clinton, Duncan, Gingrich, Sharpton 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 Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: