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'Meet the Press' transcript for Feb. 15, 2009
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 Netcast Feb. 15: More problems filling out the President's cabinet as GOP Sen. Judd Gregg withdraws as Sec. of Commerce-designate over disagreements with the final stimulus package. Senior Adviser to President Obama David Axelrod weighs in on this and the other challenges ahead for the new Obama administration -- the bank bailout, stabilizing housing markets and creating jobs. Plus, a political roundtable: National Journal's Ron Brownstein, The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, Politico's Roger Simon, and The Wall Street Journal's Kimberley Strassel. |
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MR. GREGORY: Kim, how--this is interesting to me, comparing Obama and his approach to bipartisanship, and that of President Bush, who, who I covered. How do you see those difference? Because you've talked to President Bush about this in terms of working with Democrats and, and some of the failures he had along those lines.
MS. STRASSEL: Well, I mean, one thing that I think this president understands is that you have to go out there every day and say that you're doing it, you know, and put a lot of pressure on the other side to respond to you. I mean, I think that one thing that's fascinating about Ron just said is that he's not a sap. One question is how he's actually going to learn to work with his own party. If you look at the last three weeks...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MS. STRASSEL: ...well, the first three weeks of his term, every headache this president has had has been caused by his own party; the writing of this bill by House Democrats, which allowed Republicans to frame it the way it was. You've now got the Chris Dodd provision that we were talk--you were talking about earlier, in there...
MR. GREGORY: Yeah, executive compensation.
MS. STRASSEL: ...that threatens to undermine their own TARP program.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. STRASSEL: You had a lot of pressure from left-wing groups, minorities to not allow Judd Gregg to have the census in the Commerce Department.
MR. GREGORY: The Buy American provision.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Yeah.
MS. STRASSEL: The Buy American provision. And so, you know, this is who he's going to have to stand up to in the end if he is going to want to move ahead on some of these things.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm. I want to talk about the banking crisis, as well. And, Roger, you have a view from Peoria on all of this.
MR. SIMON: I do.
MR. GREGORY: "The Geithner financial rescue plan, so complicated that he didn't really detail it in his speech, will cost about $1.5 trillion--and that's probably just for starters. `There is enormous--this is enormously complicated,' Geithner said. `There are a million ideas out there.' Actually, I liked the idea of the guy who stood up at Obama's town meeting in Elkhart, Indiana, on Monday and said he knew where Obama could send the bailout money. `Send that check to our mailbox,' he said." And this is the challenge, that Americans don't have a lot of love right now for the banks, and nor do they really understand the complexity of the credit markets.
MR. SIMON: That's correct. I mean, it's good that Barack Obama doesn't want to be a sap, but he has to convince the American people that we're not being played for saps.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. SIMON: Everything about the bailout, everything rewards bad behavior. Companies--company presidents that ran their companies into the ground, given billions of dollars. Banks that took hideous, ridiculous, ignorant risks, give them billions of dollars. Companies that have already received bailout money but have not used that money to make loans to Americans, but instead have used it to gobble up other banks...
MR. GREGORY: Yeah.
MR. SIMON: ...give them billions of dollars.
MR. GREGORY: But...
MR. SIMON: That is the trouble that President Obama and Tim Geithner face.
MR. GREGORY: OK, but when does populism and punitive measures become bad policy? Because the reality is you may not like the bankers, but there is a really prospect for systemic risk.
MR. ROBINSON: Yeah.
MR. GREGORY: Forty percent of our lending in this country through the secondary market, the credit markets, is frozen. The banks are undercapitalized. They need money. And until these rotten assets get off their books, the wheels...
MR. ROBINSON: Right.
MR. GREGORY: ...of our economy don't get moving again.
MR. ROBINSON: So, so you have to, you have to get the financial system moving again. The question is, how do you do it in a way that is politically palatable? I mean, it is not palatable.
MR. GREGORY: Is that possible?
MS. STRASSEL: Hm.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: (Unintelligible)
MS. STRASSEL: Yeah.
MR. ROBINSON: Well, you know, I think it is. I mean, I think, you know, the Obama administration did not like the compensation limits that Senator Dodd had inserted in the bill.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. ROBINSON: But they're going to live with them, and they'll interpret them with some wiggle room, probably. But it--I think that's one important step...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. ROBINSON: ...to show that there's some equity, some suffering on Wall Street...
MR. GREGORY: But here's the issue...
MR. ROBINSON: ...concomitant with the suffering in the country.
MR. GREGORY: The Journal had an interesting piece this week about the fact that in Japan, in the lost decade of the '90s, one of the things they didn't do was act aggressively enough...
MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
MR. GREGORY: ...to nationalize banks soon enough.
MS. STRASSEL: Right.
MR. ROBINSON: Well...
MR. GREGORY: Because of just this issue.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Well, he, he...
MR. GREGORY: They were worried about the public's outrage.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: He talked, he talked about that specifically in the interview, and he talked about the Japan model, which he said moved too slowly and led to a lost decade. And the Swedish model, which is the other pole, where they did in fact temporarily nationalize the banks. And it was striking, he said explicitly that he did not want to go down that route. That was not his preferred course, that there were too many banks in the U.S. as compared to Sweden to make that attractive. But when I asked him if he would rule out that option, he said, again, ends not means; "I am going to get the credit system to work, and I am--and my message to the American people is I'm going to do whatever it takes to do that."
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Now, as Gene says, the problem here is that you have a great deal of distrust of the banking system and of Wall Street at a time when we have ultimately no choice but to figure out a way to make it work better or else that--there are going to be more people needing checks in their mailbox for, for, for the economy shutting down.
MS. STRASSEL: But the bigger question, will you shut them down? I mean, look, I think this GM story this week is fascinating.
MR. GREGORY: Hm.
MS. STRASSEL: Who didn't think six or eight weeks ago when we did this...
MR. ROBINSON: Hm, right.
MS. STRASSEL: ...that Detroit wasn't going to be back and say, "We need more money."
MR. ROBINSON: Right.
MS. STRASSEL: No one wanted to shut them down because it was the politically unpopular thing to do. And this is going to be the question facing the banks right now, too. They're going to have these stress tests.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Starting at square one.
MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
MS. STRASSEL: Does that mean that the administration is actually going to say at the end, "You can't make it, you're going away"?
MR. ROBINSON: Good question.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Look at the magnitude of the decisions we're talking about. I mean, this is--I mean, a presidency is a month old, whether to allow GM to disappear.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Whether to allow Citibank or a potential...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: I mean, it is just--these are extraordinary times.
MR. GREGORY: And, and here's something else for the taxpayer, Roger, and this is really striking. You talk about the money to the Big Three, or to the Big Three. You have car sales that are at their lowest levels since 1982, despite a rise of 33 percent in the population. You have $160-plus billion for the insurance company AIG. There is the real prospect that the government is never going to get this money back.
MR. SIMON: Oh, it's true. And, and it, it--showing all the self-restraint he can muster, Vice President Biden said, "Look, even if we get everything right..."
MR. ROBINSON: Hm.
MR. SIMON: "...there's a 30 percent chance that we'll fail." It probably took all his self-restraint to put it at 30 percent. Probably 50/50 might be closer to that.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: Do you think the chance that he'll be replaced is higher or lower than 30 percent in 2012 at the, the rate he's going?
MR. GREGORY: Here's a question. On the economy overall...
MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.
MR. GREGORY: ...how are we going to know if it's working, and how much time does Obama really have?
MR. ROBINSON: It's a, it's a good question. I think there's a realization in the country that this doesn't happen overnight, that you--that, that we've dug such a deep hole and it's taken so long to do it that, that, you know, I think if, if things are perceived to have stopped getting worse in, in--within six months, say...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. ROBINSON: ...or, or, or nine months, and, and if, if we can--think we can see a bottom then, you know, I think people'll give him some more time. But the big question, I think, is the one you asked. All that's been done, all these hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars, is it enough?
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. ROBINSON: In fact, does, does the, does the bailout have to be bigger?
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. ROBINSON: Does, does the stimulus have to be bigger?
MR. GREGORY: Yeah.
MR. ROBINSON: This is a huge economy, and, and a lot of economists think it's not that easy to, to turn it around.
MR. GREGORY: And you know, we talk about the importance of kitchen table conversations. Do--are Americans prepared to do much more than the government is already doing?
MR. BROWNSTEIN: I think Americans at this point are prepared for bold action by the government because they are deeply concerned about where we're going.
And I just want to go back to a point Kim made before that I, I want to agree with.
MR. GREGORY: Hm.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: You know, as he--as Obama moves into this decisions, he does have to keep in mind that he needs, as president, to operate in a different compass than even Congressional leaders of his own party. Their institutional imperative is to find the center of their caucus. As president, your job is to find the center of the country. And those are not the same things. You saw it, you saw it in the stimulus bill. And ultimately if he is really is going to set a course that is kind of independent, ends focused, not means focused...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. BROWNSTEIN: ...he will have to--sooner or later, on entitlements or the budget or other issues, he is going to have to discipline his own side as well as being willing to confront Republicans when he views them as obstructionist.
MR. GREGORY: We are going to leave it there. Thanks to all of you.
We're going to continue our discussion, I should point out, online, and ask our roundtable some questions that our viewers submitted via e-mail. Watch our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web extra. It's going to be up this afternoon on our Web site at mtp.msnbc.com. And we'll be right back.
(Announcements)
MR. GREGORY: That's all for today. We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.
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