'Meet the Press' transcript for Feb. 24, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me move to the Republicans.  Big article in The New York Times on Thursday here is, "For McCain, Self-Confidence On Ethics Poses Its Own Risk." Talked about a potential romantic involvement, concern of the staff.  Clark Hoyt, the public editor of The Times writes today his very strong criticism about that article.  This was the exchange that Senator McCain had with Kelly O'Donnell of MEET THE PRESS after the article--of, of NBC after the article came out.  Let's listen.

(Videotape)

KELLY O'DONNELL reporting:

Senator, did you ever have any meeting with any of your staffers in which they would've intervened to ask you not to see Vicki Iseman or to be concerned about appearances of being too close to a lobbyist?

SEN. JOHN McCAIN:  No.

O'DONNELL:  No meeting ever occurred?

SEN. McCAIN:  No.

O'DONNELL:  No staffer was ever concerned about a possible romantic relationship?

SEN. McCAIN:  If they were, they didn't communicate that to me.

O'DONNELL:  Did you ever have such a relationship?

SEN. McCAIN:  No.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Michele Norris, it seemed that by the end of the day that McCain had campaigned it successfully, pushed back at The Times on the--that whole notion of a personal involvement, but the issue of lobbyists around the anti-lobby senator continued to percolate.

MS. NORRIS:  And, and well continued to percolate.  I mean, this is a story that will live on through several news cycles, in part because of, in his explanation, he seems to have made statements that other reporters have already, you know, found to be untrue or not completely true.  In The Times piece, you know, and, as you said, Hoyt did a strong--almost a strong rebuke in the paper today under the headline "What the McCain Article Did Not Say." However, what it did say has left almost a trail of bread crumbs for every other investigative reporter in, you know, in Washington and Arizona and, and every place in between, to look closely at his record.  So he's pushed back strong at The Times and may have helped him within his party, you know, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." some of the conservatives who have questions about him, you know, they may have problems with John McCain, but they have much bigger problems with The New York Times, so he may have won some support there.  But it's a story that will live on for weeks and maybe even months, dog him all the way through November potentially.

MR. RUSSERT:  Chuck Todd.

MR. TODD:  Well, you know, John McCain has a bigger problem.  I mean, yes, I think he successfully won this battle.  But he's got a bigger problem in what's coming, potentially coming at him.  If Barack Obama wraps up this nomination on March 4th, he is going to be facing a financial juggernaut that he's not ready for.  They are having some problems raising money, even as the presumptive Republican nominee now.  A story like this actually slows down the big donor donations for a little bit because you're, you're frozen in time a little bit, you're having to fight this battle over here.  If--this, this time between, say, March 5th and the convention, could be a very dangerous time for John McCain.  If Barack Obama's raising 40 to 50 million dollars a month now, what's he going to raise if he actually is the Democratic nominee?  What's that going to mean for television advertising?  You know, this--he won this battle, but I think John McCain is facing a much bigger problem.  He need--nobody needs Hillary Clinton to do well on March 4th more than John McCain because he, he's, he's facing a freight train coming at him in Barack Obama.

MR. RUSSERT:  In 1996, Bill Clinton and the Democratic National Party spent a lot of money early on in the summer to frame the issues against Bob Dole, to define Bob Dole, and Dole never dug back out of that hole.

MS. GOODWIN:  Just to pick up, though, on what Michele said about the enemy of my enemy is my friend, you know that in the decades before World War II, Winston Churchill thought that Soviet Russia was his greatest enemy.  Then Hitler came along as an even more powerful enemy.  And when Hitler invaded Russia, Russia became his friend, and he explained, he said, "And now"--he said, "If Hitler invaded hell, I'd have a nice word or two to say about the devil in the House of Commons." But I think the serious thing that happened is just this change in relationship between the candidates and the reporters has been such a sea change.  In 1920, the reporters knew in detail that Warren Harding was having an affair for 15 years.  They thought it wasn't their business to talk about the private life, compared to a front-page article that suspects an affair on the part of some aides.  In fact, the Republican committee was so worried about this affair that they actually gave the woman $20,000 and sent her to the Orient during the entire campaign to get her out of the way.  So we've changed the whole notion of what part of a private life matters.  When the real story is what part of the public life matters.

And that's where you're right, that I think if this is going to talk about some problems with propriety and appearance on a public level from McCain, that's the real issue, more important than the potential titillation of the sex...

MR. BROOKS:  But...

MS. GOODWIN:  ...that may or may not have been there.

MR. BROOKS:  My problem is, you know, Obama went after McCain on having lobbyists on the bus.  And, and that may or may not be true.  It is true. Charlie Black's a lobbyist; Rick Davis, his manager's a lobbyist.  But the guy has a record.  Obama has a fine record on ethics, but John McCain has a record for 23 years.  Every year he goes to the floor of the Senate and makes fun of the earmarks that lobbyists have produced, and his colleagues take a little piece of skin out of his back for, for ridiculing them.  He tackled Jack Abramoff, even though it made the Republican Party very uncomfortable.  He tackled Boeing.  He was chairman of the Commerce Committee.  Suppose he did write these letters for Paxon, which he may have.  I don't, I don't really understand the case.  The Commerce Committee is one of the most lobbied committees on Capitol Hill.  If he only wrote two letters out of all that time, that means he was batting 99 percent.  And I'd hate to think that Barack Obama is just going to cherry pick the--a few things and not look at the whole record.  It seems to me McCain has a pretty good case on this issue, as someone who's been pretty tough on lobbyists over the course of his career.

MR. RUSSERT:  But there will be references to the Keating Five, which he was part of.  There will be references to those letters, which he did write. There will be references to money from people who have business before the committee donating to the campaign.  It's going to happen.

MR. BROOKS:  No, obviously, it's fair, it's fair commentary.  I guess my point would be, if somebody aims at purity and then hits 95 percent, do we--how much do we fault them in a world in which a lot of members of the Senate, frankly, are hitting 25 percent, and are wholly-owned subsidiaries of lobbyists.

MR. RUSSERT:  You did write that if John McCain is publicly contradicted or challenged in any of his comments regarding his news conference, it would be fatal for his campaign.

MR. BROOKS:  Yeah.  I think--I, I was struck by the, the--by the tone of that conference.  It was total--it was--as a friend of mine said, he went all in. If they can produce evidence of an affair, then that no which he gave to Kelly O'Donnell, that's it.  Because he was pretty definite.  And I assume he's not stupid.  He wouldn't have said it that bluntly.  He could have said about the meeting, about, about the relationship, I don't remember.  He didn't say that. He said no.

MR. RUSSERT:  You don't think that's right?

MS. GOODWIN:  That if the affair comes out that it'll be a big deal?  I think to some extent, the country has moved beyond it.  After the impeachment went so far out of proportion to Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, it seems like the country is now saying, "What we really care about is public leadership, not their private behavior." Otherwise, who's going to run for public office if they're going to feel like their private life is absolutely out in the open on everything?  And I think the public's ahead of the reporters on this issue.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me show you the latest public polls, a hotline in Fox News. McCain, Clinton first, here's the matchup.  We have McCain ahead of Clinton 48-40, and 47-44.  The same matchup with McCain and Obama, Obama is ahead on one, 48-40 and ahead 47-43.  Michele, do you think the Obama people will be producing those polls for the superdelegates, saying "Hey, this is who's the strongest candidate"?

MS. NORRIS:  I think they're already produced those polls.

MR. RUSSERT:  They've already done it.

MS. NORRIS:  Yeah, they've already done it.  And the, and the candidate himself is making that case.  I mean, he's saying the polls show that in a head-to-head matchup, I'm the candidate that does best against John McCain. So they're already making that argument and, you know, those calls to the superdelegates.  I mean, there, there are some people who've gone underground. There are stories about people who've already changed their phone numbers, who put the, the phone in the kitchen drawer somewhere because they just don't want to take the calls anymore.

MR. RUSSERT:  The whole issue of national security, John McCain basis his career on that issue.  Barack Obama made this comment at the debate, how he would go after John McCain on that central issue.  Let's listen.

(Videotape)

SEN. OBAMA:  And I think that when we're having a debate with John McCain, it is going to be much easier for the candidate who was opposed to the concept of invading Iraq in the first place to have a debate about the wisdom of that decision.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Does that work?

MR. TODD:  You know, it was his best foreign policy answer I think that he'd given to date.  He finally answered the commanding--you know, that goes back to the whole point of that debate that was shocking.  I, I think the beginning of that was a question that Hillary Clinton asking whether Barack Obama was ready to be commander in chief.  She ducked the question, which seemed to think, you know, imagine had she said, "No, he's not ready." John McCain would have uttered that line a million times between now and the November election. He--she didn't do it.  He decided to take the question and say, "Not only am I qualified, I'm better qualified than she is to go after McCain." It, it is showing that he is growing as a candidate, that he is getting better and he might be ready for this matchup.  And frankly, you know, this 25-year age difference between Obama and McCain, that may be the most striking thing after all.  The only thing John McCain better be--is thankful for, I think, is that the election isn't held on a week-to-week basis, and there aren't these back-to-back speeches that you would see every night between Obama.  And these Tuesday nights have not been good for John McCain of, of late.

MR. RUSSERT:  David Brooks, Barack Obama also saying, "My most important decision, judgment as a commander in chief was I was against the war; Hillary was for it, McCain was for it.  That shows I could be a very good and effective commander in chief."

MR. BROOKS:  Right.  And if the, if the verdict on foreign policy is about that, then, then Obama'll win.  McCain'll try to shift it and say, "Hey, what about the, what about the surge?  There were two decisions here.  There was one decision before the war, but there was another decision when we were in the pits, and I was the one driving the decision.  It's produced some tremendous security benefits.  It's beginning to produce some political benefits.  He was on the wrong side of that." He'll try to change that.  I think it'll all come down to how threatened do the American public feel?  If they feel threatened by things abroad, then he is the safe choice.  If they want to move beyond that and look at domestic issues, then Obama's going to win.

MR. RUSSERT:  You have five seconds, historian.  Have you ever seen a race like this?

MS. GOODWIN:  I love it.  It's the best.  No, you know, and it's exciting because people are involved with--we've been worrying for years about the fact that nobody's paying attention anymore, that it's a--you know, it's not a participant sport, that the declining polls are going down.  People are going to the voting booths; people are excited.  How can you not love it?

MR. RUSSERT:  Doris, David, Michele, Chuck, thanks very much.  We'll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT:  That's all for today.  Watch MSNBC Tuesday night, Clinton vs. Obama.  They debate live in Cleveland at 9 p.m. on MSNBC, and we will be there.

And we'll be back next week.  If it's Sunday, it is MEET THE PRESS.

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