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'Meet the Press' transcript for March 2, 2008
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 Netcast March 2: Two days before the crucial primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas & Vermont, four veteran campaign strategists sit down with Tim Russert: Democrats James Carville & Bob Shrum and Republicans Mary Matalin & Mike Murphy. |
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MR. RUSSERT: Yeah. Now, I want to go inside the Clinton campaign--I want to get to the issues--but I want to go inside the Clinton campaign for a second, because here's an interview from Harold Ickes, the senior adviser, in The New York Observer newspaper. Headline, Ickes blames Penn, meaning Mark Penn. "Mark Penn has run this campaign," said Harold Ickes. "Besides Hillary Clinton, he is the single most responsible person for this campaign. I have been at meetings where he introduces himself as the campaign's chief strategist. I've heard him call himself that many times, say, "I am the chief strategist." Asked if Penn preferred the title of chief strategist to pollster, Ickes said, "Prefer it? He insists on it!" When asked if Penn was therefore responsible for the campaign's strategy, Ickes said, "It's pretty plain for anyone to see that he has shaped the strategy of the campaign. He has called the shots. Mark Penn has dominated the message in this campaign. Dominated it."
Bob Shrum, you've been in a few campaigns. What's going on?
MR. SHRUM: Well, Harold Ickes is not some--first of all, he's one of the most talented people in politics, also one of the most persistent people in politics. You don't want to make an enemy of him. But I think that he believes--correctly, in my view--that Penn was the architect of a strategy that positioned her as the establishment candidate in a year of change. She could have been a change candidate. She would have been--she would be the first woman president. She could have had some big change ideas. You know that conference call the other day sort of typified what's gone on. They--they're putting out this ad with the ringing phone at 3 in the morning, and someone from Slate, I think it was, asked Penn, or asked the whole group of them, "Can you name a crisis that she's had to deal with, an international crisis?" And there's this long, awkward silence. And you'd think people would have thought in advance that that question might be asked. And the answer finally comes, she's on the Armed Services Committee. Well, you know, the only crisis on the Armed Services Committee is when John McCain loses his temper. It's not an international crisis.
MR. RUSSERT: It was John Dickerson...
MR. SHRUM: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: ...of Slate who asked that question. Let me show you that ad, and then a lot of other ads close to it, similar to it, other statements similar. Many campaigns revolve around it, but here's the latest incarnation of an ad about a po--impending crisis. Let's watch.
(Videotape of political ad)
Narrator: It's 3 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone in the White House, and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call, whether it's someone who already knows the world's leaders, knows the military, someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world. It's 3 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I'm Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Now, the Obama campaign countered in pretty close to record time in turning a response ad, from what I can see.
MR. SHRUM: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: Here was their response.
(Videotape of political ad)
Narrator: It's 3 AM, and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a phone ringing in the White House. Something's happening in the world. When that call gets answered, shouldn't the president be the one, the only one, who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start? Who understood the real threat to America was al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, not Iraq? Who led the effort to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe? In a dangerous world, it's judgment that matters.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I'm Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Murphy.
MR. MURPHY: I think it's a weak, hack-y ad. I think the Obama people saw it coming a year away, were ready for it, knocked it right back on them. The only call--crisis call she may get is from Texas. So, no, I, I thought--in fact, Shrum and I were joking in the green room six months ago, "God, you think they're going to panic and do the old red phone ad?" The problem is, in a change year, it's an old execution. Now, I will say the message of trying to push the final moments of the campaign back to who's ready for a crisis and who isn't, not a bad strategy, best card she had. I just think the execution is kind of pat and predictable, and I think Obama got the better of the exchange.
MR. CARVILLE: Yeah, look, to--first of all, this is not an overly negative thing. It's something that they've been trying to say for a long time. They're certainly entitled to say it. Obama is a man, by the way, has ample resources and ample talent in this campaign, and they've put an effective answer up. I, I view this all very much in, in what's fair in politics. My, my personal preference would have been that it had a little more of an economic tinge to, to, to the ad, is that the impending economic situation that families are facing. But that's a choice that her campaign made. I think that--and, and I'm told and I'm--that, that Mr. Penn himself wrote this ad, that he--it was not a Roy Spense ad, it was a Mark Penn ad. And he feels that way, and Senator Clinton approved it. It's a completely fair ad, and the Obama response is completely fair.
MS. MATALIN: But...
MR. SHRUM: It has, it has one big downside. And the big downside is it brought Iraq and the vote on the Iraq war right back to the middle of the stage of the campaign. And I think that David Axelrod and Jim Margolis, who were doing the media for Obama, did a very, very smart thing by focusing their response so heavily on the Iraq war and the Iraq war vote.
MR. CARVILLE: Well, I would, I would call it fair ad, fair response.
MS. MATALIN: The worst bad thing of it was it was a good ad for John McCain. The first time I saw it, I said, "When Hillary came on, it was jarring. I thought this was John's ad." So Hillary's ad was experience, Obama's response was judgment and the--McCain is sitting there, "I got experience, I got judgment, and I've been up at 3:00 in the morning dealing with a crisis." I really...
MR. SHRUM: You know, Mary, I have--you just made me think of something. That ad's antecedent is Walter Mondale.
MR. MURPHY: Ah, right.
MR. SHRUM: He used it against Gary Hart.
MR. MURPHY: Right, right.
MR. RUSSERT: Let's show that. Wait a minute, let's show that.
MR. SHRUM: Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: In 1984, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, tough, bruising primary, the red phone ad.
(Videotape, 1984 political ad)
Narrator: The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone. The idea of an unsure, unsteady, untested hand is something to really think about. This is the issue of our times. On March 20th, vote as if the future of the world is at stake.
Mondale. This president will know what he's doing, and that's the difference between Gary Hart and Walter Mondale.
(End videotape)
MR. SHRUM: I mean, one of the things that's interesting about that is Mondale partially won that nomination. I mean, Hart made some mistakes, but partially won that nomination by raising this question. But, as Mary suggested, it's a very dangerous question to raise in a context where he was then going to run against Ronald Reagan. Because if you said to people, "Who do you want picking up the red phone, Walter Mondale or Ronald Reagan?" if it moved on into a general election contest, the answer, as we know, was Ronald Reagan.
MR. RUSSERT: Now, that was in 1984, before the Berlin Wall fell. This is 1992, George Herbert Walker Bush--your man, Mary Matalin--running against Bill Clinton--your man, Mr. Carville. Here's George Bush, July of '92, framing the campaign.
(Videotape, July 27, 1992)
PRES. GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH: Many times in the White House, late at night, the phone rings. And usually it's some young aide calling in about double-checking the next day's schedule. But occasionally it's another voice, more serious, more solemn, carrying news of a coup in a powerful country or asking how we should stand up to the Baghdad bully halfway around the world. And the American people need to know that the man who answers that phone has the experience, the seasoning to do the right thing.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: The phone used by Bush against Bill Clinton.
MS. MATALIN: I love that man. I love Pappy Bush so much. Anyway, I still can't believe we lost that campaign. And we didn't lose it. Perot beat us, not you.
Yeah, the reason we keep making those contrasts when people are voting for a president, they're voting for an unknown, unforeseen set of circumstances. So it's always the right question to ask.
MR. MURPHY: This year, beware of cliches. And that red phone shtick has become a cliche. And that is the fundamental Hillary Clinton problem. Her style and everything is old politics. That's the energy Barack runs off of. So I thought the thing was off by tone, even--not necessarily by message. And I do agree with James about the economy part of it.
MR. RUSSERT: Here's the interesting thing about politics and why we love to cover campaigns. This year's being now described as fear vs. hope. The phone represents fear, and Obama is trying to suggest hope. Back in 2004, your man, William Jefferson Clinton, campaigning for John Kerry, framed Clinton's political law this way. Let's watch.
(Videotape, October 25, 2004)
FMR. PRES. CLINTON: Now, one of Clinton's laws of politics is this: If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think, if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: James.
MR. CARVILLE: Well, first of all, the red telephone ad has been around 1984, 1992, OK. Fair. And, and I, I also think that--with what her campaign was trying to do is, is to tell you to think about the red telephone. I, I don't--like I say, it wouldn't be--it's a fair ad. It might not have been the ad that I would have run myself if I was there, but it's not outside of bounds.
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