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'Meet the Press' transcript for April 13, 2008
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 Netcast April 13: With less than 10 days to the Pennsylvania primary, we will devote the full hour to insights & analysis on Decision 2008 with four of the sharpest minds in politics: Democratic strategists James Carville and Bob Shrum, and Republican strategists Mary Matalin and Mike Murphy. |
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MR. MURPHY: Well, yeah. I--James is closer to her than I--it's been a flawed campaign strategically from the beginning, and fundamentally, in a change election, she--all this stuff is assembled for the same old politics. And they habitually, by just their, their method of politics, make it worse. Their activity, their style, whether it's witting or unwitting, is part of their message and it's part of their problem. It's why Barack, even with all these problems, I think will still be the nominee.
MR. CARVILLE: Yeah. Look, if you're going to insist that you be called the chief strategist, as Mr. Penn did, the least you could do is come up with a strategy, I mean. But, but having said that, he is no longer the chief strategist, and that's why he's gone. Look, I want to say this very clearly. Senator Clinton was never very much for a free trade agreement. During the campaign, I remember, as does everybody in that campaign remember, she was very cool on the idea of NAFTA. I--President Clinton is more--has always been much more of a free trader than she is. In the White House, everybody that works there, David Gergen included, says that she was always pretty cool on this stuff. He's always been--he, he pushed for NAFTA. He's been much more of a free trader than she is. That, that is a difference there. And I remember very clearly from the campaign, because it was maybe the only time that I ever was kind of in a different place on an issue than she was. So that, that--there is a--and, and anybody there will attest to that fact over a period of time. He's much more of a free trader than she is.
MR. RUSSERT: Mary.
MS. MATALIN: But that's not what she said in her book, so this is the worst political pandering. Bill Clinton is right. Mark Penn has not been fired, but he was right. This Colombia FTA that they're politically pandering on, and NAFTA before that, trade is 40 percent of our growth, 40 percent of our GDP right now. Colombia has renegotiated this thing 506 days ago. It's the--it is--we cannot be prosperous in a global economy unless we're engaged in trade. I don't--how--this is--they're going backwards. They're going--before Bill Clinton--Bill Clinton did move your party to the center on these future issues. Trade in a global economy is the only way to have prosperity.
MR. SHRUM: But there are two, two problems here, Mary. The first is whether there's a Republican president or a Democratic president, you're not going to get these trade agreements approved until there's some kind of labor and environmental protections.
MS. MATALIN: Bob...
MR. SHRUM: That's the reality.
MS. MATALIN: ...know your reality. They...
MR. SHRUM: Mary, let me finish. A lot of Republicans are...
MS. MATALIN: Bush put it...
MR. SHRUM: ...going to vote against them.
MS. MATALIN: No.
MR. SHRUM: A lot of Republicans from these states are going to vote against them.
MS. MATALIN: No.
MR. SHRUM: Secondly, I think Hillary Clinton's problem on this is that she was a good soldier in the Clinton administration. Whatever she thought privately, she had people in, she pushed for NAFTA, all of that. I take James' word that she was skeptical about it during the campaign.
MR. RUSSERT: Mike Murphy, is John McCain going to go to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and say, "I'm a free trader. We got to push these trade deals"?
MR. MURPHY: He's going to be to the right on trade of the Democrats, which he's already paid a political price for. He went...
MR. CARVILLE: What is right...
MR. MURPHY: Let me finish.
MR. CARVILLE: What is right on trade?
MR. MURPHY: Let, let me finish. John McCain, unlike any time in the Clinton history other than Bill Clinton on trade, where I'll give him some credit, went to Michigan, told a bunch of Michigan autoworkers the truth about that industry and lost the primary. So you can't question McCain's political courage on these issues. The Republican Party is the free trade party, even though it's unpopular at times because it's easy to scapegoat trade. But I think McCain will be courageous on this. He will run on a free trade platform. There is some fairness and equity issues in trade; he'll address that. And I don't speak for the campaign, but I know him well. But I--you know, and they're going to pander to, to the Luddites who say, "Yeah, let's run a protectionist country," and then we're really going to make a lot of people bitter in small town America.
MR. CARVILLE: Let me tell you something. When you tell people that their economic problems are psychological, you're a courageous guy. You, you got a courageous guy to go tell people that. What--"What the hell, it's all psychological."
MR. MURPHY: Well, you know there's more to what he said than that.
MR. SHRUM: I'd rather he said what Obama said that than.
MR. CARVILLE: Yeah. That's a--that takes a lot of political courage.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me tie all this up before we take a break. It is remarkable, here we are in April 2008, and Hillary Clinton's campaign for the nomination could be in trouble. There's no doubt about it. By every...
MR. CARVILLE: Absolutely. And I agree. This is--I think Senator Obama yesterday said something that I can, I can definitely agree on. He says, "Indiana's going to be the tie-breaker." And this thing, if she wins Pennsylvania, he wins North Carolina, I--who would have thought, when this entire process started, that Indiana was going to be the absolute crucial state here. And that's, and that's by Senator Obama's own definition himself, and I think that he's right. I think that Indiana is going, going to pretty much tell us a lot about which way this is going to go.
MR. SHRUM: James, you're clinging to Indiana like a life preserver. You worried about North Carolina?
MR. CARVILLE: I'm asking--I'm going with what Senator Obama said.
MR. SHRUM: No, no, look...
MR. CARVILLE: I'm agreeing with his statement.
MR. SHRUM: The fact is, she has to win Pennsylvania by a big margin, she has to win most of the rest of the states by a big margin, she has to break the mold by either winning or coming very close to North Carolina. Otherwise, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, numbers are stubborn things, and he'll end up being the nominee.
MR. MURPHY: But it's even, it's even more than that. Unless he keeps channeling Mike Dukakis every day and totally implodes, which is now possible, I think, the--there is--he can--she can lose the nomination, and the Democratic Party can, can go on and be formidable. To take the nomination away from Barack now requires a big superdelegate U-turn that's going to look like a smoke-filled deal and rip the Democratic Party in half. You cannot put that Barack toothpaste back in the tube unless Barack totally implodes. And he has not done that.
MR. RUSSERT: She was such the overwhelming favorite. If you go back and read anything in 2006, 2007 Politico, Jim VandeHei and, and David Paul Kuhn wrote this the other day: "Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to decide the nomination based on who can coolly and competently run the country. She had better hope they don't study her recent campaign too closely for the answer.
"Clinton has overseen two major staff shake-ups in two months. She has left a trail of unpaid bills and unhappy vendors and had to loan her own campaign $5 million to keep it afloat in January. Her campaign badly underestimated her main adversary, Barack Obama, miscalculated the importance of organizing caucus states, and was caught flat-footed after failing to lock up the nomination on Super Tuesday.
"It would be easy to dismiss all of this as fairly conventional political stumbling if she hadn't made her supreme readiness and managerial competence the central issue of her presidential campaign."
Is that fair, Mary?
MS. MATALIN: Yes, it's fair. I mean, what's--of course it is.
MR. RUSSERT: Is that fair, James?
MR. CARVILLE: No. I--it's fair to say that her campaign didn't have a strategy. It's also fair to say this is probably the best, most courageous toughest presidential candidate that we're ever seen anywhere, anyplace in our lifetimes, OK?
MR. SHRUM: You sound like Jack Valenti. I mean, that's a little over the top.
MR. CARVILLE: She is--she is--her personal performance in this campaign, her personal tenacity has been awesome. Her campaign is--I can't defend it. Look, Bush ran a very good campaign in 2000. Look what that got us.
MR. SHRUM: Can I, can I, can I defend her without suggesting that she's the finest, most courageous candidate ever? Ronald Reagan had a big staff shake-up and went on to have an effective presidency.
MR. CARVILLE: Sure did.
Mr. SHRUM: Bill Clinton, although it was quieter, had a big staff shake-up in which James was put in charge in 1992 and went on to have an effective presidency. So I don't think that's the standard by which she would--should be judged. The flaw in the Clinton campaign, as Mike said, as I've said, as--we all say it--was they misread the year. The people advising her misread the year, she took bad advice. They went out and ran her as a semi-incumbent. They almost aped Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
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