MTP Transcript for April 29, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  So New Hampshire coming out in favor of civil unions is OK by you?

SEN. BIDEN:  Yes.  Yes, it is.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me turn to the debate on Thursday night, and Brian Williams’ question of you and your answer.  Here it is.

(Videotape, Thursday)

BRIAN WILLIAMS:  (From MSNBC Democratic Candidates Debate) Senator Biden, words have, in the past, gotten you in trouble, words that were borrowed and words that some found hateful.  An editorial in the Los Angeles Times said, “In addition to his uncontrolled verbosity, Biden is a gaffe machine.” Can you reassure the voters in this country that you would have the discipline you would need on the world stage, senator?

SEN. BIDEN:  Yes.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Was that hard?

SEN. BIDEN:  No, not at all.

MR. RUSSERT:  You have gotten in trouble with your language.  When you said that Barack Obama was clean and articulate, you apologized for it.  Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote this:  “Loose Lips Sink.  The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth.  His Achilles’ heel is his mouth.” Do you have a problem?

SEN. BIDEN:  No.  I don’t have a—look, I have met with more world leaders and as many world leaders as anybody who sits in government today.  They’ve never had a problem understanding me.  Milosevic had no problem understanding me when I said, “I think you’re a war criminal.  I’m going to do everything in power to see you’re tried as one.” The prime minister of, of Great Britain’s never misunderstood me.  All the way back to Deng Xiaoping, he never understood—misunderstood me.  Look, this is a rough game, man.  This is a very rough game.  My referring to Barack as articulate, it was a mistake.  But guess what, if you look at—I will not mention the national press person who just—in saying that the problem with Barack’s appearance last—on the debate was he wasn’t articulate enough.  I mean look, give me—give me a break.  The average American out there understands—look, let me put it another way.  The good thing about being around a long time is people have a basis upon which to judge you.  And I didn’t find any serious person in the civil rights community, because of my long history and long support for civil rights, thinking that I was trying to insult Barack Obama in any way.  I didn’t find anyone suggesting that anything else I have said goes to the heart of whether or not my record is, is being undercut by what I’ve stated.  But it is true. It is true that my candor sometimes get me in trouble.

MR. RUSSERT:  And so does, sometimes, your embellishment.  You go back to ‘88 when you withdrew as a candidate, this is the way E.J., E.J.  Dionne wrote it: “Mr. Biden’s trouble began with the revelation that he had used, without attribution, long portions of a moving address by the British Labor Party leader, Neil Kinnock.” “It emerged” “he had also used passages from the speeches of Robert” “Kennedy” “Hubert Humphrey.” “It was revealed that Mr. Biden had been disciplined as a first-year law student for using portions of a law review article in a paper without proper attribution” and “was hit again by a videotape of” his “appearance in New Hampshire in which he misstated several facts about his academic career.” That was a problem.

SEN. BIDEN:  No, it was.

MR. RUSSERT:  And you learned from it?

SEN. BIDEN:  I did.  It was 20 years ago, and I learned from it.  The good for me is, and the bad news, people have had 20 years to judge since then whether or not I am the man they see or I am what I was characterized as being 20 years ago.  I learned a lot from it, and, let me tell you, it was a bitter way to learn it, but I learned a lot.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me ask you about something you said at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network on April 19^th.  Here it is, and let’s come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, April 19, 2007)

SEN. BIDEN:  To paraphrase a line from the Bible, you reap what you sow.  And ladies and gentlemen, we are reaping what we have sown, the seeds of destruction and the seeds of malcontention that we’ve sown.  I would argue, since 1994 with the Gingrich revolution, ladies and gentlemen, just take a look at Iraq, Venezuela, Katrina, what’s gone down in Virginia Tech, Darfur, Imus.  Take a look.  This didn’t happen accidentally, all of these things. Since 1994, from the Gingrich revolution to Karl Rove and President Bush, we have wallowed, wallowed in the politics of polarization.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Explain that logic.  How does Virginia Tech or Don Imus, relate to the Gingrich revolution or Karl Rove or George Bush?

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, by the way, they’re, they’re, they’re not directly responsible for any of those things, but the atmosphere—look, think of it this way, how many shock jocks did we have in 1970s and the 1980s?  What happened when we concluded that when Newt Gingrich said the way to win the House is to burn the House down?  When all of the sudden we went from—I served, for example, I got here and a lot of old segregationists were still here.  Yet, we did not engage in arguments about motive, we engaged in arguments about policy.  And all of a sudden, in the, in the mid ‘90s, it became “If you’re not with us, you’re not a good Christian.  If you’re not with us, you’re not moral.  If you share a view, you are unpatriotic.” The whole nature of the debate changed.  You had senators talking about the president of the United States on the floor calling him Bubba.  And we wonder why that doesn’t percolate through the entire society.

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