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'Meet the Press' transcript for May 25, 2008
Broadcast videos, highlights |
 Netcast May 25: Obama says the Democratic nomination is within reach, yet Hillary Clinton says the fight may last until the convention. We devote the full hour to insights & analysis with David Brody, Maureen Dowd, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gwen Ifill, Ruth Marcus & Jon Meacham. |
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MR. RUSSERT: Doris, in Boca Raton on Thursday, Barack Obama was asked about vice president, specifically about Hillary Clinton, and here's his answer, which talks about you.
(Videotape)
Unidentified Man: When the time comes, will you be willing to consider everybody who is a possible help to you as a running mate, even if his or her spouse is an occasional pain in the butt?
SEN. OBAMA: I, I--well, look. Well, look, look, look. The--we've got a little more work to do. So I don't want to jump the gun. I will tell you, though, that my goal is to have the best possible government. And that means me winning. And so I am very practical-minded. I'm a practical-minded guy. And, you know, one of my, one of my heroes is Abraham Lincoln. And a while back there was a wonderful book written by Doris Kearns Goodwin called "Team of Rivals," in which--talked about how Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet because whatever, you know, personal feelings there were, the issue was how can we get this country through this time of crisis? And I think that has to be the approach that one takes.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Who did Lincoln take into his Cabinet?
MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: Lincoln took all of his chief rivals into his Cabinet--Seward, Chase and Bates. He also took Stanton in, who had called him an ape, who had said terrible things about him, much worse than Clinton has ever said about Obama. But what it showed--and I think that's what Obama is suggesting--is that he was big-hearted enough, he was confident enough not to have to have just people who would be his personal supporters and not question his authority. And I think what Obama is saying is if this person can help me win this election, fit the jigsaw puzzle pieces together, she has one part of the map, I have another, I can rise above those personal feelings. But I suppose--and Lincoln put it in noble fashion, he said, "Look, people are wondering why have I done this? First of all, the country's in peril. These are the strongest and most able men in the country. I need them by my side." But perhaps my old buddy Lyndon Johnson might have put it in less noble fashion, "better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."
MR. RUSSERT: I just heard the beep. Like keep your enemies closer?
MS. KEARNS GOODWIN: Keep your enemies closer.
MS. DOWD: Both of them?
MR. MEACHAM: I like the way Doris says it.
MR. RUSSERT: Yeah.
Ruth Marcus suggested Hillary Clinton--self-pity, angry. One of the things that she's been talking about over the last week or so is sexism. This is what she said to The Washington Post, Lois Romano, and here's an audio recording.
(Audiotape, May 18, 2008)
SEN. CLINTON: The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted.
MS. LOIS ROMANO: Mm.
SEN. CLINTON: And I think there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when...
MS. LOIS ROMANO: Mm-hmm.
SEN. CLINTON: ...and if it ever raises its ugly head.
MS. ROMANO: Mm-hmm.
SEN. CLINTON: But it does seem as though the press, at least, is, is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments and the actions of people who are nothing but misogynists.
(End audiotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "Nothing but misogynists." Bill Clinton weighed in on Tuesday.
(Videotape)
FMR. PRES. BILL CLINTON: I don't think there's any question there have been moments in this campaign when the sort of gender bias and presuppositions have come out.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: Maureen Dowd, "misogynist," "gender bias," it seems as though the Clintons are being--trying very hard to lay that out as a premise for Hillary Clinton's difficulties in this primary contest.
MS. DOWD: I think it's poppycock, really. I mean, Hillary Clinton has allowed women to visualize a woman as president for the first time, in the way Colin Powell allowed people to visualize an African-American. And she dominated the debates, she, she proved that a woman can have as much tenacity and gall as any man on earth. We, we can visualize her facing down Ahmadinejad. But the thing is, Hillary hurts feminism when she uses it as opportunism. And she has a history of covering up her own mistakes behind sexism. She did it with health care right after health care didn't pass. She didn't admit that she was abrasive or mismanaged it or blew off good advice or was too secretive. She said that she was a Rorschach test for gender and that many men thought of a female boss they didn't like when they looked at her. And now she's doing the same thing, and it's very--you know, in a way it's the moral equivalent of Sharptonism. It's this victimhood and angry and turning women against men and saying that the men are trying to take it away from us, in the same way she's turning Florida and Michigan and riling up and comparing them to suffragettes and slaves. And it's very damaging to feminism.
MR. RUSSERT: Ruth Marcus, you wrote a piece in The Washington Post on Wednesday which I'd like to share with our viewers and our roundtable.
"Hillary Clinton isn't going to be elected the first female president--not this year, anyway. The reasons for this outcome have gratifyingly little to do with her gender. ...
"The notion that Clinton was the victim of unrelenting, vicious hatred because she is a woman--is it safe to call this reaction overwrought? Clinton managed to win more votes than any primary candidate in either party ever had before. It's hard to square that result with the notion that her candidacy exposed a deep vein of misogyny. ...
"From a feminist perspective," Clinton, "Clinton's was not a perfect candidacy. Part of this stems from a fact outside Clinton's control, that her route to power was derivative, the Adam's rib outgrowth of her husband's career. Hillary Clinton had been elected to the Senate, twice, in her own right, but the fact that her road to the White House involved standing by her man, no matter how badly he behaved, made her a flawed vessel for the feminist cause.
"And Clinton's least attractive campaign moments came when she took up the gender card and chose to play it as victim instead of a trailblazer. The notion that the male candidates were ganging up on her because she is a woman instead of--remember back when?--because she was the front-runner was silly. The complaint that asking her the first question in debates was evidence of a double standard was even sillier."
And your same Washington Post, Marie Cocco disagreed. She offered this: "There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for `change.' But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture."
MS. MARCUS: Well, I think I would look at it at, the question being "Are women in politics better off than they were eight months ago?" And I think Senator Clinton's candidacy has proved actually that they're much better off, for some of the reasons that Maureen said. She has shown you can be tough. She has shown that you could be tough, but also be human and show a little bit of emotion without getting elbowed out of the race. She's shown that you can be a little bit playful and call yourself a girl, but that there's also no question she's outwonked everybody on the campaign trail. She's as tough as any man on the campaign trail. I think that, while she is not going to be the first woman president, at least not this year, that she's really plowed the field very well for the next candidates who come along.
That isn't to say that there haven't been moments that are ugly, that are offensive. Some people in our profession have said things that are regrettable. Other, you know, the famous Hillary "Nutcracker" is regrettable. But overall, I think there's been relatively little of that. And I think, overall, if you look at the composition of the Democratic electorate, you have to see that Senator Clinton's been helped by her gender and not hurt by it.
MR. BRODY: Plus, I would also say that, you know, this is also bad timing for her, too. I mean, it's coming at the end of a campaign, and so that's a problem. So have there been incidents? Sure, there have been incidents. But at the same time, when you look at the timing of it, it comes across as a little, for lack of a better word, whiney, and that's not where she wants to be right now.
MS. MARCUS: Unh-unh, danger. Whiney.
MR. BRODY: Yeah. Well, and I said for lack of a better word. I'll rethink that word here in a little bit.
MS. MARCUS: I had said overwrought.
MR. BRODY: Yeah. Right.
MS. MARCUS: So I guess you get whiney.
MR. BRODY: But, but clearly, but clearly, let me quickly think of another word.
MR. RUSSERT: I knew I shouldn't have invited two men.
MR. BRODY: But I, I would say either way, I mean, that, that goes for both male and female.
MS. IFILL: I'd say...
MR. RUSSERT: You know--go ahead, Gwen.
MS. IFILL: Just something, keep in mind what her audience is at this stage. Her audience, assuming she's trying to get out of this campaign with something intact and with some sort of power base intact, her audience is the truly, deeply angry women out there, who I run into, and I know who you hear from, who say, "How could you do this to us? We"--I, I talk to a woman who said she had planned a dance at an inauguration of the first woman president before she died, and now she'll never be able to do it. They believe that Hillary Clinton is not the beginning of the road, but the end of the road for women in--and--with a shot at the White House.
My thinking is, we didn't know two years, or we never heard of, a couple years ago that Barack Obama would be in this position. We didn't know eight years ago that she was going to be in the Senate. So things change a lot. But the despair and the anger and the fury about this is real. And that's what she's speaking to.
MS. GOODWIN: But, you know, despair and sadness is understandable, but resentments, when you let resentments fester, I think it poisons a part of you.
MS. IFILL: Mm-hmm.
MS. GOODWIN: And what you don't want women to take away, instead of seeing her as a champion who actually did some great things for women, see her instead as a victim, it doesn't help the next women coming along. So I just wish those resentments could go on--could go away.
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