Meet the Press-Transcript for September 25
Mr. Russert: Coming next, New York Times columnists and author "On Paradise Drive," David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author of "Bushworld," Maureen Dowd, and New York Times columnist and author of "The World Is Flat," Tom Friedman. Brooks, Dowd and Friedman talk hurricanes, deficits, Iraq, George Bush's second term right here on Meet the Press.
Mr. Russert: David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, all New York Times columnists. They are next together right here after this.
Mr. Russert: And we are back.
Welcome, all. There they are. You have to pay online to read these guys, but they're free right here on Meet the Press, from The New York Times.
Here's George Bush on Friday at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., Saturday morning at the Northern Command, Colorado Springs, Colorado; later Saturday, down in Texas at the Emergency Operations Center. Very much engaged in this Hurricane Rita.
Maureen Dowd, yesterday in The New York Times you wrote, "What Katrina exposed was a president who--remarkable as this may sound--seemed bored after his reelection... The more tuned-in W. is now, the more obvious it is that he tuned out as New Orleans drowned. There's a high cost for presidential learning curves."
Bored?
Ms. Maureen Dowd: Well, I think it's hard for any of your viewers to believe that a president could get bored because what could be more fun than picking up the phone, calling the 82nd Airborne and saving a bunch of American lives? But this happened to Clinton right after his re-election. The Times had a front-page story with Senator Breaux and others quoted as saying, "He's drifting. He's lost his way." He was playing golf at night in storms. And Monica, the chaos of Monica then caused him to focus. Unfortunately it was on impeachment. But a lot of people who cover Bush think he was bored. He was exercising on the mountain bike under his iPod, listening to "My Sharona." You know, his aides did not have the nerve to tell him to cut his vacation short even after Katrina started.
Mr. Russert: A stark contrast to the government reaction for Rita as opposed to Katrina.
Ms. Dowd: Right. Well, as one Republican said this week, "Now, we've got a president who's the head of FEMA," you know, which is not where they want to be, either. He has inverse ADD. Now, he can only pay attention to one thing.
Mr. Russert: Tom Friedman, you wrote on Wednesday, "Katrina deprived the Bush team of the energy source that propelled it forward for the last four years: 9/11, and the halo over the presidency that came with it. The events of 9/11 created a deference in the U.S. public, and media, for the administration, which exploited it to the hilt to push an uncompassionate conservative agenda on tax cuts and runaway spending, on which it never could have gotten elected. That deference is over."
Explain.
Mr. Tom Friedman: Well, I believe 9/11 truly distorted our politics, Tim, and it gave the president and his advisers an opening to take a far hard right agenda, I believe, on taxes and other social issues, from 9/10, that was not going anywhere from 9/10, and drove it into a 9/12 world. It put the wind at his back. And Katrina brought that to an end. It put the wind in his face. And I believe that unless the president steps back now and does what I would call his own version of Nixon to China, that is, a fundamental recasting of his position and his administration, I think this is not going anywhere.
What's really struck me in the last couple of weeks is how the whole--the tectonic plates of politics in this country have all shifted to the left. That is, people on the far left who dislike the president hate him even more venomously. People in the sort of center left who, you know, weren't happy with the president, you know, now hate him. People, you know, left of center now dislike him. And people right of center now, many Republicans, I think, are wondering where is this going? So I think we've seen a fundamental shift now that the winds of Katrina are in this administration's face rather than the winds of 9/11 at its back.
Mr. Russert: When you say the deference of the public and the deference of the media--post- September 11th, there was a fear of terrorism, an inability to know whether there were weapons of mass destruction by the public or by the media. George W. Bush said there were. Bill and Hillary Clinton said there were. The Russians, French and Germans, who opposed the war, said there were. Hans Blix of the U.N. said there were. But now with a hurricane like Katrina and the objective reality of what happened down there, has the media changed? Has the public changed or found its voice because of the reality or because it's not terrorism?
Mr. Friedman: Well, I think there was a huge amount of projection after 9/11. We really wanted to believe, you know, that the president knew what was going on, had a plan for what was going on and how to respond to the events of 9/11 and Iraq afterwards. Because in moments of insecurity, that's a very natural thing. You want to project onto your leader. Surely he knows what's going on on WMD or any of these other things. And I think what Katrina has done, Katrina in combination with the rising deficit, in combination with an Iraq War not going well has really ripped the curtain away and we see the guy back there behind the curtain like in "The Wizard of Oz," and I think there's a lot of people now stepping back and saying, "Oh, my God. Maybe he doesn't know what's going on."
Mr. Russert: And it's not just liberal or moderate voices, David Brooks. Peggy Noonan, who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan, a conservative columnist for The Wall Street Journal, wrote this on Thursday: "George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce?"
The president has said he will spend whatever it takes in New Orleans and now more devastation in Texas, the war in Iraq, tax cuts. Is there any truth anymore to the notion that a conservative Republican is someone who believes in fiscal responsibility?
Mr. David Brooks: No. Listen, George Bush, his administration, has spent more on domestic discretionary spending, non-defense spending, twice as much as Bill Clinton, more than Lyndon Johnson. It is not what Republicans expected. I put most of the blame on Congress. But I wouldn't say--I mean, I think it's a mistake to say it's all about Bush. I sort of differ with Tom in that the party--the country has shifted left. I'd say the country has shifted in a direction where it wants authority. What 9/11 exposed was a desire to have authority, some authorities we could trust. Since 9/11, we've had a whole series of cascading authority failures: the WMD failures, the Iraq failures, the church failures, the accounting failures, now the Katrina failures, which wasn't just the failure of Bush. It was a failure up and down government.
There are agencies in Louisiana and New Orleans that were built to respond to a hurricane. This was the most anticipated natural disaster in American history and we failed on every single level. So what we've had is a whole series of institutional failures, starting with the president, but going up and down. So to me, I think there's a huge moment. I think things really--people are impatient and want to reject the president and get to something different, but I wouldn't say it's left-right. I'd say what they want is order and authority, and if I were thinking of a candidate, in a way those would be the words I'd want my candidate to project.
Mr. Russert: The Republicans control both houses of Congress, and as you said, President Bush has been encouraging spending. But the Democrats have not been standing up saying, "Wait, stop." They're still in there fighting for their own projects. David Brooks, you wrote on Thursday: "On one side are those who believe that the [Democratic] party's essential problem is with its political style. The Republicans win because they are simply rougher"--excuse me--"so the Democrats must be just as tough in response. They must match Karl Rove blow for blow. Democrats in this camp are voting against John Roberts" for the Supreme Court "just to show the world, and their donors above all, that they are willing to give no quarter. On the other side are those who believe that the Democratic defeats flow from policy problems, not from campaign style or message framing. They don't believe that Democrats can win wrapped in their own rage ...For them, the crucial challenge is to come up with policies more in tune with voters."
Who's winning that debate within the Democratic Party?
Mr. Brooks: The haters. You know what? You look across the party and you see some Democrats who really are working on policy ideas. I think of John Edwards, Steny Hoyer, one of the House leaders who had a foreign policy document come out this week. But most Democrats seem to be acting as if the main problem with the country is that the country doesn't hate George Bush enough. And if we only shout louder, they'll hate him more like tourists in Paris who think they'll understand us if we scream a little louder. And to me, it's led to the brain death of the Democratic Party. I don't know where the party stands on Iraq. I don't know where it stands on entitlement spending. On issue after issue, I really don't know where that party stands. So we're having a joint race to the bottom here between the two parties, and I think the result is what you're seeing is a dealignment. Voters flaking off the Republicans but not going over to the Democrats. They're just sort of stuck and floating in the middle. Stan Greenberg, Bill Clinton's old pollster, called them dislodged voters. And to me, that means the '08 election is gonna look very different than the '04 or '00.
Mr. Russert: We perhaps saw some evidence of that theory yesterday. More than 100,000 anti-war protesters came to Washington. And you can see there on the screen, one of the speakers was Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq. There she is with Jesse Jackson. She denounced George W. Bush but then had a message for members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans. Let's listen.
(Videotape):
Ms. Cindy Sheehan: We're going to Congress, and we're going to ask them, "How many more of other people's children are you willing to sacrifice for the lies?" And we're going to say, "Shame on you. Shame on you for giving him the authority to invade Iraq."
(End videotape)
Mr. Russert: Giving the president the authority. Before she came to Washington, Knight Ridder reports this. "En route to Washington for the rally, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan protested outside [Sen. Hillary] Clinton's New York office. `She knows that the war is a lie, but she is waiting for the right time to say it,' Sheehan told about 500 cheering supporters. `You say it or you are losing your job.'"
This is Cindy Sheehan to Hillary Rodham Clinton who very well may be the Democratic nominee in 2008, Maureen.
Ms. Dowd: Well, Hillary's plan has been to lay back and not lead and just let everyone else, all the other Democrats, you know, have stronger voices. But the minute she announces, she's going to have to have a plan about how to get rid of Iraq. I mean, she's actually suggested maybe we should send in more troops and she better have a Nixon-esque secret plan or I think she's in trouble. But I think that, you know, for the Democrats, the problem is that Katrina exposed the incompetence of Iraq and Americans were able to see them on a split screen and the same exact problems existed. They were warned by experts before they went in. They blew it off. They failed to send enough troops early enough to stop the law and order and chaos problems. Then they gave all the no-bid contracts to Halliburton and staffed everything with incompetent Bush loyalists and cronies. So the public can see that this administration has always been incompetent, but the Democrats aren't in a position to take advantage of it because they went along with Bush on authorizing a war based on false premises.
Mr. Russert: In fact, Tom Friedman, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh all voted to authorize the president to go to war in Iraq. Those--only senator opposed who's thinking of running for president was Russ Feingold. And there's been some discussion in liberal circles about Al Gore mounting an anti-war campaign for president in 2008. How do you see the divide within the Democratic Party on Iraq and how does that affect the president's ability to execute the war?
Mr. Friedman: Well, I'd say two things, Tim. One is to pick up on something David said. The Democrats generally have had what I would call a drive-by policy. You drive by the White House and you say George Bush and everyone simply is supposed to laugh. It's supposed to be self-evidently obvious that it's wrong and funny and stupid, but there hasn't been a lot of concrete policy-making on Iraq, on a lot of these domestic issues that we've talked about, number one.
Number two, on Iraq. I think we're in the end game now. I don't believe we're going to be in Iraq a year from now in the numbers that we are now because one of two things is going to happen. That's why I think it's all going to pre-empt the next presidential election. Either this process that's unfolding there now of first a referendum on the constitution and then a parliamentary election is going to play out in some decent way. And if it does, I think you're going to see not only a new Iraqi government want us to reduce our numbers there but there's going to be a huge domestic push here to do that, or it's not going to play out. In which case, it's going to be obvious that this is a fiasco and we're going have to fight our way out of there. But I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt I think the next congressional election--that's my own feeling-- let alone the presidential one.
Mr. Russert: It reminds one of Senator George Aiken of Vermont who advised President Nixon to proclaim victory and withdraw.
Mr. Friedman: Yeah, but there's no--you can't do that in Iraq basically. And that's where the Democratic alternative, whether you agree with how we got here or not, just pulling out, you know, would lead to its own kind of disaster. I just want to say one thing, you know, on the domestic spending. What we're really debating about Katrina in this bidding of--"I'll give you $50 billion. No, I'll give you $60 billion"--and we should call it by its real name. We are debating how much money we are going to borrow from China--OK?--because we're running a deficit, OK? And we're clearly not going to cut spending to make up that money. So the real debate--we should call this by its real name. It's the, "How much money are we going to borrow from China act to rebuild New Orleans?"
Ms. Dowd: Also, Tim, Hillary is going to have to answer the question about why she voted for an invasion that ended up curbing women's rights. I mean, it's not good enough to have women's rights the way we had them 218 years ago with our Constitution which is what they're saying and...
Mr. Russert: Allowing Islam to be the prevailing religion in the state and allowing husbands to take cases to religious courts.
Ms. Dowd: Right. I mean, that's what all the experts predicted and Hillary voted for it anyway.
Mr. Russert: Let me cite something from Tom Friedman's column and then open it up starting with David. This is what Tom wrote on Wednesday. "If Mr. Bush wants to make anything of his second term, he'll have to do his own Nixon-to-China turnaround, reframe the debate and recast the priorities of his presidency. He seems to think that by offering to spend billions of dollars to rebuild one city, New Orleans, he'll get his leadership halo back. Wrong. Just throwing more borrowed money at New Orleans is not leadership. Mr. Bush needs to frame a new agenda for rebuilding all our cities and strengthening the nation as a whole. And what should be the centerpiece of a policy of American renewal is blindingly obvious: making a quest for energy independence the moon shot of our generation."
David, we have a situation in Iraq. We have Saudi Arabia perhaps in a difficult disposition. We have a terrible relationship with Venezuela. Gasoline is now heading to $4 a gallon. Is it possible for Democrats and Republicans to come together, to bring in the automobile executives, the oil executives, the gas executives, energy executives and sit down and say, "We need a Manhattan Project to wean ourselves off of foreign oil"?
Mr. Brooks: Once again, no. You keep asking me questions I have to say no to. Well, it's possible, but it ain't going to happen. I think the Bush administration thinks the price signals will be the thing that creates the most important change to alternative forms of energy. With gas as high as it is, there's just tremendous incentives. And their argument will be, that will create the move to alternative energy sources.
What I think Bush needs to do over the next couple of years--first of all, I don't think he wants to embrace the Nixon analogy, building a Nixon to the 21st century. Not a good slogan for him. But I think he has to go with his heart. And the best part of George Bush has always been a sense of being a Republican who cares about the poor and has an actual instinct about it and a compassion about it. And I think that's why he's gone into this ridiculous spending. So I think what he has to do is build on the New Orleans speech and actually take some of the ideas about poverty and actually execute them effectively with a sense of priorities.
Because we're at a moment in this country where we had a debate for 20 years about: What's the cause of poverty? Is it joblessness, which the liberals were saying? Is it family breakdown, which is what a lot of conservatives were saying? Now, we're at a point where the experts really are seeing the interplay between these two forces. And I saw a hint of it with Bush when he talked in New Orleans the other week. And he understands it, too, and really wants to do something pro-active. And as I say that, you always got to go back to competence. And sometimes in my dark moments, I think he's "The Manchurian Candidate" designed to discredit all the ideas I believe in. And so he has to follow through on that. That's the crucial thing for the next two years for him.
Mr. Russert: Is the imagery of the have v. have nots, the black faces desperately seeking help on rooftops in New Orleans, so indelibly stained in the American consciousness that George Bush could not overcome that?
Mr. Brooks: He built his career on that. You go back to the 2000 campaign, you go to that convention in Philadelphia, it was built on that. Those were the problems he built his campaign on, compassionate conservatism. And so he--that's what he really cares about. In his heart, the things-- Maureen said he gets bored by. There are some things he gets bored by, but this is not one of them. So to me, this is what he has to galvanize around domestically and show that there really is a conservative alternative to addressing some of these problems in response to some liberal alternatives which haven't worked.
Mr. Friedman: I just want to say one thing in response to market forces--letting market forces send the signal for you to go buy a hybrid. When market--when you leave that to market forces, what you do basically is take all that money that we could be galvaniz--that we could be gathering with a gas tax, and you transfer it to Saudi Arabia. We are funding, Tim, both sides in the war on terrorism. And we had a gas tax on the morning of 9/12, 2001, a $1 a gallon gas tax--that money would have gone to our deficits, our schools, our budgets, our infrastructure. Instead it has gone to the infrastructure of Saudi Arabia, some of the worst regimes in the world, who are using that money to kill our soldiers on the ground. We are funding both sides in the war on terrorism. That's what happens when you leave it to the market.
Mr. Russert: Is there the political will for Democrats and Republicans to come together and try to wean ourselves off of foreign oil?
Mr. Friedman: Well, there should be. It's obviously the centerpiece of something that could solve many problems at once. It can deal with the climate change issue. It can deal with our status in the world. It can be an inspiration to get young people to go into math, science and engineering, which we're desperate to do. I'm not saying it's the cure-all of everything, but it can be the centerpiece of an administration which, clearly, to me, not only has no agenda going forward but no way to respond to the real problems facing this country today.
Mr. Russert: Maureen Dowd, be counterintuitive here. Karl Rove calls you up and said, "Maureen, I've been reading your column for the last couple years. Give us advice. What should we do in the second term?"
Ms. Dowd: Well, I think, you know, given what David said, people have talked about whether the Bushes are racist, and I don't think they're racist, but their problem is about class, because they never have understood that when they have this story arc where they go down to Texas and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, that that is--they think that's a true pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. They didn't accept the fact that they always have Daddy's friends to help them. And until they can see reality, then--you know, Bush's--say he's a good third- or fourth-quarter player, after Katrina. Well, that's not good enough for people who don't have Daddy's friends to help. And until he accepts that about himself, you know, he can't move on, I don't think.
Mr. Russert: The president's been very resistant to talk about tax cuts or certainly the repeal of them. Is there any possibility he would say, "We have these massive deficits. I believe in the war in Iraq. It's going to bring democracy to the Middle East. I believe in rebuilding New Orleans and helping the people of Texas. But to the people in my income bracket, I have to freeze the tax cut I had planned"?
Mr. Brooks: I don't know how many ways to say this--no, non, nyet. Listen, Bush believes in the tax policy of his administration. I don't. I think in time of war, you don't cut taxes. That's me, personally. But Bush's argument is that we need to grow. That's the most important thing. Tax revenues went up this year by $262 billion, the quickest revenue gain maybe in American history. And his argument is we got to keep that revenue coming in and we need a strong economy, we need low taxes.
Mr. Russert: Maureen Dowd, Tom Friedman, what do you think?
Mr. Friedman: Well, I think that if you look at the amount of money that we have cut taxes and the incredible contribution it has made to the deficit, you would think we would have gotten a little more buzz in this economy, Tim, than what, 3 1/2, you know, percent growth, 3 percent growth. We have gone into debt, OK, at a massive level, and the result of that has not been a great improvement in our infrastructure, in our engineering, in the number of young people empowered and able to compete in the world tomorrow. So I just don't buy that. I think we have--we are now in a position where China has-- they're heading for $1 trillion, OK, of our--in reserves that they're going to be holding, basically. And the leverage that is going to give China over the United States in the coming years, God knows where-- how that's going to play out. Everyone says, well, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine, Tim, until it isn't, and you're never going to know when that's going to happen.
Mr. Russert: Would there have been less growth without these tax cuts?
Mr. Friedman: I--probably. But you know, Clinton certainly proved you can grow with a much more responsible fiscal policy than Bush has.
Mr. Russert: Do you see a more energized George Bush because of the hurricanes and focusing on the issues that David talked about?
Ms. Dowd: No. I mean, he's running around acting like a "Today" show weatherman. I think he's looking for a photo op. He doesn't realize that Americans are in an identity crisis. We're wondering, if we can't take care of our own, our most vulnerable in society, who are we? If we can't, you know, deal competently with Iraq, who are we? We blew off the allies on global warming and helping us with Iraq and we bullied them. And The Post had a story about how Bush is looking--you know, you have presidents who are trying to--you fight for their soul or their brain, but in this case it's his cowboy. Laura wants him to be less of a cowboy and his other aides want him to be more of one to get back the White House confidence. But that's not what it's about.
Mr. Russert: To be continued. Three New York Times columnists with very different views. Thank you all for joining us.
Congratulations to the Boston College Eagles. Their first ACC victory. Went to Death Valley and beat Clemson.
We'll be right back. |
