Three-Way Democratic Race Puts Nevada in Spotlight

JOHN EDWARDS: I think my greatest strength is that, for 54 years, I've been fighting with every fiber of my being. In the beginning, the fight was for me. Growing up in mill towns and mill villages, I had to literally fight to survive.

But then I spent 20 years in courtrooms fighting for children and families against really powerful, well-financed interests.

I think weakness -- I sometimes have a very powerful, emotional response to pain that I see around me.

JUDY WOODRUFF: In that context, Russert asked Obama about recent comments he had made to a Nevada newspaper.

TIM RUSSERT: You said one of your weaknesses is, quote, "I'm not an operating officer." Do the American people want someone in the Oval Office who is an operating officer?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think what I was describing was how I view the presidency. Now, being president is not making sure that schedules are being run properly or the paperwork is being shuffled effectively. It involves having a vision for where the country needs to go.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Clinton said she views the responsibilities of the office differently.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: I do think that being president is the chief executive officer. And I respect what Barack said about setting the vision, setting the tone, bringing people together, but I think you have to be able to manage and run the bureaucracy.

You've got to pick good people, certainly, but you have to hold them accountable every single day. We've seen the results of a president who, frankly, failed at that.

You know, he went into office saying he was going to have the kind of Harvard Business School CEO model, where he'd set the tone, he'd set the goals, and then everybody else would have to implement it.

And we saw the failures. We saw the failures along the Gulf Coast, with people who were totally incompetent and insensitive failing to help our fellow Americans. We've seen the failures with holding the administration accountable with the no-bid contracts and the cronyism.

TIM RUSSERT: Senator Obama, Senator Clinton invoked your name. I'll give you a chance to respond.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I think that there's something -- if we're going to evaluate George Bush and his failures as president -- that I think are much more important. He was very efficient. He was on time all the time. You know, I'm sure he never lost a paper. I'm sure he knows where it is.

What he could not do, what he could not do is to listen to perspectives that didn't agree with his ideological predispositions. What he could not do is to bring in different people with different perspectives and get them to work together.

Those are the kinds of failures that have to do with judgment; they have to do with vision, the capacity to inspire people. They don't have to do with whether or not he was managing the bureaucracy properly.

That's not to deny that there has to be strong management skills in the presidency. It is to say that what has been missing is the ability to bring people together, to mobilize the country, to move us in a better direction, and to be straight with the American people.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: You know, Barack has one of his biggest supporters, in terms of funding, the Exelon Corporation, which has spent millions of dollars trying to make Yucca Mountain the waste depository. John was in favor of it twice when he voted to override President Clinton's veto, and then voted for it again.

I have consistently and persistently been against Yucca Mountain, and I will make sure it does not come into effect when I'm president.

BRIAN WILLIAMS, Host, "NBC Nightly News": Your rebuttal to the mention?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, I think it's a testimony to my commitment and opposition to Yucca Mountain that, despite the fact that my state has more nuclear power plants than any other state in the country, I've never supported Yucca Mountain, so I just want to make that clear.

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Senator Edwards?

JOHN EDWARDS: Well, I'm opposed to Yucca Mountain. I will end it, for all the reasons that have already been discussed, because of the science that's been discovered, because apparently some forgery of documents that's also been discovered, all of which has happened in recent years...

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Well, but, John, you did vote for Yucca Mountain twice, and you didn't respond to that part of the question.

JOHN EDWARDS: I did respond to it. I said the science has -- the science that has been revealed since that time, and the forged documents that have been revealed since that time, have made it very -- this has been for years, Hillary.

This didn't start last year or three years ago. I've said this for years now, have revealed that this thing does not make sense, is not good for the people of Nevada, and it's not good for America.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Immediately following the debate, Clinton rallied her supporters at a nearby high school.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: What this campaign for me is all about is making sure that the common purpose of America, to make progress as a nation and to give progress and the possibilities it represents to every American, to those who are young, to those whose lives are before them, because to do anything other than that would be to break faith with the American dream.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: ... shape public opinion against their plan...

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the Nevada campaign continued today, with Obama explaining to voters in Henderson his plan for reforming health care in America.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: We're going to have a big table. And we're going to have doctors, and nurses, and hospital administrators, and patients, advocacy groups, employers, labor.

And we'll have the insurance and the drug companies. They get a seat at the table. They just won't be able to buy every chair.

And I'll sit down at the table -- I'll have the biggest chair, because I'll be president, so...

So I'll sit down, and we will have a negotiation. I will put my plan at the center of the table. I'll say, "Here's my plan. I think that it does the best in terms of cutting costs, and improving quality, and making sure everybody is covered, but if you have good ideas, put them forward. And if you have objections, let me know."

We're going to have a good back-and-forth negotiation. Here's the thing, though: We're going to do it on C-SPAN, so everybody will be able to see -- everybody will be able to see just, you know, who's saying what.

JOHN EDWARDS: My parents brought me home to a two-room house in the mill village...

JUDY WOODRUFF: John Edwards campaigned in the western part of the state. He held a town hall in Reno.

David, what did you make of that debate last night?

DAVID BROOKS, Columnist, New York Times: Two hours of my life wasted.

JIM LEHRER: Wasted?

DAVID BROOKS: No, well, they didn't disagree. There wasn't a lot that happened. They pulled back sensibly from the really nasty stuff they have participated in earlier in the week.

And what you saw was a couple things. First, you saw a lot of policy disagreement, and that generally is good news for the Democratic Party. The differences on policy grounds between the three candidacies are now measured in micrometers. They are really small. And so that's probably good news.

I think the difference is -- and we saw it in the excerpts -- was in the question, when they were asked, "What is your weakness?" And Obama gave an honest answer. I have this weakness; I'm not that organized with papers.

And the other two candidates gave the answer which everybody who watches debates hates. The political hack answer to that question is, "I care too much. I'm too impatient for good things to happen."

And that's the nursery school, political hack answer. And they both gave it. And maybe it will turn out right for them. I see Hillary Clinton is following up, saying, "See, today Barack Obama is disorganized. He's not a good administrator."

But for those who admire a little honesty, I thought Obama's answer was by far the superior one.

JIM LEHRER: How did you read the debate, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Amen. I associate totally with Mr. Brooks' remarks about that answer to that question. I almost retched when I heard the Clinton and Edwards answers.

"My terminal compassion is my biggest problem," said John Edwards. "And I'm just too impatient to get good things for good people," Jim, said Hillary. And there was a refreshing candor on the part of Obama.

Jim, any time you start the first six questions of a debate on race, among Democrats, when it's been a sensitive subject and an open wound for the week preceding that debate, then you're guaranteed that you're going to have a laid-back, guarded, overly tactful discussion.

JIM LEHRER: Why? Nobody wants to make it...

MARK SHIELDS: Nobody wanted to do that. They had different interests in getting it behind them. Senator Obama has predicated his campaign on it being nonracial, that he is a black candidate, but he is not the black candidate.