Friday, May 30, 2008

MS. IFILL: McClellan, McCain, Michigan, and Florida - the shifting political landscape tonight on "Washington Week." Tying up loose ends.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): Let's make sure your delegates are seated.

MS. IFILL: Democrats meet this weekend to try to settle their long-running fight. But their likely nominee is already moving on, taking political aim at John McCain.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Senator McCain doesn't want to be seen hat in hand with the president whose failed policy he promises to continue for another four years.

MS. IFILL: McCain, however, says it's Obama who is the riskier choice.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): My friends, this is about - this is about leadership and learning.

MS. IFILL: And a surprise publishing bombshell offers it's own cautionary tale.

MARTHA RADDATZ: This is the most loyal White House. That is what this White House is famous for. This incredible loyalty -

SCOTT MCCLELLAN: No one questioned my loyalty to the president when I was there.

MS. IFILL: They're asking questions now. But more about the formerly loyal aide than about what his book actually says. We explore why. Covering the week, John Dickerson of "Slate" magazine, John Harwood of CNBC and the "New York Times," and Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

ANNOUNCER: Celebrating 40 years of journalistic excellence, live from our nation's capital, this is "Washington Week" with Gwen Ifill, produced in association with "National Journal."

ANNOUNCER: Once again, live from Washington, moderator Gwen Ifill.

MS. IFILL: Good evening. Perhaps by this time tomorrow, the Democrats will have it all figured out. Perhaps not. In any case, we should know whether the Democratic leaders believe they have the strongest possible nominee and whether the candidate most likely to lose that fight is willing to take it lying down. It sure doesn't sound like it.

SEN. CLINTON: We have not gone through this exciting, unprecedented, historical election only to lose. So you have to ask yourself, who is the stronger candidate?

MS. IFILL: Party leaders seem prepared to intervene. This is what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told her hometown newspaper.

SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I will step in because we cannot take this fight to the convention. It must be over before then. I believe it will be over in two weeks.

MS. IFILL: Two weeks is beginning to seem like an outside bet, but sometimes politics boils down to the art of spitting in the wind. You might get wet, but sometimes risks have their reward. Democrats meet here in Washington tomorrow to sort things out. So what do we know tonight about what's going to happen tomorrow? John?

MR. DICKERSON: Well, what happens tomorrow is there is a meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committee. Fashionable people call it the RBC -

MS. IFILL: Ooh, the RBC. (Laughter.)

MR. DICKERSON: And the RBC will meet to figure out what to do with the delegates from Florida and Michigan. Now, this same group, the RBC, met last year to take the delegates away from these two states. Now, they're going to try and find some solution. And it's interesting to see how the two campaigns are dealing with this. The Clinton campaign is fighting. She said she wants all of these delegates. She wants the RBC to give her everything out of these two states. They're holding press conferences with the media. They are doing everything they can to push. They bring out legal opinions. The Obama campaign is almost in a state of repose because they know that the outcome is likely to be mixed. It's likely that Clinton will come up with a few delegates. She'll be ahead, but she won't get everything she wants. And because that's the case, Obama will not be slowed in his march to the nomination.

MS. IFILL: So this is just a negotiating stance for the Clinton people to say - and I've heard it and you've heard it - we want 100 percent of both of these states?

MR. DICKERSON: Well, that's the argument they're making. They're making three cases, basically. They're saying that a fundamental democratic principle is at stake here, and that is that every vote should count. And so they're really loading this with lots of very charged language and they're saying also that the Democrats, as a general election proposition, need these two very important states. So they can't just do away with Florida and Michigan. They really have to do something to count for these delegates, show these two important states they care about them.

And then the third thing is they're making the case basically that the RBC has the right to do this. There is a sort of side debate about whether the Rules and Bylaws Committee can even give these delegates back. And so that's the center of their case.

MS. RADDATZ: So, John, if the RBC shows they care about these two very important states, what happens? How do they do that and what does it mean for Hillary Clinton?

MR. DICKERSON: What's likely to happen is the RBC will come up with some middle solution. They won't give Hillary Clinton all 91 delegates she could get out of this. But there're 368 delegates total, but she would get - sort of 91 would be her net gain if she gets everything she wants. They won't give her that. So they'll come up with a midway situation. We've got two problematic things here. Florida didn't - neither state held a proper primary. Michigan - Obama wasn't even on the ballot. So there are two issues here. They've got to figure out how many delegates are at stake and then how to apportion them. So they'll come up with some kind of middle solution that will give her a bit of an advantage, but not the whole thing she wants.

MR. DICKERSON: And not for long, right?

MS. IFILL: Michigan is tougher right now to figure out than Florida.

MR. DICKERSON: Tougher because Barack Obama wasn't even on the ballot. And so they may have this situation where there're some uncommitted votes that went. Well, you don't know that those uncommitted votes were for Obama. They might have been for Edwards. But, the -

MR. HARWOOD: This is banana republic time. They're going to make up a solution.

MR. DICKERSON: That's right. They're going to make up a solution and then the key question is, does everybody involved think it's fair?

MR. HARWOOD: Here is my question about Hillary Clinton and her strategy. There are two ways of looking at it. One is that, as Gwen suggested, she's asking for 100 percent as a negotiating tactic. They'll come in somewhere short of that. She'll say fine, it's over, and then we'll get on to the end of the campaign. Superdelegates will make that decision.

Another way of looking at it is that she's asking for 100 percent. She'll insist on it because she wants a pretext, a cause to go on, to keep this alive, go all the way to the Credentials Committee, go all the way to the convention. What is your suspicion as to what her real end game is?

MR. DICKERSON: Well, it's hard to tell. I was talking to a veteran Democratic staffer on the Hill who said she can do it the hard way or she can do it the easy way, offering the options basically you just outlined. And we'll know the minute we got a decision. If she does it the hard way, there are some real penalties here for Barack Obama because this race is already freighted with lots of discussion about gender, and there're going to be lots of women protesting that all the votes should be counted. If Hillary Clinton says, "look, fundamental democratic principles are at stake here," it suggests that if Obama gets the nomination, that nomination will somehow be counterfeit because these principles have not been upheld by the Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Women who already think Hillary Clinton has gotten a raw deal because of sexism will have another cause to think she's getting a raw deal. And that means Obama will have - his nomination will be that much more fraught with trouble.

Now, in terms of what Clinton wants, I think it's hard to tell. You talk to some of her staffers and they say basically "we're playing this out. We'll see what we can get and then we'll just make the kind of low key case to the superdelegates." Others are saying, "no, we're going to fight this and we're going to go back to talking about fundamental democratic principles, which really elevates -

MS. IFILL: But we've all seen some version of this play out before. The difference here is there's always something happening behind the scenes and a different thing sometimes happening in front of the scenes. No matter which one is true, do the Democrats do themselves harm while John McCain is off campaigning happily down the road there?

MR. DICKERSON: They do, particularly if this carries on. They've got two problems here. One, the RBC has to look like a serious governing body. If this looks like a circus, it goes into a second day, it goes into Sunday, there are protests on the street - another person I was interviewing was worried mostly about the show on the street, just making -

MR. HARWOOD: The Obama people are trying to minimize the circus.

MS. RADDATZ: And can't she hurt herself from this as well, long term?

MR. DICKERSON: She can if in long term she raises the stakes and makes it look bad. There's a role here for party elders. Dean and Reid and Pelosi can come in and say, "look, this has been a fair deal. Everybody got a fair shake." And that might do something to quell -

MS. IFILL: And they've already started doing that a little bit. They started hinting around about saying this is really got to end.

MR. HARWOOD: Of course, we all know in the Democratic Party that followers follow the leaders all the time, don't they?

MS. IFILL: Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what's going happen.

Oh, well, while all this is going on with the Democrats, John McCain isn't waiting for them in Washington, D.C., or Montana or South Dakota or Puerto Rico to make up their minds. He's already decided Obama is going to be the nominee that he'll be facing in the fall and that his Achilles' heel may be the war in Iraq.

SEN. MCCAIN: Now, why is it that Senator Obama wants to sit down with the president of Iran, but hasn't yet sat down with General Petraeus, the leader of our troops in Iraq?

MS. IFILL: Meanwhile, Obama zeroed in on his own favorite topic, McCain's relationship with President Bush, who raised money for the Republican nominee at a private fundraiser this week.

SEN. OBAMA: No cameras. No reporters. And we all know why. Senator McCain doesn't want to be seen hat in hand with the president whose failed policies he promises to continue for another four years.

MS. IFILL: So to what extent are we beginning to see the outlines, John, of the fall general election campaign?

MR. HARWOOD: I think we're completely seeing it and we're going to begin to see it on more display after the primaries next Tuesday when John McCain gives a major speech, begins framing the general election.

Look, in Barack Obama's comments that you just played, we saw the very simple, clear, direct line he's going to use: McCain-Bush. You want a third term of that? Bush is below 30 percent in the polls. A clear argument to make. It's time for a change.

John McCain's got a more complicated case. He's got to accommodate the desire for change and say he would be different from Bush while disqualifying Barack Obama, so how do you triangulate -

MS. IFILL: Meanwhile defending the war that George W. Bush has championed so unpopularly -

MR. HARWOOD: As well as the tax cuts that George W. Bush pushed through.

MS. IFILL: And relying on him for money.

MR. HARWOOD: Right. Now, all that is true. Now, I will say I talked to a Clinton-Gore person the other day who said, "look, he has easier - McCain has it easier than we did because with Clinton and Gore you had a very complicated situation." You had prosperity. How do you get the good without the bad? You had the impeachment, Lewinsky scandal. McCain can just keep the White House at arms length say we're not going there -

MS. IFILL: You're talking about '96 Clinton-Gore - I had lost track, not '92 -

MR. HARWOOD: No, no, I'm talking about 2000, when Al Gore had to figure out how do I handle Bill Clinton? Do I use him? Do I use his record? Do I distance myself from his personal foibles? John McCain has a clearer path to say, no, I'm not Bush. I'm my own different kind of Republican. And it was interesting - I talked to somebody at the White House today who said John McCain, knock yourself out. Do that all you want. We don't care if he goes and distances himself from us. We see him as an ally on the war and on tax cuts. And George Bush set it up this way. He picked a vice president in Dick Cheney who was not going to run to succeed him. That gave the Republican nominee in 2008 independence to run away from Bush as fast as they can.

MS. RADDATZ: John, let's go back to the war, though, because he is closely allied with the president on the war. And he talked about the war a lot this week - a lot more than he had. Barack Obama came right back to it. John McCain was saying we're back to pre-surge numbers. He said a lot of things that really weren't in fact true. Did he hurt himself with that? And how much of a role do you think the war really will play? And I know as we have that caveat of it depends on how things go.

MR. HARWOOD: Well, I think he stumbled a little with that comment about pre-surge. But John McCain is trying to take advantage of the fact that he believes conditions are better than they were before the surge. I think at the end of the day, the misstatements are not going to be focused on as much as the larger picture on how it's going. There's no question the American people are tired of the Iraq war. They want the troops to come home. And we've seen McCain accommodate that view as well by talking about in 2013 we're going to have a lot of those troops out of there. But he's trying to make the larger Republican argument on national security: I'm ready to be commander in chief, he's not. We're tougher on national security than they are, and try to make that argument stick and Barack Obama is going to try to make a judgment case.

MR. DICKERSON: So what else does he do? McCain will be tied to Bush more easily on the war, but he's got a whole set of other issues he could maybe play out. What are those and what's he trying to do?

MR. HARWOOD: We're going to begin hearing beginning next week and beyond a lot more about those. Energy. John McCain is for a cap-and-trade system to limit carbon emissions. Spending. He's going to say he's a lot tougher than George Bush on spending excesses, which is one of the things that people are unhappy about. Stem-cell research. He broke with Bush a couple years ago on stem cell research. Torture. The management of the Iraq war. You're going to hear a whole litany of arguments from John McCain that says, it's not John McBush. It's John McCain and I'm different and I'm not him.

MR. DICKERSON: We've seen these famous pictures of McCain campaigning with Bush last presidential election -

MR. HARWOOD: The hug?

MR. DICKERSON: Quite awkward. Are we going to see any pictures of the two of them -

MS. RADDATZ: Just dancing together at the White House.

MR. HARWOOD: From my conversations with both White House people and McCain campaign people, I think it is very unlikely we're going to see those two guys together if for anything more than a fleeting photo op at some point during the year. You've got the convention. They've got to be together during the convention for the hand-off, but I think this fall it's going to be few and far between.

MS. IFILL: Let's take Hillary Clinton's argument about general election strength and apply it to John McCain's thinking. Does he look at the same polls she's looking at and says, a-ha I can get him - that Barack Obama?

MR. HARWOOD: Sure. He looks at the polls and says, the Republican brand is not just broken; it's in little pieces on the floor. President Bush is extremely unpopular. It's the best environment Democrats have seen in a generation and yet I'm either running even with Barack Obama, in some polls slightly ahead and others slightly behind, but I'm right there in the game, and that's a promising argument from his point of view for how he can compete this fall.

MS. IFILL: And I have to ask you both a very brief question about this latest videotape which has surfaced about a Chicago pastor who said bad things about Hillary Clinton, yet another one in the pulpit of Barack Obama's church. Is this something that they both - Hillary Clinton or John McCain just need to step back from it and let play out or is this something they can exploit?

MR. HARWOOD: Oh, I think John McCain will be very happy to exploit this. He has said, according - Barack Obama's statement, that is a legitimate issue, Jeremiah Wright. And I see no reason why the Father Pfleger's comments are not also going to be used as an issue by Republicans.

MR. DICKERSON: Of course the problem for McCain is he's got bad pastors and preachers in his back pocket, too. And so the question is whether he doesn't get himself in trouble, and there may be others out there as well for him. So he has to be careful about exploiting it too much for fear it comes back on him.

MS. IFILL: Okay, we'll move on now. Because if you take a Bush loyalist, you add a publishing contract, and you mix it with surprisingly blunt accusations directed at Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and the vice president and the president himself, you end up with this week's big Washington buzz. Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's new book, "What Happened."

Bush supporters denounced him with almost one voice. Among the sharpest, this email sent to McClellan from former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole who, in effect, accused him of selling out. "When the money starts rolling in," he wrote, "you should donate it to a worthy cause," something like biting the hand that fed me. Ooh. Still more questions than answers. Martha sat down with McClellan yesterday and she got to ask him why tell all this now?

MR. MCCLELLAN: There is a higher loyalty. It's a loyalty to the truth. It's a loyalty to the values I was raised upon, talking about the importance -

MS. RADDATZ: Where were those during those seven years, if you think you were mistreated ?

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I think I felt short at times on some of those. We got caught up in this whole mentality of selling the war to the American people.

MS. IFILL: Was that a satisfying answer in any way, Martha?

MS. RADDATZ: In no away was that a satisfying answer. I just keep thinking, seven years. He didn't realize what he's talking about now for seven years. And he talks about walking out the door and sitting down to write that book and doing a lot of soul-searching and truth seeking. And just then the light went on. For seven years. He talks about he was young.

But during that time, he did question certain things. He says that in the book. In 1999, when he says that he overheard George Bush talking about cocaine use and he couldn't really remember whether he used cocaine or not and thinking at the time, come on, somebody would remember something like that. He's just obfuscating. What is he doing? How can it be that way?

MS. IFILL: He was clearly unhappy when he went out to defend Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame leak case.

MS. RADDATZ: Clearly unhappy. I do think that was a turning point for Scott McClellan. I do feel like he was - he felt like he was lied to by Karl Rove and that really made him mad. But to go back and sort of a blanket indictment of the Bush presidency, after you're out, after you talk about the fact, well, I couldn't talk about the Scooter Libby thing then because of my loyalty to the president, I think probably the president would be happier if he talked about that then than came out and wrote a book afterwards.

The other thing we have to remember is - let me read a couple of things that haven't gotten quite as much publicity. "The first grave mistake of Bush's presidency was rushing towards military confrontation with Iraq. It took his presidency off course and greatly damaged his standing with the public. His second grave mistake was his virtual blindness about his first mistake." You hear that again and again. You hear really sort of character attacks on the president.

MS. IFILL: Really. Yes, really.

MS. RADDATZ: He wasn't inquisitive. He wasn't this. He wasn't that. And a lot of people may believe this book completely. Whether you believe that completely or not, the idea that someone who stood in front of me and stood in front of you and stood in front of you day after day and said these things and said he was sincere at the time and suddenly wasn't is quite extraordinary.

MR. HARWOOD: Also, a little odd, I guess, that he is criticizing the press. As the person who was interacting with the press, he's criticizing the press for, I guess, believing him in the first place.

MS. RADDATZ: That's the great irony about a lot of the things Scott is saying. Come on, you should have been tougher on me. I think people were pretty tough on Scott McClellan in particular. When I started, Scott McClellan was the press secretary and I was stunned by the atmosphere in that briefing room.

MR. DICKERSON: Martha, one of the things, when you read that quote about Bush, this isn't the first time. We had Paul O'Neil saying a version of this and Richard Clarke said a version of this. So there's an accumulation factor here. But the response from White House officials inside and out that you and I both talked to was extraordinary.

MS. RADDATZ: It was extraordinary. And it's so much stronger - this book. Richard Clarke talked about security. Paul O'Neil talked - but Scott was the face of this White House. There is a huge, huge difference.

MS. IFILL: And he was a loyal Texan who had come from Texas.

MS. RADDATZ: A loyal Texan walked out that door and they were going to be sitting in the rocking chair. White House officials are really, really angry. It is true. The response has been pretty measured in public, but pretty angry. And there's lots of behind the scenes and can I just say a lot of behind the scenes about John Dickerson - (laughter) -

MS. IFILL: Go read it. It's page 206.

MS. RADDATZ: The golden-haired boy. And how you asked a question - you knew I'd embarrass you on this, but -

MR. DICKERSON: That happens with our gender all the time.

MS. RADDATZ: We'll talk about your hair color.

MS. IFILL: I want to ask John Harwood a question, not a golden-haired boy, but I - yes, because you are an author now of "Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power," which you happen to have here on the table. But you spend a lot of time in your book talking about this culture of Washington that Scott McClellan just really wiped out. Is there anything familiar? Is there a connection to what he is saying and what your book says?

MR. HARWOOD: Well, no question about it. What Scott is talking about in the book - and it has become the framework for his attack on the White House - is the permanent campaign and that you have a polarized situation where the Clinton campaign before Bush and the Clinton White House, and now the Bush campaign and the Bush White House, engage in this nonstop campaigning, spin, attacking the other side, inflating arguments for your point of view. That is exactly the circumstance - this is the true -

MS. RADDATZ: But McClellan even said the Bush White House was worse than the Clinton White House. That was a rather stunning remark -

MS. IFILL: At yet at no point in this book that we've all by now read or speed read, does he ever say I considered quitting,

MS. RADDATZ: Never, never. He never says he considered quitting. And I think that's what stuns people.

MR. HARWOOD: To give Scott his due, and it's what you were asking about, Gwen, the permanent campaign is a reality. Permanent partisan warfare is a reality in Washington. I suppose it may be possible to step outside of it and have a different view, but the question on the table right now is, is the 2008 campaign and these two nominees, Barack Obama and John McCain, who have a greater ability to reach across the aisle, could they change it?

MS. IFILL: We're going to talk about this some more on the web because we're out of time right now. Thank you, everyone. We have to leave you early so you can pledge to your local station. Maybe this time next week we'll have more answers than questions. I had to reschedule this week's web chat, but I promise I'll be there this Thursday at noon. Send your questions to washingtonweek@pbs.org.

To our friends in Atlanta, we're coming your way. If you'd like to be part of our audience June 20th, go to the website for details about how to get tickets. They go fast. Keep up with daily developments on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and we will see you right here next week on "Washington Week." Good night.