A house divided. In a week's time in Iran, a regime led by a hardened autocracy appears divided at its core. Massed in the street we see the demands or reformers, while the supreme leader demands order. Which way is this headed?
A view from the bridge. We Americans want better relations with Iran, we want them to put aside dreams of nuclear weapons. How do we help them get there without reminding them of how we interfered before?
And finally, doctor, doctor! You're needed in the emergency room, the symptoms have worsened, we need a health care fix. But all the sudden, big worries about the cost. Will the president get what he promised?
Hi, I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show.
Tina Brown is editor in chief of thedailybeast.com, Bob Woodward is associate editor of The Washington Post, Gloria Borger's senior political analyst for CNN and Joe Klein is a Time magazine columnist.
First up, the news out of Iran this past week. With the reformers taken on by the supreme leader, Khamenei, brings back once again the question: Is Iran the 21st century enigma to us? As Time magazine's cover story makes clear, even with Khamenei's announcement backing President Ahmadinejad over the reformers, there are huge divisions even within the ruling group.
Joe, it's so hard without a scorecard to figure this out. We thought going into the election that the supreme leader ran the show over there. Who does?
Mr. JOE KLEIN (Time Columnist): It's hard to tell right now. I think you still have to say the supreme leader. But we're seeing something for the first time in 30 years of this revolution, which is the establishment, the people at the very top of Iran, facing off against each other. You know, the demonstrations in the street are incredible and very moving. But the future of Iran is going to be decided by the various groups at the top of the structure; a group like the Assembly of Experts, which is kind of like the College of Cardinals. They elect the pope, but they can also take the pope down. And they're very divided right now about the supreme leader. We don't know how that's going to turn out. The Iranian parliament more--it's a
conservative body, more--almost all conservatives, and yet more of them endorsed Mousavi, the challenger, than endorsed Ahmadinejad. So this is where the contest is really going to happen; not just on the streets, but also I guess if they have suites in Iran, it's going to happen there, too.
MATTHEWS: Bob Woodward, from a journalistic point of view this is a real challenge for us because we're watching in this unusual perspective, Americans watching a hostile country, Iran--most of the people over there are still mad at us for 60 years of being on the wrong side with them, and yet we're trying to figure out who's on our side over there.
Mr. BOB WOODWARD (Associate Editor, The Washington Post): Well, I'm not sure anyone is. And the CIA has a red team, people who pretend they're Iranians and say, `How do you look at the United States?' and not very favorably. But I think Joe, I mean, has got the best evidence. You were there for 10 days. Great, really important to get that ground truth. But for the government of President Obama, the issue is the Iranian nuke and when are they going to get it, are they continuing? And there are people in the intelligence community who think it's possible as early as next year, 2010, there would be a
demonstration of a very crude Nagasaki-style gun, nuke in the desert...
Mr. KLEIN: Right.
Ms. GLORIA BORGER (CNN Senior Political Analyst): Well, but the issue...
Mr. KLEIN: But there are also people in the intelligence community who believe--and also the Israelis, at this point, believe that they're not going to have--put together until 2012 or 2014, and there is significant numbers of people in the intelligence community who believe that they're going to go the route of Japan rather than the route of Pakistan. They're going to have all the elements to put a bomb together if they need it, but they're not going to announce it. It could go either way.
Ms. BORGER: But don't you think Obama...
Mr. WOODWARD: That's all true.
Ms. TINA BROWN (The Daily Beast, Editor in Chief): But Mousavi has not either come out saying that he is going to pull back from the nukes.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. BROWN: I mean, he, you know, Mousavi's one of the founders of the--founding fathers of the Iranian Revolution himself, so he's a hard-liner in his own way.
Ms. BORGER: Well...(unintelligible).
MATTHEWS: So that's the question, Tina. If--who are we better to--I'm thinking about America here, five years now, two, three weeks from now...
Ms. BORGER: We don't know.
MATTHEWS: ...who would we want to negotiate with? Who would we rather--Joe, who would we be better off with, Mousavi or Ahmadinejad as a negotiating partner, which is a nice way to put it, on nuclear weapons?
Mr. KLEIN: Well, you know, I interviewed Mousavi the night before the election, and he actually said--he was the only Iranian I talked to who said that the weaponization part of the nuclear program, if it existed, would be negotiable. All the other reformers, including people who are in jail right now, said that--took exactly the same position as the conservatives did.
Ms. BORGER: So...
MATTHEWS: Which is--this is critical.
Mr. KLEIN: Which is that for negotiations to begin, we have to make concessions.
Ms. BORGER: So here's the problem for the administration. They're talking about engagement, they've been talking about engagement, but you can't continue to talk about it right now unless you know with whom you are engaging. So they're at a crossroads right now in terms of how they handle this. Do they gather with some other nations and say, look, we want to support the justice, we want to support votes getting counted, we want to support the people in the street.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. BORGER: How do you do that? How do you shift your tone?
Ms. BROWN: But, you know, I don't...
MATTHEWS: (Unintelligible)
Ms. BROWN: ...I don't--I don't think that--I think, actually, Obama's been very smart not to engage in kind of Twitter diplomacy, you know, and start rushing around say...
MATTHEWS: Why not? Why's he smart?
Ms. BROWN: I think he's smart because for a start, you know, he--we don't want to be branded again by Ahmadinejad if he winds up staying there as the grand Satan again, getting in the way, involving ourselves. Which the Iranian people are very proud, we don't need that. Secondly, you know, we don't—as we were saying, we don't really know yet quite who Mousavi is, you know. He's--he has been a hard-liner in the past. He's a more sophisticated operator. But, you know--for instance, he was very good in the debates but also very subtle. When he talked to Ahmadinejad in the debates, he said, you know, `You are stupid talking about Israel in this way, because you isolate our country.'
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. BROWN: He didn't say, `That's an outrage.'
MATTHEWS: Yeah. Except for...
Mr. KLEIN: Yeah, except for the fact that Ahmadinejad smoked him in the debates. Everybody there thought that they--that both Mousavi and Karoubi, the two reformers, were just taken to the cleaners by Ahmadinejad, who has massive support in this country, perhaps the majority. He might have even won the election.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. KLEIN: But those people don't like the intellectual elites like Mousavi.
Ms. BROWN: He's an upscale sort of guy. He's much more sophisticated, he's less formal.
Mr. KLEIN: Yeah. I mean, it's, you know...
Ms. BROWN: But it plays better if you're Ahmadinejad.
MATTHEWS: So they each...(unintelligible)...a silent majority, Ahmadinejad out there, like Nixon was.
Mr. KLEIN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I--he ran a campaign, I hate to say this, similar to a lot of Republican presidential campaigns we've seen over the last 30 years.
MATTHEWS: You know, I--this is so unusual. Again, we're looking at a country that's engaging in something like democracy.
Ms. BORGER: Right.
MATTHEWS: Obviously it's crude and it's not working very well. It reminds me of Khrushchev, who it came out later on he was rooting for Kennedy against Nixon, but made it clear he didn't want anybody to know that. It's so interesting.
Ms. BORGER: Well, I--and you can. And that's exactly what Tina was talking about with Obama, because he doesn't want to get in the middle of what is an internal political dispute...
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. BORGER: ...among the elites and the--and the rulers there.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. BORGER: But on the other hand, he does have to--he does have to show some support.
MATTHEWS: Bob:
Mr. WOODWARD: But what does all this mean? And the answer is, we don't know. And so you have to, if you're in the White House and the national security team here, you have to play a very cautious game. Because a misstep could become the sound bite either side needs.
Mr. KLEIN: Absolutely.
Ms. BORGER: Right. Right.
Mr. KLEIN: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: The president of the United States knows, our president knows that his number one stake here is the nuclear potential of Iran. Bob, how has his way of playing it this past week lent any sort of credence to the way he's playing it? What's he up to down the road?
Mr. WOODWARD: Well, he--I think, you know, they're more interested in what Joe's going to find out, because that is really real.
Mr. KLEIN: The strategy...
Mr. WOODWARD: There's not a lot that we--that they know about what's going on. It is a very closed government, to say the least. But the--but the issue for Obama is you've got to be a little patient and let this run. He's getting--taking some political hits on it. I think anybody who thinks about it is really going to say, you know, you don't want to enter into the fray at this point.
Ms. BROWN: No, he shouldn't take the bait.
Mr. KLEIN: No, no, you absolutely...
Ms. BORGER: (Unintelligible)
Ms. BROWN: He shouldn't take the bait.
Mr. KLEIN: I mean, one thing that the protesters in the streets have in common with the police and the army and Ahmadinejad and the supreme leader is that they all believe that we've been the cause of a lot of their troubles.
Ms. BORGER: So don't...(unintelligible).
Mr. KLEIN: There are an--I interviewed a woman last week whose husband was a chemical victim of the Iran-Iraq War. There are tens of thousands of people like that in Iraq and they all blame us for giving Saddam Hussein the poison gas. So you have to keep that in mind.
The strategy that the Obama administration's following is going to be this. They're going to go for comprehensive talks on a broad variety of things with the Iranians and try and move into the nuclear issue from there. I would be surprised and disappointed if there weren't some talks going on secretly right now.
MATTHEWS: OK. Before we break, a lighter moment. Last year Barack Obama's political enemies said he wasn't a warrior. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he was willing to talk to our enemies. Unlike John McCain, he hadn't been in combat.
Even Joe Biden warned that our adversaries might think him so...(unintelligible)...they would surely test him in the first six months. They all agreed, he wouldn't hurt a fly. Well, this week came the test. He showed he had the steel to meet the enemy and crush him.
(Clip of President Obama swatting fly)
MATTHEWS: First thing I thought of was the deranged Norman Bates at the end of "Psycho," who still thinks he's his mother and thought not swatting a fly was the way to show he was normal. Listen.
(Clip from "Psycho")
MATTHEWS: OK, I'm crazy.
When we come back, we're in need of a health care fix. But will a high price tag stop President Obama from getting what he wants, what he promised? Plus, scoops and predictions from all the notebooks of these top reporters. Tell me something I don't know. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. The push for a health care revolution began to get real this week. Even with the tax increases it will require, the president seems to have the momentum. Back in 1994, when the Clintons pushed a big reform plan, Republicans had no problem attacking it.
Former Representative NEWT GINGRICH: (NBC News "Meet the Press"/June 19, 1994) I don't think the American people, when they talk about welfare reform, want to see us create a new welfare health system designed by the Clintons
with 100 million people getting a brand-new entitlement. I think this is an open-ended invitation to a massive deficit and to massive tax increases over the next decade.
MATTHEWS: Even some top Democrats, including Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, thought the Clinton plan went too far.
Senator DANIEL PATRICK MOYNAHAN: (CBS News "Face the Nation"/March 6, 1994)
Too big, too much government. You don't know where you'll get in 20 years' time.
MATTHEWS: Well, this year things are different. First, this is the prime ambition of a popular president, which makes it hard for Democrats and even some Republicans to take him on. There's the economic urgency. Obama says the tough economy can only be addressed if health costs can be kept down. There's the simple fact that health costs are completely out of control, and that has put business and insurance companies on the side of action and wanting a fix.
Bob, things have changed.
Mr. WOODWARD: Actually, not that much, because it's all about money and it's all about costs. If you go back to the Clinton plan, there's one of these confidential memos from 1993, first year of the Clinton presidency, presidential decisions on health care in August, and it showed costs keep going up if you reform the system. And here's the beauty of the anecdote.
They sent these to Clinton, and he had one of his purple fits and threw—and said, `These numbers'--and I won't repeat his language, and said, `The only time we're going to reduce costs in health care is,' this is in 1993, he said, `in the second Gore administration.' Now, as I recall there was no first, let alone a second...
Ms. BORGER: Here we are.
MATTHEWS: So he didn't like the plan.
Mr. WOODWARD: So he's talking about right now, kind of, you know, 2007, 2008, that is the projection.
Ms. BORGER: Right.
Mr. WOODWARD: So somebody's going to have to get real with the numbers.
MATTHEWS: Well, one number being reported is $1.6 trillion is the cost of the plan floating around there right now, Joe Klein.
Mr. KLEIN: Look, I think, you know, they--the problem is that you really need to do radical things to get this right, and the Congress isn't very good at radical. I mean, for health care to be done right, doctors have to be paid according to the number of patients they have as opposed to the number of procedures that they do. And they hate that. And lawyers have to--have to
stop being able to do these malpractice suits. And, you know, companies have to be helped. You can't continue to have corporate America continue to pay for this in a global economy. These are big changes that have to be made, and none of them are on the table.
MATTHEWS: See...
Ms. BORGER: You know, I think the difference this time is--this time is, though, that the stakeholders have been at the table.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. BORGER: Now, they may not stay at the table, but they've been invited in and they're staying in because they can't afford to go on the way they're going on anymore.
Mr. KLEIN: The problem...
Ms. BROWN: (Unintelligible)...the way that the Obama administration is going about it, I mean, they have one big advantage this time over the last time, which is they have the last time as a model of how not to do it.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. BROWN: This time they have been more collaborative. It's not just kind of handing a bill down, he's getting this collaborative process going from Congress. And also, of course, you don't have a big-time Democrat like Moynihan against you.
Mr. KLEIN: Tina is right. They have the example of last time and they're following it, I think, perhaps to a fault. At a certain point, the president has to talk to all of these stakeholders around the table and say, `You're all wrong. Here's what we should do.'
Ms. BROWN: Right.
Ms. BORGER: Well...
Ms. BROWN: (Unintelligible)
Ms. BORGER: But that'll happen--but that will happen after the House and Senate do the work and a--and they come into a conference, and that's when the White House is going to say, `This is what we can do. We need to do what we can.'
MATTHEWS: OK. OK, here's why I think it's going to happen. One, we're at a huge competitive disadvantage with the world right now, our big corporations.
Ms. BORGER: Right.
MATTHEWS: We can't sell cars to the world in the world market because we've got to pay for all that health care cost, right? We've got business now that wants somebody else to pick up the cost of health care, right? You and I have been talking about this. This has changed.
Mr. KLEIN: Mm-hmm. That's right. Because, you know, the situation that business is in has become untenable.
Mr. WOODWARD: Before you get to the remedy, you've got to have the diagnosis. And the diagnosis is in the health care system the doctors and the hospital, everyone drives to get on--to get what they do on Medicaid and Medicare, and once they do it they're on the gravy train.
Ms. BROWN: One of the things I think that Obama has got a problem now in a way is keeping that focus where everybody can understand to get a consensus...
MATTHEWS: OK. OK, let's take a look at the...
Ms. BROWN: ...on any issue.
Ms. BORGER: He's got to get people to understand that one way to get that deficit under control, which Americans care about...
MATTHEWS: Right.
Ms. BORGER: ...is fixing health care.
MATTHEWS: Right. Let's talk about the Republicans. And the bottom line, we asked the Matthews Meter this week, 12 of our regulars, will Republicans line up as a party and unite against reforming health care? Well, yes, in a word. Nine say the Republicans will unite against Obama on whatever package he puts forward; just three say they won't unite.
Joe, you're with the ones who believe that they won't unite, there's a chance for Republican participation here.
Mr. KLEIN: Well, according to some of the Republicans I've spoken to, yeah. They just can't keep on saying no. And there are--you know, there are considerable Republican constituencies like corporate America that now want to see health care reform.
MATTHEWS: That's right.
Your thought?
Ms. BORGER: I think there are some Republicans, like Senator Grassley for example in the Senate, is working with Senator Baucus to try and come up together with a bill. But in the end, I think this is going to raise taxes and it's going to be too much for Republicans to swallow.
MATTHEWS: OK, you know what I think?
Ms. BORGER: And they will, except for a handful, vote against it.
MATTHEWS: OK. In the end, a handful's going to include Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins...
Ms. BORGER: Yep. Yep.
MATTHEWS: ...Martinez from Florida, probably Voinovich, people who are leaving the Senate, probably, and I'll bet you Enzi out there in the West, too.
Ms. BORGER: Could be, could be.
MATTHEWS: I think you're going to see some surprises, including, I think, Grassley.
I'll be right back with scoops and predictions--do no harm no longer means do nothing. I think that's what's changed. The notebooks of these reporters will be opened. Tell me something I don't know. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back.
Tina, tell me something I don't know.
Ms. BROWN: Well, Hillary Clinton has been pretty much boxed in at the State Department in what she's able to do. But I am really looking to see now that she's going to move forward and do some very good stuff about women, because she's just put in Melanne Verveer as her ambassador for global affairs, which is a big deal. It's not just a decorative appointment. I think Verveer is going to be a powerful voice in the State Department in Hillary, and I think she will really start looking to be much more vocal about making women change agents as part of her soft power.
MATTHEWS: I'm listening here. Any buyer's remorse by her about taking this job?
Ms. BROWN: She's too disciplined even with herself, I think. I think she is very patient.
MATTHEWS: OK.
Ms. BROWN: I think she's a patient operator.
MATTHEWS: It's a long-term proposition. Bob Woodward:
Mr. WOODWARD: If Dick Cheney had been in the White House at the time of the housefly attack, he would have gone to his undisclosed location and said it's a chem-bio attack or an anthrax attack, and treated it much more seriously than the Obama administration has.
MATTHEWS: OK, Bob, I'll leave that thought. Gloria Borger:
Ms. BORGER: Sonia Sotomayor has made between 60 and 70 visits to senators on the Hill. She's going to be confirmed easily with at least 70 votes.
MATTHEWS: Joe Klein; congratulations, by the way, on the Time cover. Big
story from Iran.
Mr. KLEIN: Thank you. A fashion note from Iran. When I was there eight years ago you could usually tell a woman's politics from how she was dressed.
Now you see some supporters of Mousavi who are in full chador, and you see supporters of Ahmadinejad, especially young women, who have their hair—their headscarves back and their hair spray--hair sprayed and are riding around on the back of motorcycles. And the point is that the arc of history bends toward freedom.
MATTHEWS: Right. And you can't tell a book by its cover.
When we come back, the Big Question of the week: Is the Obama honeymoon over? Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. We've got several new polls this week showing President Obama's approval numbers slipping, which brings us to this week's Big Question: Is Obama's honeymoon over? Tina Brown:
Ms. BROWN: How can it be over when you consider what he's running against? I mean, his greatest luck is what he's running against. I mean, the Republicans are just the clowns of all time at this point.
MATTHEWS: See, the reason I ask questions with the word "is" in front of it, it's an old journalistic trick, is to elicit a yes or no answer.
Ms. BROWN: OK.
MATTHEWS: So is it over or not?
Ms. BROWN: No. I think his popularity is extremely strong. It's not so bad to be where he is right now. He's just been so insanely popular that, yeah he's had a dip, he's a mortal politician.
MATTHEWS: I don't have a waterboard. Is it over? I'll move on. You don't want to answer, right?
Ms. BROWN: Yeah, no. I think it's nervous.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you. Bob Woodward:
Mr. WOODWARD: I like the answer "Yeah, no." I think the--no, it's not over and it's not--and it's because he--people are looking to him in this country, in the world, in Congress, for answers and proposals. He's delivered, by my count, about 140 very substantial proposals, ideas, executive orders and so forth. And so what's the--you know, Karl Rove always said it all depends on outcome, and the outcome is not going to be known for months or a year or more.
MATTHEWS: Still on. Still aglow. Gloria:
Ms. BORGER: It's peaked, unless he gets health care reform, in which case he'll be right back on again.
MATTHEWS: Well said. Joe:
Mr. KLEIN: It's not over; and in fact, in the rest of the world, especially the Islamic world, it is growing.
MATTHEWS: Majority for the honeymoon continues.
Thanks to a great roundtable: Tina Brown, Bob Woodward, Gloria Borger and Joe Klein.
That's the show. Thanks for watching. Happy Father's Day this Sunday, and see you here next week.
