Announcer: This is THE CHRIS MATTHEWS SHOW. Today...
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:
Grand illusion. Truman and Johnson faced quagmires and cut their losses. But
George W. Bush wants to continue his war in Iraq. Has the decider simply
decided?
Public enemy number one. Is getting bin Laden really a top wish priority, or
is the war in Iraq his only battle?
And Rudy Tuesday. Could conservatives decide after giving Mitt and now Fred
the look over that Giuliani's still the leader? Could the New York man still
be the front-runner come the primaries?
Interview: Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post Writers Group,
David Gregory of NBC, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times and
Robert Draper of GQ on whether Bush is in a quagmire and, if so,
if he can admit it; can Rudy Giuliani win the Republican polls,
primaries; Tell Me Something I Don't Know; The Big Question
CHRIS MATTHEWS, host:
Kathleen Parker writes a column for The Washington Post Writers Group. David
Gregory's chief White House correspondent for NBC News. Elisabeth Bumiller is
a New York Times reporter. And Robert Draper is a correspondent for GQ
magazine and author of the new Bush biography "Dead Certain."
First up, it's a climactic week ahead in the war debate and the president's
leadership. Other presidents who've been mired in wars with America, neither
winning nor losing, have decided to put up the white flag. Harry Truman did
it in Korea, deciding not to run again. LBJ retired after the Tet Offensive,
deciding that that was the only way to make a deal with the enemy. But George
W. Bush, in similar circumstances, with a war not clearly being won or lost,
is staying the course.
David, what makes this guy continue to fight the big fight for this war?
Mr. DAVID GREGORY (NBC News Chief White House Correspondent): Certitude and
an unwillingness to preside over the policy nosediving into the ground. A lot
of people think that's already happened. But he will focus on the importance
of how the United States gets out of Iraq, which is why--one of the reasons I
think he told Robert Draper that he's now an October to November guy. He
wants to get past this next hurdle with Congress and put the war on the course
to keep troops there basically for the rest of this presidency at 100 or
130,000 troops so that the next president will not pull out precipitously from
the war.
MATTHEWS: Robert, you were given rare access to the president, interviews.
You got a lot of his trust. He talk to you about it. You wrote about his
insistent optimism about the war. "Optimism was basic to Bush. It came
naturally to him, for as long as he could remember. As commander in chief of
an increasingly unpopular war, however, Bush's optimism grew less reflexive
and more self-consciously determined. Aides heard it from him time and again:
`Who's going to follow a leader who says, "Follow me, things are going to get
worse"?'"
Robert, in other words, the power of positive thinking. It's not that he
knows more about what's going on in Iraq than we do, he simply wants to make
it look better.
Mr. ROBERT DRAPER (Author, "Dead Certain"): Yeah, and it has its natural
limitations because it creates conditions for a credibility gap. You're
saying things are doing fine and we will win, when it appears to--and you say
that over and over, against evidence to the contrary, it leads people to think
that you're not in possession of the facts.
And I think that's one of the--one of the things I was really surprised with
in all the time that I spent, not only with the president but people in the
West Wing, how much difficulty the president has in owning up and
acknowledging to mistakes being made. And this had to be elaborately
orchestrated, Dan Bartlett and Josh Bolten and others getting the president to
simply admit `things aren't the way we hoped they would be. And I take
responsibility for that.' It was not a reflexive thing, ever. It had to be
very, very elaborately planned.
MATTHEWS: Elisabeth, every time that the president speaks, the bottom line is
always, `push forward, more war. I'm not--I'm not walking out of this thing.'
No matter what he hears, what is it? What keeps him going on this front full
speed ahead?
Ms. ELISABETH BUMILLER (The New York Times): Well, he--I think there is part
of him that believes that it might someday work out. Not during his
presidency, but in the next five, 10, 15 years. That's the big legacy issue.
But also, what--I also think that he feels it's a terrible admission of
failure if he makes any slightest noise about, `Well, we should have done the
occupation better, we should have, you know, planned for more troops.'
Anything--he doesn't do that. He doesn't do that.
MATTHEWS: If he doesn't know more than we know, what good is it?
Ms. BUMILLER: Well...
MATTHEWS: Because you talked to him in that private room and all the
conservatives get in that Roosevelt room and you had that little confab with
him recently, what does he tell you that he doesn't tell us?
Ms. KATHLEEN PARKER (Columnist, Washington Post Writers Group): It was all
off the record. Sorry. No, I--I'll tell you something. I actually had a
moment of one on one with him, and I asked him just straight out. I said,
`How do you keep going, given the unpopularity of the war and just the general
assault on his policies?' And he just--he unflinchingly says, `Because I know
I'm right.' Now, I don't know if that's a decision he made just because he
can't afford to be--he can't face being wrong or if he truly, truly believes
that this thing in the long run may make a difference in the world.
Mr. GREGORY: You know, I think that the president has focused more on the
fact that in his mind, the US has to have a sustained presence in this part of
the world. That even if democracy in Iraq the way he envisions it is
certainly not on the cards in his presidency, that the United States has to
condition itself for a sustained presence there, and that part of his legacy
will be to bring people around to that level of commitment, even in the face
of failures in the execution of his policies.
MATTHEWS: You have something pretty profound in this book among other
profundities, Robert. Quote, "The commanders and the troops never told him
what was going wrong, just as the generals on the ground never once told the
president during their regular video conferences, `Sir, we need more troops.'
Not once.'" Does he not want the truth?
Mr. DRAPER: Well, he didn't create conditions where the truth could come
out. I mean, how--he would have these secure video teleconferences with the
generals, and he would ask a series of questions, but it wasn't really an
honest line of questioning. He would say, `Can we win? Are we winning? What
happens if we lose? Do you got anything in it?'
Mr. GREGORY: `Do you got what you need?'
Mr. DRAPER: Military commanders aren't loathe to say, you know, very easily
at least, `We're really--we really need a lot of help here, Mr. President.'
And when he creates a conversation like that, it's not likely to come out.
Ms. PARKER: Well, let's keep in mind, as compared to Truman and LBJ,
who--Bush has completely changed the guard, in time perhaps, to do something,
to make some difference before it's all over. So that is a difference. I
mean, McNamara didn't go until a year before LBJ was out of office.
MATTHEWS: About six months ago, or a year, he said we needed this surge of
troops...
Ms. BUMILLER: Right.
MATTHEWS: ...in order to give stability to Baghdad so that the politicians
over there could get the job done...
Ms. BUMILLER: Right.
MATTHEWS: ...of unifying the country. Now we find out the politicians over
there are incapable of doing that. There's better security, of course,
because we have more troops there. But the purpose of the surge was
political. Robert, he keeps changing the score card.
Mr. DRAPER: Well, he does somewhat, and it's interesting about the surge
because when he was having his colloquys with the Iraq Study Group, it's clear
that that's what he wanted. The Study Group didn't recommend that. They
wanted a much more political solution. So it was actually inserted on page
83, and everybody in the administration came to learn this, this line saying,
`We could, however, support, in essence, a surge.' It was sort of an
afterthought. It was not one of the major recommendations. But everybody in
the presidency--in the Oval Office--or the West Wing would say `Aha! Here
indeed is the justification that the Iraq Study Group has provided us.'
MATTHEWS: So are we fighting in the reality world or in a world of Bushes?
Ms. PARKER: Well...
MATTHEWS: Robert, you spent a lot of time with him. Is there another
parallel universe here where the president says, `This is about character, my
willingness to stick to my guns.'
Mr. DRAPER: Sure.
MATTHEWS: `It's not about the casualty rate, it's not about the politics of
Maliki and the failures of those people to get their act together either.'
Mr. DRAPER: Right.
MATTHEWS: `It's about my personal character that's at stake.'
Mr. DRAPER: Sure.
MATTHEWS: Is that what this is about?
Mr. DRAPER: Well, there's--it's not so much his character that's at stake,
it's his core beliefs that are at stake.
Mr. GREGORY: Right.
Mr. DRAPER: I mean, he said to me, for example, `There's no need to argue
about the freedom agenda.' Well, some would say, actually, there is a need to
argue about the freedom agenda. That it's a fine concept, but its practical
implication has real limits.
Mr. GREGORY: Sometimes there's a temptation to make this overly complicated.
When we say faith, it's not just his faith in God.
Mr. DRAPER: Right.
Mr. GREGORY: It's the faith in the signature--the thing that will define his
presidency, which is pursuing freedom in the Middle East as a means to make
the region more stable. That has not been realized. But the notion here is
that somehow there's a choice for him between, you know, basically cutting his
losses and pulling out and going out, which would have catastrophic
consequences, according to most experts, or trying to find a way to right this
somehow, to reach for some good news where he can find it. There is some
right now, sufficient so that Democrats are backing off and saying, `OK, well,
maybe we're not going to push for an immediate deadline.'
Ms. BUMILLER: Yeah.
Mr. GREGORY: So I think this is about him having faith in--and in the
pursuit of anything that will work here. And he's not about to turn his back
on what will define, in his mind, his presidency, was taking this risk.
Ms. BUMILLER: And in the sense of changing the goal posts, there has been
this--there has been an unexpected outcome in Iraq because of the surge, which
is that there's been no political reconciliation at the top. But there--it
has been going on at the local level where all of the sudden we're on the side
of the Sunnis because the Sunnis hate al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. BUMILLER: We have the same enemy now. So the president, in terms of
changing goal posts, is that he's--they're grabbing at that at the White
House. This is not something they had planned.
MATTHEWS: We asked our Matthews Meter, 12 of our regular panelists. The
president says historians can't rate his presidency until well after he's
gone. So we asked the Meter. In 50 years, is it possible that President Bush
will be rated as an above average president? Well, eight say no, no way,
Jose. Not even possible after 50 years. And four say yes, it is possible.
David, you cover him.
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: You say it's possible that this guy will come out all right in
history.
Mr. GREGORY: Well, and the reason I say that is because it's impossible to
know whether in the immediate aftermath of the war on terror his leadership
was something that stands up over time, even though Iraq has gone the way that
it's gone. You don't know how Iraq ultimately plays itself out and whether
his writing of chapter one somehow pulls out of the real-time mistakes that
have been made.
MATTHEWS: Hm. Yeah.
Mr. GREGORY: And that's his real problem now is that the way the war was
conducted, there were mistakes that occurred in real time on his watch during
the presidency that have had a material impact on how the--how the war was
run.
MATTHEWS: Hm. Yeah.
Yeah, but the trouble with the thinking here, Robert, I think you get into it
with your book, is if you think because the people are behind you and you're
popular, you're right. And then when you realize that you're not popular,
that tells you you're right. Like he says `I'm Churchill,' well, Churchill
won Time magazine's Man of the Century...
Mr. DRAPER: Sure.
MATTHEWS: ...a few years after leaving the premiership, but he wasn't
discarded by his history.
Mr. DRAPER: I don't--yeah, I don't think he's been clued into that one about
Churchill.
MATTHEWS: Who's he--in his so-called reading of history, who does he find to
parallel himself with?
Mr. DRAPER: Well, I--he doesn't select a person. I think he, you know, he
draws strength from the experiences of some of these people like Churchill.
But I think that he really believes that fundamental to leadership is making
tough choices. You make tough choices, it makes the world uncomfortable. You
make the world uncomfortable, you'll become unpopular. He thinks it goes with
the territory and he thinks that ultimately those people who've done that
are--their--they accrue benefits at the end. That they're finally acquitted
by history, and he does believe that'll happen.
MATTHEWS: But the trouble with that is it's a predicate that if you're
unpopular, you must be right.
Mr. DRAPER: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: That's the dangerous element here.
Before we go to break, one of the little things you found out in your book,
Robert, is that Bush likes to do impressions of this guy--this guy!--from the
"Austin Powers" movies.
(Clip from "Austin Powers")
MATTHEWS: What did you make of that, Robert, that this president, George W.
Bush, likes to do Dr. Evil?
Mr. DRAPER: That he has a goofy sense of humor, at times bordering on
juvenile. I think that he looks at--he loves that movie. He loves "Austin
Powers."
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah.
Ms. BUMILLER: A lot of people love it.
Mr. DRAPER: It's not just that he loves a megalomaniacal.
MATTHEWS: Why a clueless megalomaniac?
Mr. GREGORY: He does do it well, but...
MATTHEWS: But you do Brokaw really well, and a bunch of other people like Red
Buttons that nobody else remembers. But why would this guy choose Dr. Evil?
Mr. GREGORY: Because--you just stole my line. With all respect to the
president and the presidency, the guy's a goofball. I mean, you don't see all
the time, but he likes to joke around like this.
Ms. BUMILLER: Frat house humor.
Mr. GREGORY: And this is a guy who--this is a guy who...
Mr. DRAPER: He's that kind of guy.
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah. I mean, who spends time thinking of nicknames based on,
you know, `If your name is Candy, I'm going to call you Dolce.' So, you know,
I mean...
MATTHEWS: He likes the kind of movies that are playing all day with my kids
at home.
Ms. BUMILLER: "Meet the Fockers," I think, is what he--another one. "Meet
the Fockers."
MATTHEWS: The regular movies. Anyway...
Ms. BUMILLER: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: He likes that, the "Meet the Fockers." Before we break, there's
been a lot of talk about the similarities between actor/president Ronald
Reagan and actor/presidential candidate Fred Thompson. There is something to
it. The truth is that both of them basically played themselves in the movies
and then on the stump. Didn't have to change personalities.
But here's the other connection we stumbled on just this week. They were both
late entries. A lot of people have questioned whether Thompson was smart to
take his sweet time getting into this race, which let him hold on to his Paul
Harvey radio gig. But look at NBC's Douglas Kiker covering another actor who
was worried about getting in too early back in 1979.
(Begin clip from June 21, 1979)
Mr. RONALD REAGAN: This is Ronald Reagan. I'm on the air each weekday with
my commentary on domestic, political and social issues and world affairs as
well. Join me, won't you?
Mr. DOUGLAS KIKER: There's a good reason why Reagan has not announced yet.
It would cost him money, big money. As an official candidate, Reagan would
lose the income he receives from more than 500 radio stations which carry his
daily commentaries and the huge income he earns on the lecture circuit.
Mr. REAGAN: Thank you.
Well, yeah, that's the difference between my particular activity and the
activity of most of the other candidates, that if I'm a candidate, and it was
true the last time, then I have no earnings during that period.
Mr. KIKER: Reagan has also learned about peaking too soon.
Mr. REAGAN: I just don't think the people are ready yet to be revved up, and
I think that the candidates are going to stay on too long. Pretty soon,
what's there going to be talk about in October of 1980?
(End of clip)
MATTHEWS: God, is he good. And, Kathleen, he's totally honest. He says,
`I'm not going to give up the radio gig because I like the money.' What an
honest answer.
Ms. PARKER: Well, he's a practical man. You know? And that's important for
a United States president.
MATTHEWS: These other guys, they would come up with some reason, `Oh, I have
commitments I have to meet under the law,' you know?
Ms. PARKER: Well...
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah, right.
Ms. PARKER: You know, as far as Thompson goes, he didn't have to come in
early. He already has that name recognition, so he's way ahead of the game.
All these other people have had to spend millions of dollars to get their
names known.
MATTHEWS: Good point.
Ms. BUMILLER: Right.
MATTHEWS: We're going to come back and talk about Romney, we're going to talk
about whether Thompson plays a role in keeping Rudy on top or the other way
around. We'll be right back to talk about that and the polls and everything
else. And why's Rudy still number one? What is going on here? Can he beat
these heartland conservatives? Plus, as always, scoops and predictions right
out of the notebooks of these top reporters. TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW.
Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Fred Thompson finally dives into the Republican race
this week, which probably means the pool is now full. But the guy bobbing
along at the top is still Rudy Giuliani. Take a look at the way he's kept a
big lead over all the others since the beginning back in the spring. All the
movement among McCain, Romney and Thompson hasn't really watered down any of
Rudy's lead. In fact, he's been as full of bravado, especially on world
affairs. In The New York Times Magazine this weekend, Rudy tells Matt Bai his
philosophy would not be very different from George W. Bush's, and Bai
elaborated. Quote: "Giuliani's answer to all complex foreign policy dilemmas
was essentially the same. The American president had to be someone the rest
of the world feared, someone a little too rash and belligerent for anyone
else's comfort."
David, Nixon stuff, not just Bush stuff. Very tough. The mad bomber theory.
`I might do anything.'
Mr. GREGORY: Well, I--and--but I think for--in this context, it is about
tying himself to Bush who's still popular among Republicans. It's about
saying to the country. even those Democrats and Republicans who no longer
like Bush and don't like this war, that `I'm going to stay tough in the war on
terror.' While--there's so many gaps there with Rudy, however. I mean,
there's a lot of room for maneuvering on Iraq and on terrorism generally.
He's just sticking with the argument that `I'm going to be tough, every bit as
tough as this guy was, but I'm also going to be competent.'
MATTHEWS: Hm.
Mr. GREGORY: I'm the guy who ran New York City and ran it well.
MATTHEWS: Every election's a correction for the previous mistakes we make as
voters. Do you think the voters want to go to more testosterone, more tough
guy talk?
Ms. BUMILLER: No. But...
MATTHEWS: So why's Rudy selling that?
Ms. BUMILLER: Well, it's--for those of us who've covered him in New York as
I did, it's still--it's--we're all quite surprised. But I think he's working
because, right now, the Republican, the conservatives in the Republican Party
are more divided than they've ever been, and it doesn't matter as much, so far
it looks like, from the polls about, you know, where you stand on the issues
like abortion and immigration.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. BUMILLER: But I don't--I don't see--I'll be surprised if this sustains
itself.
MATTHEWS: Well, Kathleen...
Ms. PARKER: I don't know...
MATTHEWS: The way I hear it, I hear the rumor, in fact, I get some sources
that tell me that Rudy's plan--actually is a plan now--come in at least third
in Iowa, come in second in New Hampshire, and win big in your state, South
Carolina. Can he carry this tough guy talk into the--into the South?
Ms. PARKER: Absolutely. We're hot--we're big on testosterone. We really
like it down there. And no, he's very, very popular in South Carolina and is
way, way ahead of everybody else. As for some of the issues that people think
are of concern, there is no single issue anymore that's going to disqualify a
candidate. It really comes down to security and electability.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Ms. PARKER: So the real big question is who's...
MATTHEWS: Beat Hillary.
Mr. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MATTHEWS: Beat the bad guys.
Ms. PARKER: Yeah. The base is already convinced that Hillary's got it and
they want whoever's going to beat her, and Giuliani is seen as that person.
MATTHEWS: I have a theory that Thompson comes in--he's going to win the whole
thing, obviously--but he also plays the short run game of knocking out or
closing down the Bible Belt from Mitt Romney. He gets the Southern Baptists,
he's one, he's got the Southern accent, he's a good old boy, looks good in a
La-Z-Boy recliner. He comes in there and just says, `Mitt, you're up there in
Iowa, stay up there.' And Rudy can then win on the coasts.
Ms. PARKER: Yeah.
Mr. GREGORY: Can I say, too, what I think is interesting is that I do think
there is a split between the conservative wing of the Republican Party and
moderates and independents who might have voted for Republicans before. The
conservatives do still react to this message very positively. They want to
hear the tough talk on terrorism.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Mr. GREGORY: They want to hear the tough talk on Iraq. They're more
susceptible to the argument that if you elect a Democrat, they are just going
to--they're going to...
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Mr. GREGORY: ...yank us out of the Middle East, they're going to make us
less safe.
MATTHEWS: No, that's a good argument.
Ms. PARKER: Well...
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Robert, you got a new GQ piece about the other guy,
John McCain.
Mr. DRAPER: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: McCain has tied himself to this war in Iraq.
Mr. DRAPER: Yeah. Yeah.
MATTHEWS: He's more of a warrior, more troops, more tough, more neocon, if
you will. What's that going to do with this campaign? Can he win on this
argument that he's a better fighter than Bush?
Mr. DRAPER: Well, he can't win on Iraq per se, but he can win on the sort of
meta issue, the issue of sticking to something. And he made hay with that,
you know, lampooning Romney to some degree in the last debate...
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Mr. DRAPER: ...taking about how being--the surge is apparently working.
Well, no, it's absolutely working. And I think it's an example of a candidate
turning a vice into a virtue. There's not a whole lot he can
do...(unintelligible).
MATTHEWS: Yeah, but most people still think it's a vice.
Anyway, we put it to The Matthews Meter, 12 of our regulars. Will Rudy still
be on the top of the Republican race in January when the Iowa caucuses begin
this voting? Is it--it is close, but our meter thinks he will. Seven say
yes, he'll still be riding high in the polls. Five say he won't.
David, you're with the yeses.
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah, I mean, I think right now he's got maximum flexibility on
Iraq. So he can fill in a lot of those holes. And I think he's very
deftly--and Elisabeth, from your experience, you know, managed this personal
issue.
MATTHEWS: I think so.
Mr. GREGORY: I mean, when he says `I'm not campaigning as a perfect
candidate, but as a human being,' I think a lot of people say, `Wow, that
makes sense.' But then I'm--it boggles me that he's getting away with that.
MATTHEWS: Yeah, yeah.
Ms. BUMILLER: (Unintelligible).
MATTHEWS: Too bad Larry Craig never said that a few years ago.
Mr. GREGORY: Yeah, right.
MATTHEWS: I'll be right back with scoops and predictions right out of the
notebooks of these top reporters. TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW. Be right
back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back.
Kathleen, TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW.
Ms. PARKER: Just to add a little bit to the Giuliani profile in South
Carolina, apparently people don't care a thing about the fact that he's had
three wives or that he is in favor of gun control. They see him as--they see
his vulnerabilities as being like their own, that some of these people have
actually been married more than one time. And, you know, they forgive him
that his kids don't speak to him because their kids don't speak to them,
either.
MATTHEWS: Rudy in the South. It's been my theory for years.
Go ahead, David.
Mr. GREGORY: Interesting that one of the Republican campaigns tell me
they've got internal polling that shows that Bush is polling at 82 percent
popularity in the early primary states.
MATTHEWS: Wow.
Mr. GREGORY: That shows you why these Republican candidates still want to
stay close enough to him, particularly on Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Why Rudy and McCain are both going tough on the war.
Mr. GREGORY: Absolutely.
MATTHEWS: Elisabeth.
Ms. BUMILLER: Of the original 20 or so people at the White House senior
staff meeting every morning, only three are left: Joe Hagan, Josh Bolten,
Steve Hadley, which just gives you an idea of how this president is no longer
surrounded by people he came close--people he was close to, he came in with.
MATTHEWS: Wow.
Let me get Robert, the new kid here.
Mr. DRAPER: Yeah, I'm one of seven people who thinks McCain's still got a
chance, but he's not going to do it without his A team. Look for McCain to
make a personal entreaty for John Weaver and have his uber strategist come
back in the fall.
MATTHEWS: Bring them all back.
I'll be right back with this week's BIG QUESTION. Is finding Osama bin Laden
still a top priority for President Bush?
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Osama bin Laden has reared his ugly head again. THE
BIG QUESTION, is finding him still a top Bush priority?
Kathleen, top.
Ms. PARKER: Top priority? Chris, I can't remember the last time I heard
George Bush say "Osama bin Laden."
Mr. GREGORY: I don't think it is. I think Iraq is.
Ms. BUMILLER: No, it's the top intelligence priority.
Mr. DRAPER: Exactly, top for--but for to the administration, not for the
West Wing.
MATTHEWS: Amazing. Zero for four about the guy who said `we're going to get
the guys who knocked down these buildings' back in '01.
Thanks to a great roundtable, Kathleen Parker, David Gregory, Elisabeth
Bumiller, and Robert Draper.
