GUESTS: Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, presidential
candidate; David Broder, Washington Post; Ron Brownstein, Los Angeles Times;
Roger Simon, U.S. News & World Report; Chuck Todd, The Hotline/National Journal
MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday—only one week to the Iowa caucuses.
Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, and this man, John Kerry, battle to
the wire. Can the one-time front-runner Kerry re-ignite his campaign? We’ll ask
him. Our guest: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Then, which issues are resonating with the Iowa voters? And the Internet—how
important is it in Decision 2004? Insights and analysis from David Broder of The
Washington Post, Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times, Roger Simon of U.S.
News & World Report and Chuck Todd of the National Journal Hotline.
And Senator John Kerry is joining us from Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Senator Kerry, good morning.
SEN. JOHN KERRY, (D-MA): Good morning, Tim. How are you?
MR. RUSSERT: All right. Let me show you and America...
SEN. KERRY: How about our Patriots first?
MR. RUSSERT: We’ll get to the...
SEN. KERRY: I’m sorry it’s not the Bills.
MR. RUSSERT: We’ll get to football. Let’s do a little politics first. Let me
show you and...
SEN. KERRY: Well, that’s football, too.
MR. RUSSERT: ...America the very latest tracking polls from Iowa from MSNBC,
Reuters and Zogby: Howard Dean at 25; Dick Gephardt, 23; John Kerry, 15; John
Edwards, 14; Joe Lieberman, 3; Wesley Clark, 3. And the latest poll from New
Hampshire, the American Research Group has Howard Dean at 35; Wesley Clark, 20;
John Kerry, 10; Joe Lieberman, 9;Gephardt, 4; Edwards, 3; undecided, 17.
Senator Kerry, about a year ago, maybe perhaps a year and a half, you were
widely considered the front-runner, ahead of Howard Dean 2:1 in New Hampshire.
You’re now loosing to him 3:1 in New Hampshire. What happened?
SEN. KERRY: Now, Tim, it’s not important. I don’t even accept those polls.
This is the same pollster who had Democrats winning every race in the Senate
last time and they lost them all. Look, the polls are all over the place. We
have very different polls from those. Yesterday, in Iowa, I had 1,000 people at
two different rallies. Dean had about 200 with Al Gore. We’re moving out here.
We have a lot of energy out here. The people of Iowa are independentminded. This
isn’t about polls. This is about people. This is about health care for Americans.
It’s about jobs. People are feeling extraordinarily angry about a Medicare bill
that pushes seniors off of Medicare into HMOs and gives a windfall profit to the
drug companies. I’m telling you, there’s energy out here. It is moving. I am
confident, and the polls are all over the place. We have very different polls
that show a very different outcome. This is not about polls, Tim. This is about
people. And we need to focus on that.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, last two times the Democrats have been successful with
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, they were governors. Do you believe that the
Democratic primary electorate has a disposition to nominate governors because
they think they’re more electable?
SEN. KERRY: No, I don’t, Tim. Not at all. And, in fact, if you look back in
history—and I’ve reminded people of this—we’ve had great presidents who’ve come
out of the Senate: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson. Al Gore was a great vice
president, out of the Senate. I mean, the fact is that what people are looking
for is leadership, real leadership, leadership that can stand up and make
America safer in a very dangerous world. This is not a time for governors who
have no experience whatsoever in foreign policy and national security and
military affairs. And if you need any proof of that, just look at what George
Bush has done. This is not a time to hire advisers. This is a time to hire a
president, a president who has experience and an understanding of how you really
make our nation safer. So we need a president who knows how to negotiate with
North Korea directly, who knows that we should be buying up the loose nuclear
materials in Russia and making the world safer from potential nuclear dirty
bombs. We need a president who knows how to make peace in the Middle East, deal
with AIDS globally, go back to the table on global warming. We can’t be safe at
home, Tim, unless we’re safe abroad. We also can’t be safe abroad unless we’re
doing better at home, and I have a 35-year record of fighting in both of those
arenas. I think I’m the strongest candidate to run against George Bush.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, as you sit there in Iowa, back in 1984 you entered the
Senate with someone from Iowa named Tom Harkin. He has served with you for 17
years. And yet on Friday he said: “I believe Howard Dean would be the best
Democrat to face George Bush.” What do you say to the people of Iowa when their
senator, who has worked with you for 17 years, chose to support Howard Dean?
SEN. KERRY: Well, I understand he sent an e-mail out to Gephardt’s supporters
that said that he thought Gephardt would make the best president, but that he
thought Howard Dean was going to win. You have to ask Tom Harkin about his own
decision. On the same day I had Tom Miller—he is the attorney general of Iowa.
He is the largest vote-getter in the state. He’s been attorney general since
1978, a man of great respect. And he toured the state of Iowa with me, endorsing
me. I have now won the endorsement of three newspapers here in Iowa: the
Burlington paper, the Iowa City paper, the Davenport quad cities paper, the Quad-City
Times. I’m moving out here in Iowa, Tim. This isn’t about endorsements in the
end. The people of Iowa are remarkably independent-minded. Teresa and I have
been so stunned by the welcome that you receive when you go to farms, you go to
Elks Lodges or VFW posts or restaurants. And crowds of people come in, some of
them with notebooks, and they sit there and they compare and they listen to your
points. They come back again and listen again and ask questions. This is the
best working of democracy that I’ve ever seen. And I believe that next Monday,
you and others are going to see a tremendous surprise out here in Iowa. You’re
going to see democracy working at its best. And the people of Iowa are going to
act outside of all the polls, outside of all the pundits, outside of all the
endorsements. They’re going to make their decision about who they believe can
lead America and, frankly, elect not just a president of the United States, but
a leader of the free world at a very dangerous time in America’s history.
MR. RUSSERT: When you were asked last week what happened to your campaign, you
said a war happened. And if you look at the Los Angeles Times survey out this
morning, voters in Iowa, the people you’re talking about, were asked, would they
prefer a candidate who favored the war in Iraq—only 26 percent said yes—or a
candidate who opposed the war in Iraq? Sixty-two percent, nearly two-thirds of
Iowa Democrats, said they prefer a candidate who opposed the war. As you well
know, last October you voted for a resolution authorizing President Bush to go
to war in Iraq. How much has that vote damaged your standing amongst Iowa
Democrats?
SEN. KERRY: Well, I think Iowa Democrats are listening very carefully, Tim,
and they understand that my vote and the vote of Tom Harkin, for instance, and
the vote of Hillary Clinton and the vote of Joe Biden, was not a vote
specifically to go to war; it was a vote to do what President Bush said he would
do, which is hold Saddam Hussein accountable by going to the U.N., working to
build a legitimate global coalition, working to have an inspection process that
was legitimate and that we were patient about, and finally, the president said
he would go to war as a matter of last resort. The president broke every single
one of those promises. He broke them to us as senators. He broke them to the
Congress. Most importantly, he broke them to the American people. Now, I’ve
fought in a war, Tim. You know that and other Americans know that. I know the
responsibility of a commander in chief to send people off to war. And there is
no way that I would ever have taken America to war the way George Bush did. He
owed us a legitimate last resort. And he didn’t. The only way to get the
inspectors into Iraq—everybody knows this—was to have that legitimacy of force.
We spoke with one voice out of Congress because we needed to for the security of
our country. And it was the right thing to do. There was a right way to do this.
There was a wrong way to do this. George Bush did it the wrong way. And I have
said again and again, I have consistently said,
that I believe that he’s run the most arrogant, inept, reckless and
ideological foreign policy in modern history. And I also remind you, Tim, that
Wes Clark and Howard Dean both supported giving the authority to the president
of the United States, both said he ought to be disarmed, both said he was a
threat, and subsequently switched. So everybody exercised that authority at
that time, and I think a lot of people aren’t aware of that.
MR. RUSSERT: Joe Lieberman, your Democratic colleague, said it this way,
Senator: “I thought that John Kerry’s statement in his announcement address,
that he voted for the resolution just to threaten Saddam Hussein, was
unbelievable. It was clearly an authorization for President Bush to use force
against Saddam. We don’t need a waffler in charge of our country’s future.”
SEN. KERRY: It was an authorization, if the president held accountable what he
said. Absolutely, Tim. No question about it. Absolutely. I believed we needed
to have Saddam Hussein held accountable. But you needed to do it right. And
doing it right meant going through the United Nations properly, exhausting the
remedies of the inspections. It meant taking the time to build a legitimate
coalition, not a fraudulent one. And it meant going to war as a last resort.
Now, under those circumstances, and those are the circumstances the president
promised, yes, of course we would. But the fact is, the president broke that.
Now, look, people have known me for a lifetime, Tim. Here’s the deal. I’ve
stood up and fought against Richard Nixon’s war in Vietnam. I stood up and
fought against Ronald Reagan’s illegal war in Central America. I led the fight
to try to hold Noriega, the general and the dictator in Panama, accountable
for drugs and CIA connections. I blew the whistle on Oliver North and his
illegal aid network. I’ve stood up with John McCain and led the fight to make
peace in Vietnam. I’ve had a lifetime record of fighting for reasonable
approaches in foreign policy. And if anybody out there believes John Kerry
would have led us to war the way George Bush did, they shouldn’t vote for me.
But if people know my record and know exactly how I’ve talked and thought
about foreign policy seriously, and how we protect the United States, I hope
they will respect a lifetime of fighting to make America safer and stronger in
a reasonable way. We needed to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. We needed to
get the world involved. I tried to do that in 1998 with Bill Clinton. This was
entirely consistent...
MR. RUSSERT: Well, what...
SEN. KERRY: ...but there was a right way to do it.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you say hold Saddam Hussein accountable. This is what
you told Rolling Stone magazine on December 2. “If I were president, we would
not be in Iraq today...” So if you were president...
SEN. KERRY: What I told them was we wouldn’t have—Tim, what I said...
MR. RUSSERT: No, if—but you said—let me finish, Senator. “If I were president,
we would not be in Iraq today...”
SEN. KERRY: What I...
MR. RUSSERT: What that would mean is Saddam Hussein would still be in power if
you were president.
SEN. KERRY: What I was talking about, Tim, was how you go to war. We would be
in Iraq if it—if we had exhausted the remedies of the inspections and Saddam
Hussein had not complied. We would have used the legitimate threat of force.
But if, in fact, he had complied, if he had done—look, Colin Powell said, and
the president said, there’s only one reason to go to war, originally, when
that was voted on, and that was weapons of mass destruction. And if you go
back and read my speech on the floor of the Senate, and I ask you to do it, I
said clearly, “I am voting to hold him accountable for the weapons of mass
destruction.” And no other reason to go to war. I did not buy into preemption.
I never bought into the notion that you should just remove him for the sake of
removing him the way Joe Lieberman and others did. I thought that was wrong.
When Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman went down to the White House and cut
their own deal with the president, many of us in the Senate were flabbergasted
because we felt that the resolution we were working on was a stronger one. I
did what was right to protect the security of our country. I believe the
president of the United States made an end-run around the Congress, an end-run
around the American people, and I’m going to hold him accountable for doing
that.
MR. RUSSERT: You have said that President Bush’s foreign policy has made
America less safe. “He’s creating more terrorists.” Where specifically has
George Bush created more terrorists?
SEN. KERRY: In Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: In Iraq? So there are more...
SEN. KERRY: Absolutely.
MR. RUSSERT: ...terrorists in Iraq now than there was when Saddam Hussein was
there?
SEN. KERRY: You bet there are, Tim. Every intelligence estimate will tell you
that.
FREE VIDEO
• Kerry criticizes Dean
Jan. 11: Sen. John Kerry criticizes Democratic front-runner Howard Dean's
level of experience on 'Meet the Press.'
Meet the Press MR. RUSSERT: You said this about Howard Dean, and this is, I think, at the
core of your candidacy against Howard Dean. “...those who believe we are not
safer with [Saddam Hussein’s] capture don’t have the judgment to be President
- or the credibility to be elected President.” As we speak this Sunday morning,
Senator, do you believe that Howard Dean does not have the judgment to be
president or the credibility to be elected president?
SEN. KERRY: I think the judgment of a nominee who doesn’t understand that
having Saddam Hussein captured will make it extraordinarily difficult to be
able to beat an incumbent wartime president who captured Saddam Hussein. And
let me tell you why, Tim. Saddam Hussein took us to war once before. In that
war, young Americans were killed. He went to war in order to take over the oil
fields. It wasn’t just an invasion of Kuwait. He was heading for the oil
fields of Saudi Arabia. And that would have had a profound effect on the
security of the United States. This is a man who has used weapons of mass
destruction, unlike other people on this Earth today, not only against other
people but against his own people. This is a man who tried to assassinate a
former president of the United States, a man who lobbed 36 missiles into
Israel in order to destabilize the Middle East, a man who is so capable of
miscalculation that he even brought this war on himself. This is a man who, if
he was left uncaptured, would have continued to be able to organize the Ba’athists.
He would have continued to terrorize the people, just in their minds, because
of 30 years of terror in Iraq.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator...
SEN. KERRY: There isn’t a soldier there, Tim, who doesn’t understand that the
capture of Saddam Hussein helps to reduce the capacity for the insurrection,
for the insurgency, and helps move forward. We are safer with the capture of a
man who wanted to build weapons of mass destruction and who, actually, had
them and used them at one point in time.
MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, you can just hear the Republicans saying, “John
Kerry said if he was president, we would not be in Iraq, and that there are
now more terrorists in Iraq, despite the capture of Saddam Hussein. Therefore,
John Kerry does not have the judgment or the credibility to be elected
president.” You can hear the Republican commercials.
SEN. KERRY: Tim, this debate—no, because if you look at what I said, in the
fullness of that interview, Tim, as well as in every other interview that I’ve
ever had, I have said we have to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, but I’ve
also said we have to do it in a way that is smart and legitimate. In my speech
on the floor of the Senate I made it clear, you are strongest when you act
with other nations. All presidents, historically, his father, George Herbert
Walker Bush, did a brilliant job of building a legitimate coalition and even
got other people to help pay for the war. The American people have been left
stranded, almost alone, occupying a Middle Eastern nation in a way that we
didn’t have to. What I would have done is exhausted the remedies—and I wrote
this in The New York Times- I have been consistent and clear, yes, you have to
hold Saddam Hussein accountable. Yes, you have to be prepared to go to war,
and I’m prepared to go to war if you have to. But a last resort, Tim, means
last resort. And one of the lessons I learned in Vietnam is, you better be
able to look, as commander in chief, in the eyes of families who lose their
son or daughter and say to them, “I tried to do everything in my power to
prevent the loss of your son and daughter.” I don’t think the president passes
that test in Iraq. Whether Saddam Hussein is gone or not, we went to war in a
rush, we went to war without a plan for winning the peace. This has been a
disorganized, haphazard effort. They failed in Afghanistan, to capture Saddam
Hussein in Tora-Bora. That was a miserable operation because they refused to
put the American military into the operation. I think they are accountable for
a foreign policy that had overextended the armed forces of the United States,
turned our Reserves and Guard into active duty, and they are even abandoning
the veterans who come home by cutting the VA budget by $1.8 billion. We can do
a better job of making America more secure.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you have said that, as I mentioned, Howard Dean does not
have the judgment or credibility to be president, that he would be
“eviscerated” by President Bush. Do you believe if the Democratic party
nominates Howard Dean, it would be the equivalent of a suicide mission in the
general election?
SEN. KERRY: That’s for the voters to decide. I have said that I think it is
going to be very difficult for a person in a post-September 11 world, who has
no foreign policy experience, no national security experience, no military
experience, very difficult to stand up against a wartime president and
convince America that that person has the ability to make our country safe.
And, Tim, you can hear the advertisements now; so can I. We saw what they did
to challenge the patriotism of Max Cleland, a triple amputee, a man who left
three of his limbs on the ground in Vietnam. They challenged his patriotism.
His regret is he didn’t stand up and fight back. I’m going to fight back, and
I’m going to fight back with Max Cleland at my side and with a lot of other
veterans who understand that this war is a war that they rushed into, that
they have put our troops at greater exposure of risk than we had to. We could
have had other nations in the ground with us. We should have had other nations
on the ground with us. We should have had a legitimate plan to secure the
nation more effectively, and as long as it’s an American occupation, America
remains at greater risk. And we’re also paying more money out of the pocket of
taxpayers than we need to be paying.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you can hear Howard Dean watching, saying, “Hold on,
John Kerry. You voted to authorize the president to go to war. I’m the only
Democrat who opposed this war from day one.” Senator, why do you think...
SEN. KERRY: And you know what I’ll say? Yeah.
MR. RUSSERT: ...that Howard Dean is doing so well with Democratic voters?
SEN. KERRY: Tim, you know what I’ll say right back to Howard Dean if he said
that? And I’d love to have a face-to-face debate with him. Let’s have you and
me and Howard Dean together. Howard Dean, on the 6th of October, five days
before we voted on this resolution about authorizing, he stood up and he
supported the Biden-Lugar resolution that gave authority to the president to
go to war. All the president had to do was write a little letter and say, “I
tried to do the diplomacy but it didn’t work.” Howard Dean exercised the same
judgment as the rest of us that he ought to have authority. He just put it
under a different resolution and then he could run around later on and say,
“Oh, I’m against the war,” because he didn’t have a recorded vote.
MR. RUSSERT: But why is he doing so well...
SEN. KERRY: He also stood up—just a minute, Tim.
MR. RUSSERT: ...with the Democratic voters?
SEN. KERRY: Tim, I don’t think they’re aware of that judgment. I don’t think
they’re aware. I think that what’s happened is there’s been—you know, when you
don’t vote, you’re not accountable. The fact is that I think people are
listening now. I know they’re listening now. And people are beginning to make
up their minds about who can be the nominee. Look, you know, Governor Dean has
said that he thinks we have to prepare for the time when America is not the
strongest military. I don’t. Howard Dean has said that Hamas’ soldiers—no one
has ever called Hamas soldiers before. Howard Dean has said we don’t take
sides in the Middle East. We took sides in 1948. Israel’s our ally. We always
knew that. We can’t have a president who is conducting American foreign policy
by press release clarification, and we’re certainly not going to beat George
Bush that way. I think we need somebody who has 35 years of experience, who
has been consistent from day one. I said we have to hold Saddam Hussein
accountable, but from day one, Tim, I said there’s a way to do it. And this
president kept going away from the way to do it that was correct. So I believe
that I can be trusted to do what’s necessary to make the United States secure,
and that’s what the American people want.
MR. RUSSERT: For the record, a year ago in May, we asked you to debate
Governor Dean on health care here on MEET THE PRESS when you were the front-runner
and you chose not to. Ironically, he will not debate you now because he’s the
front-runner which is the way of politics. But let me ask you about George
Bush and show you the way The Washington Post described the economic record.
“The Dow Jones industrial averaged ended 2003 up 25 percent. The economy grew
at a blistering 8.2 percent annualized rate in July, August and September.
Housing and other construction are at record highs. Interest rates remain low
and ... the manufacturing sector last month expanded at a pace not seen since
1983, when another economic recovery ushered Ronald Reagan toward his
landslide reelection.” Is the only way the Democrats can win in 2004 is by
saying, “We have a bad economy”?
SEN. KERRY: Absolutely not. I hope we have a good economy. I don’t think any
American should ever wish we have a bad economy, but every statistic that you
just read off, Tim, works wonderfully if you’re looking at a Republican
recovery. You know, corporate profits are up 46 percent, but they’re up by
consolidation. They’re up by increases in productivity. They’re not up because
Americans are going back to work, and they’re not up because Americans are
earning more money. Just this last month—yesterday, the president talked about
how his tax cuts have been good for the recovery. Well, the fact is they
projected 250,000 jobs but they only created a thousand. They’re 249,000 jobs
short. And every month, there are about 250,000 people who drop out of even
looking for work. I met a guy named Bob Anderson in Waterloo the other day.
He’s 49 years old. He’s been out of work for two years. He sends out his
resumes. When he goes to have an interview, there are 200 other people there
looking for the same job. His wife has been diagnosed with MS. He has no
health care. He doesn’t know where to turn. There are people like that all
over this country who are desperate. The wages of workers, Tim, went up three
pennies, meanwhile—three pennies an hour, and the overall wages of workers
have gone down $1,500. Meanwhile, Medicare lobbyists have turned a Medicare
bill into a windfall profit for the Medicare companies, $139 billion. The
energy companies got $50 billion of oil and gas subsidies. Everybody in
America understands the economy is tilted against them. The economy—Americans
are working for the economy, Tim, but the economy is not working for all
Americans. And I believe there’s an enormous issue there about the fundamental
fairness of the workplace in America.
MR. RUSSERT: Senator, if you do not win Iowa, if you come in third, and come
in third in New Hampshire, is your race over?
SEN. KERRY: Tim, I’m going to do great. I’m going to surprise you and a lot of
people. I’m fighting for every vote. The one thing people know about me is I’m
tenacious. I’m a fighter. I’ve got great energy out here in Iowa. I am very,
very confident about what we’re doing.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you going to win?
SEN. KERRY: And I think next Tuesday, you and others are going to be
scratching your heads and say, “How did Kerry do it?” And there’s a surprise
story out of Iowa.
MR. RUSSERT: So you’re going to win.
SEN. KERRY: You keep watching. It’s going to be a fun ride.
MR. RUSSERT: Are you going to win Iowa?
SEN. KERRY: I’m going to do the best I can. Tim, I’m doing the best I can to
give you a good surprise and we’re going to keep on working. I’m not making
any projections. I’ll just tell you this: We had 1,000 people were at two
different rallies yesterday. The energy is enormous. I’ve been endorsed by
three newspapers out here. People are coming board—the attorney general.
Tomorrow I’ll be standing up with 27 legislators in the state of Iowa. That’s
more legislators than Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt have put together. They’re
standing with me because they’re the people who do the work every day of
trying to get things done for their own people, and they believe I’d be the
strongest nominee to run with. They believe that I’d be the best president.
And I think we’re beginning to make great progress out here in Iowa.
MR. RUSSERT: We’ll be watching you and the Patriots. Senator...
SEN. KERRY: Oh, I’m glad you’ve admitted you’ll watch the Patriots.
MR. RUSSERT: Thanks very much. We’ll see you out in Iowa. Be safe on the
campaign trail.
