"Face the Nation" transcript, June 3: Axelrod, Priebus and more
(CBS News) Below is a rush transcript of "Face the Nation" on June 3, 2012, hosted by CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. Guests include: Obama Campaign Senior Strategist David Axelrod, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R), Columnist and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, New York Times reporter David Sanger and Newsweek reporter Daniel Klaidman.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, Romney clinches the Republican nomination and turns up the political heat as the economy cools.
MITT ROMNEY: The President's policies and his handling of the economy has been dealt a-- a harsh indictment.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The President's top strategist David Axelrod went to Romney's backyard to say hold it right there.
DAVID AXELROD: After selling him-- himself to Massachusetts as an economic savior, the Massachusetts record was alarmingly weak.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Axelrod is with us this morning as is the chairman of the Republican Party Reince Priebus. It's all about politics and we'll continue the conversation with former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and columnist Bob Shrum and Michael Gerson.
On page two we'll bring in David Sanger and Daniel Klaidman authors of two new books that peel back the secrecy around the administration's war on terror and the Iranian nuclear threat. Plenty to hash out and now that former President Bush's official portrait has been unveiled at the White House--
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You'll now be able to gaze at this portrait and ask, what would George do?
BOB SCHIEFFER: And why not?
This is FACE THE NATION.
ANNOUNCER: From CBS News in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning, again, and welcome to FACE THE NATION. David Axelrod is the senior strategist for the Obama campaign. He joins us at the table. Well, when you tried to talk about your strategy up in Boston; the Republicans organized a rally to try to drown you out. So we'll-- we'll let Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican Party talk in a minute, but we'll give you a chance to say what you have to say first. What about that rally up there?
DAVID AXELROD (Obama Campaign Senior Strategist): Well, look, we went up there to make a point about Governor Romney's economic record. Governor Romney offers himself as a job creator, a kind of economic oracle, and he's saying these same exact things that he said ten years ago when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. And what happened? Massachusetts plunged to forty-seventh in job creation. They lost manufacturing jobs at twice the rate of the country. They grew jobs at one-fifth the rate of the rest of country. It wasn't the record of the job creator. He had the wrong economic philosophy and he failed. And I was disappointed that they chose to send a bunch of campaign staff to try and drown out the speakers. But you can't drown out the-- the record, Bob. The record is very clear.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The New York Times says that the weakening recovery is a serious liability for the President's reelection. Romney, as you just said, said the job numbers out Friday were devastating. Is the President going to have to do something here that he hasn't tried before? Is he going to have to do something to jump start this economy?
DAVID AXELROD: Bob, first of all, obviously the-- the numbers this month were disappointing. The President said when he took office back in 2009 and-- and the country was losing eight hundred thousand jobs a day that it took years to get into this mess and it was going to take long, persistent effort to get us out of it. He took some tough decisions, the auto intervention being a major one, and we've had twenty-seven months of private sector job growth now and 4.2 million jobs created or 4.3, but we have to do more. He's asked the Congress for a series of steps to get construction workers back to work, rebuilding our roads and bridges. To put teachers back in the classroom to help homeowners renegotiate, re-- re-finance their homes under these low interest rates, homeowners who are responsible and their homes are under water. All these things would help the economy. What was striking about what happened on Friday was how quick the leaders of Congress were out there wringing their hands. These are the architects of obstruction, and now they're complaining about the pace of-- of the recovery. They should put down their political hats and join us and help solve these problems.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But aren't you going to have to do more than just attack Congress, I mean?
DAVID AXELROD: It's not a matter of attacking Congress, Bob, and I don't think the American people are looking for us to attack each other. They're looking for us to work together. There are specific steps-- you look at this jobs report, what was interesting about it is, manufacturing up. We've had five hundred thousand manufacturing jobs created over this recovery. The best record in two decades, largely because of what the President did relative to the auto industry which the Congress and Governor Romney opposed. What was down was construction. What was down was education. The very things that the President has been trying to get the Congress to act on were the things that were down. I think the country is going to demand action. What we have learned is they will only act when the country demands action. Otherwise they're going to sit on their hands and instead of high-fiving each other on days when there are bad news they should stop sitting on their hands and work on some of these answers.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you--maybe this is kind of a philosophical question--but it occurs to me that the President got himself elected with a very positive campaign that basically appealed to our better angels.
He talked about hope, he talked about change. But this time he just comes right out of the gate with a very negative ad, an attack on Mitt Romney. Isn't-- I wonder, doesn't he have to talk about what he's accomplished and what he hopes to do--
DAVID AXELROD: You know, Bob--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --before he talks about what the other guy is trying to tear down.
DAVID AXELROD: Well, let me just correct one thing. We've run probably twenty-five, twenty-seven million dollars of advertising in this campaign and virtually all of it has been positive. A lot of attention was given to an ad one particular ad but if you let--
BOB SCHIEFFER: The Bain Capital.
DAVID AXELROD: Bain Capital. But if you-- but if you live in the states where our advertising is running you have seen a steady stream of ads over the last month talking about the things that have happened over the last three and a half years, talking about all the hard work we've done together as-- as a people to move out of the mess that we were in when the President arrived. So-- so I-- I just have to challenge your premise.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So you're saying you're running a positive campaign? I mean, what-- what about this Bain ad--
DAVID AXELROD: You're just talking about advertising--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah, well I mean, you know--
DAVID AXELROD: Yes, I think we are--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Bill Clinton of all people said the President that-- said Mitt Romney had a sterling record as a businessman.
DAVID AXELROD: I saw-- I saw that interview, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What about that?
DAVID AXELROD: Well, look, what he said was he had a-- his business record and the fact that he was a governor qualify him to be president. He went on to say that his economic views would be disastrous for the country and I agree with him on that. No one's arguing whether Mitt Romney is qualified to be President. What we're arguing is whether he's qualified to call himself a job creator. That's not what he did in his business, that's not the purpose of his business. And it's certainly not what he did in Massachusetts where they had one of the worst economic records in the country. So when you hold yourself out as an economical oracle and say to people, trust me, I know how to move the country forward, and your record says something else, of course, you're going to be challenged for that.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this: I do notice that this weekend and most of this week the President did not talk about Bain Capital. Does that say that-- should we take from that, that maybe some of this criticism that people in your own party have been making on that attack that perhaps it's not working and you're going to dial back a little on that?
DAVID AXELROD: No. Let-- let-- first of all it is part of a piece which is, is Mitt Romney's background, are his ideas the ones that can move our economy forward? And, you know, the-- the particular-- some of the instances we raised, take the one about the steel company in-- in Kansas City, they-- they-- Mitt Romney and his group bought that company, they put eight million of their own dollars in a-- for a seventy-five-million-dollar company, immediately borrowed a hundred and twenty-five million dollars and the next year took thirty-six million back out of that money for dividend. The-- the company ultimately went bankrupt, workers lost their benefits, creditors lost out, and they walked away with millions of dollars. That may be a successful business strategy for them and it made money for them and their investors. But that's not an economic strategy that's going to rebuild the middle class in this country, that's going to grow our economy in the long run and that's the point we're making.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me change the subject just a little bit. You were mentioned in two new books about foreign policy. In fact the authors of both those books are coming up later in this show.
DAVID AXELROD: Mm-Hm.
BOB SCHIEFFER: In one account, it says that you were present at a national security meeting when the President was making decisions on which terrorist we were going to track down--
DAVID AXELROD: That's not true.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --and kill.
DAVID AXELROD: That's not true.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And it's you-- you're just simply saying it isn't true.
DAVID AXELROD: I'm flat-out asserting that that is not true. There were meetings-- I know there were weekly meetings dealing with terrorist threats and planning around it but I did not attend those meeting.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So because the chairman of this-- of the House Intelligence Committee, who is a Republican, I know is concerned that you were there.
DAVID AXELROD: Well, let me allay--
BOB SCHIEFFER: And you're just saying flat out--
DAVID AXELROD: Let-- let me-- let me allay his--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --you weren't there.
DAVID AXELROD: --concerns, Bob--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay.
DAVID AXELROD: --because that's not true.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. One other thing it's in one of these books and that is that you and the-- the attorney general had a chest-to-chest shouting match because he thought you were interfering in things that his department was doing, and that Valerie Jarrett of all people came up and said you need to take this out of the hole here. What about that?
DAVID AXELROD: Well, first of all, let me say, Eric-- Eric Holder is great friend of mine. We actually went to the same high school. So we may have gone chest to chest back in the day. But we-- you know, we have a strong relationship and I'm not going to get into the details of that other than to say I respect him. I obviously never tried to interfere in anything that he did, never talked to him about a governmental matter or a Justice Department matter in all the years I was in the White House.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right, David Axelrod, thank you for coming. And for--
DAVID AXELROD: Thank you for having me.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --answering the questions.
DAVID AXELROD: Okay.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Joining me now is Reince Priebus. He is the chairman of the Republican Party. He is in Milwaukee this morning, and, Mister Chairman, welcome to you. We want to get your reaction to some of the things that David Axelrod said.
But, first, you are out there to campaign for Republican governor Scott Walker, who faces a recall election this week. I just wanted to get your sense of how you think it's going.
REINCE PRIEBUS (Republican National Committee Chairman): Well, I think it's going pretty well, Bob. But, you know, here in Wisconsin, we know as Republicans, we've got to keep our foot on the pedal, see this thing through the end. And, you know the-- the difference between Scott Walker and the President is pretty stark. You know, you-- you mentioned it earlier, but Scott Walker is talking about his record. He's talking about the fact that his reforms are working, that people are getting back to work, that businesses are coming in. You know, people's property taxes have gone down. And, you know, you can't keep operating a government that spends more money than it takes in. So Scott Walker is one of these special people that have made promises and kept promises. You contrast that to David Axelrod's boss, he's a-- he's a president who is in love with the sound of his own voice but hasn't been able to follow through on too many promises. And so that's really David's problem and the President's problem. But fortunately for Scott Walker, he's got a record of keeping a promise and that's special here. People appreciate folks that are strong and make promises and keep them.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you say a President who is in love with his own voice, but I mean, that leads me to what you all were doing last week, and that is organizing a rally to try to drown out David Axelrod when he goes up to Boston at the same time that out on the West Coast, Governor Romney was loading up reporters in a bus and taking them on a secret mission to the Solyndra Plant because he said he couldn't reveal where they were going, but he was fearful that Democrats would try to-- to try break that up. Isn't that kind of silly and petty when you look at it? This campaign should be, it seems to me, about very serious things and serious issues.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I think Solyndra is a serious thing. And I think highlighting Solyndra, highlighting this President's foray into venture capitalism, using taxpayer money to send to Solyndra of which the Solyndra executives were donors to Barack Obama. I mean, this is political cronyism in its worst form. Now as far as David Axelrod and-- and going to Boston I mean that's the height of a political stunt. I mean, what-- what's the purpose of the Chicago clan going to Boston to hold some sort of political stunt. And-- and for-- for these tough guys from Boston now-- I mean, excuse me, these tough guys from Chicago to, you know, to-- to cry about it, I just find it laughable.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So should we expect more of that?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well, I mean, this is politics and I think that, you know, rallies and protests and-- and people getting out there and voicing their First Amendment rights is something that's pretty normal. And I-- I-- I just find it-- I think it's amusing. I-- I think that for-- for David Axelrod, more importantly, to be somehow holding a public event over Mitt Romney's job record in Massachusetts when if this President had Mitt Romney's job record they'd be holding a carnival celebrating their successes. But they failed so badly that they want us to believe that we're not living on earth and that the President isn't the President and all of these things that are going wrong have nothing to do with Barack Obama.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What about Governor Romney's plan to get people back to work? Will we ever hear him say anything beyond we've just got to make it more comfortable for business and-- and-- and getting rid of Barack Obama? Is he going to ever present--
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --anything really specific on how to get people back to work?
REINCE PRIEBUS: Well-- well, Bob, I-- I-- I guess we-- we-- we-- you're-- you're very good, but I just push back on this. If you look-- if you go to mittromney.com, I think you would be stunned if you go to the issues page there and look at the details and the plan that Mitt Romney has out there. He's been very specific. He's been specific about Keystone Pipeline. He's been specific about income tax cuts for everyone across the board by twenty percent. He's been specific about lowering the small business tax rate from thirty-five percent to twenty-five percent. He's been specific about what-- what offshore, onshore drilling and all of the above energy policies he would pursue. He's been spe-- specific about getting rid of Obamacare, and replacing it with something better, more market-driven. I-- I would just challenge you and anybody to go to mittromney.com, look at these policies. He's been very specific. You contrast that to the President, I mean, he's the one that made promise about-- promises about cutting the deficit in half. He made promises about the debt. He made promises about jobs after spending a trillion dollars. We are living in the Obama economy that was set up by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. I mean, Barack Obama--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well--
REINCE PRIEBUS: --is going out to rallies, Bob, and saying--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.
REINCE PRIEBUS: --"are you satisfied?" as if he's not the President. No, we're not satisfied. And you're the President, and you have an inability to lead this country.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But-- but, Mister Priebus, you're not saying that the economy was in great shape when-- when President Obama took-- took the oath. It seems to me there might have been a couple of little problems before that.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Listen, I-- I-- I-- I'm not disagreeing with you that there were challenges but what I am telling you is that he made everything worse, number one. But number two, and more importantly, he made promises to the American people. He made a promise on the debt, the deficit, jobs, lobbyist, green energy, gasoline, I mean, you name it. He made-- he was the promise king.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.
REINCE PRIEBUS: And he hasn't followed through on any of it, he went the opposite direction. You know what, people are looking for real authentic people in this country to keep their word, and this President can't do it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, thank you very much, Mister Priebus.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Hope to have you again.
REINCE PRIEBUS: Thank you, Sir.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And we'll be back in one minute with our political panel.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And we're back to continue our conversation on politics in this campaign. Governor Ed Rendell, he was our guest many times when he was governor of Pennsylvania. He has a new book out called A Nation of Wusses. Also here with us, longtime Democratic consultant, senior strategist for John Kerry, Bob Shrum and Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush; and down in Texas this morning Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. She's coming out of Dallas today.
Well, Governor Rendell, I want to start with you, because you do have this book. I have to ask you about the title. Who are the Wusses?
ED RENDELL (A Nation of Wusses/Former Pennsylvania Governor): Well, pretty much all of the folks that are in power today. Democrats are afraid to confront our base, for example, to tell seniors that we have to do something with entitlements because that's where the money is and we can do it without really crushing benefits. Republicans are afraid of Grover Norquist. They're afraid to raise revenue, even though everyone knows we can't do it by cuts alone. We have got to have revenue and cuts. And unless we get leaders who are willing to take a little risk, to do what's right, we're going to hell in a hand basket.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, that takes me right to Senator Hutchison. And something Senator I want to ask you about. You're-- you're retiring of course, and there's a very hot race, a Republican primary now to decide who is going to get the Republican nomination running for your seat. David Dewhurst is the lieutenant governor. I guess I would call him--if there is such a thing as an establishment candidate--I would call him the establishment candidate. He is in a runoff now with a Tea Party candidate, Ted Cruz. But I want to show you a clip of an ad-- part of an ad that was run by that conservative group that the governor talks about the Club for Growth. Listen to this:
MAN (Political Ad): The Dallas Morning News says Dewhurst has served as a moderate Republican.
WOMAN (Political Ad): The Houston Chronicle says Dewhurst is generally considered a moderate.
BOB SCHIEFFER: My heavens, horror of horrors, a moderate. Senator, has moderate become a dirty word?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-Texas): You know I think it has. People have called me a moderate. I've always been a conservative, David Dewhurst is certainly a conservative, and he and the governor have done all of the work in the legislature in a conservative way, and the governor is very conservative in supporting David Dewhurst as well. So, you know, I think you can differ on issues of course, but making moderate seem like you're liberal when you're really conservative I think is kind of a misstatement.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But I mean does that kind of bother you that-- that we're now talking about moderation as being something we ought to shy away from, maybe?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: Well, I think that conservative is not a dirty word and I think that moderate is a different type of approach to things. I don't think it's bad. It's just labeling people wrongly, I think is it what's bad.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, Mister Gerson, you wrote speeches for George Bush. You write a column now that obviously, you-- you write from the right. What about this thing? That somehow moderation is something that people don't want to be known as.
MICHAEL GERSON (Washington Post): I don't think it's a problem. I mean you have to-- for a national presidential election, you have to run towards the center. There's no question that Mitt Romney will have to do that and to govern in Washington you're going to have to make agreements on entitlements and other things that requires both parties. So using that as an epithet is-- is actually undermines our political system and-- and making it work. So I think that that's definitely true. Now with the Tea Party they're pushing some candidates that are just bad candidates--Sharron Angle last time and O'Donnell. There are some good ones, too, you know, Marco Rubio who is a-- who is a real star and others. And so it's a mixed bag when it comes to the Tea Party and their influence in the Senate elections.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What do you think this means, Bob?
BOB SHRUM (2004 Kerry Campaign Chief Strategist): Oh, I think the Republican Party has moved very far to the right. I think there is not a lot of room for folks who would make a compromise in terms of what Ed was talking about at the opening of this segment. The President actually was willing I think to make a grand bargain last summer. John Boehner has several different explanations as you've heard on this show about why he wouldn't do it. But I think fundamentally he went back to his caucus and said I'm thinking of doing something like this and they basically let him know that the House speaker might suddenly be named Eric Cantor, if he kept going out-- going down this road. So when the President said let's change this deal a little he used that as a pretext to walk away. So I think we have a very polarized country, very different from the Senate that I worked ten years ago, when you'd see people like Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch who probably doesn't want me to remind the voters of Utah this, working together to ensure children's health all over this country. You know Kay Bailey Hutchison has worked with John Kerry on infrastructure, I mean, this is a tradition that is dying, and it is dying to the detriment of the country.
ED RENDELL: And, Bob, that's a perfect example. I mean I think-- think labels don't matter--conservative or moderate. Kay Bailey Hutchison is a conservative, but she understands that we've got to rebuild our infrastructure or we're going to fall apart and fall behind economically. So she's willing to invest in repairing that infrastructure. I don't care whether her label is conservative or moderate, it's the right thing. It-- it's smart policy.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How do you think the President is doing right now? There's some criticism that, you know, last time it was hope and change? This time he's just negative right out of the box.
ED RENDELL: Well, I think the President, frankly, I think they don't run as much on their record as they should. I think considering the hand that he was dealt, where he has taken the country, the auto bailout successful, the financial bailout successful, his programs for children's health care. He's done a lot of good and I think they're a little shy about talking about it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. We're going to have to take a break here. We're going to hear more from our panel on page two, but I'll be back in a minute with some of my own thoughts on all of this.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: You have to drill deep into modern American politics to find something to feel good about these days, but the sharp-eyed Ashley Parker of the New York Times actually found something--deep down there among the sleazy ads, the obscene amounts of money, and the ridiculous mind-numbing talking points. And what was it? Well, she reports that for all of this criticism of Barack Obama's policy, some of Mitt Romney's supporters are upset that he continues to say the President is a nice guy, but, she reports Romney's people have decided that won't change. Tom Rath, one of Romney's key advisers says that Romney will continue to argue the President is not a bad guy, just the wrong guy to fix the bad economy, which is much the same strategy the Obama team is settled on. They may compare Romney's old company Bain Capital to a blood-sucking bat but the President describes Romney as a patriotic American who has much to be proud of. Maybe it's all just political posturing. Maybe both sides just decided this was the best strategy to get votes, but if you will excuse me for being a hopeless romantic, it could be because both of these men have looked at the sorry, crude state of what passes for political discourse these days, and have decided it disgusts them as much as it repulses the rest of us. As I said, I am a hopeless romantic.
Back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now. For most of you we'll be right back with more of our political panel. Plus, the authors of two new books that go behind the scenes of President Obama's foreign policy.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And we're back now with our political panel, Ed Rendell, former governor of Pennsylvania; plus, The Week's Bob Shrum; and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and down in Texas Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Michael, do you think it is possible any more to be elected on a positive campaign or does it have to be negative, like we see this one already is?
MICHAEL GERSON: Well, I think we had a pretty positive campaign from Ba-- Barack Obama four years ago.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.
MICHAEL GERSON: He got an edge. He can be very tough, which every politician needs to be at certain points. But right now, I think President Obama can't talk about his economic performance, his economic plans are quite limited. So he's going to trash Romney. He's going to blame the Congress and-- and President Bush. And he's going to engage in-- his campaign is engaging in a lot of culture war arguments, on-- on war on women.
This is really a complete inversion of the President we saw four years ago. His campaign aides in a recent article in New York Magazine are claiming credit for this approach, this negative approach, which I think is really sabotaging the President to have your own aides on background talking about this, even if you need to do it.
The-- the best attribute that President Obama brought to the last election was aspiration. When you remove that aspect from the President's appeal, there's not much left.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Hutchison, what advice would you give to the Romney campaign? Let's talk about the Romney campaign a little bit. What do you think he needs to do? What is he not doing as well as he should be doing right now?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: Well, I think Romney's job is to show that President Obama has not done the job, that he's been divisive, he has not worked with Congress. He had a message yesterday, oh, Congress, get back to work. Well, we're at work every day, and we don't see the President's people coming over with constructive suggestions, and I think Mister Obama, Governor Obama-- Governor Romney needs to show that there is a better way, that we can get the Keystone Pipeline going and create jobs immediately without one taxpayer dollar being spent, that we can control our budget with responsible cuts, and looking at entitlements he should be joining with Congress right now-- President Obama should-- to say, we can fix Social Security right now with relatively modest changes, with no cuts in benefits, and save it for seventy-five years, and yet--
BOB SCHIEFFER: But--
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --we just see divisiveness from the President, and I think that that's what, honestly, Mitt Romney is trying to show that there's a better way.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But doesn't he have to do something himself? I mean, doesn't he-- obviously, you always when you're running against an incumbent, you try to make it a referendum on the incumbent but doesn't he have to go a little beyond that and say, hey, folks, here's what I stand for?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: He does, he does. He has an ad that says here are the first three things I am going to do when I am President. One is repeal Obamacare that as people are finding out what is going to happen are already saying, oh, my gosh, this isn't what we need to give access to health care to more people in our country--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me--
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --because so many people are going to lose their health care that they have and that they know. And Keystone Pipeline, he said day one, we're going to open it up with our friend Canada and create jobs in America. So--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me--
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --I think he is being specific.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. Let me go to Governor Rendell. You heard what Michael Gerson just said about the President's own aides are sabotaging him, do you-- do you agree?
ED RENDELL (A Nation of Wusses): Well, anybody who puts so much emphasis on the negative-- look, do you have to point out your opponents-- if your opponent says, I did this and he didn't you have to point that out. But the thrust of a campaign has to be positive. I think the President has a lot to be proud about. I think under the circumstances he's done a terrific job. That's where they should be going. To that extent I agree with Michael.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Bob.
BOB SHRUM: Well, I-- I'm the one person here who disagrees very strongly with all of this. First of all, I think Michael's analysis is a historical. In 2008 Barack Obama was out there with a message of hope and change. He ran a huge number of ads, tough ads against John McCain, as many negative ads as John McCain ran. Secondly, Bill Clinton has made this point, the same point the Governor's making, and I went back and looked and in 1996, most of Clinton's advertising was negative against Bob Dole tarring him with Newt Gingrich. In fact, it got to the point where you thought Dole's last name was Gingrich because it was all, Dole-Gingrich did this. Dole-Gingrich did that. And it's a historical in a second sense. Franklin Roosevelt ran in 1936 for reelection. He ran against the economic royalists. There is nothing wrong with the President holding Mitt Romney to account for his record in private business and his record as a public official. Harry Truman did the same thing. Ronald Reagan in 1980, one of the most optimistic politicians in America, ran a pretty tough advertising campaign against Jimmy Carter.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So--
BOB SHRUM: So I-- I think we ought to just face reality here. If-- if you did what I think the governor is suggesting and maybe he's not, and you just let this be a referendum. I don't think the President could win because the truth of the matter is, he may have created over 4.3 million jobs, he may have saved General Motors, but the country is still not back to where it needs to be. So this needs to be a choice election. People have to have that choice and if they have the choice, I think the-- the President's going to be fine. Look, take Bain Capital. Everybody got all excited about Bain Capital. And I know some Democrats in the party are pretty close to the financial industry. Two kinds of private equity, some buy up companies and build them up, others buy up marginal companies, load them up with debt, take out giant fees. The companies go down, the employees lose their jobs. Ampad bought by Bain Capital. Put-- Bain put in one dollar for every twenty dollars it took out. The company went down and Romney and his partners made a hundred million dollars, I did the Kennedy campaign in Massachusetts in 1994 against Mitt Romney that is a very powerful argument.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me say something, I think there are a lot of Republicans that are out there saying, did you hear that Bob Shrum just said that if this is a referendum on Barack Obama, he would lose?
BOB SHRUM: Well, I think that-- look I'm being honest. If this is simply a referendum on the condition of the economy and the country, people aren't happy yet. The President has said that. We got a lot more to do. So they have to be given a choice. The Romney campaign's made it very clear that they want this to be a referendum. Did you hear the other day--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, sure.
BOB SHRUM: --he-- he was-- yeah, of course, for the same reason I just said. Did you hear the other day he asked about Bain? After eighteen years, he's had to deal with this for eighteen years, he doesn't have an answer, he looks embarrassed, he puts his head down and then he immediately goes off and tries to talk about what's wrong with-- with-- with the President.
MICHAEL GERSON: Well, the first attempt to use the Bain ad in this-- in this campaign was pretty much a flop and it was a flop because President--
BOB SHRUM: Why are you saying it was a flop?
MICHAEL GERSON: Because President Bill Clinton came on and undermined it--
BOB SHRUM: Yeah, but--
MICHAEL GERSON: --the talking about the-- about Mitt Romney's sterling record.
BOB SHRUM: But President Clinton is wrong.
MICHAEL GERSON: I mean--
BOB SHRUM: I mean look, it's not the first time-- I mean he gave some advice to Hillary Clinton and got very involved in the South Carolina primary in 2008, didn't do her much good. Where-- where this ad matters--
MICHAEL GERSON: But this is your last chance--
BOB SHRUM: Where this ad matters is not in the Acela Corridor. This ad matters in Ohio and Michigan and it's going to resonate and it's going to have a huge amount of power.
ED RENDELL: Well, Bob, I want to say one thing. I-- I think in the end, voters are going to decide not about a referendum on what Obama's done or about Mitt Romney's past, they're going to decide on who has the best prescription to get us out of this going forward. And that's why I think so much of the campaign-- I think President Obama has a much better plan, infrastructure revitalization, things like that that really will put people back to work than Governor Romney does.
So I'd like them to focus on the future. Okay, Governor, what's your plan? You're against-- you want to repeal Obamacare? What are you going to do for forty million Americans who don't have health care? That's the key. What are you going to do to get us out of that? That's what I think people are going to focus on. If we can make that the issue, I think we can win.
BOB SHRUM: That-- I agree with that on.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Hutchison, where do you think this race is right now?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: Well, Bob, first of all, I just have to say it is laughable that the Democrats would say, oh, we shouldn't be looking at Obama's record. Are you kidding? Of course, that's how you run elections. And historically, we've had negative campaigns. We don't argue about that. But is it right to distort a record of a private company like Bain Capital that--
BOB SHRUM: What's the distortion, Senator?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --did increase jobs.
BOB SHRUM: What's the distortion?
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: The distortion is that the steel industry was going under all over the country because of low cost competition globally. That-- and that ad that you ran that said that the Bain Capital took it over and then the jobs were gone, they kept it open for seven years trying to keep those jobs going and they couldn't compete like no other steel company in America could compete with the low-cost competition overseas.
BOB SHRUM: Yeah, but they got seven years--
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: Now that's the fact--
BOB SHRUM: --of giant fees--
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --and it was a distortion.
BOB SHRUM: --which is what they wanted.
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: And if you're running against a capitalist company that created overall jobs, you are going to lose because we're looking at the Obama record and jobs-- we've got an 8.2 percent unemployment rate, and what do we see? We see the President talking about new taxes on the people who could create jobs.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator.
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: We see him stifling the jobs that could be created by not approving the Keystone Pipeline even though the Washington Post said he should do it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right.
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: I mean, really, it is his record here that will--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Ding, ding, ding.
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: --win the election.
BOB SCHIEFFER: There is a bell ringing here, Senator. I'm sorry.
SENATOR KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON: Thank you.
BOB SCHIEFFER: We're just out of time. We'll be back. And thank you all so much for a very spirited discussion.
BOB SHRUM: Thank you.
BOB SCHIEFFER: We'll be back in one minute to talk about some presidential foreign policy decisions.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: We're back now with two very well-known reporters and their two brand new books. Our friend David Sanger of the New York Times, chief Washington correspondent, author of Confront and Conceal; and our friend Dan Klaidman, who writes for Newsweek and the Daily Beast and has written Kill or Capture.
David, I want to start with you. But before I do I want to clear up one thing, I-- I said earlier in the broadcast, when I'd asked David Axelrod that in these books it was reported that he was in one of these national security meetings. I believe you said it-- both of you say it was not in your books but it was actually in a New York Times story.
DAVID SANGER (Confront and Conceal/New York Times): That's right.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But that was not a story reported by you.
DAVID SANGER: That's right.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So--
DAVID SANGER: Mm-Hm.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --we-- we'll let that go. Let-- let me just ask you this you write in this book and you summarized in a piece in the New York Times this week, David. The story of this covert cyber attack that the United States and Israel used to do significant damage to Israel's-- I mean, to Iran's nuclear development program. It was code named Olympic Games. This was all news to me. Tell me about this.
DAVID SANGER: Well, it wasn't just a single attack, Bob. It was a four-yearlong campaign that continues through to this day. Olympic Games began under the Bush administration, was handed off from President Bush to President Obama in a meeting they had just a few days before the transfer of power in January of 2009. You know, Bob, the United States--
BOB SCHIEFFER: And what did-- you put a worm--
DAVID SANGER: Right.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --into their--
DAVID SANGER: The-- the way--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --computers.
DAVID SANGER: The way it worked, Bob, was that the U.S. and Israel jointly designed a system to get inside the computer controllers that run the Natanz enrichment plant, this is where-- where Iran makes its nuclear fuel. For a year they sent in a beacon that just mapped out, put up a blueprint of what this plant looks like, and then they sent in a series of these worms that were designed to speed up or slow down the centrifuges in ways where the Iranians didn't realize that they were even under attack. They believed that their-- their equipment was simply failing.
This went on many times until they made a mistake. And the worm got out of Natanz through the laptop of an unwitting Iranian engineer who went home, plugged into the internet, and suddenly one variant of this worm was out for the world to see. And that was the thread I started to pull on to be able to tell the story as we do in Confront and Conceal--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, how significant was the damage?
DAVID SANGER: The damage-- the-- the CIA, the National Security Agency believe set back Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapons capability by eighteen months to two years. There are others who dispute that. But the bigger issue here, Bob, I think is that the United States has never before acknowledged the use of cyber weapons. And now the concern is of course that because it-- Stuxnet made it clear that-- that we are using these, that the President was worried it could create a pretext for China, Russia, others to do the same to us, perhaps under less strict rules under the administration.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, have we actually confirmed? Has the U.S. government confirmed that, in fact, we are doing this?
DAVID SANGER: The United States government has never publicly confirmed, but I think as you go into the accounts I've written it's very detailed and has President Obama in the middle of it. The President sat in The Situation Room and had to make decisions about when to continue, when to accelerate, and whether to kill this program.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Dan, I want to black-- bring you in because your book is mostly about the drone war that we've been hearing about. We read about it in the paper, a drone did this, a drone did that, but I want to talk to both of you. Republicans, especially Republicans, and-- and critics of the President have said that he has failed to lead on foreign policy, that he has been very weak. But as both of you line out in your book, it's an entirely different picture.
DANIEL KLAIDMAN (Kill and Capture/Newsweek): Well, it's extraordinary the extent to which this President has actually been very deeply and personally involved in these-- in these killing decisions, kinetic activity as they call it. And there's some interesting parallels between my book and-- and David's.
I mean this is a President who came into office wanting to-- to wind down the wars of 9/11, and to sort of bring-- you know, a smaller footprint. And-- and yet, he inherited a military that was very much still on the offensive, and a world that's still very dangerous. And so he sort of emerges as a kind of shadow warrior, using drones, using Special Operations forces. And in the Iranian context, as David reports, using cyber warfare and-- and espionage. And it's a way to try to continue to deal with these threats but without full-scale war. The problem is there is this kind of grinding inexorable momentum toward more killing and more war and that is where he seems to find himself now.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How did he operate? Give me his modus operandi?
DAVID SANGER: Well, I think he started from creating something of a new doctrine, Bob. There is an Obama doctrine. I tried in the-- in the book to sort of hash out what it is. And I think the doctrine is very much along the lines that-- that Dan hinted at, which is the country's tired of these big wars of occupation, of sending a hundred thousand troops into a country, staying around for four or five years at a cost of a trillion dollars or more. And yet, we still have these threats. And so the way he has operated has been to try to choose a hi-tech area where the United States has advantage, but he's also recognized that these involve significant big moral and legal decisions, and there's some legal basis that they've laid out now for the drone wars. There's very little legal basis that they've described for the cyber wars. And so he has had to operate both as commander and has something of law professor to go try to figure out if there is a way the United States can conduct these wars legally and then also deal with what the blowback is. And you see it in the drone wars. You know, we're in worst shape in Pakistan with the Pakistani people now than we were before President Obama came in. In cyber, we're only beginning to see what the effects are going to be.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But, you know, you-- the way you talk about it in your book, we all remember--or those of my era--remember when Lyndon Johnson was sitting in the White House and picking the bombing targets in North Vietnam. And people thought, you know, no commander-in-chief should be getting that involved in tactical decisions. But, apparently, Barack Obama is taking it a little step beyond that.
DANIEL KLAIDMAN: Well, it really is extraordinary. And you really have a situation where, you know, his two closest advisers on these counterterrorism is there's John Brennan his counterterrorism adviser and General Cartwright-- Hoss Cartwright, who is the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they would come to him at extraordinary times, pull him out of a state dinner, interrupt him when he was having family time with his children, to make these grim calls. And, you know, Obama decided that he wanted to be personally involved in this. I think there-- to some extent because he wanted to assume the moral responsibility, but I think it was largely because he was worried that he was going to end up getting sucked into wars in places like Yemen and Somalia. He wanted to act as a kind of constraining--
BOB SCHIEFFER: But--
DANIEL KLAIDMAN: --force.
BOB SCHIEFFER: You all are both talking about to the point that he was actually picking out which terrorists we'll go after.
DANIEL KLAIDMAN: That-- that's right. And-- but interestingly, I think more often than not, he was scaling back the target list. He was saying I want to go after fewer of these people. We don't know that they are--as he would put it--AQ focused. He wanted to stay focused on our core interest, which is to say going after al Qaeda.
DAVID SANGER: And-- and I think that's a key part of-- of sort of his doctrine. He is willing to go do this, it seems when there's a direct threat to the United States. When there's a more general threat, then he has insisted on putting other countries out in the lead, making sure that they're putting skin in the game. So in Libya he did that. In Syria you've seen very little activity because the U.S. won't go into the lead, and there isn't a cyber option. There really isn't a drone option, and we're somewhat frozen. And this is the downside to the Obama doctrine because there are limits to what you can do with drones and cyber. It's great for going out after a specific facility or a terrorist. It's not great for changing the nature of a society.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you all something. I mean when you were reporting on this story, did either of you ever get the idea that some of these officials were disclosing some of these things to you, to boost up the President's reputation to make him appear tougher, that they were doing this and talking to you to counter this idea that he is a weak President and a weak leader?
DANIEL KLAIDMAN: You know what I got the sense, Bob, actually, I got the sense that these officials who I talked to who are dealing with on a daily basis these huge moral dilemmas and very complicated legal and policy problems, they wanted to talk about it because some of these issues weighed on their conscious-- on their consciences. They wanted to talk about it because they wanted to make sure that people understood they don't-- they don't make these decisions lightly. And I think it had more to do that-- more to do with that than to try to spin reporters and to boost up the President.
BOB SCHIEFFER: David?
DAVID SANGER: You know, in the case of Olympic Games, I spent a year working the story from the bottom up, and then went to the administration and told them what I had. Then they had to make some decisions about how much they wanted to talk about it. All that you read about this being deliberate leaks out of the White House wasn't my experience. Maybe it is in-- in other cases. I'm sure the political side of the White House probably likes reading about the President acting with drones and cyber and so forth. National security side has got very mixed emotions about it because these are classified programs.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to-- you have one-- one fascinating, almost scary little story, David, you talk about when the White House thought that the Taliban had stolen a nuclear weapon.
DAVID SANGER: That's right. There's a chapter called "Bomb Scare." They had about four days in 2009 when they thought the Pakistani Taliban based on intercepts they had gotten listening to-- to leaders of this Taliban group, had a-- a small nuclear device. And they actually sent a nuclear search team to the Gulf. They've never actually left there. And what did it reinforce in their minds? That it's Pakistan, not Afghanistan that is really the biggest single threat to the United States in that region. And Pakistan's got a hundred nuclear weapons. It's building them up very quickly. They're building mobile weapons and those are much easier to steal.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But as far as we know the Taliban didn't get one.
DAVID SANGER: In the end it was a false alarm but, boy, it really changed the way they thought about the problem.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Scary stuff. And I thank both of you, too, two really fine books.
Back in a moment with our FACE THE NATION Flashback.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Thirty-six years ago this week, President Ford came to FACE THE NATION in the midst of another furious presidential campaign.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Hi.
BOB SCHIEFFER: California governor Ronald Reagan was challenging the incumbent Ford for the Republican nomination. And that is our FACE THE NATION Flashback.
PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: America needs a full-time President. Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Ford had become President when Nixon resigned and many conservatives thought Reagan would be a better candidate, so the talk quickly turned to whether Ford should make Reagan his running mate.
One of the most interesting things I think that has been found by the CBS-New York Times polls is a statistic that came up the other day that said if-- if the race were Ford versus Carter, forty-one percent of those who call themselves Ronald Reagan people would defect and vote for Jimmy Carter.
In light of that aren't you going to have to put Ronald Reagan on the ticket if you're going to have the backing of your party? And you've got to have the solid backing of the Republican Party in order to make it.
PRESIDENT GERALD R. FORD: I have said that I would not exclude any Republican that I've looked at or we've heard about that might qualify as being a vice-presidential candidate and that would include Ronald Reagan. Now, he has himself indicated he would not be interested in being vice president, but as far as I'm concerned, I would not exclude him.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Of course, he did exclude him, put Bob Dole on the ticket and went on to lose the election. When Reagan got the Republican nomination four years later, he returned the favor. Ford's backers urged Reagan to put former President Ford on the ticket as his running mate but Reagan declined and chose George Bush.
Our FACE THE NATION Flashback.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And that's it for us today. Thank you so much for watching. We love having an hour and we'll be right here next week with more FACE THE NATION. See you then.