"Face the Nation" transcripts, August 19, 2012: Giuliani, Durbin, Norquist, Tanden
(CBS News) Below is a rush transcript of "Face the Nation" on August 19, 2012, hosted by CBS News' Bob Schieffer. Guests include: Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, Neera Tanden with Center for American Progress. A roundtable with a roundtable with CBS News' John Dickerson, The Washington Post's Nia-Malika Henderson, historian Niall Ferguson and The New York Times' Jeff Zeleny. ProPublica's Kim Barker also joined the show.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, how low can it go? If this campaign was headed to the high road, somebody gave it bad directions.
JOE BIDEN: He said in the first hundred days he was going to let the big banks once again write their own rules--unchain Wall Street. They're going to put y'all back in chains.
RUDY GIULIANI: I've never seen a vice president that has made as many mistakes, said as many stupid things. I mean there's a real fear if God forbid he ever had to be entrusted with the presidency whether he really has the mental capacity to handle.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Rudy Giuliani is a big Romney supporter and we'll talk to him about that and other criticisms he's leveled at the Obama campaign.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Their plan makes seniors pay more so they can give another tax cut to millionaires and billionaires.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The President unleashed his own broadside at the Republican plans for Medicare. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois has the President's side of that story in a week when the White House tried to explain the need to raise taxes on the rich and Romney looked for ways not to talk about his own tax bill.
MITT ROMNEY: The fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very small minded compared to the broad issues we face.
BOB SCHIEFFER: We'll get into that too and the whole idea of taxes in general with the anti-tax leader Grover Norquist, and Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress. Analysis on all of it from Newsweek contributor Niall Ferguson, Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times, Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post, and our own John Dickerson. Plus a new report from the watchdog group ProPublica about the impact of these new Super PACs and one of the very first negative campaign ads.
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.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the number two Democrat in the Senate Dick Durbin join us from their home states this morning, to talk about this campaign.
And, Mister Mayor, I want to start with you. I want to ask you about your remarks about the vice president. Did you really say at some place along the way-- I mean I heard you in the sound bite at the top of this broadcast that you were worried--
RUDY GIULIANI (Former New York City Governor): Yeah. I really said it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Oh, you (INDISTINCT)?
RUDY GIULIANI: I said I-- after not knowing what state he was in, not knowing what century he was in, in twenty-four hours, and making what I would consider to be an absolutely disgusting appeal to racial sentiment. I said I wonder if he's got the mental capacity to, you know be the President of the United States.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you really mean that--
RUDY GIULIANI: The reality is--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --or you're just using that as a metaphor? Is that just campaign talk or you really think he's nuts?
RUDY GIULIANI: I probably used-- oh, no, I don't think he's nuts. I've just-- I'm just saying I wonder if he has the kind of balance-- probably I should-- what I should have said was, you know, the balance to be President of the United States. I mean this guy is like one gaffe after another, and he's a-- he's a joke on late night television. I think they've also locked him in his room for the rest of the campaign. I think the President scolded him, and-- I mean it's been one-- one strange incident after another, telling a man in a wheelchair to stand up I-- I don't know what's going on with him, but somebody should explain it. And I guess there was also-- and excuse me for this because I know sometimes Republicans come across looking like we feel sorry for ourselves. But-- but I think we feel that if this was Cheney or Sarah Palin, or Dan Quayle, my goodness, all you guys on television would be going crazy about how could he say this and what's wrong with him? So, maybe I was just trying to even up the score a little bit. But, I do think there are some serious questions.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well I guess I better go to Dick Durbin and see what is your-- what is your reaction to what the Mayor just said?
SENATOR DICK DURBIN (D-Illinois/Assistant Majority Leader): Well, I can tell you, I served with Joe Biden for fourteen years in the Senate, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. I've worked with him as vice president. I would just say to paraphrase an earlier debate, I know Joe Biden. Joe Biden is my friend and, Rudy Giuliani, that isn't fair. What you've said has gone too far. And if you're going to put yourself out as the arbiter and the judge of vice-presidential candidates, we're going to remember that four years ago you told America at the Republican Convention that Sarah Palin should be the vice president of the United States, she was ready to be commander-in-chief and President of the United States. That speaks for itself.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mayor?
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, you know, I think Sarah Palin actually is operating-- operating at a level quite a bit above Joe Biden. I mean Joe-- this is-- this is one joke after another. And you can't escape that. I mean last week a wrong state; last week, wrong century; last week, that was an absolutely blatant appeal to racism. It was-- it was they're going to put you back in chains, emphasized the word back and it was on a teleprompter. Now that's disgusting, and somebody in the Democratic Party in addition to Governor Wilder who had the guts to do it should be able to stand up and say, Joe, I'm not going too far, Joe Biden is going too far.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Durbin--
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: If I could say--if I could a word here--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Sure.
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: I would like to say a word here. There isn't a racist bone in Joe Biden's body and to suggest that is I think over the edge. The fact is that Joe Biden throughout his career has fought for equality and opportunity and to suggest something else, it may have been a misuse of words, but to take it to that extreme is just too much, Mister Mayor.
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, then, how about apologizing for it instead of the White House backing him up on it. Make believe Southern accent, y'all, y'all, Joe talks like y'all in Delaware? Y'all going to be put back in chains. Okay, maybe he didn't mean it. I-- I'll give him that, but how about the vice president of the United States now apologizing for at least what appears to be some kind of vicious pandering that I-- I would accept that.
SENATOR DICK DURBIN (overlapping): Well--
RUDY GIULIANI: --I think most people would.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator--
SENATOR DICK DURBIN (overlapping): I'm-- I'm not going to dig-- I'm not going to dignify those remarks because I think people know Joe Biden, they know his service to this country. They know what he's done in America when it comes to the violence against Women Act, the Criminal Justice Act. This man has been an extraordinary leader in the Senate and in the United States. If he made some misstep in his statement so be it, don't we all, Mayor Giuliani. If you had a problem like that in the past, I have.
RUDY GIULIANI: Oh, we do.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. You know, I think we probably--
RUDY GIULIANI: I have and I have. And I-- I have and I have apologized for it and the real issue here is they're pretending everything is okay with it, and it's not.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right, let's-- let's just kind of move on if we could little bit here. Senator Durbin, because what I want to ask you about is Senator Harry Reid who has insisted and keeps insisting that he has heard that Mitt Romney over the past decade didn't pay any taxes during some of those years. He has offered no proof whatsoever. There-- there's nobody who can add any proof to this. And yet he keeps insisting that it is true. Isn't it time for him to basically put up or shut up on that?
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: I'd say it's time for Mitt Romney to put up or shut up. When Mayor Giuliani was running for mayor he disclosed his income tax returns and he disclosed them every year when he was in office as mayor. I've done the same thing as a member of the House and the Senate. And now Mitt Romney can put aside all of these criticisms and all of these questions in five minutes. All he has to do is live up to the standard his father established, twelve years disclosure of income tax, just like President Obama, twelve years. Instead, what he has given is-- is tantalize people. We now know he's the first presidential candidate in history to run for office with a Swiss bank account. We also know that he has disclosed these tax shelters and tax havens in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. And we just have tantalizing little tidbits--
BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): But--
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: --that have forced him to go back and amend his financial disclosure returns. Let him make a full disclosure as every major presidential candidate has for the last thirty-six years.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Yes, Sir, I-- I take your point on that, but saying he ought to disclose his income taxes is just one thing. Saying that he didn't pay any income taxes when you have absolutely no proof of that, that's-- that's something entirely different, I mean, that-- well, I mean, it's irresponsible. We wouldn't print a story like that or any major newspaper in this country. CBS News wouldn't print a story because we said we heard it. We would try to check it out. Isn't he obligated to check this out and tell us where he got the information?
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: I-- I-- you're going to have to direct that question to Harry Reid as to-- as to his source of information, but what I have to say is basic, even before Harry Reid's statement, why is Mitt Romney failing to disclose the most basic information about income taxes that Mayor Giuliani did, which I have done, which other candidates for President have done. What is in there that he doesn't want the American people to see?
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mayor Giuliani, would you like to say something about that?
RUDY GIULIANI: Sure. I-- I mean, I-- I believe that the reality is that the Romneys have explained this. They-- they've laid out a-- a year of taxes. They're going to put out another year of taxes. That's precisely what John Kerry did. It's precisely what-- what Senator McCain did. People do follow different practices here. It was acceptable in the case of McCain and Kerry, no one raised the issue, oh, my God, they didn't pay any taxes because they didn't put out their tax returns. Both-- both of them, Kerry and McCain are reasonably rich men and good men and-- and we accepted that. And I think the-- I think the-- the concern is, you put out ten, twenty years of taxes. That's all we're going to be doing for the next two months. It's going to become a total distraction. Any-- any-- any person who has reasonable amount of money is going to have complicated taxes. There's nothing wrong with Governor Romney's taxes. I was a prosecutor. I prosecuted tax evasion cases. I've defended tax evasion cases. No one-- no one in all these years has accused him of a crime. The IRS has never brought a proceeding against him. You can be sure with the kind of money that he made and the enormous charitable contributions that he appears to have made, maybe fifteen, twenty percent to charity. This-- this guy has been audited up and down, backwards and forwards.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you just--
RUDY GIULIANI (overlapping): --so I've been pretty comfortable that his taxes are in order.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And let me ask you this, Mayor Giuliani, do you think it was a good thing for the Romney campaign just from the standpoint of politics to shift this campaign away from unemployment and the ec-- economy to talking about Medicare? That's always been kind of the third rail of American politics, like Social Security. And, yet, that seems to be what Mitt Romney wants to talk about.
RUDY GIULIANI: Well, you know, Bob, we're going to find that out when the election's over. It's either going to be one of the great political decisions or one of the political mistakes, but I think it's a gutsy one, and I think it gives us some hope we can get above all the name calling because by picking Paul Ryan, he decided-- Governor Romney did-- we're going to have the debate on the issues. Let's have a debate on how do we reduce the deficit? What do we do about Medicare to save it? I mean the idea that Paul Ryan wants to end Medicare is just a-- a total lie. What he wants to do is straighten it out. He wants to save it because it's going to go bankrupt if we don't save it. So, let's have a debate about it. And I think the President wants to save Medicare. They have two different ways of doing it. Let's have a debate about that. That's far better than they're calling us names and our calling them names. So, I hope it's the right decision. My instincts tell me it is. We're not going to know until the end if it was but I think it's a good decision for the campaign and I think whoever gets elected if we can get it down to the merits, it's at least going to have a-- a mandate to do something.
RUDY GIULIANI: My instincts tell me it is. We're not going to know until the end, if it was. But I think it's a good decision for the campaign, and I think whoever gets elected, if we can get it down to the merits is at least going to have a mandate to do something.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator Durbin?
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: I can just tell you that we are anxious to make Medicare the issue if that's what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to speak to. We know the record. Paul Ryan initiated the debate to privatize Social Security, and when the stock market cratered during the recession he stopped talking about it. Then he started the effort to privatize Medicare with his voucher system under his budget approach. Now, that might work for a senior who is healthy and wealthy. But if you're not, you're going to face a five-hundred-dollar-a-month increase in Medicare premiums and many of these private insurance companies will just turn seniors away. He raises the retirement age for Medicare, the eligibility age, to sixty-seven, but then he would abolish the insurance exchanges which would provide any coverage for seniors under those circumstances. That really dramatically changes Medicare. It ends it as we know it. And I think if they want to debate that, we're ready. Medicare is a critically important program. The President has breathed eight years more life into Medicare with his-- his changes, and what we see on the other side with Romney and Ryan, unfortunately, is the death of Medicare as we know it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mayor?
RUDY GIULIANI: You know, Bob. The big-- the biggest change the President is going to make in-- in Medicare is take seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars out of Medicare to fund Obamacare, which is a absolute disaster. And to say it's going to end Medicare as we know it. If we keep Medicare as the Democrats know it, it's going to be gone for everyone. Somebody has to fix it. What we're discussing here is not cutting Medicare. What we're discussing is how-- how much the increases should be. Even the President wants to cut the increases in Medicare. So the debate is how much should we cut the increases. Medicare is going to be preserved for everyone fifty-five and over. And as a-- as I've heard from a lot of young people, a lot of them would prefer to have some private options; it's not forced on you. If you want to have private options, you have them. And I think to orthodox Democrats the idea that people have private options is somehow frightening. I think we do want to have that debate about who trusts people more, who trusts government more, I think their side particularly in there Obama trust government to make all the health care decisions for us. As Republicans we would like to see individuals making some of those health care decisions. It's a good, honest debate. It's a lot better than name calling.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, I think that's a good place to-- to call a halt here. The time is up. I want to thank both of you. And I think you're right, a good, honest debate.
RUDY GIULIANI: Thank you, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let's hope we have one. Thanks to both of you this morning.
SENATOR DICK DURBIN: Thanks, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: We'll be back in a minute.
RUDY GIULIANI: Thank you.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: We're back now with two key figures in the debate in American politics, Grover Norquist, of course, is hero of the right. He heads up the anti-tax group called Americans for Tax Reform. And Neera Tanden is the head of the Democratic think tank, The Center for American Progress.
Mister Norquist, let me start with you. You're a Mister No Taxes. You were the guy who has gone around and-- and drew up this no taxes pledge. You get people running for office to sign it or you ask them to. Nearly every Republican--I think there are only thirteen in Congress, six senators and seven members of the House--who haven't signed it. There's no question that Congress this time around, whoever is elected President, the debate in Washington is going to be all-- all about taxes, and I have to say, recently some members on the Republican side, Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham of South Carolina, for one, says that this no tax pledge is just becoming too stringent, and that it gives them no leeway to reform the tax codes, even to eliminate deductions. Is your pledge unrealistic?
GROVER NORQUIST (Americans for Tax Reform): No I think Senator, one, miss misunderstands the pledge. He has made that commitment to the voters of South Carolina and I expect he'll keep that commitment, not to raise taxes. The pledge is a commitment not to raise net taxes. It-- it was put in in 1986, to help Reagan enact the Tax Reform Act of '86, which reduced marginal tax rates down to fifteen and twenty-eight percent down from what had been twenty-five different rates over the years, down to two, top rates, fifteen and twenty-eight, and to broaden the base. So it's revenue neutral. So the pledge says if you can't ever use tax reform as a Trojan horse to increase the total tax burden on the American people. To that end it has been helpful and it will continue in the future.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, what if Congressman-- a Congressman wants to eliminate a deduction, say? Is that considered a tax increase in your way of thinking?
GROVER NORQUIST: Well, as long as you ask to reduce taxes at the same time. There is-- there is legislation Congressman Pompeo of Kansas put forward to get rid of all the tax credits and deductions for the energy industry, and to reduce marginal tax rates the same amount. So all of the questionable tax credits for solar and wind and for other kinds of energy, get rid of those, reduce marginal tax rates, revenue neutral. It protects tax reform. It stops tax increases, and people who want to raise taxes and spend more money or raise taxes to pay for Obama's increased level of spending at the national level, the pledge says no to that.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Miss Tanden, the government, it's no secret, has been in total gridlock for the last two years. I mean Congress can't even seem to do things when both sides want to do it. They can't figure out how to do it. Democrats refuse to touch the entitlement programs. Republicans refuse to increase revenues. Aren't-- aren't people going to have to give on both sides here?
BOB SCHIEFFER: Aren't-- aren't' people going to have to give on both sides here?
NEERA TANDEN (Center for American Progress): Absolutely and people are going to have to give them both sides. And I would just say that, you know, Democrats have favored a balanced approach. We've been willing to look at entitlements. President actually has some savings in Medicare in his approach on the budget. But, we have to have revenues as part of that. And what I would say to Grover is that we really don't have-- I don't think there is a--there is a consistency to approaches because there have been tax cuts that, you know, Grover Norquist and the Republicans have opposed, you know, even though they don't-- you know, they are just plain old tax cuts when it the comes to the earned income tax credit, reforms there, American opportunity tax cuts, even the health care tax cuts in the Affordable Care Act. These are all tax cuts. Now the thing is they're championed by President Obama and Democrats, but it's by Grover Norquist's standards, House Republicans, Paul Ryan, those tax cuts we can get rid of. It's those that we can get rid of. We have to protect only the millionaires' tax credits, billionaires' tax cuts, and I think that's what's a challenge. There is a level of, you know, disingenuousness here.
GROVER NORQUIST: You know, that's-- that's a misunderstanding. I certainly support, as the presidential candidate Romney and-- and Ryan do, and all Republicans in the House and Senate, abolishing Obamacare, which is three thousand pages long. We were sold hope and change. They didn't have a written down plan which is why it's so odd that the President attacks Ryan and Romney for putting forward actual specifics on-- on reforms. When they offered no specifics, they got elected. Talking about hope and change, we ended up with three thousand pages, twenty different tax increase stuck inside Obamacare. Eight of them directly hit lower-income people, directly-- all hit indirectly, lower-income people, eight directly hit them. You can see them on the website, atr.org. We go through all eight, and the President didn't keep his word when he said he wouldn't raise taxes on people who earn less than two hundred thousand dollars a year.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I see Neera Tanden is shaking hear head here.
NEERA TANDEN: I think-- I think, you know, it's hard to see which falsehood to take on. The-- the Affordable Care Act is a massive tax cut for-- in health care. It's a six-hundred-billion-dollar tax cut for health care. It's a tax cut to middle-class families. But, beyond that, they earn income tax credit, the American opportunities tax rate. There is a range of tax cuts that are authored by Democrats that Grover Norquist and Republicans have opposed. And that's why I think this whole debate is one where it's really not about tax cuts. President supports tax cuts. It's about making the wealthy pay their fair share, taking those tax cuts at the highest levels and-- and ensuring that those people are paying their fair share as part of a balanced approach. What we've been talking about is taxes on the people who are over two hundred fifty, and even those folks, Grover and Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, want to cut taxes, not have them pay their fair share.
GROVER NORQUIST: Well, at the first-- sixteen days into President Obama's presidency, sixteen days, he raised taxes on people who smoke cigarettes. Average income forty thousand dollars a year. So it only took him two weeks to screw lower-income voters. He promised he wouldn't. He did not tell the truth. He raised taxes. In Obamacare there are a series of tax increase. There're tax increase on people, on medical devices, wheelchairs--there's a tax increase, on wheelchairs, in health care. This does not reduce the cost of-- of health care. It's increased the cost of health care.
NEERA TANDEN: Actually it-- actually it does reduce the cost of health--
GROVER NORQUIST: A two-percent tax on wheelchairs does not reduce the cost of health care. So, those tax increase the President did not keep his word on those. But the most important thing that happened in the last two weeks is not even the exciting news of-- of-- of Ryan on the ticket. But the President has changed his former promise. It used to be no taxes on anyone who earned less than two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. On August 8th, and ever since then, he's said, "We're not going to raise income taxes on you if you earn less than two hundred fifty thousand dollars in the next twelve months. So we've now-- all other taxes are fair game immediately. And your income tax protection last one year, it's open season.
NEERA TANDEN: That-- that is-- I guess you have to say that is absolutely false just because--
GROVER NORQUIST: August 8th.
NEERA TANDEN: --just because Grover Norquist interprets the President saying something doesn't mean he said it. He has held firm to this commitment of not raising taxes on anyone under two hundred and fifty thousand. It's been fact-checked by folks one way or the other. He hasn't raised these taxes.
GROVER NORQUIST: And found not to be true.
NEERA TANDEN: And-- and-- and the truth is here that the only person who actually has a plan to raise taxes on middle-income folks by, you know, independent arbiters is Mitt Romney whose tax plan is giving a massive tax cut to the wealthy, and will pay for it by-- by increasing taxes by two thousand dollars on middle-income facto-- families when Barack Obama has lowered taxes by over two hundred thousand dollars.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. I gave Rudy Giuliani the last word in the previous segment. You get it in this segment. Thank you all, both.
GROVER NORQUIST: Good to be here.
BOB SCHIEFFER: We'll be right back.
NEERA TANDEN: Thanks.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: With all the nastiness we've seen lately, it's easy to wonder, are we headed toward one of the dirtiest campaigns ever? Well, here's a dirty little secret--the short answer is no. As author Lara Brown pointed out in U.S. News and World Report last week America has a long history of ugly presidential campaigns. They haven't gotten worse. They're just following a tradition as old as the Republic. Thomas Jefferson's campaign against President John Adams was probably the first really nasty one. Jefferson's supporters accused Adams of being a hermaphrodite with neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. In response, the Adams' campaign accused Jefferson of being the son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a mulatto father. In the 1828 campaign, John Quincy Adams' supporters called Andrew Jackson a murderer, his mother a prostitute, and his wife an adulteress. In 1876 Democrats accused Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of two heinous crimes shooting his own mother and stealing the pay of dead soldiers while he was a union general. And as Brown points out, the role of the media in all this has not been exactly stellar. In 1896, the New York Times was supporting Republican William McKinley and ran an article about his opponent, William Jennings Bryan titled "Is Bryan crazy." It cited one anonymous source whose identity, the newspaper said, it was not at liberty to give. On and on, it's gone down for the years. Clinton and McCain accused of fathering illegitimate children, the stuff about Obama's birth certificate, and Romney being blamed for the death of a cancer victim. So it's nothing new, that's for sure. But, as my mother used to say, just because something has always been that way doesn't mean it's right.
Back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now. As for the rest of you, we will be back with our political roundtable, a new study on Super PAC spending. And our FACE THE NATION flashback. We hope you'll stay with us because we've got a lot to come.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: And welcome back to FACE THE NATION Page Two joined this morning by an all-star cast of reporters and commentators. Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times, Nia Malika-Henderson of the Washington Post. Plus our own political director, John Dickerson. And joining us from Boston, Niall Ferguson who has written Newsweek magazine's cover story this week on President Obama. Niall, let's start with you because you pretty much make the case that Barack Obama needs to go.
NIALL FERGUSON (Newsweek Magazine): Well, yes, Bob, and I do it more in sorrow than in anger. We, obviously, had high hopes of this man four years ago. But when you think back to what he promised in the inaugural address in 2009, he-- he just hasn't delivered and that's really the key issue. If you look at the economy, it is growing at half the speed that he promised in his first budget. If you look at unemployment, it's more than two percentage points higher than we were promised. And the debt has not stabilized. It's on an explosive growth path. So it's hard to admit that your hopes were unfulfilled, but that's I think what Americans have to do now.
BOB SCHIEFFER: I-- I think I should point out that while you say we were disappointed in his record, you did work for John McCain in the last campaign?
NIALL FERGUSON: I-- I did. I--I did, Bob, and I disclosed that in the piece, and I'm happy to disclose it now. But I also was-- I think a good loser, and the day that the election was decided, I said, let's face it. The better campaigner won and he did. He really ran a spectacular campaign not only getting the nomination but winning the presidency. And his qualities were really there for all to see, quite apart from the symbolic importance of having someone of African descent become President. But you know, in the end, four years on, the question is has he done a good job as the chief executive of the nation? And I think we have to accept that he really has disappointed us.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me go to you Jeff Zeleny because you've been out there covering this campaign on the campaign trail. And in the beginning it seemed that Mitt Romney's thesis was basically just what we heard Niall say, that-- that Barack Obama just didn't get the job done. He made a lot of promises. He disappointed people. But lately, he seems to be shifting the campaign to talking about Medicare, which I must say, I was a little surprised by that, because I mean, this is kind of the third rail of American politics. I mean, I think most people would agree there has to be some reform done on Medicare but to try to shift the campaign to that I found that surprising.
JEFF ZELENY (New York Times): And it sort of happened while we weren't watching, really. I mean it was all happening at the same time as-- as Governor Romney was selecting his vice-presidential candidate. But you're absolutely right. I mean, for months, really, Governor Romney has been trying to create a permission structure, if you will, for voters who voted for President Obama four years ago, he said, you know what? It's okay to not vote for him again. It's okay to, you know, he is a nice guy and Governor Romney has said this for months on the campaign trail, you know, nice guy, good family guy, but he's not up to the job. Now we've had a one eighty here. Clearly that was not necessarily working for the Romney campaign. We're seeing much more of a base selection. The Romney campaign headquarters in Boston realized that they needed to shake things up a little bit, and they are trying to expand their base among Republican voters and this Medicare argument it's going to be fascinating to see how it plays out. We don't have a playbook for this. We don't know if we're still operating on the old script. You know Democrats have been very successful at races at all levels of running on the Medicare issue. But there is a sense that people are more concerned about, you know, the deficit and other things. So if the Romney campaign can thread this argument issue and go forward with it, it will be fascinating. But I'm not sure that they can win the argument. So far the first week in, I don't think they've shown that they definitely can.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, what have you seen so far since Ryan went on the ticket? You know a lot of people thought and I mean I think it's-- it's absolutely right. I mean the Romney people have told me that the reason that they wanted to make this vice-presidential selection early was it--- was because they wanted to get a little bump in the polls. They wanted to give it time to play because they knew that with the Democratic Convention coming immediately after the Republican Convention, if they waited until then to-- to announce it then they probably wouldn't get much of a bump.
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON (Washington Post): Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, it turns out they didn't get much of a bump.
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON: That's right. The polls show they didn't get much of a bump. It's like one percent or something like that, below what Cheney got, below what Palin got, below what-- what Biden got as well. But there has been a huge jump in-- in terms of enthusiasm. They've been able to join both wings of the Republican Party with-- with Paul Ryan representing, you know, he's the young gun. He's the Tea Party and obviously, Romney being more of an old-school moderate sort of Republican.
So you've seen these huge crowds there. Fifteen thousand people are greeting-- greeting Mitt Romney, greeting Paul Ryan. So much so that they had at one point thought they would split up in the week before-- in the week before the convention, but now they're going to be together. They're the dynamic duo, out in New Hampshire tomorrow. So I-- I think another thing that you're seeing as well is Wisconsin, this state that Democrats have won, I think the last person to win it-- a Republican to win it was Reagan. But now all of a sudden that's a toss-up. That's ten electoral votes and-- and-- and Ryan seems to have had-- had an effect on that and they're going to send the-- the White House is now going to send Biden there showing all-- that they're all of a sudden worried about that-- that state maybe being in play for the Republicans.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What about Biden, John Dickerson?
JOHN DICKERSON (CBS News Political Director): No one has ever asked that question, "What about Biden?" It seems to be the constant question with Joe Biden. You know this was the problem, obviously for the administration this week. They were in the Romney campaign's face on Medicare, they felt pretty good about it and then Joe Biden said this crazy remark about putting people back in chains. That's not just-- you know, there's a certain-- people give Joe Biden a break because he's done this so much. It's one of his character traits. But in this case, it-- it-- the Romney campaign seized on it, kind of took an excessive amount of-- of umbrage, because they see it as a way to tear down the President's likeability. This is a President who campaigned against the kind of comment that Joe Biden made. And what they want to be able to say is he's not the guy you elected, as Jeff was talking about. And this is one of the many ways in which he's not the guy you elected, and this is-- this is evidence of that.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, Niall, let me get you back into this. Where do you think this campaign is now? Did-- did, as Nia says, they did get a lot of enthusiasm, and Republicans seem delighted to have Ryan on the ticket. But there was a certain amount of delight amongst Democrats as well. I mean--
NIALL FERGUSON: Well--
BOB SCHIEFFER: --it kind of made both sides happy in a funny kind of way.
NIALL FERGUSON: I think the Democrats are in for a very big shock if they think that this was a tactical mistake by Mitt Romney. I think it was a genius move, his best move so far, because Paul Ryan is the future of American politics. He is the only politician who for now years has been arguing we have to deal with the fiscal crisis before it gets to the point that it deals with us. You know, when you look at the real unfunded liabilities of the federal government and this is the work that my friend Larry Kotlikoff of Boston University does, we're talking more than two hundred trillion dollars here. And the thing about Paul Ryan is that he's not only serious about that issue he has a mastery of that issue. He also really gets under the skin of the President. Remember, it was Ryan who really provoked the President into getting serious about budgetary issues, though he wasn't so serious as to endorse the Bowles-Simpson commission's recommendations. So I think that Ryan is the key here. I think what's interesting is that although the bounce on his initial nomination was very small, that's true, I think incompletely the opposite way from Sarah Palin, Ryan is going to grow in his credibility the more the American public sees of him. He's not just smart, he's very likable. He has many of the character traits that Mitt Romney really doesn't have. Paul Ryan is easy-going. He's funny. You know he connects with younger Americans in a way that I think Mitt Romney struggles to. And as a combination, they're really greater than the sum of the two parts. So this is-- I think it's terrible news for the Obama campaign. They must be really worried and they must be wondering whether they could get rid of Biden before it's too late.
JOHN DICKERSON: And just to pick-- pick up on Niall's point, that's one of the reasons that-- that Romney and Ryan are campaigning again together. One of the things that Ryan does is-- is tell the story about Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney has a problem. He's not likable and it's not getting better. One of the things you do in a campaign is make-- and-- and especially at the conventions make a candidate more likable. That's what Ryan does. But Peter Hart did a focus group this-- this week for the Annenberg Center in which with women, some Republican, Independent, Democrats, in Wisconsin and what those women found, showed, was that Ryan was more likable than Romney. That's great except that Romney is the guy at the top of the ticket. And so there is a way in which he can help Romney by making him more likable. There's also a way in which people look at Ryan and say I wish the guy at the top of the ticket were that way, and in the end this may-- part of this race may come down to, who do you trust. And if it's about who do you trust, Obama or Romney, the one you like more maybe the one that those up-for-grabs voters go with.
JEFF ZELENY: But the Obama campaign is really trying to talk about the policies of the Ryan budget plan. They are-- are really trying to-- and we'll see that this week during the roll out advertisements and other things targeting women specifically--
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON: Exactly.
JEFF ZELENY: --to look at exactly what this Ryan budget plan means, though. But you're absolutely right about this. The thing that the Boston headquarters believes in Romney world that this has been the biggest-- the-- the best outcome is it's made Governor Romney better. And he has struggled throughout the whole year to be sort of a good campaigner. They think that Ryan sort of energizes him. And if he's better at the top of the ticket, that's his only chance he has to win.
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON: That's right. I mean he brings a sort of aw-shucks charisma to this ticket. He loosens Romney up on the campaign trail. I do think, though, the problem that Romney has always had is that he's not been able to appeal to Hispanics. He hasn't been able to appeal to-- to African-Americans. He hasn't been able to appeal much to women either. There's like a twenty-point gap in terms of women voters and that still remains. I mean we still have a party that has problems in terms of expanding the base and-- and recognizing the democraphic--the demographic shifts in the country.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, what about that, Niall, because, you know, Rudy Giuliani, who was on the broadcast earlier, he didn't say it this morning but he said it before. He has said that he thought Marco Rubio would have been a better pick. Is Romney going to be able to increase the number of votes that Republicans normally get from Hispanics without Marco Rubio? Do you think this is going to hurt him down in Florida?
NIALL FERGUSON: I don't think so, because, remember, one of the things that Paul Ryan brings to this ticket is Roman Catholicism. I mean he is a-- he's a devout family man. And that's something that might actually appeal more to the broad Latino-Hispanic votes than Marco Rubio would have done since it's not clear that his particular brand of-- of Cuban Republican is a popular pick right across the board. I think, therefore, Ryan is better from that point of view. On the women question, I mean, I have-- I have my doubts that this is really going to be the game-changing issue. The issue in this election is the economy. It's not abortion, which is far less of a salient issue than it used to be. And on the economy Ryan has one big advantage. He has a plan. All the Obama people have is a narrative. If they attack Ryan on policy, which they certainly are going to do, we can answer what's your policy? You know, what is the policy on your side? And because they don't really have one I think that puts them in a much weaker position. The key issue for the Romney-Ryan ticket is to make this a debate about the economy and who has a plan for turning it around.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well--
NIALL FERGUSON: And when you sit down and look at the Ryan budget it is a plan to turn the USA around. It's not an austerity budget. It's a growth budget. And right now the real problem that Obama-Biden have is that they don't have a plan. All they have--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well--
NIALL FERGUSON: --is-- is attack ads. And that's not--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well if that's--
NIALL FERGUSON: --going to be enough.
BOB SCHIEFFER: If that's the plan, Jeff, let me get back to what were just talking about in the beginning. Why all of a sudden are we talking about Medicare and not talking about the economy? Because clearly that's what we thought in the beginning that we're going to talk about. Do-- do you think maybe the Romney campaign didn't quite agree with Niall here? Maybe they-- they think it's Medicare and not the economy now.
JEFF ZELENY: I don't think that they think a Medicare argument is going to win the day for them, but they're more pleased that it's happening now in the summer of August, you know, than in the weeks before October, because they believe at that point, of course, this is going to be rehashed and revisited throughout the debates in October. But they believe by that point it's going to be a confused issue. It's going to be not new information. They do still think this election is on the economy. But if you get Paul Ryan, you pick Paul Ryan. You get the entire Paul Ryan, and that includes this Medicare argument. So it's not-- in an ideal world I think they would have-- have-- have preferred to not have this but they are doubling down on it because they believe that it is one thing that makes Mitt Romney look like he is a change agent. And that's-- we've sort of seen the script flipped here. The Romney-Ryan campaign-- they're presenting themselves as the change agent, and-- and that President Obama and Vice President Biden are the status quo, totally different from four years ago.
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON: It's-- and in some ways, they are framing themselves as compassionate conservatives. I mean, you saw Paul Ryan down there with his mom Betty Ryan, who is seventy-eight or seventy-nine. He talked about his--
BOB SCHIEFFER: That's not so old.
NIA MALIKA-HENDERSON: That's right. It's not old at all. So, yeah, they're-- they know that they have to win the senior vote. I think John McCain won seniors by like fifty-one to forty-eight percent. They know that to win this election they've pretty much got to win Florida and certainly they've got to do well with the seniors.
JOHN DICKERSON: One thing we see in this Medicare conversation that we're having is Paul Ryan says we want to have this debate and the Romney campaign says that, too. But what they're really doing is not talking so much about their plan. Paul Ryan talked about it yesterday for less than two minutes. What they're talking about is how bad President Obama's plan is. So in that sense it's not embracing the third rail. It's trying to push President Obama on to it. And that's the way in a larger sense if you look at the Romney campaign, they want people to know they have a plan. They don't want to necessarily talk too much in specifics about that plan.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Where are we right now, John, in this campaign?
JOHN DICKERSON: We are in still the tiny honeymoon period of Paul Ryan. The campaign is now a choice and not a referendum, and we're still pretty much stuck in the middle in terms of the polls.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, I'm going to thank all of you for a very interesting discussion.
We'll be back with a new report about these outside groups that finance all these negative ads, in a minute.
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BOB SCHIEFFER: Kim Barker, who is a long-time investigative reporter and foreign affairs correspondent, now working for the watchdog group called ProPublica, is with us this morning. She's been looking into these super PACs and these other organizations that have become key players in this campaign. These groups, of course, have really opened the floodgates with money. They have spent over a hundred and thirty million dollars, I think it is, already, Kim. But you have come up with some reporting that really sheds a whole new light on how this-- this stuff is working, how this money is being funneled into nonprofit organizations, which are getting a tax break for putting some of these commercials on the air.
So just, first, tell us, who are these groups? And-- and what is it they're doing? I'm not sure I quite understand this.
KIM BARKER (ProPublica): Well, I-- that-- that's a very good point and I think a lot of people don't really understand this. They're the groups that have these innocuous sounding names like Americans for America, Citizens for the Future, these-- these kind of names. And specifically, what I was focusing in on was not necessarily the super PACs but their nonprofit cousins, and these are these 501(c)(4) dark money groups. Both of these groups were empowered after the January 2010 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court, which really opened the floodgates to a lot more, you know, unlimited amounts of money from--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
KIM BARKER: --corporations and from unions and nonprofits going into campaign. So what we did was we took a sort of-- sort of a forensic look at 2010 and what happened in the midterm elections at-- with these particular groups.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
KIM BARKER: And how that could affect what's going to happen now. Basically what you have is millions of dollars, and it's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars coming into this election where we are not going to know where that money is coming from. We're not going to know who is giving them money, we're not going to know who is buying the ads, we're not, the American public isn't.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And--
KIM BARKER: But the people who are going-- who-- whoever benefits from this, there's no doubt that they're going to know.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But what I find interesting is that these groups are actually getting a tax break--
KIM BARKER: Yes, they are.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --for putting these ads on television, and these are the ads-- they don't say "vote for X or Y." But they say, "Call President Obama" or "Call Mitt Romney--
KIM BARKER: Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --and tell them to do X, Y, or Z."
KIM BARKER: Tell them to do- do X, Y, or Z or-- or tell them to do something in November. Or, you know, tell them to-- to give American workers a break.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm. And they're getting a tax break, just like if they were a charitable organization.
KIM BARKER: Well, sure. If they-- they get this tax break, if they're able to categorize these ads, and a lot of them do, as say, education, or issue advocacy. These sort of ads.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.
KIM BARKER: They're able to categorize as-- as to get a tax break. Now the ads that they actually claim as political ads, they are supposed to pay taxes on those ads. But then there's another caveat on that, where they're supposed to pay taxes on that or their net investment income at the end of the year, whenever is less. So in effect you can find a way to get-- get out of paying these taxes.
BOB SCHIEFFER: But aren't they having to certify to the Internal Revenue Service that these are not political ads?
KIM BARKER: Certify, what does that mean?
BOB SCHIEFFER: Yeah.
KIM BARKER: Yeah. You know here's the interesting thing that we found out is that folks don't have to pay taxes, they don't have to submit their taxes for, you know, more than a year after election, and by then, the ads are off the internet. It's difficult to find the ads. If you're the IRS, and your primary goal is co-- collecting revenue, do you really want to spend all your time chasing these nonprofits? It's-- it's-- I mean, it's-- it's a huge problem, and nobody's actually-- the-- the thing that I find is that nobody is actually talking about it. It's just sort of accepted that this is the way it is, that we have all this anonymous money coming in there and there's nothing we can do about it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, but isn't somebody supposed to police this?
KIM BARKER: Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Isn't there somebody supposed to check on it and who would that be?
KIM BARKER: Well, the IRS is supposed to, on one hand, and then the-- the FEC is supposed to as well, that's the Federal Election Commission. And they are supposed to be the ones that are monitoring that all the ads are being reported. But they're, as many people have reported, they're paralyzed by this three to three partisan split. So you can actually go in front of the FEC and say, I want to run ads. One group did this and may-- I want to run ads let's say the White House or the administration, right before this election and I'm not naming Obama. So do I have to actually re-- report these to the FEC. No, they deadlocked three to three. So there is one group that's actually going to be running ads right before the election. You're not going to know who is paying for those ads. You're not going to know necessarily where they're going or how much they cost because they don't have to re-- report them to the FEC, but they're going to be out there influencing what people think about the campaign.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And they're doing it with a tax break. So in other words the taxpayers are getting stuck with part of the bill for these things.
KIM BARKER: Right, because they don't have to pay income-- they-- they don't have to be-- pay federal income taxes.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How-- how did this come about?
KIM BARKER: Well, and-- these are groups they're called social welfare organization. And they're allowed to spend a certain amount of money on politics. They always have been or at least for the-- the past couple of decades. But it's always to further their mission. You know it's groups like National Right to Life or Sierra Club, that they have a specific issue and they run some ads and campaign ads to further that. But it's not these-- these whole like new groups that sprang up overnight that are like, you know, again, it's Americans for America, Citizens for the Future, these groups with-- with these vague names that everybody can get behind. They come in, tell the IRS, we're not even going to do politics at all, then they get recognized as tax exempt, turn around, start buying ads, fold by the time their tax returns are due. This-- this sort of thing is what we're going-- we've seen it since 2010, we're going to see it to a much greater extent in 2012.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, thank you very much. That's an eye opener.
We'll be back in a moment with our FACE THE NATION Flashback. Stay with us.
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BOB SCHIEFFER: We were talking earlier about how dirty American politics can sometimes be but it was television that gave negative advertising new meaning.
ADLAI STEVENSON: The burdens of that office stagger the imagination.
BOB SCHIEFFER: One of the first came in 1952 when the Stevenson campaign launched this one against Eisenhower, where we begin our FACE THE NATION Flashback.
(Excerpt from a political ad)
BOB SCHIEFFER: In 1964 after the Johnson campaign went up with the infamous daisy ad suggesting Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war, campaigns got so nasty, the party signed a pledge promising not to be negative.
BARRY GOLDWATER: In the campaign of 1964, may escalate into a smear-fest of genuinely alarming proportions.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The alarm went off but no one heard it. In 1988 the infamous Willie Horton ad helped George Bush get elected.
MAN #1: Dukakis not only opposes the death penalty, he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison. One was Willie Horton.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The Swift Boaters in 2004 helped sink John Kerry.
GEORGE ELLIOTT: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
WOMAN: --on shameful dishonest attacks.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The coming of the Super PACs flooded the system with even more money this year and brought us this kind of ad which suggested Romney was responsible for a cancer victim's death.
MAN #2: And she passed away in twenty-two days.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Politics ain't beanbags, the old saying goes, but the flower of nastiness really bloomed with the coming of television. And now with the internet--
MITT ROMNEY: Oh, beautiful.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --anything goes. Our FACE THE NATION Flashback.
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BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, thank you. That's it for us today. I hope you'll join us next week when we'll be broadcasting from the Republican convention in Tampa. And we'll be talking to Florida's Republican Senator Marco Rubio. Plus, we'll have all the latest from the campaign trail and a big roundtable.
Thanks for watching. We'll see you then.