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CBS News

FACE THE NATION

Sunday, August 1, 2004

GUESTS: Senator JOHN KERRY, (D-MA) Democratic Presidential Candidate Senator JOHN EDWARDS, (D-NC) Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate NINA EASTON The Boston Globe MICHAEL DUFFY Time Magazine

MODERATOR: BOB SCHIEFFER - CBS News

This is a rush transcript provided for the information and convenience of the press. Accuracy is not guaranteed.

In case of doubt, please check with FACE THE NATION - CBS NEWS 202-457-4481

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Face the Nation (CBS News) - Sunday, August 1, 2004

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BOB SCHIEFFER, host:

Today on FACE THE NATION, the boys on the bus. We'll talk to John Kerry and John Edwards as the campaigns hit the road.

The Democrats are off and riding after their convention but so is President Bush. Suddenly, buses are the vehicles of choice. President Bush and his caravan rolled across the industrial heartland this weekend crisscrossing the same territory as John Kerry and his bus brigade. We caught up with Kerry and Edwards in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. You'll hear what they had to say about the 9/11 report, the economy, the war and their faith.

Then we'll have a political roundtable with Kerry biographer Nina Easton of The Boston Globe and Mike Duffy of Time magazine, and I'll have a final word on how this campaign stacks up against the last one. But first, Kerry and Edwards on FACE THE NATION.

Announcer: FACE THE NATION with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer. And now, from CBS News in Washington, Bob Schieffer.

SCHIEFFER: And good morning again.

Well, if anybody believes that campaigns start on Labor Day and people don't really start paying attention to politics until after the World Series, well, maybe they used to but that was then and this is now. The polls are telling us that more people than ever are paying attention, and President Bush and John Kerry are doing their very best this weekend to get their attention. Both campaigns hit the road through the heartland yesterday, and they got big crowds which was the first thing we asked John Kerry and John Edwards about when we talked to them in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

Gentlemen, welcome. You seem to be drawing some pretty good crowds here.

Senator JOHN KERRY (Democratic Presidential Candidate): We're very excited about it. We had 25,000 people at 9:00 last night in Harrisburg and an unbelievable crowd here in Greensburg in the rain. We're thrilled.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let's get right to it. Senator Kerry, you endorsed the 9-11 Commission report in toto. Now some Democrats are saying, `Maybe we ought to step back for a minute.' They're questioning one of the main recommendations and that is to put this intelligence chief in the White House.

Sen. KERRY: No, I believe it belongs there, and I'm very comfortable with that decision. In fact, it is there today, and one of the reasons you have a problem is that you haven't known what the right hand is doing vs. the left hand. If you're going to really lead a war on terror, I think it's critical to have the kind of direct accountability of the president. I think the American people want that.

SCHIEFFER: So you're not worried that it might taint...

Sen. KERRY: I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I'm not because, number one, you have a tremendous ability for oversight from the Congress itself in a renewed, strengthened oversight structure that the committee itself, the commission, has put together. That's number one.

Number two, there's also a civil liberties rights oversight structure that they recommend. I think between the two, you have adequate ability to be able to have the oversight. If I'm

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commander in chief, the president of the United States responsible for the safety and security

of the country, I want the ability to hold somebody accountability directly within the White

House. And I think the American people want the ability to know that they have that

accountability with the president.

SCHIEFFER: You made your speech at the convention. You had some criticisms of the administration. The president wasted no time in coming back with his version of things and basically what he said is, `Look, his idea of fixing the economy is just to raise taxes.' He said, `That's all he's got on his mind, raising taxes.'

Sen. KERRY: Well, you know, it's really interesting. This administration has had a problem with truth for some period of time. The Washington Post wrote an article in the front page about a month ago where they said very straightforwardly that this has been the most negative campaign in history by the Republicans and that they are making false charges. Now here's the fact. John Edwards and I provide a tax cut to 98 percent of Americans. Ninety-nine percent of American businesses will get a tax cut under our economic plan. All we're doing is rolling back the tax cut for the wealthiest Americans who earn more than $200,000 a year, and that's what President Bush is trying to protect.

John and I believe the middle class deserves a champion, the middle class deserves a break. And we're determined to give them a real break with health-care reform, with lower premiums, with help sending their kids to college, with help on the child-care tax credit which we raised. We help families, and they want help and need it.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask...

Senator JOHN EDWARDS (Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate): Can I just add one thing to that?

SCHIEFFER: Yes.

Sen. EDWARDS: And on top of that, we're going to get rid of tax breaks for American companies that are outsourcing American jobs, and instead give tax breaks to American companies that are keeping jobs here in America, and I know that's very important to people who are out there struggling.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this, Senator Edwards. It appears that the White House strategy is going to be to picture you as a pretty boy, a lightweight. Does that bother you?

Sen. EDWARDS: No, it doesn't bother me. I think that first of all I have shown through my 51 years of life a toughness and a fight. From the time I was very young, you know, growing up when I was very young in the mill village, working in the mill myself when I was young to help pay my way through college, I spent almost two decades fighting a against teams of lawyers in courtrooms on behalf of kids and families. I fought the same fights in the Senate. No, no, I'm ready for this fight.

Sen. KERRY: John and I are talking about a positive vision for the country. We're not labeling people. We're trying to talk about how we're going to provide health care. Four million Americans have lost their health care, Bob. People are desperate because of the cost of health care. We have a plan, we have a plan to lower the cost of health care for Americans. We have a a plan to revitalize manufacturing in America, to create high technology, new jobs that pay more than the jobs that we're losing overseas. These are the things that Americans care about. That's what we're going to talk about.

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SCHIEFFER: You said in your speech at the convention, you made some very specific policy

criticisms, but it seemed to me that the underlying message was you were saying, `You just

can't trust these people.' Is that what you were saying? Do you think this administration is

lying to the American people?

Sen. KERRY: We have lost credibility in the world, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: Would you go so far as to say they're liars?

Sen. KERRY: I've never used that word, and I don't like--that's not what I'm trying to do. What I'm trying to do is offer an alternative that restores America's credibility. Everybody knows that just saying there are weapons of mass destruction didn't make it so. Just saying you can fight a war on the cheap didn't make it so. Ignoring the advice of generals as to how many troops we needed didn't make our troops safer who were there. I will and I can fight a more effective war on terror that makes America safer. I will be a commander in chief who uses the lessons of war personally in order to be able to do what our troops need to be protected and what our country needs to be defended.

SCHIEFFER: You were very critical on the war but yet your own plans for the war, it seems to me, have been a little vague.

Sen. KERRY: Not vague at all, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: I mean, for example, we know that you say we need to put our alliances together again, but you know it's kind of like that old joke about the coach hollering off to the team on the field, `Give the ball to Leroy,' and finally the guys say, `Look, Coach, Leroy doesn't want the ball.'

Sen. KERRY: Yeah.

SCHIEFFER: It's one thing to say put the alliances together, but we don't seem to be able to find anybody to be in this alliance.

Sen. KERRY: The problem is that this administration has lost credibility. They've pushed countries away. They've never offered a true sharing of the kind of responsibility and decision-making that is necessary to bring people to the table, and I think what you need is a fresh start. I don't think there's a leader in the world who will tell you that there--or even an American senator or congressman who's traveled abroad who doesn't understand what's happened to America in the world today. We've lost respect. We've lost influence, and I think that a fresh start changes the equation, particularly changes it, Bob, for leaders in other countries who have great difficulty right now associating themselves with our policy and with the United States because of the way this administration has burned those bridges. I know that I can do a better job of providing a rationale for those countries to understand their stake in the outcome, and I believe we can put together a very different kind of alliance.

SCHIEFFER: Talking about a new start...

Sen. EDWARDS: Can I just add one thing to that very briefly?

SCHIEFFER: Sure.

Sen. EDWARDS: I was at NATO not long ago and I'm convinced myself that with John as president and with the kind of work that I know he can do, we can actually get NATO involved in the securing of Iraq. I also believe that with him as president, we can make sure

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that other countries in the region--and this is critical, Iran, Syria--are not interfering with

trying to establish a democratic Iraq, and bring other countries like France and Germany and

Russia to the reconstruction efforts so the Iraq economy can get off the ground and we can

get some debt forgiveness.

SCHIEFFER: Yesterday, Vice President Cheney said there were only four senators who voted to authorize military action in Iraq and then voted against funding it, and there were--and he said you two are two of the four.

Sen. EDWARDS: We believe that the president needed the authority to deal with Saddam Hussein and that him being gone is a very good thing. Both of us believe that. We did not know that the president would not do--use his authority the way he should use it, that he wouldn't do the work to set up an international coalition, that he wouldn't have a plan--who could have ever predicted he'd have no plan--no serious plan to win the peace? And it was important for us--we had been out talking about this from the very beginning--the president wasn't doing the things necessary, putting our troops at risk, putting American taxpayers' dollars into a sinking hole, and it was important for us when this vote came, Bob, we had-this was up or down, yes or no. Do you believe we should give this president whatever he's asking for and he'll come back next year and ask for the same thing? It was important for us to say no this policy is not working. What we believe needs to be done is we need to change course.

SCHIEFFER: Do you envision having to send more troops to Iraq?

Sen. KERRY: No, no.

SCHIEFFER: Is it possible you'd have to do that?

Sen. KERRY: I don't envision it. I believe that my leadership and my plan to approach these countries--and I'm not negotiating it publicly, Bob. I'll tell you. I know what I want to do. I know what I believe can be achieved. And I have colleagues of mine in the Senate who have come back from various trips who have related to me what they believe is possible. I think a fresh start for America, a new president with new credibility, has the capacity to bring people to the table who are not there today, and if we pursue a very different foreign policy, not just with respect to Iraq but with respect to North Korea, AIDS, Africa, with respect to less developed countries, global warming, nuclear proliferation in Russia and other countries, if we demonstrate an America that has a foreign policy that is smarter, more engaged and more respectful of the world, we're going to bring people to our side...

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you one question...

Sen. KERRY: ...and we will avoid having to put--we're not only not going to put additional troops there, that's the way to bring our troops home.

SCHIEFFER: You...

Sen. KERRY: And that's what I want to do.

SCHIEFFER: On a totally different subject, you said in your speech that you don't wear your religion on your sleeve. Were you saying that President Bush has crossed some kind of line and put his religion into the political world?

Sen. KERRY: I believe the administration on occasion has unabashedly done so. Look at the way they made--I'm for faith-based intervention in the lives of our communities. I support--

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I've long supported faith-based efforts, but I do it in a way that abides by the Constitution.

The president on the other hand--and this is why it hasn't happened...

SCHIEFFER: So you're saying he's using his religion for political purposes.

Sen. KERRY: No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I said that the choices they have made have stepped over a line. Whether it's inadvertent or purposeful, I'm not--I don't know. I just know that the reason the faith-based initiative of the president didn't pass is that it violated constitutional lines. What I want to do is make certain that I am president for all Americans. I--my faith is very important to me. I'm a Christian. I'm Catholic. It's important to me. I've been raised the way I'm raised, and I believe what I believe, and it has served me through my whole life. But as I said in my speech, I'm not going to claim that God is on my side, and I'm not going to go out and divide people. I want to pray that we are on God's side. And I want us--all of us--to be represented by a president who recognizes people of many faiths, of different backgrounds, of no faith. That's the job of the president of the United States. That's our country.

Sen. EDWARDS: A--my own personal view, having grown up in rural North Carolina and feeling like I have a really good instinct for what people care about, I think they want their president to be a good person, which means if he's a father, he's a good father; if he's a husband, he's a good husband; if he's a person of faith, that's important, and it certainly adds to the equation, a person of strength and character. I know this guy. He meets all those qualifications in multiples, so I think the American people are going to embrace him.

SCHIEFFER: Gentlemen, thank you very much.

Sen. EDWARDS: Thanks, Bob.

Sen. KERRY: Thanks a lot, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: And, of course, it goes without saying that we have issued invitations to the president and vice president to be interviewed, and we will go wherever they happen to be when they give us the word.

Joining us now to add some analysis, perspective to this, Nina Easton of The Boston Globe. She's part of the team of reporters who wrote "John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography." She's here with us this morning to talk about this man that she's known for a long, long time. And our old friend, Michael Duffy of Time magazine, who knows a lot about everything.

Let's talk first about this business of these crowds. I said at the beginning of this that if people think that these polls are wrong about people not being interested, they needed to come to Pennsylvania yesterday. This was a rally held out in the rain. And when we got there, people had been standing there for several hours because you had to go through metal detectors to come to this rally. The Secret Service was making everybody leave their umbrellas at the entrance way so they went on and stood in the rain. There must have been six--some people said as many as 10,000 people to watch this rally. I think that's extraordinary at this time of year.

Now, Mike, have you--what do you know about the Bush rallies? Because we hear they had big crowds, too.

Mr. MICHAEL DUFFY (Time): Same sizes. In Cambridge, Ohio, several thousand people came, which is a very small town, John Glenn's hometown--a couple thousand people there yesterday. And then he went on to Pittsburgh--the president went on to Pittsburgh last night

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and drew 5,000 around about dinnertime on a Saturday night. Both--none of these were

particularly great weather days or scenes. So, yeah, people paying attention and they're

interested, and it's one of the other reasons it's probably going to be really close.

SCHIEFFER: I think it's going to be a different kind of campaign this time. I mean, you know, last time there really weren't any issues that jumped out, but this is going to be a campaign, it seems to me, about issues.

Nina, let me ask you--you've been following John Kerry for a long, long time. You saw his convention speech. It seems to me that this is going to be a campaign about who ought to be the commander in chief. I mean, we saw more generals...

Ms. NINA EASTON (The Boston Globe): Right. That's right.

SCHIEFFER: ...at this convention than we saw labor leaders.

Ms. EASTON: Right.

SCHIEFFER: I can't remember when that's been the case at a Democratic convention.

Ms. EASTON: `Strength,' `protection'--those words were used over and over and over again. And this is a formula that, actually, John Kerry's used in the past, very much to his benefit. He's reached back in his history as a Vietnam veteran to bring that forward in campaigns. Let's go back to 1984, in a very tight primary race, the band of brothers, his crewmates, showed up to help him, to rally to his side. 1996, in a campaign against the popular governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, again, the band of brothers showed up to his side. And then just going back to Iowa, when special offers--excuse me, special operations officer Jim Rassmann--and this is the man that John Kerry pulled out of the water under combat fire, enemy fire, saved his life--he made a surprise showing in Iowa that was electrifying and really helped John kerry in that primary.

SCHIEFFER: So these are not new draftees.

Ms. EASTON: These are...

SCHIEFFER: These are people who've been recalled to active duty here.

Ms. EASTON: And they were up on the stage. They were on the stage Thursday night alongside John Kerry. And as you said, there was a lot of military presence there. We had Wesley Clark talking about the fraud that the Bush administration had committed on the American people. The crowd went nuts over that. These delegates, by the way, are very much at odds with John Kerry, though, over the Iraq War. Ninety-five percent of them, according to a Boston Globe poll, opposed even going into Iraq. And that's a war, of course-John Kerry's been...

SCHIEFFER: That's...

Ms. EASTON: ...critical, but has voted for.

SCHIEFFER: Yeah. That's a very interesting point, and we'll see what happens on that score as we get deeper into this campaign.

Ms. EASTON: Right.

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Mr. DUFFY: All through this, you know, convention, they--Kerry's kind of counter-

programming for his weaknesses. You know, he's trying to turn his weaknesses into

strengths, not on the war--not only on the war, but also, you know, he talked, as he said in

the interview, about `I'm not as--I don't see things in simple terms. I see the complexities.'

He--and then he tries to reverse the current on Bush, saying, `He does see things in simple

terms. I don't wear my faith on my sleeve.' He's trying to turn his weaknesses into strengths

and then sort of reverse the charges on Bush. And it was very consistent all through the

week. It was--that's really what he was trying to do at the convention.

SCHIEFFER: Is this a gamble for him? Because, clearly, what the Kerry people have decided is if they can beat George Bush on national security, they can win the election. That's what they think. Is that a gamble? Because normally elections turn on economic issues.

Mr. DUFFY: Well, it--everything seems upside down. Not only are there lots of generals at a Democratic convention--it's very unusual. Even in the interview, I was struck by how much he's talking about, again, you know, this--trying to express the strength--notion that he is going to be the strong leader, he's the one who's going to unite the country. The other thing about the interview that interested me was he was--still had that same sort of forceful urgency in his voice, which we were surprised to see on Thursday night. We didn't expect it. He was very good at it. He's obviously retained it. He can do it in a spontaneous session. That wasn't clear. And then he used that expression three times in the interview, which I thought was telling. He said, `I want to have a fresh start.' He kept coming back to the expression `fresh start.' He didn't use that at the convention. That's clearly something that he--that's a really good, simple way of trying to explain what it is he's trying to do here. And it's new. It's--he hadn't said it before.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, let me just tell you, if anybody thinks terrorism and this whole security issue is not going to be something that's going to be in the headlines, of course, we have this new report that there is a new terrorist threat. Bob Orr, who covers things like this for us, sent us a note just a second ago. He says within the last 24 to 48 hours, US intelligence received specific information on a plot targeting multiple sites in the financial sectors of both New York and Washington. He says officials in both cities have begun to take precautions. Security in large buildings and public institutions is being beefed up. One official said, quote, "We are rightly concerned because this information is so specific and appears to be credible." Analysts are working now to develop other sources to corroborate the information and better assess its credibility.

And, of course, the ominous thing about this is we have the Republican convention coming in the financial capital of the world, New York.

Ms. EASTON: Yet another reminder that we're a nation at war and that very much is playing out in the presidential campaign. John Kerry needs to tell people and remind people over and over again that he can be a commander in chief because people right now--I think there's a tendency to want to trust the incumbent president, I mean, particularly with these threats hanging over us.

SCHIEFFER: And getting back to the campaign trail, we learned today that the Republicans plan to stay very busy before their campaign. This is normally the time when both parties kind of take a little break and let the two conventions get over with and they start up on Labor Day. We're told that the Bush campaign starting tomorrow--well, they're already under way with some attack--they're going to open a withering attack beginning tomorrow on John Kerry and I think beginning with attacking his Senate record. He's trying to emphasize the days in Vietnam. They're going to open up on the Senate...

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