Read the complete transcript.
MR. BROKAW: All right. Thanks, Chuck. We'll see you later on MEET THE PRESS in our roundtable.
We're joined now by former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who has been a surrogate and an advocate for his friend John McCain.
I hope you understand the spirit in which I say this, but when I was a kid hanging around Bud's pool hall, you're the kind of guy I thought I probably would encounter. So you, you know the meaning of the phrase "run the table."
FMR. SEN. FRED THOMPSON (R-TN): I've heard of it, yes.
MR. BROKAW: Your senator have to run the table?
SEN. THOMPSON: Well, he has to get several of these, these battleground states, there's no question about it. Some people liken it to an inside straight. I think that's probably making it too tough, tougher than it is. It looks to me like it pretty much boils down to the undecided vote, which a lot of experts think will break heavily for John McCain. If they're decided, they're probably already for Obama. And so he's got a shot. He's, he's closing. I think the direction things are going in is, is equally important as where the numbers are today. And the direction is, is--they've been pretty much--seems to be going in John's direction.
I've been in Ohio and Pennsylvania recently and I've seen the turnout. I think Sarah Palin had about 25,000 in rural Missouri the other day. The enthusiasm is tremendous. People are really focusing now on what's at stake. And John's a closer, he always has been. He often is given up for dead, you know, literally and politically. People have been wrong about him before. He's in his element now, and he's, he's feeling good about it. So I would not count him out by any stretch of the imagination. I think the, the election is yet to be decided.
MR. BROKAW: The Economist has described a group of voters that has crossed over to vote for John McCain. They call them "Obamacans." These are disaffected Republicans and Libertarians. A couple of very prominent conservative columnists have commented on all this. We want to share with our viewers this morning what Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post had to say on Friday.
"The National security choice in this election is no contest. The domestic policy choice is more equivocal because it is ideological. McCain is the quintessential center-right candidates. Yet the quintessential center-right country is poised to reject him. The hunger for anti-Republican catharsis and the blinding promise of Obamian hope are simply too strong. The reckoning," he says, "will come in the morning."
And then Michael Gerson, who was a speechwriter for President Bush said, "Yet there is little doubt, given a likely (though not certain) McCain defeat, that the conservative movement would enter a period of intense soul-searching. The issues that have provided conservatives with victories in the past - particularly welfare and crime - have been rendered irrelevant by success. The issues of the moment - income stagnation, climate disruption, massive demographic shifts and health-care access - seem a strange, unexplored land for many in the movement. And McCain, though a past reformer, did little to reaffirm that reputation during his campaign."
The senator is at the head of a ticket in a--of a party that's been in power eight years now. The president, who's the head of that party, has historically low approval ratings. The country is saying, 85 percent, we're off on the wrong track. Isn't he swimming against a tsunami?
SEN. THOMPSON: Yeah. Yeah. He is--he's going into the strongest headwinds that I've ever seen for a candidate in a presidential race. Some might say that it's, it's amazing that he has a chance to win this race. You mentioned the factors, plus the fact that in this country, you know, we swing the pendulum. We, we have one side in for a while and then another side in for a while. The president gets credit or blame for anything that's happening. We know the numbers, we know the generic ballot and all those kinds of things, and then, you know, shortly before the election, the bottom seems to drop out of the economy. I mean, just to, you know--in case we hadn't gotten the point yet, it seems, that fate's playing with us. So, yeah, it's, it's remarkable. We nominated the, the only fellow that'll have a chance, I think, under these circumstances. And it's because of, of several things. But, but because of the character of, of the man. Here is a guy who has spent his entire life demonstrating courage, honor, dedication, duty, putting his country first, sacrifice. Someone who has been willing to stand up to power, whether it be Democratic or Republican power, whose entire life has equipped him to be the leader of the free world. Charles is right about the national security part. It's really no question. Here's a man who has been involved one way or another in the major issues facing this country for the last 25 years.
On the other hand, you have a fellow who is the most inexperienced and least qualified from a national security standpoint of any Democratic candidate I've seen in my lifetime.
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