'MEET THE PRESS' TRANSCRIPT

[continued from part one]

MR. WILLIAMS: We are back with our Roundtable. Joining us right here, at
least, my colleague David Bloom, White House correspondent for NBC News;
David Gergen, a veteran of-What is it today?-four White Houses, I guess.
You all know him; and a byline anyone in politics has known for many years,
Dan Balz of The Washington Post.

And starting with this cozy group here, before we bring in any outside
voices there may be, David Bloom, you were there leading the
questioning-What day was it?-Thursday on the road in Ohio. Tell us about
the atmospherics that couldn't be felt at home watching the television
version.

MR. BLOOM: Well, obviously, the Bush camp, I think, realized that they'd
made a mistake in terms of stopping the refusal to answer questions. Their
basic argument was-the question that was posed by The Dallas Morning News,
about, "Could you pass a federal background check, Governor," they thought
that that was a relevant question. The problem is, is that once you start
to answer a question that goes beyond where you've been before, it makes it
impossible, or virtually impossible, to stop answering additional
questions. So they knew that more questions would be forthcoming. On
Thursday, they were still answering those questions. By Friday, they
basically said, "Look, we've just got to draw the line and get it 25 years,
back to 1974." And I think what you saw was the Bush camp realizing that
this was their first big trouble on the road and they weren't quite sure at
the beginning how to deal with it.

MR. WILLIAMS: Dan, your terrific lead in Saturday's Washington Post was
that Bill Clinton has changed the rules forever on this kind of thing.
How's that?

MR. BALZ: Well, I think one of the points is that in the past, something
like this, probably a little more serious than this episode, but something
like this, might have threaten to knock a candidate out of the race. But
one of the things that Bill Clinton has taught presidential candidates is
to kind of keep your head down and bull through these things and keep going
and not to quit in the face of it. And the other thing I think that we've
learned over the years is that there is a greater public tolerance for
mistakes of the past. If people did things 20 or 25 or 30 years ago, the
public is able to digest that, filter it and come to their own conclusions,
and they are rather forgiving about things.

MR. WILLIAMS: What do you use as your rudder, your guiding light on the
road? It's up to you to sit down at a laptop and you decide what paper
readers in Washington see. How do you know that this is a story? What's
your daily gut check like?

MR. BALZ: Well, I'll tell you, this was a very interesting week to me,
because there was a kind of flurry on Wednesday that occurred before any of
us knew that Governor Bush had answered the question for The Dallas Morning
News. There was a flurry because there had been a press conference in
Austin in which he got hit by questions about had he ever used cocaine, and
he again refused to answer them. In essence, nothing new had happened, and
yet, there was kind of a frenzy building. That surprised me. I didn't quite
understand that. But the minute I heard, actually on your broadcast on
Wednesday night, about The Dallas Morning News story...

MR. WILLIAMS: 9:55 PM.

MR. BALZ: ...it triggered something in my mind that said this story has
changed, it's changed in an important way. The Bush campaign has made a
decision that is going to probably cost them something at some point. And
at that point, I knew that it was going to be a major news story.

MR. WILLIAMS: David Gergen, Congressman Kasich, a thoughtful guy, thinks
that there should be a rulebook for the journalism business. Now, there has
been a national news council that has taken on cases on an ad hoc basis,
but readers and viewers and journalists have a funny way of deciding the
rules on an ad hoc basis as the story comes up. Who do we see about that?

MR. GERGEN: We'll have a rulebook in journalism about the same day we get
money out of politics. They just-neither one's going to happen, and this is
an evolving business. Many of us, of course, feel it's evolving in some bad
ways and some unfortunate ways. We've gone down market; we're much more
scandal-oriented; we jump on things and sensationalize them in ways we
didn't do 15, 20 years ago. I think it is much more difficult to govern.

Underlying John Kasich's point is: Can't we come to some better
understandings about what's private and what's not? It does seem to me
that's very worthwhile. And what George W. Bush is trying to say is, "If it
happened when you're young, it's different than if it happened when you're
an adult running for office."

MR. WILLIAMS: We have a couple gentlemen just clamoring to get into this
conversation, both joining us by satellite. Let me read you a quote from
James Carville before we get to those two handsome young gentlemen flanking
the center portrait sadly.

"What I want to say to the press is 'Don't ask.' And what I want to say to
George W. is, 'Don't tell,' because once you start answering, you are never
going to be able to stop.' Cocaine? How many times did you do it? Where?
Who was your source? It's like an elevator that has no down button. It just
gets higher and higher. They'll try to trick you into answering questions."

Paul Begala, how would you counsel this Republican candidate?

MR. BEGALA: Well, I'd tell him, he should have stuck to his original guns.
The correct answer to David Bloom's question is, "David, it's none of your
darn business." This is something that has no relevance to Bush's fitness
for office. Now, my problem as a Democrat is not accusations of substance
abuse 30 years ago, it's Bush's lack of substance today.

And picking up on what Dan said, I think what Clinton taught us was not
just that there should be some zone of privacy, but that the press will
respect that more and certainly voters will agree with you if you have some
public agenda you're advocating. Bush's problem is not that he won't answer
drug questions, it's that he won't tell us what's his position on the
minimum wage, he won't tell us what's his position on the president's
proposal to have Medicare cover prescription drugs, he won't tell us if he
supports the Republican platform to abolish the Department of Education. If
he had ideas out there, I don't think he would be bedeviled by these
personal questions.

MR. WILLIAMS: And then there was a prescient piece in Time magazine that
American readers woke up to Monday morning this past week, and it was by
John Stacks, and it said: "...it's not hard to comprehend a national
disinclination, post-Monica, to paw over the dark moments of yet another
politician's life. The problem is that using cocaine, unlike having a bit
of sport with the ladies, is illegal, and the country has decided to dole
out harsh prison sentences to many people caught with the drug. If Bush did
try cocaine, how does that square with his support of Texas legislation
putting those caught with less than a gram of the drug in jail."

John, you have-you wrote that. It was out there, as they say, for a few
days. Around about Wednesday, Thursday you saw your back page piece come
true. How has the story changed since then?

MR. STACKS: Well, I think it's evolved remarkably over the week, and I do
think that perhaps Candidate Bush has now arrived, maybe by inadvertence,
at a kind of, at least semisafe place. He's basically answered the question
by saying that nothing has happened in the last 25 years. And for those
people who care about this, there is a kind of tacit admission. For those
who don't care, I think they will ignore it.

MR. WILLIAMS: Where is the distinction that we are talking as people
continue to refer to it, Dan Balz, a felony, this is a crime in someone's
past, that's what makes these questions legitimate?

MR. BALZ: These questions are legitimate, but I think that continuing to
badger a candidate in the absence of credible allegations will put the
press on trial, as well as the candidate. I mean, I think there is a danger
for Governor Bush in the posture that he has adopted here. If nothing ever
happened, people are now likely to assume something did happen. On the
other hand, I think that if the press makes the 2000 presidential campaign
mostly about the personal lives of politicians, the press is going to pay a
terrible price for that as well.

MR. WILLIAMS: David Gergen, you're not going to tell me that the public is
going to turn against the news media, are you?

MR. GERGEN: Can it turn any more? Listen, I think the story's simmering
down. I think John Stacks has it right, it has not been on the front page
for the last couple of days. It's now an inside story. There are only two
things I think are going to keep it going. One would be if there is a
credible charge, which we don't have yet, but if that happens, then the
press is going to be after this and he may be-you know, he could be in
trouble at that point. The other thing I think is going to be explored, and
it's legitimate to be explored, is whether as governor he is putting into
jail people who are 23 or 24 years old who are recreational users of hard
drugs. In other words, if there was something he might have done at that
age and he's now putting people in jail for it, I think that's a legitimate
discussion. My understanding of what he's been doing in Texas, contrary to
what's been said in the press, is he has not been trying to force those
people into jail. He's been trying to get the dealers in. That's quite
different from what I think the allegations in the press have been.

MR. WILLIAMS: And, David Bloom, since you're out on the road with this and
taking in this story with all of your senses, are names being named as far
as, "Oh, these are the mean people floating this story out"? Are names
being named like-initials like John McCain as to the winners of this kind
of thing while this morass starts to simmer?

MR. BLOOM: I think that people who point a finger at an individual camp are
mistaken. I mean, I can tell you that I've received phone calls from people
on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats alike, who are
adversaries of George W. Bush, who want to stir this pot. But let me say
one thing about Paul's comment about we shouldn't be asking these
questions. The questions don't get asked persistently until the governor
changed his answer. It was at that juncture that the intensive scrutiny
began. And so my point is this, the governor in choosing to devise a
strategy which said, "I will not answer these questions," had to know that
there was going to be a rough spot that he had to get through. There would
come a moment when there would be intensive scrutiny on this subject. And
if the answer was, "I'm not going to talk about this," then that's the
answer. But at that juncture, it was the governor's decision to then start
answering some questions and not answer others that got him into a pickle,
I believe.

MR. WILLIAMS: Paul Begala, there are paid investigators, political, media,
you know that. There are people on all kinds of payrolls looking into the
background of George W. Bush. It's why he did the same thing to get a jump
on what they might be able to find. Is it-as we said at the top of the
broadcast, is the crux of this story, of course, we're absent any
allegations or a shred of proof-is the crux of this story, as David Bloom
points out, the lack of a flat denial?

MR. BEGALA: No, I think the crux of the story is the press now-the
political press; I suppose I'm now part of it-has two modes, Brian:
puffball and sleazeball. You know, for months you all just laid down and
kissed Bush's ring, and now, all of a sudden, you're treating him like, oh,
he's some felon and we're talking about something that we have no reason to
believe is true as if it were.

My problem with all of this is what we now in the media ought to be
badgering him about are issues that are relevant to the performance of the
presidency. OK. I've offered-if the governor's watching, Governor Bush,
I've offered a $1,000 bounty that I'll give to your favorite charity if
you'll just take a darn position on the minimum wage. There are millions of
Americans trying to lift their kids out of poverty earning the minimum
wage. You won't tell us whether you'll support our effort to raise it or
not. That's what we ought be badgering about. Not about myths about 30
years ago.

MR. WILLIAMS: And, Dan Balz, the governor, for his defense, we don't have a
representative on today, says, "Look, there's plenty of time for that. I'm
going to wait until the people are paying attention." Now, I think you've
been called a puffball. I'm not sure. You want to respond?

MR. BALZ: Well, I've either been called a puffball or a sleazeball. I don't
know which.

MR. WILLIAMS: Take one.

MR. BALZ: I've probably been called worse by Paul Begala over the years.
So, I mean, I would disagree with Paul in his characterization of the
coverage of Bush, that it's either puffball or sleazeball. I mean, I think
there have been favorable pieces written about him. I think this week there
have been some tough questions asked about him.

On the other hand, there has been a persistent theme in the coverage that
George W. Bush has not put very much on the table in terms of what he
believes or where he wants to take the presidency or the country if he were
to become president. That is an underlying theme of the coverage, and it
will continue to be one. It's one that the press and his opponents are, I
think, stepping up the volume on, at this point.

MR. WILLIAMS: David Gergen, how does this sliding scale, in a world absent
a rulebook-we have this sliding scale, the importance of a news story, and
the public has a lot to say about this. How does this work, these
allegations, without any facts, compared to, say, what went on in the Oval
Office while a president was on the telephone with the Hill?

MR. GERGEN: I'm not quite sure where that question is going, and I'm not
sure I want to pursue it. But the-there are differences with the Clinton
story obviously. One was that the Clinton-there were specific allegations
with regard to the president; there have been no specific allegations with
regard to the governor. The allegations regarding the president concerned
his public time and public life, and as an adult, these rumors concern
Governor Bush as a young man. Those are very, very different propositions,
and I think that's why the press, while it-has properly pushed this issue.
I think David Bloom was absolutely right. Once the governor started saying
"not in the last seven years," it was obviously right to push that story
and to push him toward where he's going. And the press got more out of him
as a result, and we know more than we did before.

But I think that the-I don't think this story is going to have legs, as we
say in journalism, unless something more comes forward now. And I do think
that the focus is going to move to exactly what Paul Begala is raising and
the governor now has some months to respond.

MR. WILLIAMS: And remember it was seven years at 9:55 PM the night before.
It moved to 15 while Americans were commuting to work and then took its
place at 25, its, so far, final resting point later that afternoon. And,
John Stacks, is there a chance in cynical America of the late 1990s that
when George Bush uses a down-home expression like "Put a stick in the
ground, all questions stop here, I'm erecting a zone of privacy, you, my
fellow Republicans and Democrats should do the same," can he be right? Is
there a chance he gets his way?

MR. STACKS: Well, I think there is. I mean, I think there's a kind of
organic life to these stories and this one may have, at least, kind of
semi-died. We did a poll on Thursday night asking people: Does it matter?
Is it disqualifying if, in fact, he did use cocaine? And is it important to
know? And the numbers we got this week, as opposed to the numbers we got in
June, were remarkably lower in terms of their interest in the story. I
think almost watching this story this week, the country said, "OK. We get
it. We've had enough, and we want to move on."

MR. WILLIAMS: So, Paul Begala, there's no joy in this for you?

MR. BEGALA: No. In fact, I'm frustrated. I would have thought we learned a
lesson from what we've been through for the last two years, chasing the
president's private life, which had no bearing on his ability to conduct
his job. I think George Bush-I don't support him, but I know him a little
bit and he's a decent guy. Can't we begin in an adversarial process by
saying someone's our opponent, not our enemy? You know, Bush hasn't even
had a beer in 13 years and we're chasing him. I haven't had a beer since
last night. He ought to get his butt out there and take some positions on
some doggone issues and maybe these things wouldn't harass him the same way.

MR. WILLIAMS: David Bloom, you're shaking your head.

MR. BLOOM: Well, I mean, I think that the lesson that Paul draws from the
past two years is precisely the wrong lesson. The message for Bill Clinton
was: "I may have sinned in my past, but it's not relevant to my
presidency." In fact, it was relevant to the presidency...

MR. BEGALA: Not to his presidential duties.

MR. BLOOM: ...and only certain to validate the questions that were...

MR. BEGALA: Not to his performance as president.

MR. BLOOM: Paul, if you think that what happened in the White House wasn't
relevant to his duty...

Mr. STACKS: Right.

MR. BLOOM: I think you're sadly mistaken.

MR. BEGALA: No, I'm not.

MR. BLOOM: You know, I...

MR. BEGALA: The American people in the United States Senate took my side,
David.

MR. BLOOM: Paul, it's not a question of whether it was disqualifying to
office, but whether what happened in the past was a predictor of the
future. And I'm not saying that that's the case in this case. But what I'm
saying is you're saying...

MR. BEGALA: But why ask? But why ask? What would you not ask, David?

MR. BLOOM: Hold on. Here's the point. I didn't ask Governor Bush a question
about past drug use until the governor said, "Questions based upon the
federal background check," which he thought only covered seven years, "are
relevant," At which point I said to the governor, "Governor, the federal
background check covers back to your 18th birthday. If they're relevant
based upon seven years, then aren't they relevant back to then?" That's a
legitimate question for us to ask once he opens the door.

MR. BEGALA: I think it's a gotcha question. In fact, the federal background
checks are private, they're not conducted by NBC News, and there's a huge
difference. The message that a candidate might send-if Bush were to come
out-and it's hypothetical-and name particular things he may have used a
long, long time ago, it really might send the wrong sort of message to
young people. And I think it's better for him to say, "It's none of your
business. It was a long time ago." Every shred of evidence out there is
that he lives a clean, decent, sober, honorable life. He just ought not be
president. I mean, the gynecologist next door to me leads a clean, sober
life, but we won't make him president, because he doesn't have positions on
the issues.

MR. BLOOM: But that's my point, Paul, is I don't disagree with a thing
you're saying. What I'm saying is we have a right to ask questions. He has
a right not to answer those questions.

MR. BEGALA: Agree.

MR. BLOOM: When his answer changes, we then have a right and, in fact, a
duty to ask more questions.

MR. WILLIAMS: And, Dan, your view from the road? I hate to break that up,
gentlemen. Is there going to become a seminal moment, a "Have you no
decency, sir?" moment in the business of covering candidates?

MR. BALZ: Well, this is an evolving problem. We've been dealing with it now
for a dozen or more years, about what is legitimate, relevant to ask a
presidential candidate. There is no hard and fast rule, as David said. I
don't think there ever will be. These things take on a life of their own,
sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for ill. I think we judge them as
they evolve on the campaign trail. We try to do the best we can in
determining what's relevant and what's not and how far we can or should go.
But it's not going to change.

MR. WILLIAMS: Last word, David Gergen.

MR. GERGEN: Well, there has been, I think, a movement in the line of what's
acceptable on the part of the public. It used to be taking a puff of
marijuana disqualified you. That's no longer true. The nanny stuff is gone
now. I think we're moving toward a point if people committed discretions as
baby boomers, when they were young, the public is going to say, "Forget it.
We're going to judge you as an adult."

MR. WILLIAMS: I want to thank you all for taking part in this conversation.
An obviously still- changing story. Appreciate you all here, and by
satellite, we have a presidential candidate waiting for us. Our Meet the
Contender series 2000 with Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes
when we come back.

(Announcements)

MR. WILLIAMS: We'll meet presidential contender Alan Keyes after this brief
station break.

(Announcements)

MR. WILLIAMS: We are back on MEET THE PRESS. Republican presidential
contender Alan Keyes is with us this morning. Welcome.

MR. KEYES: Thank you.

MR. WILLIAMS: Why is it that everyone comes away from your events and says,
"You know who the exciting guy is? You know who my new guy is? It's Alan
Keyes. I saw him speak"? What happens to those people between your speech
and when they pull a curtain behind them?

MR. KEYES: Oh, I don't think anything happens. I think we've done very well
amongst people who have heard and who share my sense of the priorities.
Because I believe we're in the midst of a great moral crisis in this
country. It's not a crisis about individual behavior, it's a crisis about
our moral principles as a people and whether we're following policies,
making judgments with respect to issues like abortion that, in fact, accord
with our basic stated views and beliefs. And if we continue to stray from
that, it's about whether we can hold on to our liberty while abandoning the
truths on which that claim to freedom is based. And I think when people
hear me talk about it, very often, the truth is convincing. That's the only
thing I can say.

MR. WILLIAMS: What may hurt you, it's been said, is you're an absolutist on
things like abortion, chiefly abortion, and we don't have a lot of U.S.
presidential absolutist history to fall back on. Deals are cut, people move
to the middle. No such luck with you.

MR. KEYES: Well, except on certain issues. We couldn't cut deals on issues
like slavery and civil rights, because at the end of the day, as a people,
we're defined by one simple premise: All men are created equal and endowed
by their creator with certain unalienable rights. On the day when we as a
people turn our backs completely on that premise, this whole republic will
collapse, and our claim to liberty and due process and respect for our
individual rights will be gone. It's a claim based on an appeal to the
transcendent authority of the creator. The issue of abortion involves
turning our backs on that principle and that's why it will not go away any
more than the issue of slavery could go away.

MR. WILLIAMS: All right. Historians would argue, however, that Abraham
Lincoln was the original pragmatist and cut deals all along the way,
including the knowledge that it was expanding before the Emancipation
Proclamation.

MR. KEYES: Not on that issue of principle, no.

MR. WILLIAMS: Now, let's talk about Iowa, the straw poll. I'm reading from
tomorrow's U.S. News. And Michael Barone says, "The Ames straw poll was a
fair test." Was it?

MR. KEYES: Oh, I don't think so. I think we went through it because it gave
us an opportunity to go around Iowa, to talk to a lot of people in
different parts of the state. Many of my supporters came up and made it
quite clear, since we're a grass-roots-based campaign, we're not appealing
to a lot of rich special interests, or anything, and they just literally
did not have the money to pay for the ticket. Iowa is going through hard
times. There are a lot of folks there who can't afford to shell out even
$50 because of the situation that they're in. What we did find, though,
because all our people had to pay for themselves, had to get to the straw
poll under their own steam, it was a proof of the kind of hard commitment
to standing there with the truth that I think is going to be decisive in
the actual caucuses.

MR. WILLIAMS: And what do you think is wrong with a country where we spend
this Sunday morning talking about an allegation without proof and the
resultant political problem for a Texas governor, when a Harvard PhD former
ambassador is begging for news coverage?

MR. KEYES: Well, I don't beg for news coverage. I go out and talk to people.

MR. WILLIAMS: It wouldn't hurt.

MR. KEYES: But the one thing I do think is wrong, I think it's more
important to ask whether we as a people are respecting our moral principles
than it is to obsess over whether this or that person has made some
mistakes. We're never going to see a time when we don't have political
leaders and human beings who don't make mistakes. But we will not survive
as a free people if we don't correct the error of abandoning our basic
principle. Either our rights come from God or they come from a mother's
choice. You can't have it both ways.

MR. WILLIAMS: A prediction as we go along the way, let's say New Hampshire,
how will you do?

MR. KEYES: Well, I'm not sure. We just go out. I'll carry the message to
the people. We've been getting very good turnouts at our events, lots of
people signing up to work and spread the word at the grass roots. I will
speak my mind, tell the truth as best I can and leave the rest in God's hands.

MR. WILLIAMS: Alan Keyes, thank you very much for coming on the broadcast
this Sunday morning.

MR. KEYES: My pleasure.

MR. WILLIAMS: We will be right back with more of MEET THE PRESS in just a
moment.

(Announcements)

MR. WILLIAMS: Let's see what's coming up on "Dateline" tonight.

MR. STONE PHILLIPS: Thanks, Brian. It's an inside look at a place few
journalists have dared to explore. "Dateline" is the first newsmagazine to
return to a nightmare the world forgot. A "Dateline" exclusive at 7, 6
Central. Brian.

MR. WILLIAMS: Stone Phillips, thanks. Remember to start your day tomorrow
on "Today" with Katie and Matt. I hope to see you all this coming week on
"NBC Nightly News," and, of course, in prime time, for our broadcast, "The
News," on cable, on MSNBC at 9 and each night on CNBC at 10:00.

That is all for our broadcast today. We'll be back next week, and remember,
as a certain guy who sits in this chair says, if it's Sunday, it's MEET THE
PRESS