Scarborough Country - Interview

SHOW: SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY 22:00

HEADLINE: SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY For June 24, 2003

BYLINE: Joe Scarborough

GUESTS: Andrew Klein; Deborah Capaldi; Ava Cadell; Jeff Flake; John McCain; Amy Seagar; David Theroux; John Mccain; Carol Moseley-Braun; Peter Flaherty

HIGHLIGHT:
Are tax dollars being used to pay women to watch porn? A controversial new study says women are hitting first when it comes to domestic violence. Are cell phones in cars as dangerous as driving while drunk? Senator John McCain discusses President Bush and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

BODY:
SCARBOROUGH: Hey, welcome back to SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY. I'm Joe Scarborough.

I spoke with Senator John McCain on Capitol Hill today, and I got his thoughts on George Bush's re-election campaign, the Republican Party's deficit spending, and the Democrat's misguided attacks on weapons of mass destruction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCARBOROUGH: Senator, let's talk first about the president's fund-raiser last night. He raised over $4 million. There were 17 donors that raised $200,000 a piece. Let's not talk about campaign finance on the Congressional level. Let's talk about it in presidential campaigns where this White House has already said they're going to raise $270 million in upcoming campaign. If an administration can raise that type of money, I mean, there's no way a challenger could ever have a fair election against him, can they?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R)-ARIZONA: Campaign finance reform was intended to stop soft money, particularly in Congressional and other federal contests, but the presidential thing is a little bit different, obviously. But, you know, he's raising hard money.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes. You know, I spoke to a group of interns today on the Hill, and they asked me who was going to win the Democratic nomination. Without thinking twice, I said, the guy with the most money. Isn't that a safe bet in modern American politics that the presidential candidate that raises the most money wins?

MCCAIN: New Hampshire still gives you a chance to do retail politicking. Having said that, I won New Hampshire and then lost in South Carolina. But it still does give you a chance to jump-start your campaign and I think that there's still that opportunity. There's no doubt money plays a very key role.

SCARBOROUGH: But you can't run a type of campaign that Jimmy Carter ran in 1976, where you're an unknown, you win Iowa. It's a spring board and you win these other states throughout the summer. You won New Hampshire., and I'm glad you brought that up. After you won New Hampshire, you couldn't raise money fast enough when you started going to Super Tuesday and you had five or 10 primaries on that day. Then you went to the Midwest and they started hitting one after another. Don't we also have to reform the way presidents are selected?

MCCAIN: Well, one of the things we have to do is clearly stop this compression of the selection process. Now it's sort of the first of March. John F. Kennedy announced that he was running for president of the United States, I think, in May of the year that he won. Dwight David Eisenhower announced in June, I believe, of the year 1952, that he was running for president. In those days, they had weeks and months that went on before the primary season was over. Because everybody wants to be first, it's been collapsed. So that's going to have to change.

SCARBOROUGH: And how do we do that?

MCCAIN: I think that the parties are going to have to set some rules and say, look, we're not going to allow any early primaries, and we're going to have to have an orderly process. I think the parties will probably going to have to sort that out. I don't know how you do it by federal legislation.

SCARBOROUGH: Let's talk about the Republican Party. When I got elected in 1994, when Republicans took Congress for the fist time in 40 years, we did it on the issue of balancing the budget. It's hard to say that in 2003 without laughing, because the Republican Party on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue probably had been the most fiscally irresponsible party in the history of Washington. What has happened over the past several years?

MCCAIN: Well, part of it is understandable, homeland security, war on terrorism. But this property of spending was going on before 9/11. We went from the restraint of deficits to the liberty of surpluses. Now we're back in deficits again. Pork barrel spending has gone up dramatically. I asked for a review from the Congressional Research Service in 1994 -- you were talking about. There was 2,054 earmarks, that's special appropriations. In 2002, there were 10,270. The earmarked pork barrel spending has gone up geometrically, like any other evil, if gone unchecked, it will explode. So the pork barrel on wasteful spending is exploded. But also we're spending money on things that, very frankly, we're not going to be able to pay for over time.

SCARBOROUGH: And again, it's the Republican Party that's just as guilty of doing this as it is the Democratic party, isn't it?

MCCAIN: Oh, it's a bipartisan...

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: That's right. It's bipartisan process.

MCCAIN: I've always said, there's three kinds of Senators in the Senate. Republican Senators, Democrat Senators, and members of the Appropriations Committee. What -- the old lock box, not too many years ago we were going to take everybody's money for retirement, social security, and put it in a lock box. Now, of course, we know we're spending the social security money -- money out of the social security trust fund.

SCARBOROUGH: And of course, the balanced budget amendment that was supposed to pass in 1995, remember the Republicans in the House were enraged at the Senate because they didn't pass...

MCCAIN: Failed by one vote.

SCARBOROUGH: Failed by one vote. You think the House may owe some people an apology in the Senate side?

MCCAIN: It would be the Senate that owes the House an apology for not passing it. Maybe we would be in a different situation than we are in today. You can pass all of the amendments you want to. It has got to be the will of the elected representatives, because they can always find ways around the rules they set. And it really is terrible.

You know, one of my -- I always have a list of favorites that I read off when I go on the floor. One of my favorites last year was a million dollars -- $1 million to study the DNA on bears in Wisconsin. Bears in Wisconsin. I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a crime issue. But, you know, I mean, really. It's just has really become obscene, and you laugh or your cry. So I prefer to laugh.

SCARBOROUGH: Yes. Now, one final question. Let's talk about weapons of mass destruction. We have been hearing many on the left complaining about how the president cooked up the weapons of mass destruction issue. But that doesn't really square up, does it, with what happened in 1998 when Saddam Hussein came forward and said, these are the weapons we have. So help us through this investigation. What's the Senate hoping to uncover?

MCCAIN: In 1980's he tried to build a nuclear reactor, which was bombed by the Israelis, thank God. In the 1990 -- 1991, he had all kinds of weapons of mass destruction. Before that, he used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and against the Iranians. In 1998, Bill Clinton gave a speech saying that this guy's got to be replaced because he refuses to give up his weapons of mass destruction.

We passed a law calling for regime change. And, of course, French as well as Russian and German inspectors said that he had those weapons. Is there any doubt about the fact if he were in power today, he would be pursuing those weapons? Second of all, the president is not stupid.

If the president was deceiving the American people and knew that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, then he knew it would be found out after the war, right? But the real point is, the real point here is that we still have a lot more work to do, and the real point is that this guy had a more than 20-year record of acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction.

SCARBOROUGH: All right, Senator John McCain, thank you for being with us.

MCCAIN: Thank you, Joe.