I don‘t think Al Gore‘s style is quite the way just yet. So you know, it‘s possible for Democrats to find a way through. And they quite liked the Republican Congress with a Democratic president through the ‘90s. On the other hand, American voters have tended to like checks and balances. So it does make-open them up to being vulnerable on that question of defending America. They think the president won in 20 on national security questions. And it‘s an argument that the White House really quite enjoys. Remember, they have been vulnerable on national security before. WOLFFE: Well, this is not an easy life for Democrats. Can the Democrats get anywhere with that? I mean, the polling last week suggested there are many Americans who are still willing to sacrifice privacy in the name of security. So there is some spillover, whether it ties directly to the NSA or not.Īs to the political ramifications of this, today Al Gore, as we heard there, called for this NSA wiretapping and executive power issue to be part of every political campaign in this country. OLBERMANN: And we already know of Pentagon fact checking of the-at least, a Quaker Friends meeting in Florida. If the NSA was spying on congressmen or something salacious like that, would it take that kind of degree and amping up of this story to make it more than it is right now? OLBERMANN: But is there a tipping point that changes that concept, either of a special counsel or a public set of hearings? I mean, I don‘t know. So the game is shifting here, and this is a debate that is really out of the White House‘s control right now. He now says he‘ll cooperate with hearings, whereas before there was an idea that hearings would alert terrorists to sorts of methods. I imagine that a lot of the hearings that we‘re going to-we‘re looking forward to are going to be held in secret and a lot of this information about this program is going to be withheld from us, and the public.īut Senator Specter was very serious about it, and the president has had to change his tack.
WOLFFE: Well, they preclude the kind of hearings that-let‘s call them Alito-style public, question and answers going on for days. Barr‘s support, and he did issue it in written statements, after the kind of satellite trouble that‘s all too familiar to hosts who appear on newscasts like this one, even with Senator Specter saying again yesterday there needs to be a serious inquiry, right now don‘t the political realities preclude that kind of investigation? He has definitely become a more forceful one, ripping into the president on a host of constitutional issues, charging him with, quote, “breaking the law repeatedly and persistently,” and calling on Congress to launch an investigation into NSA wiretapping, since the legislative body can‘t be trusted to do any investigating itself. Barr‘s satellite feed failing to work, making the man who won the 2000 presidential popular vote by 500,000 to wait onstage for several awkward minutes before someone else made the introduction.Īs for what followed, well, no one would say Mr. That was the plan, anyway.įormer Congressman Barr, scheduled to appear from a remote location, in reality experiencing technical difficulties. Gore would deliver a speech challenging the Bush administration‘s expanse of executive power. Once and again, Bob Barr and Al Gore together again for the first time, at least in theory.įormer congressman, now working to defend the Bill of Rights, all set to introduce the former vice president at a bipartisan event in Washington this afternoon at which Mr. Our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, this is not to say we‘re going to see another major third party brought into being this week.
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