MSNBC "Decision 08" - Interview Transcript

Interview

MR. GREGORY: I'm here with Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, senior senator from Illinois.

An important night for you to have Barack Obama be almost officially the nominee. Let's talk about President Clinton. What strikes me about it is that, at its core, it was an attempt to respond not to the attacks of Obama's Republican critics but the attacks that came from Bill and Hillary Clinton, that electing Barack Obama would be a roll of the dice, that effectively he wasn't ready to be president. Was this speech enough to walk those criticisms back?

SEN. DURBIN: I think it was. I think it was strong and unconditional. And many of the same arguments in the primary that didn't work are being resurrected again by the McCain campaign. I think what Bill Clinton did today was to not only make it clear that he is supporting Barack Obama, but he believes that those charges being thrown at him by the Republicans are not going to resonate. The American people can see in the success of Bill Clinton's presidency that the charges of youth and inexperience don't go too far.

MR. GREGORY: And it was an intensely personal moment for Bill Clinton to adopt the argument that indeed Barack has used, which is that they used to say the same things about Bill Clinton.

SEN. DURBIN: Exactly.

MR. GREGORY: He spoke about Barack Obama in a more personal way, talked about his instincts, his understanding, his incisiveness; frankly, even more personally than Hillary Clinton did last night.

SEN. DURBIN: Well, I think it's an interesting thing to try to analyze the Clintons and their approach.

MR. GREGORY: But let's do. (Laughs.)

SEN. DURBIN: Well, let's do it for a minute. And I will just tell you, as a strong supporter of Barack Obama, one of the earliest, and as a good friend of Hillary Clinton, we couldn't have asked for more last night. And there was a question tonight, "Well how far will Bill Clinton go?" We couldn't have asked for more from Bill Clinton.

He's made it clear that when it comes to the choice in this election, it's a clear choice. And what I think he did toward the end there was go through the expected litany of what has happened the last eight years from what he left behind in the eight years of his presidency.

MR. GREGORY: But Senator, it's one thing to rally the faithful here and say, "Okay, I'm on board. I'm going to give fulsome support to Senator Obama." It's another thing for Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to say to their supporters -- white working-class voters in important parts of this country, independent voters in the Rocky Mountain West, in Colorado and beyond -- "Hey, Barack Obama's okay," because a lot of the questions will be, "Well, what makes you all of a sudden comfortable with them when it was so clear that you were (not ?) in a tough primary battle that was, in many ways, like a real bad argument between friends or family; you can say certain things that are not so easy to take back"?

SEN. DURBIN: But I can tell you that the history of the past, the politics of the last several months, are really not going to, I think, determine what's going to happen in the next two months. In the next two months we're going to focus on the real campaign issues.

And a reminder, too: We're political animals -- you on the media side, me on the political side -- and most people aren't. You know, they focus their lives on the ordinary course of events -- getting the kids ready for school, paying for gasoline. Now they're going to focus on politics. And I don't think the arguments of the past primaries are really going to decide their votes.

MR. GREGORY: I know this is a night of a lot of personal pride for you because of your support of Senator Obama. Thanks for spending time with us.

SEN. DURBIN: Good to be with you.

MR. GREGORY: Okay.

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