MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

MR. MATTHEWS: Let's turn now to the surrogates; in a moment, U.S. Congresswoman Heather Wilson of New Mexico. She's been on many times before. She supports, of course, John McCain for president. But up first, a major new governor, Tim Kaine of Virginia. He's an early Obama supporter who was on the short list for VP, we're told.

Governor Kaine, tough question -- I want to talk about Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in a minute. We've got 6.1 percent unemployment right now. We have the federal government owing almost $10 trillion under this administration. The dollar is -- well, people come to America on shopping sprees, the dollar's worth so little.

What's Barack Obama going to do if he gets into office on January 20th to solve our economic downturn?

GOV. KAINE: Well, he's going to try to juice the economy, Chris, by focusing upon the backbone of the American economy, which is helping middle-class Americans deal with fiscal stress and helping small businesses be successful.

I think the fundamental difference between Barack Obama and John McCain is the way they describe what success looks like. For John McCain, success is cutting taxes on the largest businesses and the wealthiest individuals. For Barack Obama, success is how's the middle class doing with middle-class tax cuts and how we can help small businesses be more successful by eliminating capital gains on small businesses and giving them tax credits if they buy health care for their employees. That is the fundamental difference between these two candidates.

MR. MATTHEWS: So lower taxes for people in the middle. Okay, got you.

Now, let me ask you about --

GOV. KAINE: Lower taxes for folks in the middle and small businesses. That's really important. My dad ran a five-man iron- working and welding shop. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy, and Barack targets his tax relief toward them, not to the businesses that are the ones that are well off at the top and who don't need help.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the other issue. I think you opposed the war in Iraq. I certainly have questioned it on this program. I think that most Americans think it was a mistake to place the entire American army, basically, in Iraq in a pinned-down position where the president said today, "We can't spare one soldier." It's that significant.

How would Barack avoid having gotten us into a situation like this? How will he avoid future situations like this? How's his mindset different than Bush's or McCain's?

GOV. KAINE: Well, let me just start, Chris. I'm going to correct you at the start. I thought there was a rationale, at the beginning of the war, for America to take part in multilateral action with other nations to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Now, the fact is we just blew by the whole issue of getting other nations involved and went at it essentially on our own. And that's part of the problem, and that's what Barack said was such a mistake.

How's he going to avoid these problems? He's going to have good people around him and listen to them and exercise good judgment. If President Bush had listened to the people around him who really understood the military situation at the start instead of going with some of the neocons who really didn't have much background in this area, he never would have engaged in this essentially unilateral war against Iraq.

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think he might bring in General Powell?

GOV. KAINE: And if he had listened --

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think he might bring in General Powell? Do you think he might bring in some of the name brands we know about? Will he keep Gates? Will he bring in the heavyweights, some Republicans as well?

GOV. KAINE: Yeah, I'm not privy to that, but I know this. I have been on board with the Obama campaign as a national co-chair since February '07. He prides himself and is very good at bringing the best people around him, because a president doesn't know everything about everything. You've got to have good people around you and you've got to listen. And from the very beginning, Barack has said -- and I know you realize this -- if we go into Iraq, we're going to take our eye off the ball in terms of finishing what we need to do in Afghanistan, which he supported.

Do you know the war in Afghanistan -- it was like the lost war during the Republican Convention; very little mention about Afghanistan, about how tenuous things are there. We need to pull out of Iraq and redeploy more assets to Afghanistan so we can finish the job and the fight against terrorism that is the fight that we should have been (weighing ?) from the very days after 9/11.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, John McCain, in giving, I thought, a rather good acceptance speech, never mentioned the name President Bush, which I thought was interesting; nor, I think, did he mention the word Republican much at all.

GOV. KAINE: The acceptance speech of John McCain was probably my favorite moment of both conventions because he said, "I'm now -- after all this time, I'm now going to be the change candidate." And so, on the one hand, with Barack Obama, Chris, we've got the change you can believe in. He's been talking about change since before his Senate race in 2004. We need to have better management of the economy and better national security.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay.

GOV. KAINE: John McCain's late-breaking conversion to change is like "America, just give me one more chance, and I promise, this time I'll change, and I really mean it." But that's not going to work with Americans who've seen him again and again support President Bush down the line. And I can't find one instance even today where he has proposed a policy that is at odds with what President Bush has been doing for the last two terms.

MR. MATTHEWS: Have you encouraged Terry McAuliffe, the former chair of the DNC, to run for governor of Virginia? Have you encouraged him to do so?

GOV. KAINE: I'll tell you, I am very intrigued. I didn't realize that Terry was interested till I heard him speak out in Denver and he indicated he was. We've got two legislators in Virginia who have lined up to potentially run, and Terry now is coming in and saying he's thinking about it. They're all great.

You know, it used to be, Chris -- you know this -- in Virginia, to get somebody to run statewide as a Democrat, it was like trying -- "Let's let Mikey eat the cereal." Nobody wanted to do it because it was so hard.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, you jumped in and the water's fine.

GOV. KAINE: But the fact that we now have such a competitive --

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah, I know.

GOV. KAINE: We are in a competitive state.

MR. MATTHEWS: I guess you've encouraged Terry to run. Anyway, thank you, Governor Kaine. It's great to have you on the show at any time.

GOV. KAINE: Good to be back with you.

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