CNN "State Of The Union With John King" - Transcript

Interview

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KING: You're watching, there, the president of the United States, Barack Obama, at the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, here in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., the president speaking for about a half an hour, there, attending Sunday services, paying tribute to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, as the nation prepares to mark the King holiday. We're privileged to have in the studio with us Eleanor Holmes Norton. She is the congresswoman from here in the District of Columbia. She also was then and is now a foot soldier in the Civil Rights movement.

Thank you for joining us today.

I wanted to have you in here anyway because of the moment, the crisis in Haiti, one-year anniversary of the Obama inauguration.

Reflect on what we were just listening to. We were talking a bit as we were listening to the president. And during the campaign, we saw him frequently speaking to church audiences; as president, not so often. It's a different message.

NORTON: And yet these are his best moments. And many of us would like to see him inspire the country in that way more often. He does so in policy matters, but there's no moment like this.

And he certainly used King's life in a wonderful way, as a metaphor, frankly, for what our country has gone through this entire year. He spoke of the -- of the ups and downs of King's career.

We think only of the triumph. I think of being with Medgar Evers the night before he was killed. I was a SNCC kid, and he was trying to convince me not to go to the Delta but stay in Jackson.

I get on a bus, go to Jackson, wake up the next morning, and Medgar Evers is dead, has been assassinated. Setbacks like that occurred for the entire 15 years before we got the first Civil Rights Act.

And the president, by drawing on those setbacks, as well as the triumphs of Martin Luther King's life, I think is helping a lot of Americans, Americans well beyond African-Americans, I believe.

KING: I want to talk to you about challenges around the world in a moment.

KING: But first, on this, to that very point, he said early in his remarks, "There are some out there who thought, the moment I took the oath of office, their problems would be solved."

And there are those who, one year later, are impatient that the promise has not been fulfilled.

We could list the issues, unemployment nationally, certainly in the African-American community; the failure of the Democratic majority to pass health care at this moment.

What -- what is your take, simply, on, if we were having this conversation one year ago, it would be a President-elect Obama with near 80 percent approval rating, Democrats coming out of 2006 and then 2008 with this great wind at their back.

Where are we, one year later, in this remarkably different environment?

NORTON: This president is suffering from the highest favorables any president has ever had in no small part because he broke one of the great barriers in American life. And so we had expectations well beyond anything we had a right to have, particularly given the economy that he has inherited.

And what did he do? Instead of saying what am I going to do; this is not my economy, he takes these bold steps with a stimulus that's produced 3 million jobs. He rescues the auto industry. Imagine being a great power without an auto industry.

He plunges ahead with health care instead of setting aside his own agenda and saying I'm only going to mop up what I inherited.

He renews the respect of Americans in the world. And let me tell you how important that is. If you think you're a world leader and you don't have the respect of the nation -- the nations of the world, you're not a world leader anymore.

So he knows how much he's accomplished, but he also knows that, when people do not have a job, they do not look beyond that, even if you had what are probably the most accomplishments of any president since FDR in his first year.

KING: A passionate defense from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. We'll continue our conversation in just a minute with "State of the Union." We'll take a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back, continuing our conversation with Eleanor Holmes Norton. She is the Congresswoman from here in nation's capital, the District of Columbia.

I want your perspective on the crisis on Haiti in a moment, but first a political question, back home, the president, finishing that church service, is now headed to the state of Massachusetts. There's a special election to replace the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

And the Republicans have great momentum in what is normally a Democratic state. And there is a question that will face your leadership in the Congress, that, if that Republican, Scott Brown, wins, and the Democrats lose their 60th vote in the Senate, which is important for the process, should you rush and try to get health care to final approval or would that be disrespecting the Democratic process in Massachusetts, to try to have that vote before the new senator made it to Washington?

NORTON: I don't think you should rush, but I don't think you should put aside regular order, either. If we get it finished, we shouldn't wait for somebody to come and kill it, particularly when you consider that, once the American people get to know what's in this bill and how it affects them and all of the negative notions can be answered by what's on paper, then I think you will see things turn around.

So I don't think we owe the people of Massachusetts, if they change a senator, to say, all right, we're going to wait until you get here and we're not going to finish our business.

KING: You lived through 1994 when the Republicans seized power in a sweeping midterm election, when Bill Clinton fell out of favor, a Democratic president.

As you watch this -- we're in the early weeks, of course, of the 2010 midterm election, but do you have a sense of deja vu?

NORTON: Not exactly. Because we weren't really prepared for the strong comeback of the Republican Party. Remember, that was after 40 years.

They were -- they were in power for 20 years. I do not for a second believe that the American people think that they will get jobs better if Republicans get back into power; if the people gave us the economy that Barack inherited get back into power, everything's going to be OK.

So I'm not nearly as disconcerted as I was in 1994, as I was in my second term.

KING: Well, let's turn, in closing, to what you believe every American citizen, as individuals, should do as we look at the horror in Haiti. The day before the earthquake, it was the poorest country in our hemisphere, many people living, more than half the population, in abject poverty, less than $1 a day.

So as the world responds to try to just first save lives and get desperately needed food and medicine, what is the next challenge to not just restore Haiti to where it was the day before the quake, but to get it to a point where it is a functioning, real country where people can get basic services, where children can get an education, where somebody could find a job?

NORTON: It may be difficult to see opportunity out of a crisis, which the United Nations says is the worst crisis in its existence. But if you've been to Haiti, as I have fairly recently, with the Congressional Black Caucus delegation, and seen a nation then hanging by a thread -- there was a 40 percent increase in global food costs -- it takes the tiniest crisis to set this country back which never, ever got its full footing.

So what can this do? You're going to have to rebuild this country. If you rebuild it, it's going to be very different. People won't be building their own houses adjacent to something else which makes it inevitable that, when it falls down, the whole country will fall down.

You cannot match up Haiti any more. Therefore, I do see an opportunity out of this horrific tragedy, if the world gathers around the United States of America, which has come in there full-throttle, taken the leadership role it should have taken, because this is our ally. This is our sphere of interest. If we can't get there first, then nobody else will come.

Having taken the leadership; having seen the devastation, the road ahead is, how can we rebuild the country of Haiti with the kinds of resources it's not had in 300 years?

KING: We will bring you back for that conversation in the months ahead, as that challenge unfolds. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, thanks for coming in today.

And when we come back, we'll sit down with two presidents, two former presidents that the current president has asked to help him with the challenge we were just discussing, the long term, putting Haiti on a long-term path of recovery. Stay with us.

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