Sam Donaldson: for John McCain, he has the heaviest burden here, since he voted for all the deregulation, for him to now say he would be the toughest re-regulator, is kind of a hard thing to swallow...
Cokey Roberts: ...and, he's a Republican! Whenever Republicans get into this kind of a mess, everybody, even people who weren't born or close to being born, the specter of Herbert Hoover comes out to haunt them.
George Will: I suppose the McCain campaign's hope is that when there's a big crisis, people will go for age and experience. The question is, who, in this crisis, looked more presidential? It wasn't John McCain. As usual, substituting vehemence for coherence, said, "let's fire somebody! And he picked one of the most experienced, and conservative, people in the administration, Chris Cox, and for no apparent reason, or at least none that he vouchsafed, he said fire Chris Cox of the SEC. It was un-presidential behavior by a presidential aspirant.
Sam Donaldson: It was two days after he said the fundamentals of the economy were strong. His talking points have gotten all mixed up, and I think the question of age is back on the table.
Cokey Roberts: The question is, do people trust more - Obama on the economy, which they say they do, or McCain to handle a crisis, which they say they do? On our last ABC poll, he was up by 17 points, MCain was, on the question of which candidate do you trust more to handle a crisis.
George Stephanopoulis: Except you gotta wonder that did the events of this week call that into question - 'cause I think Sam isolated the moment - that moment on Monday, Donna - where John McCain said the fundamentals of the economy are strong - and he said it sixteen times before - the Obama team clearly saw it as a breakthrough moment in the campaign, and the McCain team was reeling by the end of the day, recovered by the end of the week.
Donna Brazile: and, you know, John McCain is just unsure of his voice in the economy. He's outsourced so long to others that, now that he must talk to the American people in a coherent fashion, he doesn't get it. And what's amazing is - after calling for the firing of Chris Cox, he criticized Wall St. - and then he called himself, you know, a "champion of regulation," when he's one of the people who allowed the cops to "get off the beat" in regulating these industries - so I think McCain has to find his voice. Meanwhile, Obama did wait, he waited until the President, he waited until Secretary Paulson, he went out there and reassured voters that with his economic team - of course, the architects of the Clinton administration - and he tried to reassure voters that he will have a plan in place soon.
George Will: He has found his inner voice - it is his inner William Jennings Bryant - he's a populist. Now, the problem is, if you're running as a man who is, above all else, a leader - populism is always pandering, and pandering is always the reverse of leadership.
Sam Donaldson: Well, I don't know if he'll do the "cross of gold" that WJB said we were enslaved by... I do agree, I don't know the difference between finding your talking points and not delivering the right ones. We've seen him do this frequently, but this last week was the worst. Between two stops in Florida, as you say, he had to revise his thinking about what he wanted to say about the economy - wanted to "feel the pain," suddenly, rather than say everything's great.
Cokey Roberts: It's this question of the advisors - even though the ads are, um, ridiculous - the advisors, it is a really stark contrast. The Obama advisors, we're looking at Bob Rubin and Warren Buffett, Paul Voelker in there - you feel a sense of security.
George Stephanopoulis: and Obama clearly sensed that, and that is why he had the meeting, basically, in public. And he's also helped, George, simply by the fact that the race gets back to fundamental issues - the economy, the course of the country. When it was on personalities, coming out of the Republican Convention, Sarah Palin - he was hurting - when the race shifts, he does better.
George Will: lest week, every day spent talking about Sarah Palin, or anything but the economy, was a win for McCain.
Sam Donaldson: Yes, but the McCain ads are gonna continue to try to make the race about personality, and something about fear, from the standpoint of, "can you really trust this guy, Sen. Obama?" They are not, as far as I can see so far, gonna return to a question of the issues and "let's discuss it."
George Will: John McCain showed his personality this week, and it made some of us fearful.
any errors in the transcript are mine, for which I apologize in advance.
So -- here's every single one of these pundits, especially including Cokey Roberts and George Will - absolutely hammering McCain on pretty much everything. It was a unanimous McCain roast - and not in a funny way. I agreed with just about everything they all said. It was as if they were all infected with the truth.