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American Morning
No Major Events Surface at Democratic Presidential Debate
Aired April 27, 2007 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: ...contaminated food on this AMERICAN MORNING. Good morning to you. Here's a word you're going to want to hear. It's Friday, April 27th. I'm John Roberts in Washington, DC. Good morning to you.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: You're very right about that. It's a long week. I'm Kiran Chetry here in New York. We have a lot of stories on the radar this morning, including the latest from last night's debates.
Also some extreme weather, major new flair up in that Georgia wildfire. They have been working for more than two weeks to put that fire out. This is not the fire of course, the flooding in the northeast and we have some pictures in from New Jersey right now, the roadways a mess. It was already soaked from two weeks ago when we got a lot of rain overnight and into the morning causing a lot of headaches for drivers, as well.
ROBERTS: Developing story in the tainted pet food case. You might remember a couple of days ago we had an official from the FDA on who said it was too early to know whether or not any of this so-called melamine made it into the human food chain. Well apparently, it may have. Dr. Elizabeth Cohen is going to join us with some important information coming up.
CHETRY: Also, how is this for irony, the head of admissions quits MIT found out that he had actually fabricated his own resume while, she, rather, while urging students not to fabricate their resumes. It turns out that about 28 years ago, she embellished her own. We're going to tell you how that was discovered and talk more about how much trouble you can get in, how it can come back to bite you if you're not completely honest about your credentials when it comes to trying to get a job.
ROBERTS: And not even just running for president either.
CHETRY: That's true.
ROBERTS: Hey, speaking of that, the curtain came up on the 2008 race for president with months still to go to the first primary. Eight Democrats crowded the stage in Orangeburg, South Carolina, little time for any one candidate to stand out. Our senior political correspondent Candy Crowley joins us now live. She is in Columbia, South Carolina with her take on this inaugural debate. What did you think, Candy?
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I thought everybody kind of went in with an agenda. I think the top people wanted to not make a mistake. I think the lower tier, as we call them, wanted to sort of make an impression. So, what we have in the end was the earliest debate we've ever had in U.S. presidential history. It was aired on MSNBC. It came 18 months before the election.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CROWLEY (voice-over): No blood spilled in this first of umpteenth presidential debates. You had to listen hard for the low- impact jabs.
JOHN EDWARDS (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator Clinton and anyone else who voted for this war has to search themselves and decide whether they believe they voted the right way.
SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I said many times that if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.
CROWLEY: Fresh off a vote to authorize more spending in Iraq with a deadline to bring the troops home, nearly all agreed the president should sign the bill, except for the most anti-war lawmaker in the group.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Because every time you vote to fund the war, you're reauthorizing the war all over again.
CROWLEY: Questions ran the gamut from Iraq to abortion, from health care to what they would do if two U.S. cities were attacked by al Qaeda.
CLINTON: I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate.
CROWLEY: Answers differed in the details, but not the broad strokes, so it was a largely cordial gathering. Much of the heat came from the second tier trying to puncture the rarified atmosphere around the frontrunners.
GOV. BILL RICHARDSON (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think the American people want candor. They don't want blow-dried candidates with perfection.
CROWLEY: As interesting moments go, the hands down winner was the little known former senator from Alaska who more than once shook up the stage.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are you --
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good, we're safe.
CROWLEY: In the end, no faux pas, no unretrievable errors. The eight Democrats running for president cleared their first debate pretty much unscathed.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CROWLEY: And the fact of the matter is, even though they did not attack each other, there was one big target in this debate, George W. Bush. John?
ROBERTS: There was also an elephant in the room, even though he wasn't there. Remember back in the 2000 campaign, Al Gore was criticized for running away from Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton certainly didn't do that last night. Let's take a quick listen to something that she said during the debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: I remember very well when I accompanied Bill to Columbine after that massacre and met with the family members of those who had been killed and talked with the students.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: So, there she's talking about memories of Columbine when she was asked a question about Virginia Tech. What is really significant in there is that she is just -- it's nice to see a wife embrace her husband, but obviously there's a political strategy behind this.
CROWLEY: Well, absolutely and this is not the first time we've seen it. She does on the trail from time to time mention her husband. Obviously, she's been out fundraising with him. You're absolutely right, the big mistake a lot of people thought that Al Gore made was that he couldn't figure out a way to embrace the positive aspects of the Bill Clinton administration. This clearly is a woman who has figured out how to do that.
ROBERTS: All right, Candy, thanks very much. As always, good for your analysis and your expertise and we'll see you soon. Appreciate it.
We talked with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in our last hour here on AMERICAN MORNING. He thinks he accomplished what he wanted to do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RICHARDSON: My goal was to-fold. One, just to introduce myself to voters around the country because I'm virtually not that well known and, secondly, I wanted to establish my clearest position on Iraq among all the Democratic candidates. That is that I favor a complete withdrawal this calendar year with no residual troops and with diplomatic efforts to give Iraq a chance at reconstruction and a coalition government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: We're next going to talk with Senator Joe Biden. That's coming up about 10 minutes from now, so make sure that you stay around for that. It'll be interesting. Joe is always a good person to talk to, Kiran.
CHETRY: Sure is. Look forward to it.
Meantime, President Bush has his veto pen ready. He's now awaiting that $124 billion war funding bill the Senate passed yesterday. It does include the timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq. And the president has promised to veto any bill with a deadline. Democrats, of course, want him to reconsider.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HARRY REID (D) MAJORITY LEADER: There's not a word from the White House about changing direction in that war. Maybe if he does veto this bill, maybe he'll come to the conclusion that it's time to change the direction of this war and he'll sit and talk with us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: CNN's Elaine Quijano joins us from the White House today with more on this. Hi, Elaine.
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Kiran. The White House argument certainly would be that the administration is trying something new. They are trying a surge. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman yesterday Kiran, adamantly saying that what Democrats have passed, the legislation that includes any kind of timetable amounts to a surrender date and she called it mission defeated. That, of course, playing the off the fact that Democrats plan to note next week, it's going to be four years since President Bush made that now infamous mission accomplished speech.
A couple of things though Kiran to keep in mind. As Americans watch this all play out, officials here have said both privately and publicly, Kiran, that even though it is President Bush who will choose to wield his veto power on this that ultimately they believe the American people will hold Democrats responsible for this impasse. They feel very strongly about this idea that timetables would certainly give the enemy their playbook and they don't want to do that. So, that is something that you can expect to hear, once again, the president has promised to veto this measure when it gets to his desk and we're expecting that to happen, of course, some time early next week. Kiran?
CHETRY: Elaine Quijano at the White House, thanks so much.
We're going to be talking a little later to counselor to the president Dan Bartlett. That is coming up in just a few minutes. John.
ROBERTS: For the first time we have confirmation that humans may be involved in that pet food contamination. Here's how officials think it happened in the food chain. Pigs in California may have eaten discarded pet food containing melamine, the compound that made so many cats and dogs sick. Pork from those hogs made it into the supermarkets and now customers are being contacted. Who is at risk and how much risk is there? Medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now from Atlanta. Elizabeth, we were talking to somebody from the FDA just a couple of days ago who told us that he didn't think that this had made it into the food chain. It had been discovered and stopped. Obviously, that assessment was premature.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's been very confusing, John, definitely very confusing. What the FDA says and what the USDA says and then what state officials say doesn't always add up. The information we have here today is from California state officials. They say that 22 people possibly ate melamine-contaminated food. None of these people are sick, which is very important to point out, that they followed up with these people and none of them are sick. Now, these people did not buy their pork on supermarket shelves. These people went directly to a California hog farm or farms, they're very unclear about this and bought their pigs directly from those farmers.
Now, in addition, there's another 22 customers who also went directly to California hog farms and they, the authorities can't get a hold of those people. So they don't know if they've eaten it. They don't know if they're sick. They actually can't find them. Now it doesn't stop there. You mentioned supermarket shelves. In addition and I know this is confusing, but bear with me. In addition, there were 300 contaminated pigs, possibly contaminated pigs that were sent to slaughter. It's not known what happened to that meat. Was it distributed to stores? Was it consumed? Is it still sitting on market shelves? They just don't know. So there are a lot of questions here today.
But here's what should make everyone take a bit of a sigh of relief which is that people doctors think, the doctors that we talked to said you would have to eat huge amounts of melamine in very high concentrations to get sick. They said human beings are not household pets. We're much bigger than they are. Our systems are much different than they are. You would have to eat huge amounts of this stuff to get sick. You would get let's say kidney stones possibly or bladder stones but nobody that we talked to was concerned that this melamine was going to get people very sick and certainly not concerned that it would kill people. John?
ROBERTS: And as the FDA told us earlier this week as well Elizabeth, they're also going to be analyzing different types of food products brought in from overseas, different types of glutens, rice glutens, rice meal, that sort of thing to check to see if there is any more melamine in that. Elizabeth Cohen in Atlanta, thanks very much, appreciate it.
COHEN: Thanks.
CHETRY: What are the Democratic frontrunners saying this morning after their first presidential debate? Howard Wolfson, senior adviser to Hillary Clinton, joins us now from South Carolina. Thanks for being with us this morning, Howard.
HOWARD WOLFSON, CLINTON SENIOR ADVISER: Good morning. CHETRY: Rate your candidate for us. How do you think she did last night?
WOLFSON: We thought she was great. You know, she didn't come in with any tricks up her sleeve. She wanted to make the case that America was ready for change, that she was ready to lead. She was going to make the case on the substance, on her experience, on her record and we think she did that.
CHETRY: The consensus from the analyst seems to be that Hillary Clinton did play it safe and didn't really stand out. Do you think she was off her game last night?
WOLFSON: Actually, the consensus that I've seen in the morning press is that she did extremely well. A lot of people last night even thought that she had won. We think she did well. We think it's a good field of Democrats. Everyone had a good night. But we're very pleased with our candidate.
CHETRY: She also had a chance to maybe take Rudy Giuliani down a peg. He is running on 9/11 and claiming how much he helped in the days afterward. She did not do that. Why not?
WOLFSON: Senator Clinton isn't running against Rudy Giuliani. Senator Clinton is running against this field of Democrats and she's going to make the case for herself in the context of a Democratic primary.
CHETRY: The other question is the plan or the strategy to try to combat some of the high negatives and 52 percent respondents have an unfavorable view of her in the latest Gallup poll. What is the plan?
WOLFSON: The plan is to go out and make the case based on her record, of her experience, on her strength and her ability to get things done. We have a lot of tough challenges in front of us in this country. People know that this is a very important election. They want somebody who can step into the oval office and on day one do the kind of job that we need for the American people.
CHETRY: All right, Howard Wolfson joining us from South Carolina this morning to talk a little bit about that debate last night, the first one under your belt. Thanks so much.
WOLFSON: Thank you.
ROBERTS: So we heard from the Hillary Clinton campaign. Now, let's turn to the other frontrunner in the upcoming Democratic race, the Barack Obama campaign. Robert Gibbs is the senator's communications director. He joins us now from Columbia, South Carolina. Good morning to you, Robert. Good to see you again.
ROBERT GIBBS, COMM DIR, OBAMA CAMPAIGN: Good morning, John. How are you?
ROBERTS: I'm very good, thanks. Hey, listen, as big a personality as Barack Obama is, he was described in the press today as cautious and subdued. Was he just trying to make sure he didn't step in a hole last night?
GIBBS: I think what Barack Obama was last night was strong, confident, spoke knowledgeably about the issues but, more importantly, talked about the fact that if we're going to change our country, we have to first change our politics, John. So I thought he had a very strong debate and we are very pleased with it.
ROBERTS: One Democratic strategist said that it is clear he is better on the stump than he is in these debates. Do you have to work on his debate skills a little do you think?
GIBBS: Obviously we're dealing with big issues. It's sometimes not easy to compress how to fix Iraq into a 60-second answer. But clearly he said we're one signature away from ending this war and bringing our troops home. He spoke about cutting costs for health care and making sure that the 45 million uninsured get access to health care. Again I thought he had a strong performance. A poll out this morning done by TV stations of viewers who watched the debate showed that Barack Obama won this debate. We thought he did very well and we look forward to continuing.
ROBERTS: Robert, there was a moment last night where Barack Obama was asked about terrorism and how he would respond if the United States was attacked. In his initial answer, there was nothing about going after the terrorists. He actually had to double back to say that he would go after them. Did he hurt himself in his original response being tough and aggressive on terrorism? Some people have called it a quote, a Michael Dukakis moment.
GIBBS: No, no, no, listen to that answer, John. He talked clearly about using intelligence to figure out if there were other attacks coming, making sure that we had a credible response and obviously, John, he understands the first job as president is to protect this country. And if he had any knowledge of where a terrorist attack was coming from or had come from, he wouldn't flinch. He'd use force.
ROBERTS: All right. Well, back on the trail again, Robert Gibbs, communications director with the Senator Barack Obama campaign. Thanks very much. We'll see you at the next debate.
GIBBS: Thanks, John.
ROBERTS: Appreciate it, all right.
Coming up here on this AMERICAN MORNING, we're going to talk with one of the people on stage last night, a person who may have gotten the biggest laugh of the night too, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware joins us.
Plus the dean of admissions at MIT caught in a 28-year lie. How did the lie go on for so long? You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ROBERTS: Well, the debate may be over, but the debate over who won and who lost is just heating up on the blogs this morning. CNN's Jacki Schechner here. How is the debate on the debate shaping up today online?
JACKI SCHECHNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. A lot of people stayed away from actually posting their initial thoughts online and opened it up for their comment. So we saw a lot of people weighing in with their opinions. There was an unofficial, unscientific poll on daily kos which is the top liberal blog and Edwards came in on top, Obama just beneath that and Clinton with 12 percent. But this in surprising because they had a vote saying who are you rooting for and Edwards was on the top of that. So that's not surprising to me. Some things that were interesting. People were expecting big things from Governor Bill Richardson. They said last night that he looked nervous and unprepared.
ROBERTS: He always looks like that. It's his demeanor.
SCHECHNER: Also we're talking about Obama was relatively unremarkable. The other thing that was remarkable was his inability to answer questions directly. But there is some conversation that people always expect such big things from Obama, that if he's less than stellar on any occasion --
ROBERTS: Of course the goal for these frontrunners too is just to make sure they don't step on a landmine.
SCHECHNER: That is exactly what you were saying earlier and I think that if it's not extraordinary, that it's less than what was expected. Now there were a lot of conservatives who watched the debate and weighed in, which I thought was really interesting, especially since it's so early and they had the same thought about Obama, that he looked shockingly unprepared. There was also commentary, Hillary not bad which is interesting coming from Jim Garrity because he was the one who ran the Kerry spot, which was the blog against Kerry back in 2004.
ROBERTS: Don't forget, Republicans want to run against her.
SCHECHNER: That's true too, but Obama again needed more polish. Now of course the big scene stealer last nigh was Mike Gravel (ph). I want to play the sound bite. This is my absolutely most interesting sound bite from the night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like going into the Senate, the first time you get there you're all excited, my God, how did I ever get here? Then six months later you say, how the hell did the rest of them get here?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: I heard that line. SCHECHNER: So there were plenty of comments last night, but he really did steal the show. Now there's a debate waging whether or not he should be allowed to participate in these sorts of debates, because it is a distraction to some extent, but that's conversation that is happening. I think overall, it's early. There's going to be a lot of these. This is what we're seeing so far.
ROBERTS: The interesting thing about the Internet is that originally the conception was we're not hearing enough opinion on the mainstream media, so let's put it on the Internet and now you're hearing so much on the Internet, you don't know what to believe any more.
SCHECHNER: I think it's really nice that they're having a conversation. That's kind of the cool part. If you're watching these debates all across the country, you can get together with like-minded people and have a real time conversation online. People were live blogging the debate. They had Chris Dodd on his website had a war room camera where you could look into what was going on at Dodd headquarters. So interesting interactivity going on.
ROBERTS: No shortage of opinion.
SCHECHNER: Oh, gosh, no, especially in this room, too.
ROBERTS: Of course, all the day's political news is available online any time day or night at cn.com/ticker.
Coming up, we're going to be talking with Senator Joe Biden and also Dan Bartlett, counsel to President Bush.
Also the dean of admissions at MT being shown the door; the reason might surprise you. Stay with us on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Senator Joe Biden is trying to kick his presidential campaign into high gear, but in addition to some questions about Iraq, Biden had to answer some questions about his tendency to sometimes put his foot in his mouth. Yesterday, let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you reassure voters in this country that you would have the discipline you would need on the world stage, senator?
SEN. JOE BID (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Short and sweet. Senator Joe Biden joins me now from Columbia, South Carolina, good morning, senator.
BIDEN: Good morning, how are you?
CHETRY: Not bad this morning. How did you come up with that one last night?
BIDEN: I didn't know I was going to get the question. I think it's pretty self-evident. The voters are going to make that judgment real easy. I have been dealing with world leaders for the past 34 years. I've never had a problem,. They never had a problem misunderstanding me and so I don't think it's a problem.
CHETRY: What's your plan to move ahead to get out of the so- called second or third tier of candidates? Right now in terms of money and in terms of the polls, you're pretty far behind.
BIDEN: Well, not far behind. Look, all you guys in the press have never been right. The good news is you're never right this early in the game.
CHETRY: Thanks.
BIDEN: No, you never have been. Not you, personally. No one can be. As David Broder said, this is like spring training in baseball. There's never been a time any poll at this stage of the game has ever meant anything and the reason why I believe I'm going it win this is because I'm the only one that has an absolute clear plan to deal with the most important issue facing the United States, Iraq. I have more experience than anybody in this race. I have a track record and I don't think anyone ever is going to wonder about my authenticity. So I think ideas matter. I'm going to have enough money to compete and I believe I'm going to win this race.
CHETRY Michael Hirsch (ph) from "Newsweek" does say that you have one thing right as he puts it. He does believe in your concrete plan for Iraq. It calls for dividing Iraq into three or more different separate regions that would then be held together by a loosely-based centralized government. But what do you do with the 12 million Iraqis that now live in mixed neighborhoods?
BIDEN: What you do, there's already been, 3,500,000 have already moved. You do the same thing you did when we did this in Bosnia. Once you get that kind of political agreement, you'll find the need for people to have to leave those neighborhoods diminishes incredibly. There is not this self-sustaining violence that goes on. There's never been a time when there's been this cycle of self-sustaining sectarian violence that it ever ended other than separating the parties, giving them breathing room within a country that is loosely knit together. That's the only answer. We should get about it and I'm glad my Democratic colleagues are coming around to my idea now. I hope the president does shortly.
CHETRY: How do you then deal with the situation of the Shiite region not being an arm for Iran?
BIDEN: Look, the problem is if you don't do this, the Shiite region is going to become Iran. Why is the Shiite region so tightly tied to Iran? They're in the midst of a war. They need the help from Iran. That's why they're willing to take all that help. Remember, the Shiites in Iran fought the Shiites in Iraq. Over 1.2 million people were killed over nine years. The Shiites in Iraq are Persian, Indo- European. The Shiites in Iraq are Arab. There's not a whole lot of love loss there. So the reason why we're driving this war, this war is driving them into the arms of Iran. If you give them more autonomy within their own region not having to be engaged in this war, you will find they will move for more independence relative to Iran than they have now.
CHETRY: You're one of the five who raised your hand when asked whether they had a gun in their home. What do you have?
BIDEN: I have two shotguns. I have a 10 gauge shotgun and I have a 12 gauge shotgun. I don't have any pistols in my home. I'm not a big hunter. I like to skeet shoot. I like to occasionally hunt geese, but I'm no big hunter, but I do have two guns in my home.
CHETRY: Where do you stand on the recent calls for tougher background checks after what happened at Virginia Tech?
BIDEN: I'm the guy who in the Biden crime bill, we helped pass the Brady bill. I think background checks are absolutely essential. I argued then and I argue now that we need tougher background checks. Nobody argues that we shouldn't keep the guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable and the criminal. We have saved a lot of lives by these background checks. They have to be tougher and we have to also close the so-called gun show loophole. You walk into a gun store to buy a gun, you have to do a background check. You walk into a gun show, you can buy the same gun without the same rigorous check.
CHETRY: All right. We want to thank you for joining us. I'll be waving at you when I ride my bike past the Biden Center in Delaware because I enjoy Cape Henelopen (ph) State Park in the summer. Joe Biden, thanks for joining us.
BIDEN: I'm very proud of that. Thank you.
CHETRY: Sure. John?
ROBERTS: The battle lines have been drawn over Iraq. That was clear last night at the debate after the passage of an Iraq spending bill setting a timetable for withdrawal. The president preparing to follow up on his vow to veto it. Is it a risky move? Would he be going against the wishes of most Americans? Joining me now from the White House press room, Dan Bartlett, counselor to President Bush, good to see you again, Dan.
DAN BARTLETT, COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, John, how are you?
ROBERTS: Pretty good. Hey, listen, the Democrats last night at that debate pretty tough on this whole issue of the veto. Take a quick listen to some sound here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: He is stubbornly refusing to listen to the will of the American people. OBAMA: If the president is not going to sign the bill that has been sent it him, then what we have to do is gather up 16 votes in order to override his veto.
RICHARDSON: This war is a disaster. We must end this war.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Dan, are you surprised at the level of commitment that the Democrats have on this? They're not rolling over and playing dead here. They seem to give you a real pain between the ears.
BARTLETT: I wouldn't be surprised that the leading Democratic presidential candidates are going after the most extreme elements in the primary of their Democratic party and they all are sending the signal that they're rushing to the exits as quickly as possible, attacking the president, but not really talking about the consequences of their actions. Everybody from the national intelligence estimate to very smart thinkers when it comes to Iraq, understands the disaster we'd face if we would precipitously withdraw from Iraq. And I think whatever misgivings the American people have about where we are in the war in Iraq, I don't think they want 535 politicians in Washington to replace the judgment of our top commanders and diplomats on the ground.
And when General David Petraeus came to Washington and made a very blunt assessment about the fact that he haven't received all the reinforcements, that if we were to pull out, sectarian violence would go way up, that al Qaeda is the public enemy number one. You didn't hear any of that last night from the presidential candidates. All they are trying to do is placate a very radical element of their own party who says, get out now. Damn the consequences. It doesn't matter, just get out and that is not a serious foreign policy. I will say Senator Biden is the lone representative there who at least will put a plan on the table that has some semblance of coherency. Obviously, the president doesn't necessarily support it, but at least he's putting forward an idea. The other ones are just putting up an exit sign.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR, AMERICAN MORNING: Dan, the Democrats keep on saying that the so-called surge isn't working. General Petraeus was in town yesterday briefing Democrats and Republicans about the House and the Senate. He said that the extra judicial killings, these death squad killings are down, but suicide bombings are up. Al Qaeda's influence in Iraq is growing. So taken overall with all of this violence, where is the evidence that things are getting better?
BARTLETT: John, two things. I think first and foremost what General David Petraeus has said is that the plan is in the formative stages. We don't even have all the reinforcements on the ground. Let's give it time to get the full complement of resources on the ground, let the strategy unfold in a way and let's not rush to judgment before it even has a chance to work.
Now secondly, I think the most important point as you do point out, the violence. Who is the one creating most of the violence? David Petraeus said al Qaeda. Now think about that. Democrats are rushing to say this is all lost and public enemy number one As David Petraeus put it is al Qaeda themselves. What is their answer? Get out. The main enemy who attacked us on 9/11, 3,000 lives lost in America and their answer to us, let's get out of where al Qaeda's is fighting us. And to me, that just doesn't make sense.
ROBERTS: Dan, General Petraeus said that he will know by mid to late August if this is working. If it would come around to mid to late August and it's not working, is there any reason to keep trying?
BARTLETT: What General Petraeus says is he and Brian Crawford (ph), the ambassador for Iraq for the United States will come back and give a broad assessment as to where the strategy is, whether it is working, whether we ought to give it more time. The president is very obviously interested in knowing that. He gets weekly progress reports, but he obviously wait and hear what they have to say there. The president showed them the path that we are constantly adapting. One thing we can't do, John, is to sit there and make a rushed judgment to say, get out now and there won't be any consequences for that because everything tells us that the problem will only get worse, that our kids are over there fighting right now. Their kids will be back there years from now fighting a much more lethal enemy. So we ought to confront this challenge now. We ought to do what it takes to prevail and we ought to have a serious debate and make sure that the troops get the funding they need.
ROBERTS: Dan, thanks for being with us. I know you got a helicopter to catch. Have a good day up there with (INAUDIBLE) at Camp David, appreciate it.
BARTLETT: Thanks John, appreciate it.
ROBERTS: Top stories of the morning are coming up next. A mayor on trial for taking the law into his own hands and a sledge hammer to a suspected crack house.
Plus, it's the ultimate irony, the dean of admissions at MIT, an outspoken advocate for people not padding resumes, gets caught padding her own. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Well, good morning, once again. It is Friday, April 27th. I'm Kiran Chetry here in New York.
ROBERTS: And I'm John Roberts here in Washington, DC. I'm glad that we've had our seat belts fastened this morning, because we have just been rocking this morning with all this post-debate information and analysis. My goodness.
CHETRY: We heard from a lot of candidates. We heard from Hillary and Obama's camp and we actually heard from the candidates themselves, both Joseph Biden out of Delaware and you spoke with Governor Bill Richardson. ROBERTS: It's like being in the spin room 12 hours later. It's really interesting. We've been hearing from all these people this morning as I mentioned, eight candidates on stage in South Carolina last night in Orangeburg. The Iraq war, the central issue with the candidates laying out their positions. This morning we talked with Governor bill Richardson. Here's what he had to tell us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. BILL RICHARDSON (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a civil war right now. This is a sectarian conflict right now and what I believe the problem is, our troops who have done a magnificent job have become targets and if we leave, we take away the terrorist propaganda tool that we are there in a situation where we are causing, I believe, a lot of attacks on our own people.
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ROBERTS: Richardson's plan for Iraq is among the more aggressive of the eight candidates, Kiran.
CHETRY: I also spoke with Senator Joe Biden out of Delaware who, despite pulling very far behind the frontrunners is actually very confident about his chances.
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SEN. JOE BIDEN (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The reason why I believe I'm going to win this is because I'm the only one that has an absolute clear plan to deal with the most important issue facing the United States, Iraq. I have more experience than anybody in this race. I have a track record and I don't think anyone ever is going to wonder about my authenticity. So I think ideas matter, I'll have enough money to compete and I believe I'm going to win this race.
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CHETRY: Biden also got the biggest laugh of the night at the debate when he poked fun about his tendency to sometimes put his foot in his mouth. He gave the one-word answer, yes, John and left it at that, when asked can you control it?
ROBERTS: The word succinct I don't think exists in his vocabulary.
Let's go back to our senior political correspondent Candy Crowley. She's in Columbia, South Carolina with her take on this inaugural debate. Candy, anybody come out on top? You look at the Internet, all of these snap polls. It's kind of mixed bag. Some people say Obama, some people say Hillary.
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think if you had a candidate going in, you had the same candidate going out and I don't think anybody made up their mind on the basis of this debate. Look, the frontrunners, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, they wanted to make no mistakes. They didn't make any mistakes. The lower tier candidates wanted to kind of take a little blood, if you will, sort of punch through. I don't think there were any punch through moments, probably a disappointment to those who aren't in the lead in this race. Nonetheless, no hits, no run, no errors. They go on to the next one.
ROBERTS: So no punch-through moments for the lower tier candidates. Any break out moments for the front runners Any faux pas?
CROWLEY: No faux pas, no real, ta-da, boy, that was the best line of the debate. I think if you look at the coverage of it, what was really interesting to me, talking to reporters afterwards, you know how this goes, you've written your piece and you want to know, what did you lead with? What did you lead with? Everybody had a different lead. It was really interesting.
ROBERTS: Whenever people have a different lead, that means that there were so many different things you could take away from it that everybody had different impressions. What about Obama? It was observed last night that Obama is better on the stump than he is in the debates, is that where the inexperience starts to show?
CROWLEY: Well, I think it does. And I think that the more town hall meetings he does, because frankly, there's a lot in town hall meetings that comes up that also come up in debates. So, after a while, it's hard to run into a different question. So, certainly, the form of the town hall and he does a lot of them will help Barack Obama, but, you're right, his strength really is the rhetoric and being out there with people. You talk to people after a Barack Obama event and they're saying oh he's so hopeful. He's so optimistic. He really makes me want to get involved in politics again. You talk to people after a Hillary Clinton town hall and they so, oh, she's so smart. She's right on target. She knows so much. The two of them have sort of opposite powers in some ways. She's a very good debater. She's less scintillating on the stump than he is. So they're sort of polar opposites, but I think both of them, as you continue to do more and more of these, will improve.
ROBERTS: It was a good warm up out of the gate and we hope to have everybody just rock and roll and sparks flying by the time that they come to the CNN debate in June. Candy, thanks very much.
CROWLEY Absolutely.
ROBERTS: Kiran.
CHETRY: The weather also making some news on this Friday morning. Heavy rain and severe flooding in the northeast. Meteorologist Chad Myers will have more on the severe weather threat.
Plus, a mayor goes on trial, accused of taking a sledge hammer to a crack house. He faces up to 50 years in prison. We're going to tell you how it all turned out. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ROBERTS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. wet one in the northeast. Roads flooding in Somerset County, New Jersey. Take a look there, two to three inches of rain expected around the state. Parts of New Jersey were just declared Federal disaster areas after heavy flooding two weeks ago. Chad Myers in the severe weather center here for us in Atlanta and, Chad, what's with this spring weather pattern? Is this just typical when an el Nino event subsides or is there something else going on?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: We're so neutral right now, John. We were in la Nina, going to the el Nino, I just don't see those numbers being such a huge switch in the pattern. It's called a southern oscillation index and we look at the pressure, the difference in the pressures between Tahiti and Darwin and if the wind is blowing one way or the other and it's just insignificant, I think right now. This is just a spring pattern and some people get a lot of rain in the spring and the rain lined up in New Jersey, the Delaware water gap, even into New York City last night. This is an indication of the rain where you see orange, that's two inches of rain. Where you see red, that's three. Here's Patterson, here's Piscataway, here is Trenton, so to the west of Trenton, Bucks County, there's Philadelphia right on down, almost to the nation's capital, getting all that water will eventually get into the Susquehanna and that will even be coming up, as well. We'll keep watching it for you. Kiran, the rain is not over by any means.
CHETRY: You can see it on your radar, it's all blue, all blue this morning.
MYERS: Except right there where there's a big forest fire. The wild fire couldn't get a drop of rain in Georgia last night down there.
CHETRY: That's so ironic. They need it down in Waycross and they're not getting it. Absolutely, Chad, thanks so much.
A jury of his peers has weighed in on the mayor of Mississippi's largest city, Jackson. Jackson's Mayor Frank Melten (ph) and two bodyguards accused of taking a sledge hammer to a suspected crack house. It turns out there were no drugs inside and maybe not a warrant either. AMERICAN MORNING's Sean Callebs was there for the verdict. He joins us now from Jackson to explain exactly what happened. Hi, Sean.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kiran. This may sound like a tired old movie plot, the crusading mayor takes office. He vows to take on crime. He gets some bodyguards, clubs, sledge hammers and descends on a crack house. But here's the twist, instead of being applauded for his efforts, he was faced with a host of criminal charges.
CALLEBS (voice-over): As mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, 57- year-old Frank Melton cultivated a tough guy image. He dressed the part in his war on drugs. Then in late August Melten and two of his bodyguards laid waste to what they called a crack house, located in a run down section of the city. These photos were taken with a cell phone the night the mayor led the raid on the house using sledge hammers. The district attorney said the gun toting, club wielding mayor went too far.
FAYE PETERSON, JACKSON DISTRICT ATTORNEY: They went to that home without a search warrant, without probable cause while this individual was watching TV in his home and broke in and kicked in the door. Then they proceeded to demolish his property on the pretext of looking for drugs that they never found.
CALLEBS: The DA charged Melten with a string of felonies that could have put him away for 50 years. The defense didn't deny the home was damaged, but said no crime was committed because the mayor was trying to clean up the city. After a three-day trial --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not guilty.
CALLEBS: Melten and his body guards were acquitted of all charges.
DALE DANKS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think that he understands now that there is a process that he has to comply with. I will encourage him to comply with it.
CALLEBS: The prosecution says the ruling is a disappointment, adding she can only hope this eight-month ordeal will rein in the mayor.
PETERSON: A lot of things that he does, they do seem like things out of a movie. You think the law does not apply to you.
DANKS: It's got to humble anybody and it's something I certainly wouldn't want to go through and I am sure he doesn't want to go through it again. And that's why I think that he's learned his lesson.
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CALLEBS: Interesting side note here, Melton's defense attorney Danks is a former mayor of Jackson himself. He is convinced that Melten left this courthouse yesterday a humbled man. While the DA's office certainly hopes so, it is the second time Melten has run afoul of the law in less than two years in office. Recently about six months ago, Kiran, he pleaded in a case involving a handgun. So a lot of charges, a lot of attention focused on the mayor of this city.
CHETRY: You're absolutely right. Sean Callebs, very interesting story, thanks so much.
ROBERTS: Still to come this morning, a big surprise at MIT, a dean exposed for a 28-year-old lie, never correcting her embellished resume.
Plus, the day the music died. A piano takes a tumble into the history books. We'll explain ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHETRY: It's the irony of all ironies, MIT's dean of admissions, Marilee Jones out of a job this morning for embellishing her resume, doing the very thing that she advised students not to do.
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MARILEE JONES, FMR DEAN OF ADMISSIONS, MIT: People get into college all the time and good colleges without having to behave this way.
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CHETRY: Jones resigned earlier this week after it came out that she had lied about the colleges she went to. Joining us now, business journalist Polly Labarre with more on the fallout from this case. What exactly - how did they find out in this case?
POLLY LABARRE, CO-AUTHOR, "MAVERICKS AT WORK": It's just the kind of situation where we live in a world of full disclosure and you have to assume that any e-mail you send, any lie you have in your background, any document you create is going to end up in the public sphere and the ultimate irony with this woman is, she is not only the most prominent college admissions director in the country. She was this aggressive advocate for easing up the pressure on hyperactive high schoolers who feel like they have marred their resumes with all kinds of achievements and accolades and credentials and yet she got caught out doing the very same thing.
CHETRY: Which is maybe why she was trying to change --
LABARRE: ... not psychoanalyze her, but I think maybe she was trying to create that opportunity for them that she couldn't create for herself.
CHETRY: What do you do for the people out there that may have padded their resumes trying to get a job?
LABARRE: I think we live in this world of full disclosure. The most important thing to do is be as open and honest as quickly as possible and best yet to use the tools that are going to cream you anyway in the end like blogs or youtube. When Jetblue had that customer service fiasco in February where they left people on the tarmac for hours and hours, the CEO created his own youtube mea culpa and put it out there on the web open and honest no spin and said, we were wrong. We messed up. We're human beings and people respond to that.
CHETRY: On the flip side, it seems that kids these days, kids these days, (INAUDIBLE) they have the facebooks and all these things online where they share so much of themselves. What about 10 years down the road when they're trying to get a job and there's video of them dancing in their underwear in their dorm room?
LABARRE: It's all about over exposure, the minutiae of their life, it's posted everywhere. I think you just have to assume that Google is your resume. Google is your permanent record and you can't control that. So, you do have to think, if some day you want a job, if you do something that clashes with the values of the organization that you want it work in, you're going to be in trouble. The only way to get around it is again to be out there blogging, posting, doing things that are positive that you want to get linked to so you can control your Google list search.
CHETRY: Is that on there forever by the way or after a certain amount of time, do these things just sort of disappear off the Internet?
LABARRE: In my own experience when I Google myself, which I don't do that often.
CHETRY: Everyone does it.
LABARRE: There are things that are on there from years ago that I think, why is that still there? That's no me. I don't want that there. So it just goes to show you, you can't really control your image on the web. There are actually all these businesses that are coming up now around reputation management and how you control your Google links for professionals, but I think kids at this point, kids, again, we're kids ourselves, really do revel in that exposure and maybe companies in the future are going to say, we want people who are facile in that world so we'll be more forgiving.
CHETRY: That's interest. All right, Polly Labarre, business journalist and co-author of "Mavericks at Work." Thanks for being with us this morning.
LABARRE: Thank you.
ROBERTS: Elsewhere on the MIT campus, students marked the last day to drop classes with a high note or was it sour note, an annual Baker house piano drop. Students pushed a 700-pound piano to the top of a seven-story building. There it goes. They call it a musical gravitational demonstration.
Still to come, a story that lots of people are talking about, designing a baby to not have cancer. Would you do it? We'll tell you where it's about to happen and the big debate that it is touching off. Plus the smooch that could send Richard Gere to the slammer. More on the kiss and the arrest warrant just issued for the actor, coming up.
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CHETRY: Two minutes before the top of the hour. Ali Velshi is minding your business. We've talked about the record Dow. As investors, should we be doing anything?
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) because every day I'm telling you about a record. What do you do? That's what most people are asking. So look at this Dow over 13,000 points. Big gain back in February you saw that big dip that it took February 22nd, 416 points. We have more than made up for that right now. Now, what do you do about this? Well let's take a look. First of all, let's look at how the other indices has done. This is the Dow. It's 30 big stocks. Look at the S&P 500, 500 stocks and the Nasdaq, this is Thursday's performance. They're all up. The Nasdaq is at six-year highs, don't expect all-time highs because that was in the dot com boom. It was almost double where it is now. The S&P 500 is really just a couple of percent off its all-time high.
The point here is that stocks across the board are participating in this rally, which means your 401k or your investments should also be participating. You shouldn't be going in the other direction. Your stocks may not match exactly what the Dow or the S&P are doing, but they should be trending up. If they're not, talk to your financial adviser, talk to your broker but make some decisions. You don't just sell because the market is up or just sell because the market is down. What are your goals? Some people say that when a stock goes up 20 percent, then they sell. The other thing is that most Americans are invested in mutual funds. That's how they get into the stock market. If you're invested in mutual funds, look at how they perform. Fundamentally, this is an opportunity to look at your own portfolio. We'll have more business news but the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING begins right now.
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