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Parker Spitzer
President Obama's Trip to Asia; Dick Cavett Reflects on Life, Career
Aired November 12, 2010 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KATHLEEN PARKER, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening, I'm Kathleen Parker.
ELIOT SPITZER, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: And I'm Eliot Spitzer. Welcome to the program.
PARKER: Well Eliot, the big news of the day was of course President Obama's disastrous trip to Asia. I think we can say it was an unmitigated disaster.
SPITZER: No question about it.
PARKER: And you know, I mean, it was really just nothing more than a global rebuke of the president.
SPITZER: Indeed. In fact, we'll have David Gergen here later in the show to talk about that. David Gergen has been in the White House advising multiple presidents of both parties. We'll talk about what they should have done differently to sort of step aside and not have this disaster occur, but before we get there...
PARKER: Call David Gergen.
SPITZER: Call David, yeah, that's step No. 1, no question about it. But you know what, before we get there, last night on the show John Ziegler, an ultraconservative radio host made a movie, "Media Malpractice," in which he claims the liberal conspiratorial media destroyed Sarah Palin intentionally. They didn't like her. And the funny thing is...
PARKER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPITZER: He put you, the conservative on this show...
PARKER: Oh, that was hilarious.
SPITZER: Inside that conspiracy and that led to quite a ruckus on the show. Let's take a look to see what happened last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN ZIEGLER, FILMMAKER: ...into targeting of Sarah Palin. You essentially took part in the assassination of Sarah Palin 1.0. That person is dead. She doesn't exist anymore. PARKER: Actually, I did not take part in it. I led it. OK? Let's be clear. Let's get our facts straight.
ZIEGLER: All right, you led the assassination.
PARKER: On September 26, 2008...
(LAUGHTER)
ZIEGLER: Have you cleaned the blood off of your clothes yet?
PARKER: On September 26, 2008 I said that she was out of her league and I have rested my case so many times I don't need to bring that up again.
ZIEGLER: Right. So you duped into that myth, as well.
PARKER: I will agree with you that some people in the media came after her in a vicious, cruel and unfair way. I was not one of them.
ZIEGLER: Oh, really?
PARKER: No, I'm not. I'm not. But if you want to...
ZIEGLER: So, as an alleged conservative, who is the first to come out there...
PARKER: So, did you come here to attack me or are you going to let me interview you?
ZIEGLER: No, I want to understand, I really truly want to understand how someone as smart as you could be duped like you were by the media into believing that Obama was really a moderate, not a socialist and that Sarah Palin, the vice presidential candidate, was really "not in her league," as you said? It's not true...
PARKER: Every column I write is a true essay in that moment. And I change my mind and I will say if I change my mind. But I have not changed my mind about whether Sarah Palin was ready to be president. And I hold John McCain accountable for bringing her into the national arena before she was ready, because I think she could have been great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: Wow, that's what I'm talking about. Seriously, you know.
SPITZER: That was fun to watch.
PARKER: I realize I said I led the charge, obviously the liberal media led the charge against Sarah Palin, but I was the first, I think, conservative writer to step forward and say what was obvious after the Katie Couric interview. And I actually wrote columns in advance of that one on September 26, 2008, which I remembered because it was on my birthday and I got 20,000 hate mails and so it was a memorable moment.
SPITZER: That's a way to celebrate your birthday.
PARKER: Hard to forget. Yeah. But I was initially very pro- Palin, so when I wrote that column, it was really -- it was with great disappointment and I didn't shred her to pieces. I just said, you know, I'm sorry this is -- it's become apparent she's not quite ready.
SPITZER: You said she's paper thin, unqualified, not ready for the job, she's a quitter...
PARKER: I did not say that, and actually the column that I wrote...
SPITZER: But we liberals loved it.
PARKER: Well, I didn't love it. I hated it. I was sorry.
SPITZER: We could see the ice kind of dripping out of the article. You loved every minute of it and you were right.
PARKER: No, I didn't. I hated it. Are you kidding?
SPITZER: You led the effort on the part of conservatives to tell the truth about this election that was wrong.
PARKER: Here's what I did. I liberated -- you know, I hate leading every sentence with...
SPITZER: Oh, you're a liberator now?
PARKER: Yeah. I mean, it was liberating to me because once everybody turned on me I thought, oh, OK, so that's the way it is, I get it, because the truth is if you are a Republican you are never supposed to say anything negative about another Republican and if you do you will be banished into outer darkness.
SPITZER: Just so we're clear, that was President Reagan's 11th commandment, right?
PARKER: Yeah.
SPITZER: All right, to talk more about the media's relationship with Sarah Palin, let's go into "The Arena." Joining us now is the founder Mediaite.com.
Dan Abrams, welcome.
DAN ABRAMS, MEDIAITE.COM: Good to be back with you.
PARKER: Welcome, Dan. OK, you saw the exchange from last night.
ABRAMS: I did.
PARKER: Did the media assassinate Palin? ABRAMS: Well, you know, I think the media has defiantly has put bullets into Palin. The question is whether these were self-inflicted wounds.
PARKER: Well, that is the question.
ABRAMS: That's the real question, right? Because I think that Palin had an enormous opportunity to become a media darling. When she was first nominated, when they first announced her name, everyone started looking and saw, wow, straight speaking, attractive, from Alaska, and so people...
PARKER: Well, that's what I wrote in my first column about her. Absolutely.
ABRAMS: People loved...
SPITZER: And her first speech.
ABRAMS: They loved it. They loved...
SPITZER: Ate it up. The public ate it up.
ABRAMS: So, the notion the minute she came onto this scene that the media was beating her up is a fall fallacy. Now, she was offered the opportunity to become a media darling. Like everyone, once people get to know you, they start figuring out the things they don't like about the person.
PARKER: Really?
ABRAMS: But there's no question in this case, no question in this case, though, that a lot of what has happened -- you see, here's what drives the media crazy about Sarah Palin: She revels in ignorance at times. She's proud of the fact that she doesn't know certain things.
PARKER: Sarah Palin is what she is in large part because of the media. I mean, the media are her greatest gift, right? Because every time she turns around we show up, we talk about her, we write about her, and, you know...
ABRAMS: And you would know this as well as anyone. I would think that that drives a lot of Republicans crazy, the fact that she's become the voice in many ways of the Republican Party.
PARKER: No doubt about it.
SPITZER: But Kathleen, look, I got to disagree a little bit. She isn't where she is because of the media. The civil rights movement didn't become the civil rights movement because of the media or George McGovern...
PARKER: Oh, come on.
SPITZER: Listen, people become leaders of movements because they touch a nerve and the people congregate -- yes, the media is a necessary...
ABRAMS: She was chosen as the vice presidential candidate. That's why she became...
SPITZER: That wasn't the media.
ABRAMS: But I think it's fair to say that she's getting a lot more attention than Geraldine Ferraro is, right now.
PARKER: There you go. Yeah.
SPITZER: Because Sarah Palin speaks in a way that touches a nerve in the public. And you know I don't agree with her on that much of anything, but I think whether you blame or praise the media for her is to misplace the credit.
ABRAMS: But what is she saying that's touching the nerve? What she's saying is that the media awful. That I think is one of her...
PARKER: Wait, wait, wait. Say that again. I'm sorry. I didn't hear you.
ABRAMS: I think one of the most important things that Sarah Palin is saying that is touching a nerve and that's getting people to really support her is that this idea of using the media as the villain.
PARKER: I really do believe that media went after her in a way that they didn't go after other candidates and were -- and I think treated her cruelly in some instances in part because she's a woman. I mean, she's a unique character in our history. We've never had a woman who played up her femininity and flirted her way, you know, through the crowds the way she has.
SPITZER: Let's look at the Katie Couric interview because I think that's instructive about these issues.
PARKER: Yeah.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATIE COURIC, CBS EVENING NEWS: Well, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand...
SARAH PALIN, FMR ALASKA GOVERNOR: I read most of them, again, with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
COURIC: Well, like what ones specifically? I'm curious.
PALIN: All of them. Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
COURIC: Can you name a few?
PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news. Alaska isn't a foreign country where it's kind of suggested it seems like, wow, how could you keep in touch with the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking and doing when you live in Alaska?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ABRAMS: These are not "gotcha" questions. I mean, I'm sorry, there has to be some sort of, you know, factual analysis of why we've gotten to where we are with Sarah Palin. And for Palin to simply say, you know, the media is just against me, whatever they say, the bottom line is the media, I do think, has come to view Sarah Palin as not very smart and I think that that's reflect reflected in the coverage of Sarah Palin.
SPITZER: I think that is the case. Can we switch gears just for a moment? One of the issues we were we debating last night is whether the media is biased. And my perspective on this is that the media of course is biased. Every writer brings a bias to every story and to think otherwise is to live in a world that doesn't exist. And the public should understand it. And that's why the more media there are the better. Let them all be heard.
ABRAMS: Well, but I think, look, leading up to 2008 there's no question that the media as this sort of broad entity fell in love with Barack Obama. All right?
SPITZER: That's right.
ABRAMS: And I think that hurt Hillary Clinton, a lot.
SPITZER: No question about it.
ABRAMS: Is the media coverage -- they came to life -- and part of it may be because it's politics, but part of it is a bias towards something different and something interesting. And the media does have this -- they like conflict. The media like something new. They love the idea of being able to say for the first time an African- American -- that's news. It's a bias towards news. Hillary Clinton wasn't news.
PARKER: Well, yeah, that's for sure.
SPITZER: But think back to Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton got the benefit of this, the comeback kid, when he came in, what, second or third in New Hampshire and yet he got all the headlines and he became the train that everybody wanted to hop on in his '92 presidential campaign, so I think candidates see both the upside and the downside of this and to say, therefore, this was unique to the race with President Obama I think is wrong. There's always this argument.
PARKER: Well, I want to go back to Sarah Palin for a minute because, you know, there is -- what we can't ignore is the fact that after we had seen her in these interviews and realized that she had no real depth of knowledge in certain areas that one would expect for someone at that high level of government, people didn't go after her to destroy her, to assassinate her, they went after her because she was a heartbeat away from the presidency and because John McCain just celebrated his 72nd birthday. You know, this is not irrational, mad assassination tactic. This is -- we have to talk to this person.
ABRAMS: That's why I think you got to separate out bias, right? Bias suggests the reason you're going after Sarah Palin is because you don't like her politics versus the way of -- the media treats someone like Sarah Palin, which may be in part bias, but also in part simply based on what she said. That's not bias.
PARKER: Right.
ABRAMS: It's not a bias to want to attack someone because they don't get their facts straight.
PARKER: Right.
ABRAMS: That may be the media's bias towards wanting facts.
PARKER: Right.
ABRAMS: But I don't think of that classically as bias.
PARKER: And the way you go after people in interviews sometimes, drilling down, pushing forward, going to that next question, the follow-up question, the follow-up question, there's no way Sarah Palin would survive that kind of interview. I wouldn't either, by the way, but I'm not running for president.
SPITZER: Well, Dan, fascinating conversation. Thank you for joining us.
ABRAMS: Good to see you.
PARKER: We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DOUG LIMAN, FILMMAKER: The people in the trenches and people up and down the chain of command, in both the CIA and the State Department, were shouting at the top of their lungs to the people in the people in the administration that there was no solid evidence for WMDs in Iraq. And the White House just continually ignored that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: Welcome back. In tonight's "Culture of Politics" segment we will have a fascinating conversation with Doug Liman. He was the director of the "Bourne Identity" and "Mr. And Mrs. Smith," blockbuster movies and now he's come out with "Fair Game," a fascinating movie, Kathleen, that makes the case that President Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War.
PARKER: And the movie is about Valerie Plame, who, as you'll recall, was the CIA agent whose identity was leaked by the Bush White House in that run-up. And we have a clip from the film that shows Valerie Plame played by Naomi Watts talking to Plame's CIA boss. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know it's not easy but I want you to know how much the agency appreciates your silence in the light of this matter. We can't afford to have this knife fight go on any longer.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I get death threats every day. People threaten to kill my husband, hurt my children. I went to the agency and I requested security to protect my family. I was declined because, "my circumstances fall outside the budget protocols." If this is a knife fight, sir, right now we're fighting it alone.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe Wilson versus the White House, huh? But I feel as a friend I should tell you that those men, those few men in that building over there are the most powerful men in the history of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: The movie's director, Doug Liman, joins us here, today.
Welcome, Doug. The movie is the story of WMD and the White House effort to perpetuate the myth that there case that there were weapons of mass destruction was powerful. In the book, President Bush's memoirs, he says, "The single sentence in my five," he's talking about his State of the Union speeches, "The single sentence in my 5,000 word speech was not a major point in the case against Saddam." Now, as he's trying to say this transaction that Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson debunked, said it never happened, now he's claiming it didn't even matter. Do you buy that?
LIMAN: Well, he actually only made a few claims to justify the invasion of Iraq. One of them was that Saddam was -- had tried to seek uranium from Niger, and actually what's incredible in his memoir is that as soon as -- because you remember Joe Wilson was the one who was sent to Africa to investigate this claim and came back and said it could not have happened. And what's incredible is that as soon as he published his op-ed piece, the White House, the next day, retracted the statement, said it was a mistake for that uranium claim to have ended up in the State of the Union address and yet suddenly in his memoir he's -- seems to be contradicting his own administration from a couple years ago.
PARKER: Well, that 16-word statement came from a British report at the time.
LIMAN: Yeah.
PARKER: And, you know, we've all acknowledged that there was some very bad intelligence from all directions during that period. But your movie advances the idea that they actually knew this was faulty intelligence and were insistent on pushing forward in order to justify the war.
LIMAN: Well, this is why seeing the story from the point of view of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, such an interesting lens to investigate this chapter in our history because the people in the trenches and people up and down the chain of command, both the CIA and State Department, were shouting at the top of their lungs to the people in the administration that there was no solid evidence for WMDs in Iraq and the White House just continually ignored that and obviously I have very good sources in this. I mean, Valerie Plame, who personally led the cover team in Jordan that seized the aluminum tubes that Dick Cheney went on to talk about as did President Bush in his State of the Union address. I mean, these were -- these were the people in the trenches screaming at the top of their lungs, this is not solid intelligence.
SPITZER: What is the message, the take away from this movie? I mean, what do you want somebody walking out to have learned based on this story?
LIMAN: I think, you know, this film, again, is not really about Valerie Plame, it's about abuse of power by the White House. And this is not the first time the White House in our country's history has abused power. In this particular case, it involved a decision to go to war. There really is no more serious decision the president of the United States makes than to go to war. So to have abused the power of the White House and to manipulate the country to the extent which they did for a decision that's as solemn as going to war, that's the story that I want to tell.
SPITZER: The deception about WMD, I think we all now appreciate and understand. The question that I have is what did the White House gain by outing Valerie Plame? What was the -- sort of the political game, or was it just retribution? Was it venom? I don't see their political purpose, there.
LIMAN: I don't know, and unlike other filmmakers, you know, Hollywood filmmakers who might make up a scene, you know, and just make up a scene in the White House, I stuck to scenes that actually took place. I mean, you'd appreciate it as a lawyer that I actually used court transcripts. And the words that you see being uttered in the scenes that do take place in the White House are actually pulled verbatim from court transcripts. And there were no court transcripts involving -- there was a meeting that took place in which Valerie Plame's name comes up and Karl Rove let that slip in his memoir, even though it contradicts his actual grand jury testimony, and we don't know what happened in that meeting.
SPITZER: To come back to what you said was one of sort of the most trenchant point for you, which is what happens when there's abuse of power. Let's look at it from the other side. They stood up to power and did what was right. What has happened to them as a consequence?
LIMAN: Well, it's probably the reason I chose to make this movie, because I am a Hollywood filmmaker, I don't make documentaries. And, you know, a husband and wife standing up to the most powerful men in the history of the world makes for a good story. And they weren't just an ordinary husband and wife, he's the former ambassador who, when he was in Iraq, he was the last American official to meet with Saddam Hussein and actually threaten Saddam Hussein back, and, you know, Valerie Plame seems like a suburban housewife, investment banker, beautiful blond, little did the neighbors know after she's done dropping the kids off at school she's going to Langley where it turns out she's a top CIA operative on weapons proliferation, nuclear weapons proliferation.
PARKER: Even her husband didn't know where she was going.
LIMAN: No. And the human side of what it's like to be married to a spy was infinitely fascinating to me, so that's really what drew me to the story.
PARKER: All right, well the film is "Fair Game." Doug Liman, thank you so much for being with us.
LIMAN: Thank you.
SPITZER: We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: One of the my favorite things about your show is that you would bring people on who would not necessarily go together. You know, it was sort of like the interesting dinner party.
DICK CAVETT, FMR TALK SHOW HOST: Yes.
SPITZER: Was that intentional or was this...
PARKER: Of course it was.
CAVETT: Sometimes that was a good idea. But was it a good idea, do you think?
PARKER: Oh, it was a wonderful idea. Did you not have Grace Kelly and Alice Cooper on together, once?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Tonight's "Person of Interest" for years hosted the most famous personalities on his self-titled late-night talk show, from John Lennon to Katharine Hepburn to writers Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal -- Dick Cavett, achieved what few hosts could, candid and engaging conversation.
PARKER: And it's...
CAVETT: Can I hear that again? I like that.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: Wait. We're not done yet.
SPITZER: We'll send you a tape.
CAVETT: And see, I'm new to TV. Which of you is which?
PARKER: All right, this is Parker and I'm Spitzer.
CAVETT: OK.
PARKER: All right, so what are your cuts?
CAVETT: You can't stand being the one who's supposed to be interviewed. You started asking questions immediately.
PARKER: Oh, this is fantastic. Well, we were going to promote your book, You know, Dick Cavett has just written a book.
CAVETT: I'm actually merchandiser today.
PARKER: Called "Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary and Off Screen Secrets." Well, I find it very intimidating to be interviewing you because I've -- not only have I been a huge fan of yours from the beginning when you had the "Dick Cavett Show" back in the late '60s and early '70s, but I've also been reading your book and I've learned that I've done everything wrong so far. One of the things you say is don't ask questions Q & A style and I have a script here and I'll show you what I'm going to do with it.
SPITZER: Well, you do that all the time. You do that all the time.
PARKER: There you go.
CAVETT: What a dramatic...
PARKER: We're off script now.
CAVETT: I know, as they say exactly what you mean with that. But just before I began doing a talk show I had worked for seemingly all the big people who did them, Jack and Johnny.
SPITZER: Wait, wait, wait. For the new generation, who are they? Jack and Johnny who?
CAVETT: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot you're a kid.
SPITZER: Not me. I mean, I'm not quite that young, but others are.
PARKER: We're trying to get the youth demographic so we have to explain things.
CAVETT: Their full names are Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, and for two glorious weeks, Groucho Marx, when he...
SPITZER: That's the one I want to hear about.
CAVETT: ...hosted the "Tonight Show" for two weeks.
(SINGING)
CAVETT: (INAUDIBLE) Groucho said. I don't think you'd ever hear it anywhere else. I had him in the backseat of a rented car in Hollywood with the great Harry Ruby he's a great friend and songwriter, and I'll make this quick and I heard Groucho say to Harry Ruby, we had stop for a light where somewhere in Beverly Hills, "That's where your son lives in that building right there." And Harry Ruby said, "No, it isn't, Groucho." And Groucho said, "Yes, it is. That's the building where your son lives, the one over here." Ruby said, "No, no, Groucho he lives over on Wilshire." And Groucho said, "Well, that's funny, I ran into him the other day and he never mentioned not living here."
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: That's great.
CAVETT: That's a weird curve, isn't it?
PARKER: The thing I love about your speech, the way you talk and the conversational tone of your show is it's that. It's not this sort of wild and crazy thing that we've all merged into.
CAVETT: Well, the best advice I got was from Jack, who said, "Kid, don't do interviews. That's clipboards and David Frost and what's your favorite color and, you know, and pet peeve, for god's sake, make it a conversation."
PARKER: Right.
CAVETT: And that's what Jack did.
SPITZER: That's a lost art.
CAVETT: Well, you know, you must know yourselves that when it gets going into real talk and not here's No. 1 and let me ask you this and let me ask you that, that's when it flows and that's when it feels good and that's when it's fun to watch.
PARKER: You write two columns a week, now. Is that right?
CAVETT: No, actually, I started doing two a week and I found that easy for the first two and then penal servitude for the next -- my life is over, I have no more to say.
PARKER: I understand.
CAVETT: Three years later I'm now doing it every other week, pretty much. You know, I got in trouble in a thing that said Cavett criticizes Stewart and Colbert by saying they weren't very manly. Now, what I had said was it took real men to do late night in those days because I did 90 minutes five times a week and these guys only do two hours. Well, that became my big question of their masculinity and it alienated them and so on and so on.
PARKER: In your book you tell all wonderful stories that we all want to read about, you know, the wonderful people, interesting people you interviewed. And you said two of the people you wished you had interview and did not were Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. CAVETT: Yeah, yeah, both of those, that would have been fun. Sinatra was wary somehow, I don't know why. I don't know how many times I'd met him. I once might have called him a goon at the other end who said, "Frank's in the steam room right now." And Cary Grant on the phone I think he was close. I think I should have tried harder. He got so far as saying, "Well, if I did it, they'd find out how dumb I am."
PARKER: Well, you know, I've had that thought myself. You know? It's better...
CAVETT: Oh, about you not about Cary Grant.
PARKER: About me. Well, I didn't care if Cary was dumb.
CAVETT: Well, the never tried to convince Cary Grant that he could come off so badly. How do you do that?
PARKER: Well who would you -- if you had a show today, and I personally wish you did...
CAVETT: OK. Do you know anybody?
PARKER: Who would come on the first week? Well, we got room at our table.
CAVETT: You know, I don't know. I try not to think in those terms because I can get frustrated.
SPITZER: I want to bring up something. Because you do comment on politics, also.
PARKER: He said not to do that.
SPITZER: No, no, it's not, but you comment on politics.
CAVETT: I do.
SPITZER: And you've made harsh comments about Sarah Palin, who for better or worse, worse, in my view, is sort of all the rage out there and captured the psychology of the -- What do you make of that?
CAVETT: Palin, is it?
SPITZER: Yeah. I mean, how does it work?
CAVETT: On the thing that the readers seem to like most in their responses, which you get to read after your column when your column appears, was the line that she seemed to have no first language.
PARKER: Well, they used to say that George W. Bush spoke English as though it were his second language. Right? So, Sarah has no first language whatsoever.
CAVETT: So it seemed to me. My guess is that 25 years from now this will be seen as a period when America had lost its mind for a while and mercifully one hopes recovered it.
PARKER: One of my favorite things about your show is you would bring people on who would not necessarily go together. You know, it was sort of like the interesting dinner party.
SPITZER: Was that intentional or was this...
PARKER: Of course it was.
CAVETT: Sometimes that was a good idea, but was it a good idea, do you think?
PARKER: Oh, it was a wonderful idea. Did you not have Grace Kelly and Alice Cooper on together, once?
CAVETT: No.
PARKER: No.
CAVETT: No. But, I'll tell you one more astonishing.
PARKER: I've been telling people that for years.
CAVETT: What would you guess -- well --
PARKER: Well, who were your most interesting --
CAVETT: Where we asking for trouble to book Governor Lester Maddox of segregation fame?
PARKER: Yes, down yonder.
CAVETT: Along with James Brown, the football player.
PARKER: Nice.
CAVETT: A mountain of brick, telephone booth of a man.
PARKER: Dirty dozen.
CAVETT: And Truman Capote.
PARKER: Perfect. Perfect.
CAVETT: (INAUDIBLE) Looking good. Well, this was --
SPITZER: And in a rumble? What happened?
CAVETT: It was dynamite. The governor got upset. He said I had to apologize to the people of Georgia because I had called them bigots. And I wish we had a clip from this. It was quite exciting.
PARKER: Oh, me too.
CAVETT: And I said, no, I didn't say it, governor. I said the bigots who voted for you -- (INAUDIBLE). And he was apologizing. He looked at his Timex and he stood up and he gave me one minute to apologize. And luckily I thought to say, all right, if I called anyone a bigot who isn't a bigot, I apologize. Well, the governor saw through that. The audience roared with applause and the governor hauled -- walked off the stage.
SPITZER: What was the last half of that?
CAVETT: He hauled his weight, his considerable weight into the arms of his trooper, who was standing back there. Actually, Lester came back on the show some months back and the hatchet was buried.
SPITZER: Reformed.
CAVETT: Yes. Really as a professional politician, knowing the value of television time, he knew to walk off a scant 88 minutes into the show.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: The book is "Talk Show." Dick Cavett, thank you so much. And when Eliot goes on vacation, will you come warm this chair for me?
CAVETT: Yes. And next time you leave a party, Groucho will say to the hostess, say to the hostess, I had a wonderful evening but this wasn't it.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: Thank you so much.
SPITZER: You wouldn't say that.
PARKER: All right. Well, we'll be right back. Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: What we have here, Eliot, is something deeper and bigger. This is not just about President Obama and what may have been mishandling or misplanning his trip. I think what was more fundamental here is a growing sense that America itself, especially in relationship to others in the world, is no longer the leader that it once was.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: It would appear that President Obama's Asia trip was a total disaster. He failed to achieve any of his objectives for the trip. No trade deal with South Korea, no currency deal with China, no agreement on trade deficits in the G-20 summit. It's a rebuke of global proportions.
PARKER: CNN senior analyst David Gergen has written a provocative editorial about the president's trip. He joins us now.
Welcome, David.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you, Kathleen.
SPITZER: You have been in the White House multiple administrations, Democratic as well as Republican. Is it conceivable that -- it seems unconceivable to me that a president would go overseas without having at least the certainty of a trade deal with South Korea. How could they not have had that locked up and done to ensure at least one success when they went over to Asia?
GERGEN: Eliot, that will be a big surprise to a lot of people who worked at White Houses over the years. I go back all the way to Nixon and planning trips to China. And I can tell you on every one of these foreign trips, the president and his advisers put a lot of story in what kind of headlines are we going to get around the world from this trip. Are we going to have a triumph or not? It's very important to the prestige both of the presidency and to the United States. So when you wake up as we did this morning with "The New York Times" in the front page of "The New York Times," on the top two columns, headline, "Obama's Economic View is Rejected on World Stage," that's a terrible headline. That is a very, very disappointing.
Now to be fair to the president, he did have a good trip to India before this. He did have a good trip to Indonesia, but this was a really bad day for him because, as you say, you know, basically he went into this trip to South Korea wanting a trade deal with South Koreans and saying he would have it by this time. And it fell through because they resisted his demands. He wanted a deal from the Chinese on currency manipulation. They rejected that. He wanted a deal from the other nations on basic trade imbalances. They rejected that. And on top of that, he got criticized by people like the Chinese and the Brazilians and the Germans and the Brits, for the United States engaging in its own currency manipulation that day.
SPITZER: But, David, with hindsight, it looks clear that the president made a strategic mistake making this trip right after the elections and then, of course, without any sort of real assurances that he could accomplish what his mission was. But he couldn't really cancel another trip to Indonesia, could he? He's already canceled twice. Don't you think that would have been a huge mistake?
GERGEN: Kathleen, I think a couple things. One is no, I don't think he could cancel Indonesia. I do think he could have put the trip off for a few days in order to -- you know, frankly, I think what he wanted to do back here in the United States was to frame the election in a way that strengthened his hand as much as possible, you know, and damage control. But by leaving the states to others, he went abroad looking like a weakened president, and now the weakness of his own presidency at home plays into this story about, you know, failures in South Korea. And you get this sort of narrative that's built up, he's weak at home and abroad, and that's exactly what you don't want a president to do.
SPITZER: And, David, it seems to me that had the message been sent to the South Koreans, the president is not coming unless he has a treaty, that was the ultimate persuasive argument to get the deal done. And so that's what they should have said to the South Koreans.
GERGEN: Well, this is not just about President Obama and what may have been mishandling or misplanning his trip. I think what was more fundamental here is a growing sense that America itself, especially in relationship to others in the world, is no longer the leader that it once was.
PARKER: Well, unfortunately, you know, he went over to Asia with diminished stature and now he's coming back here with yet another, sort of a double whammy. The problems aren't over for President Obama. Once he gets back to Washington, he's got to face this debt commission report. Can he lead? I mean, is he going to be able to lead a bipartisan commission and convince Americans that they've got to make all these sacrifices in order to not only put our economy back on track but to regain our stature in the world?
GERGEN: Jackpot questions, Kathleen. I think he's got two issues he's got to deal with when he gets back on the economic front. One is what in the world does the administration really believe about these tax extensions of the Bush tax cuts? You know, we've gotten mixed signals in the last few days about where they plan to go. He's got to come back just squarely in the middle of that and resolve it and lead to an answer that I think is bipartisan in nature. But the second and more difficult issue is the one you pointed out. What is he going to do about the big, big 800-pound gorilla that's just waiting for him next year, and that is these deficits? Is he going to take the lead or he's going to try to sit on the sidelines?
I think his presidency is going to heavily hang now on the economic performance here, not only on the United States on jobs but what we do about these deficits over the next couple years.
SPITZER: David, I want to go back to what you were saying before about the relative position of the United States in the world. I want to quote something that's in your very persuasive article that's I guess posted on CNN.com.
GERGEN: Thank you.
SPITZER: I just want to read it. It says, "Either we get our economic house in order or we will lose much of our influence and our leadership on the world stage."
And the question I have is, even if we do get our economic house in order, as you look out over the next 10 or 15 years, do -- many people are saying it's inevitable that we have a diminished role in the world as was evidenced at the most recent G-20 conference. Did you think that is, in fact, the path we followed?
GERGEN: I think it's inevitable, Eliot, that more players will be at the table of power over the next 20 years, that China, India, Brazil and others are going to be at that table. The question remains is the United States still at the table and where do we sit? You know, are we just one more player or are we at the head of the table helping to shape things? And I think you and I would agree and I'm sure Kathleen would, that it makes a big difference where the United States sits at that table and whether we, in fact, have a respected place at that table.
SPITZER: Right.
PARKER: Couldn't agree more, David. One more question, one last question. Has the White House called you yet to see if you're available?
GERGEN: I think that's the last thing they're going to do or probably should do. But thank you.
PARKER: Oh, we think they should. We think they should. You've got our vote.
GERGEN: I'm happy right here talking to you folks. It's great fun. Thank you.
PARKER: All right. David Gergen, thank you. We'll be right back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. GAIL SALTZ, PSYCHIATRIST: Presidents don't have friends. Friends are people you can trust, who trust you, that you share your secrets with, that have your back. I mean, there are many adjectives we would all use to describe friends. And at the end of the day, leaders can't really afford to have friends.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PARKER: Welcome to "Our Political Party," a conversation in which our guests often speak before they think, which is kind of the way we like it. They're the kind of people you want to sit with next to at a party like Will Cain. He is a columnist for the National Review online and Steve Kornacki, who's the editor-at-large at Salon.com. And Gail Saltz who's a shrink. And we're happy to have you here because by golly, we need one.
SPITZER: We all need it. We all need one.
PARKER: And Charles Blow, "New York Times" visual op-ed columnist.
President Barack Obama says that the midterm election results have displayed nothing ideological whatsoever. Is he delusional?
DR. GAIL SALTZ, PSYCHIATRIST: Wish fulfillment.
PARKER: Wish fulfillment.
SALTZ: You know, he wants it to be so. And he may even be right in the sense that people have varying thoughts of, you know, some of their thoughts are Republicans, some of their thoughts are Democrat. When it comes to voting, the mind says needs to line up. And I'm only going to hear what's on one side. And that's what happened.
WILL CAIN, NATIONALREVIEW.COM: I think you've got it right. I think he's right and he's wrong. He's right and -- look, 40 percent of the electorate call themselves --
PARKER: You're bipolar.
CAIN: Forty percent call themselves conservative, right? That's ideological. Twenty percent call themselves liberal. That's ideological. And then you have this great of independents, which encompasses communists, socialists, libertarians, all ideological. Then you get the confused people. That's the ones who don't carry around the ideological card he talked about.
But let me say this. Here's where he's wrong. This was an ideological election. He was an ideological president that pushed an ideological agenda, and the voters happened to not be as left ideologically as him.
STEVE KORNACKI, SALON.COM: The biggest myth in politics is that here you have the Democrats, you have the Republicans, then you've got this big group of independents and maybe they're confused, maybe they're on some fringe thing. The reality is only 10 percent of independents, political science has shown, can actually be classified as true, pure independents who will swing from the Democrats in this election, with the Republicans on this election. The rest of them are people who are functionally members of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. That is they vote Republican steadily, they vote Democratic steadily, but they like the label independent.
SPITZER: Two years ago the people who thought their economic situation was worse off voted overwhelmingly Democratic. This year when that group was huge, they all voted Republican. So they take away from that is you become an ideologue after you look at your economic situation. Economics drives ideology, not vice versa. If the economy comes back, they'll fly back the other direction. And so it is not ideology. It's jobs, jobs, jobs.
KORNACKI: We can draw the same conclusions about a midterm election from the opposite ideological standpoint when Ronald Reagan was president. When Ronald Reagan was president, he had his first midterm. It was a disaster for the Republicans, and the left concluded it was a rejection of ideological overreach. What it was was a response to double-digit unemployment. We have the highest unemployment now that we've had since Reagan was president.
SPITZER: Right. Look, we're not going to -- so I'm going to -- you and I are in alignment but we'll tolerate the others.
Gail, since we don't often have a shrink at the table, we want to really take full advantage of it. You're not going to send the bill. But the person who needs some help -- yes, we'll debate that later. The person who needs some help right now, the president had a bad day on Election Day, midterms. He goes overseas it gets even worse. He has no friends. I mean, you look at the pictures, you hear it's bad. So when he comes home, if he walked into your office, laid down on your sofa, couch, whatever you guys have, what would you tell him? What do you say to him?
SALTZ: Presidents don't have friends. Friends are people you can trust, who trust you, that you share your secrets with, that have your back. I mean, there are many adjectives we would all use to describe friends. And at the end of the day, leaders can't really afford to have friends. You know, I hate to sound so Machiavellian but --
PARKER: TV anchors don't have friends either.
SALTZ: To some degree, right? It's, you know, you keep your enemies closer. I think better to be feared than loved. I mean, you know, I think that it's very difficult for any president to really have friends.
SPITZER: Did he know that going in? Was he trying to be loved and not feared? Is that part of the problem?
SALTZ: I think that is part of the problem. Actually, I think that's been a big problem for the Democrats in general. They're often trying to be loved. They need to be more feared. They need to be more aggressive. And that's I think has a lot to do with the current election, quite honestly.
PARKER: You think Republicans don't need to be loved?
SALTZ: I think that no, Republicans have used aggression to motivate their elections, and that works. Libidinal, you know, loving elections, they don't work. It doesn't stimulate people so much.
CHARLES BLOW, "NY TIMES" VISUAL OP-ED COLUMNIST: There are different constituencies completely. So the vitriol works on people who lean right. But --
(CROSSTALK)
PARKER: Wait, explain yourself.
BLOW: It's absolutely true. I mean, the people yesterday basically saying how Democrats and Republicans see their leaders completely differently. Democrats want you to get along. They pride people who compromise. When we asked the Republicans the same question, they prize people who would not compromise whatsoever who are --
SALTZ: Tough.
BLOW: They want a tougher --
PARKER: Democrats are more nursing.
BLOW: leaders as Democrats really want, you know, somebody to move towards the middle.
KORNACKI: When you make the point that the Democrats as a whole want people to move to the middle and the Republicans, you know, want somebody who can fight more. But what that's really a function of is that the Republicans as a whole are an ideologically cohesive lot. The Republicans are tough to the bottom an ideologically conservative party. The Democrats are a much broader party.
SALTZ: Yes.
KORNACKI: There's much broader constituency.
SALTZ: But part of the reason for that is that the mind of many Republicans has to do with I see things in black and white. I see -- you know, this is right, this is wrong. And liberals tend to see things --
(CROSSTALK)
More mushy, mushy.
SPITZER: One at a time. One at a time.
BLOW: Liberals are a big tent, and Republicans are a sweat lodge. I mean, it's --
PARKER: Wow.
BLOW: That's the way it works.
CAIN: Let me make a point also because you're lauding compromise so much. It plays into the liberal hand to laud compromise. Government moves in one direction, getting bigger. You compromise in the direction of bigger. The reason the Republicans are cohesive and not for compromise but for gridlock, it's the only way to keep the government from growing.
PARKER: OK, hold on. We have to take a quick break, but we have more with our party. So stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SPITZER: We've got time for just one more question. News just broke today that several sections of George Bush's memoir are apparently plagiarized from other sources including previously published books by his own subordinates. So the question is when you have a ghostwriter who plagiarizes, who gets the credit for the book?
PARKER: Or who gets the blame for the plagiarism?
SPITZER: Who gets the blame?
SALTZ: The commander in chief, right? If somebody under you does something it's on you. But I don't think this is that surprising because I think that it's tough to be the president and not have some, I guess I would call it fungible superego, a little bit of, like, this is OK and, you know, I can make this OK. And to feel that everything that has gone on is somehow really in your wheelhouse, right? You're the president. So that you might report on things that you weren't exactly at but feel a sense of ownership.
PARKER: But I would suspect that he doesn't necessarily know. If he's got some researcher doing most of the writing and he does research online as many of us do and he's going and grabbing a memo here and a memo there --
SALTZ: Right.
PARKER: Cutting and pasting and then, you know, the president -- it looks familiar.
SALTZ: And to delegate, this is true.
KORNACKI: And this just gets, you know, to the idea that are we really surprised a president or a politician who makes his living reading the words that somebody else has written for him in every speech he ever delivers -
SPITZER: John F. Kennedy "Profiles in Courage," Ted Sorensen wrote it. I mean, we all know this, of course, and Sorensen never really would publicly own up to it until very recently in history.
BLOW: It does bother me. It's true. You know, there's -- you know, if he is saying people said things to him that they actually said to reporters, that's actually -- that's I don't know. That bothers me.
PARKER: I have a problem with ghostwriters. Period. Because as a writer I know that what matters are the words you choose and the way you string them together because that's what reveals something about you. So I don't like the ghostwriter business at all. All right.
Well, this was a great party as usual. Thank you all for coming. And please come back. And you all, because it is a party, we gave you permission to have a real hug. We urge you to.
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello. I'm Randi Kaye. More of "PARKER SPITZER" in a moment. First, the latest.
The cholera outbreak in Haiti is worsening. Health officials now say that nearly 800 people have died from the disease and that 12,000 others have been stricken with it. The Supreme Court refused today to temporarily suspend enforcement of the Pentagon's controversial "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy while a court battle proceeds. The request for the suspension came from the log cabin Republicans.
Tonight on "360," why is it taking Amazon.com so long to take objectionable material, including pornography, off its Web site? And we finally received a statement late tonight from Amazon. We'll tell you what it says. We're keeping them honest. "360" at 10:00 p.m.
That's the very latest. "PARKER SPITZER" is back right after this.
PARKER: We leave you tonight with a P.S. Well, it's been a tough road trip for President Obama. His QE2 plan to revive the economy has turned his former friends into harsh critics, and his hopes of scoring a big sale for American cars in South Korea went nowhere. You can't blame the guy for wanting to make a fast exit. Just take a look at the way he ended his G-20 press conference.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My main job is to look out for the American people, American workers and American businesses. And, you know, I want to make sure that this deal is balanced. And so we're going to keep on working on it. But I'm confident we can get it done.
All right. Thank you very much, everybody. I'm late for my flight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SPITZER: Did he really say he's late for his flight.
PARKER: I love that.
SPITZER: Like it's going to leave without him?
PARKER: Yes.
SPITZER: But the one perk he still got left is Air Force One goes nowhere without him, although there are some folks out there who think it's leaving real quick without him.
PARKER: Well, that contrail out in California, that mysterious contrail, I think maybe now we have our mystery solved.
SPITZER: Air Force One without him. Look, if this visit to Japan goes like the one in South Korea, it's going to be a long trip home. The way his luck is running, he'll be sitting in coach, middle seat, row 44, with 45 looking over his shoulder.
PARKER: Oh, I get it. 45, like the next president.
SPITZER: Yes, that's it. 44, the president.
PARKER: Got it. Got it. Got it.
SPITZER: I know. It's Friday. What can you tell?
PARKER: Well, my flight is almost about to leave, too. Enjoy the flight, Mr. President. And enjoy the pretzels. They'll cost you extra.
That's our show for tonight. Thank you so much for being with us. And enjoy your weekend.
SPITZER: Good night from New York. "LARRY KING LIVE" starts right now.
