"Face the Nation" transcript: December 25, 2011
Below is a rush transcript of "Face the Nation" on December 25, 2011, hosted by CBS News chief Washington correspondent and "Face the Nation" anchor Bob Schieffer. The guests are: CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O'Donnell, CBS News Political Director John Dickerson, CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes, CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin, CBS News Justice and Homeland Security Correspondent Bob Orr and CBS News Senior Business Correspondent Anthony Mason.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION looking back on an extraordinary year as we covered it and looking ahead to what comes next.
It was a year that began on a sad and shocking note. Our second broadcast of the year began this way.
On an awful day in Tucson, a young Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords lies gravely wounded, shot through the head. Giffords would survive but continues a long rehabilitation.
The end of January was the beginning of an onslaught afar.
Today on FACE THE NATION, Egypt in crisis. Across the Middle East demonstrators took to the streets as one regime after another fell. Mubarak left Egypt. Qaddafi would die in Libya.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN MCCAIN (R-Arizona): These winds of change that are blowing, I think that I would be a little less cocky in the Kremlin with my KGB cronies today if I were Vladimir Putin.
BOB SCHIEFFER: By the middle of March attention shifted to another unimaginable story. Japan was overwhelmed by a triple disaster--first an earthquake, then a tsunami, and a melt down at one of the country's nuclear reactors
And then the biggest news of all.
Today on FACE THE NATION, Osama bin Laden is dead. What next for the war on terror? Evidence seized when bin Laden was killed suggests he was still running al Qaeda from his hideout in Pakistan.
In a bizarre turn of events back home, a New York congressman named Anthony Weiner had to resign after sending out inappropriate pictures of himself in his underwear to young women. By then politics was heating up and the economy became the story in a way none of us wanted to hear.
Bad just got worse. Now what? It is an embarrassment. And that's just the half of it. U.S. securities are no longer the safest place to invest your money.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Newt Gingrich announced for President and when he tried to explain a four-hundred-thousand-dollar bill at Tiffany's Jewelry, the late night comics had a field day. It looked like his campaign was over. But he recovered and goes into the Iowa caucuses as one of the favorites.
Former members of the Bush administration came out with books. And the former vice president admitted he said a couple of things that might make former Secretary of State Powell's head explode. Powell came on FACE THE NATION to say his head was fine, thanks.
COLIN POWELL (Former Secretary of State): The kind of headline you might see one of the supermarket tabloids write. I think Dick overshot the runway with that kind of comment and if that's how he plans to sell his book.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All the Republican candidates but Romney and Perry came to our table. During a Herman Cain visit, we got into it over his campaign ad that featured his campaign manager taking a drag on a cigarette
Was it meant to be funny?
HERMAN CAIN: It was meant to be informative. The bit on the end, we didn't know whether it was going to be funny to some people or whether they were going to ignore it or whatever the case may be.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just tell you it's not funny to me.
Cain then urged young people not to smoke.
HERMAN CAIN: So I'm not--
BOB SCHIEFFER: It's not a cool thing to do.
HERMAN CAIN: It was not a cool thing to do.
BOB SCHIEFFER: The campaign rolled on with first one, then another candidate climbing to the top of the polls. Congress didn't accomplish much of anything except record low approval ratings. And most of the problems we had at the beginning of the year are still with us. With a year like that, how could anyone predict what next year will bring?
GOVERNOR RICK PERRRY(R-Texas): Oops.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Not to worry. We'll try as we bring together our correspondents to review the past and look to the future because this is FACE THE NATION.
ANNOUNCER: From CBS News in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, good morning again and welcome to FACE THE NATION and our annual CBS News correspondent roundtable. Joining me here in the studio, chief White House correspondent Norah O'Donnell, political director John Dickerson, congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes, national security correspondent David Martin, and justice and homeland security correspondent Bob Orr. In New York, our senior business correspondent Anthony Mason and in London correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.
Elizabeth, I'm going start with you because one of the most dramatic moments on FACE THE NATION this year was when Egypt suddenly erupted, everything was in turmoil there. And when we switched to you here's what happened.
ELIZABETH PALMER (January 30, 2011): There's reason to-- to believe that the looters are un-uniformed police who have kept their weapons and turned into thugs. And in fact it maybe--
(Plane flying close by overhead)
BOB SCHIEFFER: You were not dive bombed as it turned out, Elizabeth. They were just flying over for show. But how is it these days in-- in Egypt? We know what happened that day. Where are we today in that part of the world?
ELIZABETH PALMER (correspondent): Well, shortly after that incident, Mubarak was forced to step down. And since then Egypt has been lurching very uncertainly toward electing a government. But the problem is the military doesn't really want to let go of power. So we've had round after round of violence and-- and-- and chaos really. And the big winners so far are the Islamists, the political party representing the Muslim-- Muslim religion are--look-- set to form the next government. So it's highly unstable.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Bob Orr, the biggest story of the year in my view was the killing of Osama bin Laden. How is the war on terror these days?
BOB ORR (Justice & Homeland Security Correspondent): Well, that was a game-changer when it comes to core al Qaeda, Bob. The network put together by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri over a decade ago was pre-eminent in planning attacks against the West. Getting bin Laden was crucial if this country was going-- going to bring down al Qaeda. And I think now we can say, we can start to envision the death throes of the core part of that network. That's all good news. Core al Qaeda is probably not capable of a 9/11-style attack anymore. But the bad news is this ideology has kind of flattened out and moved across a number of continents. So we have hot spots in Yemen, hot spots in Somalia and North Africa. So the threat goes on. It's just a little different.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And David Martin, another big story, the last U.S. military troops left Iraq. There is still a large American presence there--
DAVID MARTIN (National Security Correspondent): Yeah.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --but the last military troops are out. Where are we on that?
DAVID MARTIN: Well, the day after combat troops left, the Prime Minister Maliki issued an arrest warrant for his vice president on grounds that the vice president was actually running death squads. Now, we have political crises in this country. We call it Democrats versus Republicans. There, it's Shiites versus Sunni. We don't settle our political disputes by guns. In Iraq, they do. And so the question is whether this crisis will dissolve into sectarian fighting that the Iraqi army and police can't control, in which case all the sacrifices of the past nine years are put at risk.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What you're saying is that this whole thing might fall in?
DAVID MARTIN: It could. The-- the presence of the U.S. military was a big tamping device on top of all that seething sectarian discontent and hatred.
BOB SCHIEFFER: In this country, of course, Nancy and John Dickerson, it was all about the Congress and what the Congress didn't do. I laughed one day and said, you know, it's a good thing Congress hasn't done anything this year because if they had, we wouldn't have any place to put it with all-- with all the news that we had otherwise. But it was quite a year up there on the Hill. Wasn't it?
NANCY CORDES (Congressional Correspondent): It was. And I think what we learned this year is that divided government which in the past has produced some really remarkable pieces of legislation, doesn't produce the same kind of results when you have two parties that are so far apart the way that these two are right now. And you know, the modus operandi on the Hill for so many years has been to leave legislation to the last minute, funding the government, this payroll tax cut, it's worked in the past but it doesn't work anymore because you have a new crop of Tea Party House Republicans who have no interest in political expediency. That's not what they ran on. They're not just going to get along. When they don't like a piece of legislation, they don't mind if it makes them look bad in the short term, they're going to stand their ground.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And Anthony Mason in New York, perhaps the-- the news that many of us found the-- kind of the most discouraging, I-- I don't know what word to put on it but for the first time in a long time, U.S. securities were not the safest place to put your money. Our-- our financial securities were downgraded. This whole thing about the economy kept on-- unemployment stayed high. What was the biggest thing that happened this year, do you think?
ANTHONY MASON (Senior Business Correspondent): Well, I-- I think I would call it an embarrassment, Bob. That's what it was. I mean our-- our debt rating was downgraded. And it looked like, you know, that would cost us money because our interest rates would go up. But as it turns out, the rest of the world was in worse shape than we were. So in fact, people were still investing money in the United States and still bla-- buying our debt. That didn't solve the jobs problem, though, that continues to be the-- the biggest lingering problem out of the financial crisis and the recession. We-- we just aren't producing enough jobs. And even though the economy is kind of stumbling along, it doesn't look like it's getting a whole lot better.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Norah O'Donnell over at the White House, the President seemed to catch it from all sides. The-- the Republicans obviously don't like him. But a lot of people on the left were very disappointed in the President and said he didn't fight hard enough for the things that they thought he ought to be fighting for. His approval ratings are certainly nothing to brag about. What-- what's he going to do in the next year?
NORAH O'DONNELL (Chief White House Correspondent): Well, no doubt it has been a very tough year for President Obama domestically. As you pointed out, his approval ratings have been below fifty percent for almost the entire year with the exception of the killing of Osama bin Laden where the President saw a spike in his approval ratings. Jobs are still the number one issue for the President. And as you see, he tried to put forward, changed the debate of that disastrous summer in the debt ceiling debacle to talk about the American Jobs Act. And guess what, only one small piece of that bill has been passed, and that was, of course, to help veterans. So this has been a difficult year for the President domestically but on foreign policy, they believe it was a successful year. Not only the killing of Osama bin Laden, they claimed some credit, of course, for successfully ending the war in Iraq, while there are still some sectarian tensions that exist. And they think that they've taken the fight to al Qaeda in a way that President George W. Bush has done. And that will be a strength in the new election. But I think this is going to be-- next year is going to be a year when the President tries to priv-- pivot and try and rack up successes on the economy or else he won't be re-elected.
BOB SCHIEFFER: John Dickerson, you have the hardest job of all as our political director. Just trying to make some sense of the politics of all of this and what's going on. I have to say this is one of the most unusual-- for want of a better word-- campaigns that I've seen going into Iowa here now. I mean up and down. The last-- I mean somebody said Bob Orr was now leading out in Iowa.
JOHN DICKERSON (Political Director): That's right. He's got a very good ground game. The-- you know, that picture Norah paints of the President in peril. Republicans see this golden opportunity right before them and they are so desperate to grab it. And yet what has happened in this primary season both nationally in the polls and in Iowa, you've seen the sort of king for a day. You had Michelle Bachmann doing well then Rick Perry doing well. Herman Cain had his moment. Newt Gingrich had his moment in Iowa. And going into the caucus he is undergoing a blistering amount of attacks and he doesn't have the organization or the money to fight back in part because his campaign was declared dead in June. So what's happening now going into the Iowa caucuses it's all up for grabs again in-- in-- in a race where it's been up for grabs? Well, it goes in that way and Mitt Romney who has kind of stayed steady and at about twenty percent in the polls, well that's where he is who--
BOB SCHIEFFER: Well.
JOHN DICKERSON: --where he is too. And at just finally Ron Paul has supporters who love him. They-- his supporters are not undecided like the rest of the Republican voters. And he is the one who is now having his little moment in the sun.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this. Let's suppose that somebody does eventually get the Republican nomination as somebody will. That puts us against-- that puts that person against Barack Obama. How does that campaign, how does the general election start out? About even will Obama be favored? Where-- where do you see it right now?
JOHN DICKERSON: Key thing to look at his those twelve swing states. We forget the rest of the country just focus on the twelve where it stands there is in most of those it's about even. Some polls you can show either the President or one of the Republican frontrunners is-- is ahead. But what we suddenly get very quickly into is a debate over a referendum on the President's behavior, the economy. Almost exclusively unless we have some foreign event that interrupts. And then the President will try and stop that conversation and say, no, this is a conversation about the attributes, qualities, and vision of whoever it may be, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. And it is not going to be a pretty election at all. No more hope and change and glowing speeches. It's going to be a pretty ugly campaign.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right, why don't we take a-- a break here and we'll come back because we got to talk about Iran. We got to talk about a whole lot of things in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Back now with our panel. And I want to talk to our-- kind of our foreign policy folks on this one. What about Iran? What-- what happens there, David?
DAVID MARTIN: Well, you know, defense secretary Panetta gave this interview to Scott Pelley in which he said that the Iranians would need one year to build a bomb. Now that one year starts counting from the moment they make a decision to build the bomb and he said they have no evidence that Iran has made that decision. But how are we going to know that? There's going to be a decision made obviously in great secrecy. So are the U.S. and more importantly Israel going to be confident enough in their intelligence or are they going to decide that they cannot afford to wait any longer and particularly the-- the Israelis? When they look at Iran and its nuclear program, what they see is Adolph Hitler in 1939. If they don't do something about it, there's going to be another Holocaust.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Liz Palmer, what would you add on to that because you've spent some time in Iran?
ELIZABETH PALMER: I would say that there's a huge power struggle going on inside Iran between the President, Ahmadinejad, and the supreme leader. And whenever the Iranian leadership is consumed with its own power struggle, it tends to act out and do something provocative to-- to draw attention away. Is this the-- the moment they're going to act out by deciding to go after a bomb? It's a highly unstable and dangerous time.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Bob Orr, speaking of unstable, North Korea. The long-time dear leader has passed, apparently. And gone on to whatever reward he-- he has earned. What do you think is? What's the situation? What do we know about North Korea?
BOB ORR: Well, the problem is we don't know very much at all. We know virtually nothing about the successor's youngest son who has a bit of a Western education. But this is a person who has been purposely closeted away from the public. I think the question there is who is really going to run the country? I mean will it be entrusted to this young successor or will the military complex there take control? And I think most of the smart people are saying there might be a little bit of a power struggle here at least a vacuum and uncertainty that raises everybody's stakes because this is a flash point. It is just kind of waiting to happen. And we know in the past that Korea has always used provocation as a way to try to get its way. Question is, will that continue?
BOB SCHIEFFER: Norah, what do they think at the White House is the most dangerous place in the world right now? North Korea or still the Pakistan border?
NORAH O'DONNELL: Well, I think there are a number of hot spots, North Korea in particular. One of the problems is there almost is no intelligence in North Korea. It's more difficult I was told in getting intelligence in Iran because it is a hermetically sealed place. So there is a concern about loose nukes there. On Iran you've see this administration, the President make the case repeatedly that they believe they've imposed the toughest sanctions ever. If you talk to leaders in the Middle East they believe there's more unity now around the world against Iran. And so they believe they've done that. But there's still, there's a great concern that Iran could eventually develop a nuclear weapon. But so far it's just been tough sanctions from this administration.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Nancy Cordes, among the things Congress didn't do, we saw the collapse of the so-called supercommittee. But we kind of overlooked the fact that the law that created the supercommittee called for these draconian across-the-board cuts in other-- in places including the Pentagon at the end of next year. Does anyone really believe Congress will let those cut-- those cuts go in now, go into effect?
NANCY CORDES (Congressional Correspondent): Well, I think what we see this year is that even when Congress decides it wants to do something it can't necessarily achieve it. So even if you have some Republicans and some Democrats who want to roll back so-called sequestration and make sure that those cuts aren't imposed they may not be able to marshal the support they need to actually pass a-- a-- to pass a bill on it. And you've heard the President come out very forcefully and say, look, I am going to stick with this. Unless you can come up with some other way to cut 1.2 trillion dollars from the budget, you know, this was supposed to be a big stick to force the supercommittee to act. And, you know, if the supercommittee couldn't get its act together, then this is what you get.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Anthony Mason in New York, is unemployment going to stay around nine percent next year? Is there any suggestion that it might get better?
ANTHONY MASON: I think it will get a little better, Bob. I mean, I think the first half of the year is going to be pretty bumpy in part because Europe still has not resolved itself. I think the second half of the year you'll start to see some improvement. But I don't think it's going to be all that impressive. I think the President is going to have a tough record to-- to run on. I mean, I-- we might get down to eight and a half percent unemployment. But-- but that still looks pretty scary I think to most people.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And-- and I want to get back to politics a little bit so everybody join and if you like. What-- how do you see this playing out now, John? Do you think we're going to know early who this Republican nominee is? I'm beginning to think it may be a while and in fact you might go down to the convention and not know.
JOHN DICKERSON: Well, there are a-- a couple of scenarios. The-- the-- it could go a very long while because the actual delegates being selected in the Republican process, we all have been paying a lot of attention to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, but that's only fifteen percent. If you add all that, that's all just fifteen percent of the delegates. So, in-- in fact, it could go on quite a while. The reason it may not is that there are limited number of candidates who could take it that far. Mitt Romney is one. He has got a lot of money. Rick Perry has a lot of money. But for somebody like Newt Gingrich, he needs to do well and then start to get money. But then, he has got actually go through the process. There are still twenty states before February that you need to get on the ballot. He has got a lot of organizational challenges that because his campaign was considered dead, he-- he can't, you know, he doesn't have things in line. So, you could also see a scenario where it ends quickly. If Mitt Romney does well because he just doesn't have anymore competitors who can make it.
BOB SCHIEFFER: What do they think at the White House, Norah?
NORAH O'DONNELL: The White House still believes that Mitt Romney will be the eventual nominee. That he is the-- the only one who has the infrastructure to essentially live out this entire process that it could go long and they certainly hope that it does so that it drains Mitt Romney's coffers, you know, his cash coffers as well as sort of his energy and doesn't allow him to sort of pivot. We saw Mitt Romney try and pivot already to-- to train his fire on the President when he was in New Hampshire. But it's going to be very difficult to do that when he is fighting on his right flank to, you know, to defeat Newt Gingrich and even Ron Paul in a number of these early primaries.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Does anybody but me remember the days when it was really fun to go to the convention because you didn't know who the candidate was going to be? And-- and we-- I still think there's at least an outside possibility we may see that. Okay. It's time for predictions, fearless predictions from the CBS correspondents. Liz Palmer, what's your prediction for next year?
ELIZABETH PALMER: Uh-Huh, hmm, one maybe two civil war-- wars in the Arab world and continuing enormous instability.
BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Bob Orr?
BOB ORR: I think maybe for the first time cyber security catches terrorism, maybe even passes terrorism as our top domestic security concern. And I think we're about to for the first true cyber attack on a piece of critical infrastructure. So we should watch for that, Bob.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Anthony Mason?
ANTHONY MASON: I think the economy struggles along, Bob. I think we get a little improvement in the unemployment rate, but not much, maybe as I said eight and a half percent. Jobs is still the biggest lingering problem in the economy.
BOB SCHIEFFER: David?
DAVID MARTIN: If Iran doesn't blink, Israel will strike.
BOB SCHIEFFER: You're saying that Israel will strike Iran?
DAVID MARTIN: Go-- go after its nuclear facilities, if Iran doesn't blink.
BOB SCHIEFFER: How-- what will the United States do if that happens, David?
DAVID MARTIN: Have no choice but to support Israel. And depending on what the evidence is at that time, they might even want to take part in the raid. It depends on what kind of intelligence they have about that decision that Iran has to make about whether to really build a bomb and-- and go beyond putting all the pieces in place which is what it's doing now.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Nancy Cordes?
NANCY CORDES: I predict Republicans will gain seats in the Senate, maybe even take control of the Senate. They will lose some seats in the House, but they will keep their majority. And I think a day of reckoning is coming between House Speaker John Boehner and his number two man Eric Cantor because they have been on opposite sides of almost every major fight this year. The less charitable view by Boehner's allies is that Cantor keeps cutting him off at the knees. And that has put Republicans in some very sticky positions this year.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Norah?
NORAH O'DONNELL: That's a good prediction, very interesting to watch that. I think I'm hearing that there have been a lot of really secretive talks going on behind the scenes, the Gang of Six, on deficit reduction. They continue to meet regularly. I'm told they're very close to a deal that's four to five trillion dollars and that they're working to get new sign off on that. And I think that's going to be part of the debate again next year is a significant deficit reduction plan that also includes major tax reform.
BOB SCHIEFFER: John?
JOHN DICKERSON: I think that we actually are going to see on the supercommittee that failed to make its 1.2 trillion dollars in cuts. Those automatic cuts are going to happen January 1, 2013. Nobody wants that to happen. They won't be able to come up with an agreement until after the election in the lame duck period when everybody is done with their politicking, there will be a little moment of opportunity there where they actually will come to some kind of a deal and those ugly cuts which really hit the-- the Defense Department or that many people who are concerned hit the Defense Department too much, that they'll come up with some kind of agreement.
BOB SCHIEFFER: My prediction I think we'll see a wholesale turnover in the Congress. I think we'll see more incumbents turned out of office, both Republicans and Democrats, than in any time since I've been here in Washington. And that's been a long time.
Well, thanks to all of you. It's a lot of fun to get you together and hear your thoughts. I'll be back in a moment with some final thoughts.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
BOB SCHIEFFER: Finally today, some thoughts on this day of love that came to me after waiting on a plane at the Orlando Airport. I had a dream the other night about what heaven's gate might be like. And it was like an airport boarding planes, yes, the pearly gates had two lanes, first class to the left, everyone else on the right. In that first class lane, some I hadn't seen before. No old school ties. Some downright poor. Like the widow who gave her last mite to one who needed it more. Oh, they waved her right through the first class door. With a man who turned the other cheek and the woman who forgave a thief and the fellow who stooped to help a child who had no food to eat. I didn't see a bold-faced name or those that hunger after fame, but the gatekeeper knew all their faces. He was on a first name basis with those he waved through heaven's door. Now I hate to add this to our song, but the second line was mighty long. Cheaters, schemers, lying, lovers, those who write down the faults of others, it's all politician that I knew and, yeah, journalist or two. A banker and a hedge fund czar up there, no one knows who they are. A creep, a con, an operator with BlackBerry set on vibrator. He's waiting now to get the call to find out if it is his fate to be stuck forever outside the gate. Only he who rules the streets of gold knows for sure, but I've been told they're all dead right to have those fears because I hear their line hasn't moved in years. Do you think they'll know your name up there in heaven? Do you think you'll be a big celebrity? Will you be a VIP or have to show I.D.? Do you think they'll know your name way up there? From all of us here at FACE THE NATION, we want to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. We'll see you next year.
ANNOUNCER: This broadcast was produced by CBS News which is solely responsible for the selection of today's guests and comments. It originated in Washington, D.C.