Transcript: Howard Dean On John McCain And The Republican 'Culture Of Corruption'

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Q: I want to welcome Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Welcome, Chairman Dean.

Dean: Thanks for having me on, Linda.

Q: So there is big news about John McCain -- the story that is in the New York Times, raising questions about his relationship with a lobbyist. This is a story the McCain people are saying is unfair and untrue. What do you think?

Dean: I have no idea whether the affair story is true or not, and I don't care. What I do care about is John McCain -- and this has been well-documented -- is talking all the time about being a reformer and a maverick, and in fact, he has taken thousands of dollars from corporations, ridden on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them and get projects approved. He has tons of lobbyists on his staff. This is a guy who is very close to the lobbyist community, a guy who has been documented again and again by taking contributions and then doing favors for it. This is not a guy who is a reformer. This is a guy who has been in Washington for 25 years and wants to give us four more years of the same, and I don't think we need that.

Q: So are you saying that McCain, by virtue of what is spelled out in this story, has somehow suffered a hit in terms of his own legitimacy on the campaign finance and ethics issue?

Dean: Yes, he certainly has. This goes all the way back to the Keating Five Scandal and the S & L scandals, where he took a hundred thousand donations, rode on corporate jets and then intervened on Charles Keating's behalf -- and again and again we see this. We even saw -- it's so hypocritical -- we even saw that he is trying to harass Barack Obama about whether he's going to take public financing in the campaign, and he forewent his own public financing in the primaries after getting a loan, based on the idea that he might take public financing.

This is not a guy who is a reformer. He talks about change, and he makes a big deal about not being like Bush when in fact he is Bush. He voted for Bush's tax cuts after saying he didn't, and has been responsible for a $6 trillion national debt that our children are going to have to pay. He thinks we ought to stay in Iraq for 100 years. He thought it was great that the president vetoed health care for our kids under 18. This is four more years of George Bush, and I don't think the American people are going to buy it.

Q: Do you think that running against John McCain -- the Democratic Party -- that ethics is going to be an issue for him in this campaign?

Dean: Yes, because ethics is a huge issue anyway. People are tired of the incredible lack of ethics in the Bush Administration -- what we call the culture of corruption. I think they want somebody who is not going to do that any more, who is not going to mislead the American people -- whether it is on Iraq, or on lobbying or on taking public financing of campaigns, and who is not going to say one thing and do another.

Q: This whole matter, actually though, seems in a funny way to be helping Senator McCain, because the conservatives who were so skeptical about him now are rallying around him and saying he is a victim of the liberal New York Times. Isn't this a development that could actually wind up helping John McCain?

Dean: The conservatives are part of this culture of corruption that the Republicans have brought to Washington. Think of the Scooter Libby problem, the Alberto Gonzales problem, the Doug Feith problem. Think of all of the people in the Bush Administration that have had to leave office under a cloud -- Randy Cunningham, the Republican congressman.

Well, now it looks like John McCain is part of the corruption problem in Washington. He has done things that are legally questionable -- the Keating Five business back in the '90s -- but he doesn't seem to really have an ethical compass. He doesn't seem to have an instinct about what is the right thing to do and what isn't the right thing to do. He talks a good game, but he's just like all those Republicans in Washington have been for all these years, and I don't think the American people want a president like that.

Q: So Mr. Chairman, let's just, in the brief time we have left, talk a little bit about your own candidates. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama are almost tied in the number of delegates that they have. It looks increasingly possible that the superdelegates, the elected officials, the party activists might be the people who actually decide who is the nominee of the Democratic Party. Should they, as Obama has recommended, follow the wishes of the voters in their states?

Dean: They are going to follow the wishes of the voters in their states, and I'll tell you why. They are elected by the voters in their states. Superdelegates are not cigar-smoking people who take corporate jet rides from lobbyists. Superdelegates are elected by the same people who went and elected the other delegates. For example, there are two classes, and one is elected officials -- senators, governors, congressmen. Those people are responsive to their own electorate. If you go and vote for a governor and you work in their campaign and you do all the things that activist Democrats do, you're going to have the ability to call the governor's people and say, look, I really want the governor to vote this way in the primary. That is part of the democratic process.

The other class of people are DNC members. Anderson Cooper of CNN did a great interview last week with a 21-year-old college student from Wisconsin. He is a superdelegate. How did he get to be one? He went to the Wisconsin Democratic convention with his friends, ran a campaign, handed out stuff and won at a convention of 6,000 delegates and became a DNC member. The DNC looks like the Democratic Party. It is ethnically diverse, racially diverse; 50 percent of them are women. So the idea that the superdelegates are somehow going to fix this process -- that's not so. They are just like everybody else and they will vote according to what they believe is the right thing to do for the Democratic Party and for the country.

Q: OK, well, thank you so much, Governor Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Thanks for being with us.

Dean: Thanks for having me on.