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Face the Nation5/11/03 SCHIEFFER: And joining us now, Karen Tumulty the national political correspondent for Time magazine.
Karen, thanks for coming. And you just saw the interview with Senator Graham. I must say, Democrats have been criticized for being soft on defense, but we saw something a little different today. Here's Bob Graham sort of coming at the president from the right rather than the left saying, basically what happened is, in his view, is the president went after the wrong person. We should be looking for Osama bin Laden. He decided instead to go after Saddam Hussein and if -- yes, I know he said this, he said in his view that makes us less safe, not safer.
KAREN TUMULTY, Time Magazine: Exactly.
SCHIEFFER: Does that work?
TUMULTY: What we saw was a very good demonstration of why Bob Graham makes the rest of the Democrats in the field so very nervous. He's got the sweet spot on national security.
He can go left; he can go right. In a field full of Democrats, he is the only senator who voted against this war, but he voted against it, he says, because we're not laying a glove on the real bad guys.
SCHIEFFER: So does this help him? Who does he hurt if you were looking at it just from a political observer's point of view?
TUMULTY: Oh, who doesn't he hurt? We, in fact, in the magazine this week, to quote an unnamed operative of another campaign saying he's the Swiss Army knife of the Democratic field because no matter how you open him, he hurts somebody. He cuts into Joe Lieberman's ability to raise money in Florida. John Edwards is no longer the only Southerner in the race. Howard Dean's not the only governor. And he also has, as I said, this vote on the Iraq war that the other contenders don't.
SCHIEFFER: Doyle, he talked about a cover-up. He says the administration is covering up information that the American people need to know about. Does that have traction?
McMANUS: It doesn't have traction yet, Bob, because I don't think most voters know what he's talking about, which is that report on September 11th that the committee he worked on and put out. I think he can make it have traction. I think what -- in fact, he told us after that interview what he is going to be doing -- is working away on that. I think if he can make alliance, in effect, with the states and counties that are saying that the federal government isn't giving them enough money to wage the war on terrorism, and couple that with his point, which is a new one, that there is actual information in that report that would be tactically useful to county governments and state governments in making their counterterrorism plans, he may get somewhere.
SCHIEFFER: These states are really in a mess, aren't they, Karen
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