Will voters 'forget' the 'magnitude' of the recession?
President Obama's poor choice of words during speech could come back to haunt him in many ways
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record," May 11, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Republicans are ripping into President Obama for forgetting the recession! How could the president forget the economic crisis? Well, here's what President Obama said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've seen a record surplus that was squandered on tax cuts for people who didn't need them and weren't even asking for them. Two wars were being waged on a credit card. Wall Street speculators reaped huge profits by making bets with other people's money. Manufacturing was leaving our shores.
It was a house of cards, and it collapsed in the most destructive, worst crisis that we've seen since the Great Depression. And sometimes, people forget the magnitude of it. You know, and you saw some of that, I think, in the video that was shown. Sometimes I forget.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAN SUSTEREN: "Sometimes I forget." Bad choice of words, or is President Obama detached from what is happening to many Americans, as the GOP is quick to point out?
Dick Morris, author of the new book, "Screwed," joins us. Nice to see you, Dick. And I'm sure the Republicans are jumping on that, that sometimes he forgets. Nonetheless, that is a mistake I'm sure we're going to hear in lots of campaign ads.
DICK MORRIS, DICKMORRIS.COM/FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Well, I think it was a slip of the tongue or a mistake. But it's silly, of course. He doesn't forget. But what he's doing is he's trying to merge two completely separate things. One was the banking crisis. And that exacerbated the recession, caused huge unemployment, huge instability. But that was largely being solved by the time he took office.
Then there's the aftermath of the recession, the so-called sluggish recovery, which is entirely Obama's. And that's because he's borrowed so much money that the world has freaked out. That's a technical economic term, Greta. And he -- let me just give you the stats. When he took office, public sector debt of all nations, all states, everybody in the world, was $40 trillion. He increased it himself by $5 trillion and state and local governments by another $4 trillion. So he -- a 25 percent increase in debt in three years.
And it totally freaked out the world, and it led to the crisis in Greece, the crisis in Spain, the freezing of lending of capital throughout the world. And it's why the United States can't shake this recession because it's not a recession. It's what is called the debt implosion caused by debt. And the spending that he's doing to solve it is making it worse, like the way they used to bleed patients in the Middle Ages to get rid of the evil spirits and just made them worse. That's what he's doing, really.
VAN SUSTEREN: But he -- but -- well, what he is running on is the statement that, Oh, it could have been so much worse...
MORRIS: Yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: ... and, you know, we're really lucky. So how do we know if he's right, that it could have been so much worse and he really sort of stopped the -- you know, stopped all the problems from getting so much bigger, or how do we know that he's not scaring us?
MORRIS: Well, look at every other country in the world, Greta. We are the only country that did not bounce back from this recession. China had a 9 percent, 10 percent growth rate. India, high growth rate. The European zone came out of this recession a year-and-a-half before we did and they had...
VAN SUSTEREN: How can that be? You've got -- you've got Greece, you've got unemployment...
MORRIS: No, no, no.
VAN SUSTEREN: ... in Spain of 24 percent. You've got -- I mean-...
MORRIS: Yes, now you are.
VAN SUSTEREN: Europe is imploding!
MORRIS: Yes. Yes. Now you are, Greta. It's 2012. But in 2009 and 2010, into '11, Europe did much better than the United States, much better. Even Japan did better. Now Europe's falling apart because this debt implosion that he caused is catching up with them.
But it -- you know, debt implosion is kind of like lions chasing the herd of antelopes and the weak antelopes get eaten, and Greece and Spain are the week antelopes. But everybody else is scared of it, and the result is that the economy isn't growing. And now we're all going back into a recession because of his policies.
VAN SUSTEREN: Well, there's a recent poll, which -- I mean, I say, How do we know? I don't know the answer, but you know, how we exactly know, but at least I can tell you what the American people think. In a recent poll, Associated Press/GFK poll, says, Do you approve or disapprove how President Obama is handling the economy? In February, February 16th through 20th, 48 percent approved. Now that's declined by 2 percent, 50 percent disapprove. Now, of course, it's gone up by 52 -- by 2 percent to 52 in two months.
So the trend is that, you know, the American people don't think he's handling it particularly...
MORRIS: I -- I just...
VAN SUSTEREN: They think he's handling it less well than he was.
MORRIS: I just did a poll where I found 42 percent said he's made it worse, 33 percent said he's made it better. And at rest said his policies have had no impact at all. So you get almost two thirds of the country that believes it's either worse or no impact of his policies.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right, the Electoral College map. If the race were today, tell me who would be winning and who -- I mean, tell me what the numbers would be about?
MORRIS: Oh, Romney would be winning overwhelmingly. Obama might carry, if the election were held today, 8 or 10 states. The polling that I've seen, the likely voter polling -- not the registered voter, the likely voter polling is so overwhelming here that he is really headed for a rout.
VAN SUSTEREN: You know, it's sort of interesting, is that we're going to hear probably a lot of the things we've been hearing for the last year from both candidates, the same stuff. And you know, if I were to venture a guess as to, you know, what's going be different between now and November, is the trend. We're either going to trend better or we're going to trend worse.
MORRIS: Well, I think the...
VAN SUSTEREN: And I think that -- and I think that's going to be such a dynamic factor and so important, I would suspect, if I could be so bold, in how people vote, those who are undecided right now.
MORRIS: Yes. Well, I think the economy is getting worse. You just look at the jobs numbers. But you know, one of the things that's been concerning me, Greta, is what he's going to do during the lame duck session of the Senate after, I believe, he loses the election and after, I believe, the Democrats lose control of the Senate.
And in my new book, "Screwed," I have a whole discussion of a range of treaties that he is signing and planning to get ratified during the lame duck session, just like in 2010, he had the START treaty with Russia ratified.
And they amount to the worst fears of globalization and loss of sovereignty coming true. One of them which is up for ratification next month is the Law of the Sea Treaty. This obliges the United States to give half of its royalties for oil and mineral drilling offshore out past 200 miles to the third world, to the United Nations, to be distributed as it wishes through a thing called Sea Bed Authority.
There's another treaty, the International Criminal Court, that makes it a crime -- the president could be arrested for going to war without United Nations approval, meaning Russia and China. Bush was going to go to Switzerland in 2010 to accept an award, and he canceled the trip out of fear of being arrested because Switzerland is a signatory to the International Criminal Court.
And Obama is going to push that in the next six months...
VAN SUSTEREN: Wouldn't he -- would it not be...
MORRIS: ... and particularly after the lame duck session.
VAN SUSTEREN: What -- I mean -- I mean, obviously, what -- I mean, this is a very delicate time for the candidates. Don't the candidates -- I mean, doesn't President Obama sort of just want to, you know, try to make things improve and not do anything that is particularly bold between now and the election, sort of upset the applecart?
MORRIS: Yes. That's right, but what I'm doing is looking past that. Just as he waited with the START treaty, which was a giveaway to Russia, until after election day in 2010, there are a whole series of these treaties. One is backdoor gun control. Another creates a legal right to welfare for children, internationally enforceable.
All of these treaties are piling up. He's been negotiating them. And I believe they're going to be pushing them through the lame duck Democratic Senate after the election.
VAN SUSTEREN: That's after the election. After the election.
MORRIS: And that's why I wrote "Screwed," and we moved the pub date up because the first of these treaties, the Law of the Sea treaty, is coming up for ratification in June. And once they get ratified, they can't be unratified. They take the supremacy clause of the Constitution. They become -- have the force of a constitutional amendment.
VAN SUSTEREN: And I got to go, Dick. I got to leave. Thank you very much.
MORRIS: Thank you.
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