HANNITY: And tonight on our "Great American Panel," he is a nationally-syndicated radio talk show host, columnist, author, and of course, he has PragerUniversity.com now. Dennis Prager is back with us.
He is the kicker for the New York Jets, Jay Feeley is with us, and he is a former deputy secretary of state under every liberal president that's ever existed. FOX News contributor, USA Today columnist.
You were yelling at me before we even came on the air today.
BOB BECKEL, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Can I just speak to what you did in this segment here for a second?
HANNITY: You can do whatever you want.
BECKEL: You go to this thing with John Ensign, right, about Harry Reid. He's more popular than -- now, this is a guy -- you're a big family values guy. Here's a guy that cheats on his wife, not just with somebody, but somebody on his staff who's married. Now what do you think? Are you defending John Ensign?
HANNITY: That sounds like a liberal Democrat to me.
BECKEL: That was good.
DENNIS PRAGER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Wait, wait, wait. What does have it to do with...
BECKEL: Excuse me. Excuse me for a second, Mr. University Prager. I want -- I want him to answer this question.
HANNITY: My answer is, if you're going to be a family-values candidate and a family-values politician, and you don't live up to that, I think you should resign.
BECKEL: Well...
HANNITY: I don't know where he stands.
BECKEL: Oh, he's big.
HANNITY: But with that said, it is interesting that Harry, you know, Prince Pelosi, Prince Harry and Princess Pelosi. His ratings are lower than the guy that had an affair.
BECKEL: All I'm saying is let the record show that that you called for John Ensign to resign.
HANNITY: I don't know where he stands on the issues.
PRAGER: OK. Let me just said this. On behalf of people who say, "If we are going to demand that everyone who advocates anything noble be perfectly noble, no one will ever advocate anything noble." It is a terrible idea that, if someone falls short of ideals he advocates, he has to quit advocating it. I don't agree with that.
HANNITY: What about a minister in the pulpit that is preaching the gospel...
PRAGER: Yes.
HANNITY: ... and that minister doesn't live up to what the gospel says. And they're trying to, you know, exhort people to think. Don't they have an obligation to be legal?
JAY FEELEY, NEW YORK JETS: American people want transparency and they want honesty. That's what they want from their leader, they don't necessarily want to be on one side or the other. But whatever you believe in, they want you to stand for that.
PRAGER: You should, but first of all, a senator and a minister have two roles. And I'd much rather have a senator whose values I agree with who cheats on his wife or, for that matter, embezzles funds than a guy who is the opposite. I would rather have had a guy in World War II who wanted to fight World War II, wanted to fight Hitler, than a pacifist who was faithful to his wife.
I mean, any public affairs we care more about what they advocate...
HANNITY: Does it reveal a part of your character? I mean, I think this is the deeper question, guys. Does it reveal a part of your character in that, if you can't live up to that standard -- "I promise to love, honor, cherish, be faithful, to forsake all others" -- why should anyone in the public trust you?
PRAGER: Well, we both come from faith traditions, meaning Judaism and Christianity, that looks on king David rather -- rather positively.
HANNITY: That's true.
PRAGER: And the guy not only committed adultery, but got the guy killed whose wife he slept with.
BECKEL: Can I make one suggestion here? Could we get off philosophy and back to politics.
HANNITY: Why did you start it?
BECKEL: I didn't start it. Wait a minute. I started it because I wanted you to be honest about this guy Ensign who's apparently a guy who is a family values guy.
HANNITY: Here's a question. Let's throw this out.
BECKEL: Let's get on to our anti-Obama rap. And then we'll be happy. You'll be happy, and I'll be sane (ph). Go ahead.
PRAGER: It's OK, Bob.
HANNITY: Bob, are you all right? Can I get you something to eat or is there any comfort food or something?
BECKEL: Now, just give me a little moral food to eat. Come on. Let's go.
HANNITY: All right. We've got -- why won't the administration stand up to Iran? And if America doesn't stand for freedom and liberty, who will? Let's roll Obama saying the following on "The Early Show."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HANNITY: Meddling? We're a -- you know, a foil? That America can't take a stand? And say we're with these students? And by the way, we're holding up signs in English. Obviously, they wanted our support, our moral support, like Reagan did with Solidarity.
FEELEY: He did. We talked about that last time I was on here.
Now, it's interesting. A guy named Phillip Brooks said character may be manifested in great moment, but it's made in the small moments, and this is what scares me about President Obama because if you look at Iran, you look at Chavez, you look at North Korea. Bob, I heard you talk on this show a few weeks about calling Obama to be a little more stringent with North Korea.
He's creating a foundation from which he must lead from, and that foundation does not have the same character traits that have made this nation great. Those character traits are standing up for what is right and talking about and believing in and...
(CROSSTALK)
KEELEY: You're ruining the stereotype of a typical football player. That's all I can say.
BECKEL: Let me go back just a few years before this. Look, the fact of the matter is, Obama has done this in a measured way.
There's no indication at all that the opposition in Iran would be any better or worse to deal with on the biggest issue that we care about, which is the question of nuclear weapons.
And the other question I've got is what are we going to do? Sit there and be cheerleaders? And then what? Give Ahmadinejad more ammunition?
HANNITY: I want to answering by asking Dennis a question, and I'm not dodging your point.
BECKEL: Yes, you are. But...
HANNITY: But -- no, no, is silence complicity? Is Obama not taking a stand, a green light? Was it a green light for the crackdown to begin?
PRESS: It was a statement. Tell me if you differ. We spoke beforehand. And I'm bigger on clarity than agreement. So let's be clear.
Do you believe that it honors America for the American president, when the most important country that has the potential to destroy other countries has the possibility of its regime, terrible regime, being overthrown, that he decided to wait to see who was winning in order to make a statement? Do you think that honors the American tradition?
BECKEL: I don't -- I don't think it's an issue -- the American tradition is dishonored as it is in the Middle East. The question really is this is an advantage for us, to see the Iranian regime split like this probably is helpful for the United States.
HANNITY: Can I gently interrupt? You did answer a good question, but I don't think you were answering his question. I think that's a really important question.
BECKEL: About honoring America?
PRAGER: He's waiting to see who is the winner.
BECKEL: But look, I think that is an absolute false statement, Dennis. I don't think that -- for a second that he was sitting back there to see who was inning.
PRAGER: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: I don't believe that. I think he was taking advice from people who said you need to be measured, because any indication that you side with these people are going to put these people in a difficult position.
I was in Tehran shortly before Khomeini came back. I can tell you, there is no love loss for the United States there. We've got a long time to rebuild our relationships. Better to do it.
HANNITY: Bob does have a point in this way, and that is Mousavi or Rafsanjani, I don't think, are any better than what we've got right now.
PRAGER: I think -- I think they are because you can't get worse. And, therefore, this Mousavi, I think, has been changed by this. He realizes what the...
HANNITY: This is the guy that started Iran's nuclear weapons program.
PRAGER: You're right.
HANNITY: But that's conjecture.
PRAGER: He started the hydrogen bomb.
Here's the best news. The CIA may find some real people on the ground to do some intelligence for us.
HANNITY: Jay is going to grade my throw. More with our "Great American Panel" straight ahead.
HANNITY: And we continue now with our "Great American Panel."
All right, I'll throw this to Beckel first. You look at the poll numbers, Rasmussen and Gallup, and what do we see? We see Barack Obama's approval rating going down. They're now catching up to where he was in terms of his policies. He did have this personal popularity that was holding up there for awhile. It seems to be sinking.
Why the reason for the decline?
BECKEL: First of all, this is -- he is doing better at this stage of his presidency than even George Bush or Bill Clinton were at that stage of their presidency. One.
No. 2, we are in some very difficult times. And eventually, Obama is going to inherit this economy and this bad news. So far, he has rightfully put this off on George Bush, but at a certain point, there's going to be expectations, because he is...
HANNITY: ... shows now a greater number of people see it as Obama's economy.
BECKEL: And by the falls -- I'll say it again. I suspect, as a politician and analyst, I would think it would probably be below 50 percent come the fall. But I think when this recession ends, he will be like Ronald Reagan was after '82. By the time it gets to reelection, it will be a very popular president.
HANNITY: And we'll be bankrupt, but go ahead. Yes.
FEELEY: Bob, you won't like it, but I think that the magic act that Obama put on during the election, the curtain has kind of being pulled back, and the American people will see what is behind the stage, and they don't really like it.
You know, from his refusal to stand firm in the face of tyranny, to now going all through the bailout package, on into Chrysler and GM, and his meddling and jumping in there and kind of the throwback that he gave to the unions. I think the American people are unhappy with what he's doing, and they don't like the direction we're going.
BECKEL: Just to say, you wanted to see Chrysler and GM go bankrupt?
FEELEY: No, but I did not want to see them throw away 200 years of corporate law. And take the secure bond holders and throw them.
BECKEL: That means that they would have gone bankrupt, and that means that you really take the position that you...
HANNITY: But the difference is, is companies recover from bankruptcy all the time and reorganize.
PRAGER: Bankrupt there. No, no, that is the American way. If you don't run a good company, you go bankrupt. Why is it fair to Ford that those two get bailed out to the tune of tens of billions of dollars? I don't understand.
BECKEL: Because one in 10 workers in this country depend on the auto industry. I don't know about you guys, but I happen to be a nationalist in this sense. I don't want all of our cars to be Japanese.
PRAGER: No, they won't be Japanese cars. We will start making better cars in a bankruptcy situation.
BECKEL: Dennis, they would not have come out of bankruptcy. They would have been split up and sold off for parts.
PRAGER: No, no, no.
HANNITY: They could get restructured, and they could have also renegotiated the deals.
(CROSSTALK)
BECKEL: In the end, here and now, or I'll eat my shoe, that the United States taxpayer will make money on the GM-Chrysler.
FEELEY: Let me say this real quickly. And Bob, you'll like this point. The Republican Party just last week, they came out. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times say that they are on an all-time low in public approval. So it's not just Democrat parties, not just Obama. It's everybody. I think the American people want real leaders, and they want real solutions.
HANNITY: One of the problems where I think Obama is going to have his biggest problem is the debt. It's now his debt. The deficit, he quadrupled it in a year.
If you look at the long-term sustainability, when we add the health- care numbers, it did not go very well for him when the CBO scored their official plan last week.
All right. This is one of the things that drives me crazy. We did Waste 101, a special on this very program, going through all the waste and mismanagement.
For example, I don't know if I'd like, you know, swine odor studies or a turtle, you know, pathway underneath a highway for three and a half million dollars. And now we've got, you know, 450 -- $23,000 to find out why men don't like to wear condoms, Dennis. And why do I think...
PRAGER: "Men don't like to wear condoms, Dennis"? I was just curious.
BECKEL: Listen...
HANNITY: That's what we're spending our hard-earned taxes. Everybody out there is spending their money on that.
BECKEL: I could save a whole lot of money and answer that question. That's easy enough. Just ask me.
(CROSSTALK)
PRAGER: We don't need a study.
HANNITY: Trying to control the show.
BECKEL: Let me tell you, if you look -- if you're talking about all of this pork, Republicans were in control of Capitol Hill, there was more pork barrel spending than in the entire health-care reform bill put together. Come on. And he didn't quadruple the debt in a year.
HANNITY: No, no, he did. To $1.8 trillion. He quadrupled the deficit in one year. And the CBO...
BECKEL: It is not true.
HANNITY: And the CBO says we're going to quadruple the debt.
BECKEL: We're moving in the fiscal 2009 cycle, right?
HANNITY: I've got one social -- social...
BECKEL: OK, good.
HANNITY: "Jon and Kate Plus Eight." Here is the thing. A lot of people are raising questions about whether or not it's exploitation of children. And apparently, they announced now that they're separating, this couple. Is it exploitive to put these kids on TV like this?
PRAGER: Yes, of course, but the parents are responsible. If there is a reality show based on your family, you have made a terrible decision. But there was a desire.
I speak to college kids, and it's astonishing. And high school kids. The greatest single urge most of them have is fame, and that's -- that's it. More than money, more than sex, more than anything, they want fame. And if this will take fame, so I will then give over my family to the camera.
FEELEY: Wait a minute. Father has four kids, and you know, been with the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) things. You know, the one thing, if it comes in the way of your family, then step aside. Pull back, because there's nothing more important than raising your children, keeping that family in tact.
BECKEL: I care about these kids. About the two of them, I could give a damn. Let them get divorced. I care about their kids, but if they're going to do this on television, a pox on both of their houses.
HANNITY: All right, guys. Good to see you all. Thanks. Good panel tonight.
And that is all the time we have left this evening. Thank you for being with us. Don't forget, "Freedom Concert" tickets at Hannity.com.
We'll be back here tomorrow night. Thank you for being with us.
