Dennis Miller's Election Reflections

This is a rush transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," November 12, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Miller Time" segment tonight: Our guy Dennis has been reassessing the presidential vote and watching with detached amusement as Sarah Palin continues her media dominance. Mr. Miller joins us now from Los Angeles.

And I understand you watched the Marvin Kalb-O'Reilly interview last night.

Click here to watch Miller Time.

DENNIS MILLER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Bill, I know for a lot of people the Palin impression by Tina Fey is the TV moment of the year, but the vivisection of Marvin Kalb reminded me of Bruce Lee who went in through his stomach, came up, got his heart, pulled it out, and showed it to him before he died.

Only in the insular world of journalism and academy can a dolt like Marvin Kalb be ascribed emeritus status. And it was beautiful to watch him not only step in it but step in something that flew out of his own pie hole.

And when he whips that old canard out about this is what O'Reilly does, he bullies you, just after you Zorro-ed his shirt, he was like Professor Kingsfield with his fly down. In a world where the tenured Tonto, Ward Churchill, can be called Thomas Aquinas, to think that his own students were laughing at him. It was my favorite television moment of the year.

O'REILLY: I have to say something in Professor Kalb's defense.

MILLER: Yes.

O'REILLY: After that interview, he wrote me a note and said to me, "You did a great job, O'Reilly. You really turned it around on me." And very few people would have done that. They would have been mad: "I hate O'Reilly. He's a savage." But Professor Kalb, you know, to his former student, said you won. So he knew what happened.

MILLER: Yes, but Billy, right up until that moment, he was so arrogant with you. He had to. You flattened him. It was like Dan Gable wrestling. You pancaked him.

O'REILLY: Well, I did it in a gentle way, because that's just the kind of guy I am.

Now, the Sarah Palin hysteria. I mean, can you believe she is getting more ink now than the president-elect is getting? Didn't she lose? It looks like she won.

MILLER: Listen, she's a great dame. People are fascinated by her because the left hate her. I think the left hate her — mostly women on the left hate her — because to me, from outside in, it appears that she has a great sex life, all right? I think she has non-neurotic sex with that Todd Palin guy. I think most of the women on the Upper East Side, their husbands haven't been around since Mahler signed copies of "The Executioner's Song" at Rizzoli's back in the early '70s. So they look at her, and they hate her. I think that snowmobile looks like mechanized foreplay to me, and that's why people are fascinated by it.

O'REILLY: You think that cutting through all of the metaphors that even I don't even understand. Rizzoli's used to be a bookstore. You think that because she looks like a happy wedded mom...

MILLER: Yes.

O'REILLY: ...with not so much neurosis, that these people are going, "We have to hate her"? What, it's schadenfreude? How do you say that German?

MILLER: Schadenfreude.

O'REILLY: Schadenfreude. The Germans concocted it. It's one's vague pleasure in another's discomfort. Leave it to the Germans, by the way, to concoct an intricate glossary of pain terminology.

I think people have schadenfreude about her. It's like Tina Fey's movie "Mean Girls." Women are mean to other women. They look at her. She looks happy. A lot of them aren't. And they're cranky about her.

Plus, you know, she's still viable to me. Katie Couric is not going to be the interlocutor that turns me off Sarah Palin. For God's sakes, does anybody remember Katie Couric during her first month on the job? Bill Paley and Ed Murrow were turning over in their graves so fast that they resembled the twin screws on the "Thunderball" boat, the Disco Valente, when they threw it into hydrofoil mode.

O'REILLY: I guess that's a James Bond reference? I don't even...

MILLER: Billy, I have no idea. Help me. Help me for God's sake.

O'REILLY: Miller, I hate to say this, but I think you may be beyond help. I think "Bordello of Blood" was it.

Now, you've been reassessing in the last eight days the presidential vote. And what conclusions, Miller, have you come to?

MILLER: Two. I'm kind of happy now that it's over, because when they showed Grant Park that night and I saw the looks on the faces, some of the black elders looking up, who had been pushed aside to lunch counters and bathrooms, and I saw that catharsis, I thought, well, I intellectualized this would be good for the country in that way. I had no idea the depth of feeling. It pleases my heart. I'm happy for them.

Also, the guy looks so smart to me. I didn't believe anything he said when he was running. But now I know he's so smart that when two dim, mindless magpies like Reid and Pelosi trundle down there to sell their tired Willie Loman wares, he's going to pay them lip service. The moment they split, he's going to look at Rahm Emanuel and go, "Sharp elbows, dull intellects. We're not listening to those cats. Do you think I worked this hard to get to this point that I'm going to parrot what those two idiots say?" So I like the fact that he's really smart.

And you know something? He's my president now. And I am not going to do what the left did to Bush. I find it unbecoming. I hope that Barack Obama does so well that four years hence, I am salivating to vote for him. I want this all to work, because I love my country. At some point, I make Lee Greenwood look like the Rosenbergs. And I hope he does great.

But I will not turn my back on George Bush. Today, 2,619 days since a domestic terror attack on this soil. Thank you to my commander in chief, and thank you to the troops for providing us the safety to have an election like that.

O'REILLY: Absolutely. Now, how skeptical are you going to — I think your sentiment is noble, by the way. And particularly in this dangerous economic time when people are really suffering, you've got to root for Obama to get the economy back on track and lessen suffering.

But how skeptical are you going to be? And what is my watchdog role? See, I'm setting myself up to watch Barack Obama, and I'm going to be fair about it. There's no doubt I'll be fair. But I'm going to, you know, watch him closer than I watched Bush because I didn't watch Bush close enough. I didn't. I admit it. I should have. So how skeptical are you going to be about Obama? Are you going to bring a skepticism in from the beginning?

MILLER: I'm always skeptical about guys who want to be president, because it seems like its own form of madness to me. But I'll tell you, if he wants to earn my goodwill and the goodwill of a lot of people, he ought to flatten these punks at AIG who keep saying — these guys party. They make Caligula look like a shut-in. Enough is enough. We just gave them $150 billion. We've got to follow them around with hidden cameras, take it all back, let them go away. It's economic Darwinism. If they want to spend like that, they should go under. Forget the parties, you guys. And I think that he ought to come down hard on them right now.

O'REILLY: OK, and then arrest Barney Frank, correct?

MILLER: Barney might want to be arrested.

O'REILLY: OK. Dennis Miller, everybody. I told you to hide the kids.

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