Scott Brown Says Talk of Running for President 'Silly' but 'Humbling'

It doesn't take long in today's relentless news cycles for a hot new political property to be immediately mentioned as a presidential candidate, but Massachusetts' Senator-elect Scott Brown said Sunday that talk of a race by him in 2012 was "silly" although "extremely humbling."

Before taping an interview on ABC's This Week [transcript here], a well-wisher had said to Brown "President 2012" and Walters reminded Brown of it: "You said to me -- or under your breath, 'That's silly.' But do you rule it out?"

"I have to tell you, I don't even have a business card," Brown said. "I haven't even been sworn in. I don't have any exploratory committees started. I don't have anything, it's overwhelming, and it's extremely humbling. I don't...what else to tell you."

Brown, who upset Democrat Martha Coakley in a solid blue state, appeared to carefully steer clear of the ideological infighting that has been going on with the Republican Party between the GOP establishment and conservative and Tea Party activists.

He described himself as a "fiscal conservative" who is more moderate on social issues, and as an example, repeated that he remains "pro-choice" on abortion and "because I feel this issue is best handled between a woman and her doctor and her family."

But he added, "the difference between me and maybe others is that I'm very against partial- birth abortions. I'm against federal funding of abortions."

He also downplayed a suggestion from Walters about the importance of the Tea Party movement to his victory, saying "you're making an assumption that the Tea Party movement was influential, and I have to respectfully disagree. It was everybody. I had a plurality." But he did acknowledge that Tea Party support "was part of it."

Brown has been called the 41st vote in the Senate particularly because his victory robbed the Democrats of their 60 vote majority that enabled them to shut down filibusters on bills like health care reform, and he made clear that he believed the health care legislation now on the table should be scrapped.

"I think it was on its last legs before I even got elected, because the Democrats even were upset at the backroom deals, for example, in Nebraska," he said, referring to a concession made by Democratic leaders to Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson on federal Medicaid funding.

"They (rank-and-file Democrats) want a chance, I believe, based on just what I'm hearing... to go back to the drawing board and do it in a transparent, bipartisan manner."

Brown, a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, declined to take a stand on President Obama's determination to repeal the don't-ask-don't-tell policy regarding gays in the military, which Obama mentioned in his State of the Union.

Brown said he would "wait to speak to the generals on the ground" before making up his mind about whether "the social change is not going to disrupt our ability to finish the job and complete the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Walters and Brown bantered about the beefcake photo of Brown that appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1982 which Walters called "pretty raw stuff." Brown said "you're kidding right?" when Walters mentioned she had a copy of the magazine, and asked, "Do you want me to sign it.?"

But that exchange turned serious when Brown was asked if there was a double-standard in which a woman in politics would not survive the discovery of a nude photo spread.

"I think if someone is qualified, regardless of what they did in their youth -- we all make mistakes," Brown said. "I'm not perfect. And do I regret doing that? No. Cause if I hadn't done that, I never would have been sitting here with you. It's all connected. So is there a double standard? I hope not. If someone is qualified to do the job, they should be able to do it, regardless of what they've done in their past."