tv State of the Union CNN June 19, 2011 9:00am-10:00am PDT
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the next morning the "the herald" ran a big ad congratulating the heat for winning the championship. that's a slam dunk for mortifying media mistake of the week. check out our new redesigned webpage. you can catch video of the segments you've missed an check out the guests coming up each sunday. you can find us at reliablesources.blogs.cnn.com. that's it for this edition of the program. i'm howard kurtz. join us next sunday morning 11:00 a.m. eastern for another critical look at the media. "state of the union" with candy crowley begins right now. in a town awash in rhetoric, defense secretary robert gates has been a standout. >> do you believe we are currently winning in iraq? >> no, sir. >> the only defense secretary to serve two presidents from different parties, robert gates was always direct, heading for the exit he has taken direct to a new art form. >> how long do we support governments that lie to us? >> most governments lie to each
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other. that's the way business gets done. >> plenty to say and no reason not to say it. today, outgoing defense secretary robert gates. >> i want people to face up to these realities. >> and gearing up for 2012 with obama senior campaign adviser david axelrod. >> the values that drove him in the first to get into politics are the values that drive him today. >> i'm candy crowley. and this is "state of the union." we begin about a about an eagle scout from wichita whose dad sold auto parts. robert gates has served eight u.s. presidents and five years as defense secretary across two wars. >> secretary gates, i look forward to you coming home to our home state at some point. i know you must be looking forward to that. >> 15 days. >> 11 days now and counting.
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i sat down with defense secretary gates yesterday afternoon. thank you so much for joining us. let me get to some news here over the weekend, and that is president karzai from afghanistan says that the u.s. is talking directly to the taliban in peace talks. is that so? >> i think there's been outreach on the part of a number of countries, including the united states. i would say that these contacts are very preliminary at this point. >> at what level is it? >> well, it's being carried out by the state department. >> so it's at the diplomatic level, certainly not at the level of secretary of state. >> no. no. >> and when you say -- >> as i say, other countries are involved, as well. >> and when you say preliminary, how long has it been going on? >> well, i'm not sure. a few weeks, maybe. >> and is the nature of it how can we get peace here? >> i think the first question we
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have is who represents mullah omar. who really represents the taliban. we don't want to end up having a conversation at some point with somebody who's basically a freelancer. and, i mean, my own view is that real reconciliation talks are not likely to be able to make any substantive headway until at least this winter. i think that the taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure and begin to believe that they can't win before they're willing to have a serious conversation. we've all said all along that the political outcome is the way most of these wars end. the question is when and if they're ready to talk seriously about meeting the red lines that president karzai and that the coalition have laid down, including totally disavowing al qaeda. >> and two questions come out of
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that. the first is, is there any part of you, knowing what the taliban has done, which is basically protect and help the folks who made an attack on the u.s. on 9/11, any part of you that is uneasy with this sort of talk? >> well, i think, first of all, we've just killed the guy who was responsible for attacking us on september 11th. and we have taken out a lot of other al qaeda as well over the years. look, we ended up talking to people in anbar province in iraq who were directly killing -- had directly been involved in killing our troops. that's the way wars end. >> and the second question coming out of that is you seem to again be making the case that june is not the time for a major drawdown or even a significant drawdown as the president has said he wanted of u.s. combat
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forces in afghanistan if you say, as you do, the taliban needs to feel pressure this winter. >> well, look. the president has added something like 65,000 troops to afghanistan since he took office. we -- whatever decision he makes we will have a significant number of troops remaining in afghanistan. he announced in december of 2009 with all of our support that the drawdowns would begin in july of 2011 and that the pace and the scope would be based on the conditions on the ground. well, one of the conditions on the ground is we've made a lot of progress over the last 15 months. we have basically thrown the taliban out of their home turf of kandahar and helmand provinces. so i think we will present the president with options and with different levels of risk
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associated with those options and he will decide. >> but you've made no secret of the fact that you think that there should not be any kind of major drawdown at this point but at a critical time you want to protect those advances you have talked about, and you're now talking about the the taliban needing to feel the pressure of u.s. forces. so am i right to say that you want still a modest drawdown? >> well, what i also have said is that the drawdown must be politically credible here at home. so i think there's a lot of room for maneuver in that framework. >> there certainly is. you know senator carl levin, who has suggested 15,000 troops by the end of the year. is that doable as far as you're concerned? >> we can do anything the president tells us to do. the question is -- >> wise. >> -- whether that ease wise. >> let me ask you that question, then, more correctly. >> i'm not going to get into any advice i may or may not have given the president.
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>> yes, and i totally understand those have to be private conversations, but publicly, senator levin has said, hey, i think you can get 15,000 troops, so i'm just trying to see if you think that would be a wise decision to pull out 15,000 troops by the end of the year, combat or otherwise. >> we're all aware of what senator levin has called for. but the president also unlike senator levin has the responsibility. >> i want to play you something, and i'm sure you heard some of this. this was from questions at hearings on capitol hill. take a listen to this. >> what is the mission, and, therefore, what is the goal? >> how much can we achieve and how much of that actually benefits our strategic objectives. that's what i've been struggling with for more than a year now. >> tell me how this ends. i just don't see how it ends. >> let me reform late that last question a little bit. how do you want this to end? what do you see as a doable end to u.s. combat presence in
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afghanistan? >> frankly, i don't see what's so complicated about it. how this nds is essentially the same way it ended in iraq, with us playing a key role for some period of time, building up the local security forces, in one case iraq, in this case, afghanistan. degrading the capability of the taliban to the point where the afghan forces can take care of them. that transition has already begun. a quarter of the people live under afghan security leadership, and what you will see between now and 2014 is the transition of the rest of the country over a period of time, as the afghan forces get better, we can pull back into a training and partnering role and more into counterterrorism. and so i think this transition
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to afghan leadership, so that they can keep control of their own country, so that al qaeda can no longer find a safe haven in afghanistan, and the taliban cannot forcibly overthrow the government of afghanistan. that doesn't seem that hard to me for people to understand. >> i think maybe it just seems that this has been a very long war and as you know by looking at the polling and listening to the folks up on capitol hill, which i know you often have to be up there, that the political will is not there anymore. i understand that you understand that people are weary of war as you are. >> i know the american people are tired of war. but, look, the reality is the united states had a very limited commitment in afghanistan until well into 2008, and we didn't have the right strategy and the right resources for this conflict, and a lot of resources, those needed to do the job, until the late summer
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of 2010. the president made this decision for the second surge in december of 2009, and it took us some months to get the additional surge in, so i understand everybody is war weary. but the reality is we won the first afghan war in 2001-2002. we were diverted by iraq and we neglected afghanistan for several years. when i took office at the end of the december in 2006, 194 americans had been killed in five years of warfare. that is the level of conflict that we were engaged in. so i understand we have been at war for ten years, but we have not been at war full scale in afghanistan except since last summer. >> secretary gates, i'll ask you to stick with me. we'll take a quick break. when we come back, more on afghanistan and other trouble spots around the world. in here, inventory can be taught to learn.
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there has been emotional farewells, to the troops which i think are understandable, and the mission of the toll that has taken on you, and watching and knowing you are partly responsible for these young men and women going overseas and into war, and then this caught a lot of attention at west point at the end of the february. >> in my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big american land army into asia or into the middle east or africa should have his head examined, as general macarthur so delicately put it. >> now, the totality of the speech was about the army needing to readjust what it does and how it trains and that kind of thing, but i can't help but wonder whether you are leaving with regrets. as i watch you, i think you are sorry about some things and i can't figure out what it is. were these the right wars? >> well, i have said all along,
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first of all, only time and history can answer that question. what i do know, and what i do have confidence in is that once there, failure is a huge challenge for the united states. and failure will have costs of its own that will linger with us for a long time, as was the case in vietnam. so my objective in both of these wars has been to end them on terms that enhance the united states' security, that uphold america's prestige in the world and our reputation, and advance our interests. if we can accomplish that, then bringing them to a close as quickly as possible i think is the right thing to do. >> and when you say this, i know that history judges this, but i can't help but get the feeling from you that you have judged at least in the near term about these wars, and what do you feel?
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>> well, first of all, we had no choice in iraq and afghanistan, i should say. we were attacked out of afghanistan. and in a way, if i had it all to do over again i would have used different wording at west point, because if the united states is directly threatened, i will be the first in line to say we should use military force and that we should do so with all the power we have available to us. it's wars of choice that i have become more cautious about, and being very careful about electing to send troops in harm's way wherever they may be. if it's a matter of choice as opposed to a direct threat to the united states. so that was really what i was trying to express and frankly didn't do so very well. >> it got a lot of play as we well know. >> it sure did. >> i'm just going to extrapolate here. and that is that you had -- prior to to it, if you had to go
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back, and you were not here when the iraq war started, but you questioned whether we should have gone to war in iraq. >> what i said is the war in iraq will always be clouded by how it began, which was a wrong premise, that there were in fact no weapons of mass destruction. >> using your measurement and your lessons that you take from recent history, how does libya fit into this? >> i would say that the broader point that i try to remind people of is the inherent unpredictability of war. churchill said something to the effect that once the guns start the fire the statesman lose control because nobody can predict what will happen. by the same token, i think the president's decision that we would go in big at the
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would go in big at the beginning and establish the no fly zone, in accordance with the u.n. security council resolution, and then recede into a support role because of all the other commitments we have in iraq and afghanistan, 24,000 people in humanitarian work in japan because of the earthquake and so on, that was his understanding with the other leaders from the very beginning of this thing, that that's the way this would play out. he struck to that and made clear it would not be u.s. ground troops in libya and he stuck to that. i think he set a way in which the united states would participate at the beginning, and then once the no-fly zone was established -- and he stuck to that. and i think that has been very disciplined. >> but in terms of just the action itself, the u.s. being involved with other nato members in essentially these arial assaults, and no ground troops from anybody, really, and i think there are trainers and stuff in misrata, but nonetheless, this does not fit
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your category of direct threat from overseas. >> no. >> libya was not a direct threat. >> no, but let's look at it this way. it was considered a vital interest. what was going on in libya was considered a vital interest by some of our closest allies. those are the same allies that have come to our support and assistance in afghanistan. and so it seems to me the kind of limited, measured role that the president decided on in support of our allies who did consider it a vital interest, is is a legitimate way to look at this prop. >> and yet your feelings about nato you've made pretty clear in some recent speeches. you don't think they've paid their fair share in terms of nato, either in dollar terms or troop terms. they tend to take positions in afghanistan and elsewhere where they are not in the kind of danger that u.s. troops are in. so our plan was to go in libya
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and then let nato, this group that you think doesn't pay its fair share in any way, shape or form, take the lead. >> i think what we have seen -- they have taken the lead and performed. the interesting thing is some of the smaller air forces, like the danes and the norwegians, contributed maybe 12% of the aircraft but hit 30% of the targets. some of these guys are punching above their weight. the british and french have significant forces engaged. i think the worry they have, and this was reflected in my speech in brussels, because of the lack of investment in defense over decades that their forces are beginning to be stretched by a limbed engagement against, basically, kind of a third-rate dictator. >> sure. how long is the u.s. going to be in libya? how long should we be backing up -- we're not in libya. >> i think the allies are prepared to sustain this. we are seeing the gadhafi government weaken.
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this is not, i think -- i think this will end okay. i think gadhafi will eventually fall. my own bet is he will not step down voluntarily, but somebody will make that decision for him, either his family or military. >> or somebody will kill him? >> possibly. >> i think the allies will be able to sustain that until this happens. and we will support them. >> when we come back, we will talk about the future of u.s. forces with the outgoing secretary of the pentagon. we're back with secretary of ♪ you love money ♪ well, you know i love it too ♪ ♪ i work so hard at my job ♪ and then i bring it home to you ♪ ♪ i love money in my pocket
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we're back with secretary of defense, robert gates. a couple wrap-up questions. june 6th was the deadliest day for u.s. troops in iraq in two years. these are advisers. these are not combat troops. what are your fears vis-a-vis iraq, especially when it comes to iran and its influence when we leave iraq at the end of the year? >> i think that is actually one of the reasons why the iraqis and we are talking about some kind of a residual american
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presence in terms of the helping them with beyond december of 2011. >> what does that mean, "residual"? >> a small number of troops to stay behind to train and help and intelligence and so on. >> 10,000? >> the number will depend on what the mission is, and the mission is what we're discussing with them and what they are discussing among themselves. i am worried about iranian influence. most of our kids who have been killed recently have been killed by extremist shia groups, not by al qaeda in iraq, but by shia extremists groups and they are getting sophisticated and powerful weapons from iran. so i do worry about that. and frankly, based on what i have seen in the last few days, i think prime minister maliki is beginning to get worried as well and beginning to take serious these shia extremist groups. >> let me ask you about al qaeda. what does it say to you post bin
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laden, when we all thought they were going to make an attack to retaliate against u.s. troops killing osama bin laden, it hasn't happened. as far as i can tell, there's been no real lift in the terror warnings. are they too weak to launch a strike against the u.s.? >> a couple things. first of all, they have been significantly weakened. there's no two ways about it. killing bin laden, he's not the first leader we have killed from al qaeda. we've taken a toll on them particularly the last few year, last several. and so there have been real successes there. and second, most of their operations that we see do take some time to prepare and get things ready. so we worry still about al qaeda central there on the pakistani/afghan border. and we also worry about al qaeda and the iranian peninsula and
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yem en in north africa, in the maghreb. and so this is a threat that in some ways has metastasized. the question is, whether the new leader taking bin laden's place can hold these groups together in some kind of a cohesive movement or whether it begins to splinter and they become essentially regional terrorist groups that focus on regional targets. and we just don't know that yet. >> let me turn to budget cuts, all the rage in washington this year, and something you said about the size of the military. >> we need to be honest with the president and congress and the american people and ourselves about what the consequences are, that a smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go fewer places and do fewer things. >> what do you warn against? do you think it would be a good thing to have a smaller military? clearly not. >> clearly not. what i want to avoid, the worst possible outcome of this budget process, is what happened in the
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1970s and to a lesser extent in the ninth. and that is across-the-board cuts where everything becomes mediocre. >> what's sacrosanct? >> you don't touch infrastructure. >> what should not be cut in the military budget? >> the two things i have told the defense to not touch is the family programs and the training. the training is where we often take the hit first when it comes to budget cutting. but we have to make investments in the new tanker and in a fifth generation fighter. the chinese and russians are both developing such fighters and we have to make investments in our surface ships. there are certain areas where we just have to -- the surface ship, the number of our surface ships in our navy will be at the smallest number since 1916. if you cut the surface ships, then the ability to do things like our humanitarian assistance in japan, will be affected by
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that. i want teem pooem to face up to these realities and face up to the fact if they have to make hard choices rather than the politically expedient choice of saying let's just cut everything by a certain percentage. >> and some are saying why does the united states have to stay a super power? why do we have to go some of these places? i am okay with the cuts you are talking about, and why should the u.s. be a super power? >> well, there clearly are going to be some cuts in things that i care about. but the united states has global interests. we have had global interests for a century and a half. we have been a global power since the 19th century. we have interests. we have allies. we have partners. we find that we have a bad history. when we turn inward we end up in a really big war. >> mr. secretary, a very emotional issue for some family members of service people who
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kill themselves while on duty, and that is that the president traditionally over many years has not written condolence letters to people who use a family member in the service who's committed suicide. should that policy be changed? >> i have discussed this personally with the president. i have not done so either, so it's not just the president's policy. so i think the services and the defense secretary and the white house all need to revisit this issue. >> in fact, you all are trying to make it a more open military to psychiatric services, people who need emotional help. this stands in opposition to that, does it not? >> yes. >> and finally, is this the last time you're going to retire from public service? >> yes, for sure. >> that's it for you. it's been nice having you in washington. have a good retirement. >> thank you. >> thanks a lot.
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cnn's debate this week featured seven republican rivals with different ideas about how to reach one mutual goal. >> we need a new president to end the obama depression. >> this president has failed. >> the programs that president obama has put forward has not worked. >> president obama is a one-term president. >> but in the end, the re-election of president obama will have less to do with who the republicans have to nominate against him than some cold, hard facts. a 9.1% unemployment rate and a restless public. asked if they are satisfied with the direction the country is headed 78% of the americans said no, and it's rough economic terrain that could change the electoral landscape. strategists see these five states, one the president captured in 2008, as most vulnerable for a republican takeover in 2012. together they account for 79
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electoral votes. i asked one top obama campaign official this week what he worries about most. his reply? the economy. next up, the president's senior campaign strategist, david axelrod, with his take on the president's republican rivals. yep. the longer you stay with us, the more you save. and when you switch from another company to us, we even reward you for the time you spent there. genius. yeah, genius. you guys must have your own loyalty program, right? well, we have something. show her, tom.
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this week i caught up with former senior white house adviser david axelrod who returned home to his business in chicago earlier this year, and he says he has a client list of one, the president of the united states. he doesn't work out of re-election headquarters. he uses the comfortable political consuling office he's had even before working on the obama campaigns. here he hangs on what used to be on his white house wall, a picture by his daughter of the white house and in its reflection, the chicago skyline. you are back in chicago. >> i am, indeed. >> helping to steer the re-election ship. >> yes. >> something that the president said this week struck me. he was down in miami talking to donors. he said it's not as cool to be an obama supporter as it was in 2008 with the posters and all of that stuff. i think he's right. i think it's not as cool to be an obama supporter now. how do you get cool back into this campaign?
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>> i find it cool to be an obama supporter after having sat with him two years in the white house and watching him work through difficult things with intelligence and grace and equilibrium. i have great admiration for him. but there's no doubt that when you are the incumbent, it's a little different. i think ultimately, the people participating in the campaign in 2008 were not involved in some sort of cultive personality, it was about the country and they cared deeply about the country. when the campaign gets fully engaged and the choices become clear you will see a great deal of activity out there on his behalf. i think that it may not be the same, but i think the level of energy will be very high. >> and when is fully engaged? how do you lay that out for me? sort of the schedule. >> he has a day job. candy, let's stipulate that you and i are junkies, we get paid
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to do this. >> true. >> and we would probably be fascinated by it if we didn't. but most americans are living their lives trying to deal with what is in front of them. they just had an election, and they are not hankering for the thex one to begin. they want the president of the united states to deal with the challenges facing this country, and that's what he's going to do from now until next spring and summer when the candidates are chosing and we have a great national debate. >> i know you look at the polls, and as much as you look at the polls, about as much as you hate to have me talk about them, i want to ask you a couple things. in the latest poll that we saw, 42% of independents supported re-elect for president obama. that's compared to the 52% you got in the win. when you ask staunch liberals, do you approve of the president, 64% approved of the president's performance, and 89% is what you had vote for him in the last election.
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fist let's take it from your base. why is your base unhappy? >> first of all, candy, let me say if we sat together at this point before the last election, the poll numbers that you quoted me would be about as relevant as the farm ears almanac. >> true. a snapshot in time. >> that's true. let me emphasize that. when we get to the election, it will be a choice between two candidates. i have no doubt that our base will be very, very solid. the polling that i have seen is contrary to that. i think our base will be very, very solid. they will understand what the choices are and the direction in which he wants to lead and the direction in which the republican candidate will want to lead. i think one of the things that will inform that campaign is whether that republican candidate can yield to some of the forces within his own party or her own party that is driving their party further to the right. >> it's to your benefit to
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portray whoever comes out of the republican process as a right-wing conservative -- >> no. i'm not interested in characterizing the candidate as a right-wing conservative. i am interested in looking at their views and whether those views are consistently held. one of the things that people are going to look at is not just the positions that the candidates take, not just their records but also the character of their leadership and politics. and part of that character is do you have the fortitude to stick with your positions or do you shift according to the political moment. >> that sounds like a romney argument. >> well, it could fit any number of people. it's not unusual in politics for people who are ambitious to change their points of view on fundamental things, to try and win an election. but that's not what people want in the president of the united states. >> but the president did as a candidate over time change his opinion. he was hit for that, too.
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>> nobody in public life does or should never change an opinion. but the question is on the fundamental things, basic things. are you going to be consistent so that when people vote for you they have some sense of where you will be the next day. my experience with barack obama is he is one of the most consistent people that i have ever met. the values that drove him to get into politics are the values that drive him today. it's a fundamental identification for middle class people and people struggling to become middle class, to push for that kind of opportunities that have characterized our country in the past and we want to characterize our country in the future. >> stick with me, and we'll take a quick break, and when we come back we want to talk issues and size up the competition. it flows with clean water. it makes its skyline greener and its population healthier. all to become the kind of city people want to live and work in. somewhere in america,
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thankfully, there's listerine® antiseptic. its triple-action formula penetrates biofilm, kills germs and protects your mouth for hours. fight biofilm with listerine®. welcome back. we're here with senior obama re-election strategist david axelrod. can the president win with an 9% unemployment rate? >> first of all, i don't think there will be an 9% unemployment rate. i'm not an economist. i believe we will make improvement just as we have made -- we were at 10.2 and it's down to 9. i think it will go down, but that's not the fundamental issue.
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the issue is do people feel like we're making progress and moving in the right direction, and do they feel like the person on the other side of the ballot will hold out greater hope? i am very confident that we will be in the right place. >> david, if you look at right track, wrong track, which i know a lot of pollsters put stake in, overwhelmingly, a lot of people think we're on the wrong track. isn't that what it's about? you have to have people feeling things are getter better and they don't. >> here's what i think. people understand that the problems we're facing took years to create and years to manifest themselves, and it's going to take longer than anybody would like to solve them. but they want to know the approach taken is the right approach, and it has at its core their economic security and best interests. and the president has a balanced plan, a plan that has the middle class at its core and has broad
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growth as a goal. >> why don't they feel that way now? what i am saying he has been in office now, do the math, more than two years, and people feel that the country is on the wrong track. what changes between now and next november? >> because we have been through -- we have been through a horrific recession that followed a lost decade -- >> can you run blaming george bush for the economy? >> i don't think anybody cares about pointing fingers of blame. >> you were talking about these -- this was a decade in the making. >> no, no. that's just a fact of what's happened in the life of our economy. i don't think it's about the past. it's about the future. it's only relevant to talk about the past in evaluating the approach that people would take moving forward. >> i know as part of your job we talked about this, is to watch
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debates. we had a big debate in new hampshire this week. size up the competition for me. >> i think it's early to size up the competition. there seemed to be a unanimity of antipathy toward the president. i'll assert that. i didn't hear a lot of ideas. the first mayor daley said we have to rise to higher and higher platitudes. i was reminded of that watching the republican debate because i heard a lot of partisan platitudes. ultimately people will ask for answers. and they're going to ask hard questions, if you're governor romney and you say i'm going to turn this economy around, i've got the answers. you don't offer them. then people have a right to say why is it that your state was 47th in the country in job creation when you were governor? if you're governor pawlenty and you say we've got to clean up the fiscal mess, people have a right to ask, why did you leave your state with a $6.2 billion deficit? that's what campaigns are about. one thing about running for president -- we ran a very long campaign and i know a lot about
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this, is whoever you are, people will know who you are by the end of that campaign. they're very valuable in that regard. >> did anybody look particularly strong to you? >> you know, i don't know. i'll leave it to the pundits to grade that. i agree with the conventional wisdom. i think congresswoman bachmann, who was relatively unknown, probably did herself some good there. i thought governor romney for what he did did fine. but we were through 28 or something of these things in our democratic race. i know this is very early, and i think it's the later debates that become more revealing. we've got some candidates who weren't there who are about to join the race. that will add to the fight. >> john huntsman is getting in next week. size him up for me. >> well, i know him because he was president obama's ambassador to china. i got to meet him when we were in shanghai.
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i think he's a very bright, fluent person. it was a little surprising to me because when we were in shanghai we got a chance to talk. he was very effusive. this was many the fall of 2009 -- abwhat the president was doing. he was encouraging on health care and a whole range of issues, he was a little quizzical about what was going on in his own party. you got the sense he was going to wait until 2016 for the storm to blow over. obviously, circumstances changed. i was surprised when he emerged as a candidate. but i certainly take him serious. >> it's funny because i interviewed him for last sunday's show. and he said -- i asked him if he thought, as does mitt romney, that president obama has had a failed presidency, and he said yes, he did, particularly on the economy. >> well, that is in conflict with what he communicated to us in 2009. if he had suggestions on the
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economy, he had an excellent opportunity to suggest them then when we were all together in china. i think what has changed is not his view of the economy but his view of his own chances to perhaps win the nomination. i understand. that's politics. he's a politician and he sees an opportunity, but it is -- it's a stark contrast to what he said when he wasn't on your program. >> sounds like you're a little ticked off at him. >> no. listen, i've been around -- as george bush used to say, this isn't my first rodeo. i think anybody who wants to get in the pool should jump in the pool. and i believe in the process. i believe you get tested in this process, your character gets tested as well as your ability to read a script or a speech, and so he and all the candidates will be tested. ultimately i'm very confident about the outcome. >> david axelrod, senior adviser for the president, thank you very much for joining us. >> good to see you, candy.
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is u.s. activity in support of the nato in support of the war? the president finding safe harbor from republicans and getting grief from democrats. >> i think it's an infringement on the power of the commander in chief. the president's done a lousy job of communicating and managing our involvement in libya, but i will be no part of an effort to defund libya or to try to cut off our efforts to bring gadhafi down. the president needs to step up his game for libya and congress should sort of shut up. >> i think the war powers act and constitution make it clear that hostilities by remote control are still hostilities. what we should do is act on a timely basis to pass congressional,000 under the war powers act. >> also involved in an intraparty dust-up, the republicans' 2008 presidential
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nominee, john mccain, invoked the name of one of the party's most revered icons in pushing back against to 20 12 candidates that mccain believes are borderline isolationists. >> wonder what ronald reagan would be staying today. that's not the republican party of the 20th century and now the 21st century. that is not the republican party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people for all over the world. >> and the public push-and-pull over what the president will decide privately. how many u.s. troops to pull out of afghanistan this summer. earlier on "state of the union," defense secretary robert gates, who has called for a modest drawdown, would only say withdrawal has to be politically credible at home. on cbs, democratic senator chuck schumer said there is room for significant reduction. >> the success our troops have had and the great job they've done over the last ten years culminating in the elimination of bin laden haas given us the ability to
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