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tv   Meet the Press  NBC  December 27, 2010 3:00am-4:00am PST

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arms treaty with russia. >> a lot of folks in this town predicted that after the mid-term elections washington would be headed for more partisanship and more gridlock. instead, this has been a season of progress for the american people. >> here to talk with us about the president's agenda heading into 2011 a top white house adviser and close friend of the president's valerie jarrett. happy holidays. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thank you david. same to you and your family. >> a season of progress the president called it. just november 3rd the president was talking about a shellacking he was responsible for in the mid term election. then unexpected victories in this lame duck session. what happened in that interim time from the president's point of view? was there a course correction that he ushered in? >> i think as the president said right after the election what we heard and what the nation said during the election is that they really wanted to see congress and the president and the administration in washington working together.
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they wanted us to deliver on behalf of the american people and i think what we saw over the course of the last few weeks is just that. we made enormous progress as you pointed out from the taxes where, you know, everyone when they get their next paycheck instead of their taxes going up they're going down with a payroll tax, earned income tax credit, child care tax credit, with a credit so we can afford to send children to college and importantly a credit so that companies will invest and they can take 100% of their expenses now to create jobs for america so that sends a very positive signal. the s.t.a.r.t. treaty, probably the president's single most important foreign policy accomplishment. in fact, the most successful treaty in decades was just passed as well and then you mentioned don't ask don't tell. now we'll be able to have gays and lesbians serve their country proudly in the military and it's a military based on trust so now they'll be able to serve proudly and represent our country. these are all major accomplishments achieved on a bipartisan basis with congress
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and the president both sides of the aisle working together. the vice president, who was on the program last week, responded to a question of mine about when people think about the president, are they able to sort of pin him down? what is he exactly? liberal, moderate, centrist, or what? he had this response in part. i want to play it for you. >> what he is, is he is a progressive leader who, in fact, understands politics is all over the art of the possible. >> that's the art of the possible to a lot of observers is a marked change from somebody somebody who was going to change the way washington operated. has he made a shift in his own mind to say i have to change strategy here to achieve some of the things i want to achieve? >> i don't think so. i think the president we are seeing now is the same person i've known for over 20 years. when the president was in the state senate he had a reputation
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for being able to work very closely with people on the other side of the aisle and forge that compromise that's pragmatic. he never lets the perfect be the enemy of the good. i think that's his reputation. early on in the administration i think the republicans made a concerted decision to really oppose what we did and i think what we saw after the mid term was the president who said i'm going to reach out more, try harder, and they reciprocated and i think that is what the people want. >> is that really the issue here? the tax deal sort of cleared out some of the under brush here and now there is more opportunity for real engagement and agreement? >> i hope so. i don't know about clearing out the under brush. i think it is an example of what we can do when everybody says what is most important to me? what the president said was most important to him was not to raise taxes on the middle class, make sure those who are unemployed have 13 months of benefits. they're going to go out, pay rent, buy groceries, buy supplies, afford christmas presents for their children. that is going to grow the economy and create jobs. what was important to the
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republicans was to have tax breaks for the very wealthy and the estate tax provisions and so when you marry the two, you ended up with a package that was able to get the bipartisan support that we needed. in a sense, everybody got what they wanted. >> but this was a candidate who wrote in one of the memoirs extending bush tax cuts for the wealthy was morally troubling. so a lot of the core supporters who came out in unprecedented numbers in 2008 see this as caving or they see it as weakness. they don't see it as somebody who is a progressive who believes that politics is the art of the possible. >> what the president wakes up every morning focusing on is what is best for the american people. not what is in his short term political calculus but what is important to the american people. what he did not want to have happen on january first was to see our economy although improving is still very fragile, he did not want to have people see their taxes go up. he knew that is what was going
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to happen. he wasn't looking for a fight just to fight and take that chance. what he realized is that he had to be pragmatic but he was being pragmatic in order to deliver for the american people. that's really what i think you have to focus your attention for and what he used every decision he makes. he has two priorities and the vice president said this again last week on your show. grow our economy, create jobs, and keep america safe and so every decision he makes is measured against that test. >> but, still, as president you do have to fight some things. he talked about it after the mid terms. you have to fight how things are done in washington. he told john stewart recently that yes we can is still yes we can but yes we can but. is that now the next year's story that the obama agenda has to be tempered by the realities of washington? >> we do have to accept the realities that the republicans did win the house and so they now have a responsibility to lead as well and we can't ignore the realities of the membership
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and makeup of congress and the fact that we are going to need bipartisan support to get things done. that is a reality. there are certain things the president won't compromise. for example the republicans wanted the high income tax breaks to be permanent. what the president said is, no, we can't afford it. we're going to have to really tackle our deficit so we're not going to extend the tax breaks for the very wealthy indefinitely. we can't afford it and it's important that we control our deficit and tighten our belt. that is something he is willing to fight for and we'll see in the next year and the year after that he is going to fight very hard when those two-year extensions expire to cut off the income break for the very wealthy. >> you are among other parts of your portfolio someone who is a liaison with the business community in america from the white house for this president. the president has had a strained relationship with the business community. he has acknowledged it. he talked about bankers as fat cats and others that led business to really think he was hostile toward them. what does this tax package do to
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get people back to work and what is the new area of cooperation between the white house and the business community to get the economy moving? >> let's put it in context and keep in mind what was going on when the president took office. our financial institutions were crumbling on the brink of disaster. our economy was in a free fall. the stock market was crashing. people were seeing their life savings destroyed. businesses were having to layoff people. in fact, the last six months of the prior administration we lost 4 million jobs. it was a period of turmoil and the president had to take several bold and decisive steps, some of them unpopular, to right our economy and get us on the right track. just last week the president had a group of about 20 ceos from around the country come in and talk about, how can we grow the economy? how can we get some of the dollars sitting on the balance sheet invested? it was a very good session where we spent 4 1/2 hours really talking about what we have in common and i think what you're going to see going forward is an enormous amount of cooperation
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around exports, around free trade, making sure the korean free trade agreement where the president lobbied very hard to open up export opportunities for u.s. companies gets passed through congress, focusing on public education making sure our community colleges are training people in a way where there will be real jobs at the end of the training. there are so many ways that business and the president are aligned right now. what he said to them is, look. if you succeed, if you create jobs, if you invest in america, if we're able to help you compete in a globally competitive marketplace then the country wins. that's what the president wants. >> the president spoke after the mid terms about a difficulty that he has had connecting with the american people, living in the bubble of the white house and the bubble of the presidency. he talked about it after the mid term. i'll play a portion of what he said. >> when you're in this place, it is hard not to seem removed, and
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one of the challenges that we've got to think about is how do i meet my responsibilities here in the white house, which require a lot of hours and a lot of work but still have that opportunity to engage with the american people on a day-to-day basis and give them confidence that i'm listening to them. >> you know him as well or better than anybody working in the white house. >> yes. >> how does he do a better job of connecting with the american people when so many are hurting? >> he often says this is his biggest regret. when he took office because of the crisis presented to him he had to spend almost every waking hour in washington focusing very hard on solving that crisis and what he missed sorely was the engagement with the american people. he said it right before he left for vacation. he said, when i get back i really want to figure out a way where i can spend more time
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outside of washington listening and learning and engaging with the american people. it's really what gives him his energy and his strength so we're determined in the new year to make sure his schedule reflects that priority. >> we are in the midst of a permanent campaign and the campaign of 2012 is already upon us. i find it interesting in one of the president's recent interviews, he said about potential presidential aspirant sarah palin that he doesn't think about her. do you think he should? >> you know what i think? as the president of the united states his obligation is to think about all americans every day. he has to wake up in the morning, has to think about growing our economy, has to think about keeping us safe. he needs to keep focused on the prize. >> he also thinks about political opponents. >> you know what? i think as president his job is to focus first on that. if he does that job well, if he looks out for america, if it's clear that he's doing everything he can to make sure that hard working americans who have lost their jobs can go back to work and if he keeps america safe and demonstrates that 24/7 that's his priority, then i think the
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politics will take care of itself. >> do you think he should be paying attention to her as a political threat? >> i think he shouldn't be distracted by what are perceived as threats. i really go back to what i'm saying. because he is the president of the united states he's not out there running the way he was before when he was a u.s. senator where you have to think about everybody in the field every second of the day. the american people expect him to lead. he's their president. he is everybody's president regardless of party affiliation. that doesn't mean at some point he's not going to get out there and launch a campaign but the most important thing that he can do for the american people is think of them every single day and let them guide his actions. >> finally, your role in the white house is unique. i mean, for those of us who cover politics, who cover administrations, you have a lot of responsibility as an adviser but you're also one of the president's closest friends and have helped to mentor him and develop him as a political figure. what role do you play for him in that way?
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what is unique about it and how do you help strengthen him? >> well, i think the president's lucky to be surrounded by a strong group of both within the white house as well as his cabinet of people who he trusts and who he relies on for advice. i think the fact that i'm a friend who's there who has known him for a long time provides me with the ability to be a sounding board in one way but i think what's important to know about the president is he really listens to a variety of different voices, diversity of opinions. that's what really gives him the energy and ability to think creatively and innovatively. the president calls on the new stranger who has walked in the room who might be the junior person at the table but has a new idea how we can grow our country and make it strong, compete internationally. he has an almost insatiable appetite for new ideas, from wherever he goes. when he's walking along a rope line often times people will lean and whisper suggestions to him and he comes back and tells
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his economic team some of the smartest people in the country this is what i heard today. what do you think? i think that's what you want in a president, somebody who is innovative, creative, who's always looking for new ideas and who surrounds himself with a diverse and robust group of people and i consider myself privileged to be at his service. >> valerie jarrett, thank you as always. >> you're welcome. >> up next, taking stock of 2010. health care reform, the oil disaster in the gulf, the rise of the tea party, and the ongoing economic crisis. where has it all left the country politically? our round table weighs in. nbc's tom brokaw, historian and author doris kearns goodwin, peggy noonan and bob woodward. i.
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coming up our round table examines where 2010 has left the country politically and will it be possible for the two parties to find any common ground in 2011? after this brief commercial break.
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and we are back joined now
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by our special political round table. historian and author doris kearns goodwin. "the washington post" associate editor bob woodward, columnist for "the wall street journal" peggy noonan and our own nbc news special correspondent tom brokaw. welcome to all of you and happy holidays. there is so much to go through. tom brokaw you think about the lame duck session, how this year ends for president obama, and all these people are talking about the comeback kid and look what he accomplished. you know, on november 3rd in the shellacking of the mid term it wasn't supposed to work out this way. what happened? >> well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. we have a long way to go and a lot of big problems are still out there. i do think he has had a good month obviously. i think that it's due in large part to the fact that he seemed to be in charge. he was leading from the front and not from the back as the guy who was kind of consulting with everybody on the hill before he made a decision. he stepped up and the country was ready for this kind of action and the republicans i think to some degree got caught
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all but flat footed by his eagerness to get the deal done in the way that he did and the way he stood down the democrats who weren't happy about it let's pick up on that, doris. because at the end of the week he signs a signature piece of legislation, that is the repeal of don't ask don't tell which prohibited gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. this was a way to mitigate some of the damage on the left to say, look, this was a campaign promise. i got this done. you may not like i'm dealing with the republicans in other ways but i got this done. and on this issue the politics were too difficult for the republicans to stay united in opposition. >> right. it's one of those moments when it was an idea whose time had come and the gay movement deserves a lot of credit for making the whole way we think about gays different now. but it is very fortunate for obama i think that that came at the same time as the tax cut, which a lot of the people on the left were upset about. presidents in history are always upset about the people in their own party who criticize them. teddy roosevelt used to say they're tom foolery guys,
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lunatic fringe. on the other hand they need them to push from the outside in so what they can get done is larger than it might otherwise be. i understand why he got irritated but i think on the other hand it was great that he had that combination so he could, yeah, i did this. on the other hand, i did the tax cut. >> bob woodward, what's your read on the president's strong finish? >> it's real. and the repeal of don't ask don't tell is a big deal. that is a movement in civil rights that will be noted for a long time and perhaps forever. at the same time, there's something about obama that is not connecting with the people. and i was trying to think, you know, what is that? and somebody was telling me about this wake and gathering that richard holbrooke's widow had in new york after he died, holbrooke being the afghan/pakistan negotiator for
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obama who died. and at this gathering bill clinton walked in and of course clinton always takes over a room and he put his arm around the widow and started talking and saying that richard holbrooke had been somebody who always fought, who believed in peace, and somebody who was there told me, said suddenly, everyone in the room was involved in bill clinton's emotions. and that's what obama has to do. he has to find a way to make these things personal, not abstract. he is so cerebral, so smart he appears cool and he's got to get in there and make those connections with the people in the unemployment line, the assembly line, in the mountains of afghanistan. >> i agree with you but the very steadiness that allowed him to come back from scott brown's victory which seemed like he was dead in january and then he
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brought health care and now allowed him to come back from the shellacking in the mid term, that's a strength to neither be too high or too low and to keep that steadiness. i'm sure at times you want him to yell, to fight, show more emotion, but maybe those qualities don't often come together in the same person. >> as a manager he did a great job. it's masterful. but as something connecting with the average voter he's not yet there. that's how you win. >> can i throw in, too, on an issue like considering the president's position right now, an issue like don't ask don't tell is perfect. here's why. it's a liberal issue, a left issue, fine. but it was in line with centrist thinking. the center supported the change. when a president of the left can make leftist moves with centrist support he's going to be okay. rightist president the same thing. so always keep in line the center.
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i would say also bob, as an extenuation to your remarks i think the president has to regain his mystique. the presidency has a certain mystique, a certain weight, certain gravitational pull. i think the president walked into the white house with a certain mystique. i think he lost it in this first two years. he needs to gain it back. that's my read. >> tom i'm going to full out a little further but first i want to follow up on something specific about don't ask don't tell. there are still a lot of questions about how this gets implemented and then another question about military recruiting on college campuses. my own wife as you know was part of the program at princeton, the rotc program, as a lot of americans were who are in the military and are no longer in the military. is that the next step to take it on? >> that's quite another question. the military has mixed feelings about whether they want to go back to harvard, columbia, the ivy league schools. it's expensive. rotc programs. it's whether they get enough
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bang for their buck. do they get enough kids who sign up at the elite institutions to go into a commission program of some kind? or are they better off working at the land grant schools where they're going to get generally a greater response to it? so that's an issue. now, the ivy league and elite institutions are beginning to say, we would welcome them back. we want to open that conversation again because of the repeal of don't ask don't tell but you may find the military saying, you know, i'm not sure we need to go there because, frankly, it's not a happy hunting ground for us. >> i did naval rotc in college back in the coolidge administration or whenever it was. and it is important for the military to connect there with exactly the point you made recently in your op-ed piece about this disconnect between those who serve and people who kind of say oh, no not -- that's not for me.
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and one way to do that is to bring it -- bring rotc everywhere. >> well, here is what i think, bob. i've actually been thinking about this a fair amount. what i would do is if not do it campus by campus, if you go to boston for example you could do an m.i.t. harvard program and put a couple institutions together and have a central rotc program drawing on all the institutions. if you do it institution by institution with the questions that the military already has about a lot of costs, you have to put officers in those programs and training programs, they may be better to do something that is more centralized. >> let me bring it back to some of the wider challenges the president has faced this year. we can look at the last couple weeks, see a strong finish but this has been a tough year for the president and democrats. ap summed it up starting with the passage of health care reform quoting the president, this is what change looks like, obama said proudly, after the health care law passed. but the economic recovery feels
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-- was too slow. the oil gushed for too long. the health care law was too complicated. the unemployment rate too high. the political discourse too raw. the tea party too loud. americans were in a foul mood, and democrats got the blame. that's really the story of 2010. >> well, it's not -- the way that's written it suggests it was a matter of fate. well, my goodness, decisions were made. they were not popular. you know, health care two years into this drama you can look at it, look at the numbers and you realize, people just don't love that. that was just the wrong -- >> they don't understand it. >> when you're two years in and they still, everywhere across the country, are scratching their heads, that is almost the definition of a bad idea. he gave his first 18 months to it. >> and in fact it is going to help poor people in a tight economy. >> there are two different answers. a lot of small businesses understand it very well and say it's going to cost us more money and we're going to move our employees into the medicaid program or something else. we aren't going to be able to afford to cover them.
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people looking at it from the ground up are saying i don't get it. it's 2700 pages. most of the major health institutions that i know in this country who are going to be responsible for the care are still trying to sort their way through it. at the very highest levels they don't understand it. >> i think politically it was a misjudgment, a waste of time and reputation. >> you mean to even do it? i don't agree with that. >> to go down that road with that bill. >> but i think what hasn't been done, bill saffire used to say when you give a speech tell them what you're going to say, then tell them, then tell them what you told them. somehow a lot of people didn't understand what is in that bill. that's the bully pulpit. part is the rhetoric of the president. part of it is it is so hard to get anything out to the country because everything is so distracting. you give a speech on health care and joe wilson says you lie and that becomes the story. >> i actually met somebody who read the whole thing twice and he confessed he didn't
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understand it. >> that's a problem. >> the complexity. >> and health care and where that's going or how it gets changed or implemented is a peril to the obama presidency. i think there are other things like the threat of terrorism, very, very real. >> they missed the path on that. systemic unemployment when it goes up 0.2 of a point right before the election after they thought they were in the right direction is a big signal. my own guess is it is probably 12 or 13% of people probably not looking for jobs anymore. >> to peggy's point, about health care, the government stepped up, took some big whacks at policy namely dealing with the economy. a lot of people said wait a minute. nothing has worked here. you bailed out the banks, started under bush. you continued it. the auto companies.
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you did health care, did the stimulus, and we're still in the same position. i still don't have any equity in my house and i can't find a job. that's a role of government issue. >> there is also this growing -- part of what we're talking about is this -- the biggest political change in the united states in my lifetime is the sense grown ups have that their children will not have it better. it is a -- we are a happy people. you walk along any street in america right now and you'll see people doing christmas and the holidays and it's wonderful. but there is, deep down on the third level of thought, a strain of pessimism that i've never seen before. >> take a look at this poll. people's views on the last -- on this last decade that it's the worst decade in history at 54%. >> part of that is things happened at the beginning. >> let me take them back to 1938 for example when the prospect of
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war and world war ii and the recovery wasn't working as well as fdr hoped it would in that year and we still had bread lines in america and the country was on its back side at that point. >> and we were hopeful. it was dreadful. >> how about the worst decade leading up to the civil war. for those of us who are historians, lived in those other decades, i'll still take this one as troubling as it is. >> what about course correction though? bob, you talked about connecting. this issue of how the president positions himself to deal with the pessimism, deal with systemic unemployment, the threat of terror. politico wrote something interesting about obama 2.0, reinventing the presidency. they wrote, quote, he needs to be the ceo of america said former white house chief of staff john podesta, an obama sympathizer who ran his transition to power after the 2008 election and is urging him to dramatically refashion his presidency. the west wing makeover would involve obama no longer being velcroed to the hill and giving
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more attention to powers of the presidency that don't involve signing bills into law. in other words legislating is not good for popularity. >> that's true but if you talk to economists, ceos, the one theme that comes through all of this in terms of the economy, you need to plan and you need a plan that's not one or two years but a long-range plan. and no politician in the modern era has figured out to present a ten-year plan that he or she could sell politically and because the problems in the economy are structural. it's not something you can tinker with. it's something that you get a ceo on sodium pentathol, truth serum, and say how do you fix these things? they'll say what's your ten-year plan, your eight-year plan. so he's got to find a way to make that politically saleable whether he can we'll see. >> i think there's a way of having a bold vision. i mean, think about what fdr did
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in 1940. we were still coming out of the depression. we had the war in europe to worry about but he mobilized the economy in a fantastic way. he brought in ceos to run his production agencies. i think obama could do something similar like that. he gave much bigger appreciation, deceleration, tax credits to business. and they came through to produce the ships, the tanks, and the weapons. right now if he were to go for alternative energy in a bigger way than he has, if he would get these ceos saying what kind of tax credits do you need to keep jobs here in this country, there is a way of making america competitive in the world again, number one economically. >> but he had that war. >> of course. >> that was the engine that drove it economically. >> you can't believe that's all it has to be. >> maybe that's the answer. >> let me get a break. we'll come back and talk specifically about some of the challenges ahead. spending, the war in afghanistan, and the political landscape which is already taking shape for 2012. more from our round table right after this. ♪
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we are back joined again by our political round table. i want to talk about some of the specific challenges the president faces. there are some tough issues out there. i think the first one is best summed up by merriam. it is austerity. it is a noun. enforced or extreme economy. tom brokaw, that's what washington is going to be grappling with, which is government has to shrink, spend less. how do you go about doing it? in fact if you go across the country you find out families are already doing that. more women are saying to me i buy an extra edition of the sunday paper just to get the coupons. i used to make fun of people with the coupons. i'm now clipping them myself. on the other hand when they make a decision to close a military base in whatever state, a republican or democratic state or shut down an agricultural sub station you're always going to get the pushback from the special interests. the community is going to say you can't do that. it's our whole economy. this is going to be very tricky. mitch mcconnell said the other
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day the president is in for a big fight here but the republicans have a lot of pressure on them as well because they've made some big promises about how much they can cut spending. we're not going to kick-start the economy just by cutting spending and by cutting taxes. there are as i said a moment ago some real structural issues that we have to deal with here. innovation is way behind the curve about what's going on in vietnam and india and china and even in the middle east for that matter and we're not addressing that by this political rhetoric i've asked this question, peggy, to numerous guests over the past several weeks. do we have the balance right between austerity and what tom mentioned innovation? are we done investing in our economy to ultimately be competitive before we can deal with this long-term debt picture? >> well, that's a huge one. that's going to be worked out over the next few years. i'm thinking as tom was speaking, we have 40 million americans on foodstamps. we have a lot of people in distress and a lot of people getting help from the government.
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it is true that we have to cut spending. i mean, everybody can make that speech, but it's going to be really difficult at the same time entrenched interests that are winding up costing a heck of a lot of money in america such as municipal and state employee unions with pension benefits, etcetera. every state is going bankrupt. they all have to look at the price of things. i don't know if austerity is really the right word. >> it's an odd word. austerity means self-discipline. shared sacrifice means you're doing something for a higher object. for example during world war ii they called what we were wearing austerity clothing. it meant trousers that didn't have cuffs, no vests, two piece bathing suits to save cloth. but you knew you were doing that -- >> that's where those came from. >> yeah. but you knew you were doing it for a common cause and i think leadership strength has to be
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right now if we're going through an austere period to convince us something more than just undoing the deficit, that we're investing in the future at the same time as we're being austere. >> which involves leaders with trust who when they say everybody is going to take a hair cut and have some difficulties but we can get through it together, we're a great nation. that's the difficult part. >> there is all this talk about cutting spending and then they don't do it. of course the tax cut deal is going to add almost a trillion dollars to the deficit. if you go back, i happened to recently be reading ronald reagan's own autobiography and in there he says, he is identifying with somebody who tried to cut government, and in a very confessional way he says, one of my biggest disappointments as president i was not able to do this and he says i let down the people on this issue. so if ronald reagan couldn't cut
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spending, who is going to do it now? >> able to cut the yearly increase but never able to cut into this huge thing. >> right. >> the cross currents in the republican party over just how deeply they want to cut, which programs. are they going after entitlements, are they going to repeal health care? how does the president navigate this? the budget is the big fight of 2011. >> i think part of what he does is take a listen from bill clinton. let them play their own hand for a while and stand back from it and see what happens within their party. there's going to be more pressure coming from the ground up in the republican party than we can now fully anticipate in these tea party members coming in. when they come to increase the debt limit in june or down the pike a little ways, or shut down the government, the tea party people who come in on this wave of populism within the republican party are going to push back very hard. peggy was a close witness to this but i was reading as well some of the reagan years and people forget this, in 1982 he raised taxes after cutting them the year before.
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but they have wonderful language. they call the tax cut -- the tax increase not an increase. they called it revenue enhancement. >> those were the days. >> president reagan also said and only reagan could have gotten away with this, he said when he signed a bill and addressed the country about what he was doing he said this is really an extension of what we did a year ago when they cut taxes. to increase taxes was an extension of that and somehow they were able to market that. >> go ahead. >> they'll have to raise taxes at some point here or you don't address the deficit problem and again if you go to reagan, the deal he made with tip o'neill they doubled the payroll tax which is the most regressive tax in our system. >> peggy, how do republicans manage here? john boehner is the speaker of the house, a familiar figure in the republicans. mitch mcconnell on the senate side boasted about making the democrats sweat tactically as we get into the new year. what is this dynamic going to be like?
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>> well, it's interesting. they've been -- the republican party has been winning big, consequential, serious elections throughout '09 and '10. they just won the house, 66 seats. so it is very significant but they all know the problem is entitlement spending and if you are going to look at where the money is spent you have to decide how exactly do we go with this and how do we go at it not only among the available remedies on spending, how do we take any one of those remedies without the presidency? it will be highly unusual for a party not holding the presidency, only holding the house, to make huge changes here and yet they have to move forward in a serious way or the people who elected them will be very angry with them. >> bob woodward another huge challenge is wart in afghanistan.
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2011 is the year troops will start to come out. the vice president was on the program last week and i pressed him on this. this is what he said about the end game. the recent lisbon conference, nato conference where we said we're starting this process just like we did in iraq. we're starting it in july of 2011. we're going to be totally out of there come hell or water by 2014. >> "the wall street journal" took this on in an editorial saying this was a mistake and this is what they wrote in part. mr. biden's glib rhetoric implying a lack of american staying power will in particular make it that much harder for general petraeus to get the support of pakistan's military in rooting out taliban sanctuaries in north waziristan and around quetta over the border from afghanistan in the tribal areas. the remarks also undermine months of administration effort to downplay its original mistake of setting a july, 2011 dead line for beginning to withdraw u.s. forces.
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the u.s. and its allies went out of their way to extend the date when afghan forces will take full responsibility for security in their country but even full responsibility does not mean the afghans won't need some foreign military help. does your head spin? >> yes, it does. what they've told us is the beginning of the end of the war is july of next year and the end of the war is 2014. what they haven't told us is how they're going to do it and how it will work. and there is still this disconnect between obama and his white house and the military about where this is going and, you know, if you take that report that they've issued after studying this, you know, really for months they said, well, we've made progress but it's fragile and reversible. now, if you've got ratings and you're making progress but it's fragile and reversible, you're smiling, what does that mean? that means you're in never never land.
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that means we don't know. >> can the president make the case we are still fighting an existential threat in afghanistan? does he have to do that to maintain support? >> one of the things that hasn't happened yet because he obviously hasn't made the case strong enough 6 of 10 people don't think this is a war worth fighting. in a democracy you cannot bring soldiers into harm's way unless you convince the people this is a war we should be fighting and the threat of al qaeda still remains the strongest question. if we can prevent and dismantle and disable them from getting back at us, then that's worth doing. but somehow that hasn't penetrated the country and that's a failure of leadership until that happens. >> it is amazing to me that we are, what, nine years into these wars? oh, my goodness. and we are not talking about it every day. on the streets and in the cafe and over coffee, it is amazing. it's just accepted as a fact that one doesn't comment on. >> that's because less than 1% of the country is fighting the war.
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>> 99% of the country, nothing is asked of us. >> we getter get our rotc back to harvard. >> i don't think that will make the difference with all due respect because they have a choice of whether or not they want to join rotc. they don't have to. >> of course. >> it's working class families primarily coming from smaller towns in america. >> it always is. >> they come from the military tradition of joining. it's an obligation of all of us as well as the political leadership of this country to make sure it's on the table not just in forums like this on a regular basis. also i think we're looking at this in old terms. we're looking at where is the victory in afghanistan? afghanistan has had 2,000 years of foreign invaders who have crawled out of there without a victory in conventional terms and it goes beyond the borders of afghanistan. we're talking about islamic rage. i've been in waziristan and in the north and these are two of the most hostile areas i have
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ever seen anywhere in the world and as some of you know i've been on a lot of battle fronts. >> and the problem hasn't been defined with specificity that's necessary. the problem is in these secret meetings last year obama said the poison is in pakistan. the problem is in pakistan. the sanctuaries are there. and he decided secretly, okay. these sanctuaries are unacceptable now. >> let me get another break in here. we'll have a couple minutes left on the other side of this break and at least broach the topic already under way which is who are the republicans going to nominate to challenge president obama? some final thoughts from our round table right after this. cadillac cts with a direct injection v6. it's the one gift you can open up all year long. see your cadillac dealer for this attractive offer. backed by the peace of mind that only comes from cadillac premium care maintenance. the season's best sales event. from cadillac.
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to give our war fighters every advantage. ♪ [ man ] to deliver technologies that anticipate the future, today. ♪ and help protect america, everywhere. from the battle space to cyberspace. [ female announcer ] around the globe, the people of boeing are working together. to give our best, for america's best. that's why we're here. ♪ we are back with more from our round table. final moments. tom brokaw, at this stage of the 2008 cycle we were getting ready for the new year and some new announcements as to who was going to run for president. >> right. >> so what are republicans going to do? >> well, you know, who knows at this point, david? you've heard me say this a
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thousand times over the ufo theory always holds. the unforeseen will occur. we don't know who they are at this point. the tea party was just a faint line on the political horizon in this country. and then suddenly it was this very powerful force. there are obviously a lot of republicans in the senate and in the state houses around the country who see themselves in the oval office. i mean, tim pawlenty is running hard in minnesota, sarah palin obviously more than flirting with the idea now. haley barbour probably has banged himself up again with his comments about white citizens council to say nothing of people in the united states senate and mitt romney the former governor of massachusetts. there is a lot of moving around going on out there. >> what kind of candidate, peggy noonan, do you need to run as republican to take on obama? what is the theory of the case at this stage? >> a big thing is how the tectonic plates keep moving in
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american politics. harrison salisbury once said, a lifetime in journalism, he was asked what did you learn? he said, expect the unexpected. if we've learned anything from the past decade it's that anybody can arise from anywhere and become a leader. gosh, what do the republicans need to beat obama? a credible alternative, a serious man or woman, someone with experience and some weight and heft who can get through iowa and south carolina. >> and so not sarah palin you're saying. is that right? >> thank you, bob, so much. >> yes. >> for clarifying that. >> yes. >> i got to tell you i'm one of those who thinks palin will not run and i happen to think if she runs it will not work. her people love her, support her, watch her on tv, read her books, love to cheer her. they especially love to defend her when people like us criticize her. they will not -- i'm telling you they will not vote for her. >> she can be a factor without running. >> they won't vote for her for president. what i think she'll do is sit back, she is a realist.
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she'll know she isn't going to win, this isn't going to work, so she will sacrifice herself and support somebody else so there will be a palin primary. >> against whom is the president vulnerable, doris? >> i think somebody like a chris christi. >> governor of new jersey who proclaimed on this program he is not running, no way. >> but that kind of person. the kind of person who speaks straight, who has a fire in his belly, who you believe him even if you don't agree with him. that kind of person i think. >> who seems to not be a politician. >> who seems to mean it. >> what are the conditions going to be? >> exactly. >> are we going to have another terrorist attack or does the country remain secure? suddenly we catch fire in the economy in some fashion for example. something happens catastrophically in the middle east that the president deals with either in an utter failure or brilliantly. all of those are the unknowns against which we have to measure
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what the chances are and we still have a long way to go for that, david. >> does the president make a fundamental shift, tom, in this next year in his leadership style and in his tonal approach to the american people that gives him a lift? >> he better. that's what i think. >> i remember years ago talking to obama when he was in the senate and we were talking about illinois and he went around the state saying i have support here. i have support there. i don't have support here. i walked away realizing, oh, he's a politician. he knows where the votes are and he's a realist. the question is going to be, can he grow and adapt to whatever those circumstances are. >> here's what i think about president obama. we'll see whether this painful loss in november and then the recovery we're seeing in the short term in terms of his political fortunes convert him in some fashion to a new kind of person.
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i always said that bill clinton's career was helped immeasurably by his defeat when he first ran for re-election as governor of arkansas. he learned a lot from that. he had a deal with a lot of people in arkansas that were in the business community and he also learned that he was vulnerable. by the time he got here, he had been through that kind of an ordeal. ronald reagan had been governor of california for two terms before he got here. he had been used to running a big state and dealing with the democrats. president obama had not been through that kind of baptism by fire and i hope now that he's beginning to listen to some of the business leaders who have been rapping on his door for the last year saying, we were for you. we have some things that we think you ought to hear and whether or not he is going to be receptive to them now about how to change the economy. >> i'll make that the last word. we will leave it there. thank you all very much. happy new year and happy new year to all of you at home. we'll be back next week if it's
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