it was difficult to persuade president bush in america actually.end to regard these issues as somewhat separate. now, in mitigation of that, we did eventually other later than i want to get the roadmap adopted and the roadmap was extremely important. and secondly however, and again i know more about this now than i probably would've know them because of the work i do now. i think truthfully with the intifada still raging in palestine it would've been pretty difficult to have got this thing back together again. however, having said that i was very frustrated about it because they believed then and i believe now that when these are not divisible problems, is one problem with different facets. and one major facet of the whole problem is this israel palestine conflict not because evidently the existence of israel has provoked this conflict. i totally disagree with people who say that that the resolution of the conflict would have been enormously beneficial impact on relations with the muslim world. >> i think, if i recall rightly, you were arguing very

he has now adopted many of those that bush adopted in the second term. >> right. by the time president bush left office he had already shaved off some of the most, you know, extremely radical parts of the first-term counterterrorism policy. president obama kept a lot of it. he didn't give up the right to have renditions. he still has people being detained without trial. >> schieffer: it's a fascinating piece. i highly recommend it. we're out of time. we'll be back in a moment. employees everywhere are sending out an sos.

bush, bush 41, defeated ronald reagan. it is difficult to push the party either direction, giving them the same party, the white house or three terms in a row. history was against senator mccain in this election cycle. the second thing was the party in power is held accountable for economic factors. we had the market collapse in october which was truly frightening. i was in the white house at that time. there was a concern weaver looking at the prospect of a genuine meltdown in the -- we were looking at the prospect of a genuine meltdown in the financial and housing markets. ben bernanke and hank paulson said to the president, looking at the prospect of an economy worse than the great depression, it took people to their core. it reinforced a change, and republican party suffered from that. let us also give credit to where credit is too. president obama was a phenomenal candidate, literally and figuratively. it was an historical run for the presidency. he blazed a lot of trails in terms of technology, voter contact, so he d

bush begins his second term.ope john paul ii, the world' pope dies and 17 days later german cardinal rahsinger elected to the papacy and taking the name the 16th. and michael jackson found not guilty. and suicide bombers underground. hurricane katrina hits new orleans and the gulf coast, elliss we've got to start with you on that one you're a louisiana native. your memories of the coverage of it. >> two categories, in the early days, marvelous, early print and television that did ensure even though the government responded so ineptly to it that eventually americans would need to respond to it. of course, we have a short attention span in the media coverage and years later gosh, i wish we could get people interested in it again. >> jon: jim. >> i agree the initial story was compelling and astonishing to people things could go this wrong and a story line that was all george w. bush's fault and satisfied them completely for the years after that. >> jon: 2006, the sago mine disaster in west virginia, 13 miners trappe

you talked about the test that faced president bush. this is a young presidency with a new chapter in the threat matrix from terror. >> i think there has to be a new paradigm. i think what we learned is you can't win the war against islamic rage wherever it exists just militarily or even with all of the technical capacity that we have around the world. we still have not gotten at the root of this islamic rage and how we're going to deal with that. there is that phrase that i'm not keen about called soft power but we have to have some new way of dealing with these units that can move as they do from pakistan to afghanistan to the arabian peninsula and visit great, great harm or the possibility of great harm on western nations. i think doris is right, i do think we need more help from our allies in the western world. we also should expect more from the islamic world, from the established states in the islamic world. we have to work harder to get at these people who have a crazed idea about how the world should exist. >> we do have an oppo

the budget results under the bush administration. the difference -- the difference between the anticipated path president clinton left this country on and what president bush actually did is this. it is a mind-boggling $8.9 trillion. for purposes of rounding, i will call teds it $9 trillion. and that's a conservative figure that does not include the likely costs of servicing that debt over the years -- you have to pay interest and not just pay back your borrowing -- and it also does not include the spending that president obama had to do -- had to do -- to offset fiscal disaster because of the financial meltdown that he inherited. that spending by president obama wasn't anything president obama wanted to do. it wasn't anything he campaigned on. it wasn't on his agenda. it was an emergency measure necessary to clean up the economic wreckage left by the bush administration. mr. president, look at one particular contrast. our current majority leader, harry reid, has worked to craft a health care reform bill that would not only achieve n

of the bush/cheney syndrome during the 2004 presidential campaign. is noteworthy about all the books that i've written is that they've had a much longer shelf life than the years in which they were published. just this past week i posted a whole new batch of the same kinds of hate mail that i called attention to in "unhinged." it's never ending and certainly a bottomless source of fodder for an author and a writer. >> host: as we were discussing right before the show, your children could not read this book because of some of the e-mails that you have printed. [laughter] are these e-mails you received? >> guest: yes, yes. and what is striking, and i made note of this in that book and have since made note of it, you know, as i talk about the response that i provoke as a writer, as a public, very public conservative is that so many people are willing to sign their actual names to these missives and to these ad homonym attacks. i've talked about this, you know, on the book tour trail and certainly on college the book tour when trail and certainly college

bush, bush 41, defeated ronald reagan.it is difficult to push the party either direction, giving them the same party, the white house or three terms in a row. history was against senator mccain in this election cycle. the second thing was the party in power is held accountable for economic factors. we had the market collapse in october which was truly frightening. i was in the white house at that time. there was a concern weaver looking at the prospect of a genuine meltdown in the -- we were looking at the prospect of a genuine meltdown in the financial and housing markets. ben bernanke and hank paulson said to the president, looking at the prospect of an economy worse than the great depression, it took people to their core. it reinforced a change, and republican party suffered from that. let us also give credit to where credit is too. president obama was a phenomenal candidate, literally and figuratively. it was an historical run for the presidency. he blazed a lot of trails in terms of technology, voter contact, so he de

obama blames bush, cheney seems to blame a lot of people.ly president obama. you heard john brennan lash out against the former vice president for his criticism and he's worked for both administrations. >> i think you pointed that out in the question that there is a sort of lack of fit between what republicans said when they were in power and what they said when they are out of power. but we are a free country. politics is always going to be a factor and that's something that i wouldn't want to get rid of even though some can be damaging and some is dishonest. i think the initial administration response was an effort to be calm and reassuring. some people viewed that as complacency. as tom pointed out they quickly corrected that and then turned it into urgency. i think the biggest favor that was done to president obama was dick cheney coming out and politicizing this the way he did. he is the gift that keeps on giving to democrats. you saw democrats critical of president obama on health care or afghanistan, suddenly they rallied to him. by t

a fire that said "this bush is brown, brown is bush," i said that there was nothing here but a anti-bush referendum, and that we would vote for martha coakley because we were anti-bush. guest: talking about candidates in the past is difficult. there was an effort to tie mr. brown to bush, cheney, etc., but now we are removed from that. host: amy walter, there was a lot in that call -- the woman was an independent, african- american, one from president bush to president obama to scott brown. guest: i think the point about bush was very important. this is the debate within the democratic party right now, which is do we spend a whole lot of time talking about the fact that it was the bush white house and republican congress that took us to the place where we are today and to focus on that, or do we go beyond that and say, all right, we were dealt a really bad hand and here is how we are going to fix it. voters clearly are not interested in the past. we thought originally -- and i admit that i did, too -- in a place like massachusetts, tying a republican to bush could work. it may not work i

the clinton-bush haiti fund. i went to thank both of you for returning to service and leading this urgent mission. this is a model that works. after the terrible tsunami in asia president bush turned to president clinton to lead a similar fund. that effort raced resources for the victims of that disaster -- that effort raised resources that helped rebuild communities. that is exactly what the people of haiti need right now. every day that goes by we learn more about the scope of this catastrophe any. the suffering that defies comprehension, families sleeping in the streets, injured and desperate for care. many thousands feared dead. that is why thousands of american personnel are on the scene working to distribute clean drinking water and food and medicine, and tons of emergency food supplies are arriving every day. it will be difficult, it is an enormous challenge to distribute this ate quickly and safely in a place that has suffered such destruction. -- distribute this aid quickly. we are working with many orga

bush in fighting that war. today president obama is being hampered as he tries to fight al-qaeda and the taliban. i guess what goes around comes around. since i have been critical of president obama's anti--terrorist strategy, i thought about his appeal yesterday and i thought about it hard. i understand it, but come on, trying khalid sheik and the underwear guy in our courts is not good. we need coerced interrogation to fight terror. talk being a plea bargain for this nigerian lo o n is insane? that being said, i don't want president obama to fail in dismantling al-qaeda and the taliban. i want him to succeed! i'm not trying to undermine the president. but if mr. obama could explain to me how a $100 million civilian trial in new york city for khalid shaikh mohammed is better than an inexpensive and efficient military trial, i'm willing to listen. same thing with a plea bargain for the nigerian loon. but no one, no one has been able to put forth anything other than ideological arguments to support the trial dea

they had a higher view of american policy for george bush than they did of america february 2009. of course, palestinians are still recovering from 2008 / 2009 that left palestinians and israelis dead creek and that even the election could call the rage with the devastation of that conflict and words could not be enough. obama gave his cairo audience something of a mixed message. he started by reaffirming america to its alliance with israel. he said unbreakable bond but the reflection on the plight of the palestinians went further then any american president had said let there be no doubt he assured his audience this situation for the people it is intolerable. the occupation that comes and the acknowledged that the suffering of refugees who for more than 60 years haven't heard pain and dislocation and reaffirmed his said ministrations commitment to a two-state solution where israelis and palestinians each live in insecurity that is in israel's interest and palestine interest and the world's interest. two achieve this settlement he called on the palestinians to abandon the path of

why did bush allow malan to get out of bora bora?hy do you investigate cheney when he had halliburton dealing with iran. >> host: what do you think the answer is why to those questions is? >> caller: because she doesn't investigate nobody come her, hannity. nobody seems to back up -- holding hands with the king of saudi arabia. at the 19th they hit our towers, nobody brings that up. but when obama bows down to the president of japan, there's a big to do about it. i just think that the conservative mindset is only looking out against the liberal mind, that doesn't see any negativity in the conservative actions. >> host: got the point. thanks. >> guest: if he had listened over the last hour and half, he would have heard me criticizing the bush administration state department for creating these express program. he would have heard me criticizing the bush administration for reopening up a student pilot visa program for saudi's. and actually, if he would go to my website and search for bush, saudi, you will see many, many posts over the y

and george bush said senior, the smarter one, -- george bush said in, well, we have now buried the vietnam syndrome. in the sands of the arabian peninsula. a rare politics demint out of the white house. [laughter] did well, the practice we have not. the vietnam syndrome. in vietnam is coming back to haunt us and people are thinking about that more and more every day and people who remembered the and on, they would remember how the calls for withdrawal that came early on. i must say in 1967 to years after we were escalating the war in 1967i wrote a book, i looked -- i love to advertise my books -- i will try to resist kids later on. but i can't resist this -- i wrote a book called bignami, the logic of withdrawal. mine was the first book that called simply for the united states to get out. .. >> we can't do that, there will be chaos. there will be chaos? in vietnam? there was chaos in vietnam. we were bombing vietnam into eternity. were destroyed vietnamese villages. we were destroying their lead. we were killing their people. ultimately, 2 million people died and it noncom and we mustn't l

, george bush sr. said well, we have now buried the vietnam syndrome in this sands of the arabian peninsula. where poetic statement out of the white house. [laughter] but, the fact is we have not buried the vietnam war govea thumb is coming back to haunt us and people are thinking about that more and more everyday. if people remembered vietnam they would remember how the calls for withdrawal that came early on, i must say in 1967, two years after we were escalating the war. in 1967 i wrote a book, i love to advertise my books-- i will try to resist it later on, but i can't resist this one. in 1967 i wrote a book called vietnam, the logic of withdrawal and i must say the first book, there have been a number of books on the war in vietnam and mine was the first book that called simply for the united states to get out, not equivocating, not setting timetables, not saying we will get out if and when, we are not going to go to paris to negotiate for five years and six years. leagis tett to get out. and the

in other words it's not just about obama versus bush. there is an independent judicial tradition taking place which the supreme court tried to establish. >> monica? >> the supreme court also ruled that enemy combatants held by the united states could be held indefinitely without due process. >> they did. >> for the length of the war. >> but the key thing, martin is, look, we get these fellas. what do you want out of this fella when you got this? immediate information and intelligence. no water boarding. >> you got that. [ all talking at once ] >> you are violating his miranda rights when you do that. >> did you hear the list that i just read some. >> yes, i did. >> are you persuaded that obama -- >> i agree with some of the things obama did. water boarding -- >> you think that adds up to a negative opinion by obama? >> i think it's a mitched bag. >> a suspect opinion by obama of the intelligence community? >> i think it's a mixed bag, john, and i think obama is being forced -- >> do you know of any president until you go back to the '80s

the clinton-bush haiti fund. i went to thank both of you for returning to service and leading this urgent mission. this is a model that works. after the terrible tsunami in asia president bush turned to president clinton to lead a similar fund. that effort raced resources for the victims of that disaster -- that effort raised resources that helped rebuild communities. that is exactly what the people of haiti need right now. every day that goes by we learn more about the scope of this catastrophe any. the suffering that defies comprehension, families sleeping in the streets, injured and desperate for care. many thousands feared dead. that is why thousands of american personnel are on the scene working to distribute clean drinking water and food and medicine, and tons of emergency food supplies are arriving every day. it will be difficult, it is an enormous challenge to distribute this ate quickly and safely in a place that has suffered such destruction. -- distribute this aid quickly. we are working with many orga

bush and chief of staff to laura bush. in washington. dan at the white house.aura schwartz in chicago served as director of events in the white house social office in the clinton administration. want to get us up to date on the new crash story? >> reporter: well, yeah. we got the statement from the secret service this morning. they were pointing out that now a third individual did manage to make the way into the white house here to that state dinner in november. this person according to the secret service went to a local hotel where the indian delegation was meeting and then hopped in a vehicle there and came into the white house. now the secret service says that they did go through -- that individual did go through a security screening and they don't believe at any time that individual got into the receiving line or had a chance to meet the president or the first lady. it's under investigation and clearly another embarrassing situation for this white house which we're talking about security issues, national security, and now a third individual managed to get i

i don't think they did it in the bush administration. i don't think they're doing it in this administration either. >> larry: tanya, the president has talked about builtability at all levels. how is he doing? >> i think congressman paul raised a number of very, very good points. when we're talking about this war on terror, we have to be more precise about what it is we're doing. yemen is different from iraq, which is a very different place from afghanistan. until we get our handle on some of these internal problems and why these situations are so combustible, we're going to declare war on a tactic without any resolution. i think in terms of what you're seeing on the presidential approach in yemen, we can't simply drop bombs and launch missile strikes. we have to look at some of the situations on the ground. it's a civil war. we need to give the president of yemen some cover. >> larry: andz ya andrea, do we do enough here of cause and effect? >> i want to go back to what ron paul and tanya said. to say we need to take time to get a better

bush again, many momentous events. just to mention one because time is running, i led the fight for embryonic stem cell research, the specter-harkin bill to use federal funds to use stem cells which had enormous potential for curing the maladies of the world. a veritable fountain of youth by injecting stem cells into diseased cells. president bush vetoed the specter-harkin bill, vetoed it twice, but now with president obama, there has been an executive order and senator harkin and i are continuing to push for legislation because legislation has more pharmacy than an executive order. an executive order can be changed by the next president. and then the obama administration -- administration of president obama. got to know senator barack obama, had his office down the corridor from mine on the seventh floor of the hart senate office building. and when he came forward with his proposal for a stimulus and i took a look at what was happening on the economy, i was concerned that we would slip back into a 1929 depression if w

bush administration. because we never sought a pierre kramer administration where they follow the doctrines to 80. it wasn't a john bolten india the administration who was, who hated the u.s. but it was harry ambassador picket they were theory clear both the academic neocons and those in power and those who follow the kramer doctrine hoover not neocons. they believe in it and they used the words over and over again, so it is because there is a whole new setting that we open a whole new panorama for you to view the last 40 years of foreign policy, the demise of the knicks the administration, the rise of obama and i caution you, we are in the 41st year in the war. it does not end with the book title. it is going on. cini is articulating those positions and it is important to understand that cheney has an ideology. if you listen to people on television, some of these cable people, they attack him for being a republican while the job. he has an ideology that he firmly believes in and firmly believes obama is

president bush in the speech to the u.n. general assembly on the 12th of september said should iraq require the material which is the basic point about somebody somebody giving you. it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year. >> yup. now that obviously begs all of the important questions about the material. so did you see that as a problem of reconciliation between a rather relaxed timetable suggested by the jic and it's incredibly urgent timetable to be mentioned by the president. >> when i saw the -- the latest guardian conspiracy theory yesterday about the issue. and i had knowledge of any discussion about britain and america. as far as what i recall, the dossier and timelines was because one of the drafts i genuinely did not understand what they were saying. because they appeared to be suggesting that saddam hussein could get a weapon more quickly with sanctions in place than with sanctions removed. what they were not making clear was the question of legality. when the issue was raised, the council qc took

it was the bush administration that set up this terror watch system.nd several of the guantanamo detainees, as you pointed out, who ended up in yemen were released under president bush. don't republicans have plenty to answer for? >> i think the bush administration really needs to answer for releasing the detainees to saudi arabia and other places. and we've seen that is a mistake. and i know, i'm sure they would admit that's a mistake. but to continue to make the same mistake would be a tragedy. i really think that failing to recognize that we are under attack, the al-qaeda and its related activities, related allies have declares war on us. they're coming after us. this is not a case for a series of criminal trials. we tried that in the '90s after the first attack on the world trade center, the embassy bombing, the cole attack. this is war. and it's time that we reacted to the war attacks that are coming at us. >> chris: senator, thank you. >> thank you. >> chris: thank you always for coming in and bringing us up to speed. >> thank you, sir. >> chris:

cheney said president obama reversal of the bush administration policies on guantanamo bay and terroruspect interrogations made the u.s. more vulnerable to attack. it was the first of several public statements and comments cheney made last year, critical of the new administration. charles, was dick cheney really the point man for criticism when it came to the republican side? >> he was. and i think it was remarkable how successful he was. given the history and how the media and others have treated him. he actually -- there was a dueling speeches. the cheney speech and then obama spoke within a few hours of each other and cheney was the winner on that. i think the effect he had was that "a," he legitimized criticism of what obama was doing, which i think was rather lax. but secondly, i think it actually inhibited obama. he's kept some of the policies that the bush administration had in place, detention without trial rendition, he's tried to do the guantanamo, which he committed himself to the most egregious thing he did of course was the putting of sheikh mohammed, giving him a trial i

trade representative under bush. easy to tag him, bring back george bush.epresentative r - well that scares democrats but not scary to independent voters or squishy republicans because now the focus is on president obama and i think they'll try to mike it about george bush. with each day of the calendar it gets harder. while there's still animosity among democrats independents are much more about mood if they were strong ideology they would be republicans or democrats but they're independent so the mood right now is for change. . guest: we have a long way to go. but it is certainly a heavily, heavily democratic district, and the odds are it will go back to democrats. host: fresno, california, independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. happy new year. i guess i am a squishy and moody and not sure and fringe because i'm an independent. guest: i did not say that the voters were fringe, but the candidates were. host: senator feinstein -- caller: senator feinstein is going to lose. host: senator boxer is up for reelection this year, but senator feinst

shortly after president bush's election.nd that discussion was happening with other leaders as well. clearly with the french, to the extent which the containment policy were not working. i think there was a sense it wasn't sustainable for the long-term. and i go back again to the point about what the jrc report, this threat, i think that had changed the nature of that argument. but all of these different options he would have been aware of them, he had been getting advice on them, thinking about them all the time. >> there were times when perhaps even in a slightly formal way with cam and ministers and cds and other experts on the region, the finest would have sat down and said, here is the problem of iraq. what are the possible ways, possible strategies for dealing with it, and what's the downside of this, that any other as well as the outside? those discussions did take place. and the prime minister therefore was fully aware of the risks of going for a policy that might eventually lead to military action. >> and i would sa

bush which opened up the camp to law lawyers and for a minimal amount of scrutiny bush administration officials had claimed all the detainees in guantanamo were a sort of menically diabolical lot. not only were they trained killers they had a super ability to gnaw through at wires of c17 transport plane. i was naturally distrustful of this claims but this first image obviously did not advance my skepticism. another military guard carried out what appeared to be his somber duty instructing me to push away from the table in case the man lunged for my throat. leaving the guard booth we walked toward the structure in camp echo that housed the detainees cells mindful to stay within the gravel walking lanes manicured by the lowest level military personnel. a young soldier who had been preparing my client. he says he doesn't want a translator. i exchange concerned looks with be-linda the german translator i brought all the way to translate our interviews. you're sure talking about him, i ask? he doesn't speak english. the guard replied, no he speaks it good enough and he's pretty adamant he

bush administration. i -- just for example, i'm incredulous, but so many republicans are complaining about the cost of the health care measure that is being considered, that at least is being paid for in one way or another. whereas they put forward a proposal to expand drug benefits for people on meds -- meds care and didn't pay for it at all. it has cost like a trillion dollars over the next ten years, the medicare drug benefit law, which is about the cost of the health benefit. so these people have no credibility whatsoever. >> host: your book is about the failure of supply-side economics, it starts with a look back at fdr. why did you start there? >> guest: my basic idea was that it observed that supply-side economics had gone through a cycle where there was a real problem that the existing orthodoxy couldn't handle. the new philosophy came into existence, was implement, appeared to be successful and it was applied in every circumstance whether it was successful or not. so it was cycle of success and f

and the second george bush it kroez agarose ag government -- >> you got it, he grew government, hold on, hold on -- >> it different pay -- >> increased when tax rates were cut under reagan and revenues, amount of money that came in, increased -- >> but david. >> hold on, victoria. go ahead, vickie. >> go ahead, vickie. >> increases in capital gains tax typically lead to lower revenues of capital gains. so you don't see the increase that you want because that -- those investment dollars go elsewhere. so these tax hikes -- >> but vick it increases at the level george bush was okay with, in 2001. >> quentin you complain about other people overtalk and you do it all the time. >> there we go, quiet. go ahead. >> and we take -- back to the '90s level and that was the decade of capital gains and the decade we had, nothing and capital gains and your s&p 500 index, nothing. so the '90s was higher capital gains, taxes had higher capital gains. >> goodness, we writing of history, soviet style and under clinton, thanks to a republican congress we cut the capital gains levy from 28 to 20% and boo

you have sued president bush, he asked?s, you and i have sued him and i will do everything i can to help you, i answered. to my considerable relief he said with a heavy germany accident, this is good. on the second day of my visit, i brought him mcdonald's coffee and a half dozen of packets of sugar to satisfy what i know about the turkish coffee culture as well as an apple pie which he ate for nostalgia for his mother's version. on subsequent visits i became more adventurous what i would bring on our next visits. jolly ranchers, cookies, canned fruit, dried foot, melting mcflurries and even a package of shrimp cocktail. i was shopping for a starving man. i also brought him starbucks but to my surprise he preferred mcdonalds coffee. it's an interesting bit of consumer's trivia an absurdly dark one really when one considers that just about a mile from the strip mall housing those and other fronts of innocent americana there existed a camp housing of fully constructed project of dehumanization. he asked me about my family, to

100 of president bush's nominees.about the same number that in twice that amount of time republicans chairing the committee confirmed. only 12 of president obama's judicial nominations in the federal circuit judicial court were con firmed all of last year. during president bush's tumultuous first year, we -- we confirmed 28 judges. i might point out the democrats were in control only six months of that year. we still put through 28 of george bush's nominees. as i said, during the 17 months i chaired that committee, we put through 100 of his nominees. the republicans have refused to agree to the consideration of qualified, noncontroversial nominees for weeks and months. last december, only three of the available 13 judicial nominations on the senate executive calendar were considered. by contrast, in december, 2001, the first year of president bush's administration, senate democrats proceeded to confirm ten of his judicial nominations. none of the judicial nominations currently pending on the executive calendar are con

bush?ame in to office with the notion that the whole, the major exessential threat to united states was the terrorism attack in the country. there was a profound emphasis on al-qaeda and terrorism up until i think the decision to go into iraq and then the operations in iraq consumed all of the energy. the situation in yemen has deteriorated over the last several years, because of a concentration on iraq, a concentration on efforts that are tangential at best to al-qaeda. this president, i think, understands that the exocential threat are in afghanistan. >> chris: i don't want to relive the bush year. let's talk about what jon kyl talked about that stuck in people's craw. the decision to charge umar farouk abdulmutallab as criminal defendant inste of enemy combatant. yes, he did talk, but only for 30 hours. and the fact is according to a lot of interrogators 30 hours is not enough. why not? what is the -- let me ask it this way: what is the downside to continuing to treat him as an enemy com

>> i thought he almost shot bush. >> he almost shot bush where? >> trying to catch a turkey. >> trying catch a turkey he almost shot president bush. who is this? >> lionel richie. >> i thought it was lionel richie. you can laugh at them but who is dumber. the jersey shore cast or those who call the jersey shore cast dumb? they never said they were members of mensa. the only pompous jerks who ever tell you they are from mensa are from mensa. they are only proud of their abs. the fact they are honest about their shallowness puts them on an intellectual plain higher than gwyneth paltrow and another gwyneth paltrow combined. it is disgusting but we know it is disgusting. what is more dangerous is the crap that is disgusting but passes itself off as enlightening. i'm not just referring to "the view" but also the climate conference and any cnn special on race. why obsess over punks slaughtered in hair gel when you have nancy pelosi and harry reid with their hands on the wheel. in sum, lay off the dumb. there is more idiotcy in the situation room than in

bush. know. let's go to h.w. bush -- let's go to w. bush. the years can never be too big. but the interesting thing about his face is that, over time, i abbreviated him so fast that i can turn him out in six seconds. he has very strong flared nostrils, a set of parentheses, a civil like that, horizontal line, horizontal line, and a few lines like this. his chin as a w. then you have the strong growth like this. and you have tiny eyes, a tiny eyes. then the years. let's abbreviate the years a little bit like this and like this. then you have another parentheses here. then you have lines like this, which i called the perplex lloyoid. then you have george w. bush. what do you think? [applause] not bad. not bad. let's get on to president barack obama. it is interesting watching him over the course of time. he had a very young taut face when he first ran for office. the the combination of gravity and gravitas have worked its toll on his face the way it does. you look on the picture of any present, over four years, their faces age at an exponential rate. -- of any president, ove

the bush administration took him out.that is a great question because it focuses our attention a bit on alternative courses of history. in many respects as we look back on the decision to intervene in 2003, critics sometimes assume if we had not everything would have been just fine. well, everything was not just fine then. i was involved in the washington in much of that debate. i recall clearly in 2002 that we were looking at the saddam hussein regime that probably was the most evil government in the world since world war ii with the exception of the vietnamese regime -- looking at one that had defied more than any number of chapter 7 security council resolutions which call on the international committee to use all necessary means to fill their agenda, and was arguably therefore the most defined nation to the whole post-world war ii international order since the u.n. was created. the sanctions regime was in trouble. people were tired of it. we owe ourselves the intellectual honesty to consider what would have happened ha

bush.coming up at noon, the inauguration for newly elected virginia governor bob mcdonl. >> now, secretary of state hillary clinton briefing reportersxd yesterday on u.s. relief efforts in haiti. she is traveling to the country today. we'll hear more about her trip right now. this is about 25 minutes and we'll show you as much as we can before live coverage of president obama and former presidents clinton and bush. >> i want to take a moment first to thank the american people who have been extraordinarily generous in the amount of support that they have shown for the people of haiti during this devastating period. through a state department partnership with the red cross and m give, we have raised more than $10 million from more than 1 million donors through our haiti relief campaign. it has become the single largest mobile donation campaign ever. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the red cross for their activities on the ground in haiti. but the devastation is far greater than we could h

the people who were at the top when george bush and detainees were in office -- george bush and dickheney were in office. this is what the republicans have been talking about. no one has been killed by an outside a tttack from someone outside the united states since obama was in office. who will benefit from this attack? thank you. guest: the political point on this is something i tried to stay away from. it is not really what the central question is for me. the political implications of a terrorist attack is sort of irrelevant. host: let's talk about the difference in tone between president obama and president bush. it is something that your colleague, peter baker, writes about. president obama intentionally takes a different tone and reacts differently, even to the christmas day bomber. guest: that was a shift that was occurring in the bush administration, as well. if you look at the first homeland security security, tom ridge, and to look at michael chertoff, chertoff really shifted with the color alert system. basically, it did not happen under chertoff, except when there was the

year. >> after the bush administration came in, then the recession started.bush administration did not quote in here and recession, is that right? >> the national bureau of economic search date business cycle. they dated investing in march i think analysts would agree. >> and instead of a 10 year $5.5 trillion surplus, we ended up with, what, a 3.5% or deficit, additional debt for those just? >> yes. i don't have the numbers in hand but there was, as you know, and as the picture shows, there were significant deficits in this age. >> and not standing the fact the bush administration overspent the budget $9 trillion, can you present the next chart -- the jobs created under the bush administration were about the worst sense when? >> i don't have those facts, but it is i believe true that net job creation over the past decade has now been essentially zero. >> and that's the worst since the great depression, a.q. >> that very well may be, i'm not sure, congressman. >> we are always in a very challenging situation where we are trying to create jobs. what impact doe

one him and george bush sr. left office, it was ordered $5 trillion.on left a surplus -- it was $405 trillion. clinton left a surplus, and the deficit was $10.90 trillion when obama took over. where democrats get all the blame for the spending when it is actually republicans who created all this deficit? the democrats never seem to address that issue, and they continue to be demonized for the spending, and republicans used fiscal conservatives -- host: at some of this is playing out, what he is getting at, in the special elections in messages, about democrats' big spenders -- special election in massachusetts, about democrats being spenders and raising taxes. i am wondering if you could compare your debts from hillary clinton's campaign, the staffers -- your notes from hillary clinton's campaign, the staffers that she had, and reports this morning that hillary clinton's staff for new england is helping to run martha coakley's campaign. guest: mark would know more about this. we have been so busy with this book that i don't know the details of this spir