Real Time Thoughts on Meet the Press (November 21, 2010)
Its Sunday; so its Meet the Press. Today’s broadcast of Meet the Press with David Gregory features the showdown between the Obama Administration and the GOP (principally, Senator Jon Kyl) on the New Start Treaty Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is here. So is Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal.
Hillary Clinton is defending President Obama’s moves to ratify New Start in the Senate in the lameduck session. She has been tasked to shepherd ratification of the Treaty, with 67 votes in the Senate. She is saying that not only the administration but even NATO states are defending the Treaty. At issue: verifying the Russian nuclear arsenal at the cost of fixing up the U.S nuclear armaments–even though the Obama admininstration has bowed over to satisfy GOP needs.
Clinton is saying that Obama did not agree to a trade deal with Korea because the deal wasn’t in America’s interests. (Though there is much to say that Korea did not bow to American moves.)
Clinton is saying that the new 2014 deadline is consistent with the adminstration’s promises to drawdown in Afghanistan starting in 2011. The drawdown WILL begin she says. The conditions based argument of drawdown applies to 2014. Security lead for the fight in 2014 will move to Afghans, but training etc, will be helped by American presence. (i.e the U.S. will have a large presence in Afghanistan for quite a while to come.)
On airport security. Terrorists are adaptable, so we need to secure our borders and need to strike the right balance between security and freedom. She is sure that the security officials working with the TSA will strike that balance. (This sounds to me like Mrs. Clinton doesn’t want to be at cross-currents with other members of the cabinet.)
Now she is talking about Ahmed Gilani. The terror suspect was acquitted for every charge but one. He will spend his adult life in prison. Mrs. Clinton is civlian courts have a better track record of convictions than military commissions. Therefore we should have these arguing that given teh move to a military commissions, military justice, the civilian courts reached a decision that would have been reached in military commission, since the rules of evidence would have been the similar.
What about election day? She won’t answer. She is out of politics, she says, so she will refrain from answering.
Bobby Jindal is here. He has written a book about the Gulf Oil Spill. It argues about the proper scope of federal government reach.
On airport pat-downs: Profiling is a better option that patdowns. Use intelligence, use past information, etc. (This sounds like something that members of the GOP can argue now that they are out of power in the executive office.)
JIndal thinks that we should not worry about the argument that people’s grievances affect their choices to engage in terrorism. We need to get over that idea, he thinks. Root out the terrorists and kill them.
Okay, but what about the Nigerian would be bomber? Shehzad? The adminstrations moves to take their information under Miranda helped route terrorist cells in Pakistan. How can this be a soft policy here?
David Gregory: You say Obama got lucky that no one of those attacks succeeded-how does Obama get lucky, when President Bush might have been equally lucky? (Jindal just dodged the question by saying that he thinks Bush was off in his policy as well. Okay, speak more on this. But no!)
Jindal is saying that the Obama adminstration messed up with incompetent moves and did not help Louisiana against the Gulf Spill Crisis. Haley Barbour said that the government has done more right than wrong. Jindal is saying that the Obama adminstration did not lead and allowed red tape to get in the way of spill cleanup. (There is no way to dispute any of this sin
Jindal is not going to run for president in 2012. He is taking his time for the presidency. On Sarah Palin: she is a good messenger. (But he seems to not want to defend that position though. He seems to support governors as good candidates for the presidency. Could he be thinking about Haley Barbour here?)
Robert Draper, Paul Gigot, Newly-elected Congressman Allen West and Richard Wolff are here as the roundtable.
The right seems to think that the brou-haha on the holiday pat-downs in airports. The left is saying that lets just admit this is a risk averse president who is worried about national security in the midst of news reports that Al Qaeda is working to attack American interests and American soil.
How come the right is up at arms about Obama’s national security moves when a Republican president also chose draconian measures in support of national security.
The right is of course defending extending the Bush era tax cuts across the board. No one seems to want to talk about Obama’s move that the middle-class cuts be extended and that the wealthier bracket be extended down the road. (Interesting that there is now a multi-dimensional voting blocs, libertarians who are now going against deficit hawks.)
Paul Gigot is arguing that tax reform is a winning argument over tax cuts. He’s arguing that given GOP minority status, they can still obstruct, whereas Democratic members of the Senate need accomplishments. This implies that the Democrats will have to be less intransigent that the GOP in the House.
Sarah Palin: is she ready for the Oval Office? She is on a TLC reality show. But does she have the ability to become a person that Americans might think is ready to serve? Certainly she has the ability to draw middle class white voters. Though her problem is that she is not popular amongst independents.
Richard Wolff is surely right that though Sarah Palin is likeable she does not have the wider appeal to win the “median voter” in 2012. That may be the reason why Sarah Palin for House candidates was a winning proposition. But it failed in teh Senate. Why? Because she does not have the wherewithal to generate the kind of wider support that statewide races (like the Senate) and country wide races (as the presidential race) require.
The Tea Party is coming to town, Robert Draper is saying. Many of the incoming freshmen have claimed to want to blow up the appropriations process. Will they stick by that claim? Or will they become Congressmen per usual and spread around some of that money for their constituents?
Blackandwhiteandthings 