Obama's war. He didn't start it, but he's got to finish it. How do we go in strong enough to win but agree now we're going to leave?
A constant war. What's it like for this president, knowing he's destined to command two wars that will bleed well into the future? Can he lead a domestic fight to push our country forward with this daily news of soldiers dying?
And finally, two running for number two? Hillary's been more hawkish on the war, tougher on Pakistan, warmer to Israel. She's pushed back on running for New York governor in 2010. But what about VP in 2012?
Hi, I'm Chris Matthews. Welcome to the show.
Anne Kornblut covers the White House for The Washington Post, Joe Klein is a TIME magazine columnist, Andrea Mitchell's Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC News and David Ignatius is a Washington Post columnist.
First up, the president is poised to announce the number of new troops he's sending to Afghanistan and prepared to take fire from both his left and right flanks here at home. His decision has been months in the making, and the president told NBC News that he plans to make his announcement clear.
President BARACK OBAMA: (From November 18) I'm confident that at the end of this process I'm going to be able to present to the American people, in very clear terms, what exactly is at stake, what we intend to do, how we're going to succeed, how much it's going to cost, how long it's going to take.
MATTHEWS: OK, let's take the president's points one by one. First, what's at stake?
Joe, what will the president say?
Mr. JOE KLEIN (Time Columnist): Well, this is the toughest part of the world. And by the way, this is a really complicated argument for him to make. Al-Qaeda is there, and Pakistan is a very shaky country with upwards of 80 nuclear weapons. And our role there is to stabilize the region and make sure that there isn't an Islamist coup in Pakistan, and that the Taliban don't come back to have safe havens in Afghanistan.
MATTHEWS: Wow. So it's al-Qaeda and it's Pakistan's nukes.
David, you've been over there.
Mr. DAVID IGNATIUS (Columnist, The Washington Post): I think—I think—well, just—I just got back from trips to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. I think Joe's right in saying the stakes really are Pakistan. Pakistan is fighting a hot war now against its own Taliban insurgency. The United States walked away from the fight against the Taliban in the next country over, in Afghanistan, I think that could really create a vacuum...
Mr. KLEIN: Absolutely.
Mr. IGNATIUS: ...and create a big problem. The president knows it. The president has to say that to the country so people get it.
MATTHEWS: So, Andrea, he's said before—rather, George W. before, president for eight years, said if we don't fight them there, we'll fight them here. But now we have this nuclear thing on top of al-Qaeda.
ANDREA MITCHELL (Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News):
Exactly. Look, it's the domino theory. I mean, it's as old an argument as presidents have been making. He's got to make it an issue of national security for the United States. He has to explain what's at stake. And it can't be nation-building in Afghanistan. No one thinks that's ever going to be possible. He has to say this is critical for saving us from terrorism here
at home.
MATTHEWS: Anne, the problem is that we've had eight years of a Republican president saying that very argument, fight them there or fight them here. Has that gotten too old? Are the American people sort of ready to push back on that?
Ms. ANNE KORNBLUT (White House Correspondent, The Washington Post): Well, that's in one sense why you're going to hear him sort of lowering the stakes, saying it's not about saving Afghanistan, it's not about propping it up. It's about choosing our targets, it's about terrorism and hunting down the terrorists, not about saving the whole country. That's the kind of shift we're going to see, I think, from him in the next few weeks.
MATTHEWS: OK, the president also said he will tell us how we're going to get there, how we're going to get there in terms of strategy.
David, it's fascinating. Here's the president, he's going to have to tell the military, as he tells us, this is the strategy I want you to follow.
Mr. IGNATIUS: Well, he's lucky to have a retired Marine Corps general, Jim Jones, as his national security adviser. As I understand the way that this is going to be laid out, he's going to talk about we're going to clear this area of al-Qaeda and Taliban, we're going—we're going to try to hold it, we're going to build economic development and then we're going to transfer it. They've added a key fourth word, transfer to the Afghan government and the Afghan security institutions control here. And I think that's the heart. And so we're not going to be there forever, because we're going to transfer it so it's going to be their problem.
MATTHEWS: OK, we'll get to duration and the exit strategy.
Go ahead, Joe.
Mr. KLEIN: But he's got a problem there, because this past year the—what they call the fighting season in Afghanistan, we've really blown. There is real controversy within the US military about whether we should have sent the troops to Helmand province rather than Kandahar, which is the heart of the Taliban insurgency.
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. KLEIN: And now, you know, we're going to have to send the troops to Kandahar.
MATTHEWS: This president has made a real effort, as so many said here, to keep the confidence of the military. Having Jim Jones in there, keeping Gates as secretary of defense.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
MATTHEWS: A real effort to make sure there's no distance between him and the fighting forces over there. How's he do that at the same time he's basically saying, `OK, here's the strategy I want you guys to follow'?
MITCHELL: He's basically going to say, we're going to train them and we're—it's going to be a different composition of troops. They're trying to get away from what has saddled them since the leak of the McChrystal report, the numbers. It's not going to be the numbers game, it's going to be—we're going to play this smarter. We're going to send trainers. We're going to get the Afghan troops up. And a key thing here is watch what the Brits did in saying that they want more troops, they're going to send more troops. We're going to get more from the allies. That's why Richard Holbrooke has been going around Europe, trying to get NATO to finally step up to the plate. Because if we can say to the American people, we're going to get more allied troops in there, get more Afghan troops in there, we can de-emphasize what we're sending on our—of our own.
MATTHEWS: Joe, your thoughts on that, the whole way it's going to be sold in terms of the texture, how many people us, how many—and the real purpose here?
Mr. KLEIN: Well, there are two problems with what Andrea said, and that is that our allies are leaving as fast as they're coming. I think the Dutch and the Canadians, who played really important fighting roles there, are going to be leaving pretty soon, and some of the—some of our ally—other allies are like campus cops, they don't really fight.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
MITCHELL: Well, that's why they're trying to stop them—stop them from leaving there.
Mr. KLEIN: And...
MATTHEWS: Well, does that run—does that cause a problem, Anne, for the president's message? If the president's message is clear-cut, here's why we're there, this is how we're going to do it, all this intellectualism behind it, this rationalization, at the same time people are picking up the newspaper and it's saying the Dutch are leaving, the English aren't really stepping up to the plate?
Ms. KORNBLUT: Well, that's actually going to be the trickiest part of his sales job, I think, is saying that it's not going to be open-ended; that we, too, are going to have some kind of a deadline, but that we're going to go in there and do the job right. That's something that President Bush, of course, resisted, and he's going to have to reconcile.
MITCHELL: And the other tricky part is Karzai. Good cop, bad cop. First they say that Karzai is incompetent, he's corrupt, he's bad.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
MITCHELL: This is the rationale for the exit strategy. Then they have Hillary Clinton over there sort of cozying up to him...
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
MITCHELL: ...and saying, `Look, you can do this.'
MATTHEWS: OK. Next, the president said he will tell us how long it's going to take. This is the hottest question.
Andrea, again, duration, exit strategy. Colin Powell doctrine: How are we going to get out? Even as we go in, we have to explain that.
MITCHELL: Three to five years, we have to have an exit strategy. They're going to try to say that it can be done at least in five years and start drawing down. But this is the whole argument over the composition of troops, it's the training up of Afghan forces, And that is a very big stretch to make people believe that that's even possible.
MATTHEWS: Anne, this question of duration's very important to the left, if you will, in the Democratic Party. They don't even like being there. But they have to be told up front, this isn't another Vietnam. This is not going to go on forever. We've been there since '01, eight years already.
Ms. KORNBLUT: Well, and it's been too long already as far as they're concerned. It's been the first year of his presidency, which it wasn't supposed to be. So I think that's why we heard him say in interviews he's done over the last few weeks that he doesn't want to pass it off to the next president, it's going to end under his term.
Mr. KLEIN: This is...
Mr. IGNATIUS: The—I just was going to say, I think that in terms of duration, the biggest problem the White House has found in this long review of policy...
MATTHEWS: Right.
Mr. IGNATIUS: ...is that the—is that the expectations about how quickly you can grow the Afghan national army and police are unrealistic.
MITCHELL: Exactly.
Mr. IGNATIUS: The deeper they go with this, the more they see that what they've been getting from the military just doesn't add up. And that's the problem. I mean, yes, Andrea, they're talking about three to five years. But that's premised on numbers that get softer the closer you get. So I think, you know, the thing that worries people the most I think in the inner circle is that even with this somewhat scaled-back commitment they're going to announce, it's based on some numbers they're not for sure are right.
MITCHELL: But I'm just saying that...
Mr. KLEIN: OK, but that—that's the other thing. I think that the greatest sense of tension in this process between the White House and the military is that the military plans in five to 10-year increments and what the president and his people have wanted to hear is what is this going to look like a year from now? What are we going to know about the training process a year from now? What are we going to know about whether we're able to tamp down the Taliban in Kandahar a year from now?
MITCHELL: Midterm elections.
MATTHEWS: Well, can he get those metrics back? Can he get them to—can he dictate and say, `Tell me a year from now'?
Mr. KLEIN: Well, that—that's what—I think that that's the push and pull that's been going on.
Mr. IGNATIUS: You can't get it.
MATTHEWS: OK. Did they orchestrate this thing with Karzai a week ago where he said it'll be five years when they can defend themselves? Do you think we got him to do that so it'd look good for our departure?
Mr. IGNATIUS: We have been leaning on him to make clear that this is not open-ended, that, you know, there's a—there's a time limit. I understand that. But the problem is that—I mean, let me give you one number. We are assuming at present that we can recruit 32 percent of the available military-age males for the police or the army, and that's at a time when we don't control half the country. It's just not—you look at it and it sort of falls apart.
MATTHEWS: OK, that's good.
Finally, the president said he will say how much it's going to cost.
Anne, it's amazing. I've never heard of going to war but saying how much it's going to cost. It's like that old thing, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.
Ms. KORNBLUT: Well, the White House would say the opposite, is that we haven't asked until now, and that they have to finally start taking it into account. They've actually broken down the numbers to figure out how many per soldier it would be. It's, you know, $1/2 million a year to have them there. So at this point they're taking into account and they're measuring it against the other important priorities like health care, like the other domestic achievements they want to get done.
MATTHEWS: Andrea, isn't it odd we're talking about the cost of this war as we—we're already in it.
MITCHELL: No. I think you have to because of the economy, because of health care and all of the other competing demands. I think the problem that we've all been addressing here is you ask, well, how are they going to try to sell this? And those are the answers. But the problem is the credibility, what David and Joe and Anne are all pointing out, is that it doesn't meet the smell test; that they can either train up the Afghan troops, get the allied commitment and afford this.
MATTHEWS: The bottom line, we asked The Matthews Meter, 12 of our regulars, who will the president's decision please more, the left or the center? Unanimous, these are the powerful ones on the meter. Everybody says the center's going to like this a lot more than the left. I am absolutely sure of that.
Joe, the left is not going to like this. The center might.
Mr. KLEIN: Yeah, but it's not going to make all that much difference. I think that the left will give the president the leeway on this.
MATTHEWS: Really?
Mr. KLEIN: I do. I think he's going to have more problems from the right, from the people who get upset that he doesn't give Stanley McChrystal everything that he wants.
MATTHEWS: Andrea, do you think the left will buy this, the people that got him in office?
MITCHELL: I don't. I think that this is the president who won in Iowa partly because he was perceived as the anti-war. Hillary, remember, wouldn't apologize for voting for the war.
MATTHEWS: Right.
MITCHELL: And here he is about to sell another war six months after he laid
it out.
MATTHEWS: Even though...
Mr. KLEIN: He's also ending the war in Iraq.
MATTHEWS: But even though he said it was the good war.
Let's go back. Will this long deliberation—Anne Kornblut, you've got the tough question here to start with. Whip around here. It took three months to make this decision. Will he look smart and deliberative for having taken all this time, or will the dithering shot still being cast at him by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney, is that still going to hurt?
Ms. KORNBLUT: The gamble they're making is that he'll look smart and he'll look like the anti-Bush for having thought about it for so long.
Mr. KLEIN: The anti-Bush part is really important, because Bush really needed to do a strategy re-evaluation about Iraq six months in there and he never did.
MATTHEWS: Andrea, will it look good if he takes all this time?
MITCHELL: I agree, it will look good—it will look good if he takes this time—if taken his time, he comes out with something that adds up. If he doesn't, then people will say, `You took so long and what did you deliver?'
Mr. IGNATIUS: The long period of analysis, very deliberative, robs this of passion. This is—he was going to be a wartime president now, and he has to sell the country on the idea that our young men and women are going to go there, fight and get killed.
MITCHELL: Yes.
Mr. IGNATIUS: And, you know, I think this, you know, this is not going to...
MATTHEWS: So too much Chamberlain, not enough Churchill.
Mr. IGNATIUS: Well, too much—too much college professor.
MATTHEWS: Before we break, President Obama's taken flack for his wartime decision making; a little too much hand-wringing some critics say, not enough snap to it. But no such knocks on the way the commander in chief gives his salute. The editor of Smithsonian magazine, a former Marine himself, recently decreed that Obama's salute at Dover Air Force Base was impeccable in every way. He said it's spot on as a mastery of standards set by the armed services themselves.
Presidents have long taken salutes from the troops that attend them, but Ronald Reagan, the Hollywood movie star who made training films during his service in World War II, was the first to actually return those salutes. And boy, did he get it right. Check out the sweep of his arm there. And then there was George H.W. Bush, the World War II fighter pilot who kept up Reagan's tradition. Bush's salute, as you can see, was less dramatic than Reagan's but did have a snap to it. Bill Clinton, who was—as a candidate was best known as his youthful opposition to a war caught some flack for his salute, which was—well, it was a bit uncertain when he first took office. But after a while he got it down pat. As for George W. Bush, who could forget this moment on the deck of the USS Lincoln? That beats even Reagan when it comes to commander-in-chief performance art.
But getting back to our current president, it does seem that the president's salute isn't the only one he's mastered. Remember Mr. Spock's Vulcan salute in "Star Trek"? Obama showed that off at a black tie dinner earlier this year. Live long and prosper.
When we come back, why do more Americans say Hillary Clinton's qualified to be president right now than the vice president, Joe Biden? Is that just an idle question for political junkies, or is President Obama considering switching veeps next time? Plus, scoops and predictions from all the notebooks of these top reporters. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's been a smashing success: superb at her job, no headache to the boss, a great team player. That's one view. She's also been shrewdly political, showing toughness toward Pakistan, niceness toward Israel. Joe Biden, the vice president's also been an asset to Obama, tending to hard sells like promoting his economic stimulus effort. Obama's gone out of his way to say so.
Pres. OBAMA: (From September 15) And my outstanding vice president, that scrappy kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe Biden.
MATTHEWS: So what's the question here? Well, a recent Gallup poll asked who's qualified to be president, and Hillary beats out Biden getting 67 percent yes and Biden's 50 percent. That's a tough one. A strong showing by the secretary of state, not so good by the veep.
Andrea, that's why I'm talking about it, because it seems like the pollsters are out checking this. What is going on here? Hillary has been, you've covered it, smart diplomat, but also shrewdly political in terms of any possible future, I think.
MITCHELL: Well, you can't take the politician out of Hillary Clinton. But I am persuaded that she has for now given up politics. I cannot see her on the ticket.
MATTHEWS: OK, you are so political yourself; for now.
MITCHELL: Listen, wait. Wait. For now. But let me just—let me just add on, you've got to look at Vogue magazine. There is a profile of Hillary Clinton, and if you think that she's completely gone diplomat on us, this profile with pictures by Annie Leibovitz, it's called "Her brilliant career." The writer talks about how she comes out of the water in Cape Verde from a
quiet swim by herself, her hair wet, looking radiant, much prettier in person than in any of her pictures; which, you know, is something that a lot of people do say. She looks great, she feels great, she's having fun, she is working harder than ever. And she's got this profile with these glamorous pictures of her with President Obama. I think that he and she are getting
along fine. I still think that there is some strain between their respective staffs, that those circles around them still don't really intersect.
MATTHEWS: Joe, I'm still taken by the fact that when she was over there we—at this hard line in Israel, real tough line, we want no more settlement, no more growth, even natural growth, and she gives this big wet kiss to B.B. Netanyahu, the—a man of the right over there, for what she calls his unprecedented efforts to restrain growth. That didn't sound like Obama policy to me. Is she still running?
Mr. KLEIN: It wasn't Obama policy. I was there, and it was at the end of—she was tired.
MITCHELL: Yeah.
Mr. KLEIN: And it was a mistake. And I think that, you know, tacitly, at least, her staff acknowledged that it was a mistake.
MATTHEWS: Not politics, a mistake.
Mr. KLEIN: It was—it was a mistake. I think that the important thing here with Obama, the ideology of this administration can be summed up in two words: no drama. And unless things get vastly, vastly worse for him, things are going to stay the way they are.
MATTHEWS: OK. You've written—you've got a new book coming out which we're going to celebrate on this show when the time comes, "Notes from the Cracked Ceiling," a lot about Hillary Clinton and other women in politics. How's it matching up here, her job description, which is support this president; her life dream, which is to become president?
Ms. KORNBLUT: Well, look, she's actually in a much easier role now than she was ever running for president. She can keep a low profile when she chooses, and she has for much of the administration. There've been a few high-profile gaffes, a few high-profile trips. So she's been able to sort of call it on her own terms at this point. But there have been—there was a long period of time when we didn't actually see her, which some people think accounts for her elevated numbers. I can't say whether—it's very hard to imagine a scenario where he would replace Biden with Clinton on a ticket or, you know, something kind of radical like that going forward. But it's—I think that—I agree with Andrea that she's not being a politician purely at this moment, but it's never completely far from her mind.
MATTHEWS: Joe, you think she might still go on to be president.
Mr. KLEIN: I think she might still want to be president. But what we've seen this year is part of a pattern we always see with her, which is that she starts off very, very quietly. She started her Senate campaign with alistening tour.
MITCHELL: Right.
Mr. KLEIN: She started her health care program with this very secretive task force. And I think this year she's spending the year learning the job. And now, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she's beginning to take a much higher profile role.
MITCHELL: And two things. She did break—did break her elbow, and that took her out of action during a key period. So that was part of a low profile. You're right, she does this learning, listening. She's also traveled around the world with some very high-profile trips, endlessly, more than any other secretary.
MATTHEWS: Has she given up her ambition to become president?
MITCHELL: I don't think she'll ever—ever will give up that ambition.
MATTHEWS: David:
Mr. IGNATIUS: You know, I think her triumph has been that she stopped being a rock star and has been secretary of state. And she's a competent secretary of state.
Mr. KLEIN: Yep.
Mr. IGNATIUS: And the world sees her in that role. And near as I can tell in my conversations with her, she likes that. She likes being secretary of state.
MITCHELL: She certainly has been loyal.
Mr. IGNATIUS: And being a success at it.
MITCHELL: She always talks about President Obama's policy.
MATTHEWS: What was all this talk about her running for governor a couple weeks ago, running for governor of New York?
Mr. KLEIN: Baloney is what it was. I think it was baloney.
MITCHELL: Can you see her in Albany after she's traveled the globe this way?
MATTHEWS: OK. I accept that. I accept that.
When we come back, scoops and predictions from all the notebooks of these top reporters. Tell me something I don't know. They just did. Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back.
Anne, tell me something I don't know.
Ms. KORNBLUT: We will see President Obama at some point visit Afghanistan after his announcement.
MATTHEWS: Wow. Joe:
Mr. KLEIN: Back to Afghanistan again. Training isn't going very well. The military wants to marry one American company with an Afghan battalion; there isn't one such joint operation going on in Afghanistan now, months after them saying they wanted to do it.
MATTHEWS: Andrea:
MITCHELL: Jim Jones, Leon Panetta, Hillary Clinton all in Pakistan one after the other, trying to work with the military and with Pasha, the head of the intelligence services, because they know that their weak link is the president.
MATTHEWS: Wow.
Mr. IGNATIUS: Iranian dissidents have been able to get out of the country, are talking to people here in Washington and they're saying one thing: When you go to sanctions against Iran, focus on the Revolutionary Guard. Don't do things that hurt the Iranian people. And for goodness sake, don't try to meddle in a way that exposes us to reprisals.
MITCHELL: (Unintelligible)
MATTHEWS: When we come back, this week's big question: Will the recovery we've seen this year come to a screeching halt with a double-dip recession? Are we looking at a double dip this year? Be right back.
(Announcements)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. The stock market's up dramatically from its March low. Housing and lending have come a long way, even though jobs have not. But there is talk of a double-dip recession. Our big question: Will there be a double-dip? Anne:
Ms. KORNBLUT: Well, it's interesting, President Obama made news saying that there could be or that he's worried about it during an interview with FOX News, so that was its own kind of breakthrough. But I think the White House is keeping a close eye on it at this point, and that's why you're seeing they're talking about tax breaks for companies to get them to hire more, trying to get that unemployment rate down below 10 percent.
MATTHEWS: Well, that was taking coal to Newcastle, wasn't it? Bad news over to FOX. Just thinking here. Joe:
Mr. KLEIN: I have absolutely no idea.
MATTHEWS: Andrea:
MITCHELL: Not a double dip, but such slow growth and such continuing unemployment that they're going to have to do something.
Mr. IGNATIUS: If unemployment doesn't fall and people don't start pumping money back into this economy, this is like a balloon that just doesn't have enough air in it. I wouldn't call it a double dip, but I think it's so slow, so weak and maybe weakening.
MATTHEWS: Wow. I think that's well said.
Thanks to a great roundtable: Anne Kornblut, Joe Klein, Andrea Mitchell and David Ignatius.
That's the show. Thanks for watching. See you here next week.
