Change You Can Believe In

Fresh off of his highly successful pre-inaugural European and Middle Eastern tour, President-elect (in his mind anyway) Barack Obama sat down for a friendly chat with Tom Brokaw on "Meet the Press" today.

MR. TOM BROKAW: And we are here with Senator Obama late Saturday afternoon in London, the last stop of his nine-day overseas trip.

You head back to the United States in a few hours. For purposes of this program, we'll say good morning. By my judgment, at least, the only television appearances that you've missed this week have been the Home Shopping Network and "Morning Devotional." We're going to take...

SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL): Right. But those are scheduled when I get back.

Only the chat was not quite as friendly as Senator Obama may have wanted. The interview immediately turned to Iraq and once there Brokaw pressed Obama on the differences between what Senator Obama said on the Senate floor and what Candidate Obama said in front of anti-war groups when he was running neck and neck with Senator Clinton AND the what Candidate Obama has said since he secured the nomination.

MR. BROKAW: Let's begin there in Iraq, and that judgment of yours that violence has lessened and that there is a possibility now that Prime Minister Maliki can take on more responsibility. You engaged in some verbal kung fu with reporters and others as well this week about the surge. You opposed the surge, the addition of other American troops in there. Many analysts believe that the reason that violence has decreased is because the American troops were deployed in a more effective manner...And it allowed President Maliki to stabilize his government somewhat. But you would not apologize, and you said you did not regret your opposition this surge. That prompted this radio ad from your opponent John McCain, which is running today. So let's listen to that and then respond.

(Videotape)

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: (From political ad) Now that it's clear that the surge has succeeded and brought victory in Iraq within sight, Senator Obama can't quite bring himself to admit his own failure in judgment. Instead, he commits the even greater error of insisting that, even in hindsight, he would still oppose the surge. Even in retrospect, he would choose the path of retreat and failure for America over the path of success and victory. That's not exactly my idea of the judgment we seek in a commander-in-chief.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: That's a radio speech from Senator John McCain that is running on this Sunday in America. He's referring to what you had to say on January 10th, 2007...and repeated several times. Let's listen to you now and your immediate reaction to the idea of the surge back in the beginning of 2007.

(Videotape)

SEN. OBAMA: I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse.

(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW: We're not talking about angels on the head of a pin here, but let me ask you a direct question...Do you believe that President Maliki would be in a position to more or less endorse your timetable of getting troops out within 16 months if it had not been for the surge?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, we don't know, because in my earlier statements--I mean, I know that there's that little snippet that you ran, but there were also statements made during the course of this debate in which I said there's no doubt that additional U.S. troops could temporarily quell the violence. But unless we saw an underlying change in the politics of the country, unless Sunni, Shia, Kurd made different decisions, then we were going to have a civil war and we could not stop a civil war simply with more troops. Now, I, I...

MR. BROKAW: But couldn't they make that political decision because troops were there to help them make it.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, the--well, the--look, there's no doubt, and I've said this repeatedly, that our troops make a difference. If--you know, they do extraordinary work. The troops that I met, they were proud of their work, they had made enormous sacrifices, they had fought, they had helped to construct schools and, and rebuilt the countryside. But, for example, in Anbar Province, where we went to visit, the Sunni awakening took place before the surge started, and tribal leaders made a decision that, instead of fighting the Americans, we're going to work with the Americans against al-Qaeda. That was a political decision that was made that has made a huge difference in this entire process.

So the, the point I want to make is this, Tom, I mean, you know, if we want to look at the question of judgment which is the one that John McCain raised, John McCain's essential focus has been on the tactical issue of sending more troops, and he's, he's made his entire approach to foreign policy rest on that support of Bush's decision to send more troops in. But we can have a whole range of arguments about past decisions--the decision to go into Iraq in the first place, and whether that was a good strategic decision, where we've spent a trillion dollars at least by the time this thing is over, lost thousands of lives in pursuit of goals John McCain supported that turned out to be false. We can make decisions about does it make sense for us to set a time frame for withdrawal to encourage the kind of political reconciliation that needs to take place to stabilize Iraq. We can talk about the distractions from hunting down al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, where there is no doubt that we would be further along had we not engaged in some of these actions, and...

MR. BROKAW: But we have to talk about the reality of what's going on in Iraq right now.

SEN. OBAMA: Well, but, but, but, let me...

MR. BROKAW: And the Anbar awakening, most people believe, was successful in large part because the American troops did come in and make it possible for them to have the kind of political reconciliation...

SEN. OBAMA: Tom, look--Tom, I'm, I'm--the fact that--the...

MR. BROKAW: Do you disagree with that?

SEN. OBAMA: As I said before, our troops made an enormous contribution, but to try to single out one factor in a very messy situation is just not accurate, and it doesn't, it doesn't take into account the larger strategic issues that have been at stake throughout this process. Look, we've got a finite amount of resources. We've got a finite number of troops. Our military is stretched extraordinarily because of trying to fight two wars at the same time. And so my job as the next commander in chief is going to be to make a decision what is the right war to fight, and, and how do we fight it? And I think that we should have been focused on Afghanistan from the start. We should have finished that job. We have not, but we now have the opportunity, moving forward, to begin a phased redeployment and to make sure that we're finishing the job in Afghanistan.

As you can tell, Brokaw had Sen. Obama quite tongue tied at times. It especially got good when Brokaw brought up the USA Today editorial that took Sen. Obama to task for his "stubbornness" in failing to admit that he was wrong on the surge. Given that the charge of stubbornness is one that the Dems have leveled at President Bush on a number of occassions, that charge really had Sen. Obama spinning for dear life!

SEN. OBAMA: Well, listen. I, I actually think that there's no doubt that the violence has gone down more than any of us anticipated, including President Bush and John McCain. If you, if you would--if you had talked to them and, and said, "You know what? We're going to bring down violence to the levels that we have," I think--I, I, I suspect USA Today's own editorial board wouldn't have anticipated that. That's not a, that's not a hard thing to acknowledge, that the situations have improved more rapidly than we had anticipated.

Then Brokaw brought up the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll which showed (among other things) that people think that Sen McCain has more experience to be President and he would be a better commander in chief (by a 2-1 margin in both cases!) and that Sen. Obama would actually be (again by a 2-1 margin) a riskier choice for President. That brought about this reply.

SEN. OBAMA: No, because, let's say we had reversed--or rephrased the question. Let's say the question had been, "Who's more likely to bring about change in the country?" I suspect I would beat Senator McCain handily. Or another way we could have phrased it was, "Who's more likely to maintain the status quo?" Well, John McCain would have won that poll handily. The fact is is that our campaign has been based on the idea that we need to fundamentally change how we do business, both domestically and internationally;...

Well, if you are strictly going by who will bring change, then yes, Senator Obama is your man. But remember this - the end of the world is change - but is it really the kind of change that we want or is the best thing for the nation? While I am certainly not saying that Sen. Obama will bring about the end of the world, I am simply saying that not all change is good. We need to ask ourselves what "change" is really the best for the country. After all, in 2006, the voters supposed voted for change and instead of the changes we wanted (lower gas prices, more transparent government, lower property taxes) we saw the price of gas almost double, no earmark reform and almost $10 billion in new state taxes! Is that really the kind of change that the voters wanted or want now?