In his debut as the 12th moderator of "Meet The Press," Chuck Todd described the set and the show's format like living in a house while we're changing it, and we'll take him on his word because we're not sold on a set that looks a like one of the daily programs on MSNBC, and our jury is out on having the moderator doing board analysis work, though Mr. Todd is very good at it.
With that said, Mr. Todd's interview with the president gleaned many candid answers - worthy of the program and the mayoral segment displayed some key insights into how cities are rebuilding success in society. We'll comment on this later, but first the interview with President Obama.
(And yes, we'd give a high-five to Chuck Todd at the end of the program, as the credits rolled.)
In a speech scheduled for Wednesday, Mr. Obama said he will inform the American people of the degree of which ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and Levant) is a threat to the country and what the administration plans to do. "I'm preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIL," Mr. Obama said.
This means the United States is definitely and rightly going to do something, and the reason we say 'rightly' is because if the world community lead by the United States waits until ISIL starts turning its attention outward from the territory they are now trying to occupy then it's too late. And it may seem periphery that the U.S. killed the head of Al-Shabab, an Al Qaeda off-shoot, in Somalia, but it's not. ISIL recruits from all over the world and groups like Al-Shabab are certainly looking to connect with ISIL.
Mr. Obama said that he'll explain that ISIL is a serious threat, but one that we can deal with, and here's the plan, but as he mentioned he's going to need the support of Congress, with whom he said he has been consulting and which by early indications is coming around to supporting the president. It's happening slowly, as is the building of an international coalition, but it is happening. Joe Scarborough, who will be a regular contributor to "Meet The Press," said that it's been in fact a conservative position in taking a measured stance as to what to do about the chaos in the Middle East. If this is an accurate assessment, then the president should have congressional support.
(We do not think this is a good idea to have Joe Scarborough as a prominent contributor. Mr. Scarborough has his own
program, where he opines loudly, and Mr. Todd needs to be the dominating personality on the
program at all times. Chuck Todd is "Meet The Press" now.)
It was also important to hear the president outline what the United States is not going to do, which is putting 100,000 troops on the ground in Iraq. However, we would be careful of the nuance in this answer because we all know that ISIL can not be defeated by air strikes alone. Mr. Obama said that the United States military will be instrumental in coordinating Iraqi and Kurdish troops, but there also must be a large international force, the bulk of which will be made up of U.S. troops because the reality is that anything short of that is not going to eliminate ISIL as is the president's stated goal. That's the rub, that's the 'preparation' that the president referred to, but we agree with Mr. Obama in that the United States can not serially occupy countries in the Middle East, or around the world for that matter. As the president said, we just don't have the resources (money) to do it.
And, as Mr. Obama accurately explained, the United States is the country that when there is a crisis in Ukraine, it is the one that mobilizes other countries to act; when there is an outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, other countries look to the U.S. for solutions and security.If you believe in the idea of American Exceptionalism, these are the kinds of burdens and the costs (hard and otherwise) that come with being exceptional.
And that's the reasoning behind Mr. Obama's decision to be careful in how the U.S. engages ISIL in Syria. The president said we would hunt down ISIL members and assets. Well, to do that it's going to take American personnel on the ground, there's no way around it. But finding and funding the Free Syrian Army (moderate Sunnis) is going to be tricky because the United States is going to need help from Shia populations in the region to defeat ISIL, populations that include Iran's. For the moment, the United States also needs Assad in place to defeat ISIL so that results in Saudia Arabia not giving its support. As Micheal Leiter noted on the program, the Saudis do not trust the president to do all he can to take out Assad. (There's so much to be said about the Saudis and trust and doing the right, humane thing, but we'll just leave it... we really don't want to get that upset on this football Sunday.)
On this Sunday, Mr. Todd introduced a new feature to the program entitle "Who Needs Washington?" which was a very good segment interviewing three mayors in three different parts of the country from three different political party affiliations.
(A segment with such a title implies that Washington does know anything, so we found it funny that later in the program there was another feature entitled, "What Everyone in Washington Knows," and because of the stale topic of Hillary Clinton political aspirations, we'd answer that premise with, "Not much.")
We poke fun, but the segment with the three mayors gave the viewer a very good perspective of what local officials are doing to improve the lives of citizens in their cities. What was most telling about the segment was how all three mayors were instituting policies that run in 'sharp contrast' (Mr. Obama's phrase in describing the countries party differences) to Tea Party policy choices - this was across the board. Instead of giving vouchers for schools in Tacoma, Washington, Mayor Marilyn Strickland (I) talked about giving vouchers for housing so that children can maintain continuity in their education by staying at the same school. Speaking of education, you expect Democratic Pittsburgh Mayor, Bill Peduto, to express expanding early childhood education - a publicly funded program that is long overdue in national scale. And even though Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett said that people of his city, describing their conservative leaning, don't like program they can't 'touch and feel," meaning public programs, he signed a tax increase, a Republican tax increase, to improve and repair infrastructure. As ideological as the two major national political parties are, local politics are all about practicality.
Round Table: Amy Walter, National Editor of The Cook Political Report; John Stanton, Washington Bureau Chief for Buzzfeed.com; Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe;" Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post
Post Note: Our wish would have been for Mr. Todd to interview the President in studio (we understand the difficulties of presidential scheduling), live for 20 minutes because it would have spoke volumes to the renewed importance of the 'program of record.' Plus, not chopping up the interview and running it as one longer segment is what separates serious journalism from commercialized TV journalism, no? Further impressing upon the viewer the importance of the interview and hence the program. Alas, it was just a wish.
And apologies for not getting to the topic of immigration this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment