'Meet the Press' transcript for Feb. 8, 2009

MR. GREGORY: All right, I want to finish here in our--just a couple minutes left with what the administration admits were some self-inflicted wounds this week.  I'm talking about the failed nomination of Tom Daschle to run health care policy and run Health and Human Services, that department.  He sat down with Brian Williams this week and said this, taking the blame.  Listen.

(Videotape, Tuesday)

PRES. OBAMA: I'm here on television saying I screwed up.  And that's--part of the era of responsibility is not never making mistakes, it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you don't repeat them.  And that's what we intend to do.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Here's what Steve Pearlstein wrote in The Washington Post, business columnist, about all of this: "Tom Daschle's problem wasn't that he didn't pay his taxes.  It was that he--along with those who vetted his nomination as health and human services secretary and many of his colleagues in the Senate--found it perfectly ordinary and acceptable that he would be able to cash in on his time in the Senate by earning more than $5 million over two years as a law-firm rainmaker, equity fundraiser, corporate director and luncheon speaker, all the while being driven around town in a chauffeured town car."

Senator McCaskill, has this been a wake-up call for Washington?

SEN. McCASKILL: Well, I think it's been a wake-up call in many ways.  And I think one of the things that's refreshing, and one of the reasons President Obama is, is going to win the hearts of the American people continually is that he looked in the camera and said he screwed up.  That doesn't happen very often.  And by the way, this is in the same week that he appointed a very fiscal conservative Republican as secretary of Commerce.  I don't know when the last time was that happened around Washington.  This is a guy who's going to be very disciplined, as president of the United States, about reaching out to all points of view and admitting mistakes when he makes them.  And frankly, that's just what the doctor ordered in Washington.

MR. GREGORY: But he, but he, but he wanted to--him to fight for his nomination before it got too hot politically.

SEN. McCASKILL: Well, I think, I think he knew what Tom Daschle was capable of bringing to the table in terms of this area of public policy.  And you always weigh the good and the bad.  And I think he saw so much of the good that he made a mistake and didn't realize how much the bad was going to drag the administration when they got to get this economy going again.

MR. GREGORY: Senator, larger point here for Washington on what's acceptable?

SEN. ENSIGN: Well, it's not just--I mean, first of all, we're leaders. We're supposed to pay our taxes, we're supposed to obey the laws.  But also, I think through your larger point about this almost incestuous nature of Washington, D.C. When people leave the Senate, leave the House, leave the administration and then make all this money basically--I mean, he's being paid $2 million by a lobbying firm, and that's not a lobbyist?  I mean, there's just something wrong.  I mean, there--you can't believe how many relatives of senators and, and congressmen are lobbyists.  And, and, and that whole...

SEN. McCASKILL: On both sides.

SEN. ENSIGN: On both sides, absolutely.  No, there's, there's a lot wrong. The American people need to have more trust in what we do in Washington, D.C. And, and today there's no wonder that they don't trust us, because they see so much of this kind of thing that was brought out with Tom Daschle going on. And it is, it is both sides, and it needs to be cleaned up.

MR. GREGORY: Congressman Frank, how do you fix it?

REP. FRANK: Well, the last chauffeured town car I drove in, David, was this morning when you sent one to pick me up.  I don't usually do it.  But--and the week before was with Stephanopoulos sent one.

MR. GREGORY: Right.  Yeah.

REP. FRANK: But I do...

MR. GREGORY: We want to make sure you got here and--yeah.

REP. FRANK: I, I appreciate it.  I just wanted to know...

SEN. McCASKILL: Mine was a hybrid.

REP. FRANK: In case I'm accused of being a--well, I don't know what kind of car it was, to be honest with you.  I got in the backseat with the paper.

SEN. ENSIGN: I drove my own car.

MR. GREGORY: But seriously, how do you change this?  Because a lot of people--you know, you've got the president who's out there castigating Wall Street, you brought up the issue of compensation, you've brought up the issue of compensation very strongly, and yet this kind of thing happens in Washington.

REP. FRANK: Well, you change it by the voters being tougher.  Frankly, I think that part of the problem is the voters.  You know, nobody in the Senate--well, a couple in the Senate, but nobody in the House parachuted in. And the voters have to be tougher.  I don't think they hold us to a high enough standard.

MR. GREGORY: Before I let you go, do you think the government will ask for more money for additional money for the banks?  Will they actually ask Congress for more beyond the $350 billion that's in the bailout fund?

REP. FRANK: They probably will.  But if they haven't been able to get the banks to lend more, restrict excessive compensation and help deal with foreclosure in a reasonable way, they're not going to get it.

MR. GREGORY: OK.

REP. FRANK: And I've made that very clear to the, to the Obama administration.

MR. GREGORY: We are going to leave it there.  Thank you very much for a spirited debate this morning, to all of you.

Coming next, our presidential leadership series continues.  We'll look at the challenges the new president will face in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent and author of the new book "The Gamble" will share his reporting and analysis.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY: The rough road ahead in Iraq and Afghanistan, after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY: And we're back and joined by Tom Ricks for his first interview on his new book "The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006 through 2008."

Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. TOM RICKS: Thank you.

MR. GREGORY: This was the first book, "Fiasco," about Iraq.  It speaks for itself.  And just to hold it up, this is the new book.  It is "The Gamble." And here was something striking that you wrote from this book, looking forward now to President Obama and his leadership test: "2009 could prove to be a particularly difficult year in the war.  `In many ways, the entire war was a huge gamble, risking America's future power and prestige on a war that, at best, is likely to be inconclusive,' commented Shawn Brimley, a former Canadian infantry officer who became a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security.  He predicted that Bush's gamble will force Obama into a series of his own gambles and trade-offs--between the war and domestic needs, between Iraq and Afghanistan, between his political base and his military.  In sum, the first year of Obama's war promises to be tougher for America's leaders and military than was the last year of Bush's war." How so?

MR. RICKS: I think a lot of people back here incorrectly think the war is over.  What I say in this book is that we may be only halfway through this thing.  In fact, my favorite line in the book is the last line.  Ambassador Crocker, a very thoughtful diplomat, says that the events for which the Iraq war will be remembered have not yet happened.

MR. GREGORY: That is an amazing statement.  And a lot of people have to be listening to that, thinking, "Well, what's the other shoe to drop, then?"

MR. RICKS: There's a whole lot of shoes out there.  A whole lot of shoes to be thrown, actually.  This, this year we're in now, '09, is going to be, I think, a, a surprisingly tough year.  You've got a series of elections in Iraq.  Meanwhile, you've got American troops declining.  General Odierno says in the book that the really dangerous withdrawals come at the end of this year.  We're doing the easy troop withdrawals now, but down the road you start taking them out of areas that aren't so secure, that aren't so safe, that you're, that you're worried about.  So they're going to be holding national elections in Iraq just when we have fewer troops there.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MR. RICKS: And finally, none of the basic problems that the surge was meant to solve have been solved.  All of the basic issues facing Iraq are still there.

MR. GREGORY: You suggested--while the administration has said the surge was successful, undeniably violence has gone down, you suggested kick the can down the road.  What do you mean?

MR. RICKS: Well, basically the surge succeeded military, failed politically. And that was its purpose; not just to improve security, but to create a political breathing space in which national reconciliation, in which major change could occur in Iraq that hasn't changed.  What General Odierno says in the book--he's the U.S. commander there now.  What Odierno says is that Iraqis, many of them use the breathing space we created to step backwards, to become more sectarian.  They've become more divided.

MR. GREGORY: The issue of troops is what everybody's focused on, certainly politically, when troops come home.  This is what President Obama said before he was president, on the campaign trail.  This is October 2007.

(Videotape, October 27, 2007)

PRES. OBAMA: I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do.  I will get our troops home, we will bring an end to this war.  You can take that to the bank.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: And yet by July of 2008 on the campaign trail, he spoke about it somewhat differently.

(Videotape, July 3, 2008)

PRES. OBAMA: My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I've said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe.  And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: You write in the book that Obama will be torn between what his supporters expect and what his generals advise.

MR. RICKS: I think that's right, and I think we may see a confrontation between Obama and the generals by the end of this year.  American voters, many of them, think we're going to be out of Iraq in 16 months; when he talks about having combat troops out of Iraq, that somehow no more Americans troops will die.  Well, the news flash for Obama here is there are not such thing as noncombat troops.  We don't have a pacifist wing of the U.S. military.  All our troops are ready for combat.  We're going to have American troops fighting and dying there for many years to come.  What General Odierno says in the book is he would like to see 35,000 American troops there in 2015.

MR. GREGORY: In 2015.

MR. RICKS: Yeah.  So, which means that Obama's war in Iraq may be longer than Bush's war in Iraq.  So bottom line here, I think Iraq is going to change Obama more than Obama changes Iraq.

MR. GREGORY: Where are troop levels now?

MR. RICKS: We're about 155,000.

MR. GREGORY: And when do we get to that bottom-out level of 30, 35,000 that Odierno's talking about?

MR. RICKS: Well, that's going to be the fight all year long.  When do you come down?  How fast do you come down?  Do you come down a brigade a month, as Obama indicated on the campaign trail?  Or do you plateau it out this year and then bring it down early 2010?  No matter when you do it, though, you're going to come to a point where the generals are going to say, "You know, this is not something I really want to do here.  This is dangerous.  We're taking troops out of a place where things are going to start breaking loose."

MR. GREGORY: But that's the question, which is how much danger do Americans face?  Because what you write in the book about the surge is that it was the first time that Iraqis took the lead in this war effort.  If U.S. troops are there, but they are not in harm's way in the same manner than they've been before, perhaps Americans can live with that long-term commitment.  Do you expect that'll be the case?

MR. RICKS: If you're in Iraq, you're in harm's way, first of all.  The second thing is I think people here--and this is a major theme of the book--people here don't understand quite how tough the surge was.  Those first six months of 2007 were the hardest six months of the war, and it was a near-rung thing.  The generals who were there were not confident it was going to succeed.  There were several months there--April, May, June 2007--where U.S. casualties are increasing, no signs of success.  So one of the last things they want to do is roll the dice again and say, "Sure, you know, it might not--it might blow up in our faces, but let's try it." No, they feel they have made huge sacrifices, that they have had friends die and sons bleed, and that they don't want to throw that all away on the--you know, because some guy said on the campaign trail, "We're going to get all these guys out."

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