to the bush years the american people don t want to do it. gentlemen, ask you about in book that s coming up bob woodward has written obama s wars and i m glad that there debate inside of the white house, i m glad they re swearing at each other about policy, it seems to me like president obama s trying to do the right thing, get us out of that damn thing. he says, quote, i can t let this war eye can t let this be a war without end and i can t lose the whole democratic party. what do you make of this, bill press? first of all, if i were president obama, i would have paid woodward to write this book from what i read about it so far. look, this is a big deal. this is bush s war. obama inherits it, they ve got to decide what do. and the way he describes it, it worked. the system worked. the president brought everybody in, the generals, everybody else in. they discussed all of the various possibilities. the generals wouldn t give him an exit strategy. obama says, i m taking charge. i
about his qualifications to be commander in chief for a long time and that ought to prove it. ralph, apparently the president brought all the advisors in and he had been asking, get me an exit strategy. get me an exit i got to get out of afghanistan and in fact, he said, i have two years on this with the public on this, i want an exit strategy. i can t lose the whole democratic party and then he handed out to his advisors, the military advisors, ok, this is my plan. it s either my way or the highway, guys, and it was a hybrid of what they suggested and what the administration wanted. it s a reminder of one of the great truisms in american history. we always forget it. it s always the case. presidential candidates run primarily on domestic policy. that s what obama did but their presidencies are always defined about how they handle military and foreign policy crises fortunately kenne fortunate. kenny, vietnam and cuban missile crisis. johnson, vietnam. reagan, the cold war. you
megyn: fox news alert awaiting reaction from the pentagon as an explosive new book suggests the president of the united states may be putting politics ahead of american lives in afghanistan. that s where we begin this new hour of america live. hi, everybody i m megyn kelly. journalist bob woodward releasing obama s wars describing a split in the administration over pleasing democrats or wink the war in afghanistan. quote, i have two years with the public on this. then when referring to withdrawing the troops demanding at one meeting, quote, i want an exit strategy, quote, i can t let this be a war without end. and explaining, i can t lose the whole democratic party. jennifer given is live at the pentagon. jennifer apparently the white house wants us to believe that they are happy with this book, why is that? reporter: in a way they are happy, because what comes out of this, look at the timing of when it was released, it s released
house and should point out what the vice president said about richard holbrooke is he is the most egotistical blast card i ever met but he is probably the right guy for the job. so there are extensions and contexts there when you see the book that some of the newspaper headlines did not pick up. but i think it does cause problems and i think it does sort of proceed an exit strategy by some people, like the national sex yourity adviser jim jones it is very clear that he feels ostracized. that he didn t have access to the president on the president s first european trip, white house aides, toad go to the president and complain. it true they don t like each other? bottom line. true the military guys don t trust the white house political people and the other way around? your thoughts first, andrea, on that one? i think that is true and in particular, jim jones, marine general, retired marine general, feels very much at odds with some of the civilians on the national security team and i
standing by him, giving him more leeway on this, are probably the first guys that lose if this midterm election goes badly. so he won t even have he will have even fewer democrats left in congress backing him up beyond july 2011. that appears what he is talking about here in the book, the woodward book, told gates, the secretary of defense, robert gates and secretary clinton, secretary of state, i m not doing ten years i m not doing long-term nation building. i m not spending a trillion dollars. i guess, andrea, you are the expert on foreign policy. why is he doing what he he is doing if he doesn t think it is working, because he says i don t believe in nation building? ment is that what we are trying to do in this short timeframe? it s and i think that dish think he really what you see in the book is that he felt trapped by being in afghanistan. he had campaigned against the war in iraq. afghanistan and the commitment there was really the exit strategy from iraq. it was clea