Page 17 - Thomas Ricks News Today

>> tom, what about the leadership difference between these two administrations? president bush had his basically all -- almost all of his two terms to get this done. president obama made it a top priority. they got it done. it feels like there was a big difference in emphasis. >> i think the big difference is more rhetorical. youre seeing obama i think at his best with that rhetorical coolness. whereas bush with bin laden waivered all over the place. sometimes talking like an old west gunfighter...

Theres a calmness about this group that reflects the coolness at the center of the administration in kind of president obamas reflective rather detached approach to events. >> tom ricks with foreign policy magazine. thank u very much for joining us tonight, tom. >> youre welcome. >> in tonights rewrite, what more does president obama have to do to disprove the republican lie that democrats are soft on defense? also, the terror threat. with bin laden gone, how powerful will al qaeda be? [ man ] i...

You always see institutional frictions, but i think they got very personal in the bush administration. theres a calmness about this group that reflects the coolness at the center of the administration in kind of president obamas reflective rather detached approach to events. >> tom ricks with foreign policy magazine. thank you very much for joining us tonight, tom. >> youre welcome. >> in tonights rewrite, what more does president obama have to do to disprove the republican lie that democrats ar...

Down comfortably in a walled fortress in a pakistan suburb. but someone -- someone was still thinking about bin laden in a lethal way. >> if we have osama bin laden in our sights, and the pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then i think that we have to act. and we will take them out. we will kill bin laden. we will crush al qaeda. that has to be our biggest national security priority. >> that was candidate obama saying unlike president bush that had announced as youve s...

yes. >> today, at my direction, the small team of americans carried out the operation -- >> when that helicopter was seen to be unable to move, all of a sudden you had to go into plan b. and they did it flawlessly. >> this purportedly the bloody scene. >> im fascinated by the fact that there was a neighbor next to this compound tweeting -- live tweeting during the raid. go away, helicopter before i take out my giant swatter. >> d.n.a. analysis confirms with 100% certainty that in fact ...

>> today, at my direction, the small team of americans carried out the operation -- >> when that helicopter was seen to be unable to move, all of a sudden you had to go into plan b. and they did it flawlessly. >> im fascinated by the fact that there was a neighbor next to this compound tweeting -- live tweeting during the raid. go away, helicopter before i take out my giant swatter. >> d.n.a. analysis confirms with 100% certainty that in fact it was osama bin laden killed. >> by how di...

>> today, at my direction, the small team of americans carried out the operation -- >> when that helicopter was seen to be unable to move, all of a sudden you had to go into plan b. and they did it flawlessly. >> this purportedly the bloody scene. >> im fascinated by the fact that there was a neighbor next to this compound tweeting -- live tweeting during the raid. go away, helicopter before i take out my giant swatter. >> d.n.a. analysis confirms with 100% certainty that in fact it wa...

>> well, i think it did and it didnt. meaning i think in all these ways it clearly shifted the focus of his presidency to issues that he was not, you know, coming into the white house thinking it would consume his time. he was interested in education reform and immigration, very interested in immigration reform and really liberalizing immigration policy and all that, you know, takes a second place when 9/11 happens. and the book does wrestle with this, you know, iraq doesnt clearly fit...

>> guest: id add that, you know, historians 50 years from now will be biased about this period in different ways. obviously, if anyone writes about vietnam today, even someone not living through that event, they have opinions that reflect their politics today oh how they view iraq and afghanistan. its impossible to escape that. theres differences. some are quite comfortable, otherrings are not. i think its healthy to have historians put these things into context and capture and put the...

had more, "decision points." w. bush. lets start with just a general at the end of m4 as toys that come>> and i think on things that is i see is even if he doesnt want to play politics, hes also missing the political game thats being played around him. and that was one of the things that did come through in the book as i was reading it. >> and lara brown is the author of jockeying for the american presidency, the political opportunism of aspirants. dr. brown if you wrote presid...