0 credibility and ability to lead the nation and the world and cokie, if you dig into all of these assessments, they go to the contradiction, where the president says assad issed be, he gassed little children, he is a boast. john kerry and other administration officials compare him to hitler. in the next breath, oh, by the way, we're financial to do a deal with him and vladmir putin. then in the next breath, it was a military threat that brought him to the table. then in the next breath, we're not going to have a military strike. >> attack. there is a reason that everybody is saying this is incoherent. it's incoherent and the fact that the president really had his gloves taken out of the fire by vladmir putin. is this a position we want to be in. >> is this a guy we want to trust. in the days moving forward, putin was moving away from anything that mattered the united nations, here we are in the united states having to rely in 2013 on the french. >> i know. there you go. >> watching tv last night, i hear him say, but putin said that the russian position was far, far from being the u.s. position from the french position. but, yet the french are holding the loan. >> but to me is really telling is that the more the president has talked and the more he has lobbied and the more he has done all the, you know, huge presidential things of going to the hill and all the people and all that, the less people are for this policy. i mean, he keeps driving people away rather than attract them. >> i wonder, al hunt, given, i thought it was a sort of clear explanation of everything we have at play. and i'm not sure i have a problem with him understanding that the nation is really, really, really tired of speech and he was very emotional in talkingable these terrible hofk things that occurred. in that sense, given a bad hand, i thought he gave a good speech. i don't think he changed many minds at all. i was with buck mckee and the chairman of the armed services afterwards, he said, i thought it was a good speech. i don't think any of my wicht constituents were served. >> he would have been better off in the oval office or the family residence and the teleprompter was way up here. so he's looking like this, so he never looked us in the eye as he talked to us. that really matters to have somebody look you in the eye when they're trying to convince you. >> i will say strategically the thing that was good about this speech was it reset things. we were all looking at the president. everybody yesterday afternoon before john kerry committed a slip of the tongue, which now our u.s. foreign policy is based uponment by the way, i like john, but please den tell me you meant a to do that. >> it was a well crafted plan. >> it was perhaps the most well crafted gap if repeat history. >> genius. >> strategic, the point is you have a president about to be undercut. his credibility across the globe is about to be vashed, tan down, the next three years were going to be a nightmare for him. the causes a reset. now the president can do what his democratic allies wanted him to do in the first place, if putin and assad do what we know they are going to do, back away from the deal. then do you the military strikes and you is ask for more giveness instead of permission. the president looks strategically, that's very good. jeremy the impact on the hill. >> i think the phrase you used, the reset button. the temperature dropped dramatically yesterday on fill. you heard some of the president's strongest critics like ron johnson of wisconsin, a republican senator, saying they have an appreciation for what he's going through. the president gave a version last into it to republicans and democrats separately on the hill. what he said was more direct. he said, do not undercut my authority to threaten force on syria. and with republican, they thought, okay, we want to have a powerful, the united states military august to have a powerful commander-in-chief. >> yet, i was hearing late yesterday afternoon, i'm curious if you heard the same thing. in the democratic caution, it seemed like he said the military threat was taken off the table. we are now pursuing a diplomat ec approach. >> maybe that's what some democrats had selective hearing only. i think they want a united states option on the table. i didn't hear he had taken military option off the table. remember, the liberal democrats the president will need to authorize force in congress are very, very wary of a solution that does not heavily involve the international community. >> you know what i'm wary of? >> what are you wary about? >> i'm wary of having a hard foot guys, he dithers in. you talk act dithering. he dithers in. welcome to the show. >> is daylight savings on? >> no. we're on the east coast. >> that was for agricultural times, you know. >> so did you hear the reviews, the harsh reviews while you were coming over here? >> i did. maureen was kind of tough the washington post. >> maureen was tough, there's a shock. i'm surprised by that. >> did you see the speech? >> i'm surprised. in fact, i was watching it on an endless loop, why is why i'm a little loopy. i was trying to get the first part and the second part to work together. >> it was, first of all, set the stage for the speeches to work. >> i looked it. al hunt, thank you for saying that. did you like it, joe? >> it was something unusual. i thought it was something unusual. >> john meacham. >> it was unusual because we, a lot of us think that presidential loadership should be to some extent about bringing us into the tent. about explaining what it's like to be on the other side of the desk, explaining the issues. being realistic. treating voters like, get it. >> intelligent people. >> grown-ups. right. it was something that churchill did, that fdr did, that ronald reagan did. you actually talk about the problem and there is another school of thought embodied by certain recent presidents that presidential leadership is only about anounting decisions and sticking by them. >> making the hammer fall. >> right. now, i wish, personally, that president obama had come to this deal term with fdr educationalal masterfully maybe say health care some years ago, so people might understand what's in that far more i liked the speech better than others did. far more is the policy-making if you will. this resemblebled a pickup game on tuesday, you go over here, kerry will do this. susan rice will be here. >> that is not -- >> hillary, please. >> that is really not a way to engender confidence either with the congress or the american people. i think they have been very hurt by that. i'm not sure they can recover from that. >> again, i want to go back to there are a lot of people very negative on the speech this morning. i wasn't quite so negative on the speech and the flip-floping. i just looked at it again as important because it did allow the reset. because syria matters. >> yes. >> i was against kosovo in kovenlth i was against bosnia. i was against the surge because i to the bush mishandled it. i was against tripleing the number of troops. i'm sort of from col co lynn powell's school. >> it would be worse if joe were in charge. >> i'm from colin powell. >> you don't send your troops to war unless are you ready to go to war and we don't want a fair fight. these limited skirmishes are always bad. >> that said, syria matters and i think it matters a hell of a lot more than boss fiia or kosovo and the president, having a strong commander-in-chief matters. that's why, forget all of the bumbling last week. forget the disjointed nature of his speech. i think, cokie, last night it mattered because it gave the president a reset. i think again if putin and assad don't follow through on their promises. of course, they're not going to, the president can strike. he won't make the sake mistake twice. >> let's hope not. when do we decide they have him follow through? and how long does it take? do we go to the u.n. and get a resolution? this is now going to go on and on and on. so maybe it's a reset with congress and he doesn't have to face the devastateing vote and look like -- >> that was one thing that i would point out is that we don't know where this is going to take us. it's more than likely this issue ends up before congress. >> this is what joe mansion was talking, i talked to him three days ago. this is what he was drafting with heidi highcamp three days ago. again, thanks, to john kerry's gaffe, you talk about basketball, the bull rolled at joe's feet. we will probably have about a 45-day delay. >> we will be talking about this much more. coming up on "morning joe," senator john mccain will join us, former national security advisory zbignei be brzezifski 57bd general michael hayden and sheila bair. up next, willie geist is down on ground zero on the 12th anniversary of the september 11th attacks him willie, what do you have ahead? >> hey, guys, can you believe it's been 12 years this morning? 8:46 a.m., one of the towers was hit behind me. this morning we will look at the progress rebuilding this place. you can see the beautiful memorial with the pools opened two years ago on the 10th anniversary. we will give a look down underground inside the national september 11th memorial museum which doesn't open until next 84. they let us go in, walk around, see some of the amazing artifacts and exhibits inside. we'll show you that when we come back on "morning joe." 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