he s well thought of. he ran the uso, he s a retired banker. he came on, i believe, in february into the va. so there is somebody you could rely on day to die if shinseki were to leave this afternoon. getting to the bigger point that barbara was making, there s only two years left. this is a political appointment, right. i m just a reporter, i can t remake washington. but i don t know. this is a huge health care system that needs a boss that s going to make huge changes in a bureaucracy that s been there for years and years and years. maybe it s time to pick somebody who could go from one administration to the next and actually do the job of turning this around. good point. athena jones at the white house, if this audit is as scathing as expected, as drew has been reporting, there may be more benefit for the president to fire shinseki rather than merely
calls for her to be fire ford apexance probla performance problem. now shinseki he s not willing to let anybody be beaten down, including susan rice, how upset he was with susan rice after the benghazi talking point nightmare. she wasn t in a position to be the secretary of state. he tried to stay with her up until he didn t. and there becomes political reality can overwhelm the situation. i think that possibly is going to happen if not tomorrow then by sunday. dana makes a great point, tom. nobody is questioning the president s loyalty to his staff, they re questioning his loyalty to theveterans. that s ed s point. the veterans are suffering. president obama had time today to do a summit, the first of its kind for sports concussions, something that what the heck is the president getting involved in? he looks detached but he has his priorities straight and his little tis to his staff not our
for politics. because if obama fires him, the gop will take a pound of flesh and point the finger at a bad hire because shinseki has been there for almost the duration of the obama presidency. so even on the left they realize at this so far 40 vets dead isn t a bigger pound of flesh the dead veterans? i think the point you made, the politics, the best politics would be to fire him. i mean, that s where he s got it wrong. i think that takes the heat off of a lot of things, bring someone in fresh from the outside. by the way, when you suggested that jay carney, what does it take to get him fired, in the break i said carney puts up with all of this stuff all the time, dennis told me to kiss her because she had to put up with all this stuff i. want to say to both dana and to jay, i m impressed kiss my grits, bob. can i just say one more thing
military heroes. i don t think it does any good to be loyal to his staff. it always helps if you can fire someone and someone new comes in and says, i m the new guy. then the story goes away. which is why i don t think anyone should ever get fired. then the story goes away and somebody says, we re working on it. that happened at the irs. exactly. i don t know what good it is to be loyal to shinseki, but. but there s other people in the administration, if he was going to fire somebody, i wouldn t put shinseki at the top of that list xs we talked about susan rice. we talked about kathleen sebeli sebelius. if he isn t going to fire them, why is he going to fire shinseki. don t take it from me. take it from bill burton. wasn t he he on both campaign snz i believe he s on both of president obama s campaigns. let s call him a very insider on the left. he today said the reason why obama is not firing shinseki is
like pelosi and boehner are reluctant to call for shinseki s firing. he s a decorated war veteran, has dedicated his life to the country, and i don t think they think his commitment to the vets is any less than theirs. i think that s why they are showing deference in this regard. that makes seps s sense to i do think he s the most dedicated to the veterans. i agreed with bob on both of those stories. amazing. shocking. better go to the doctor tomorrow. there s some vulnerable democrats up for senate reelection who are zapsing themselves, actually calling for shinseki s head. aloft politics going on. come up, dick cheney and mitt romney were not impressed with the president s foreign policy speech at west point. they re fire ud up about it, an you re going to hear from both of them next.