he is pressing implementation of obama care, the signature measure of his first term. and he s pushing climate change and education measure that is he didn t get to in his first term. right now, gun control measures and a strike on syria have risen out of events that he didn t foresee previously. so the president right now is being buffeted by events out of his control. i don t really think we ve seen much of him driving an agenda to begin with. so he really needs to start laying one out for him to be buffeted off of it, wolf. he s got to get over these hurdles in the short term the next few weeks. it could be a disaster if the government runs out of money or if the nation s debt ceiling is not increased. dana, how much of this is ideological, this whole battle between republicans and the president, these substantive issues? how much is it, i guess, personal in the sense they don t really like this president very much? reporter: well, i definitely think a lot of it is personal and
disagreements between the u.s. and russia in geneva are now airing out in public. one of those disagreements on who was actually behind the attack, the other on the use of force if syria fails to comply with the agreement. but on the assad regime s responsibility, the state department s position here is that not only does the u.n. report bolster washington s daysst case, but syria s and russia s agreement to remove all of syria s chemical weapons is in effect, wolf, admission enough of responsibility. on force, however, the disagreement is potentially more problematic because russia s made clear it will never support the use of force which means if syria refuses to comply, the u.s. has to go back to the u.n. for a vote or be willing to take military action largely on its own. the u.s. would lose that at the security council if russia would use its veto. the first deadline on the syria deal is coming up.
stuff up over a couple days to underscore a point or principle is not a strategy. panetta adding this, when the president of the united states draws a red line, the credibility of this country is dependent on him backing up his words. i don t know about you. i was pretty surprised to here both of these former defense secretaries raise questions about the way the president is handling syria. it is a very complicated issue going on for a long time. let s see where we were three weeks ago and what the ultimate policy goal was. with the president declared assad can never use chemical weapons again. our goal was to prevent him from doing so. where are we now? three weeks later we re at a situation we re not just preventing assad from using chemical weapons again, it is about actually being involved in a process of removing those chemical weapons from his possession. that is a policy outcome, much better than anyone thought was possible just a few weeks ago. that happened directly because
declare if they don t get what they want, 100% of what they want, they will allow the u.s. government to default for the first time. that would have tremendous consequences for the economy and potentially put us back, set us back many years in economic recovery and so things are different. in the past they haven t negotiated over the debt ceiling. they were adding it into other deals they were doing. it is important to understand the difference here. let s move onto syria. surprised to hear two former defense secretaries, both of whom work for president obama, a forum in southern methodist university in dallas and they were pretty blunt, critical of the president, and on syria, and gates saying among other things given the timelines that were involved, i would have advised him against going to congress. gates also, my bottom line is i believe that a blow, that to a blow of punch to ploe a bunch of
syria given one week to release complete accounts of all of its chemical weapons stockpiles, where they are, how much they have. here s the question, jim, will they meet that deadline? it s a good question. there s been some question, first of all, when that deadline actually is the agreement was announced last friday. i m told by the state department, their understanding is that the deadline would be this coming saturday. that said, they re not calling it a deadline but a time line. that s on purpose. the officials here don t want to be put in a position where if syria is a day late they would have to start to talk about repercussions or consequences for the syrian regime. i don t think you ll see anybody in the state department panicking if that deal if all this information, as you say, is not released on saturday. but they ll be looking for it. if by early next week, you still don t have all that information, then you re going to start to hear some anger from foggy bottom at t