now. do we think we ll see any fruits born from this labor? no. you want a quick answer. he did this in 2009. it was conservatism. and 2011. he did it in 2011. he invited john baoehner to six different dinners. he didn t even come to the university of kentucky basketball team awards. they want to say that because that somehow gives him the upper ground. the reality is it doesn t matter what they do. president obama is evil to them and they will not work with him. it has been interesting to hear some suggest that this entire operation is charm offensive has been more for us folks in the media than the lawmakers on capitol hill. i m a little more optimistic now. i m more pessimistic about the
with. he was who ut a doubt a conservative nebraskan senator. i did not like his views on gays and lesbians. he has since changed his view. if the senate puts him in and confirms him over the department of defense, he will have to implement the end of don t ask, don t tell and make sure that the spouses and partners and significant others of our gay men and women in the military are treated with equality and with respect. just like we treat those who are not, who are heterosexual. so he will have to live up to that test. i suspect that he will do that. he has said that he will do that, and i trust that he will do it. if he doesn t, then i will be wrong. john? martin, look, president obama would not have nominated chuck hagel if chuck hagel was not in line with him on this particular issue and on the president s policy descriptions for the pentagon. so i am not worried about chuck hagel, about what he said 15 years ago, especially since he has since apologized and has
contributor and an opinion writer for the washington post and jimmy williams joins us from washington and is an msnbc contributor. john, when the president announced his pick for defense secretary, he made an important reference to how chuck hagel understands the notion of war. take a listen to this, john. chuck knows war is not an abstraction. he understands that sending young americans to fight and bleed in the dirt and mud, that s something we only do when it s absolutely necessary. it sounds like chuck hagel is going to be a million miles away from the idiocy that we heard throughout the republican primaries when people like rick santorum and mitt romney would try to outdo each other in terms of their desire to start a military conflict with countries like iran. right. it was almost as if they were basically warmongering their way through the republican primaries basically promising a third war for the united states when the people back home, democrats and
republicans, were completely tired of war. the president is clearly in that statement, what he s saying is very clear. chuck hagel is someone who knows war, who has gone to war, who knows the sacrifices, the costs of war, and who will not advise the president to go into a war without weighing the serious consequences of making that type ofjimmy, john is right, isn t he, isn t the republican objection to chuck hagel fundamentally that he maintains might might be described as a healthy skepticism about deploying american troops overseas. as hagel himself once said, there is no glory in war. don t forget mitt romney said that he liked having a strong military, we needed more ships and barack obama s reply to that was he was living in a 1950s
me to have him here in the white house, but my loss will be the nation s gain. joining us now is jonathan alter, a columnist for the bloomberg view, and in washington jared bernstein, a senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities. welcome to you both. john, congratulations on a very severe haircut which i must confess i approve of. hard to respond to that. well, don t. i have been reading a lot about mr. lieu, it seems he s either a socialist liberal according to republicans or a wall street apologist according to progressives. which is he? well, obviously he s neither one of them. what he is is a long-time, talented public servant who has been working mostly in government since he started with tip o neill, actually joe moakley, he knows the federal