welcome back to morning joe. steve schmidt is still with us, mike barnicle joins the table. in washington, former national security adviser, dr. zbigniew brzezinski, author of strategic vision. also in washington, chief foreign affairs correspondent andrea mitchell and of the washington post, david ignatius. the man who wrote the cover story for this week s new issue which, of course, focuses on what we re talking about today. dr. bezrzezinski, libya, cai and now yemen overnight blowing up. what should the white house response be this morning? i think the president responded the way a president should respond, being calm, determined and promising a promise that will be painful to the perpetrators. i think that s the way to do it. at the same time, there s a larger issue behind all of this. there is an issue in the region.
other historical implications. look, i think we have to make sure that they know that our aid will be impacted. our entire relationship. but to just say we re going to cut off aid and walk away, we can t. we can t, joe. agreed. four years ago you had a lot of conservative leaders whispering in your ear, yelling at you, telling you to be much more aggressive, much more forceful to do things that you refused to do. i suspect the same thing s happening to mitt romney right now in ways that only you could understand. i did understand you re not going to be critical of the republican nominee this morning for what he did, but is it safe to say that if john mccain were in that same situation, he may have waited a week or so before bringing this tragedy into the middle of a political campaign?
box with someone who has absolutely no discipline, and it just seemed like a turning point. is that too strong is that my world view seeping into the i think it s too strong. we re still in the middle of september, but it does bear repeating, richard haass, and it was september 15th, 2008, when john mccain stepped on it and bumbled around after lehman brothers and lost his lead and never regained it. impressions like this can stick. if mitt romney looks craven, if he looks desperate, like he s not ready for primetime, that impression can stick through the fall. yeah. the old political saw that people start saying paenpaying after labor day. things matter now. and also it s a reminder that ultimately we re voting not just for governor in chief but for commander in chief. so people are going to watch what is said and how it is said by the president and by governor romney. so this stuff now, it s all seen
so they can get these things under control. there are still these militias running around tripoli, benghazi, misrata and other places. it can work. they re wealthy. it s not money they need. it s the assistance we can provide technically speaking. joe. senator mccain, let me ask you about what s going on specifically in cairo. we get reports this morning that the police there were very slow to act in defending u.s. embassy personnel there as the mobs continue to gather and actually scaled the walls. of course, the muslim brotherhood has not spoken out against these heinous, cowardly attacks. and mohamed morsi who some had a good bit of hope for as the leader the new leader of egypt has also been very slow to condemn these attacks and stand up for the united states. what does this mean moving forward? it s very tough.
on which governor romney cannot win. foreign policy is not the american people, right or wrong, have decided that barack obama is a strong leader, that he s conducted foreign policy well for the country. that s why the mccain campaign all along said they wanted to keep the focus on the economy. so apart from everything else, what is governor romney doing elevating the issue of foreign policy yesterday when it takes him away from the issue on which he can win the election? it s nuts. and for republicans, mika, to circle the wagons when he s taking a bad situation and making it worse, they re only hurting the romney campaign by not speaking truth to power, by not trying to right the ship. they really are. you d think they would have learned the lessons over the bush era where they kept apologizing for massive spending or reckless foreign policy. and it led to nancy pelosi being speaker of the house and barack obama being president of the united states. it s not too late to turn thing