during a time of war, during a time of economic difficulty for our country. if i m asked by my president to serve, i ll stand up and do it. so would you do it again? i would do it again, of course. what do we make of that? john, then mark, this idea you serve as personal representative of the president of the united states, it is not just the job. you are personal representative on all issues. that s why you take an ambassadorship. there was no war with china, by the way. he did it because he saw an opportunity and he sees one now. does that look opportunistic, to break with a guy you worked for? i don t think so. we will see his argument, his rationale, for what he disagrees with barack obama on. we are still in very early days. from the standpoint of primary voters and the nomination fight, for him to be able to say, look, i served the president. i served the country abroad, and to to i know you said they are not at war with china. but the military analogy is not a bad one.
and the other reason why i think the military analogy is valid, i sat down with admiral allen not long ago and he said that only in a military setting can you really have unity of command. you can have unity of effort or unity of purpose, the way things are set up now with the command center, and the federal officials here and bp there and kind of working together. but everything that we hear from the coast o about the success or failure of the containment efforts, about the oil that s now approaching the oil that s now there, suggests to me that a more unified command and a bigger, frankly, deployment of resources is necessary in order to do all that can be done to protect the environment. one of the things that i was asking earlier today is why they have not helped the coast guard out with the navy. i don t know what assets we have, but thad allen has said in the past that if you brought in more ships, you would have a
david boyce. teaming up, they were adversaries in front of the supreme court in the land mark bush v. gore case. wilson won that one. the judge s decision could come in weeks. we continue to await the president s at the same time from the white house about his meeting with bp executives which has been going on for several hours now. at the white house we will bring that to you live as soon as it begins. in his speech last night, president obama described fighting the oil spill in military terms as a battle to save the gulf. the washington post s eugene robinson continued that analogy today writing, there s no silver bullet that can defeat this blob-like enemy, but each drop of oil that gets removed from the gulf and its shores is a victory and each drop that doesn t is a defeat. it s that simple, this is war. msnbc political analyst gene robinson, pulitzer prize winning columnist with the washington post is here with us now. the military analogy really does take hold because t