the other countries in the region have their territorial claims and the u.s. has broad interests there as well. so i think he did a nice job. let me slip into raw domestic politics. many people of the former bush administrations particularly george h.w. bush have expressed some concern about the republican field, the gaffes mccain has made, allegations against herman cain, rick perry s gaffes. do you share that level of concern that people like the former chief of staff have voiced publicly? yes. is what we re seeing right now, you see some people describing a clown show. that these people are not serious. does it hurt the republican party brand more broadly? i don t think so. ken is a great guy. he publicly endorsed barack obama last time. i m not sure he is the right guy to eval yacuate the republican field. these are early days. the united states has such an open system. there is no on switch off switch. anybody steps up and says things. a lot of these folks aren t
so it isn t, 2013 is not in stone that somehow we re going to it s a largely technical, scientific process. since i am neither i can t really comment on how long it would take to do properly. any of these republican presidential candidates ready to answer the 3:00 a.m. phone call? well, you know, i m out of politics, happy to be out of politics. but i am very proud of the leadership that president obama has shown. he s demonstrated clearly that he s ready, willing, and able to do whatever is necessary for our country. not confident in what you ve been hearing on the republican side? i haven t been honestly paying a loft attention. been busy. i m a lull busy, on a lot of airplanes. i think i ll just wait until it plays itself out. will you have any role in the campaign? no. by law i cannot. i think there are three of us in the cabinet, defense, treasury, and state that cannot participate in politics. so i think my biggest contribution is to do the best job i can fo
outside of 9-9-9 and he can t handle it. he is not able to parry and be flexible and talk about anything else. that is coming out. we re asking him and our colleagues are asking him serious questions and he can t answer them and then he is saying things like i m a leader not a reader. it s one of those things, a fun line but when you think about it do we want this person to be president? right. jennifer, it goes beyond just kind of what herman cain has said. it feels like the campaign while always somewhat chaotic the wheels are starting to come off. the best example, yesterday there was a big back and forth over the new hampshire union leader. very influential endorser in nape inner the state of new hampshire which as we know is an early primary state. he no showed for the interview. whether he canceled or they canceled we re not sure. joe mcquaid is the not he is not a wilting flower. let s say that. the publisher of the union leader. said he was not concerned about cain no
indonesia, for more on his interview with secretary of state hillary clinton. chuck? thank you, chris. for the second half of the interview i focus on some domestic political issues, including that controversial decision by the state department to delay approval or disapproval of that oil pipe line coming from canada to the gulf coast of the united states called keystone. that s where we begin. keystone, this decision, no politics involved at all in this delay and could we see the state department approval in the next three to six months? well, we have experts who are working on this and they reached a conclusion after having done all of this work and listened to all these different voices on both sides of the debate, that there had to be attention paid to a potential other routing and so that s what they are now about the business of doing.
right turn blog for the washington post. and we have a political reporter for usa today and jeff i want to start with you. at some point herman cain s great line which i always appreciated is america needs to get a sense of humor. which i actually agree with that platform. at some point the joking about everything he said, how do you say 9-9-9, how do you say 15 minutes in cuban? does this all start to catch up with him? are we reaching a tipping point? it s catching up with him now. i think we re seeing his numbers begin to decline. his 15 minutes is up in cuban or any other language and i think now is the time especially on the tail of him saying presidents don t need to know everything. yeah. it s just a dangerous place now for even gop members to be more concerned with entertainment than substance. and going into new hampshire and iowa they just can t afford to continue to ride this rollercoaster. we all know that politics is, you know, equal parts