these forces do not have a combat vision. if we were envisioning a combat operation, we probably would be contemplating more than 50 troops on the ground. white house press secretary josh earnest explaining a major shift in president obama s syria strategy. it s time for our sunday group, syndicated columnist george will, ron fournier, liz cheney, and former senator evan bayh. liz, start us off here. the president said two years ago definitively i m not going to put american forces on the ground in syria. two years later, here we are. it s no longer news that the president does something that contradicts statements he made previously. it happens on a regular basis. bottom line is we have a terrorist organization that established a caliphate in the heart of the middle east. it s a clear and direct threat to the united states of america. they have to be defeated and defeated by force. there s no diplomatic solution. there s no negotiation that s going to defeat isis. we have to take
evan bayh former united states senator and governor of indiana and fox news contributor brad blakeman former deputy assistant to president george w. bush. thank you for joining us on fox & friends. good morning. good morning. let s look at the field here. evan what s your take in terms of past experience what makes one better suited to really be the ceo leader of the united states? a senator, a governor? well, there s no one right path. you learn different things from different experiences. but, elisabeth, i had to pick one i d pick being governor. you re the ceo of a large enterprise. tens of thousands of employees. multimillion dollar budget. you ve got to work with your legislature to try and get things passed. you have to communicate to the public what you re doing. and most importantly of all you actually have to get things done. you don t just give speeches like you do on the floor of the senate or just cast votes. you actually have to put things into effect and make th
discipline of the marketplace. those are good things. but if you re looking for the whole package i think it s more likely to be a governor. american people success rate ran a poll here and they agreed with you, 40% said governors would make a better commander in chief right here. 23% said senators, and 23% said private sector contenders. so those bottom two neck and neck there. brad, what s your position here? who is better suited to lead the nation? i have to agree with senator bayh. i happen to believe that a governor has all the accoutrements that a president would have to have from day one. he has to deal with a legislature. he has to deal with a judiciary. guess what? he has to have a budget. and he even has a military, national guard, but he also has an infrastructure very akin to what the president will have to deal with on the national level and in addition, many of our states have larger budgets and larger organizations than many independent sovereign states of our allies
the number of abandoned buildings increased by over 2,700 while he was mayor of baltimore and a study by two harvard economists show that among 100 american cities baltimore ranks last when it comes to children and the possibility of their escaping poverty. so yes, he has a record that is favorable to the democratic left but no i don t think he has a record that will appeal to the country. we ll switch to senator bayh and the democratic perspective in the sense that o malley is a virtually unknown, that may be an insult to people who are virtually unknown. his polling numbers are almost nonexistent. the question is for him to become relevant he has to take on hillary clinton. he has to not be a sparring partner but fight to win. he does that means he doesn t get a cabinet post in her administration and he could hurt her standing in the democratic party, which way does he if? leland as you indicated in the open this is just a major challenge for martin o malley who is a good guy. i
clintons this is a little bit of a shift and also mentioned the bush family. he said in an interview that the crown shouldn t be passed down. obviously a reference to the clintons and also the bush family but how can he separate himself in this race? well i think that s right and i would agree with that but they have a saying you mentioned crown. in britain, the monarchy they have a saying about the heir and the spare. i would say that hillary clinton is the presumed heir for the democratic nomination and martin o malley is the spare. some people suggested he s really trying to raise his name recognition for a race in 2020. that may be true. but again i think he s a pure indiluted liberal and i think senator bayh is right. he can t go too far to the left because he ll run into bernie sanders. it s going to be interesting to see how he stakes out his position and if he is consistent with his record when hillary clinton doesn t really have a record at all, not as first lady