gene, how does obama play this on the campaign trail, though? he does seem reluctant to advertise himself as the war president, if you will. can he do a better job of that? how would he do that? i think he could talk about it more, and point out the successes he has had. you know, one reason he may be reluctant to do that is there s still a question mark to how the afghanistan escalation is going to work out and how the united states is going to strict extri itself? the president gets high marks on the handling of terrorism threats, 53% approve and 40% disapproved. ron, how do the republicans handle this politically? i don t think that they sound too well complaining about him getting osama bin laden or anything like that. how should they do this? i think this is one of the
we re talking about former tristate governors here with christie in the mix, too. i think giuliani would probably have more impact in a place like new hampshire. because ever his branding with 9/11. but i think it s uncertainly it s really uncertainly to whether or not either are going to run. the republican party is in a conservative place, and i m not sure why moderate politicians would have much appeal at this movement. we ll keep watching this, of course, as the debates and everything else proceed. thank you, charlie cook, and jonathan martin, appreciate you being here. thank you. coming up, george bush was good at dressing up and standing in front of the mission accomplished signs. president obama is good at accomplishing missions, so why isn t he making the most of being a war president? you re watching hardball, only on msnbc.
laden, he pulled the trigger on the somali pirates, he doubled down in afghanistan. what else did he do here? lots of stuff. he s been pretty good, it seems to me at sending troops overseas to do things. by traditional republican standards, how is obama doing as a war president? well, what he has done, i would say, ron, is neutralized the traditional republican attack on democrats that they are wusses who can t be trusted to defend america or project american military force the way republicans would. clearly obama is knolls hesitant to do so, and he s clearly rather skillful at doing so, because he s had these successes. i think that s the major political impact. ron, if george w. bush, or for that matter mitt romney had somehow nail osama bin laden orring flying those drone
leading from behind. this is a place where i like his caution. he s proving to be a very interesting kind of war president, actually. he s very careful and considered unthreatened by the noise around him. he goes in in a smart way and gets the result without having a bunch of american loss of life. not to rain on your drone-loving parade here, but the president has dramatically expanded the drone operations. i was in somalia as well as yemen. one of the aspects is we have to be individual lent in monitoring blow back. in pakistan, it s a major propaganda tool. taliban and other insurgent groups, a lot of civilians have
an economic gridlock, i think they face a direct correlation, how the economy is performing and the social issues that tie up the system. they jam the media and jam the bills from passing through and the republican party is obsessed with the social issues to the point where they don t focus on the actual issues that matter. i think what s interesting here, if rick perry gets in, they comes in as a social conservative and as the guy with the economic background. that s why i think he goes right to the top of the list, and i want to look at the national security issues we discussed earlier this morning and we ve seen essentially no one run in support of afghanistan, in support of libya, maybe rick santorum is the candidates. is there a different party. is john mccain realizing how much things have changed since 2008. it s interesting you say that, what did obama campaign on. anti-war. look what s happened. this is the war president, this is his war, baby.