agree. we ve had now in the left few years since the national intelligence director has been set up, we ve had three different people who churned through that job as national intelligence director in just five years. i don t think we have a handle on this mammoth undertaking that the government has got under way. fran, you were homeland security adviser to president bush. how was the intelligence bureaucracy allowed to mushroom to this extent? well you, know, campbell, this goes back to the after the cold war there was a peace dividend and there were resources cut during the clinton administration to the intelligence community. and so 9/11 happens. you have this dire need for additional capability. what do you do? you don t have it in the government so you contract it. we then add to that the establishment of the director of national intelligence. now in 2006, the intelligence community undertook a review of the contractors looking and setting rules like you can t conduct essenti
to get this sort of under control. so i guess, did the bush administration or the obama administration for that matter, underestimate, i guess, the difficulty of making sure that all these different groups, all these different agencies talk to each other and communicate effectively? you know, for me, i ll tell you, campbell, this is an everyday job making sure that they are sharing information. and i think we struggled in the bush administration and we ve seen the obama administration also struggle with this job. it s important that when tomorrow jim clapper goes for his confirmation hearings, they talk about what are the authorities he needs to get this job done and run the intelligence community as a single integrated enterprise? so, david, how do you turn it around at this point? what do you do? you have to ask when mr. clapper goes up there tomorrow, where has congress been in overseeing this over the last several years. for this mammoth growth. but i do think a couple of t
the senate has used parliamentary maneuvers to block a vote denying millions of people who are out of work much-needed relief. these leaders in the senate who were advancing a misguided notion that emergency relief somehow discourages people from looking for a job should talk to these folks. that attitude, i think, reflects a lack of faith in the american people. it s time to stop holding workers laid off in this recession hostage to washington politics. it s time to do what s right. not for the next election, but for the middle class. now tomorrow, the senate takes the billup once again. democrats are hoping the newly seated replacement for the late robert byrd will give them the votes to break the gridlock. with the unemployment rate still hovering near double digits, jobs will be a key factor in the midterms. maybe the key factor. both sides are not wasting a minute pointing fingers as campaigns ramp up. joining me now to talk about all of this is cnn political analyst
just fine. people like him a lot more than they like their his policies, in fact. so putting him out there is not a big campbell, real quick, down in louisiana, you had labor secretary hilda solis in a room with some of the fishermen. they didn t know who she was. they thought she was some person from washington. this was a member of the president s cabinet. that goes to show you there s no name identification with this cabinet. you have to flood the zone. so if you are sitting in the commerce secretary out, he s talking to small business. labor secretary, she s talking to the average worker out there as well. you use all of your bodies. the president cannot say and do everything. there s a real danger that s coming about. 41 was a well liked man when he was defeated and had the lowest vote of people in history because they didn t think he could do the job. people like barack obama. they don t like his policies and they aren t sure he s competent as president. that s a tough pl
they ve done extraordinarily well most of the time. this is a work in progress. the dni hasn t fungesed as it should. this is an opportunity to get that better. and a fair point there. we don t talk about the successes. they aren t publicized and we don t sit and debate them on cable news. that s right. and campbell, the information sharing, i think fran would attest to this. has is much better today than it was. and we have been able to stop large conspiracies. we re having trouble with the loners. you know, the odd ball who doesn t communicate. that is very, very hard for intelligence to pick up. i thing intelligence services overall are doing a much better job at picking up the conspiracies and breaking them up very, very early. and that s a tliflts mammoth effort. now the mammoth effort needs to be pruned. it need to be brought under better control. i think dni, the national intelligence director needs far more budgetary authority. if you are really going to ask someone to be