MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
So, more jobs lost in December. Also this week, some key Democratic senators said they'll leave their jobs; they've decided not to run again. And of course, the review of intelligence failures leading up to the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner - all this gives us a lot to talk about with E. J. Dionne and David Brooks, our regular Friday political commentators. Welcome back to you both.
BLOCK: Great to be with you.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: And let's start with the attempted terrorist attack and the president's remarks yesterday on what that intelligence review revealed. David Brooks, there had been calls for the president to fire someone in the intelligence community. That didn't happen. Should it have, do you think?
BLOCK: No, it shouldn't have. There are a lot of post-op geniuses in the world. But, you know, war is a catalog of errors. If you're going to have a resilient country in the face of war, you've going to have to have loyalty up and down. And I thought the president showed some loyalty. You're not going to have to scapegoat people up and down. Earlier in the week, the president was a little blaming people below him, but by the end of the week he said, the buck stops here. He hung together as a cohesive team. And I think that's going to stand the country well in the long term. We need a cohesive team at the top where people know that occasionally they're going to be mistakes, but they're not going get shoved out to sea.
BLOCK: E.J., my ear was caught by one reform that the president talked about yesterday. He mentioned assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively. You would think that that would already be done, and that was surprising for me. What did you see here that was surprising in his remarks?
BLOCK: Well, in fact, I think that on the firing issue, the very problem we have here is that we have created a system that is so complicated that you wouldn't know whom he should fire if you wanted him to fire somebody. And I, too, was surprised by that recommendation, that hadn't been taken up before. But I really think, when you look at what happened since the Christmas incident, I think 50 percent of it was substantive - what can we learn from this, and how can we make messages pass through the government more quickly so people can act on them? Well, 50 percent of it was about messaging, that the president really, really, really wanted to show that he was on top of this. A lot of these meetings, the pictures were as important as what was said. And I think that - I agree with David: The buck stops with him was the most important thing. There was a period when he was veering toward looking like he was blaming everybody else. I think that was the most important moment of the last two weeks.
BLOCK: Well, speaking of messaging, since you mentioned that, let's listen to something else that President Obama said toward the end of his remarks, after his comment that "the buck stops with me." Let's listen.
P: We are at war. We are at war against al-Qaida, a far- reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.
BLOCK: Now E.J., the president has, in the past, taken heat from Republicans, including Dick Cheney, who claim that the president does not, in fact, consider this a war. This seems to be a direct response to those broadsides. Language is important.
BLOCK: Well, in fact, if you go back through his record, he has said over and over again, since the campaign, that we are at war with terrorism. What the administration has not wanted to use is sort of phrase like global war on terror, and to say that should govern every decision we make on foreign policy. There, there is a difference with the Republicans. But the Republicans are trying to take that difference and say that somehow, the president doesn't think this fight with the terrorists is a war. It's just wrong. And I guess he's going to have to say it over and over again until people believe him.
BLOCK: And David Brooks, do you see partisanship on this question dying down or heating up still?
BLOCK: Oh, dying down.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: No, we never have bipartisanship. No, it's going to the stay the same. I thought Dick Cheney was wrong. The idea that this act was semi-possible because of some policy change at the top - that's absurd. It wasn't because of that. Nonetheless, if Barack Obama says we're at war, maybe we should try the perpetrators of these acts as if they were warriors and not put them in civilian court, as the Detroit bomber and as KSM is being put in the civilian court.
BLOCK: Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
BLOCK: Khalid Sheik Mohammed. And I think that - so there's a little contradiction there, which I think he's going to have to eventually resolve.
BLOCK: Let's turn to the news this week that two longtime Democratic senators, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, have decided, as we said, not to run again. Looking ahead, E.J., to this November's elections, how bad a portent do you think this is? Will there be more of a Democratic exodus? And are we looking at huge Democratic losses?
BLOCK: Well, you know, when all of Washington is going one way, you want to bet on the other side. And, you know, if you heard the talk this week, it's as if the Democrats are going the way of the Whigs or the Federalists.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: And that's just wrong. I mean, of course, they've got troubles. So we just had - heard the unemployment report. The Democrats in the House are defending Republican seats that they've won in the last two elections, so some of those are going to be very difficult. But just look at what happened with the dropouts: Byron Dorgan dropping out helps the Republicans in North Dakota; that probably becomes a Republican seat. But Chris Dodd dropping out in Connecticut probably helps the Democrats. He had become very unpopular. Dick Blumenthal, the state attorney general who's going to run for the seat, is very popular. There are, in the Senate, seven vulnerable Democratic seats, about four to six vulnerable Republican seats. Yes, Republicans could win a lot of seats, but it also could be more complicated. Last point is, I think the big difference between this year and 1994 is that Democrats this time are worried and ready. I was talking to a Democratic pollster who was speaking in 1994 June to a group of Democratic governors. He said, look to your right and look to your left. A lot of the people you see won't be in this room next year. They didn't believe him. This time they believe him, and that puts the Democrats in a better position.
BLOCK: David Brooks, what do you think?
BLOCK: So, there's a whole series of rightward shift in the public, recoiling against what they see as the centralization of power in Washington. That does not mean Republicans are going to take over. The Republican Party is still in terrible shape. Nonetheless, there is a recoil against what's happening here. And I think the Republicans will pick up 25, 30 seats in the House. But you've got - let's think, there's at least a 10 or 15 percent chance of a real landslide.
BLOCK: That's where we'll have to leave it this week. Thanks to you both.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: David Brooks of the New York Times, and E. J. Dionne of The Washington Post.