Bipartisan Presidents Fete ‘Face The Nation’ 60th Birthday: VIDEO

Face The Nation, CBS’s Sunday Beltway show, celebrated its 60th anniversary today with separate interviews with President Obama and George W. Bush, and with videos from the show’s archives. That includes its first broadcast on Nov. 7, 1954, when a panel of journalists sparred with Sen. Joesph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) over the Senate’s efforts to censure him.

Fast-forwarding six decades, Obama told host Bob Schieffer in an interview that the current administration has suffered image-wise from solving problems at a speed that does not always keep up with the press cycle.

“When you solve the problem, sometimes the cameras have gone away,” Obama said.

The decision to double the size of the force in Iraq, Obama said “signals…a new phase in which Americans will not go into battle. What we learned from the previous engagement in Iraq is that our military is always the best, we can knock back any threat. But then, when we leave, that threat comes back.”

Bush insisted he had no regrets over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, except that ISIS has moved in.
“I put in the book that they need to be defeated and I hope they are,” he added. He was referring to his new book about the other President Bush, George H.W., which he described as a “bouquet to a guy I love.” W. said his wife’s style “is a little different from Mother’s – thankfully,” adding, ‘Sorry, Mom.” Asked whether brother Jeb will run for POTUS in 2016, he put the odds at “50-50.”

Schieffer said he did not get the sense Obama loved the back slapping, arm twisting, and gamesmanship of politics compared to predecessors such as Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, among others.

“I don’t sense that you have the same feeling they did,” Schieffer said. “Do you like politicians? Do you like politics?… Do you like this job?”

Obama responded with a rather pointed joke: “If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you had to have liked politics in order to get into this office.” Noting the difference between himself and his predecessor, Obama said, “I wasn’t born into politics, and wasn’t encouraged to go into politics. I got into politics because I believed I could make a difference and I would not be sitting [in the Oval Office] every day if I didn’t love politics.”

Watch video from the show here:

This article was printed from https://deadline.com/2014/11/obama-george-w-bush-celebrate-face-nation-60th-anniversary-1201279415/

ad