Transcript: 'Face The Nation' (11-1-09): David Axelrod

Obama's adviser David Axelrod appeared on Face The Nation (11-1-09). Complete transcript. Excerpt below:

Mr. Axelrod, the president insisted that the Afghan people have a run-off election. He convinced the Afghan president, Karzai to do that after charges that the general election was a fraud. He agreed but he refused to replace the officials who were in charge of the last one, and now the other candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, has quit.

I guess I would ask you first, is this going to have any impact on the timing of the president’s decision on when to send those troops to Afghanistan?

AXELROD: Well, let me correct one thing that you said, Bob. What the president said was he wanted there to be an election that proceeded in the constitutional way. It did. In fact, many ballots were thrown out, a run-off was called.

Now Mr. Abdullah has exercised his rights as a candidate to withdraw. He has made a political decision to withdraw from this contest. And that doesn’t markedly change the situation.

SCHIEFFER: Well, why doesn’t it? I mean, the thing was a fraud. The man who was opposing him said, you know, he has got to replace these officials who allowed this to happen. They didn’t allow it to happen. The United States I guess went along with that. Why doesn’t it change the situation?

AXELROD: Well, I think, first of all, as I said, he made a political judgment. And I thought that his remarks today were rather moderate. He left open as to whether his supporters should participate in the process. And he is establishing himself as a leader of the opposition.

But every poll that had been taken there suggested that he was likely to be defeated anyway. So we are going to deal with the government that is there. And obviously there are issues we need to discuss, such as reducing the high level of corruption. These are issues we’ll take up with President Karzai. SCHIEFFER: Is there any word, Mr. Axelrod, on when we can expect the president to make this decision on whether or not he’s going to put more troops in there?

AXELROD: Well, Bob, I expect the president will make a decision within weeks. As you know, he has gone through a very rigorous process because the goal here is not just to make an arithmetic judgment about the number of troops, but to make sure that we have the right strategy to reach our goal.

And our goal is to protect the American people from al Qaeda. That’s why we’re in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda launched on us from Afghanistan. They’ve been driven to the mountains of Pakistan. We don’t want them to return to Afghanistan and make Afghanistan a base again. And that’s what this is about.

And the question is, what is the most effective strategy moving forward in the context of Pakistan, our troop strength around the world? These are the decisions the commander-in-chief has to make. And he is going through a methodical process, met with the Joint Chiefs on Friday had a good discussion with them.

SCHIEFFER: OK. But on timing, you’re saying in a matter of weeks. Let me ask you...

AXELROD: Yes, I...

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: ... Mr. Axelrod, last week when casualties in Afghanistan hit a new high, President Obama went to Dover Air Force Base to take part in a ceremony honoring the return of some of those who had been killed there. Well, this morning on FOX News, Rush Limbaugh had this to say about that.

RUSH LIMBAUGH, HOST, “THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW”: It was a photo op. It was a photo op precisely because he’s having big-time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation. He found one family that would allow photos to be taken. None of the others did.

And of course when you have a sycophantic media following you around, able to promote and amplify whatever you want, then he can create the impression that he has all of this great concern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: So what’s your reaction to that?

AXELROD: My reaction is that I think that the president of the United States went to Dover to represent the American people and pay his respects to the families who had made so much of a sacrifice, to those brave service people who made the ultimate sacrifice.

It was the appropriate thing to do. And I think most Americans appreciate that.