Face the Nation transcripts September 15, 2013: Levin, Corker, Albright
(CBS News) Below is a transcript of "Face the Nation" on September 15, 2013, hosted by CBS News' Bob Schieffer. Guests include: Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and CBS News correspondents Margaret Brennan and Elizabeth Palmer. Plus, a panel with Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, Harvard University's David Gergen, USA Today's Susan Page, and Washington Post's Michael Gerson.
BOB SCHIEFFER: And good morning again. Well, the big news this weekend, the United States and the Russians have agreed on a deal to get chemical weapons out of Syrian hands. Under this agreement, the Syrians have one week to detail their entire chemical weapons stockpile; weapons inspectors will go to Syria in November with the goal of destroying all the weapons by the middle of next year. The agreement will be backed up by a U.N. resolution that will leave the option of using force against Syria if they fail to comply. Our CBS news State Department correspondent Margaret Brennan is traveling with Secretary of State Kerry. She joins us now from Tel Aviv. Well, Margaret, he is there to tell the Israelis what this agreement means and so on. How is this going?
MARGARET BRENNAN, CBS NEWS STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bob, Secretary Kerry is trying to reassure Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that this is not just an agreement based on words; it will be one based on results. The Israelis have sort of cautious optimism. That's how the press is covering it. The idea is that the message being sent to Damascus is going to be received really in Tehran. The idea that weapons and disarmament in Syria is sort of being seen as a model for how the international community might challenge Iran about its nuclear program is the focus, in many ways, of the debate here in Israel. Keep in mind, there is this diplomatic agreement but it was really hastily put together over two and a half days of around-the- clock negotiations in Geneva. So there are a lot of unanswered questions and technical details, including who is going to provide security for the weapons inspectors who are going in to an active war zone to try to break apart one of the largest chemical weapons stockpiles in the world and to do it in record time? Friday is going to be a real test for the Syrians to see if they truly do come clean and detail what U.S. and Russian intelligence agree they have in their chemical weapons arsenal. So there's a lot of pressure that Secretary Kerry and the U.S. are trying to keep on the Russians to follow through and get their client, Bashar al-Assad, to hand over these chemical weapons. That's why Secretary Kerry travels from Israel on to Paris to meet with the Saudi, the British, the French, and the Turkish foreign ministers to say, I know a week ago I was asking for your help in a U.S-led strike. Now I'm asking to you help support us at the United Nations. But the Obama administration says that threat of U.S-led strikes still stands. It's still on the table.
SCHIEFFER: All right, Margaret. And all this will then shift in the coming weeks to the United Nations once he gets back to this country. Margaret Brennan, thank you so much. We want to go now to Damascus, where CBS news correspondent Elizabeth Palmer has been reporting for almost three weeks now, the only American television reporter there. Liz, what has been the reaction there to all these developments?
ELIZABETH PALMER, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: the remarkable thing is that there's been no reaction, Bob, no Syrian official has commented. The Syrian state-controlled news has covered the story as fact, giving all the credit for the diplomatic initiative to the Russians, but nobody has spoken up beyond that. The Russians, of course, don't want anything coming out of here at this stage that would complicate the deal. On the opposition side, no comment equally from opposition politicians, although the military command has spoken up, General Salim Idris making it very clear he was very disappointed. He said this has dealt a blow to our hopes of overthrowing President Assad. I have to say the reaction here, there's a lot of real skepticism that -- about Assad, because of his record, that he might just try to use this as some sort of a delaying tactic, that he might be planning something else behind the scenes. What can you tell us about that?
PALMER: Well, even Syrians say that. One opposition politician said to me other day, "Well, they've been lying to us for many years, and there's no reason to think this they're going to stop now." However, there's a lot riding on this, and don't forget, that the Russians really have the whip hand here. If they have said they're going to do it, they may be forcing a reluctant Syrian government and bureaucracy to get on with it, and there could be a quid pro quo in the background. Some of the Syrian officials will say to us off the record there are real rumblings that the Russians have promised Assad a new anti- aircraft system as a compensation for the fact that he's going to be losing his chemical weapons stock. So we shouldn't be surprised if that emerges sometime in the weeks to come.
SCHIEFFER: All right, Elizabeth palmer. Well, thank you very much, Liz, and be very careful. And we go now to two key voices on Syria in the United States Senate, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin. He's in Detroit this morning. The top Republican on the foreign relations will committee, Bob corker is in Chattanooga. I just want to get the reaction from both of you First. Senator Levin, you just heard Liz palmer say it may be that in order to force Assad to give up these weapons, the Russians are maybe going to give him a whole bunch of conventional weapons -- fancy new anti-aircraft systems. So is this a good thing that's happening here? How do you assess this?
LEVIN: Well, this represents significant progress. It would not have been achieved-- again, assuming it's fully implemented which is the key-- but assuming that it is fully implemented, this progress would not have been achieved without the threat of the use of a military strike by President Obama. It's no coincidence that after that threat was achieved and made, and after our Foreign Relations Committee on a bipartisan basis voted to authorize the use of force, that Russia finally decided that it would put some pressure on Syria and get involved. So this would not have happened and, without that threat -- and it will not be fully implemented, I'm afraid, without a continuing threat, and that's why it is so important that that continuing threat be very, very clearly available and the president did make that clear last night in his statement.
SCHIEFFER: Well, the Secretary of State John Kerry in Tel Aviv this morning spent a good part of a news conference there saying that the use of force, the threat of force is still on the table. Senator Corker, what's your first reaction to all this?
CORKER: Well, look, as Carl just said, in our committee, we passed that on a bipartisan basis, the authorization for the use of force, and it was done to get us to a diplomatic place. I think all of us have wanted a diplomatic solution, and know that's the only way to solve this. On the other hand, I think all of us have to approach this with a healthy and strong degree of skepticism. The fact is that's it's not only what is said in these agreements but what is not said or what is said privately. So I think we need to move through this with skepticism. There's no question that Russia has retained its ability to veto under Chapter 7. So the threat of force from a multilateral standpoint is still very much in Russian hands. That's the most important element is the veto piece. So in many ways our credibility in the region and certainly relative to the chemical warfare issue is very much driven by Russia, which has its hands firmly on the steering wheel. So I think Kerry went over there candidly with a weak hand. And I talked with him at length yesterday. I do appreciate what he's been able to accomplish from the standpoint of a proposal. Again, this is not a U.N. resolution yet. With a weak hand, but I think we should be skeptical until we see how this unfolds.
SCHIEFFER: Well, let me ask both of you, what do you think the first test here is going to be on whether or not Assad is really serious about going along with this? Senator Levin, I would guess it might come -- he has a week now to come up with a detailed list of what weapons they have there. Would you see that as the next big thing to happen here?
LEVIN: Yes, very much so. That is an amazingly short timetable, but the pressure of Russia is key here. Russia can force Assad to do what Russia wants Assad to do. It is the weapons supplier for Assad. It has been deeply involved in one of the very few countries that have supported Assad. Putin made an outrageous statement the other day, trying to cover up Russia's support for Assad weapons systems by saying all the evidence points to the use of chemicals, that they were used by opposition rather than by Assad. As a matter of fact, that is a lie. All the evidence points to Assad using it. Russia has tried their very hardest -- their really number one or number two goal is to force us to give up the option of using force if Assad does not comply. Russia has failed in that goal. We retain the option of using force if there's not full compliance.
SCHIEFFER: Senator Corker, we have been trying to arm the rebels, the opponents of Assad, or at least that's what we have said. We have seen very little evidence that any of that aid has gotten to Syria at this point. What will be the impact of this -- these developments over the weekend on those efforts? And do we now have to do more than we were doing on -- on trying to reinforce and help the opponents?
CORKER: Look, I was -- Bob, I was just in the region a few weeks ago and could not have been more dismayed at our lack of support for the opposition. I know Carl was there maybe a week before I was and sensed the same thing. So one of the things that I pressed yesterday with Secretary Kerry, is this going to in any way effect our support of the opposition? And we certainly have not done what we need to do. It's hurt our -- it has hurt our credibility, certainly, on the ground. I think the opposition views this agreement as a setback. But the way to counter that, I think, is to much more strongly equip and train the opposition there on the ground. We have been remiss. We've announced that we're doing something, but what we've done certainly has not been at the pace that it should be.
SCHIEFFER: What about that, Senator Levin?
LEVIN: I agree with that, but Syria has tried very hard and will continue to try to make it a condition of its compliance with this agreement between Russia and the United States that the United States not support the opposition. We are not going to agree to that. We have supported the opposition, I agree, not sufficiently. I have always called for increasing the military pressure on Assad by supporting the opposition. And I think we should do that and we now, I think, have some indication from the administration recently that there will be ways found to provide greater military support, hopefully including anti-tank weapons for the opposition. We've recognized them as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. And I think we should provide greater military support or at least help others facilitate provision of additional military support.
SCHIEFFER: Well, how do we know, Senator Corker, which of these opposition forces we need to support? We know there's Al Qaida there in very large numbers, if the latest estimates are correct.
CORKER: Yeah, we've spent a lot of time -- I know General Petraeus was spending time while he was there, trying to understand which of these groups we should support and which not. I think it's been overstated from the standpoint of how much of a role Al Qaida is playing and some of the foreign fighters are playing there. There's a whole group of folks, Bob, not unlike you or Carl or myself where our neighborhoods have been infiltrated with a regime who have risen up and want to protect their villages, want to see a pluralistic government take place there. Those are the folks that we need to be supporting. We're coalescing around Idris, who, obviously, is disappointed with the results of these talks, but we've coalesced around him. We've got to certainly support them in a much stronger way. That's the second war that so many of us have talked about, and that is, after Assad, who is going to control the country? So, look, I think we know more than we let on publicly about which groups to support and which not. We need to do much more to help them. Our intelligence agencies, I think, have a very good handle on who to support and who not to support. And there's going to be mistakes. We understand some people are going to get arms that should not be getting arms. But we still should be doing everything we can to support the free Syrian opposition.
SCHIEFFER: Senator Levin, what kind of a grade would you give the president on the way he's handled this?
LEVIN: I give him a very good grade because he's taken a very difficult step, because he has always been very reluctant to use force. He believes force should be the last option, and I happen to agree with that. But he has decided, despite a lack of great public support here, that the -- we must, we must respond to the use of chemicals in this way by the Syrian regime or else we will ultimately be threatened and our troops will ultimately be threatened if the use of chemicals become just a routine weapon. And so he has taken a stand which I believe is the right stand. It's a courageous stand because, even though the rest of the world says there must be a response, when it comes to actually acting to act against Assad for that response, then the rest of the world is, kind of, pulling up short. But the president was clear. He has decided we are going to strike against that chemical system of -- of Syria, and I give him credit for doing that.
SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, we have to stop there. Thanks to both of you. And we'll be back in one minute with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Stay with us.
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SCHIEFFER: Joining us now, the former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who served during the Clinton administration. Madam Secretary, let me just ask you flat-out, do you trust Putin?
ALBRIGHT: No. But he is the leader of the Russians, who play -- have played and continue to play an important role. And I don't think we have to trust him. I think we have to be able to work with him on issues of common interest. And I think that that's where we are now.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think the Russians are legitimately serious about getting the Syrians to give up their weapons, their chemical weapons?
ALBRIGHT: I think that they do see the danger of chemical weapons generally. I mean, they have made that very clear. They have had their own problems. They are also afraid of extremists and extremists getting control over weapons for their own reasons. I think they also have a reason for wanting stability in the Middle East. And they also, I think, want to get reinvolved in the Middle East and show their influence.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think the president should still pursue a vote in Congress for permission to take military action if he thinks it's necessary?
ALBRIGHT: I think the president needs to keep the use of force on the table because it is my belief that the threat of the use of force is what got us to where we are. I have always been a great believer in the combination of force and diplomacy. So I think it needs to be out there. I -- I think one has to see where Congress is. Congress has an awful lot of stuff on their table that they have to deal with.
SCHIEFFER: A lot of people, Republicans, Democrats, hawks, doves -- and this thing seems to go across a lot of lines -- believe or say that the president has been sending mixed messages about Syria. How do you think he's handled this?
ALBRIGHT: I think that this has been an extremely difficult issue. There is no question about it. I think the president has, obviously, a history of his own in terms of how he has viewed American involvement, the war in Iraq. But these are difficult issues in terms of saying why should we care if people in some other country are being murdered by each other? You know, why should we care about that? What does it have to do with American national security, and then the issue about what our value system, and that we care about human life and we have a very different approach to that than many other people. And I think he has tried to explain it. I think the problem, Bob, is that this is a very fast-changing situation. I think that the people have not been as interested in learning about what this is all about because they are more and more interested in what's going on at home.
SCHIEFFER: What is our long-range goal? What is the strategy here right now? Obviously, we'd like to get the fighting stopped. But, beyond that, is it to get rid of Assad? What exactly would we hope, at the end of the day, to accomplish here?
ALBRIGHT: I believe that what we're trying to do is to, first of all, stop the killing, clearly get some control over the chemical weapons issue because that is a whole other level of horror, and then, I think, the capability of trying to get some kind of a transitional government there. And from the perspective of the United States, it would be without Assad, but not necessarily getting rid of everybody that had anything to do with the regime.
SCHIEFFER: Well, do you -- does it concern you that we could wind up with something worse?
ALBRIGHT: It's very hard for me to believe that there could be something worse, frankly. I think that it's going to be a while, I think, before we find stability there. But to have to deal with a dictator who, first of all, lies. Second, who finds it appropriate to use chemical weapons against his own people, and has some kind of delusional aspect of what is going on in that country, so I do-- I think things are pretty bad. So I do think that we're not exactly sure of the things that might come out. But my sense is if we do nothing, if we are not watchful, if we aren't trying to figure out this chemical issue, trying to work out some political solution, it can -- it will only get worse if we don't do anything. But that is my own view. And I think that -- it's not going to be perfect for a very long time. One of the problems, Bob, is Americans always want a quick solution -- done it, checked off the box. This is going to take a while. I think we're watching changes in that region that are historic, and, you know, very, very -- they're going to take a long time, and we need be helpful. It's not totally our story. It's their story. But I don't think things could be worse.
SCHIEFFER: Madam Secretary, thank you so much.
ALBRIGHT: Great to be with you, Bob.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCHIEFFER: We talked to Madeleine Albright Friday. And I'll be back in a moment with some personal thoughts.
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SCHIEFFER: Depending on who you ask, there are many roads to heaven, but what we've been seeing this weekend underlines there may be even more routes to getting rid of Syria's chemical weapons. And the path we're on is more like a wilderness trail than a superhighway. Think about it. The president draws a red line and tells Syria not to use chemical weapons or we'll unleash our military might. Our most loyal ally, Great Britain, then pulls the rug out from under the president by saying, sorry, but you're on your own by this one. Hoping to show the American people are at least behind him, he then asks congress to endorse his idea, but the smoke signals from Capitol Hill say, sorry, no way. Even so, the secretary of state says the only thing Syria can do to avoid an attack is to turn their chemical weapons over to the U.N. But that is hardly out of his mouth, when the State Department says he really doesn't mean it. Apparently, the Russian foreign minister didn't hear that part, because he seized on Kerry's words. Suddenly Russia's back in the game. Assad agreed to Kerry's words, and the Russians say they were actual actually their idea in the first place. But in any case they become the framework for Syria to give up those weapons. Critics may say better to be lucky than skilled, but as we say on the golf course, there is no pictures of how you did it on the scorecard. The only thing you put on the scorecard is the score. If this works -- and we have to hope it does -- that will be the only things that matters. Back in a minute.
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SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now, but for most of you, we'll be right back with a lot "Face the Nation." Stay with us.
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SCHIEFFER: Well, welcome back to "Face the Nation." And we begin with CBS News senior correspondent John Miller who has quite an interview tonight on "60 Minutes" with Mike Morell, the recently retired number two official at the CIA. John, what strikes me in your interview is just how complex and delicate the CIA sees this effort to arm the opposition to Assad. Morell says that we have to give the rebels enough support to force Assad to the negotiating table, but not enough to destroy Syria's army.
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MIKE MORELL, (RET.) CIA: The Syrian military and the institutions of the Syrian security services to defect al Qaeda when this is done. And every day that goes by, every day that goes by, those institutions are eroded.
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SCHIEFFER: So, John, here's what strikes me this is a war. Things are changing by the minute. Is it really realistic to think that you can calibrate the level of support that precisely?
JOHN MILLER, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, that is the question. You've heard about precision strikes with missiles, but how do you do precision strikes with whom you give either money or arms to? And that's just because it wasn't complicated enough, Bob? In Morell's view, there are four wars going on there. There is the war of the people against the dictator. There is the war of Sunnis versus Shias. There's the war of the proxy war in the shadows of the Saudis versus the Iranians for dominance in the region. So the idea of providing arms or support to one side and knowing that you've got the right side, or in the cases that weapons are often traded, they won't end up in the wrong place. You know, he who doesn't study history is doomed to repeat it. We were chasing stinger missiles we gave to the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Russians for years after that was over. And there's 20,000 of those floating around since the fall of the Soviet Union from their side. So it is complicated. SCHIEFFER: Well, he clearly laid out why the CIA thinks this is so important for the Syrian army to be able to crush those forces. Listen to this.
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MORELL: Those areas could eventually become the kind of safe haven that could pose a significant threat to us. They don't right now, they pose only a regional threat. But, you know, the places that I'm worried about in terms of the ultimately becoming a safe haven that could pose the kind of threat that al Qaeda posed to us pre-9/11 is Syria, number one, and number two, Afghanistan if the Taliban were to get a grip on that country again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILLER: So here is a situation where, you know, the question to elicit that answer was basically what keeps you up at night? And the idea that we could have fought in Afghanistan for 12 years with all of those dollars and all of that bloodshed, only to find -- that was to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, and that they reemerge in Syria and maybe Afghanistan again is a long way. Throw in the additional factor of chemical weapons, and, you know, Mike Morell and others believe that Assad will never give up his chemical weapons. They'll give some back, they'll hide some, and if al Qaeda takes over, they could end up with that too.
SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, thank you so much, John. And a reminder, you can see all of John's interview tonight on "60 Minutes." And joining us now to talk about that and all of the rest of it, Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Harvard University's David Gergen, Susan Page, who is the Washington bureau chief for USA Today, and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson. Let me just talk just a little bit first about what you just saw. I mean, I find this hard to kind of get my head around, my arms around this idea that you can calibrate aid so precisely that you can, you know, hurt Assad but not destroy the institutions around him -- David?
DAVID GERGEN, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Well, all of us like to believe in fairy tales. I would like to think you can do it, and of course we have the best intelligence agency working out there. I think they're doing a superb job. But I think the larger point here is, Bob, that we have some sort of moral obligation to the rebels. It was our policy, after all, to remove Assad, and we told the rebels we would arm them. We've been very slow on that. And now they feel betrayed by this agreement.
MICHAEL GERSON, WASHINGTON POST: I think it's worth pointing out that inaction has consequences in a situation like this, too. I was in Jordan just recently and talked to refugees. They described a situation where for a year, if you wanted to fight the regime, who did you go to that had the best weapons and the best ammunition? Jihadists did in that circumstance. So there's a competition going on within Syria, and the U.S. has not been very effective in engaging that competition.
SUSAN PAGE, USA TODAY: But it's clear from the president's interview this morning on ABC that his goal is not to have the rebels succeed. His goal is to control chemical weapons and to make sure that the rebels aren't wiped out. You know, ideally, I guess we try to have some kind of resolution to the civil war. You asked Madeleine Albright if there was a possibility that what replaced Assad would be worse than Assad, she said no. A lot of officials, strategists in the U.S. government disagree with that. They think it is possible that if you topple Assad, you don't have control who takes over for him and it could be a worse situation for the United States strategic interests.
SCHIEFFER: So Peggy, what does this agreement that the secretary of state and the Russian foreign minister come up with? How does that impact all of this? Do you think this is a good thing?
PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, I gotta tell you, I think your question about how to help is the essential one. I think the most interesting thing that has happened in the past few weeks is that the American people looked at this potential action, looked to some degree at what was going on in Syria, and thought Assad is bad. And the people who are up against him seem bad. And the president is saying we're going to do a strike. We're not going to knock over the bad guy, and we are not going to hurt or help too much the other bad guys. And it all seemed like a big-- a big confusion, the kind of confusion America gets in now and then and nothing good happens from the moment they jump in. On the agreement itself, oh, my goodness. I think-- I think everybody's relieved that the U.S. right now is not striking Syria. I think there's just a lot of widespread relief on that. We will see how the agreement that has avoided that, least temporarily, works out. Doesn't look to me like anything but a time saver and ultimately an agreement that probably keeps Mr. Assad in power, lets a lot of time goes by, lets the subject shift, lets it all disappear into past.
SCHIEFFER: You know what I'm glad about? I'm glad that after the president said we're going to do something, that he then would -- might have to go back to the world and say, "oh, I'm sorry, I promised you I was going to do this, but I can't do it because the congress won't let me do it." I think that is the worst possible place of all. Maybe he should have drawn the red line, maybe she shouldn't. But he did, and after that to have the president of the United States not be able to follow through, I think is the-- would put this country in an extremely dangerous place.
GERGEN: I couldn't agree more with that. And I think all of us around the table devoutly hope that a peaceful resolution comes about here, that this all works. And if it does, President Obama and his team do deserve a lot of credit. But I think there's also -- I'm not among the optimists. I'm among the pessimists. I think we are -- this agreement depends upon the good faith of the two lyingest SOBs on the face of the planet. You know, in the world view, Assad is a butcher and Putin is a thug. And we're going to depend on their good faith? Beyond that, there's a question of how toothless this deal is. There is nothing here that promises if he violates -- there's a good chance he will hide his stuff -- that force will follow. So, let's go back to it Bob, if Senator Levin truly believes that the threat of force is what's going to make this drive this, then it's time for the president to go back to the congress and get an authorization now for the use of force if this fails. That would put some real teeth into this.
PAGE: But I think the biggest lesson we've learned from this whole episode is the incredible reluctance of Americans to get engaged in more military action. I mean this was a surprise that -- the intensity of the opposition in congress and among the American public was a surprise to the White House, a surprise to the leadership both Democratic and Republican on the Hill. And we saw this new coalition emerge of Liberals in the Democratic Party and Libertarian Republicans who are -- who were going to succeed in blocking what both the president and their own leadership told them they ought to do.
That is an error we're going to be living with I think for some time.
NOONAN: But it was Americans on the ground even more than liberal left Democrats, or libertarian Republicans. It was Americans on the ground who started emailing and calling their congressmen with things like -- congressmen were saying I got 632 calls, 612 were against action. That tells you something. That tells you something very big is bubbling up in America. Interestingly, it used to be Washington used to be the moderating force on American impulses. In this case, I think rather historically, America was the moderating force on Washington's impulses looking for action. Very interesting.
GERSON: Yes, but this is what diplomacy look likes from a position of weakness. The Russians gave a lifeline. The president was not on the verge of action. He was on the verge of historic humiliation. They gave him a lifeline, and it's come with Russian rules. Their proxy is more secure in power. He can go on committing atrocities without gassing people because he's perfectly capable of doing that, and Russia gains tremendous influence in the region. So I don't think anyone can view this -- this is avoiding disaster. It's not a victory in that region. There's a serious regional challenge going on and an anti-western alliance that the United States is not very effectively opposing right now. And you can't oppose it just by focusing on chemical weapons. There are other issues at stake here.
SCHIEFFER: David?
GERGEN: I was going to say there is -- I'm pessimistic about this agreement for the obvious reasons I have stated. I do think there is an argument on the other side which one has to listen to at least, and that is we have -- by not going in with force, we are going to get an agreement that will eliminate at least 50 percent or so of his chemical weapons, that he's not going to use chemical weapons again because the Russians won't let him -- they've got their credibility on the line -- that the -- over time, his position will be weakened, and this strengthens us in other parts of the Middle East. That's the argument. I don't buy it, but I just think we should -- we'd be aware that there is an argument out there.
SCHIEFFER: Let me -- let's take a quick break here because we're going to have a lot more to talk about this. We'll be back in just a second.
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SCHIEFFER: And we're back, and we're talking about the only story to really talk about in Washington this Sunday, and that is this agreement that the Russians and the American secretary of state have put together. You know, somebody told me, Michael, that they're talking about doing in a matter of weeks what, from a practical standpoint, could take years. I mean, the United States is still trying to destroy the chemical weapons that it had at one point. This is just not an easy thing technically to do.
GERSON: I think it's very -- it's likely to be an uncertain, long-term outcome here. We're not going to get something decisive, as Secretary of State Albright said, in this case. I think that it does take the use of American force pretty much off the table. Americans were not willing to endorse the use of force when it was the president created a crisis situation with people being gassed on August 21. I don't think that they're going to undertake force because there's an indecisive inspection process in a difficult war zone. So I think -- I think it's in the president's interest to assert that the use of force is still on the table, but I think it's very unlikely now.
PAGE: I think he's set a -- he's now set a precedent for himself, that there's a value in going to Congress, which Congress didn't expect in this case because it's been so long since a president went to Congress for authorization. He's set a standard for himself. Here's one question: has he set a standard that future presidents will need to abide by? Will future presidents now -- will there be an expectation that they will go to Congress in a situation like this and ask for authorization before moving ahead?
NOONAN: We're lucky we avoided the point where Congress voted, and if it had voted the idea down. The president either would have done it without their authorization or not done it in accordance with their views. That had implications for the American presidency down the road. I'm very grateful we didn't get to that point. As for a precedent, I don't think this sets a precedent with regard to Congress. The precedent it sets is probably with regard to other things, like the Mideast.
GERGEN: I think there's a precedent here for the president, this president, not necessarily for his successors. I don't think he can now take action against Iran without going to Congress. And that's a very important distinction that the Iranians will surely notice. But I want to go back to this, Michael. The -- the way to put teeth back in this is have the Democrats and the Republicans who are saying this is such a good deal but we need to keep force on the table to put their money where their mouth is and vote now to authorize force. That would send a signal to Assad that the United States is united on this and it's not simply just a rhetorical ploy...
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GERGEN: ... that we're keeping force on the table.
GERSON: I'd love to see that happen, particularly...
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GERSON: Right, I'd like to see that particularly in relation to Iran. Right now, they see a conflicted superpower that was unwilling to make a decision to take force.
GERGEN: Right.
GERSON: I think the Congress could help with that. But I think the president, because of this, if things stay the way they are, is entering a danger zone. If you look at Kennedy and Khrushchev in 1961, where Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure and thought he was weak at that summit in Vienna. You had almost immediately the construction of the Berlin wall and sending missiles to Cuba. People watch these kind of crises. If they sense weakness, whether it's Iran, whether it's Russia, whether it's North Korea, you could see serious repercussions here. And it's one reason that Congress should come and make credible the threat of the use of force.
SCHIEFFER: Why is it in Russia's interest for Syria not to have chemical weapons? Is it in their interest for Syria not to have chemical weapons? Is that why they're in this?
PAGE: I -- I think that's right. I think they don't want the attention. You know, Assad is their client, right? This has been bad for Assad. It's focused the world's attention on him. It's united; it's fomented opposition to his regime generally. You know, if -- if they remove the threat of chemical weapons, I think the rest of the world is going to say there's a terrible civil war going on there; it's really terrible for the Syrian people; we're not going to do very much about it.
GERGEN: There's -- Bob, the foreign policy experts say in part Russia is concerned about chemical weapons getting in the wrong hands and being used against them and their own people back home. But the larger issue here, as they say, is that Russia's strongest interest is to keep Assad in power. That gives them a big voice in the Middle East. He is giving up not very much, his chemical weapons capacity, and in turn they're going to cut these side deals with him to arm him more fully. And now the international community, in order to enforce this deal, has to work through Assad. You know, they've -- they have legitimatized him as the place you go to get cooperation. And that's why it's going to be hard to arm the rebels. If we start arming the rebels and Assad says, well, if you're going to arm the other side, I'm not going to help you with the weapons. And you're bogged down in a group of arguments.
GERSON: Assad used chemical weapons and improved his job security. That's not a particularly good message to other dictators.
NOONAN: That is the message that will be out there, too.
SCHIEFFER: Well, and, you know, going back to Peggy's point that the people really rose up and let -- and let their elected officials know that they really wanted no part of that. And that is the way this country operates, and that is a good thing. But, you know, I think back to the -- the strong isolationism that gripped this country before World War II, and there are people that just wanted America to withdraw from the world, and they just, kind of, looked the other way while Hitler was doing what he was doing. That turned out not -- not to be such a good idea, when you come right down to it. And of course America did become involved, and had we not, I think the world would have, you know, been on the verge of a new dark age. So does Congress also have an obligation sometimes to educate its constituents when they don't necessarily agree? I remember asking several congressmen along the way here at this table, can you ever see an issue where it's -- you think it's so important that you would go against 90 percent of the people in your district?
GERGEN: As I recall, when the Marshall Plan was first proposed in the Truman administration, the Gallup poll found that there was only 17 percent support for it. And there was a bipartisan coalition that went to work to turn that around. And they did.
NOONAN: It seems like another era, though, doesn't it?
GERGEN: It does.
PAGE: Both parties working together to educate the American people to change their point of view, not just to poll and figure out how to appeal to them. It sounds -- it sounds pretty old-fashioned.
GERSON: It's historically depressing, a little bit. Because Franklin Roosevelt was one of the great communicators and most ruthless communicators in American history. He did not persuade the American people to enter World War II. It was Pearl Harbor that persuaded them to enter.
GERGEN: Yeah.
PAGE (?): Yeah.
GERSON: It was, in fact, deeply unpopular in 1940 to send U.S. troops abroad. And that does mean that sometimes the president and the Congress, to be credible in the world, in important regions like the Middle East, may have to defy their own constituents and say there are important national interests here and that, you know, need to be reinforced.
NOONAN: Yeah, but this was also a story about specifics. The American people were looking at the Mideast and thinking "We're snake- bit." They're looking at Iraq and Afghanistan. They are looking at Syria and thinking, "If we strike, we could become enmeshed in a war. Is this man, the president, a war president?" They're worried about their culture, their infrastructure, their economy. Their children don't have jobs, which means they won't develop the human habits of constructive lives. Americans got -- I think looked at this Syria case very specifically and voted no.
PAGE: Because I think, most of all, they thought "We just got out of two wars, two long wars." We never thought Iraq and Afghanistan would go on as long and cost as much as it did. And I think that is the shadow that hangs over Syria.
SCHIEFFER: Well, it's just exactly the shadow that hung over the United States in the days before World War II. We had just come out of World War I. Nobody was quite sure why we had gone there or -- and we weren't quite sure what the results were.
NOONAN: But we also have got the shadow of Libya. You know what I mean?
(LAUGHTER)
We tried to do something big there and it didn't work out, so...
SCHIEFFER: What happens now? I mean, let's say what will be the impact of all this on what's ahead for the president? Because there are some other things coming up this fall in Washington. Among other things, the country is broke. We've got to figure out something about our debt crisis. I guess immigration is just something that was a good idea, but I have -- my sense of it is that's just gone away; that will never happen now, immigration reform of any kind. Susan?
PAGE: And health care comes up in two weeks. The heart of the Affordable Care Act goes into effect, when these exchanges open for business. You know, we have a new -- tomorrow we'll be publishing a new USA Today/Pew Research Center poll on this. It shows that, while Republicans have failed to repeal Obamacare, they made it really hard for it to succeed. Opposition to the law is as high as it's ever been. For the first time in the history of this poll, Republicans are preferred when it comes to dealing with health care. And only -- only half of Americans understand that there are going to be exchanges available, subsidies for lower-income Americans. You talked about an education effort needed on an issue like Syria. There's a big education effort need ahead of...
SCHIEFFER: Do you think anything is going to come together here, Michael?
GERSON: Well, I think this is a second term on the edge right now, an uphill battle on both budget issues. Their main positive issues, like gun control or climate change, are off the map. Health care implementation is going to be a huge issue in America and could have some real rocky road ahead. And the president, right now, as far as his approval ratings, is about where George W. Bush was in his second term. And there are warning signs for the midterm election. There are warning signs for his broader agenda. So I think it's a serious moment for the president.
GERGEN: But the...
SCHIEFFER: Twenty seconds.
GERGEN: What could rescue him is the Republicans could overplay their hand...
(CROSSTALK)
GERGEN: Yeah, and they could try to shut down the government or have us go into default over Obamacare. That would help him a lot.
SCHIEFFER: All right. We have to stop there. Thanks to all of you. We'll be back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCHIEFFER: Well, that rounds it up for us today. We hope you'll tune into "CBS This Morning" tomorrow morning for the very latest on the Syrian crisis. As for us, we'll be right here next Sunday on "Face the Nation." Bye.