Hey Jim, it has come to my attention that you completely mangled the Rose/Brokaw disussion and totally changed the meaning of their sentences.
I would like to know why you tried to mislead us like this please. Below are the quotes you took out of context and the actual quotes.
Please explain why you tried to decieve us on this one.
Jimpeel said:
Then why did two of the most politically informed and savvy commentators in America -- Tom Brokaw and Charlie Rose -- say the following in an interview:
Montage of the Charlie Rose Tom Brokaw interview.
Jimpeel said:
ROSE: I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is.
BROKAW: No, I don't, either.
ROSE: I care about it almost as much as you do in terms of being a political junkie, but there are questions you don't know in terms of -- I don't know what Barack Obama's worldview is, I really don't know.
BROKAW: No, no, I don't either.
ROSE: I don't know how he really sees where China is and where it wants to go and how smart he is about that, or India, or the whole global structure.
BROKAW: Well, one of the things that --
ROSE: And --
or John McCain either.
BROKAW: Yeah, one of things I tried to get at in the national debate, and they began to answer it a little bit, which was -- which I think is an important question: What is the Obama doctrine and the McCain doctrine when there is a humanitarian crisis?
We are going through one this week in the Congo again, and I raised the Congo as an example of that, and the use of American military forces to intervene if we have no national security stake in all of that. And they both said in a kind of broadest possible terms, well, we should go help out.
But you didn't get the impression that they were going to go pull the trigger on that in the next day. That's an important discussion for this country to have.
...
ROSE: I don't know how he really sees where China is.
BROKAW: We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.
...
ROSE: I don't really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?
BROKAW: Yeah, it's an interesting question.
ROSE: Foreign policy -- economic crisis will stand out, but there is also enormous challenge here. Have we had a serious debate about foreign policy in this country?
BROKAW: No. We have not had -- there are a number of issues that have not come up. John McCain believes in a league of democracy, putting together a separate group to push against Russia. Charles Krauthammer -- Krauthammer -- wrote that that was -- he couldn't say, and I can, as Charles put it, he said, that is designed to kill the United Nations, which is a good idea. We didn't examine that very carefully.
We don't know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy. China has been not examined at all.
ROSE: At all.
BROKAW: Which is astonishing.
ROSE: But do we know about what they think? I mean, it is more likely we'll know more about John McCain, because he's been speaking about foreign policy --
BROKAW: Right.
ROSE: -- just over a longer period of time.
BROKAW: Right.
ROSE: But I don't really know -- and
do we know anything about the people who are advising them, I mean, in terms of whether Susan Rice and where they are? And then who -- do we know who might populate these governments?
...
ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.
BROKAW: Two of them! I don't know what books he's read.
ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?
ROSE: All right. Barack Obama, we know him because of -- he has been in the public view for a long time. He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational speeches.
BROKAW: Two of them.
ROSE: Exactly, two of them, two books. What do you make of him? Tell me what you see there, because I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said, I see someone who is clearly aspirational, someone who is clearly bright, someone who is clearly ambitious in the best sense of that, but who is clearly cautious. And in the end, he may very well be a man of the center.
BROKAW: He is a very interesting figure in American politics. He has made very few false steps along the way, when you think about this long, difficult road that he has been on -- against the Clinton machine first, and the appearances he has made all over the country.
Sure, he has hit some speed bumps, and there are conservative commentators who say there is a lot about him we don't know because we haven't asked enough tough questions -- the Bill Ayers relationship -- even those who say we've got to go back and explore what his drug use was.
ROSE: Even though Senator McCain had a chance to do that very thing and ask him about it in one of the debates.
BROKAW: And did not. He chose not to go there. And, look, he is a very smart guy. I love this phrase "postmodern," even though I don't know what it means.
ROSE: All right. We know people sometimes by the books that they read, heroes they have. We know John McCain, for example, enormously admires Teddy Roosevelt, probably more than anyone else in a political sense, and really wanted to run a campaign, you know, in which Teddy would be his model -- Teddy Roosevelt.
What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama --
BROKAW: He likes Justice --
ROSE: -- the books?
BROKAW: Well, he -- Thurgood Marshall is a big hero of his. He has got a picture of him in his office.
ROSE: Now was that because of his central role in arguing Brown versus Board of Education?
BROKAW: Well, I think that -- remember Barack Obama went to Harvard Law School and taught at the University of Chicago, and there was no greater legal figure in the African-American community or in those times when America was changing than Thurgood Marshall. So, that makes perfect sense.
You know, it's an interesting question. I don't know what books he has read. I know that he's got a great, curious mind. So does John McCain, by the way. He's always got a book in his hand. Mark Salter, who is a first-rate writer, is his --
ROSE: Right, and his best friend.
BROKAW: -- alter ego --
ROSE: Yeah, right, his alter ego.
BROKAW: -- and they're trading book ideas constantly. So that's an interesting question.
BROKAW: There's a lot about him we don't know.
Brokaw's actual quote:
"and
there are conservative commentators who say there is a lot about him we don't know"