Did President Bush Change Any Minds Last Night?
COLLINS: Want to show you some of the best shots of the morning in our "Quick Hits." Tropical Storm Ingrid now the ninth named storm of the 2007 hurricane season. National Hurricane Center says it formed Thursday night in the open Atlantic. Still hundreds of miles though from the outer Caribbean Islands. That's good news. Meanwhile, a child stands on top of a pile of brick and rubble that was once a house. It was leveled in a series of powerful earthquakes and aftershocks that hit Indonesia this week, killing at least nine people. A lightning strike caught on film in Texas. Look at that. Wow! It actually hit a school library. I-Reporter Christy Duran caught it while picking up her son from school. It's huge. Nobody reports of injuries, though. Again, good news there -- John.</s>ROBERTS: Thanks, Heidi. In his speech to the nation last night President Bush hailed the reduction of violence in Iraq and said some troops will begin returning home by end of the year but did he change any minds last night? The Jim Vandehei is the co-founder and executive editor of Politico.com and joins me from Politico's headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Jim, thanks for being with us. Let me play a little bit of what the president said last night in his address to the nation and get you to react to it. It's about the draw-down of troops.</s>BUSH: He has recommended that we not replace about 2,200 Marines scheduled to leave Anbar Province later this month. In addition he says it will soon be possible to bring home an Army combat brigade, for a total force reduction of 5,700 troops by Christmas.</s>ROBERTS: So, Jim, has the debate shifted now from whether to bring troops home to now how many troops and when? And is this a tacit acknowledgement by the president things are not going well in Iraq, and it is time to start bringing these troops home?</s>JIM VANDEHEI, CO-FOUNDER, EXEC. EDITOR, POLITICO.COM: I've got to tell you, I was surprised about the tone of this speech. There was a very optimistic spin to what's happening in Baghdad. You know from covering Bush, he really gets into trouble when it starts to look like there is a disconnect between what he's saying and what people are seeing on the ground in Iraq. I do not think he did himself any favors with that speech. You know, just when Petraeus is talking to Congress, members want to listen to the general, and they want to do what the commanders are saying. They get a little frustrated when they have to listen to Bush and they feel like Bush isn't being completely candid with him. So, I think moderate Republicans, particularly those we talked to last night and this morning, they are as skeptical and ever. And they are really going to scrutinize the scorecard that Bush is going to send up to the Hill today and make determinations about whether they should leave the staunch support of Bush and start working with Democrats and something that might restrict this military campaign.</s>ROBERTS: What effect do you think this progress report will have today? We said there were nine of the 18 benchmarks met satisfactorily, five unsatisfactorily, two too early to tell, which in many people's books would be a failing report card, or at the very least one that would be maybe a "</s>D." VANDEHEI: It's certainly one that you would not be proud of. Members of Congress are going to start scratching their head and wondering what is it that we heard over the last week from the White House and from Petraeus? It sounded like things were going so well, at least on the trajectory to start doing much better. And then you look at this report card, and it seems to contradict what they're hearing. I think that will add to more frustration. There are a lot of Senate Republicans, people like John Sununu, in New Hampshire, who are very skeptical to begin with and who are looking for some sort of political cover and also some policy cover, to do something different with Iraq. Bush has to be worried that he's going to start to lose these members. So far they've held firm.</s>ROBERTS: Certainly the Democrats didn't find anything in this thing to like. Here's what Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, said in the official Democratic response afterwards.</s>SEN. JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: We have put forth a plan to responsibly and rapidly begin a reduction of our troops. Our proposal cannot erase the mistakes of the last four and a half years. But we can chart a better way forward.</s>ROBERTS: So they got a proposal but they don't have the votes to get the proposal passed. What do they do between now and the '08 election, Jim? Just keep on hammering on measure after measure after measure, hoping that it begins to give them some traction and get the court of public opinion going in their direction?</s>VANDEHEI: Democrats made a strategic blunder I think a few months ago when they really had an opportunity to work with moderate Republicans on something that did not demand a fixed end to the war, but would have restricted what Bush could do and what troops could do in Iraq. Now Democrats have changed their tactics and are really trying to work with moderate Republicans. I think they'll continue to pound that. I think that Bush knows he has enough support among Republicans in the Senate to be able to sustain a veto if he were to have to veto any legislation passed by Congress. So, he'll be able to continue the military campaign, as proposed. What Democrats need to do is bring in more and more Republicans over the next couple of months to try to restrict what Bush can do. If you cut between the words what Bush is saying, essentially we'll have as many troops six months from now as nine months ago. That's not good news for Republicans who want to see this war over by the time Bush leaves office. There will probably be more than 100,000 troops still in Iraq when Bush leaves.</s>ROBERTS: Then there is the idea of what is the scope of this extraordinarily long-term commitment that he was talking about last night. Jim Vandehei, from the Politico.com -- Jim, thanks. Good to see you.</s>VANDEHEI: Take care, John.</s>ROBERTS: Heidi.</s>COLLINS: A flag ban overturned tops your "Quick Hits" now. A high school in North Carolina has reversed its ban on clothes with flags on them. The story got national attention after a student was told to change out of an American flag T-shirt on September 11th. The school says the ban was put in place to stop kids from sporting flags with gang colors. What will eventually be the world's tallest building is already the world's tallest free-standing structure. Look at this, the Birge (ph) Dubai, in Dubai, which is still under construction, is now more than 1,831 feet tall. That makes it taller than the CNN Tower -- no, that's the CNN Tower, I was going to say, do we have a tower in Toronto? No -- which had been the tallest free-standing structure since 1976. Defending the defender: Rudy Giuliani takes out his own ad in the "New York Times" and he has good things to say about General David Petraeus. We have his response to MoveOn.org and to Senator Clinton. Adjustable rate mortgages, we were just talking about this with Ali Velshi, are about to adjust. Homeowners are worried about refinancing their loans. Gerri Willis will be here to help coming up here on AMERICAN MORNING.