Poll: Obama Won "Fiscal Cliff" Fight; "As Much Leverage" as GOP Will Get
BLITZER: All right. Let's get to our strategy session. Joining us, the Democratic strategist James Carville and former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. Both CNN contributors. Guys, thanks very much. There's going to be another huge fight in the coming weeks over raising the nation's debt ceiling. There's going to be a battle between the president and John Boehner, the Republican leadership in the Senate, Mitch McConnell. Here's a "Washington Post" poll that just came out. Do you approve of the way budget negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff were handled? Fifty-two percent approve of the way president handled it, only 31 percent, John Boehner. Ari, who has more political capital going into this next round?</s>ARI FLEISCHER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, on a poll like that, remember, John Boehner is not known by 100 percent of the country. And so, it's not as indicative of that poll. But no question, the president has the upper hand. The president is more popular than the Congress and the president has more leverage than the Congress does. At the end of the day, though, we are all in one nation and we all have to do something about this debt to save our children from it being such a burden. That still requires everybody to come together. But no matter how you slice it, the Republican hand is a weaker one, the president's is a stronger one.</s>BLITZER: Does he have any hand right now when it comes to raising the nation's debt ceiling? I'm talking about John Boehner and the Republicans giving the enormous consequences of failure to do so for the overall U.S. economy, James.</s>JAMES CARVILLE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You know, I mean, you don't know. There's a lot of talk about letting it happen and, you know, this is one of these things, I never saw it in the fiscal cliff that actually go over the cliff. On this one, I'm a little less certain and a lot of times an event has to happen to sort of wake people up to it. Ari will remember this well. Remember, TARP first went down and the stock market lost 770 points and they came back in and it went up. I'm beginning to sense -- obviously I don't know this -- that something bad might have to happen in order to get this reconciled. It sure does like from a distance, both sides are digging in pretty hard here.</s>BLITZER: Boehner in "The Wall Street Journal" the other day actually said this, I'll read it to you, Ari. He said, "It wasn't until literally last week that the White House brought up replacing the sequester. They were always counting on us to bring this to the table. The sequester is as much leverage as we're going to get." How big of a deal is this going to be? In other words, sequestration, the forced domestic and social cuts, they delayed it for two months but they'll go into effect in a couple of months unless something is done.</s>FLEISCHER: I think that's a pretty astute observation by the speaker. "The Sequester" is the issue that Republicans can use to their maximum advantage in order to make the decisions that need to be made, more so than the threat of default. Default is too much of a threat. On the other hand, the problem is, if we keep raising the debt limit forever, we're acknowledging that the debt is so far out of control, there's nothing we can do about it, there's a debt without limits. "The Sequester," on the other hand, is more sensible. It allows Republicans to say, we do have a spending problem. We need to do something about spending. Let's not target only the Pentagon and hospitals and doctors, which is what "The Sequester" targets. But let's make smarter spending cuts to affect everybody from all walks of life, including corporate world and therefore we can do something to give our children a better future with less debt on their shoulders. That's the smarter card for the Republicans to play.</s>BLITZER: Let me shift, James, to you, on the Chuck Hagel nomination to be the nation's next defense secretary. There's been some quiet murmuring, some complaining among Democrats, not unusual, I should say. You've heard it as well. Why can't a Democratic president ask a Democrat to be defense secretary? They go back to the Clinton administration when President Clinton invited William Cohen, a Republican to be defense secretary. Then the Obama administration, President Obama asked Robert Gates, a Republican to be defense secretary. Then there was Leon Panetta. He is a real Democrat, but now another Republican, Chuck Hagel. What's wrong with Democrats being defense secretary?</s>CARVILLE: Rright. Actually, just as an historical footnote, Leon used to be a Republican. You know, I think that there's a sort of feeling that each one of these can be justified. I think President Clinton and Senator Cohen had a very good relationship, as does President Obama and Senator Hagel. In Gates' instance, that made a lot of sense. So much was going on that you didn't want to have an immediate change in the defense. But that is true, that it looks like Democrats always want to appoint Republican secretaries of defense. Also if you look at the history of the independent councils, they have almost all been Republicans. And as a Democrat I sometimes get frustrated, too. We can't find an independent council or defense secretary in our own party. I can understand the frustration, but the president is entitled to pick who he wants and he thinks Hagel is a good guy so it's good enough for me.</s>BLITZER: And he can pick whoever he wants, you're absolutely right. I thought there was a good candidate, at least on my short list, Jack Reed, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island. Like Hagel, a veteran himself, somebody who knows a lot about national security and military matters. But the president decided to go with Chuck Hagel. That's his right. That's his decision. Now there will be a battle to be sure. Guys, thanks very much for coming in. It was so recently the massive scene of change and hope and a lot of optimism, but there's been a lot of change in Egypt since the Arab spring. We're going to talk about those changes. More of my exclusive interview with the president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsy. We spent a lot of time together in Cairo this weekend.