Leon Panetta
Leon Panetta
Leon Edward Panettais an American statesman, lawyer, and professor. He served in the Obama administration as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2009 to 2011, and as Secretary of Defense from 2011 to 2013. A Democrat, Panetta was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1993, served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1993 to 1994, and as President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1994 to 1997. He is...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth28 June 1938
CityMonterey, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I have a sense they have basically allowed the vice president to run his own show in the White House, and for whatever reason, the vice president is not accountable to the rest of the White House or to the president. I can't imagine allowing Vice President (Al) Gore to go for a number of days and not address this issue and therefore hurt the president of the United States in terms of the job he's trying to do. The first priority in the White House is not the vice president. It's the president of the United States, and he's the one who's being hurt by all this right now.
The United States will do whatever we have to do to protect our forces.
One demonstration of extremists, any more than a Ku Klux Klan demonstration in the United States, is not necessarily reflective of what the rest of the country feels.
The United States was attacked on 9/11/12, and we know who attacked us.
The United States is going to defend itself under any circumstances.
The United States has to be a leader in the world, because the problem is: If we are not leading, nobody else will.
Well, the United States is a Pacific power. And we have always had a presence in the Pacific.
The reality is that the United States military alone cannot be all things to all nations. We will sharpen the application of our resources, better deploy our forces in the world and share our burdens more and more effectively with our partners. And frankly, all our allies need to do the same.
You have to have a good relationship with the president, but you also have to be a tough SOB to get things done. And that means not only being tough with the staff, but, occasionally, tough with the president.
Both sides of the spectrum are really going to use the opportunity provided by Katrina to really begin to test some ideas that they otherwise couldn't test.
The public does not translate the deficit into something that really bites them. We are going to have to get public support for action on the deficit.
One of the things that has made Iraq such a tragedy is you've got the administration, which is kind of locked into its view; you've got Congress, which is scrambling all over the place; and politics, which has invaded this issue on all sides. The good thing here is we can stand back and assess this.
None of this is being paid for. At some point, all of that borrowing comes back to haunt you.
On the Democratic side, it's an uphill battle for anyone who runs. I don't think it's a slam dunk at all. Schwarzenegger has huge name identity, and that counts for a lot.