CQ Transcriptswire

SPEAKERS: JOHN KING, HOST

GENERAL RAY ODIERNO, U.S. COMMANDER IN IRAQ

MOWAFFAK AL RUBAIE, IRAQ’S NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

[*] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: I’m John King. And this is our STATE OF THE UNION report for this Sunday, April 12th.

President Obama visits U.S. troops in Baghdad and tells them it’s time for Iraqis to take control of their country. But will attacks in big cities like Mosul force a delay in the troop withdrawal timeline? The top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, joins us for an exclusive interview.

Mr. Obama says he sees glimmer of hopes in the troubled economy. We’ll have some serious talk about jobs, and on a lighter note, some breaking news on the first family’s new dog, with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican strategist Kevin Madden.

And we’ll head to North Carolina for a firsthand look at what happens when trouble on Wall Street translates into wiping out what no long ago seemed like a secure retirement nest egg. That is all ahead in this hour of STATE OF THE UNION.

An aerial view there of the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the home of the United States military. During his visit to Iraq last Tuesday, President Obama acknowledged there is still much to be done to stabilize the country, but he emphasized he intends to keep his commitment to withdraw all U.S. troops by 2011.

A big test looms soon, American forces are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq’s cities by June 30th this year. That’s just eleven weeks from now. And just as American troops are preparing to leave, violence is on the rise in the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Baqubah.

Here to talk about the president’s visit and the challenges in keeping with the withdrawal schedule is the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. He joins us from Camp Victory in Baghdad.

Sir. happy Easter to you, and thank you for joining us. Let me start with the big challenge you face. In just 11 weeks you’re supposed to have your troops out of Mosul, out of Baqubah, out of other major cities. And you have an uptick in violence in recent days. Will you meet the deadline or will you have to keep the troops there?

GEN. RAY ODIERNO, COMMANDER, MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ: Well, first, John, if I could, I would like to wish happy Easter to everyone back in the United States, especially to all of the family and friends of our service members who continue to serve over here. It’s a real dedication to their great work that has helped our soldiers over here.

John, what I would tell you is overall violence remains at 2003 lows. However, as you have seen over the last week or so, there are still some elements here that are able still to conduct some very serious attacks.

So we will continue to conduct assessments along with the government of Iraq as we move forwards the June 30th deadline. If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain a presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that, but, ultimately, it will the decision of Prime Minister Maliki.

KING: And when the president was there, sir, just the other day, did you discuss this with him and did you, in fact, maybe ask him to pressure the Iraqi government? You know the political pressures, not only on our president here in the United States, but on Prime Minister Maliki.

Did you ask the president to say, look, if we need more time you need to nudge them to give it to us?

ODIERNO: Well, again, we did have good discussions. We went through all of the major issues facing Iraq now with the president. What we discussed is there is some diplomatic actions that have to be taken.

Listen, Prime Minister Maliki understands the tensions in Mosul. He understands there’s an assessment that has to be made. I’m confident that we will make a joint assessment and then he will make a decision. We will tell him what we believe is the right thing to do but ultimately it will up to him to make that decision.

KING: I want to remind our viewers, as we have this conversation, about the timelines and the deadlines you face. June 30th of this year, all U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out of Baghdad and the other major Iraqi cities. It is August 31st, 2010, all U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out of Iraq, leaving about 50,000 behind. And then by December 31st, 2011, all U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Sir, in your conversations with President Obama, how comfortable do you feel that if you go to him at any point, whether it’s one of these interim deadlines or the bigger deadline in 2011, you say, sir, I need more time or, sir, I need more troops, that you will get what you need?

ODIERNO: Well, again, he understands, as he has stated, that there is still much work to be done here in Iraq. I believe he has given me the flexibility over the next 18 months in order to adjust the size of the force that I need in order to accomplish the mission. What we’re trying to do is set the conditions for Iraq to take over and be able to secure themselves.

And so we’ll continue to do that. And I have the flexibility to do that. The president has given that to me.

John, if I could make one correction. On August 31st, it is that we will have a change in mission here in Iraq and we will no longer conduct combat operations. It’s not necessarily that all combat troops will be out of Iraq by that date.

KING: Thank you for the correction, sir. And it’s well noted, because let me follow on that point. Are you concerned at all? The mission went off-track at the beginning, way back, six years ago when there weren’t enough troops to do everything that needed to be done. Are you concerned, sir, when you get to that point, when you’re looking at 50,000 troops or so that you will have too few troops to do what you need to do or are you confident that if you need more, you’ll get them?

ODIERNO: Well, what has changed, John, is that the Iraqi security forces have matured significantly. They now have 250,000, army. They have over 400,000 police. They are continuing to improve in their competency. So that is helping significantly.

So it is not the same as it was in 2004 or 2005 or 2006. So part of the judgment will be how much can they do. They are proving every day that they are becoming more competent, so the decision will be made as how much of U.S. forces are needed in order to continue to support them to keep the stability that we’re starting to see here in Iraq.

KING: And, sir, I’ve walked over to our map so can I show our viewers what has happened over the timeline of the past six years. Back in May 2003, a little over 142,000 troops. And if you follow the timeline over, you see here in October 2007 because of your surge strategy, 170,000 troops on the ground. And we’re down now somewhere in the area of 140,000 troops on the ground.

In terms of the pace of operations, the last time I was there and out with troops in the field was a little more than a year ago. And I did a convoy run up from Camp Anaconda up to Baqubah. That was a pretty dicey time, about every other convoy was experiencing an IED attack.

In terms of the reports you get back from the daily operations of the troops, is it as bad as it was then or have things improved significantly?

ODIERNO: Yes, they’ve improved significantly. And I think you would be surprised if you were here again. Obviously, we still have some very serious incidents, based on one this week.

But, again, it’s much safer. In March, our combat fatalities were the lowest they’ve been since the beginning of the war. The number of incidents in March was the lowest month of incidents we’ve had since really right back to June of 2003 before the insurgency started.

So there has been a clear improvement of security here. The issue is, can we maintain that -- can the Iraqis maintain it? And that is what we’re working through now is we want them to be able to maintain this stability as we pull out.

And that is what we’re assessing and constantly doing. I believe we’re on track to do that. We have a schedule to reduce our forces. I have flexibility to change that within the next 18 months, and we’ll continue to look at that very closely as we move forward.

KING: And you mentioned that March was a relatively good month. I want to, again, play a little timeline here so that our viewers can see it here. This is U.S. troops killed in Iraq and you see the numbers from 2003 moving forward. 2007 at the height of the surge was the highest year and 51 so far, I hesitate to say, only 51 so far in 2009. You mentioned that March was a good month, sir. That was nine Americans killed in March. But already we’ve hit the number nine 12 days into the month of April because of a few tragic events in recent days.

Why? Are you seeing that this -- is this just random events or are you seeing some coordination of increase in violence?

ODIERNO: Yes. What I see is there are some cells out there who are still capable of conducting suicide attacks. And, unfortunately, had a tragic attack in Mosul this past week of a suicide bomber who killed five of our soldiers. Tragic, tragic event.

They have that capacity still. It’s much less than it has ever been. They are very small cells throughout Iraq. We continue to be aggressive at going after them with the Iraqi security forces.

But this is not a significant increase in overall lack of security. There just are still some suicide bombers and those who profess suicide attacks that are still very dangerous.

KING: And help those military families and other Americans watching on this Easter Sunday morning assess where you are now. We talked at the beginning about the potential that you might have to ask for a little bit more time in Mosul, in Baqubah, in other cities.

Is this in part because you’re saving the worst, the hardest challenges for last, if you will? That al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups that oppose your being there have concentrated in certain areas and these are the last fronts?

ODIERNO: Well, what we’ve done is we’ve driven them there, John, through our operations over the last two years. And we’ve continued to eliminate areas where they are no longer welcome by the Iraqi people. They are rejected. They are no longer able to conduct operations so they’ve moved to certain areas.

One is in the desert near Syria between Syria and the city of Mosul, and then inside of Mosul. So we now are working very hard with the Iraqi security forces to finish off this last group of individuals who are still able to conduct some serious attacks.

The same in Baqubah. Although Baquba actually has been extremely safe, areas east of there towards the Iranian border still have some remnants of al Qaeda and other extremists that are still able to do some operations.

So we’re in the process of routing them out with the Iraqi security forces.

KING: You just mentioned there, sir, areas near the Syrian border, and areas near the Iranian border which begs the question for the past six years we’ve had these conversations about Syria letting people back and forth across the border, in fact, maybe even supporting some of them. Iran letting people back and forth, letting weapons across the border, and in fact training some of the people who are trying to kill the men and women who serve under you, sir.

What is the status of Iran and Syria? Are they still as problematic as they were before or have we seen any improvement?

ODIERNO: Well, first, we’ve been able to significantly limit the ability of them to traffic foreign fighters in through Syria. We have done that through major operations. We made it extremely difficult. The Iraqis have helped significantly in closing their borders and making it more difficult for foreign fighters and suicide attackers to come across.

They are still able to come across in very small numbers. There’s still some of a facilitation network that still is in Syria.

In terms of Iran, Iran, although I would -- the support is a bit less than it was, there’s still reports that training, funding, and the providing of weapons still goes on. Although it’s at a smaller level, it’s still very sophisticated and is still trying to impact the stability situation here in Iraq.

KING: More of our conversation with General Ray Odierno in just a moment. And later, also, is President Obama the most polarizing president of recent times? We’ll debate that question and more with two of our top political strategists. Our “State of the Union” report will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We’re back with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.

And, General, I want to ask you a bit about what I find fascinating is; that is, your relationship with the new commander in chief, someone who was so vigorously opposed to the war effort you now lead.

And I want to show our viewers a bit of a timeline, here.

It was back in October 2002 when then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama , not even in the United States Senate yet, declared he was against the war in Iraq.

And then, in January of 2007, Senator Barack Obama , a United States senator, at this point, and candidate for the presidency of the United States, spoke out strongly against the surge policy that General Odierno pushed for.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The responsible course of action for the United States, for Iraq, and for our troops is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: But since winning the election and becoming commander in chief, a decidedly different tone from President Obama, when it comes to the war in Iraq, including his visit to Baghdad just this past Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Every mission that’s been assigned, from getting rid of Saddam to reducing violence to stabilizing the country, to facilitating elections, you have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country. That is an extraordinary achievement, and, for that, you have the thanks of the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

General Odierno, you are the father of the surge strategy. You pushed for it when even many of your commanders wanted to get troops out of Iraq.

How hard is it to develop a rapport with a president of the United States who thought your strategy was a reckless escalation?

ODIERNO: Well, first off, he’s our commander in chief. And as the commander in chief, we take direction from him. He has -- in all of the meetings I’ve had with him, he is very attentive; he’s very -- he listens. He is incredibly intelligent. He talks through the issues, and -- and we discuss it. He makes a decision and then we execute those decisions.

And that’s all you can expect out of your commander in chief. And he’s -- I’ve been very pleased with the interaction that I’ve been able to have with him.

KING: Has he ever said, General, you know, Ray, you were right; I was wrong about the surge?

ODIERNO: I don’t think we talked about that ever.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Let me -- let me ask you -- let me move back to a more serious question, and the idea that, in the previous administration and in your service prior to this administration, you were very clear that you thought these decisions should not be based on political timelines; they should be based on conditions on the ground.

I understand you’re executing the orders of the commander in chief. I just want to get a sense of, are you concerned at all that the bad guys, the enemy, knows the timeline, too, and they are simply going into hiding, hoarding their resources, gathering their weapons and waiting for you to leave?

ODIERNO: There is always that potential. But, again, let me remind everyone what change was in December when the United States and the government of Iraq signed an agreement, a bilateral agreement that put the timeline in place, that said we would withdraw all our forces by 31 December, 2011.

In my mind, that was historic. It allowed Iraq to prove that it has its own sovereignty. It allows them, now, to move forward and take control, which was always -- it’s always been our goal, is that they can control the stability in their country.

So I think I feel comfortable with that timeline. I did back in December. I do now. We continue to work with the government of Iraq so they can meet that timeline, so that they are able to maintain stability once we leave. I still believe we’re on track with that, as we talk about this today.

KING: You say you’re comfortable with that timeline, sir. I want you to expound on that, a little bit. Because, back in -- I’m holding up a copy of Tom Ricks’ book, “The Gamble.” It’s a fascinating book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist about the war effort in Iraq.

And you told him, in that book -- this is -- he’s quoting you in that book. “When asked what sort of U.S. military presence he expected in Iraq around 2014 or 2015, well after Obama’s first term, Odierno said, ‘I would like to see a force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000, with many troops training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against Al Qaida in Iraq and its allies.’”

Now, certainly, this was before the agreement with the Iraqi government was negotiated -- and I want to make that clear -- when you made those remarks.

But you have to implement this strategy because it is a signed agreement between the government of Iraq and the United States of America. But do you personally think it would be best that, for the foreseeable future, to leave 30,000 or so behind?

ODIERNO: Well, again, what I would tell you is it really has always been about Iraqi -- Iraqis securing their own country. So the issue becomes, do we think they will be able to do that?

As they continue to improve in the operations they’ve been able to conduct, I believe that they will be able to do that by the end of 2011.

And so the most important thing for us is to help them now to reduce the risk that will be left with them once we depart at the end of 2011. We will continue to train and advise. We’ll continue to assist; we’ll continue to conduct combat operations, where we believe it’s necessary.

And I do believe, now, that it is probably the right time frame.

KING: And on a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being fully confident, that you will meet that deadline, that all U.S. troops will be gone at the end of 2011? ODIERNO: As you ask me today, I believe it’s a 10 that we will be gone by 2011.

KING: That’s a -- that’s a bold statement. I want to ask you, a little bit, about your current work. Because a lot of what you’re doing requires the Iraqi security forces to get up to speed, and that, of course, is part of your mission.

But the other part of the equation is the Iraqi political environment. And in that environment, you are finding yourself, I’m told, in some meetings that you would prefer that the lead person be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and you don’t have a U.S. ambassador at the moment. The nomination of Chris Hill is held up at the moment in the United States Senate.

Does that hurt the U.S. effort in Iraq, not having an ambassador on the ground?

ODIERNO: Well, I mean I believe it’s important to have an ambassador here. It’s important to have an ambassador in all of our key countries. And Iraq is a very important country in our national strategy. So, of course, it would be much better to have our ambassador here. We have a process that we have to go through to get our ambassadors confirmed. We’re going through that process. Hopefully we’ll have an ambassador out here very soon. It would certainly help to have an ambassador here as quickly as possible.

KING: You work now in an administration that doesn’t like the term war on terror. The Bush administration used that term quite frequently. Does that matter to you? The men and women who are risking their lives every day, are they fighting the war on terror in General Odierno’s view or something else?

ODIERNO: Well, what they are doing is fighting for the security of United States. So it doesn’t matter what you call it. We’re here to ensure that we better secure the -- all of the people of our country and that by doing that, by defeating terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, we’re here to accomplish what we believe is important to maintain security for our country.

KING: I want to ask you, sir, as a general and as a parent of someone who was hurt in Iraq, your son suffered a devastating injury, but, thank God, was not hurt any further than that in Iraq. We have a new policy where they have opened Dover and allowed media coverage of the returning bodies, the caskets of those who suffer the ultimate sacrifice overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you support that policy? Do you think it helps the American people better understand the price those young men and women are paying, or do you think it’s too much?

ODIERNO: I think the most important piece of that was that you give the families the choice. What we care about is the families have their choice. We want to respect the families. So it always comes down to that. So I’m very pleased the families gets to choose whether that coverage happens or not and I think that’s the right thing. KING: I want to ask you lastly, sir, a lot people now watch more troops going into Afghanistan and say well, the surge worked in Iraq, a surge will work in Afghanistan. I want to give you an opportunity to say what you think is similar and importantly what you think is different in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

ODIERNO: Well, I don’t really -- I don’t want to comment too much on Afghanistan. I’ve spent an awful lot of time here in Iraq and I consider myself to understand Iraq. I don’t consider myself to fully understand Afghanistan. But what I do know, some of the concepts are the same. You have to secure the population. Once you secure the population, it is much easier than to fight the terrorists, because the population then helps you. When they’re not secure, when they feel like they are being terrorized, it’s much more difficult for them to support any effort to defeat these terrorists. So I think that concept is clearly the same. The only other thing I would say is that it is a civil/military problem. It is not just a military solution. And I know that in Afghanistan, they’re working towards a civil/military solution. So I think those are the keys as we move forward.

KING: General Ray Odierno joining us from Baghdad this morning. Sir, we thank you for your time and we thank you and the thousands of men and women under you there in Iraq for their military service and you should know you are in our thoughts and prayers every day as we go forward.

ODIERNO: Thank you very much, John. Once again, Happy Easter to all Americans.

KING: General, one other thing I wanted to mention. I’m sorry, before I do let you go. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy and thought I had a friend in Ray Odierno on the show but I understand you have launched Facebook site so that you can better communicate with folks back here in the United States and we’re showing it on our monitors before we let you go.

I just want you to know my resistance to Facebook has now crumbled thanks to Ray Odierno. Explain why you think this is important.

ODIERNO: Well, I want to -- I think it’s important that people can reach out and ask questions and maybe educate them a little bit more on what is going on here in Iraq. And get to know us a little bit better. This is new for me. This is new ground so we’ll see how it goes but I’m actually pretty excited about it.

KING: Well, we’ll see how many people are watching today by how many friends you get in the next few hours. Again, general, Happy Easter to you and the men and women serving in Iraq and take care, sir.

ODIERNO: Thanks, John. I appreciate it very much.

KING: All right, general. Take care. And huge factors in getting the U.S. troops out of Iraq on schedule are the abilities of a Iraq military and police forces to step up major security challenges and the willingness of Iraq’s political leaders to set aside sectarian and other rivalries. Up next, we discuss those challenges with Iraq’s national security adviser.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: President Obama there addressing U.S. troops in Iraq during a quick visit to the country this past Tuesday. We just heard from General Odierno. Now let’s get the Iraqi view of where things stand. In Baghdad bureau, Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie. Sir, let me start with the basic premise. President Obama said it’s time for Iraq to take over. Are you ready?

MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, IRAQI NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, before I answer your question, let me, through your program, say Happy Easter to all Christians all over the world.

And, number two, I would like to express my gratitude and the big thank you from the Iraqi people and the government of Iraq to the United States of America for things they have done in this country, bringing down the dictatorship and sustaining the security of this country and building, helping us in building our Iraqi security forces and to reach to this least now to a considerable reduction in violence and this security, we believe it’s sustainable and we are -- we, the government of Iraq and the security forces in Iraq are much more suited now for this fight. And we believe that now we are leading and we are planning and cutting out most of the combat operations in the country and the United States forces are moving or transitioning to a more support role, more training, more providing more logistical support, rather than engaging in a huge military or kinetic combat operations.

KING: And so, sir, with that progress or despite that progress maybe, you just heard General Odierno. If he comes to you in three or four weeks or six or eight weeks and says, Mr. National Security Adviser, Mr. Prime Minister, I know I have this June 30th deadline to get out of the cities but in Mosul, in Baqubah there are still some problems, I need a little bit more time, I may actually have to send more U.S. troops in in the short term.

KING: Would he get the permission of the Iraqi government to do that if he believes it’s necessary?

AL-RUBAIE: See, we’re continuing monitoring the situation jointly with the multi-national forces and we’re consulting the multi- national forces on a military and we are on daily coordination and cooperation and assessing the situation on daily basis. So I don’t think we should answer this hypothetical question now.

KING: OK. I understand that point. And I bring it up in the past, sir, you say you’re ready or you will be ready by the deadlines. In the past you have been optimistic and that optimism has turned out not to be so well-founded. I want to bring up something you told “The Washington Post” in June 2006, almost three years ago.

You said, “We envision the U.S. troop presence by year end to be under 100,000 with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.”

It is now, of course, 2009 and there are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Why should we believe your optimism now, to put it bluntly, when you were on the record some time ago saying you thought this day would come a lot sooner?

AL-RUBAIE: Well, we are all much more intelligent with hindsight and I believe we have now very, very competent and very well trained and equipped, the Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi security forces are leading and doing most of the combat operation now. What we are requiring. Only the high-end very specialized counterterrorism operation and some logistical support, some air fire support, some navy support, that is what we are requiring. And we are building these as we go along and in the next year or so, we will be in a position to take all -- to take over all of our country. All the security, all over the country.

KING: Mr. al-Rubaie, Let me ask you this question. The White House says when President Obama was there and he had the meetings with your political leaders, he delivered a stern message that the differences between the Kurds and the Shia need to be resolved. Other sectarian issues.

Essentially a push and nudge for the politics of Iraq to become more peaceful and more stable to build confidence going forward. What was the strongest or the most different message you found from President Obama in these meetings? AL-RUBAIE: See, what we have, we have agreed, the three communities. The three major communities have agreed on a one-term reference and that is the Constitution. And millions of Iraqis have ratified this Constitution. We formed national unity government according to that Constitution. The Sunni, Kurds, the Shia are all in that government. And we are -- if we have any differences, if we have any dispute, we should go back to the Constitution and defer to the one document we have agreed on and that is the Constitution. There’s nothing else, other than the Constitution.

KING: Let me ask you, lastly, sir. We’re still getting to know our new president here in the United States. You have been in the room with President Bush, his predecessor, and now in the room with President Obama. How is President Obama different than President Bush when it comes to these big diplomatic challenges and conducting the affairs of the United States?

AL-RUBAIE: I don’t want to elaborate on differences, but I believe that the President Obama understands the situation in Iraq and I believe he wanted to stick by the Status of Forces Agreement, the withdrawal agreement and what -- his visit to Iraq, it’s a very significant visit. Because this is the first Arab country President Obama paid this visit to and it means a lot to us, because it means the United States government is adhering to the Strategic Framework Agreement and shows the commitment of the United States government towards Iraq and towards helping Iraq.

Iraq is definitely and irreversibly and decisively flying west and in return of the United States government is committing itself to helping Iraq and reconstruct -- in the reconstruction and in ensuring its democratic system.

KING: Mowaffak al-Rubaie is the national security adviser of Iraq. Sir, we thank you for your time and your insights this morning.

AL-RUBAIE: Thank you for having me.

KING: Take care, sir.

And up next we turn to the problems back home in this country, including the economy. With so much country still struggling was it the right time for President Obama to say we’re starting to see glimmers of hope?

And on a lighter note some important news this morning on the Obama family’s new dog. We will talk about it all with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican strategist Kevin Madden. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I’m John King. And this is STATE OF THE NATION. Here are stories breaking this Sunday morning.

A U.S. official tells CNN authorities have been in touch with a U.S. ship captain held four days now hostage by Somali pirates. Those authorities report Captain Richard Phillips is doing well. His ship and crew are now safely in Kenya briefing FBI agents about the pirate attack. Negotiations to win the captain’s release are ongoing.

Christians around the world are celebrating Easter today. At the Vatican, Pope Benedict delivered an Easter mass to thousands gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica. He delivered Easter language -- Easter blessings, excuse me, in 63 languages.

And mystery solved. Sources tell CNN the Obamas have chosen six- month-old Portuguese water dog to be the first pet. Sasha and Malia Obama have nicknamed their puppy “Bo”. The dog will make its debut at the White House on Tuesday. That and more ahead on STATE OF THE UNION.

Picture of the White House there on a beautiful Sunday, Easter Sunday here in Washington. After weeks of warnings things could get worse before they got better, President Obama is suddenly speaking in a considerably more hopeful tone. For insight into the president’s change in message we turn to two seasoned political veterans, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican strategist Kevin Madden. Welcome. Happy Easter to both of you.

I want to get to the economy in a minute but I want to go back to our conversation with General Odierno. And Donna, I want to start with you.

He is very confident and says 10 on a scale of 10 he will get the troops out by 2011 as President Obama and the Iraqi government have promised in an agreement. But he says it’s possible he might need time for the interim deadlines. June 30 is 11 weeks away, supposed to get out of all the big cities. What will happen on the antiwar left of the Democratic Party if one of those preliminary deadlines falls and the general says I need more time in Mosul, I need more time in Baqubah? Will antiwar Democrats give the president that time or will there be an outrage?

DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think they will give the president the amount of time he needs to get our troops out in a responsible way. President Obama this week said when he was in Iraq that we’re entering a critical phase. Of course, you know, we have elections -- they have elections a little bit later this year. And the president also emphasized that it was important that the two sides, the Sunnis and the Shias, also begin to mend some of the fences.

So this is a critical phase in the operations in Iraq but, clearly, if the general decides and the president will listen, I’m sure, to this general and other advisers, that they need more time to get the situation under control for the elections, I’m sure the left as well as the right, the country, will give the people of Iraq that time.

KING: Is she overly optimistic, already?

You see some -- and it’s a small minority -- I want to make that clear -- but some on the left saying they won’t even vote for the money to support the troops.

Now, that happened in the Bush administration, too. There were some who simply said war is a bad idea; I’m not going to support the money. A hiccup? Minor bump?

MADDEN: Well, I think that the -- Donna’s right. On the left, as long as there’s incremental progress toward the draw-down or a complete withdrawal of the troops, that he’ll be fine with that -- with that part of the political equation.

And I think, with Republicans, as long as -- and Donna used the key word, “responsible,” making sure that we’re meeting our security objections there -- objectives there, and that we’re doing the withdrawals responsibly so that we still have a safe and secure Iraq, then I think he’s going to have Republican support as well.

KING: Let’s come home to the debate about the economy. Previous times on the program, we’ve talked about the president saying it’s going to get worse before it gets better. This past week, he’s out there urging Americans to refinance, saying, get in the re-fi business; you can save the family a few bucks in the budget; and also sounding more optimistic.

Let’s listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What you’re starting to see is glimmers of hope across the economy. Now, we have always been very cautious about prognosticating, and that’s not going to change just because it’s Easter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Smart to be more upbeat?

BRAZILE: Well, I believe he’s responding to some of the good news, consumer confidence up just a little bit; the housing market. People are going back in, refinancing, buying up some of the foreclosed properties. Clearly, the credit markets are thawing.

So the president is just expressing what, I’m sure, his advisers have told him, look, is there a bright sign out there. But, look, John, until we can, you know, get jobs back into the communities, until we can provide people with health care, I still believe that we’re still in the thick of this recession.

KING: Is it risky, if maybe a lagging indicator, but if unemployment is still on the way up, to have this president saying I see “glimmers of hope,” and then next month, the unemployment rate edges up toward 9 percent, maybe even goes higher than that?

Does he risk as seeing, as President Bush was, as out of touch?

MADDEN: No, that is the great peril, here, that he does risk seeming to be talking in very flowery terms when people are still struggling.

There’s still a great deal of anxiety out there amongst the American public. And we are going to see a lot more job losses before things gets better.

You know, I grew up in the city, and it was always very easy to see the the green sprouting from bricks and bricks of concrete. And I think that is what is happening here, is that President Obama is trying to point to these signs of life in a very -- you know, in a very barren economy, right now, in an effort to encourage the markets.

The markets, right now, don’t need somebody who is a chief executive who is out there talking down the economy. So this is much more geared towards encouraging many of those in the private sector to keep moving in the right direction as the economy starts to...

(CROSSTALK)

BRAZILE: ... to rebuild trust in the system. I mean, most Americans are not trust -- we don’t trust the banks. We don’t trust the system.

KING: I want to bring you both to your thoughts on an essay written by Michael Gerson. He worked for the former President Bush, a thoughtful guy, outside of working in the Bush White House. And he says this about Barack Obama , quite interesting. He says, “Who has been the most polarizing new president of recent times, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush ? No, that honor belongs to Barack Obama . Obama has been a unifier, of sorts. He’s unified Democrats and united Republicans against each other.”

BRAZILE: You know, Mr. Gerson made two mistakes. One, he didn’t point out that this is part of a long-term trend, and that’s something that the Pew poll talked about. This trend goes back for 30 years.

And the second thing is that the Republican Party itself really has shrunken over the last four years. And in 2004, 33 percent of the American people identified with the Republican Party; today it’s 27 percent.

So there has been a 6 percent drop. And so this is part of a long-term trend and has nothing to do with President Obama.

KING: Nothing to do with President Obama? But the numbers don’t lie. Among Democrats, Obama has 88 percent approval rating; among Republicans, a 27 percent approval rating.

MADDEN: You know, a lot of Republicans seized on this poll, this week, as evidence that -- you know, of reasons to criticize President Obama.

And I think it has less to do with polarization and more to do with failed expectations. President Obama ran, during this last campaign, as somebody who was going to change the tone and tenor of Washington, who was going to challenge the status quo.

And I think, with both his policies and his rhetoric, he has done neither, and that’s why we’ve seen -- the biggest problem for President Obama, here, is the fact that independents have dropped about 13 points since the inauguration. And he had sizable levels of Republican support, close to 40 percent at the inauguration, and that has now eroded to a record low.

And I think that is a troubling sign, I think, for President Obama, if he is going to try to forge an agenda around unity and bipartisanship for his...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: I want to put you both on the spot.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Time-out, time-out. We’ve got about 20 seconds left. I want to put you both on the spot on the day’s biggest breaking news, “The First Puppy Makes a Big Splash.”

(LAUGHTER)

Bo will be coming to the White House. Sasha and Malia have named their new dog “Bo.” He will be there on Tuesday. That should clearly improve his ratings among independents and Republicans.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, what’s not to like about this dog? He’s cute. He’s adorable, but I hope he’s potty-trained.

KING: You hope he’s potty-trained.

Is this silly season or does it matter how a president and his new young family go about their business?

MADDEN: You know, I think one of the things that’s happened with this president is that Washington, D.C. has become not only the financial and political capital of the world but the cultural capital of the world. What they eat, what they wear, the kind of pets that they have -- that has really, I think, influenced a lot of Americans. Americans are watching Washington in a new way they haven’t about before.

I mean, I know that this is going to create problems in the Madden household because when, the debate comes up about getting a dog, now it’s...

(LAUGHTER)

... well, if, you know, if Sasha and Malia can have one, how come Riley (ph) and Colin (ph) can’t?

(LAUGHTER)

KING: I had a little conversation with Hannah (ph) King yesterday, and let me just say, I share your pain.

(LAUGHTER)

Kevin Madden, Donna Brazile, thanks so much for coming in today.

He played by the rules and made what he thought were safe investments. Up next, you’ll find out what forced one man out of retirement and into the classroom. Our “State of the Union” report will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Earlier in the program, you heard President Obama saying he sees glimmers of hope in the economy. Well, look at this map. If it is an orange color, that means relatively few jobs are being created. This color blue, the teal-ish, is in the middle. The dark blue means that is an area where a significant, or at least a decent number of jobs are being created.

To take a closer look at the strains of this recession, among our stops on the road as we get out of the country was the state of North Carolina. It has an unemployment rate of 10.7 percent. That is the fourth-highest in the country. Nearly 200,000 jobs lost in just the last year.

Many people are losing their jobs and going back to work, but that’s not all that’s happening out there. Many people who had retired, thought they had a safe nest egg, they find themselves feeling the pain of this recession, too.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON WITTE, WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.: But it’s not easy. And each situation is different.

KING (voice-over): In tough economic times, Don Witte is both the teacher and a painful lesson.

WITTE: You have 150 people applying for 25 jobs.

KING: His job search advice at Forsyth Community College, borne of 35 years of experience helping airlines and other businesses recruit and hire new talent.

WITTE: Now, successful networking, be yourself, always be yourself. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not.

KING: He loves the work, but he’s here because he needs it.

WITTE: I retired about four years ago, had a very enjoyable retirement, until last year. And a lot of the funds we had counted on evaporated.

KING: All the more frustrating because Don Witte did it just like they say: a smaller, more affordable house after his daughter got married, carefully researched investments, a good mix of blue chips, offering consistent dividends.

WITTE: Diversify, diversify, and diversify. I did. But it didn’t make any difference. It is the American dream, you work hard for a number of years, and then retire, enjoy yourself, relax, unfortunately, no more.

KING: Career counseling at the college doesn’t pay much, but it helps with the bills, and with Witte’s understanding of a recession he says is like none other in his lifetime.

WITTE: From the senior executive to the middle manager to the nurse to the teacher to the laborer to the unskilled, it’s affecting everybody. Each one of them is a little different story, and the common thread is if they haven’t looked for a job for 10 years or so, it’s the toughest job market that I’ve seen in my lifetime.

How many of you are on LinkedIn?

KING: Witte sees more evidence here when he volunteers for a nonprofit group called Professionals in Transition, a nice way of saying “out of work.”

WITTE: I know a few people in town, and I’ll share my contacts with you openly and gladly.

KING: Damien Birkel founded the organization in 1992. Most of that stretch, 10 or 12 people at a meeting. Now, often 40 to 50.

DAMIEN BIRKEL, FOUNDER, PROFESSIONALS IN TRANSITION: Banking, housing, construction. I have never, in the 17 years that I’ve been doing it, ever seen the economic impact ripple through the America like this. It’s your neighbors. It’s your friends. It’s people that, you know, you would least expect to be impacted.

KING: People like Don Witte, who sees the headlines from Wall Street and believes reckless greed washed out his years of careful investing.

WITTE: Me and many, many other millions of people like me, they were playing with our money, not in a safe, prudent way, and they’re not suffering. We are. In contrast to a year ago, we’re counting every single penny that goes out, not because we want to, because we have to.

KING: Dinner out is now a splurge, not a weekly ritual. There is less travel, and waiting for sales to buy clothes and other staples. Still, Don Witte is an optimist who believes the economy and the market will bounce back, eventually. It is the uncertainty of just when that leaves him worried and has him back in the workforce.

WITTE: Being 64, is there enough time left in my life to recoup, to get back to where it was? Because I’d like to leave something to my daughter and our grandson and ultimate grandchildren, but at this point, there’s very little there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Our thanks to Don Witte for inviting us into his home. And we want to say good-bye to our international audience for this hour. But coming up for our viewers here in the United States, Howard Kurtz talks about the problem some Democrats have with the media coverage of their party and President Obama.

Our STATE OF THE UNION report will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I’m John King. And this is our STATE OF THE UNION report for this Sunday, April 12th, 2009. Only days after President Obama visited troops in Iraq, five soldiers are killed in the deadliest attack in more than a year.

And today, another soldier dies. How will the continued violence affect the American withdrawal? We’ll get the story straight from the man in charge. An exclusive interview with General Ray Odierno.

With the deadline to file your income taxes just days away, the president says he sees glimmers of hope in the economy. His opponent, well they just see higher taxes and more government spending. Two top political strategists will join me to break down the battle over fiscal policy.

Many Republicans say the media favors President Obama. The strategist who advised Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards disagrees. Howie Kurtz talks to Joe Trippi about media bias at his former boss’s sex scandal. That’s all ahead in this hour of STATE OF THE UNION.

KING: Time now, as we do every Sunday at this hour, to the turn the thing over to my colleague, Howard Kurtz, and his RELIABLE SOURCES.

Good morning, Howie.

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Good morning, John.

KING: You see the pirates in the news, Howie, the front page of The New York Post, here. Look at the pirate flag to the left. “Sea monsters,” they call them. That, of course, focusing on the Somali pirates there. And one more quick one for you, Newsday of Long Island: “The crew’s plea: free our hero.” The captain, Mr. Phillips, of course, still held hostage even as that ship has made it safely to port in Kenya. A big drama on the front page and a big drama for the president.

KURTZ: An important story, as well, John, but I’m kind of pleased that the media have shown some restraint here, have not turned this into a 24-hour melodrama as happened during the Carter years with the Iranian hostage crisis.

I suspect though that part of the reason for television may be that there are no pictures, there is no video, and that has maybe dampened the voracious appetite for a story like this.

KING: I suspect you are right in the less pictures, fewer pictures environment. But still a big story. And we’ll keep on it.

KURTZ: All right. Good. Thanks very much, John.

Ahead, Deborah Norville joins us to examine those awkward TV interviews with Bristol Palin’s ex-boyfriend that have so ticked off the Alaska governor, and whether the media are really exploiting the problems of two 18-year-olds.

But first, I never thought I’d be leading off this program with a dog story. All right. It’s not just any dog. It’s the new Obama family dog. But it’s also about White House media manipulation.

When a “Washington Post” reporter discovered some weeks back that Michelle Obama was planting a vegetable garden, presidential aides said that exclusive had been promised to “The New York Times,” so they offered to throw The Post a bone, so to speak. Hold off on the garden story, and we’ll give you a scoop on the new pooch.

Well, it was ridiculous to think that wouldn’t leak out, and now it has. While The Post was told it could publish the doggie tale Tuesday -- it was even given a picture of the first pet, which you see there -- a mysterious new Web site called First Dog Charlie got hold of the story yesterday with a different picture of what seems to be the very same Portuguese Water Hound.

Joining us now to sink our teeth into the handling of this story, in New York, Chrystia Freeland, U.S. managing editor of “The Financial Times.” And here in Washington, David Corn, Washington bureau chief of “Mother Jones” magazine, and Tara Wall, deputy editorial page editor of “The Washington Times.”

Chrystia, we see “The Washington Post” front-page treatment here. The dog has been named Bo. There we go. I’ve got to ask you whether the White House is being a little too clever in trying to control the timing and placement of this story, or does this sort of bargaining with journalists go on all the time?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND, U.S. MANAGING EDITOR, “THE FINANCIAL TIMES”: Well, of course, it does, and in it sort of “But for the grave of God, there go I,” I think all of us have to feel a little bit sorry for “The Washington Post.” Having said, that my dominant feeling was really cheering on that Web site, because you’re quite right, Howard, that I think media, right now, in general, and this White House in particular, actually, has been very adept at media management. And it’s nice to see that sometimes that doesn’t work, and it’s nice to see that the Internet actually can push against those boundaries and push against those deals, even on a trivial story like the dog. KURTZ: Well, you say trivial story, and I would tend to agree, except that in the green room, all the CNN people around here were saying, “Oh, look at the dog. It’s so cute.”

So, Tara Wall, should presidential aides be manipulating these feature stories? OK, the garden story over here, and you can have the dog story.

TARA WALL, DEPUTY EDITOR, “WASHINGTON TIMES”: Oh, the horror. Oh, my God, the horror and the scandal in a dog story. What have we come to?

I mean, I think it does border on the absurd. And I am a dog person, by the way, for all intents and purposes. I have a dog, and certainly those pictures are adorably cute, but front page, really, I mean, I think that this is just -- I mean, it’s something so trivial, that the White House probably really doesn’t even need to manipulate. There are other things that they are very good at manipulating, I think the least of which should be a dog story.

KURTZ: So just to be clear, if “The Washington Times” was offered the exclusive on the dog and the first pictures of Bo, it would have put the story on page A-9?

WALL: I doubt that you’d see it. I’m not speaking for the entire paper, but I doubt that you’d see something like that leading the front page, above-the-fold story, if you will.

KURTZ: I bet you that gets the most hits online.

David Corn, is this unusual? Do you get offered these deals about, we’ll give you an exclusive if you hold off on this story?

DAVID CORN, “MOTHER JONES”: No, but I’m not “The New York Times” and “Washington Post.” I mean, it takes two to tango and it takes two in an act of manipulation.

I mean, the story here is not just that the White House is trying to manipulate by feeding the media stories. Here is “The Washington Post” writing about this on the front page and saying we made a deal. We made a deal we wouldn’t get too upset about the garden story because they threw us that bone. And so -- and they even...

KURTZ: You’re saying this is not exactly Watergate.

CORN: Well, yes. This is not exactly -- but in the story itself, they call themselves the paper that broke Watergate, got thrown a bone, the puppy story. So some readers might wonder if this is the best use of The Washington Post’s time and resources these days.

KURTZ: Chrystia, you wanted to get in here?

FREELAND: I was just going to say, I thought actually the way that “The Washington Post” handled the story today was really admirable and really quite elegant. I liked the way that they made fun of themselves, that they made clear, I think, with that sort of tongue-in-cheek Watergate reference they were saying, look, guys, we understand this wasn’t Watergate, but we were had a little bit. And by the way, we think a lot of you are going to want to see the dog today, so here he is.

KURTZ: And here’s the dog. And I’m sure when I check the numbers on “The Washington Post” Web site, that dog story is going to get far more hits than all the serious investigative pieces, national and local, you name it.

All right. Let’s turn to a non-canine subject now, and that is the president visiting Iraq this week, wrapping up his international trip.

And I want to come back to you, Chrystia, on this, because some critics were saying that this meeting with those whooping and hollering troops was kind of a glorified photo-op made for TV. Is that fair?

FREELAND: No, I don’t think it is. I mean, I think that wherever presidents travel, there is the photo-op side of things, and particularly when presidents travel to Iraq right now. So I think that that’s not right.

I think it was really quite significant and important for President Obama to go to Iraq, important for U.S. troops, and also important in terms of the statement that he makes to America and to the world that he gets that this is now his war. And that’s particularly significant given how much of his political career was based on the fact that he said he was opposed to this war.

KURTZ: Well, we almost didn’t get to see the photo part of the photo-op because the Pentagon took hours to deliver the tape from CBS, which was the pool network, so that everyone could have these pictures.

Let me play some sound for the two of you about what some of the commentators are saying not just about the trip, but some remarks that the president made. What Obama said was, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We are a nation bound by a set of ideals and values.”

Let’s roll that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know that technically he’s right, but I think that this country has its roots so deep in Christianity and in its traditions and its laws, I think that should be an affront to the American people. I was really disappointed in the bow to the Saudi king.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: All right. So, we’re an arrogant country and we’re not a Christian nation and we bow before the Saudi king. JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think it was very important what the president did. And I think this right-wing claptrap of saying he was apologizing for United States or denying our heritage or something...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Tara, why are some pundits on your side of the spectrum saying that perhaps Obama doesn’t believe in a Christian nation, when he was clearly just saying that America is a pluralistic society?

WALL: Well, you know, his idea to forge ahead and this idea of religious neutrality, he essentially threw Christianity under the bus the same way he did Reverend Wright. I mean...

KURTZ: Threw Christianity under the bus? Where is that...

WALL: Well, listen, the point is the history -- let’s revisit our history here. This one dollar bill, all of our dollar bills say “In God We Trust.” We are a country -- wait. We are...

KURTZ: It doesn’t say in Christianity we trust.

WALL: We are a country based on Judeo-Christian values. Our laws are inscribed based on Judeo-Christian values -- our Constitution.

CORN: You can go back and look at Thomas Jefferson.

WALL: And the point is, at the same time -- listen, because we are a Christian nation, we welcome all religions. We are a free country; we welcome individuality.

KURTZ: Let’s let David in here.

WALL: These are things that he can certainly communicate in communicating his message of religious neutrality without essentially saying we are not a Christian nation. That’s completely false.

KURTZ: David?

CORN: I know this is a media show, not a religious show, but this debate comes up again and again, whether we are or are not a Christian nation. It’s not in the Constitution. You can go back and look at some of our founders, including Thomas Jefferson...

WALL: I have.

CORN: ... and he doesn’t call us a Christian nation. In fact, his relationship to God is kind of on the iffy side, let alone his relationship, if he had one, with Jesus Christ. And so, you know, here you have these people on the right, Lars Larson, Sean Hannity, again and again focusing, oddly enough, on the Christian end of the remark. You know, they cut off his quote when he said we are not a Christian nation.

WALL: Because he says we are not a Christian nation. And that’s false.

CORN: He says we’re not a Jewish nation and we’re not a Muslim nation.

KURTZ: Right.

WALL: But we are a nation...

CORN: We have no official religion in this nation.

WALL: We are a nation based on Judeo-Christian values, and there is nothing wrong with asserting that notion while, at the same time, embracing all religions as we do. And why people come here to flee religious persecution, because we are based on...

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: I’ve got to get Chrystia in here.

FREELAND: I was just going to say, Howard, that what -- I mean, if we move to the media side of the debate, as opposed to the religious content of the debate, what I think is interesting, actually, is that those remarks were not that controversial and were not picked up that much in the mainstream media in the U.S. Yes, they were picked up by some of the more shrill right-wing critics of the president, but what I thought was really interesting about those remarks, about his entire performance in Turkey, was how smoothly that went over in the U.S.

And what I thought was really the risky move by the president was talking about how he has Muslims in his family. And if you think back to the campaign, when there were these efforts to smear the president as being Muslim himself, I thought that was quite a risky move, and it was interesting that it didn’t boomerang against him.

KURTZ: Chrystia, what about the -- hold on now. What about the business about, did Obama appeared to bow to the Saudi king, and was that a terrible thing, that it also seemed to be -- factor into some of this criticism?

FREELAND: Yes. No, definitely. And I think, again there, as it happened, one of the things that I, not being American, find most attractive about the United States is that this is a country based on opposition to the monarchical principle. So I think American leaders in general should not be bowing to monarchs.

But having said that, again, what I thought was interesting was that was very much a right-wing fringe criticism. And I think one of the things that we’re seeing right now in terms of the polarization...

KURTZ: I’ve got to move on.

FREELAND: ... of the American debate is the right -- really grasping at these straws that are not overall being picked up by the American people.

KURTZ: I want to give you a crack at...

WALL: Not true. Absolutely not true.

KURTZ: I want to give you a crack at one other subject, but I should note that the president held a seder, a Passover seder, in the White House this week. And yet, he’s also gotten some criticism for not going to church enough. He is heading to church this Easter morning.

All right. Now, the new refrain from some George Bush aides in the media -- Karl Rove writing in “The Washington Journal,” “No president in 40 years has done more to polarize America.” Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, now “Washington Post” columnist, “Who is the most polarizing president in recent times? It’s not Nixon, Reagan, Bush. It is Barack Obama .”

That is based on a Pew poll -- if we can briefly put it up there -- which shows that President Obama getting support from 88 percent of Democrats, just 27 percent of Republicans.

Fair criticism, reasonable observation?

WALL: Well, yes. I mean, it’s not surprising when I think that, you know, in the beginning, Republicans and Independents -- certainly, there are many Republicans that actually voted for Obama, but they voted for him, they wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, they supported him. And I think you’re seeing that start to fall by the wayside with the expansion of government, these spending policies that are out of control, and the tone and the rancor within the Democratic Congress, and the lack of bipartisanship on the part of the president. That’s why you’re starting to see this wedge.

KURTZ: David.

CORN: Karl Rove calling anybody polarizing and archly partisan is absurd. I mean, he tried to politicize the war on terror. We have his notes proving that.

I mean, you wrote a very good piece in The Post about this. You know, the Pew people, who did the poll themselves, say this doesn’t lead to the conclusion that Karl Rove or Michael Gerson are pushing because Democrats usually give Republicans more of the benefit of the doubt at the beginning.

KURTZ: Not just that, but about the same level of Republican support for Obama as there was for Bill Clinton, but Obama is much more popular among Democrats. That’s why we see that gap.

CORN: That’s why there’s a wider gap.

KURTZ: Got to go. Got to go.

David Corn, Tara Wall, Chrystia Freeland in New York, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

When we come back, same-sex shift. Iowa and Vermont green-light gay marriage, but the once divisive issue doesn’t generate much coverage or even debate. Are the media simply moving on?

And don’t forget to check out our RELIABLE SOURCES fan page on Facebook. You can get an early look at guests and topics we’ll be talking about. Check it out.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Gay marriage was a big issue in the 2004 campaign with President Bush and Vice President Cheney vowing to push a constitutional amendment to ban the practice. But in the last two weeks, it almost seems to have become old news.

First, the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in that heartland state, and days ago, Vermont lawmakers brushed off a veto by the Republican governor in becoming the first state to adopt gay marriage through legislation. But here’s the real interesting part. This has not caused an explosion of press coverage. A handful of primetime cable news shows debated the issue, for one day, at least, none of them on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: The country waited 232 years for the first two U.S. states to recognize gay marriage. Now we’ve got two more states in the space of a week.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: A lot of people on -- who are against gay marriage, when it happened in California, were saying, well, it’s those liberal activist judges in California. Can’t really say that about this court in Iowa, though, can you?

DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC: At least in terms of generational issues, most people of my generation and Harold’s generation see nothing wrong with gay marriage.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Why has the media reaction been so muted? I spoke earlier with two media commentators, one gay, one straight, on opposite sides of the gay marriage question.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Joining us now here in Washington, John Aravosis, found of AmericaBlog.com. And in Los Angeles, Dennis Prager, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, columnist and author most recently of “Happiness is a Serious Problem.”

John Aravosis, the news of this has certainly been covered, but most of the primetime shows have stayed away. No debates on Fox, no parade of right-wingers coming in to denounce this.

Why is that?

JOHN ARAVOSIS, FOUNDER, AMERICABLOG.COM: I think America is bored of the topic a little bit in the sense that this is, what, the fourth or fifth state where we’ve now had gay marriage legalized, if you count California. There is only so many news stories you can do showing guys in tuxes, and what does it really mean, and will the world fall apart, are the locusts going to come and swarm us?

If there were locusts, there would be news, but honestly, it’s funny, I predict about a year ago on your show that, if California got repealed, gay marriage in California, the media would go crazy on that story. And they did.

KURTZ: Right.

ARAVOSIS: But the point is, that’s news.

KURTZ: But let me bring you back to this week. We had Vermont, the first state to actually do this to elected representatives, “CBS Evening News”, ABC’s “World News”, nothing at all. Three sentences on “NBC Nightly News.”

Is John right that the legalization in previous states, such as Massachusetts and Connecticut, have somehow convinced the media that this is not a current, pressing news issue?

DENNIS PRAGER, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: You asking me?

KURTZ: I’m asking you, Dennis.

PRAGER: Yes. Look, this is a real good question you’re posing. I don’t think that the press covers always what’s most important because, honestly, whatever side you’re on, I can’t think, frankly, of a more important issue, even including the economy, then the definition of marriage. So this is really, to me, somewhat of an indictment of the news media and their priorities.

This is big. You don’t get bigger than the redefining of the most important civilian or civil and social institution that we have. And so your question is a legit one, and I think it reflects poorly on the media.

KURTZ: Do you think, Dennis Prager, that the coverage has been so unmuted also because journalists are supportive of gay marriage? They don’t come out and say so, it’s our job to be objective, but they don’t view this as a threat or as a bad thing the way you do and the way some Americans do.

PRAGER: Yes. Well, that’s right. I think that’s a very fair analysis. It’s almost as if one were to declare that rain is wet. Why cover it? It’s so obviously the correct thing to do, and so that is a factor as well.

ARAVOSIS: See, but that’s not really true either. I’m sorry, but if the media were pro-gay or so crazily pro-gay, then they would be reporting the story as, oh my God, look at these great civil rights victories again. Let’s do a whole week show on how wonderful the gays are.

But one other point, though. I appreciate Dennis saying that to him, this is the most important issue. I think to most Americans, whether or not we go into another Great Depression and whether or not I keep my job this year and can afford my mortgage, I’m sorry. First I pay my mortgage and I eat, then I worry about the neighbors down the street.

PRAGER: All right. But the interesting thing, John -- that’s a very -- that’s a fair point, but let me tell you, I’ve been covering this, I testified for DOMA at Congress. So I’ve been in this for many years.

ARAVOSIS: I have too.

PRAGER: I’ve been told from the beginning, John and Howard, from the beginning, this is no big deal. Americans are considering other things.

ARAVOSIS: They are.

PRAGER: When the economy was stupendous I was told that this was of secondary importance.

ARAVOSIS: Well, but maybe it is.

PRAGER: So I don’t buy this notion that it’s the economy now that is dwarfing this.

KURTZ: Let me bring you back to the media coverage, John, and I will go back to Dennis, and ask you this question. My theory is that when we had the legalization briefly in California, more permanently, as I said, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, you had a lot of images on TV of pictures of happy couples, including older women, and I think maybe that changed the media perception because they didn’t seem particularly threatening to anyone.

ARAVOSIS: It wasn’t just the media perception. It’s a matter of the public perception.

How many times could you show the same photo over and over again on the TV show or an AP story? It’s not news any more, Howie. I can’t show you the same -- I’m a photographer. Once I show you the same photo 10 times, you’re going to say, John, show me your photo.

KURTZ: Dennis?

PRAGER: What you’re saying, John, really doesn’t contradict what I’m saying in that if there isn’t drama to be shown, television news doesn’t cover it. I agree with you.

ARAVOSIS: But that’s always the point, of course.

PRAGER: If it leads and nothing is bleeding -- but it is the most important story.

ARAVOSIS: But it’s not. The G-20 was the most important story last week, Howie.

PRAGER: No, no, no. It was the most covered. I’m sorry. I think -- listen, this is a matter of opinion.

ARAVOSIS: Yes, of course.

PRAGER: I of course think the economy is central. But even when the economy was doing well, people did not understand the gravity of the issue of redefining marriage.

ARAVOSIS: And I just disagree with you. I think the majority of Americans think the economy is more important.

KURTZ: Let’s move on.

PRAGER: I agree, they do.

KURTZ: John Aravosis, in recent polls...

PRAGER: I agree.

KURTZ: ... CBS poll, 33 percent support gay marriage. CNN poll had it at 44 percent.

A lot of Democrats oppose gay marriage. President Obama is not in favor of gay marriage. I think the news stories have dutifully quoted opponents, but it doesn’t seem to me like they reflect the controversy that’s still out there with ordinary Americans, maybe beside the pundits.

ARAVOSIS: You did not cite me a controversy. You told me that when asked, are Americans in favor or opposed to gay marriage? What you didn’t get into was how strongly do they feel about this? I think there is a segment of the population, a segment of conservatives on the far right, that are incensed about gay marriage just like abortion. It is their number one issue.

I think for most Americans, they may have an opinion on it, but it’s not really strong. And so that if you really push below the surface, they go, you know what? I don’t care. I don’t like it. I don’t care.

PRAGER: There we disagree, John. I think that most Americans who do want marriage defined as it always has been have simply given up on their ability to influence courts, which have taken it out of their hands, or legislatures which have taken it out of their hands. That’s the problem, and I understand that given that there is nothing we can do even though -- look at California, we voted in California...

KURTZ: Let me jump in because we’re down to our last minute.

Dennis Prager, is there a hint, in your view, a whiff, perhaps, in the coverage, that if you oppose gay marriage you’re kind of bigoted?

PRAGER: Whiff? You have to spend most of your time saying you’re not homophobic, you’re not like a racist. Right now, opposition to redefining marriage is considered the moral equivalent of opposition to racial integration. KURTZ: All right. Let me get John in here.

ARAVOSIS: Of course, it is. But the point is...

PRAGER: OK. There you go.

ARAVOSIS: ... that the top story in America right now is the G- 20 summit and Obama, and not going into a depression. And anybody who thinks the top story in America is gay marriage is off their rocker. And I’ll let your audience decide, but I know 80 percent of them are going, that guy’s right. The economy is the issue.

PRAGER: I think we are more likely to survive economically than we are the redefinition of marriage.

ARAVOSIS: I know you are. That’s why I love you, Dennis.

KURTZ: Got to wrap it up.

All right. Dennis Prager, John Aravosis, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

PRAGER: It’s great to be loved. (END VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Coming up in the second half of RELIABLE SOURCES, Levi laments. The father of Bristol Palin’s baby speaks out on the television circuit, but do we really need to feast on the uncomfortable details of a teenage breakup?

Deborah Norville joins our discussion.

Plus, returning serve. Democratic strategist Joe Trippi on the John Edwards affair and why he thinks Republicans are wrong in saying the mainstream media are soft on President Obama.

Also, going overboard. Is it OK for the gang at Fox News to join those April 15th tea party protests?

And later, John King one-on-one with the U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I’m John King, and this is STATE OF THE UNION.

Here are stories breaking this Sunday morning.

The country’s top general in Iraq says the Iraqis will have the final say on pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq’s major cities by a June 30th deadline. I spoke to General Ray Odierno on STATE OF THE UNION earlier today. General Odierno says he’s confident all U.S. forces will be out of Iraq by the 2011 deadline.

A U.S. official tells CNN authorities have been in touch with the U.S. ship captain held hostage now for four days by Somali pirates. Those authorities report Captain Richard Phillips is doing well. His ship and screw are now safely in Kenya, briefing FBI agents about that attack. Negotiations to win the captain’s release are ongoing.

Christians around the world are celebrating Easter today, and at the Vatican, Pope Benedict delivered an Easter mass to thousands gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica. He delivered Easter blessings in 63 languages.

That and more ahead on STATE OF THE UNION.

We’ll turn it back over now to my friend and partner, Howie Kurtz of RELIABLE SOURCES.

And Howard, as we do so, I hold up this here. This is the ombudsman in “The New York Times” today saying maybe they didn’t do something quite right.

KURTZ: Which, of course, is the ombudsman’s job. Here’s the scoop, John.

The Times published an op-ed piece a couple of weeks ago by a woman named Daphne Merkin that was sympathetic to convicted scam artist Bernie Madoff. Merkin briefly mentioned that she has “a sibling who did business with him.” It turns out her brother, Ezra Merkin, was the chairman of GMAC and has now been charge by the New York attorney general with deceiving his clients and just turning their money over to Madoff.

“The New York Times” says Daphne Merkin’s disclosure was adequate. I don’t even think it was close. And many readers says ombudsman Clark Hoyt felt the disclosure was so limited as to be disingenuous.

Thanks, John. We’ll talk to you at the top of the hour.

But first, the breakup of two 18-year-olds in Alaska. Even the unmarried parents of a new baby would not ordinarily qualify as big news. But when the young mother in question is Sarah Palin ’s daughter, it’s hardly surprising the media would take notice. And when the governor of Alaska puts out a statement ripping ex-boyfriend Levi Johnston as a liar, well, that puts the ugly situation front and center.

Levi hit the television circuit this past week, first on Tyra Banks’ chat-fest, and then on CBS’s “Early Show.”

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TYRA BANKS, TALK SHOW HOST: You haven’t spoke on the press. Why are you breaking your silence now?

LEVI JOHNSTON, FATHER OF BRISTOL PALIN’S CHILD: Because I’ve seen a lot of stuff and read a lot of things in the newspapers and the news, and it’s time that we get our story out there. I’ve seen a lot of stuff saying I’ve done steroids and drugs and cheated on Bristol, that kind of thing, and it’s not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sarah Palin , through a spokesperson, has denied a lot of the things that you’re saying. So either you’re lying or Sarah Palin is lying. Which is it?

JOHNSTON: They said I didn’t live there, I stayed there. I was, like, OK, well, whatever you want to call it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: So, are these shows unfairly feasting on a private family tragedy? I put that question to two women with experience on these kinds of stories.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Joining me now in New York, Deborah Norville, host of the nationally-syndicated show, “Inside Edition”; and here in Washington, Amy Argetsinger, who co-writes “The Reliable Source” gossip column for “The Washington Post.”

KURTZ: Deborah Norville, you saw those interviews. Isn’t it basically raw exploitation at this point to have this kid on?

DEBORAH NORVILLE, HOST, “INSIDE EDITION”: I think, you know, he’s a young man, he’s confused. We don’t know, you know, how many options he has in his life. And I think it’s very intoxicating when the big producer from New York calls you up and says, we’d be happy to fly you and your mom and your sister to New York, we’ll put you up in a nice hotel, we’ll have fancy cars for you, maybe we can even get you tickets to go see the Statue of Liberty.

That’s a real hard thing for the average person to say no to. So yes.

KURTZ: Have you ever made that offer?

NORVILLE: No. No, I haven’t.

KURTZ: OK.

NORVILLE: In fact, I’ll tell you, during the O.J. Simpson trial, I was trying to get an interview with the Brown family. And I said, “My producer and I’d be happy to take you out for dinner,” and the person said, well, that’s very kind, but somebody at XYZ network has offered to fly the family to a foreign country.

I’m like, I can’t compete.

KURTZ: Ah, hard to compete with that.

Amy Argetsinger, let me play one more clip from Levi Johnston’s appearance with CBS’s Maggie Rodriguez.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ, CBS ANCHOR: Do you think it’s heartbreaking, the way that it all turned out? Did you get your heart broken?

LEVI JOHNSTON, FATHER OF BRISTOL PALIN’S CHILD: Yes, I did. But I got an amazing little boy out of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: “Did you get your heart broken?” I mean, basically, Levi Johnston was giving monosyllabic answers, and she’s trying to get him to show some emotion, right? AMY ARGETSINGER, CO-WRITER, “THE RELIABLE SOURCE”: Yes, she’s trying very hard here. The whole thing is crazy-making. And I feel a little bit hypocritical here.

On the one hand, would I like to have an interview with Levi Johnston? Heck, yes. I would. I’d be delighted to talk with him.

On the other hand, I was watching these interviews thinking, oh, shut up. He’s not doing himself any favors.

You know, the interesting thing is that when there was scrutiny on him back in November, you know, during the convention in September, and then even more recently after the breakup, he was the subject of a couple of sort of ambush interviews where he sort of, you know, acquitted himself pretty well. He gave very dignified, short answers where he said sort of the right things, and then nothing more.

KURTZ: He certainly didn’t ask to be a public figure, except nobody forced him to go on in this situation.

ARGETSINGER: And that changes -- I mean, giving these interviews, it’s -- yes, it’s a bad idea.

KURTZ: All right.

Deborah Norville, we decided -- I decided on this program last Sunday to talk about this because Sarah Palin had put out this blistering statement, ripping Levi Johnston as a liar and distorting the facts and all of that.

Did the governor, you know, boost the ratings of these programs by blowing it up into this big public family feud?

NORVILLE: I think there’s no question, because when an elected official who was campaigning for the second-highest office in the land issues a statement, we’re obligated in the news media to pay attention. This could have been a story that you could have ignored and everyone else could have ignored if they had simply stayed on “The Tyra Banks Show.” Then CBS News goes and sends one of their prime morning anchors to do an interview with this fellow.

The thing that bothered me about all of this is if you’re going to do the interview, do a good interview. Please ask follow-up questions.

In the interview with the woman from CBS, he said, yes, I stayed there. How many nights did you stay there? Did you stay there for weeks at a time? Did you stay one night on occasion? Did the governor know when you were staying there?

There were so many follow-up questions. For heaven’s sakes, if you’re going to be a reporter, act like one.

KURTZ: Were they just kind of treading lightly because they didn’t know what they could out of a guy who obviously wasn’t used to sitting in front of cameras with the lights on and all of that? ARGETSINGER: I think they spent enough time with him to realize that there wasn’t much more. I mean, Tyra had him on for 45 minutes, and there is just not a whole lot to get.

I think they probably backed off because, who knows what? It’s...

KURTZ: And do you agree that Governor Palin, by going so public with her denunciation of this kid who dated her daughter and is the father of her daughter’s baby, made it more of a story for all of us?

ARGETSINGER: I don’t think anyone was particularly interested in talking to Levi Johnston after the Tyra show. But she called him a liar, which opened the door to going back and getting his response. She created the day two, day three story, really.

NORVILLE: You know, Howard, there’s the other thing too. It was either Plato or Socrates. One of those dead Greeks said, you will never regret your silences. And I can’t help but think that perhaps Governor Palin regrets that she did engage on this, because what it does is it puts the spotlight on her own family, which has had its own brush with the law.

The governor’s sister-in-law was arrested several days ago and charged with burglary. So, look, we’ve all got skeletons in our closet, but when you invite people to come and take a look at your house, they might just find them.

KURTZ: First of all, thank you. It’s the first time anyone has ever quoted Plato on this program.

(LAUGHTER)

KURTZ: Secondly, look, I mean, this kid, when he was dating Bristol Palin, was trotted out at the Republican Convention to make an image of an all-star family with an unusual situation, and now it’s hard to pull that curtain back.

Last question.

Amy Argetsinger, is there some sort of journalistic code that says we can’t just say, OK, this is a private mess between two 18- year-olds, and we’re going to leave them alone? Are we just incapable of doing that?

ARGETSINGER: We may be. I mean, there is really not much to this story. When you get right down to it, it is a very ordinary teenage breakup. Sarah Palin ’s reaction, unwise as it may have been, was a pretty ordinary mom reaction.

KURTZ: Except she happens to be the governor of Alaska who ran for vice president.

ARGETSINGER: Exactly. Yes.

KURTZ: All right. Want to turn now to Eliot Spitzer, who went on “The Today Show” this week. He, of course, the former governor of New York, resigned just over a year ago for getting ensnared in a prostitution scandal.

Let’s take a look at what Matt Lauer asked him. And I’ll give you a hint, he didn’t begin with the former governor’s position on AIG.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELIOT SPITZER, FORMER GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK: This is something that has caused excruciating pain to Silda, to my daughters, something that I carry with me every day because of the pain to them.

MATT LAUER, CO-HOST, “THE TODAY SHOW”: People look at you and they say, here was the highest elected official in the state of New York. But there is more.

Here is a guy who had almost an Eliot Ness-type reputation. He went after abuses of power. He went after the high and mighty.

How could he have allowed himself to be involved in a prostitution scandal?

SPITZER: I, Matt, like most of us, I suppose, I won’t speak for everybody else, have flaws, and have tried to think about it, deeply, address it. As I say, there are no excuses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Deborah Norville, you once worked at “The Today Show,” of course. You know how morning television works. Matt Lauer didn’t really want Eliot Spitzer on to get his views on the financial crisis, did he?

NORVILLE: No, he didn’t. And that obviously was the invitation. And certainly, he did work very publicly in dealing with some of the problems on Wall Street when he was attorney general and talked about it as governor.

But, again, ask the follow-up question. One of the frustrations about morning television is you do have that clock ticking, and just as in your cameras here at CNN, we’ve got the clock that has got the digital numbers. You see that when you’re doing morning TV.

But again, Governor Spitzer was incredibly noncommittal in any of his answers. He didn’t talk about how many times. When Matt asked him, how often did you frequent these kinds of people? He didn’t say, even though prosecutors say as much as $80,000 was spent.

You can’t say it was just a few times. But Spitzer managed to do the interview and not really say anything.

KURTZ: And on that point, Amy Argetsinger, Eliot Spitzer had tried in recent weeks to write pieces about the fiscal crisis for “Slate” magazine, for “The Washington Post,” but basically he had been avoiding the prostitution scandal that brought him down.

Was talking about it on national television kind of the price of admission for him to get into the punditry club?

ARGETSINGER: It was like some kind of media ritual he was undergoing here. If you watched it with an eye on the clock, it was exactly -- the first half of the seven-minute interview was devoted to the scandal that toppled him from power.

And it was very interesting to watch him, because his affect changed very little, whether he was talking about his personal life or talking about AIG. It was as if he knew he had to go through this.

He had to hit his marks. He had to tell his story. He had to show the pictures of his daughters. This was part of the routine and the ritual.

KURTZ: I was reminded of Hugh Grant going on the Leno show some years ago to talk about his dalliance with one of the ladies of the night.

Deborah, this is a former prosecutor who broke the law, humiliated his family, and had to resign as governor. Why should journalists care at this point what he has to say about financial matters?

NORVILLE: I don’t really know that they should, to be honest with you. I think we use that sometimes, the, “Gee, he has expertise in this area,” to really get to the salient stuff. I think the news agenda is filled with so many complicated issues.

I mean, in the history of my career and yours, we’ve never had a more challenging set of problems facing this country, and yet what are we talking about? The knocked-up younger daughter of the governor of Alaska, and a politician who fell from grace doing something that certainly happened more than once in Washington.

I think it’s a bit of an evasive tactic, because we don’t really know how to solve these issues.

KURTZ: Right.

NORVILLE: And the pundits don’t really have any answers to offer up either.

KURTZ: Teenage pregnancy and hookers often sells, no matter what is going on in the world.

All right. Deborah Norville, Amy Argetsinger, thanks very much for joining us.

NORVILLE: Thank you.

ARGETSINGER: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KURTZ: Up next, former Republican chairman Ed Gillespie said on this program two weeks ago that the media are much rougher on his party. Now Democratic strategist Joe Trippi gets his turn and takes on the John Edwards sex scandal as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Republicans, as you may have noticed, have been complaining roughly forever that the mainstream media tilt to the left, but Democrats aren’t always happy with people in my business either. On RELIABLE SOURCES two weeks ago, former Republican Party chairman Ed Gillespie laid out his indictment of why he thinks journalists are unfair to his party.

Joe Trippi, the Democratic strategist who worked for John Edwards in the last year of his presidential campaign, and Howard Dean, four years before that, sees things a little differently.

I spoke to him earlier, here in the studio.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Joe Trippi, welcome.

JOE TRIPPI, DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Great to be here.

KURTZ: President Obama has gotten pretty mixed coverage in recent weeks -- he is doing too much at once, he screwed up the AIG bonuses, he’s talking over General Motors, he hasn’t solved the pirate problem. But a majority of Americans still seem to like the guy.

So is there a gap between the punditry and public opinion?

TRIPPI: Big time, yes. I mean, people like this guy. They want to root for him. They want him to succeed.

And I don’t think that the pundits have caught up with the people in this one. People are giving him the benefit of the doubt. They want to make things work.

KURTZ: Are you surprised at all that liberal columnists like Paul Krugman, who was on the cover of “Newsweek” the other week, are criticizing Obama from the left?

TRIPPI: No. I’ve criticized him. I don’t think he’s doing a great job on everything.

We don’t know how this is all going to turn out. It’s a big mess. They’re working on it. I don’t agree with everything they’ve -- particularly on the banking crisis.

And I kind of line up on the Krugman side of things. But we’ll see, you know.

KURTZ: All right.

TRIPPI: Krugman, I’m sorry.

KURTZ: What about coverage of the Republicans? I mean, Mitch McConnell , John Boehner have barely produced an alternative budget. Do the media care, or would we rather be sitting around talking about Rush Limbaugh?

TRIPPI: Well, they should care, because right now, I mean, it’s kind of -- from my perspective, it’s kind of amazing how the media covered all of this, because there really isn’t a Republican Party right now. And so they’ve been covering Rush Limbaugh and other things.

KURTZ: All of those people who have GOP on their name, who have been elected to House and Senate, they’re not Republicans?

TRIPPI: It’s amazing the extent there is no Republican Party. There is really no opposition, I don’t think, organized opposition.

KURTZ: Well, wait a second, there is opposition when the president can’t even get a single Republican vote for a stimulus package and from many other things.

TRIPPI: When basically Rush Limbaugh is the key spokesman, or the person that is covered the most of the -- that tells you something along...

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: Maybe that says more about the media. Well, actually, he did get three Republican votes for the stimulus package.

We had, a couple of weeks ago, former Bush White House aide Ed Gillespie on, on this program. And he talked about how he thinks -- he likes reporters, but he thinks media coverage has really tilted to the left.

Let’s listen to some of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED GILLESPIE, REPUBLICAN POLITICAL STRATEGIST: In my experience in campaigns and politics over the years, when a Republican, you know, says something or gets in a fix, the media stay on him pretty good, or her, for a while. On the Democratic side, they only -- the media will only do that if the Republican opponent kind of forces the issue and presses it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Is there a double standard?

TRIPPI: Not at all. I mean, that’s a sort of loss of memory on what happened when George Bush was first president of the United States and the press literally cheer-led him into the war in Iraq. I mean, the embedded journalists. I mean, we’ve had -- once a new administration comes in, I do think there is some tendency for the press to sort of go along for the ride. They do start criticizing after a while.

That will happen with Obama, and it is starting to happen. But I don’t think there is a bias at all.

KURTZ: But Gillespie is saying that journalists are quicker to jump on scandal or some kind of mishap involving a Republican. And when a Democrat is involved, they do it only if the GOP is firing live ammunition at the Democratic target.

TRIPPI: I don’t think that’s true at all.

KURTZ: You’ve been through a lot of campaigns.

TRIPPI: I’ve been through a lot of them. And they jump on scandal regardless of who got it, who stepped in it.

KURTZ: When you worked for John Edwards in the Democratic primaries, how frustrating was it for you that Obama and Hillary seemed to get 99 percent of the coverage?

TRIPPI: Oh, it was awful. I mean, I remember one day John Edwards looked at me and said, “What do I have to do, set myself on fire?” And I told him that if I thought it would work, I’d do it. But...

KURTZ: You didn’t rule it out.

TRIPPI: Didn’t rule it out.

KURTZ: Was it fair for the press to pile on Edwards after “The National Enquirer” story, after he had to acknowledge that he had lied about having an affair with a former campaign aide, or basically had he asked for it by not being truthful about this affair?

TRIPPI: No, I think he asked for it. I think he would say he asked for it. And no, I thought that coverage was fair. I think there’s a lot of healing now that has got to go on, on a personal level, but he asked for it.

KURTZ: Well, this happened while you were working for that campaign.

TRIPPI: Yes -- no, I was angry. I mean, I was upset. There were a lot of people upset. If I had known what I had known -- well, I mean, if I had known now what I didn’t know then, I’m not sure I would have done it, you know, put that year of my life into it. But...

KURTZ: Isn’t this all going to get dredged up again when Elizabeth Edwards’ book comes out in a couple of months? She’s obviously going to have to address it.

TRIPPI: Well, she’s -- I’m sure she’ll address it. But, look, I think they are two really, I think, people who love each other. I have no idea how this happened, but I think Elizabeth Edwards is a great person and I think it’s going to be an interesting book. I can’t wait for it to come out.

KURTZ: All right.

Now you were famously Howard Dean’s Internet guru in the 2004 campaign. Obama took the whole online thing to another level, fundraising machine and all of that.

And yet, a lot of people say, well, he’ll just run a YouTube presidency. He’ll go around the mainstream press. And yet, he is granted a slew of interviews to newspaper reporters, to bloggers, to network anchors, “60 Minutes,” you name it.

Why is he spending so much time dealing with the old dinosaur media?

TRIPPI: Because I think they understand you’ve got to do both. I think they did both really well in the campaign. A lot of the campaigns were doing the old media and not doing the new -- not doing any of the new stuff.

They mastered it. And I think they’re doing a great job right now. I mean, they know how to use YouTube, they know how to use CNN. And they’re doing a pretty job of it.

KURTZ: Almost every night, I flip around the channels, I see opinionated hosts on Fox News beating up on President Obama. I see people on MSNBC beating up on the Republicans, defending Obama.

Do you get a little tired of this fragmentation in the media where some folks seem to take sides?

TRIPPI: Yes, I’m pretty sick of it. I think a lot of Americans are too. But it seems to be the way the media is fragmenting right now, where you tune in to Fox to get the hits on the Democrats, the liberals, and the same thing on MSNBC going the other way.

That’s how...

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: Is that playing to your base, as a political term?

TRIPPI: Yes. But that’s how journalism was in the very beginning, in the old days. I mean, maybe that’s where we’re going.

KURTZ: Joe Trippi, thanks very much for joining us.

TRIPPI: Good to be with you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: And RELIABLE SOURCES is now portable. You can download our video podcast at CNN.com/podcast, or look for us on iTunes. And coming up after the break, tea time. Fox News gets on board in a big way with this week’s tea party protests. Has that crossed some kind of line?

We report, you decide. That’s next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: The folks at Fox News have found something to be fore in this age of Obama. They are firmly in favor of tea parties.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ (voice-over): On Wednesday -- that would be April 15th -- there will be tax protests around the country on the theme of the original Boston Tea Party. TaxDayTeaParty.com says it was inspired by that rant against President Obama’s mortgage aid plan by CNBC’s Rick Santelli.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Obama, are you listening?

NARRATOR: From sea to shining sea, in every city, we, the people, take our nation back.

KURTZ: Among those backing what’s being billed as a grassroots movement, a conservative blogger, Michelle Malkin, a Fox contributor. Newt Gingrich, the former House-speaker-turned-Fox-analyst, will also will be attending one of the parties. Fox News, whose new online slogan is “Just Say No to Biased Media,” began publicizing the protests, and soon some hosts were signing on.

GLENN BECK, FOX NEWS: We’re getting ready for next week’s Tax Day tea parties. All across the country, people coming together to let the politicians know, OK, enough spending.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS: And, of course, April 15th, our big show coming out of Atlanta. It’s Tax Day, our Tax Day tea party show. Don’t forget, we’re going to have “Joe the Plumber.”

KURTZ: Now, the hosts at Rupert murdoch’s network all make up their own minds, right? But soon the tax protest became a full- fledged Fox fight.

BECK: Fox News with “Your World With Neil Cavuto” is going to be live in Sacramento, California at 4:00 p.m.. That’s 4:00 p.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. Pacific. Our show is going to be at the Alamo at our regular time. Then “Hannity” will be in Atlanta, Georgia, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 6:00 p.m. Pacific. And then Greta is live in Washington, D.C., 10:00 p.m. Eastern, 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time.

KURTZ: These hosts said little or nothing about the huge deficits run up by President Bush, but Barack Obama ’s budget and tax plans have driven them to tea.

On the other hand, CNN and MSNBC may have dropped the ball by all but ignoring the protests. (END VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Glenn and company joining the somewhat over-caffeinated tea parties. They are commentators who are paid for their point of view, and these aren’t Republican Party events. At least not officially. Obviously, they’re playing to their conservative base.

The test for me is whether these Fox hosts occasionally find something nice to say about President Obama. In the interest of being fair and balanced, of course.

Still to come, front-page flap. NBC advertises in the “L.A. Times,” and, well, it sure looks like a real news story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KURTZ: Many major newspapers have started selling ads on their front pages. A little tacky in my view, but hey, times are tough. But what the “Los Angeles Times” did this week is just plain bogus.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ (voice-over): What appears to be a news story, “Southland’s Rookie Hero,” was actually an ad by NBC for a new cop show called “Southland.” Yes, there’s a small line saying “advertisement,” but it’s even written by a news story -- “It’s not every assignment that puts you in the back of a squad car.”

Look, don’t take my word for it. A petition circulating in The Times’ newsroom calls it an embarrassing and demoralizing ad that makes a mockery of our integrity and our journalistic standards.

And John King, that line between news and advertising seems to be getting more blurry all the time.

KING: It is. And on the one hand, you have a bit sympathy. If putting the ad on the front page means more revenue, it means they fire fewer reporters, you might say you’re for it. But I understand the reporters in the newsroom who are working hard every day to put together what is one of the country’s finest newspapers cringing at the idea of an ad on the front page. It’s tough times for the newspaper business.

KURTZ: I’m old-fashioned, but I think an ad should look like an ad.

I should mention, by the way, that my wardrobe this week is brought to you by -- well, actually, I shop for my own clothes.

John King, returning the reins back over to you.

KING: Howie, have a great Sunday. Thank you very much.

And here’s what’s still to come on our STATE OF THE UNION report for this Sunday, April 12th, 2009. Millions are still dying of HIV/AIDS in Africa, but according to the United Nations, the epidemic there has stabilized or begun to decline. Dana Perino went from the Bush White House press room to an AIDS counseling center in South Africa. We’ll ask her if this positive trend will continue.

This week, President Obama says he sees glimmers of hope in the economy. Are they real or just political rhetoric? The best political team on television will join me to break it down.

And will sectarian violence slow the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq? We’ll get the facts in an exclusive interview with the commanding general in Iraq, Ray Odierno.

That’s all ahead on STATE OF THE UNION.

The top U.S. commander in Iraq voices full confidence that all American troops will leave in two years on schedule. But General Ray Odierno tells us a recent spike in violence could mean he will push to keep U.S. troops in some Iraqi cities past an interim deadline that’s just 11 weeks away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ODIERNO: But we will continue to conduct assessments, along with the government of Iraq, as we move toward the June 30th deadline. If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain our presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that. But ultimately, it will be the decision of Prime Minister Maliki.

KING: Nearly three years ago, Iraq’s national security adviser predicted all American troops would leave his country by the end of 2007. They are still there, of course, and now Mowaffak al-Rubaie voices confidence Iraqi security forces are finally be ready.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL-RUBAIE (ph): In the next year or so, we’ll be in a position to take over all our country, all the security all over the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And here at home, the Obamas are finally, finally going to get a new pet, a Portuguese water dog named Bo. To some, it’s front- page news. To the former Republican speaker of the House, it’s something very different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NEWT GINGRICH (ph): I hope that the girls love the dog. I hope the family and all the press (ph) they’re going to be in finds it useful, and I think this whole thing is fairly stupid. It’s great that they have a dog. It’s great that the kids are adjusting. And where they got it from, who cares. It’s a nice gesture on Senator Kennedy’s part to give it to them, but who cares?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

As you can see, we’ve been watching all the other Sunday shows, so you don’t have to.

A bit later, our reporters and analysts will discuss and debate the major challenges at home and abroad, as President Obama inches closer to the 100-day mark.

But first, something a little different, this morning. For Christians, this is Easter Sunday. And Jews, this past week, gathered with family and friends to mark Passover.

It is a time when many not only reflect on their faith but also commit themselves to charity and to helping others.

So we begin this hour with a guest you came to know as a top aide to President Bush. Former White House press secretary Dana Perino is with us today, though, because of a choice she made, as her time in government was coming to an end.

Dana Perino, welcome to “State of the Union.”

You decided, after the leaving the rigors of the White House press room to go to South Africa, to volunteer in an HIV clinic. I want you to tell us why, and as you do, over your shoulder, we’re going to show some of the video you brought back of the amazing children you met.

PERINO: Well, thanks for having me on and for being willing to spend some time, on your Sunday show, when there’s no shortage of political topics to talk about, to shed some light on this.

You know, over the years at the White House, you become, kind of, hardened. And I had felt that way, a little bit, but it wasn’t my true heart. And when we went to Africa in February of 2008 with President Bush, I realized that this is what I want to do. I want to come back and try to help in some small way.

I actually think that the work that I did really only helped them in a very small way, but if I can come back and shed some light and have some -- put some amplification on what we are doing, as Americans, all around the world -- there are Americans of all different stripes, and some with Christian groups, some with Islamic groups, some with Jewish groups, out working with NGOS and governments all around the world, to try to help in any way that we can.

KING: And turn over your shoulder, as we speak. You can see some of the children here. This is your video that you’ve brought back. Tell us about meeting these young children who come from families where their parents and I assume some of these children have HIV.

PERINO: Well, these are children who live in a township called (inaudible)

And I didn’t really know a lot about townships and how that had really -- I had never seen it and witnessed it. Of course, I read about it books and you can see it on TV, but it’s something different when you see it in person.

And these children were at a kids’ club, which is something they do between the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., every day, through Living Hope. That’s the group that I went and volunteered with. And they have little warm-up exercises.

I remember, this little kid here, in the jersey, he was very proud of his Ronaldo shirt because, obviously, soccer is very important.

(LAUGHTER)

But they were basically getting taken care of. They get a snack every day, which in some cases was the most nutrition that they got in any day. And it’s all provided by Living Hope, which 52 percent of the funding from Living Hope comes from the American taxpayer.

So I wanted to see for myself, what are we really doing and how is it working?

And I can tell you -- I just want to make sure every American knows that this is a bipartisan program, now, started by President Bush but embraced by everybody. And the work that we’re doing is really good, and we should be proud of it.

KING: Let’s get up and walk over to the wall for a minute. Because, before we talk more about your experience, I want to put the HIV crisis in context.

This is a map of the world. And the lighter colors mean lower incidence of HIV. You see 5,000 cases. The brighter colors, orange and red, mean a higher incidence. You see the United States here. There’s between 1 million and 5 million cases in the United States.

And I want to swing the map around, because this is where you were. And you see, obviously, the biggest problem is in Africa, in the continent of Africa.

And I want to zoom in a little closer here, where you were, down in South Africa, and bring it up on the screen: 5.7 million cases -- that’s 18 percent of the population -- higher over in tiny Swaziland, 26 percent of the population, but 5.7 million cases.

Now, the PEPFAR program, the president’s emergency program -- the U.N. says it has stabilized people, but not so much in the new incidence of the disease.

What is the next key step, in your group, in terms of making these numbers go down?

PERINO: Well, one thing that happened, when President Bush took over in 2001, 50,000 people on the entire continent of Africa were getting anti-retroviral treatment. OK? He started the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief. It’s called PEPFAR. Now that’s 2.2 million people around the world that are getting this treatment. Most of them are in Africa.

The key to any type of poverty eradication is education. And in this case, it’s not only education for those youngsters to be able to get jobs but prevention, and prevention is the next step.

And I think that -- obviously, there’s a lot of need. If you imagined that 18 out of 100 people that meet almost had a death sentence; now they’re able to, maybe, live longer -- not necessary in the rural areas. But it’s because of our generosity and working with NGOs and in some cases the United Nations, they were able to help save lives.

But then, how do you make lives better? And that’s the next step.

KING: When you were going on this trip and you told me about it, I begged you to take a camera. And I want, as we sit back down and continue our conversation, for our viewers to meet your new friend, Kumi.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KUMI, RECIPIENT OF AID FROM PEPFAR (ph): I was very, very sick at that time. My children were in foster care. And now (inaudible) I could see that now I can, maybe, be able to support my children with the money that I make from this (inaudible)

PERINO: How many women do you have selling for you?

KUMI: I’ve got eight women and one man.

PERINO: Do they make enough money to help support themselves and their families?

KUMI: It does really make a difference in their lives.

PERINO: How did this whole thing get started?

KUMI: At night, I would practice sewing. When other patients were asleep, I would be sewing.

(LAUGHTER)

PERINO: Tell me a little bit about what you have made here.

KUMI: This is the original (inaudible) of the peacock. The text says, “(inaudible) for hope. (inaudible) Ministries is a nonprofit mission helping South African women who live with HIV and AIDS, to enrich their lives by developing skills that make them self- sufficient.”

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: You have with you some of the products from this.

PERINO: I do.

KING: We’re not in the endorsement business or the advertising business, but how important is that self-sufficiency to these people who, as you mentioned before, had a death sentence?

PERINO: Well, it’s critical because a lot of these people have no way to make a living. And Kumi, which she doesn’t talk about it in the video, in that sound bite, is, she was on her deathbed in 2006. She was 34 years old at the time, is a mother of two sets of twins, and was basically had no way to support herself or her children.

So she had to take the older set of twins and take them to family out in a rural area in the northern area, and then find some place where somebody could take care of her babies because she was about ten days away from death.

And she says to me that the doctor leaned over her, at Living Hope --basically she had gone there to die -- and said to her, we just got some medicines from America and you’re going to make it.

And she said she didn’t believe him at the time. And then she was taught to do these bags. And I do have the original peacock bag, actually. And I have to tell you -- I’m not a connoisseur of bags. I’m trying to find the best one.

(LAUGHTER)

But it has pockets on this side. And they have cute little wooden buttons.

But you heard what she said. She has figured out a way to help other women learn how to sew in order to help take care of themselves and to be able to provide for their families. And you just -- you can’t put a price tag on that.

The one thing I think is great -- you saw this study, this week, from Stanford, saying that President Bush’s program had saved over a million lives. What you don’t know from that -- and that’s just through 2006, so we don’t know what the numbers are in the past two years.

But what it doesn’t talk about is the ripple effect of what we’re doing. If you help Kumi and she helps eight women, then how many other people is that helping?

And so, if we can keep these programs going and focus on the good work that Americans do and be really proud of ourselves and not apologize wherever we go, I think that -- I think that we can do even greater work.

KING: It is remarkable and inspiring. I’m going to make an awkward twist, because I can’t let you leave without a little bit of political commentary...

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

KING: ... from Dana Perino. In that very seat, a month ago, the vice president, the former president, Dick Cheney , said something about the Obama administration that drew a very tart response from senior adviser David Axelrod. I want you to listen to the exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You believe the president of the United States has made Americans less safe?

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: I do. I think those programs were absolutely essential to the success we enjoyed of being able to collect the intelligence that let us defeat all further attempts to launch attacks against the United States since 9/11.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And Mr. Axelrod’s response. Do we have that?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID AXELROD, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT: I think it was an unfortunate statement. And let me say, in contrast, how much we appreciate the way President Bush has behaved. He was incredibly cooperative during the transition. And when he left, he said “I wish you guys the best. I’m rooting for you.” I believe that to be the case. And he’s behaved like a statesman.

And as I have said before here and elsewhere, I just don’t think the memo got passed down to the vice president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Don’t think the memo got passed down. Just take us inside the White House in those final days. Did former President Bush get together with you all and say, I’m going to keep quiet, you feel free to say what you want, or please be quiet, give the guy a chance?

PERINO: Well, he had said for a couple years as people got ready for the 2008 elections that he was going to get off the stage when he left the office.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t defend yourself, and I think, you know, you posed a question to Vice President Cheney and for two years the Democrats and then-candidate Obama criticized the Bush administration for our policies in the war on terror or whatever they call it now, and I think it’s perfectly appropriate for Vice President Cheney to defend the policies of the United States.

I don’t think he was being bombastic. He didn’t seek it out to talk about it. And Vice President Biden and others in the current administration, after they took office, have viciously criticized President Bush at every turn. And I just think that there’s a double standard here and people should take a step back. And he was asked a question, do you think America is less safe if the policies that you had changed? And he said yes.

Well, I think it would have been easier for the Obama administration to be able to say something along the lines of, I know George Bush loved his country, I love mine, too, and I take my responsibility very seriously, I’m going to protect our country, as well, I just might do it in a different way.

And then we wouldn’t have been -- had this debate, which might have not have been as much fun, but that would have been a way to deal with it.

KING: Well, we’ll continue to cover all sides right here. And, Dana Perino, mostly for bringing us the inspiring story of your trip.

PERINO: Thank you.

KING: Thanks for coming in to see us today. Thank you.

And let’s take a quick look at what’s still coming up on STATE OF THE UNION. Straight ahead, we will debate the day’s big stories with Hilary Rosen and Rich Galen.

Then waffles and eggs at the Ridge Diner in Park Ridge, New Jersey. And a breakfast debate over whether President Obama is on the right course, and maybe trying to do too much too fast.

At the top of the hour, our exclusive conversation with General Ray Odierno, the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq.

And amid all of this talk about new green energy sources, a reminder, we are still very much dependent on oil. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar takes us offshore and gets “The Last Word.”

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: It is Easter Sunday, but we’re going to prove that politics never takes a holiday. Joining me, Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen, and Republican strategist Rich Galen. Thanks for coming in this morning.

I want to begin with the interview we had earlier in the day with the commanding general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. He said, number one, he thinks he will be able to get all of the troops out by 2011, which is President Obama’s deadline and the agreement between the United States and the government of Iraq.

But he also said that if he sees a problem in a major city or somewhere else and he thinks he needs to delay something or put more troops somewhere, that he believes President Obama will be flexible and listen. Let’s listen to General Odierno.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEN. RAY ODIERNO, COMMANDER, MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ: He understands, as he has stated, that there is still much work to be done here in Iraq. I believe he has given me the flexibility over the next 18 months in order to adjust the size of the force that I need in order to accomplish the mission. What we’re trying to do is set the conditions for Iraq to take over and be able to secure themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: As you know, Hilary, on the left there have been some jitters about more troops in Afghanistan, maybe taking a little longer than they had hoped to get out of Iraq. Does this president have the political flexibility here at home to say, General, if you need a few more months or if you need especially the short-term interim deadlines to get out of the cities, if you need to send more troops in for a little while, that’s OK?

HILARY ROSEN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think the president has flexibility for one reason, because he is being really honest about why we’re in Iraq now. We’re there as a police force essentially until the Iraqis can take over.

He doesn’t pretend any longer, like we had for so many years, that we’re in there because there is a strategic mission to accomplish and therefore there’s a deadline to accomplish the mission.

The political situation needs to be fixed. It’s not going to be fixed militarily. It has got to be mixed politically. And I think the fact that the president is being clear about it, he is talking with the troops properly, I think that gives him the kind of leeway people need.

People didn’t feel like we were getting the real deal before.

KING: Rich, you spent a good amount of time there in the early days. Do you have the confidence on the Iraqi side that they are finally ready?

RICH GALEN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: You know, I was there when General Odierno was the commanding general of 4th ID, I believe it was, in Tikrit, which was huge, very dangerous back in those days.

But the point I think that was really telling, earlier when you had the general on and the national security adviser, was the notion of how far we’ve come that it’s no longer just the president’s decision or the field general’s decisions where and when we’re going to deploy these people.

Now it’s not only negotiated but, in fact, sort of asking permission, would it be OK if we added forces here. So I think it has come a really long way and we really are I think at the end of that very long and arduous and dangerous time, you know, when we had to have ground forces everywhere in Iraq.

KING: Another big issue facing the president is this hijacking, kidnapping, piracy, call it what you will, off the coast of Somalia, an American captain now held prisoner, held hostage by these pirates or terrorists, you might say.

And it’s a big challenge for the president. Republican Senator Tom Coburn out earlier this morning saying that the American people will judge the president by how he handles this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM COBURN (r), OKLAHOMA: You have to have a tough approach, which means you have to be strong. We’re not going to give in to blackmail, and we’re not going to allow them to continue to do what they’re doing.

So, that’s going to require a tremendous increase in resources, but it can’t be just us. It has to be everybody, because everybody is affected by it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This is not a country, Rich Galen. These are outlaws and thugs. How does this president and, as Senator Coburn notes, how does the world respond to this?

GALEN: Well, you know, the Marine Corps hymn has “to the shores of Tripoli,” and Tripoli was -- that was an anti-piracy maneuver. And the rule then was, and I think it is now, is you fight piracy from their land bases, not on the seas because the seas are too vast.

And I suspect unfortunately that’s what it’s going to take. Whether or not we get any help from our great and grand friends at the U.N. is something else again, but we’ll have to do it.

ROSEN: I can’t remember the last time I agreed with Senator Coburn on anything, but I do today. Commercial shipping is critical to the global economic development of this -- in this environment, and if the commercial seas are not accessible, then we’ve cut off a vast opportunity for economic development.

And I think it’s a big mistake for this country and all countries with that kind of economic interest not to band together and use our military forces.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Use our military forces. Does that include -- they’re trying to negotiate, and elders in Somalia who are in contact with these pirates, I’ll call them pirates for now, some say terrorist is a better word, would not agree to the deal, if necessary?

ROSEN: Piracy is most focused by deterrence. The reason that it has been so successful in the last year-and-a-half is because is there’s a perception that there is no deterrence, that there’s no enforcement.

And the only way we’re going to see those seas safe again is to really focus on the enforcement side. GALEN: One of the reasons it’s been so successful is because of the vast amount of shipping that frankly for the shippers, it’s cheaper to pay the ransom occasionally when one of their ships gets hijacked than it is to put armed guards at hundreds of millions of dollars a year on each and every one of the ships that goes through there. So it’s a little built like Chicago in the 1930s. Somebody’s got to step in and say OK, we’re going to stop this and stop it now.

KING: I want to pivot and close our conversation on a more light note and uplifting note. For one, we do know this morning that President Obama and the family went across Lafayette Park to St. John Church, the church very close to the White House. That does not mean that is the church the Obama family has picked to worship. It is the church they picked this morning to go.

The other news we know this morning is the White House has released an official White House photo, and I believe we can take it better than what I’m holding. There we go right there. Meet Bo. Bo is the new White House dog. The favored pet now and named by Sasha and Malia Obama.

Rich Galen, you worked closely with Newt Gingrich in the past. He says this is a joke. Why are we spending any time talking about this?

GALEN: It is not a joke to talk about it. I think it’s a joke for anybody to somehow get exercised about the fact that we’re talking about it. As he said, there are two little girls in the White House, they wanted a dog. Their folks got him a dog. I hope they have a wonderful time with it and they learn to take care of it and take it out for walks, much as, you know, my wife has had to do with me.

ROSEN: This family is working pretty hard to be as normal as they can, but I love the extra touches that the White House is going to when it comes to the major moments. On holidays, that they celebrate a Seder as well as Easter Sunday, that they focus on what Muslims have in their religion. I just think their inclusiveness, their energy around it, their sense of America’s a family and they as the first family is just really nice for people to see.

GALEN: I think it’s -- that’s overstating it a little bit.

ROSEN: No, it’s not.

GALEN: On a positive side just as some of my friends --

ROSEN: That’s why he’s so popular.

KING: But to that point, you say he’s so popular. To that point, having a Seder, he’s a Christian obviously. That’s a unifying moment. You know, trying the lighter moments, like the dogs.

And yet if you look at the new Pew Research Center poll, 88 percent of Democrats approve of the job he’s doing. Only 27 percent of Republicans approve of the job the president is doing. Is he doing something wrong, Rich Galen, or is that just welcome to Washington, after eight years of Bill Clinton and eight years of George W. Bush , we are polarized no matter what?

GALEN: And 20 years of CNN and FOX and everybody else. But let’s remember that exactly eight years ago, I believe to the very week, eight years ago, an ABC/”Washington Post” poll had George W. Bush at 63 percent. So, we are still in what is commonly known as and properly, the honeymoon period. We’ll see what happens.

ROSEN: I think he’s still got very strong support among Independents, and basically what the American people wanted was change in this election. That means that there was a sense that people weren’t feeling that they had a good economic future. When you disrupt some of the haves to help the have-nots, that’s going to create some unhappiness. And clearly, wealthy Republicans for the last eight years were feeling pretty good about what they had and change doesn’t feel good to them.

GALEN: Well, I’m not sure if that’s right either, but I think what we’re finding is that --

ROSEN: Yeah, it is. It’s the Republican base that’s the most unhappy.

GALEN: Stop for a second. Most people, most people have solidified their theories of watching people like us having these kinds of discussions. And I’m not -- somewhere along the line, this stuff will even itself out, but I still think we are far from the post-partisan era that both Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed in his re-election and --

ROSEN: I don’t think so.

KING: John King will declare detante. Not peace, but detante on this Easter Sunday. Rich Galen, Hilary Rosen, thanks for coming in. And one of those Internet dining guides, you know, you read those, says the Ridge Diner in Park Ridge, New Jersey, is the best diner in Bergen County. We didn’t get into that debate, but we enjoyed our breakfast and listening to strong opinions on everything from bailouts to global warming. Our weekly diner segment is straight ahead. STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: As you know, we make it our mission to get out of Washington and listen to your voices every week. This week’s full disclosure, we went up to New Jersey, but not just for work. I was up here in Bergen County, right up here, this is where my in-laws live. Stuart and Nancy Schwartz (ph) hosted us for a fabulous Seder on Wednesday night. Then on Thursday, we went to the Park Ridge Diner. It is a fabulous diner in a state known for its diners. Very interesting conversation about the Obama agenda and whether the president is trying to do too much, too soon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Let me just set the table in terms of if you supported President Obama in the last election, raise your hand. If you didn’t, keep it down. All right, so we have two out of three. What do you think about how he has handled this whole bailout issue? Because it’s your money and it’s going out, whether it’s to AIG, whether it’s to General Motors and Chrysler, whether it is to the banks, do you get a sense that’s being done right or do you even understand it because it’s so much money and it is so confusing?

PETER FITZPATRICK, PARK RIDGE RESIDENT: Well, I think it’s being done right. Again, you just have to make sure that the strings are attached and there’s accountability.

JENNIFER HEIT, PARK RIDGE RESIDENT: I think again on the accountability front, we need to make sure that there is trickle down. That money is being made available for loans for people who need it and really stimulate the economy.

SCOTT WALTERS, PARK RIDGE RESIDENT: Well, to me, capitalism without failure is like religion without sin.

KING: So let it crash?

WALTERS: You know, if people make stupid decision, you have to live and die by the sword. When I make a stupid decision, I get told about it. I have to live and die with the consequences of it.

KING: Let me talk about the new president, whether you supported him or not, has a pretty ambitious agenda in his first year. He wants to do this economic stimulus plan and other things. He wants to do health care reform, work on climate change, wants to work on immigration reform. Do any of you get the sense that even if he supports all of it, that he he’s trying to do too much too fast or do you think that’s the best way to do it, put it all out there?

FITZPATRICK: I think he’s got to take it head on, but again I would worry about him burning out, too. Anytime you look at the news, President Obama is doing this, he’s got a million things going on. So I understand that you have to talk the issues that are involved here, but I wonder sometimes, a little fearful if he’s going to run out of gas.

HEIT: I’m a little bit fearful, but like you said, you kind of have to take risks, and I think that it’s important to take risks at this time. We kind of have nowhere to go but up.

WALTERS: Well, it obviously is. The main priority has to be the economy. The second priority has to be national security. Cap and trade is going to be a total disaster once everyone understands exactly what that is.

KING: You raise the issue of the cap and trade. Do you think climate change is a problem?

HEIT: Absolutely.

FITZPATRICK: Oh, yeah.

WALTERS: No, not at all. It’s not caused by humans. Humans are not the factor. And it’s interesting that the people have changed from calling it global warming to climate change because they realized they can’t win the argument now on global warming so they’re giving it yet another name to add a different spin to it.

KING: And a passionate case there, again, for those of you who believe it is a problem, are you willing to maybe personally pay a bit higher in energy taxes, whether it’s a carbon tax, whether it is a cap and trade program?

FITZPATRICK: Absolutely.

KING: Is it big enough now that you’re willing to pay a little bit more?

FITZPATRICK: Absolutely.

HEIT: Uh-huh. I drive hybrid car. I try to do what I can. I think that -- I’m not a scientist, but certainly there’s a lot going on that humans do contribute to the environment, and we can change our ways.

KING: This one is immigration reform. And he wants to do essentially what President Bush wanted to do, which was change the immigration laws so that you create a new guest worker program, but for the -- whether it’s $12 million or $15 million or $10 million or $8 million, it’s those who are here illegally would eventually be able to get some form of legal status. Are you OK with that?

FITZPATRICK: I am OK with that. I mean, I look around and I see, why wouldn’t you want to come to this country? You know, I see immigrants, they are working hard, they’re trying to make a difference, they’re raising their families. So I’m all for it. I mean, I think they should be given every opportunity to become a citizen here.

KING: Is that harder to sell in a tough economic time where, you know, people are losing their jobs?

HEIT: Sure. I think that that’s the case. I think most of us, though, you know, come -- my grandparents are not -- were not citizens and, you know, my parents and myself have made a great life here and why were we allowed to do that? So I think it’s hard to drew draw the line, but, you know, I certainly can see the other side, as well.

WALTERS: Well, I think the biggest problem has been there has been a lack of enforcement of current law. You have to enforce current law. If you enforce current law, a lot of the problem would simply go away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: If you want to keep track of our travels, including reading this week’s column from North Carolina, go to cnnpolitics.com.

Now congress may still be off next week, but President Obama is heading for Mexico, then the Summit of the Americas. When we come back, three top CNN correspondents look at the policy and politics of the week ahead.

And today, a U.S. soldier died in Iraq. Five U.S. troops died earlier this week in a truck bomb, the kind of tragedy we haven’t seen in months. How will this uptick in violence affect the troop withdrawal? My exclusive interview with General Ray Odierno coming up at the top of the hour.

STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I’m John King, and this is STATE OF THE UNION. Here are stories breaking this Sunday morning. The Associated Press is reporting hostage negotiations between the United States and Somali pirates have broken down. Armed pirates have been holding a U.S. ship captain in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean for four days now.

AP quotes a Somali official as saying Somali elders negotiating with those U.S. officials objected to U.S. demands that the pirates be arrested.

Christians around the world are celebrating Easter. Pope Benedict celebrated Easter Mass at the Vatican. He appealed for peace in Africa and the Middle East and delivered Easter blessings in 63 different languages.

And the White House is getting a new resident. The Obamas have chose a 6-month-old Portuguese Water Dog to be the first pet. And here he is. The puppy will move in Tuesday. The Obama girls named the dog Bo. Get the connection here, the first lady’s father’s nickname is Diddley.

That and more ahead on STATE OF THE UNION.

Shot of the Capitol Building there on Easter Sunday here in Washington, D.C. I’m joined here in the studio by senior White House correspondent Ed Henry, senior political analyst Gloria Borger, and senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash, a senior moment on STATE OF THE UNION. (LAUGHTER)

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Speak for yourself.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Speak for yourself. OK. I want to start with the interview we had with General Ray Odierno earlier in the day because here is a guy who, in the previous administration, said I don’t want timelines, I want everything to be conditions-based on the ground.

When I asked him about his confidence of getting the troops out in 2011, as agreed to between the United States and the government of Iraq, I was surprised by the answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: On a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being fully confident, that you will meet that deadline, that all U.S. troops will be gone at the end of 2011?

ODIERNO: As you ask me today, I believe it’s a 10 that we will be gone by 2011.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Over at the White House, Ed Henry, they must be very happy that their general on the ground, who had some concerns about this president’s policies as a candidate, is on-board now.

ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They are, but he did say “as of today,” and so there’s a lot of time between now and next summer, when all combat troops are supposed to be out. As you noted, there is also this agreement that we have with the Iraqis, the Status of Forces Agreement that mandates they have to be out by 2011.

So obviously as a commanding general, he needs to do as much as possible to get that done. But you’re right, this gives the president some political breathing space. He made his first secret trip to Baghdad as president this past week.

And he was very clear throughout his trip over the last week or so in saying that, look, I was against this war at the beginning but I feel see a responsibility to end it responsibly and not just pull out too quickly.

So the president will be very happy to have that political breathing space from his general.

BORGER: You know, what the general has also been talking about is withdrawal of combat troops from some of the big cities like Baqubah and Mosul and all of that, and he has left himself some wiggle room on that on about whether he’s going to be able to do that in June, because if the conditions on the ground don’t warrant it, he’s not going to do it. KING: And he says he has flexibility from the commander-in- chief, if necessary, within the big deadline of moving around U.S. troops and keeping more troops than necessary.

BORGER: Exactly.

KING: What about on Capitol Hill, especially on the left, and the Democrats who said this was the president-elected to end the war as soon as possible? Does the president have the flexibility politically here at home that he has apparently given his commanding general on the ground inside Iraq?

DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The reality is, he does. He does because the members of Congress on the left and even his supporters on the left were very vocal when he made his decision in first place to extend the troop deployment more than he said he would as a candidate.

And the reality is that it was very clear from even the Democratic leaders at the time that he made this announcement that they were not happy about it, but they sort of shrugged their shoulders and said, you’re going to do what you’re going to do because you are listening to the commanders on the ground.

What I thought was interesting about General Odierno is that, as Ed said, he did say as of now I think we can get them out by 2011, but, you know, politically if Democrats -- those Democrats on the left are hearing him say that, and if you get to that point in time and he says, you know what, I tried, at least he has the ability to say, I made a good faith effort, I made that statement because I really meant it.

KING: Let’s come home to the economy. The president this past week said he sees glimmers of hope. And the White House likes to say they believe some of those hopeful signs were a result of the stimulus spending and a result of the new administration’s policy.

But there are some who have a more pessimistic view of the economy, among them the former speaker of the house, Newt Gingrich, who believes that more stimulus will be necessary, although not the type of stimulus the White House has supported.

Let’s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think there will be a second stimulus. I would prefer to see it on the tax side rather than the spending side. But I think there’s going to have to be some dramatic effort, because I think this is not going to work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let me start on Capitol Hill. Is there one Republican in Congress who thinks President Obama is going to come forward with a Newt Gingrich-approved stimulus package that leaves out tax cuts? DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That would be a no, there’s no question about it. But, look, you know, stimulus is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, you heard the way he just described it. As you said, tax cuts.

If President Obama did that, that would be probably a defining bipartisan moment in this country and in Washington, D.C. I think that, you know, we already heard just even in the idea of a second stimulus, when Nancy Pelosi , the House speaker, mentioned to let the door open to that about a month ago, Democrats from the White House to the Senate to the rank and file went, don’t even say that because the political will was just not there to deal with it at all.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: And when Wolf Blitzer and I asked the vice president about that this week and I said can you rule it out, and he said, well, well, well, it’s too early, it’s too early. I said likely, not likely, and he wouldn’t bite. So it’s clear they just don’t want to talk about it right now.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It would be an acknowledgment that the fist one hasn’t really worked so, they want to let that work, they want to give it more time. When you talk to top White House aides, they insist look, some of the infrastructure spending has started but not all of it. They think that’s starting to help the economy. And they also think refinancings are up. We’ve seen the stock market come up just a little bit. They don’t want to cheerlead just yet because they’ve got to manage expectations, but they want to let the first one work.

KING: Do they see any risk, as we do this, I want to put up a graphic showing the polarization of the American electorate -- 88 percent of Democrats approve of the job the president is doing, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 27 percent of Republicans.

Do they see any risk more broadly at the White House in saying there’s glimmers of hope, in getting people convinced that we’ve hit bottom and we’re bouncing back? And although the unemployment rate is likely to keep going up, do they see any risk of getting too hopeful?

HENRY: Absolutely they do. And that’s why Lawrence Summers, the chief economic advisor came out with a big speech this week. He had said look, we’re starting to see that maybe the bottom will be coming this fall, which squares with what “The Wall Street Journal’s” panel of economic experts found on Friday, as well. He was also very careful to say that unemployment could be lagging and that it might not be until late 2010 that we see unemployment start coming down. Why is that significant politically? The midterm elections. A lot of pressure in late 2010 on both the president and his party on Capitol Hill, those Democratic leaders to show they’ve gotten some results.

BORGER: You know, the president got criticized when he was too gloomy at the beginning and then last week he got criticized because he was saying there are glimmers of hope. And the truth is they know this is not a mission accomplished moment and they can’t do that because it’ll bite them.

KING: All right, let’s call a quite time out. We’ll be back with all three of you. Don’t go anywhere.

And according to the Department of Labor, the number of Americans working past the age of 65 is expected to jump by two-thirds in just the next seven years. Ahead, an up-close look at the toll of recession, the story of one retiree who had to go back to work after his nest egg simply disappeared. STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We’re back with Ed Henry, Gloria Borger and Dana Bash. I want to move a little bit of a confrontation. Gloria, you had an interview with Vice President Biden this past week along with Wolf Blitzer and he said something that quickly drew a visceral retort from Karl Rove, President Bush’s former top political adviser. Let’s hear both sides.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office, and he was a great guy, I enjoyed being with him, he said to me, he said, “Well, Joe, he said I’m a leader.” And I said, “Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one’s following.” People are beginning to follow the United States again as a consequence of our administration.

KARL ROVE, FORMER BUSH ADVISOR: He’s a serial exaggerator. If I was being unkind, I’d say he was a liar, but it’s a habit he ought to drop. You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you’re the vice president of the United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BORGER: I think -- I think Karl Rove thinks that Joe Biden’s not telling the truth in that particular anecdote that he told. Some have remarked that Joe Biden has said that anecdote before. The vice president’s office stood by the story. He was trying to make a point that this administration has, in fact, made us more safe as opposed to what Dick Cheney told you, which is that we’re less safe.

KING: What do they make of that at the White House? President Bush, as David Axelrod and others have said, has said he would stay quiet and he has stayed quiet. But Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, others are out there enjoying the sparring with this administration, and this administration seems to be enjoying firing back.

HENRY: That’s right. And the early reaction I’ve gotten is they’re more than happy to let Vice President Biden handle that. You’re not going to see President Obama do that. We haven’t, as you’ve been noting on this show. He’s been very careful not to take swipes at President Bush. Even overseas, we saw sort of subtle swipes at how President Bush used to handle foreign policy, his relationship with European leaders, but President Obama has been very careful. He’s going to let Joe Biden do that.

BORGER: You know, and as Axelrod told you, David Axelrod told you, they’re happy because the president is staying out of this.

KING: Right.

BORGER: And so, why would they get into a fight with the president?

KING: You spent a long time covering Joe Biden on Capitol Hill before he moved to the White House. And I think that Karl Rove touched on it in his criticism, the guy has a reputation sometimes for exaggerating and talking for out of school so, much so that “Saturday Night Live” had a little fun last night at his expense. Let’s listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What else? What else? All right, Karl Rove called me a liar.

FRED ARMISEN, ACTOR: I heard about that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. I was telling that story, you know, the one about me with President Bush when he said to me, Joe, I’m a leader. And you know, and I said, Mr. President, turn around, look behind you. No one is following. Zing! Right? One for Joe. Yeah. Rove says I never said that, you know.

ARMISEN: Did you really say that, Joe?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who really knows, you know? Lose track of that kind of stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: He did have a reputation on the Hill. You’ve covered him a long time. Can he get a break?

BASH: I don’t think so, not with this. Because, you know, once something really becomes ingrained in pop culture, which this obviously is, there’s nothing you can do about it, really, to take over.

And when you have something like “Saturday Night Live” doing such a great parody of that kind of part of your personality and your persona, there’s no way around it. And he’ll tell you, just in covering him, that I remember him coming back from some meetings at the White House and he did in private have some interesting things to say about his meetings with President Bush.

KING: All right. Interesting things. We’ll leave it at that.

BORGER: But it’s easier to attack Joe Biden for the Republicans than it is to attack a president who’s at 68 percent in the polls.

KING: And you said they want Biden to be the point guy in this, so they may not like everything he says, but they’re putting him in this role.

HENRY: Well, yes. They’ll let him do it. I don’t think it’s necessarily an orchestrated attack, but, you’re right, obviously, when Vice President Cheney came on here and attacked, Robert Gibbs was very quick in the White House briefing room to respond when we asked him about it. And so they’re more than happy to have Vice President Biden do this in the short term, but I’ve also gotten, from White House aides, that they don’t want this to go on for too long because they realize...

BORGER (?): We do.

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: Yes, well, sure, the media may. But the fact of the matter is they have a lot of other problems to deal with.

KING: All right, let’s move to the day’s most important pressing story, which is, of course, the Obamas have a new pet. Bo, a Portuguese water dog, will be moving into the White House on Tuesday.

The front page of The Washington Post today; you see the picture on our air, right now. It’s certainly a cute puppy. The former speaker, Newt Gingrich was on ABC this morning. He says, this is a joke; why is everybody talking about this? So what is it?

HENRY: Well, I think Newt Gingrich is all bark and no bite.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

HENRY: No, I think -- you know, I’m going to be really happy to move on to covering more serious subjects like whether Mrs. Obama is showing her biceps too much, whether the president’s hair is turning gray.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, I kid, but, you know, look, there’s a lot of interest in the first family. That’s part of the reason why we report it. But there’s also a lot of serious stuff going on. I think, as long as there’s a mix; as long as there’s a blend, this is what the American people -- they want to hear some good news sometimes, as well as the problems.

BASH: And you can take Gingrich’s name and shrink it down to grinch, I think, when it comes to...

(LAUGHTER)

HENRY: Oh.

BASH: It’s true. No, because...

BORGER: Yes, I’m with you. I’m with you.

BASH: Look, I mean, as, you know, I’m somebody who is -- likes pop culture. And I think the reality is that, when we’re talking about pop culture in this country, we’re talk about Rihanna; we’re talking about Chris Brown. It’s not a bad thing to turn our focus on some nice things in the White House. And if that has to do with a little dog and two little girls, great.

BORGER: You know what? There’s a lot of bad news we hear, every single day. A puppy is cute and sweet, and so are the president’s daughters. And Newt Gingrich ought to really lighten up, here.

KING: OK, we’re going to end it right there. You’re all a little “ruff” on Speaker Gingrich.

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

(CROSSTALK)

(UNKNOWN): ... quit while we’re ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: We’ll quit while we’re ahead is right. And straight ahead, we’ll spend some time in a job-hunting class, where a teacher is putting his own painful experience into the lesson plan.

At the top of the hour, the latest from Iraq, an exclusive interview with a top Iraqi official and the U.S. commanding general. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: When we leave Washington every week to hear your voices, much of our focus has been on jobs. This map, here, shows where the jobs are and are not.

If you see the gold, that is where very few jobs are being created. The teal is somewhere in the middle. The darker blue is where there are jobs to be found, a decent amount, anyway.

One of the places we visited was Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Why? The unemployment rate is nearly 11 percent. That’s the fourth highest rate in the country, almost 200,000 jobs lost in the last year. And it’s not just those who lose their jobs that are back in the job market. Some people who had decided to retire and call it a day feel the need to make money again.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON WITTE, WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.: But it’s not easy. And each situation is different.

KING (voice-over): In tough economic times, Don Witte is both the teacher and a painful lesson.

WITTE: You have 150 people applying for 25 jobs.

KING: His job search advice at Forsyth Community College, borne of 35 years of experience helping airlines and other businesses recruit and hire new talent.

WITTE: Now, successful networking, be yourself, always be yourself. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not.

KING: He loves the work, but he’s here because he needs it.

WITTE: I retired about four years ago, had a very enjoyable retirement, until last year. And a lot of the funds we had counted on evaporated.

KING: All the more frustrating because Don Witte did it just like they say: a smaller, more affordable house after his daughter got married, carefully researched investments, a good mix of blue chips, offering consistent dividends.

WITTE: Diversify, diversify, and diversify. I did. But it didn’t make any difference. It is the American dream, you work hard for a number of years, and then retire, enjoy yourself, relax, unfortunately, no more.

KING: Career counseling at the college doesn’t pay much, but it helps with the bills, and with Witte’s understanding of a recession he says is like none other in his lifetime.

WITTE: From the senior executive to the middle manager to the nurse to the teacher to the laborer to the unskilled, it’s affecting everybody. Each one of them is a little different story, and the common thread is if they haven’t looked for a job for 10 years or so, it’s the toughest job market that I’ve seen in my lifetime.

How many of you are on LinkedIn?

KING: Witte sees more evidence here when he volunteers for a nonprofit group called Professionals in Transition, a nice way of saying “out of work.”

WITTE: I know a few people in town, and I’ll share my contacts with you openly and gladly.

KING: Damien Birkel founded the organization in 1992. Most of that stretch, 10 or 12 people at a meeting. Now, often 40 to 50.

DAMIEN BIRKEL, FOUNDER, PROFESSIONALS IN TRANSITION: Banking, housing, construction. I have never, in the 17 years that I’ve been doing it, ever seen the economic impact ripple through the America like this. It’s your neighbors. It’s your friends. It’s people that, you know, you would least expect to be impacted.

KING: People like Don Witte, who sees the headlines from Wall Street and believes reckless greed washed out his years of careful investing.

WITTE: Me and many, many other millions of people like me, they were playing with our money, not in a safe, prudent way, and they’re not suffering. We are. In contrast to a year ago, we’re counting every single penny that goes out, not because we want to, because we have to.

KING: Dinner out is now a splurge, not a weekly ritual. There is less travel, and waiting for sales to buy clothes and other staples. Still, Don Witte is an optimist who believes the economy and the market will bounce back, eventually. It is the uncertainty of just when that leaves him worried and has him back in the workforce.

WITTE: Being 64, is there enough time left in my life to recoup, to get back to where it was? Because I’d like to leave something to my daughter and our grandson, and ultimately, grandchildren, but at this point, there’s very little there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: I’d like to welcome back our international viewer to our “State of the Union” report for this Sunday, April 12.

President Obama visits U.S. troops in Baghdad and tells them it’s time for the Iraqis to take control of their country, but will attacks in big cities like Mosul force a delay in the U.S. troop withdrawal timeline? Top U.S. commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno joins us for an exclusive interview.

A stand-off between pirates holding an American hostage captive as the U.S. Navy grows more intense. We’ll get a live report on the drama unfolding in the Indian Ocean with CNN’s Barbara Starr.

And many environmentalists oppose off-shore drilling for oil, but will the Obama administration support it as part of a broader energy plan? Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gets “The Last Word” from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s all ahead in this hour of STATE OF THE UNION.

An aerial view there of the Pentagon just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the home of the United States military. And during his visit to Iraq last Tuesday, President Obama acknowledged there’s still much to be done to stabilize the country. But he emphasized he intends to keep his commitment to withdraw all troops by 2011.

A big test looms soon. American forces scheduled to withdraw by June 30th this year, that’s just 11 weeks from now. And just as American troops are preparing to leave, violence is on the rise in the northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Baqubah. Here to talk about the president’s visit and the challenges in keeping with the withdrawal schedule is the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. He joins us from Camp Victory in Baghdad.

Sir, happy Easter to you, and thank you for joining us. Let me start with the big challenge you face. In just 11 weeks you’re supposed to have your troops out of Mosul, out of Baqubah, out of other major cities. And you have an uptick in violence in recent days. Will you meet the deadline or will you have to keep the troops there?

GEN. RAY ODIERNO, COMMANDER, MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE-IRAQ: Well, first, John, if I could, I would like to wish happy Easter to everyone back in the United States, especially to all of the family and friends of our service members who continue to serve over here. It’s a real dedication to their great work that has helped our soldiers over here.

John, what I would tell you is overall violence remains at 2003 lows. However, as you have seen over the last week or so, there are still some elements here that are able still to conduct some very serious attacks.

So we will continue to conduct assessments along with the government of Iraq as we move forwards the June 30th deadline. If we believe that we’ll need troops to maintain a presence in some of the cities, we’ll recommend that, but, ultimately, it will the decision of Prime Minister Maliki.

KING: And when the president was there, sir, just the other day, did you discuss this with him and did you, in fact, maybe ask him to pressure the Iraqi government? You know the political pressures, not only on our president here in the United States, but on Prime Minister Maliki.

Did you ask the president to say, look, if we need more time you need to nudge them to give it to us?

ODIERNO: Well, again, we did have good discussions. We went through all of the major issues facing Iraq now with the president. What we discussed is there is some diplomatic actions that have to be taken.

Listen, Prime Minister Maliki understands the tensions in Mosul. He understands there’s an assessment that has to be made. I’m confident that we will make a joint assessment and then he will make a decision. We will tell him what we believe is the right thing to do but ultimately it will up to him to make that decision.

KING: I want to remind our viewers, as we have this conversation, about the timelines and the deadlines you face. June 30th of this year, all U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out of Baghdad and the other major Iraqi cities. It is August 31st, 2010, all U.S. combat troops are supposed to be out of Iraq, leaving about 50,000 behind. And then by December 31st, 2011, all U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Sir, in your conversations with President Obama, how comfortable do you feel that if you go to him at any point, whether it’s one of these interim deadlines or the bigger deadline in 2011, you say, sir, I need more time or, sir, I need more troops, that you will get what you need?

ODIERNO: Well, again, he understands, as he has stated, that there is still much work to be done here in Iraq. I believe he has given me the flexibility over the next 18 months in order to adjust the size of the force that I need in order to accomplish the mission. What we’re trying to do is set the conditions for Iraq to take over and be able to secure themselves.

And so we’ll continue to do that. And I have the flexibility to do that. The president has given that to me.

John, if I could make one correction. On August 31st, it is that we will have a change in mission here in Iraq and we will no longer conduct combat operations. It’s not necessarily that all combat troops will be out of Iraq by that date.

KING: Thank you for the correction, sir. And it’s well noted, because let me follow on that point. Are you concerned at all? The mission went off-track at the beginning, way back, six years ago when there weren’t enough troops to do everything that needed to be done. Are you concerned, sir, when you get to that point, when you’re looking at 50,000 troops or so that you will have too few troops to do what you need to do or are you confident that if you need more, you’ll get them?

ODIERNO: Well, what has changed, John, is that the Iraqi security forces have matured significantly. They now have 250,000, army. They have over 400,000 police. They are continuing to improve in their competency. So that is helping significantly.

So it is not the same as it was in 2004 or 2005 or 2006. So part of the judgment will be how much can they do. They are proving every day that they are becoming more competent, so the decision will be made as how much of U.S. forces are needed in order to continue to support them to keep the stability that we’re starting to see here in Iraq.

KING: And, sir, I’ve walked over to our map so can I show our viewers what has happened over the timeline of the past six years. Back in May 2003, a little over 142,000 troops. And if you follow the timeline over, you see here in October 2007 because of your surge strategy, 170,000 troops on the ground. And we’re down now somewhere in the area of 140,000 troops on the ground.

In terms of the pace of operations, the last time I was there and out with troops in the field was a little more than a year ago. And I did a convoy run up from Camp Anaconda up to Baqubah. That was a pretty dicey time, about every other convoy was experiencing an IED attack.

In terms of the reports you get back from the daily operations of the troops, is it as bad as it was then or have things improved significantly?

ODIERNO: Yes, they’ve improved significantly. And I think you would be surprised if you were here again. Obviously, we still have some very serious incidents, based on one this week.

But, again, it’s much safer. In March, our combat fatalities were the lowest they’ve been since the beginning of the war. The number of incidents in March was the lowest month of incidents we’ve had since really right back to June of 2003 before the insurgency started.

So there has been a clear improvement of security here. The issue is, can we maintain that -- can the Iraqis maintain it? And that is what we’re working through now is we want them to be able to maintain this stability as we pull out.

And that is what we’re assessing and constantly doing. I believe we’re on track to do that. We have a schedule to reduce our forces. I have flexibility to change that within the next 18 months, and we’ll continue to look at that very closely as we move forward.

KING: And you mentioned that March was a relatively good month. I want to, again, play a little timeline here so that our viewers can see it here. This is U.S. troops killed in Iraq and you see the numbers from 2003 moving forward. 2007 at the height of the surge was the highest year and 51 so far, I hesitate to say, only 51 so far in 2009. You mentioned that March was a good month, sir. That was nine Americans killed in March. But already we’ve hit the number nine 12 days into the month of April because of a few tragic events in recent days.

Why? Are you seeing that this -- is this just random events or are you seeing some coordination of increase in violence?

ODIERNO: Yes. What I see is there are some cells out there who are still capable of conducting suicide attacks. And, unfortunately, had a tragic attack in Mosul this past week of a suicide bomber who probably killed five of our soldiers. Tragic, tragic event.

They have that capacity still. It’s much less than it has ever been. They are very small cells throughout Iraq. We continue to be aggressive at going after them with the Iraqi security forces.

But this is not a significant increase in overall lack of security. There just are still some suicide bombers and those who profess suicide attacks that are still very dangerous.

KING: And help those military families and other Americans watching on this Easter Sunday morning assess where you are now. We talked at the beginning about the potential that you might have to ask for a little bit more time in Mosul, in Baqubah, in other cities.

Is this in part because you’re saving the worst, the hardest challenges for last, if you will? That al Qaeda in Iraq and other groups that oppose your being there have concentrated in certain areas and these are the last fronts?

ODIERNO: Well, what we’ve done is we’ve driven them there, John, through our operations over the last two years. And we’ve continued to eliminate areas where they are no longer welcome by the Iraqi people. They are rejected. They are no longer able to conduct operations so they’ve moved to certain areas.

One is in the desert near Syria between Syria and the city of Mosul, and then inside of Mosul. So we now are working very hard with the Iraqi security forces to finish off this last group of individuals who are still able to conduct some serious attacks.

The same in Baqubah. Although Baquba actually has been extremely safe, areas east of there towards the Iranian border still have some remnants of al Qaeda and other extremists that are still able to do some operations.

So we’re in the process of routing them out with the Iraqi security forces.

KING: You just mentioned there, sir, areas near the Syrian border, and areas near the Iranian border which begs the question for the past six years we’ve had these conversations about Syria letting people back and forth across the border, in fact, maybe even supporting some of them.

Iran letting people back and forth, letting weapons across the border, and in fact training some of the people who are trying to kill the men and women who serve under you, sir.

What is the status of Iran and Syria? Are they still as problematic as they were before or have we seen any improvement?

ODIERNO: Well, first, we’ve been able to significantly limit the ability of them to traffic foreign fighters in through Syria. We have done through that major operations. We made it extremely difficult. The Iraqis have helped significantly in closing their borders and making it more difficult for foreign fighters and suicide attackers to come across.

They are still able to come across in very small numbers. There’s still some of a facilitation network that still is in Syria.

In terms of Iran, Iran, although I would -- the support is a bit less than it was, there still reports that training, funding, and the providing of weapons still goes on, although at it’s at a smaller level, it’s still very sophisticated and is still trying to impact the stability situation here in Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: More of our conversation with General Ray Odierno in just a moment.

And, later, also, is President Obama the most polarizing president of recent times? We’ll debate that question and more with two of our top political strategists. Our STATE OF THE UNION report will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: We’re back with the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno.

And, General, I want to ask you a bit about what I find fascinating. That is, your relationship with the new commander-in- chief, someone who was so vigorously opposed to the war effort you now lead.

And I want to show our viewers a bit of a timeline here. It was back in October of 2002 when then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama , not even in the United States Senate yet, declared he was against the war in Iraq.

And then in January of 2007, Senator Barack Obama , United States senator at this point, and candidate for the presidency of the United States, spoke out strongly against the surge policy that General Odierno pushed for.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, THEN U.S. SENATOR: The responsible course of action of the United States for Iraq and for our troops is to oppose this reckless escalation and to pursue a new policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: But since winning the election and becoming commander-in- chief, a decidedly different tone from President Obama when it comes to the war in Iraq, including his visit to Baghdad just this past Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Every mission that has been assigned from getting rid of Saddam to reducing violence, to stabilizing the country, to facilitating elections, you have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country. That is an extraordinary achievement and, for that, you have the thanks of the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: General Odierno, you are the father of the surge strategy. You pushed for it when even many of your commanders wanted to get troops out of Iraq. How hard is it to develop a rapport with the president of the United States who thought your strategy was a reckless escalation?

ODIERNO: Well, first off, he’s our commander-in-chief, and as the commander-in-chief, we take direction from him.

He has -- in all of the meetings I’ve had with him, he’s very attentive, he is very -- he listens, he is incredibly intelligent, he talks through the issues and we discuss it. He makes a decision and then we execute those decisions, and that’s all you can expect out of your commander-in-chief.

And he’s -- and I’ve been very pleased with the interaction that I’ve been able to have with him.

KING: Has he ever said, hey, General, you know, Ray, you were right, I was wrong about the surge?

ODIERNO: I don’t think we’ve talked about that ever.

KING: Let me ask you -- let me move back to a more serious question, the idea that in the previous administration and in your service prior to this administration, you were very clear that you thought these decisions should not be based on political timelines, they should be based on conditions on the ground.

I understand you’re executing the orders of the commander-in- chief, I just want to get a sense of are you concerned at all that the bad guys, the enemy, knows the timeline, too, and they are going into hiding, hoarding their resources, gathering their weapons, and waiting for you to leave?

ODIERNO: There’s always that potential, but, again, let me remind everyone what change was in December when the United States and the government of Iraq signed an agreement, a bilateral agreement that put the timeline in place that said we would withdraw all our forces by 31 December, 2011.

In my mind that was historic. It allowed Iraq to prove that it has its own sovereignty. It allows them now to move forward and take control, which was always -- it has always been our goal is that they can control the stability in their country.

So, I think I feel comfortable with that timeline. I did back in December, I do now. We continue to work with the government of Iraq so they can meet that timeline so that they are able to maintain stability once we leave.

I still believe we’re on track with that as we talk about this today.

KING: You say you’re comfortable with that timeline, sir. I want you to expound on that a little bit, because back in -- I’m holding up a copy of Tom Ricks’ book “The Gamble.” It’s a fascinating book from the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist about the war effort in Iraq.

And you told him in that book, this is -- he’s quoting you in that book: “When asked what sort of U.S. military presence he expected in Iraq around 2014 or 2014, well after Obama’s first term, Odierno said, I would like to see a force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000 with many troops training Iraqi forces and others conducting combat operations against al Qaeda in Iraq and its allies.”

Now certainly this was before the agreement with the Iraqi government was negotiated, I want to make that clear when you made those remarks. But you have to implement this strategy because it is a signed agreement between a government, Iraq, and the United States of America.

But do you personally think it would be best that for the foreseeable future to leave 30,000 or so behind?

ODIERNO: Well, again, what I would tell you is, it really has always been about Iraqis securing their own country. So, the issue becomes, do we think they will be able to do that?

As they continue to improve in the operations they’ve been able to conduct, I believe that they will be able to do that by the end of 2011. And so the most important thing for us is to help them now, to reduce the risk that will be left with them once we depart at the end of 2011.

We will continue to train and advise. We will continue to assist. We’ll continue to conduct combat operations when we believe it’s necessary. And I do believe now that it is probably the right time frame.

KING: And on a scale of 1 to 10, sir, how confident are you, 10 being fully confident, that you will meet that deadline? That all U.S. troops will be gone at the end of 2011?

ODIERNO: As you ask me today, I believe it is a 10 that we’ll be gone by 2011.

KING: That’s a bold statement.

I want is to ask you a little bit about your current work, because a lot of what you’re doing requires the Iraqi security forces to get up to speed, and that, of course, is part of your mission, but the other part of the equation is the Iraqi political environment.

And in that environment, you are finding yourself, I’m told, in some meetings that you would prefer that the lead person be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and you don’t have a U.S. ambassador at the moment.

The nomination of Chris Hill is held up at the moment in the United States Senate. Does that hurt the U.S. effort in Iraq, not having an ambassador on the ground?

ODIERNO: Well, I mean, I believe it’s important to have an ambassador here. It’s important to have an ambassador in all of our key countries. And Iraq is a very important country in our national strategy. So, of course, it would be much better to have our ambassador here. We have a process that we have to go through to get our ambassadors confirmed. We’re going through that process. Hopefully we’ll have an ambassador out here very soon. It would certainly help to have an ambassador here as quickly as possible.

KING: You work now in an administration that doesn’t like the term war on terror. The Bush administration used that term quite frequently. Does that matter to you? The men and women who are risking their lives every day, are they fighting the war on terror in General Odierno’s view or something else?

ODIERNO: Well, what they are doing is fighting for the security of United States. So it doesn’t matter what you call it. We’re here to ensure that we better secure the -- all of the people of our country and that by doing that, by defeating terrorists in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else, we’re here to accomplish what we believe is important to maintain security for our country.

KING: I want to ask you, sir, as a general and as a parent of someone who was hurt in Iraq, your son suffered a devastating injury, but, thank God, was not hurt any further than that in Iraq. We have a new policy where they have opened Dover and allowed media coverage of the returning bodies, the caskets of those who suffer the ultimate sacrifice overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you support that policy? Do you think it helps the American people better understand the price those young men and women are paying, or do you think it’s too much?

ODIERNO: I think the most important piece of that was that you give the families the choice. What we care about is the families have their choice. We want to respect the families. So it always comes down to that. So I’m very pleased the families gets to choose whether that coverage happens or not and I think that’s the right thing.

KING: General, one other thing I wanted to mention. I’m sorry, before I do let you go. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy and thought I had a friend in Ray Odierno on the show but I understand you have launched Facebook site so that you can better communicate with folks back here in the United States and we’re showing it on our monitors before we let you go.

I just want you to know my resistance to Facebook has now crumbled thanks to Ray Odierno. Explain why you think this is important.

ODIERNO: Well, I want to -- I think it’s important that people can reach out and ask questions and maybe educate them a little bit more on what is going on here in Iraq. And get to know us a little bit better. This is new for me. This is new ground so we’ll see how it goes but I’m actually pretty excited about it.

KING: Well, we’ll see how many people are watching today by how many friends you get in the next few hours. Again, general, Happy Easter to you and the men and women serving in Iraq and take care, sir.

ODIERNO: Thanks, John. I appreciate it very much.

KING: All right, general. Take care.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: And huge factors in getting the U.S. troops out of Iraq on schedule are the abilities of Iraq’s military and police forces to step up major security challenges and the willingness of Iraq’s political leaders to set aside sectarian and other rivalries.

Up next, we discuss those challenges with Iraq’s national security adviser.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis. They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: President Obama there addressing U.S. troops in Iraq during a quick visit to the country this past Tuesday. We just heard from General Odierno. Now let’s get the Iraqi view of where things stand. In our Baghdad bureau, Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie. Sir, let me start with the basic premise. President Obama said it’s time for Iraq to take over. Are you ready?

MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, IRAQI NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, before I answer your question, let me, through your program, say Happy Easter to all Christians all over the world.

And, number two, I would like to express my gratitude and the big thank you from the Iraqi people and the government of Iraq to the United States of America for things they have done in this country, bringing down the dictatorship and sustaining the security of this country and building, helping us in building our Iraqi security forces and to reach to this level now to a considerable reduction in violence and this security, we believe it’s sustainable and we are -- we, the government of Iraq and the security forces in Iraq are much more suited now for this fight.

And we believe that now we are leading and we are planning and cutting out most of the combat operations in the country and the United States forces are moving or transitioning to a more support role, more training, more providing more logistical support, rather than engaging in a huge military or kinetic combat operations.

KING: And so, sir, with that progress or despite that progress maybe, you just heard General Odierno. If he comes to you in three or four weeks or six or eight weeks and says, Mr. National Security Adviser, Mr. Prime Minister, I know I have this June 30th deadline to get out of the cities but in Mosul, in Baqubah there are still some problems, I need a little bit more time, I may actually have to send more U.S. troops in in the short term.

Would he get the permission of the Iraqi government to do that if he believes it’s necessary?

AL-RUBAIE: See, we’re continuing monitoring the situation jointly with the multi-national forces and we’re consulting the multi- national forces on a military and we are on daily coordination and cooperation and assessing the situation on daily basis. So I don’t think we should answer this hypothetical question now.

KING: OK. I understand that point. And I bring it up because in the past, sir, you say you’re ready or you will be ready by the deadlines. In the past you have been optimistic and that optimism has turned out not to be so well-founded. I want to bring up something you told “The Washington Post” back in June 2006, that’s almost three years ago.

You said, “We envision the U.S. troop presence by year’s end to be under 100,000 with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.”

It is now, of course, 2009 and there are 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Why should we believe your optimism now, to put it bluntly, when you were on the record some time ago saying you thought this day would come a lot sooner?

AL-RUBAIE: Well, we are all much more intelligent with hindsight and I believe we have now very, very competent and very well trained and equipped, the Iraqi security forces. The Iraqi security forces are leading and doing most of the combat operation now. What we are requiring. Only the high-end very specialized counterterrorism operation and some logistical support, some air fire support, some navy support, that is what we are requiring. And we are building these as we go along and in the next year or so, we will be in a position to take all -- to take over all of our country. All the security, all over the country.

KING: Mr. al-Rubaie, let me ask you this question. The White House says when President Obama was there and he had the meetings with your political leaders, he delivered a stern message that the differences between the Kurds and the Shia need to be resolved. Other sectarian issues.

Essentially a push and nudge for the politics of Iraq to become more peaceful and more stable to build confidence going forward. What was the strongest or the most different message you found from President Obama in these meetings?

AL-RUBAIE: See, what we have, we have agreed, the three communities. The three major communities have agreed on a one-term reference and that is the Constitution. And millions of Iraqis have ratified this Constitution. We formed a national unity government according to that Constitution. The Sunni, Kurds, the Shia are all in that government. And we are -- if we have any differences, if we have any dispute, we should go back to the Constitution and refer to the one document we have agreed on and that is the Constitution. There’s nothing else, other than the Constitution.

KING: Mowaffak al-Rubaie is the national security adviser of Iraq. Sir, we thank you for your time and your insights this morning.

AL-RUBAIE: Thank you for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: If you’d like to get more insight and analysis on foreign policy in the Middle East, be sure to watch “FAREED ZAKARIA: GPS.” That’s at 1 p.m. Eastern. This week, Fareed speaks with Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: If the United States were to call a peace conference between Syria and Israel next week, you would be willing to attend and you would be willing to initiate land for peace if Israel gave back the Golan in the course of those negotiations?

IMAD MOUSTAPHA, SYRIAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: Because you are asking me a hypothetical question about what might happen next week, I will tell you let me first consult with my government. Most possibly they will tell me, yes, we will attend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: For more, stay tuned to “Fareed Zakaria: GPS,” coming up at the top of the hour, only here on CNN.

Up next, our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has the latest on the Somali pirate stand off. She’s been talking to a top naval commander in the region. STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: I’m John King and this is STATE OF THE UNION. Here are stories breaking this Sunday morning. The “Associated Press” is reporting hostage negotiations between United States and Somali pirates have broken down. Armed pirates have been holding a U.S. ship captain in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean for four days now. A Somali official is saying Somali elders negotiating with the American officials objected to U.S. demands that the pirates be arrested.

Christians around the world are celebrating Easter today. Pope Benedict celebrated Easter mass before thousands at the Vatican. The pontiff appealed for peace in Africa and the Middle East and he delivered Easter blessings in 63 different languages.

And the White House is getting a new resident. The Obamas have chosen a 6-month-old Portuguese water dog to be the first pet. The puppy will move in on Tuesday. The Obama girls, Malia and Sasha, named the dog Bo. Follow the connection here, the first lady’s father was nicknamed Diddley. Those are the headlines on STATE OF THE UNION.

Picture there of Richard Phillips. He has become known around the world as the American captain, ship captain, now held hostage by Somali pirates. And the U.S. navy is locked in an increasingly tense standoff with those pirates who are holding Captain Phillips hostage for four days now.

Our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr joins us from Manama, Bahrain, where she spoke with a top naval commander about this crisis. Barbara, help us put this into context because I know and you know it’s not this simple. But many Americans see we have the most powerful navy in the world, how could a bunch of thugs in a life boat be still holding this man hostage?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: You know, that’s the question, John. What are we in, day four, day five? Four pirates with AK-47 rifles holding this man hostage in terrible circumstances, very tough circumstances. And holding the United States Navy at bay.

Now, of course, what U.S. officials tell us, their absolute primary goal is to get Captain Phillips released safely. That is what they are working towards so they are moving very cautiously.

But make no mistake, a senior U.S. official told us just a short time ago, all options remain on the table. They are not going to let these pirates take Captain Phillips back into Somalia. They will stop them from doing that, but the negotiations continue. The goal now, make these pirates realize they have no options that they have to give up. John?

KING: Barbara, what type of resources in terms of naval vessels, naval vessels, naval personnel are we talking about in this particular standoff?

STARR: Well, standing about 200 yards as we understand it from the life boat is the USS Bainbridge. This is a U.S. Navy warship. There are a number of other warships of further distance away. They’ve established essentially a cordon, making sure no other pirates can come into the vicinity.

The Bainbridge has a variety of weapons. It has naval forces. They will make sure, according to their strategy, that this life boat does not move closer to the shore of Somalia. That there is no chance Captain Phillips is taken into Somalia. There are military helicopters from a number of countries in the region. They can patrol the coastline. They can fire from the air.

No one is exactly saying this, John, but let’s be clear. Four or five days into this, the U.S. military certainly has moved any covert assets it has into the immediate region on standby, ready to go with any kind of rescue attempt if, if it came to that and President Obama ordered that. They’re hoping it doesn’t, they’re hoping the pirates just give up. John?

KING: And Barbara, more broadly to the overall strategy, this is not a new issue. It is just the first time an American captain has been held hostage. Does the military have any good options on the table for preventing, discouraging these things in the future?

STARR: Well you know when we came to Bahrain and exclusively interviewed Vice Admiral William Gortney, the top naval commander in this region for both the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa, he says, no. You know, the problem is this, this is a piece of water out here. As we have said repeatedly, about four times the size of Texas. Hundreds and hundreds of cargo ships move through these waters every year, all year long. Cargo going from Asia, the Far East, Africa, to Europe, to the United States. This is an absolute vital waterway, there aren’t enough warships on Earth to keep everyone safe out here.

KING: Tough options facing the military, Barbara Starr, on the ground for us in Bahrain, helping to keep on top of this story. Barbara, thank you so much.

And up next, we turn back to the problems facing this country, including the economy. With so much of the country still struggling, was it the right time for President Obama to say, we’re beginning to see glimmers of hope.

And on a lighter note, we have some details on the Obama family’s new dog. We’ll talk abut it all with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican strategist Kevin Madden. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: A picture of the White House there on a beautiful Sunday -- Easter Sunday here in Washington. After weeks of warnings that things could get worse before they got better, President Obama is suddenly speaking in a considerably more hopeful tone. For insight into the president’s change and message, we turn to two seasoned political veterans: Democratic strategist Donna Brazile and Republican strategist Kevin Madden.

Welcome, happy Easter to both of you. Previous times on the program, we talked about the president saying it’s going to get worst before it gets better. This past week he is out there urging Americans to refinance, saying, get in the refi business, you can save the family a few bucks on the budget.

And also sounding much more optimistic, let’s listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: What you’re starting to see is glimmers of hope across the economy. Now, we have always been very cautious about prognosticating and that’s not going to change just because it’s Easter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Smart to be more upbeat?

DONNA BRAZILE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, I believe he’s responding to some of the good news, consumer confidence up just a little bit, the housing market, people are going back in, refinancing, buying up some of the foreclosed properties.

Clearly the credit markets are thawing so the president is just expressing what I’m sure his advisers told him, look, there’s a bright sign out there.

But, look, John, until we can, you know, get jobs back in the communities, until we can provide people with health care, I still believe that we’re still in the thick of this recession.

KING: Is it risky -- if maybe a lagging indicator, but if unemployment is still on the way up, to have this president saying, I see glimmers of hope and then next month the unemployment rate edges up toward 9 percent, maybe even goes higher than that, does he risk being seen as President Bush was, as out of touch?

KEVIN MADDEN, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: No, that is the great peril here, that he does risk seeming to be talking in very flowery terms when people are still struggling. There is still a great deal of anxiety out there amongst the America public. And we are going to see a lot more job losses before things get better.

You know, I grew up in the city and it was always very easy to see the green sprouting from bricks and bricks of concrete, and I think that is what is happening here, is that President Obama is trying to point to the signs of life in a very -- you know, in a very barren economy right now in an effort to encourage the markets.

The markets right now don’t need somebody who is a -- you know, a chief executive who is out there talking down the economy. So this is much more geared towards encouraging many of those in the private sector to keep moving in the right direction as the economy starts to improve.

KING: I want you both to...

(CROSSTALK)

BRAZILE: ... has to rebuild trust in the system. And most Americans are not trust -- we don’t trust the banks. We don’t trust the system.

KING: I want to bring you to both of your thoughts on an essay written by Michael Gerson. He worked for the former President Bush, thoughtful guy, outside of working in the Bush White House. And he says this about Barack Obama , quite interesting, he says: “Who has been the most polarizing new president of recent times? Richard Nixon? Ronald Reagan? George W. Bush ? No, that honor belongs to Barack Obama . Obama has been unifier, of sorts. He has united Democrats and united Republicans against each other.”

BRAZILE: You know, Mr. Gerson made two mistakes. One, he didn’t point out that this is part of a long-term trend and that’s something the Pew poll talked about. This trend goes back for 30 years. And the second thing is that the Republican Party itself really has shrunken over the last four years.

In 2004, 33 percent of the American people identified with the Republican Party. Today it’s 27 percent. So there has been a 6 percent drop. And so this is part of a long-term trend and has nothing to do with President Obama.

KING: Nothing to do with President Obama, but the numbers don’t lie, among Democrats Obama has an 88 percent approval rating, among Republicans, a 27 percent approval rating.

MADDEN: You know, a lot of Republicans seized on this poll this week as evidence that -- you know, of -- reasons to criticize President Obama. And I think it has less to do with polarization and more to do with failed expectations.

President Obama ran, during this last campaign, as somebody who was going to change the tone and tenor of Washington, who was going to challenge the status quo. And I think with both his policies and his rhetoric, he has done neither. And that’s why we’ve seen.

The biggest problem for President Obama here is the fact that independents have dropped about 13 points since the Inauguration, and he had sizable levels of Republican support, close to 40 percent at the Inauguration. And that has now eroded to a record low.

And I think that is a troubling sign, I think, for President Obama if he is going to try and forge an agenda around unity and bipartisanship for his...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Going to put you both on the spot. No, time out, time out, we’ve got about 20 seconds left. I want to put you both on the spot on the day’s biggest breaking news. The first puppy makes a big splash. Bo will be coming to the White House. Sasha and Malia have named their new dog Bo who will be there on Tuesday.

BRAZILE: That should clearly improve his ratings among independents and Republicans.

(LAUGHTER)

BRAZILE: I mean, what’s not to like about this dog? He’s cute. He’s adorable. But I hope he’s potty-trained.

KING: You hope he’s potty-trained.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Is this silly season or does it matter how a president and his new young family go about their business?

MADDEN: You know, I think one of things that has happened with this president is that Washington, D.C., has become not only the financial and political capital of the world, but the cultural capital of the world.

What they eat, what they wear, the kind of pets that they have, that has really, I think, influenced a lot of Americans. Americans are watching in a new -- Washington in a new way that they haven’t before.

I mean, I know that this is going to create problems in the Madden household because when the debate comes up about getting a dog, now it’s both, you know, Sasha and Malia can have one, how come Riley (ph) and Colin (ph) can’t?

(LAUGHTER)

KING: I had a little conversation with Hannah (ph) King yesterday, and let me just say, I share your pain.

(LAUGHTER)

KING: Kevin Madden, Donna Brazile, thanks so much for coming in today.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

During the last campaign, it was Republicans who were clamoring for more oil drilling offshore. But is it something the Democratic Obama administration is now willing to consider? We’ll go out on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to get the answer. STATE OF THE UNION will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: You hear a lot of talk these days about the green economy. You might remember just a few weeks back we went to a factory just outside of Philadelphia where they’re making those giant wind turbines. The goal, to help reduce the dependence of the United States on foreign oil. But foreign oil will be with us for quite some time. One way to reduce that dependence is to find more domestic sources. And look at the map here. This is off shore oil. They believe there are 10.5 billion barrels offshore in the Pacific, 41 billion in the Western Gulf of Mexico, 3.8 billion here. So we went off shore with the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to talk about this and other energy and environment debates and from an oil rig right here in the Gulf of Mexico, Secretary Salazar gets “The Last Word.”

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING: How much of a part of the future is this?

KEN SALAZAR, INTERIOR SECRETARY: It’s a very huge part of the future. The outer shelf has 1.57 billion acres, that’s a massive plate.

KING: A lot of your friends, people who support your political coalition who don’t like this. They think it’s dangerous for the environment, they think it’s risky the environment.

SALAZAR: We need a comprehensive energy plan. We need to do more with efficiency and we need to do a lot with alternative fuels and renewable energies. We move forward with the mass technologies, but in the meantime, we need to make sure that we’re also developing our oil and gas resources so we break our dependence on foreign oil.

KING: But we will be reliant on oil for how long?

SALAZAR: You know, for the foreseeable future. There is no way that we are going to replace the oil and gas that we’re using today, John, in a matter of four, five, 10 years. We’ll continue to depend on oil and gas as we transition over to higher efficiency and to alternative fuel.

KING: And based on this, if you were to have a conversation with the governor of California or the governor of Florida, whose citizens are very wary of this, they don’t want it off their shores, what would you tell them?

SALAZAR: I would tell them to make sure they’re making informed decisions. I think there might be something to be said about the placement of where these rigs actually go.

So it’s actually the further you are from sharp.

Today we’re standing some 75 miles away from the shoreline and it has a different impact on the coast than if we were actually in the marshes or right next to the coastline. So, I think some of it has to do with where the resources are located. Some of it has to do with the technology that has been developed. I think the technology has come a long ways. There was a time, I think, when there was a lot of pollution that actually occurred from these rigs. I think now they’ll tell you that there is very little pollution that actually occurs.

Have you had any spills since you’ve been here?

KING: It sounds like you’re saying they should at least open their minds to thinking about this more.

SALAZAR: President Obama has said that the outer continental shelf should be on the table, as part of a comprehensive energy package. So, how exactly that will happen is something that we will be deciding over the next several months. And at the end of the day, we are going to have production. We are pro-production, but we also are going to transform our energy economy from an oil-based, carbon- based economy over to a new energy economy of renewables and the vast technologies. KING: And as this debate has started in the new administration, your critics and Republicans in Congress -- and not all Republicans and some people outside the Congress say what you want to do in terms of greenhouse gases, cap and trade, is essentially a carbon tax on hard-working America.

SALAZAR: You know, they are wrong. I think it’s a false choice that is being set up by those who are in opposition to us addressing the issue of carbon emissions.

Here’s where the point of transaction occurs, right here.

KING: Could that mean though to deal with it that American households, American families might have to pay more?

SALAZAR: I think what it will mean is that we’re going to have to change what we’re doing now. So I think there may be changes in the lifestyles of Americans. As we look at the country in ten years of now, it will probably be different in terms of how our homes are constructed, the kinds of vehicles that we drive and other kind of efficiencies we use.

KING: If you turn on a television, the different parties, the different interest in this debate often fight it out with television ads, just like politicians do. Big ads running now say there are no such things as clean coal. Shows a family choking in their house. Is there clean coal?

SALAZAR: There can be clean coal technologies and there is clean coal technologies. But part of what has happened is there has been a failure to move forward in the investment to find out how we can sequester the carbon. You know, coal is to the United States what oil is to Saudi Arabia. The problem is, when you burn it, you have such high emissions of CO2. We could capture CO2 and we could sequester it in geologic formations, but that technology is something that has to be developed. And one of the things that President Obama and the stimulus package has invested a significant amount of money in, to see how we can burn coal in a clean way.

KING: And what do you say to those who look at the new administration, even some who support the goals of the new administration, say the president is trying to do too much. And when you’re trying to do too much, too fast, everything gets a little scatter shot.

SALAZAR: I know Barack Obama well, but I know about him is that he is effective in what he is doing. And when you have the kind of crises that we face today as a nation, it requires somebody to do a lot.

So, what President Obama is doing now, he’s tackling a whole host of issues, frankly because we were in a crisis time. This is a transformational time. November was a transformational election and the issues that we’re dealing with from the economy to health care to energy are issues that cannot wait. We can’t wait to get moving on these issues for three or four years. And so that’s why he’s working so hard every day to try to deliver on the promise of change that he made to America.

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KING: Our thanks to Secretary Salazar for taking us along. It was a fascinating trip. And remember, we will be here again next Sunday and every Sunday 9 a.m. Eastern for the first and last word in Sunday talk. If you missed any part of our program, tune in tonight 8 p.m. Eastern. We’ll showcase the best of today’s STATE OF THE UNION. Until then, I’m John King in Washington. Have a great Easter Sunday.

For our international viewers, “African Voices” is next. For everyone else, “Fareed Zakaria: GPS” starts right now.

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