Hotline After Dark -- I Can't Get No Satisfaction

by Rachelle Douillard-Proulx & Abby Livingston

"World News", "Evening News" and "Nightly News" each led with Afghanistan.

Pres. Obama's West Point speech on Afghanistan got mixed reactions 12/1 p.m.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): "I'm terribly sad after having to listen to the speech. I felt that for this young, bright, articulate president who wants to do the right thing but made commitments, too, in his campaign that he was going to Afghanistan, he was going to get Osama bin Laden and now, he's back against the wall with a strategy that I think has no end. It doesn't really resonate for me. ... What do we do? We have to kill all of the Taliban and we're going to try and transition that government into a democracy? I don't get it. It doesn't work for me."

More Waters, on whether she and her progressive-minded colleagues can support Obama in this effort: "I did have an opportunity to speak with my colleague, Barbara Lee, who is the head of the Black Caucus and who is very firm on it in the progressive caucus. And we both agree that we cannot support the president and this continuing effort. And we will not support him" ("Countdown," MSNBC, 12/1).

Gen. Wesley Clark (D): "It was a strong speech. I think he laid out an important case" ("LKL," CNN, 12/1).

After the jump,more speech reactions and more on ex-AR Gov. Mike Huckabee's (R) commutation of Maurice Clemmons

CBS' Schieffer: "How do you on the one hand say, 'We need to send these troops over there. It's critical. This is in our national-security interest to do this.' But then say, 'But we're only going to keep them there for 18 months; we're going to start to withdraw them after 18 months'? I just don't understand the logic of how that works. It seems to me that what the president did tonight was try to make a speech that had a little something for everybody" (CBS, 12/1).

Ex-WH sr. adviser David Gergen: "The speech was carefully crafted and very well-calibrated. It was a speech that was intended have something that would please everyone. But, by its very nature, it then also had something that would displease everyone. And people and response are focusing on what they don't like about it. And it's what happened to our society. And it's a reason his plea for unity at the end of the speech, which I thought was one of the best pieces of it, it's not being heard" ("AC 360," CNN, 12/1).

NBC's Engel, on the troop reaction from Afghanistan: "The troop reaction has been fairly positive. This is something that they wanted. They wanted the reinforcements. They've been asking for it for quite a long time. And there had been considerable frustration that this announcement hadn't come sooner, but now that it has come ... they seem to be satisfied" ("Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC, 12/1).

Ticking Timebomb

Huckabee's commutation of Clemmons was discussed on the "Situation Room," 12/1 p.m.

Dem strategist Paul Begala: "I have to tell you, it's a little shameful that so far, his level of accountability has been to go on Fox News, where he already works, and do a creampuff interview with Bill O'Reilly. He needs to go to Seattle and he needs to go to Tacoma, and he needs to apologize to those families and that police force, because he was part of the chain that could have prevented this, and he broke that chain."

GOP strategist Alex Castellanos: "This is the end of his political career, and deservedly so. ... The interesting thing is that most campaigns, and the 2008 campaign, the Republican campaigns, had this information, didn't use it. McCain didn't want to. He wanted to keep Huckabee on the right to divide the Romney vote, and the Romney campaign, of which I was a part, had two spots ready to go in Iowa and New Hampshire, didn't use them. ... The campaign thought, I think, they were too tough."

CNN's Blitzer: "Was that a Mitt Romney decision personally? Did he make that decision?"

Castellanos: "That was made at the top level of the campaign."

Blitzer: "So I assume that would be Mitt Romney" (CNN, 12/1).