Striking quote in today's Washington Post:
"I want to hear from the president, and not just on combat troops," Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) said in an interview. "Combat troops is like the public option" in health care, he said, quoting a conversation with Levin this month when they traveled together to Afghanistan. "Everybody can understand combat troops."
For most Americans, Kaufman said, eight years "is an eternity, and now they come in asking for another batch of troops? What's that all about? . . . This is a crescendo growing. At some point in the not-too-distant future, [Obama] has got to do this. The clock is ticking."
This is not the most coherent quote of all time, but Kaufman is clearly a big skeptic that the Obama policy is destined for success. What the Post doesn't note, however, is that Kaufman was vice president Joe Biden's longtime Senate chief of staff. And Biden is a known internal skeptic of our prospects in Afghanistan. I don't know how often Biden and Kaufman speak, but this does make you wonder....