Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg issued a quick, emphatic correction to former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, arguing that Santorum and many other commenters discussing Robert Gates' forthcoming memoir were overplaying the former Defense Secretary's remarks on President Barack Obama's handling of the Afghanistan War.
"The larger point to this book, in my opinion, was the fact the president puts domestic politics before international concerns," Santorum said. "Everything's seen through the lens of domestic politics."
"I just read the book," Goldberg replied. "He doesn't say that about the president. He says politics does come into the conversation, but he says—specifically in terms of the president, maybe not some of the operatives—the president makes the decisions based on national security."
Goldberg then widened his critique to the general tenor of the coverage of Gates' memoir, citing "the overwritten quality of some of the coverage."
"Robert Gates says very specifically in his book, I agree the president made the right decisions on all the primary questions on Afghanistan. So the scandal is not quite as much of a scandal as some people think."
