David Rothkopf: Bush, Unlike Obama, Learned From Early Mistakes

The difference between President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama is that Bush grew during his time in office and learned from his mistakes, foreign policy expert and author David Rothkopf said Monday on "America’s Forum" on Newsmax TV.

"Bush in his second term took hold of things, changed his team, pursued the surge, changed the strategy, got ahead of results," said Rothkopf, who wrote the book "National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear."

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"Presidents don't always recognize they're making mistakes," he said. "George Bush came from a place in his life where he had confronted a lot of challenges in his life, he'd failed business, he'd run for Congress and failed, he had had problems with alcohol and so forth," Rothkopf said.

"He couldn't have been president if he wasn't periodically able to say I was wrong, I'm going to fix it."

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"With Iraq, he saw that it was going badly. He saw that the administration wasn't performing well.

"He pushed back on Cheney's role, he replaced Rumsfeld with Gates, he moved Condoleezza Rice to the State Department, he promoted Steve Hadley. He brought in Hank Paulson in the Treasury Department.

"He brought in a new series of generals. He changed to the surge."

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