Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein says Obama statement on NYC mosque "appropriate"

I think what he said Friday night on religious freedom and what America stands for was absolutely appropriate.

But if I were on the White House staff and I believed John, if he had been on the White House staff, would have cautioned the president nod to add the next sentence, or to go the next day and take it back by starting to get into it as a local issue.

The presidency should be on the high plane of talking about principles of America and of all the American people. He was absolutely right to talk about that. But he should have said, but the placement or the exact location of a mosque is a local decision by New York City and New York State, and that’s where it should reside, rather than confronting the situation, adding to everything else, especially in light of the polling numbers that he has subsequently seen, and then starting to walk back.

It almost looks like the John Kerry he was for it before he was against it. And I think that, again, hurts Barack Obama’s credibility where he needs it so desperately on jobs and the economy.