Fox News Network
July 24, 2009

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, we are getting word now that, just as the president indicated in his remarks to the press earlier today on this whole professor arrest situation in Massachusetts, the White House has gone ahead and invited the Harvard professor and the arresting police officer to the White House.

Earlier on, they joked about they would have beer in the Oval Office, whatever. I don`t know if that is on tap. I would recommend pizza. But that is just me.

The fact of the matter is, the president has invited both the professor and the arresting police officer to the White House. No indications from either whether they will accept. But the CBO director accepted, didn`t he? So, you know, you never know. Anyway, we`re following that.

Getting reaction right now from my good friend the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and multiple bestselling author, including this latest one, "Real Change."

Newt, so much to talk to you about. This, first, kind of blew up in our faces here. What do you make of it?

NEWT GINGRICH: Look, he made a mistake. It took him two days to realize it was a big mistake; it was not going to go away.

I think it`s pretty classy to call the policeman direct and say, you know, I am sorry. Why don`t you come on down to the White House?

CAVUTO: Well, we don`t know if he said, I`m sorry.

GINGRICH: Well...

CAVUTO: But that -- you`re right.

GINGRICH: Yes. I mean, when the president of the United States calls you -- I mean, he didn`t call him to say, boy, I`m sure glad I was a fool - - I was stupid on television.

He called him to say, I should not have said it. You know, and I think presidents sometimes have a little bit of difficulty going all the way to, I`m sorry. But I think it`s pretty classy.

I`m going to -- and a lot of my conservative friends won`t like this reaction on my part, but I think it is pretty classy for the president to call him. It is very classy for the president to invite him down. I hope the policeman will accept.

And then we will go back to talking about serious things. This was a mistake on the president`s part. I think it is good that he recognizes it was a mistake. And I think this is a pretty reasonably good thing for him to have done.

CAVUTO: It is a classy act. The question is, legally -- and I`m going to talk to a lawyer about this a little later, but whether the officer goes if they`re contemplating a suit. But that`s a whole `nother issue.

But this did take time, as I was discussing with Fred Thompson earlier, from the debate on health care, didn`t it?

GINGRICH: Well, I mean, the president`s problem now on health care is, he started way too far to the left, way too many taxes, way too much government.

He let people like Henry Waxman and Nancy Pelosi lead the charge. And it has been eroding in popular support for three or four weeks. And he is now, as you just showed a minute ago -- when you start getting below 50 percent in approval, you don`t have nearly as much ability to convince the Congress to do something.

And I think he has a lot of Democrats who are really scared. To try to vote for something on top of the energy tax, on top of the $787 billion of spending they didn`t read, I mean, to now pass an 11 -- I guess a 1,018- page bill, I think they have a very long way to go.

CAVUTO: All right.

So, if domestic issues were not enough to roil him, this comment earlier today in an interview on Afghanistan ignited a whole new debate. I want you to listen to this. This is from the president earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I`m always worried about using the word "victory," because, you know, it evokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAVUTO: That was ABC`s Terry Moran on whether you claim victory or whether it`s even a justifiable goal in Afghanistan.

What did you think?

(CROSSTALK)

GINGRICH: Look, this was a much bigger mistake than the police comment.

Ronald Reagan, asked about his vision of the Cold War, said four words that changed history: "We win. They lose." Now, every American could look up and go, got it.

If our goal in Afghanistan isn`t victory, why are young American men and women risking their lives? If our goal in Afghanistan -- and, now, you can define victory as a complex thing, but the fact is, if we`re not there to achieve a purpose, and we`re are just there to hold Karzai`s coat while corruption reigns, drugs are dealt, and the country disintegrates, that is very foolish.

And I can`t imagine what the military has as their objective. Now, the victory may not be as in Japan, but there ought to be a pretty clear sense of what the United States is trying to achieve, why we believe it is worth risking the lives of our young men and women, and how we will know whether or not we have achieved this.

CAVUTO: Do you think that, given the increasing casualty count in Afghanistan and growing pressure even from the left within his own party to say, you know, we have got to cool it here, this is not looking good, that he is getting us ready for either a pullback, or certainly not as active a role in Afghanistan as some were envisioning?

GINGRICH: You know, I -- I think he`s got himself now in a difficulty, because he wanted to campaign saying: Iraq was the bad war. Afghanistan is the good war. I`m really not a normal left-winger. I am actually for being tough in Afghanistan.

Now he`s finding out, I think, that -- that -- because Afghanistan is not isolated. You have to deal with Afghanistan and Pakistan as the same problem. The Pashtun people cross the border. They have no sense of traditional European nation states. And Northwest Pakistan is an enormous challenge.

I think they`re finding this is much harder than they thought it would be. I think it`s going to take a long time, not a short time. I do think that General Petraeus understands probably as much about counterinsurgency as anybody in the American military.

And I think that, given time, they will eventually be successful. But the president is conflicted, because, as a member of the left wing of his party, it is very hard for him to go to the country and remind the country that the world is dangerous, there are people who want to kill us, and it is better for us to be hunting them in Afghanistan and Northwest Pakistan than for them to be hunting us in the United States.

CAVUTO: Newt Gingrich, thank you very much.

GINGRICH: Thank you.

CAVUTO: Good seeing you again.