Obama stars on Letterman, tipping off his big week

With Netanyahu, Ahmadinejad and G20 on the docket, all eyes will be on Obama this week.

C.M. SennottSeptember 22, 2009 06:02Updated May 30, 2010 12:08

U.S. President Barack Obama laughs during the taping on his guest appearance on the "Late Show with David Letterman" show in New York, Sept. 21, 2009. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

BOSTON — If you’re a foreign policy junkie, this is your week.

Even late night talk show host David Letterman understood that foreign policy and the global economy are the things to focus on with President Barack Obama.

It’s an extraordinary week for the president as he backpedals after a leak of a report calling for more U.S. troops in Afghanistan Monday, pulls together Israeli-Palestinian peace talks Tuesday, addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York Wednesday, and heads off to the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh Thursday to, as he put it, “get the global economy back on track.”

It seems the president is everywhere, making the historic first appearance for a president on CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” just one day after appearing on the ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN Sunday talk shows.

After a fair bit of chatter, a few laughs, a crack about President George W. Bush and a lot of talk about a heart-shaped potato from a woman in the audience, Letterman was impressively on point in his questions.

He asked first about the global economy and the upcoming G20 gathering.

“We’re not through the woods yet,” the president said.

But he added to strong applause, “We’re going to come back stronger than before.”

And then CBS went on to paying the bills with a commercial break. After the return, Letterman asked about Afghanistan and whether the president would call for an increase in troops as a report by Gen. Stanley McChrystal called for in a document leaked to the Washington Post Monday.

“Afghanistan is a real difficult situation,” Obama said, his face shifting from a broad smile to a somber expression.

“Moving forward, we’re not going to have easy decisions ... I don’t want Americans to be under illusions that we will. There are those that argue that now’s the time to completely pull out of Afghanistan. There are coherent arguments for that, but there are enormous risks involved in that. There are those who say, let’s double down and put more troops in Afghanistan. There are good arguments for that but also enormous risks.”

The words and the posture of Obama on this issue revealed a discernable shift in strategy, a distinct stepping away from the ledge of conducting a “surge” of troops in Afghanistan which many military analysts and Afghan experts see as perilous.

“The country is weary of the war. The Afghan people are frustrated that they haven’t seen more concrete improvements in their own lives,” Obama added.