ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: Today on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line,” we spoke with James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, about President Obama’s speech in Cairo.
Zogby called it an “agenda-setter” speech — similar to a State of the Union Address — and said the president “has to move quickly” to capitalize on the potential for momentum in moving forward on Middle East peace and US relations with the Muslim world.
“I think everyone who’s been saying, ‘now the deliverables are important’ are right, but what he has done is laid out for us what are the deliverables,” Zogby told us. “I think he has to move quickly, but the programs that he laid out are not sort of fast-acting, long-lasting. They’re sort of slow and they’ll take time to put in place.”
As for the president’s tougher-than-usual talk for Israel, Zogby described it as a critical message — not just outside of Israel, but inside the Jewish state as well.
“There are Israelis right now, even before this speech, who are nervous about this,” he said. “But there also are Israelis who are . . . heartened . . . by this speech, and who feel that for the first time in a long time, an American president is supporting us, those of us who want to move forward towards peace. So there will be an internal debate, make no doubt about it.”
Watch our full interview with James Zogby HERE.
We also spoke with Politico’s Jonathan Martin about President Obama’s speech — and how he’s turning something that might have been a liability on the campaign trail (his Muslim roots) into a governing asset.
Click HERE to watch the interview with Jonathan Martin.
Political News 