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Hello and welcome to this late political gab fest for Thanksgiving, the 26th of November.

I'm John Dickerson here with David Plotz and Washington, Emily Bazelon, Easy, and New Haven.

We are taping this the day before Thanksgiving because we're all headed off to our festivities.

So today we're going to... This is one of my favorite days of the year. I love the day before Thanksgiving. Now, can we talk about this? Is this because you're going home early or because the office is going to empty out and be quiet? No, I think it's because, I mean, first of all, everyone usually finishes their work really early and so you do have that sort of celebratory kind of afternoon, but i love that sort of thanksgiving preparation i love that meal the night before thanksgiving because it's always like

no one really wants to cook but it's always very communal and familial and and i just love Thanksgiving

week so much and i have such fond memories because it in high school we used to almost always

always have like a game the night before Thanksgiving. I always love that.

I always, you know, a basketball game or something. I love playing those games. Anyway, so it's, I, it's, it is really, I think it's my favorite, my favorite day of the year is the day before Thanksgiving.

So our third topic is going to be Thanksgiving, but we're not in honor of Thanksgiving running the show backwards. So our first topic will be Afghanistan and the president's decision to send more troops there.

The second topic will be the president's political situation this week and the box that he's in.

Then our third topic will be Thanksgiving, a rumination on this holiday and the joys and sometimes pains caused by gathering family together around a large piece of foul.

Let's start with Afghanistan.

The president is going to announce next Tuesday at West Point, the fact that he's adding more troops,

somewhere around 30,000 troops, to go into Afghanistan.

Emily, your reaction, and what does it mean to you that he's making this speech at West Point rather than in the Oval Office where we've come to expect these kinds of announcements?

I suppose he's signaling his commander-in-chief credentials by going to West Point, and obviously, this is a decision that is more in line with what the military, you know, General McChrystal was asking for than it is with various lefty, doveish members of Congress or with Joe Biden, his vice president.

I got really worried when I saw Obama using the phrase, finish the job to describe this troop deployment.

I just, I mean, finish what job?

Finish how? This is a part of the world that's been a wreck for most of many of the last centuries.

I just don't see how he isn't setting himself up by using that phrase.

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