From the NYT on August 17, 2008: "As Senator Barack Obama prepares to accept the Democratic presidential nomination next week, party leaders in battleground states say the fight ahead against Senator John McCain looks tougher than they imagined, with Mr. Obama vulnerable on multiple fronts despite weeks of cross-country and overseas campaigning.
These Democrats — 15 governors, members of Congress and state party leaders — say Mr. Obama has yet to convert his popularity among many Americans into solutions to crucial electoral challenges: showing ownership of an issue, like economic stewardship or national security; winning over supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and minimizing his race and experience level as concerns for voters.
Mr. Obama has run for the last 18 months as the candidate of hope. Yet party leaders — while enthusiastic about Mr. Obama and his state-by-state campaign operations — say he must do more to convince the many undecided Democrats and independents that he would address their financial anxieties rather than run, by and large, as an agent of change — given that change, they note, is not an issue.
“I particularly hope he strengthens his economic message — even Senator Obama can speak more clearly and specifically about the kitchen-table, bread-and-butter issues like high energy costs,” said Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio. “It’s fine to tell people about hope and change, but you have to have plenty of concrete, pragmatic ideas that bring hope and change to life.”
Or, in the blunter words of Gov. Phil Bredesen, Democrat of Tennessee: “Instead of giving big speeches at big stadiums, he needs to give straight-up 10-word answers to people at Wal-Mart about how he would improve their lives.”
Obama advisers say he has made significant headway defining his positions on issues like tougher trade policies, the links between new energy sources and job creation and projecting American leadership abroad. At the same time, his trip last month to Iraq, Afghanistan and Europe helped reassure voters about his experience, they said, and his agreement to a roll-call vote on Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy at the convention should bring her disappointed supporters into the fold.
Moreover, the Obama campaign has started running negative advertisements against Mr. McCain in battleground states — often without announcing them beforehand. The reason, Obama aides say, is to try to convince voters that Mr. McCain is barely different than President Bush through a day or two of uncontested advertisements — until the Republicans learn about them and begin to counter the ads.
Yet these advisers also acknowledge that the Obama phenomenon — the candidacy that helped inspire record voter registrations and turnout during the primaries — has come down to earth in a divided, economically stressed nation. Even though political analysts say that the economic conditions favor the Democrats in this election, and Mr. Bush’s unpopularity could hurt Republicans, Mr. Obama has not broken away from Mr. McCain in polling — a reflection, in part, of the huge numbers of undecided voters across party lines.
“Democrats should take a deep breath and realize that there are a group of voters who won’t make up their mind about a candidate until deep in the fall,” said David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager. “And there are 18 states that are battlegrounds for a reason, and they’ll be decided by 2 to 4 points. I don’t care about national polls.”
A New York Times/CBS News poll last month found the race between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain to be a statistical dead heat, not unlike where Senator John Kerry and Mr. Bush stood in a Times/CBS News poll in July 2004. The poll four years ago was conducted after Mr. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, picked Senator John Edwards as his running mate, yet before both the party conventions and the most intense period of political attacks on Mr. Kerry’s war service record as skipper of a Swift boat in Vietnam.
The McCain campaign has sought to turn Mr. Obama’s celebrity against him by portraying the freshman senator as out of his depth in crises like Russia’s invasion of Georgia. As Mr. Obama was in Hawaii last week, Mr. McCain presented himself as a man-at-the-ready, opining daily about Russia, as well as repeatedly invoking action verbs like “drill” in pledging to address high fuel prices.
To a considerable extent, political analysts say, the closeness of the race at this stage reflects the fact that many voters are not paying attention to it, after the long, wearying primary season. Many Democrats pointed to the election of 1980 when voters, choosing between a relatively inexperienced former governor, Ronald Reagan, and an unpopular incumbent, Jimmy Carter, finally flocked to Mr. Reagan at the end after resolving whatever qualms they had about him.
But some Republicans disputed that analogy, saying the difficulty Mr. Obama faces getting traction in public opinion polls reflects the country’s reservations about this relative newcomer to national politics — both because he has little experience in national security but also, inevitably, because of his race.
“I think Senator Obama is a motivational speaker, but at the end of the day I don’t think that will translate into votes, and certainly not the image of strength that Ronald Reagan had,” said Jim Greer, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party.
“Florida has not yet been locked down by either candidate, or all but won by either candidate, but I think Obama’s inability to prove his experience or prove that he owns a political issue far more than McCain is a real problem for him,” Mr. Greer said.
In response, several Democrats said that choosing a seasoned party leader as his running mate would help Mr. Obama in the fall if he is unable to fully allay voters’ uncertainty that a one-term senator is ready for the presidency.
“The one area he still needs credibility in is experience, and picking an Evan Bayh or a Joe Biden as vice president would help a lot with that,” said John B. Breaux, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana. “It wouldn’t be bad if he came out early and said who his secretary of defense and secretary of state would be — that would address and stabilize the concerns about his experience.”
Mr. Obama and his aides made several strategic decisions this summer that had clear payoffs, yet also carried some risks that could play out in the general election.
He quit the public campaign finance system and built a formidable bank account for his campaign, while the Clintons and their supporters still smarted from her loss and grew frustrated that he did not do more to help pay down her campaign debt. He traveled overseas for a week, and was widely praised for his statesmanlike bearing, yet Republicans derided him as vainglorious for holding a huge rally in Berlin. And while Mr. Obama kept a low profile during his Hawaiian vacation, Mr. McCain sought to burnish his image on national security by responding to the Georgian crisis.
Some Democrats said Mr. Obama must still demonstrate that he would be a more effective president than Mr. McCain, and that he could unite the Democratic Party before its convention. Jane Kidd, the party leader in Georgia — where Mr. Obama is hoping black support will help him succeed where other northern Democratic nominees have failed — said Mr. Obama had a good deal more work to do to win over Clinton supporters as well as white voters who are loath to support a black candidate.
“In rural parts of Georgia and the South, there is still some fear about people who look different from themselves,” Ms. Kidd said. “And there’s also healing left to do among women who wanted to see the day that a woman was elected president,”
Mr. Bredesen, of Tennessee, said that while the Democrats had little chance of carrying his state — the Obama camp is sending Mr. Bredesen to campaign in other states — Mr. Obama could still take steps to appeal to undecided Democrats there that might increase his chances elsewhere.
“I would really like to see him do things in Tennessee that would help in other working-class and blue-collar places, like Ohio,” Mr. Bredesen said. “Job security and health care are huge here. He needs to come to the aisle of Home Depot and show them that a Harvard graduate — which I am as well — knows how to help them.”
Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, the host of next week’s Democratic National Convention, said Mr. Obama needed to hone and amplify his plan to create more jobs if he wants to woo undecided independent voters, who make up the largest bloc of the electorate in the swing state.
“His message is the right one, but he needs to turn up the volume and sharpen it a bit because these are voters who care a great, great deal about the future of the economy,” Mr. Ritter said. “He has to convince them he is ready for that huge task.”
Showing posts with label Obama's inexperience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama's inexperience. Show all posts
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Obama Faking It
From RealClearPolitics.com on June 23, 2008 by Maggie Gallagher:
"Obama has a problem: What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief?
Pose, of course.
What else can a guy like Obama do?
So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance -- the aura as a commander -- that he hasn't yet earned on his own.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell was the one journalist with the courage to name what she was actually seeing happen: Obama faking even being interviewed by the press.
"Let me say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell on the air. Instead Obama manufactured "what some would call 'fake interviews,' because they are not interviews from a journalist," Mitchell went on.
Mitchell understands very well that this contrived image management is powerfully all to Obama's political advantage. He's shameless when it comes to managing his own image. "Politically it's as smart as can be," she conceded before noting the big obvious truth nobody else in the media was bothering to expose: "We've not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before."
The whole Obama campaign is something we've never seen before -- at least not executed to this level of perfection with a media willing to go along because, well, so many of them want it to succeed.
Poor John McCain. He's so last-century. Still living in a world in which deeds matter, policies matter, what you would actually do with the power entrusted to you matters.
In the op ed the New York Times refused to print (which appeared in the New York Post this week instead), McCain lays out the facts in Iraq:
"Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent."
Obama, he points out, still claims no political progress is being made. "Perhaps he's unaware that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, 'Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress,'" McCain jabs.
He jabs at an opponent who melts away from his punch.
McCain's approach is all so, well, cognitive. McCain thinks that reality is something that really exists, that has to be dealt with, instead of recognizing that we live in a Brave New World where highly paid symbolic analysts construct reality by manipulating symbols.
The left imagines they learned this from Ronald Reagan and the rise of the right: big strong guy, genial, looks good on camera -- bingo! Maybe you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool 51 percent every time, with the right branding and the right kind of images.
God help us when the people who think like that actually run all three branches of our government.
President Obama, if that's our future, and his team of symbolic analysts will find out soon enough there are realities out there which none of his contrivances are going to be able to help him handle."
More important, so will we.
"Obama has a problem: What do you do when you're a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief?
Pose, of course.
What else can a guy like Obama do?
So the man who would be president of the United States of America flies around the world in the middle of a political campaign, enlisting the U.S. military and the Berlin Wall as free campaign commercial backdrops, to lend him the emotional weight and substance -- the aura as a commander -- that he hasn't yet earned on his own.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell was the one journalist with the courage to name what she was actually seeing happen: Obama faking even being interviewed by the press.
"Let me say something about the message management. He didn't have reporters with him, he didn't have a press pool, he didn't do a press conference," either in Afghanistan or Iraq, noted Mitchell on the air. Instead Obama manufactured "what some would call 'fake interviews,' because they are not interviews from a journalist," Mitchell went on.
Mitchell understands very well that this contrived image management is powerfully all to Obama's political advantage. He's shameless when it comes to managing his own image. "Politically it's as smart as can be," she conceded before noting the big obvious truth nobody else in the media was bothering to expose: "We've not seen a presidential candidate do this, in my recollection, ever before."
The whole Obama campaign is something we've never seen before -- at least not executed to this level of perfection with a media willing to go along because, well, so many of them want it to succeed.
Poor John McCain. He's so last-century. Still living in a world in which deeds matter, policies matter, what you would actually do with the power entrusted to you matters.
In the op ed the New York Times refused to print (which appeared in the New York Post this week instead), McCain lays out the facts in Iraq:
"Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent."
Obama, he points out, still claims no political progress is being made. "Perhaps he's unaware that the U.S. embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, 'Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress,'" McCain jabs.
He jabs at an opponent who melts away from his punch.
McCain's approach is all so, well, cognitive. McCain thinks that reality is something that really exists, that has to be dealt with, instead of recognizing that we live in a Brave New World where highly paid symbolic analysts construct reality by manipulating symbols.
The left imagines they learned this from Ronald Reagan and the rise of the right: big strong guy, genial, looks good on camera -- bingo! Maybe you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool 51 percent every time, with the right branding and the right kind of images.
God help us when the people who think like that actually run all three branches of our government.
President Obama, if that's our future, and his team of symbolic analysts will find out soon enough there are realities out there which none of his contrivances are going to be able to help him handle."
More important, so will we.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Final Flip-Flop: Obama May "Refine" His Iraq Withdrawal Plan
From RealClearPolitics.com: "That's the headline over at The Caucus, where Jeff Zeleny reports Barack Obama dropped a not so subtle hint today in North Dakota that his fixed, 16-month timetable for pulling US troops out of Iraq beginning in January 2009 may in fact not be so fixed:
"I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said. "And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies." [snip]
"My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I've said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe," he said. "I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable."
He added, "I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."
This may not be a flip-flop by the technical definition of the term, but it certainly is a substantial walk back on perhaps the defining issue of the election that will draw fire from both the right and the left.
Indeed, the RNC has already reacted with a statement from Alex Conant:
"There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience. Obama's Iraq problem undermines the central premise of his candidacy and shows him to be a typical politician."
Nothing yet from the progressives in the blogosphere, but rest assured there will a great gnashing of teeth.
UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer's new column, which will appear in tomorrow's paper, is more prescient than even he realized:
In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-9/11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started. [snip]
Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?
Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.
Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama's cynicism. I suspect he will make the move much sooner -- using his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and formally abandon his primary-season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.
The shift has already begun. Last Friday, he said: "It's time to be in a responsible, gradual withdrawal from Iraq." The next step is clear: simply define "responsible, gradual" as meaning "flexible." It won't be hard. Obama will say he remains pledged to a withdrawal, that the 16-month time frame remains his goal, but that as president he will necessarily take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.
Done. And with that, the Obama of the primaries, the Obama with last year's most liberal voting record in the Senate, will have disappeared into the collective memory hole.
UPDATE: Mike Allen has more from David Axelrod on Wolf Blitzer's show this afternoon:
David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, went even further during remarks Wednesday on CNN's "Situation Room," telling guest host John Roberts that Obama has actually advocated "a phased withdrawal, with benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that called for strategic pauses, based on the progress on these benchmarks, and advice on the commanders on the ground."
"He's always said that he would listen to the advice of commanders on the ground, that that would factor into his thinking," Axelrod said. "He's also always said that we had to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. So he's been very consistent on this point...
"I think he will take the advice, not just the advice of the commanders on the ground, but his general assessment of conditions on the ground in calibrating that withdrawal. He said he thought we could get one to two brigades out a month. But he's not wedded to that in the face of events. No president would be. And he's always said that he's never said that this withdrawal would be without any possibility of alteration based on events on the ground. That would not be a prudent thing to do for any president.â€
The phrase "he's not wedded to that in the face of events" would seem to be a direct contradiction to Claire McCaskill's comment the other day.
UPDATE II: Obama held a second "hastily" arranged press conference to clarify his previous answer in which he stated that he is still committed to withdrawing one or two brigades a month upon taking office. Bascially, he made a complete hash of things this evening heading into the holiday weekend. We'll see if it matters at all in the end."
"I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said. "And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I'm sure I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies." [snip]
"My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything that I've said, was always premised on making sure that our troops were safe," he said. "I said that based on the information that we had received from our commanders that one to two brigades a month could be pulled out safely, from a logistical perspective. My guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable."
He added, "I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."
This may not be a flip-flop by the technical definition of the term, but it certainly is a substantial walk back on perhaps the defining issue of the election that will draw fire from both the right and the left.
Indeed, the RNC has already reacted with a statement from Alex Conant:
"There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience. Obama's Iraq problem undermines the central premise of his candidacy and shows him to be a typical politician."
Nothing yet from the progressives in the blogosphere, but rest assured there will a great gnashing of teeth.
UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer's new column, which will appear in tomorrow's paper, is more prescient than even he realized:
In last week's column, I thought I had thoroughly chronicled Obama's brazen reversals of position and abandonment of principles -- on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-9/11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Ahmadinejad -- as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started. [snip]
Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?
Iraq. The reversal is coming, and soon.
Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama's cynicism. I suspect he will make the move much sooner -- using his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and formally abandon his primary-season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.
The shift has already begun. Last Friday, he said: "It's time to be in a responsible, gradual withdrawal from Iraq." The next step is clear: simply define "responsible, gradual" as meaning "flexible." It won't be hard. Obama will say he remains pledged to a withdrawal, that the 16-month time frame remains his goal, but that as president he will necessarily take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.
Done. And with that, the Obama of the primaries, the Obama with last year's most liberal voting record in the Senate, will have disappeared into the collective memory hole.
UPDATE: Mike Allen has more from David Axelrod on Wolf Blitzer's show this afternoon:
David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, went even further during remarks Wednesday on CNN's "Situation Room," telling guest host John Roberts that Obama has actually advocated "a phased withdrawal, with benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet, that called for strategic pauses, based on the progress on these benchmarks, and advice on the commanders on the ground."
"He's always said that he would listen to the advice of commanders on the ground, that that would factor into his thinking," Axelrod said. "He's also always said that we had to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. So he's been very consistent on this point...
"I think he will take the advice, not just the advice of the commanders on the ground, but his general assessment of conditions on the ground in calibrating that withdrawal. He said he thought we could get one to two brigades out a month. But he's not wedded to that in the face of events. No president would be. And he's always said that he's never said that this withdrawal would be without any possibility of alteration based on events on the ground. That would not be a prudent thing to do for any president.â€
The phrase "he's not wedded to that in the face of events" would seem to be a direct contradiction to Claire McCaskill's comment the other day.
UPDATE II: Obama held a second "hastily" arranged press conference to clarify his previous answer in which he stated that he is still committed to withdrawing one or two brigades a month upon taking office. Bascially, he made a complete hash of things this evening heading into the holiday weekend. We'll see if it matters at all in the end."
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Memo to Obama: Moving to the Middle is for Losers
By Arianna Huffington
"Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.
As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.
Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.
Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of "I'll do these things for you" with Obama's "Let's do these things together":
"This has been the premise of Barack's politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer," Axelrod told me. "He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it."
Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.
In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters -- voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart -- allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.
Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an "unlikely candidate." Which he certainly was -- and still is. And one of the things that turned him from "unlikely" upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters -- some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn't turn out in 2004 -- to engage in the system.
So why start playing to the political fence sitters -- staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?
In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."
Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"
Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.
When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us -- especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.
The transition between the primaries and the general election -- and from insurgent to frontrunner -- is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point -- and stick with it.
In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama's attempts at "shifting toward the center," Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a "good politician. He's doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."
But isn't being a "good politician" as it's meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:
"What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.... The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."
That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said that day, "but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."
Was that just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric?
The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.
Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.
Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another."
"Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday's roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama's perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost's DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.
As part of this process, I looked at the Obama campaign not through the prism of my own progressive views and beliefs but through the prism of a cold-eyed campaign strategist who has no principles except winning. From that point of view, and taking nothing else into consideration, I can unequivocally say: the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. Tacking to the center is a losing strategy. And don't let the latest head-to-head poll numbers lull you the way they lulled Hillary Clinton in December.
Running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn (obsessed with his "microtrends" and missing the megatrend) convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008.
Fixating on -- and pandering to -- this fickle crowd is all about messaging tailored to avoid offending rather than to inspire and galvanize. And isn't galvanizing the electorate to demand fundamental change the raison d'etre of the Obama campaign in the first place? This is how David Axelrod put it at the end of February, contrasting the tired Washington model of "I'll do these things for you" with Obama's "Let's do these things together":
"This has been the premise of Barack's politics all his life, going back to his days as a community organizer," Axelrod told me. "He has really lived and breathed it, which is why it comes across so authentically. Of course, the time also has to be right for the man and the moment to come together. And, after all the country has been through over the last seven years, the times are definitely right for the message that the only way to get real change is to activate the American people to demand it."
Watering down that brand is the political equivalent of New Coke. Call it Obama Zero.
In 2004, the Kerry campaign's obsession with undecided voters -- voters so easily swayed that 46 percent of them found credible the Swift Boaters' charges that Kerry might have faked his war wounds to earn a Purple Heart -- allowed the race to devolve from a referendum on the future of the country into a petty squabble over whether Kerry had bled enough to warrant his medals.
Throughout the primary, Obama referred to himself as an "unlikely candidate." Which he certainly was -- and still is. And one of the things that turned him from "unlikely" upstart to presidential frontrunner is his ability to expand the electorate by convincing unlikely voters -- some of the 83 million eligible voters who didn't turn out in 2004 -- to engage in the system.
So why start playing to the political fence sitters -- staking out newly nuanced positions on FISA, gun control laws, expansion of the death penalty, and NAFTA?
In an interview with Nina Easton in Fortune Magazine, Obama was asked about having called NAFTA "a big mistake" and "devastating." Obama's reply: "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified."
Overheated? So when he was campaigning in the Midwest, many parts of which have been, yes, devastated by economic changes since the passage of NAFTA, and he pledged to make use of a six-month opt-out clause in the trade agreement, that was "overheated?" Or was that one "amplified?"
Because if that's the case, it would be helpful going forward if Obama would let us know which of his powerful rhetoric is "overheated" and/or "amplified," so voters will know not to get their hopes too high.
When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponent a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand. We know that McCain has completely abandoned any legitimate claim on his maverick image, but the echoes of that reputation are still very much with us -- especially among many in the media who would love nothing more than to be able to once again portray McCain as the real leader they fell in love with in 2000. And the new Straight Talk Express plane has been modeled on its namesake bus, decked out to better recreate the seduction.
The transition between the primaries and the general election -- and from insurgent to frontrunner -- is tricky. Even a confident campaign can be knocked off course. So this is when Obama most needs to remember what got him to this point -- and stick with it.
In a Los Angeles Times article detailing Obama's attempts at "shifting toward the center," Matt Bennett of the centrist think tank Third Way says that Obama is a "good politician. He's doing all he can to make sure people know he would govern as a post-partisan moderate."
But isn't being a "good politician" as it's meant here exactly what Obama defined himself as being against? Instead of Third Way think tankers, Obama should listen to this guy:
"What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.... The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."
That was Barack Obama in February of 2007, announcing his run for the White House. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington," he said that day, "but I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change."
Was that just "overheated and amplified" rhetoric?
The Obama brand has always been about inspiration, a new kind of politics, the audacity of hope, and "change we can believe in." I like that brand. More importantly, voters -- especially unlikely voters -- like that brand.
Pulling it off the shelf and replacing it with a political product geared to pleasing America's vacillating swing voters -- the ones who will be most susceptible to the fear-mongering avalanche that has already begun -- would be a fatal blunder.
Realpolitik is one thing. Realstupidpolitik is quite another."
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Obama Endorses Bush Supporting Georgia Democrat
From SavannahNow.com: "In an unusual move, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is backing U.S. Rep. John Barrow in a contested primary election.
On July 15, Barrow, who is white, faces state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is black, in a Democratic primary likely to attract overwhelmingly black turnout.
The Savannah congressman supports policies such as the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts, which Obama and Thomas oppose.
His campaign is airing radio ads featuring Obama in his 12th Congressional District. "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track," Obama says. "He's ... standing up to the ... Republicans who go right down the line with George Bush."
Obama said Barrow will help lower fuel prices and provide access to affordable health care and good-paying jobs.
"It's kind of surprising," said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. "Party leaders usually don't want to get involved in a contested primary, thinking they don't have anything to gain."
Bullock said the endorsement likely will sway at least some black voters who are inclined to vote for Thomas.
Thomas, a Savannah lawmaker, disputed that. "People have their own minds," she said. "I'll win whether Obama, Bush or Clinton endorses him. My record speaks for itself. So does John's. He votes the Bush agenda."
Ed Feiler, a local Barrow supporter, said the endorsement speaks well of Barrow.
"This shows that he does a very balanced job of representing a district with very different kinds of people," the Savannah businessman said. "It shows he can talk to everybody and that he works hard to deal their concerns."
But Mary Osborne, who was Obama's Chatham County coordinator in Georgia's Feb. 5 Democratic presidential primary, said she is disappointed.
Osborne, a Savannah alderman, said Obama might not be familiar with Barrow's voting record.
Kevin Clark, another local Obama supporter and a leader in the gay rights community, said he was "sorely, sorely disappointed."
Clark said Barrow failed to stand behind the pro-gay-rights positions he took in his 2004 Democratic primary campaign.
Osborne and others suggested the endorsement was a reward for Barrow's support of Obama for president. Barrow backed Obama as he rounded up support from so-called "superdelegates" such as Barrow. Thomas did not back Obama until around the time he locked up the nomination.
"I'm sure there's a matter of trade-offs," Osborne said. "That's how things are done in politics."
But others noted that Barrow also is helping Obama with a major voter registration drive.
"Absolutely not," Barrow responded when asked about payback speculation.
He acknowledged that he differs with Obama on some issues. "But he's trying to make the economy work for the middle class, and so am I," Barrow said. "It doesn't mean he agrees with me 100 percent, or that I agree with him 100 percent."
Obama campaign spokeswoman Amy Brundage made a similar point.
"Sen. Obama believes that Congressman Barrow has worked hard to bring change that families in his district deserve," Brundage said."
On July 15, Barrow, who is white, faces state Sen. Regina Thomas, who is black, in a Democratic primary likely to attract overwhelmingly black turnout.
The Savannah congressman supports policies such as the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts, which Obama and Thomas oppose.
His campaign is airing radio ads featuring Obama in his 12th Congressional District. "We're going to need John Barrow back in Congress to help change Washington and get our country back on track," Obama says. "He's ... standing up to the ... Republicans who go right down the line with George Bush."
Obama said Barrow will help lower fuel prices and provide access to affordable health care and good-paying jobs.
"It's kind of surprising," said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. "Party leaders usually don't want to get involved in a contested primary, thinking they don't have anything to gain."
Bullock said the endorsement likely will sway at least some black voters who are inclined to vote for Thomas.
Thomas, a Savannah lawmaker, disputed that. "People have their own minds," she said. "I'll win whether Obama, Bush or Clinton endorses him. My record speaks for itself. So does John's. He votes the Bush agenda."
Ed Feiler, a local Barrow supporter, said the endorsement speaks well of Barrow.
"This shows that he does a very balanced job of representing a district with very different kinds of people," the Savannah businessman said. "It shows he can talk to everybody and that he works hard to deal their concerns."
But Mary Osborne, who was Obama's Chatham County coordinator in Georgia's Feb. 5 Democratic presidential primary, said she is disappointed.
Osborne, a Savannah alderman, said Obama might not be familiar with Barrow's voting record.
Kevin Clark, another local Obama supporter and a leader in the gay rights community, said he was "sorely, sorely disappointed."
Clark said Barrow failed to stand behind the pro-gay-rights positions he took in his 2004 Democratic primary campaign.
Osborne and others suggested the endorsement was a reward for Barrow's support of Obama for president. Barrow backed Obama as he rounded up support from so-called "superdelegates" such as Barrow. Thomas did not back Obama until around the time he locked up the nomination.
"I'm sure there's a matter of trade-offs," Osborne said. "That's how things are done in politics."
But others noted that Barrow also is helping Obama with a major voter registration drive.
"Absolutely not," Barrow responded when asked about payback speculation.
He acknowledged that he differs with Obama on some issues. "But he's trying to make the economy work for the middle class, and so am I," Barrow said. "It doesn't mean he agrees with me 100 percent, or that I agree with him 100 percent."
Obama campaign spokeswoman Amy Brundage made a similar point.
"Sen. Obama believes that Congressman Barrow has worked hard to bring change that families in his district deserve," Brundage said."
Ever-Changing "Change"
From NYPost.com: "June 21, 2008 -- Awash in campaign cash, Barack Obama this week announced that he's opting out of the public-financing system for presidential campaigns. He'll be the first general-election candidate to do that since the system was set up.
This gives new meaning to the notion of "politics of change."
"In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public-financing system in the 2008 election," he wrote in November. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fund-raising truce, return excess money from donors and stay within the public-financing system for the general election."
So much for that.
This isn't the first time Obama has, um, "changed" political lanes:
* He ripped Hillary Clinton for months for voting to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Days after Clinton conceded, Obama flipped and said he supported the definition.
* Obama repeatedly vowed to meet with various heads of terror states - most notably Ahmadinejad of Iran - "without preconditions." Then, with the nomination in sight, he zigzagged: "There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad. He's not the most powerful person in Iran."
* In October, he supported NAFTA expansion. In March, campaigning in the Ohio primary, he called for a "reopening" of the trade pact's terms. This week, he called his own primary rhetoric "overheated" and said NAFTA has had a positive effect on the US economy.
* Yesterday, after signaling opposition to nuclear power, he told Democratic governors he's open to expanding it.
Change, yes.
But "change we can believe in"?
That remains to be seen."
This gives new meaning to the notion of "politics of change."
"In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public-financing system in the 2008 election," he wrote in November. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fund-raising truce, return excess money from donors and stay within the public-financing system for the general election."
So much for that.
This isn't the first time Obama has, um, "changed" political lanes:
* He ripped Hillary Clinton for months for voting to list Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Days after Clinton conceded, Obama flipped and said he supported the definition.
* Obama repeatedly vowed to meet with various heads of terror states - most notably Ahmadinejad of Iran - "without preconditions." Then, with the nomination in sight, he zigzagged: "There's no reason why we would necessarily meet with Ahmadinejad. He's not the most powerful person in Iran."
* In October, he supported NAFTA expansion. In March, campaigning in the Ohio primary, he called for a "reopening" of the trade pact's terms. This week, he called his own primary rhetoric "overheated" and said NAFTA has had a positive effect on the US economy.
* Yesterday, after signaling opposition to nuclear power, he told Democratic governors he's open to expanding it.
Change, yes.
But "change we can believe in"?
That remains to be seen."
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
More Obama Lies - He is For NAFTA (he was against it in the primaries)
From Fortune Magazine By Nina Easton, Washington editor
Last Updated: June 18, 2008: 3:00 PM EDT:
"WASHINGTON (Fortune) -- The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.
Obama says he believes in "opening up a dialogue" with trading partners Canada and Mexico "and figuring to how we can make this work for all people."
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that Obama-as the candidate noted in Fortune's interview-has not changed his core position on NAFTA, and that he has always said he would talk to the leaders of Canada and Mexico in an effort to include enforceable labor and environmental standards in the pact.
Nevertheless, Obama's tone stands in marked contrast to his primary campaign's anti-NAFTA fusillades. The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.
The Democratic candidates fought hard to win over those factions of their party, with Obama generally following Hillary Clinton's lead in setting a protectionist tone.
In February, as the campaign moved into the Rust Belt, both candidates vowed to invoke a six-month opt-out clause ("as a hammer," in Obama's words) to pressure Canada and Mexico to make concessions.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called that threat a mistake, and other leaders abroad expressed worries about their trade deals. Leading House Democrats, including Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, distanced themselves from the candidates.
Now, however, Obama says he doesn't believe in unilaterally reopening NAFTA. On the afternoon that I sat down with him to discuss the economy, Obama said he had just spoken with Harper, who had called to congratulate him on winning the nomination.
"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people."
Obama has repeatedly described himself as a free-trade proponent who wants to be a "better bargainer" on behalf of U.S. interests and wants agreements to include labor and environmental standards.
In May 2007, congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreed to a plan to include environmental and international labor standards in upcoming trade agreements. Still, later that year Obama supported one agreement (Peru) and opposed three others (Panama, Colombia, South Korea). Labor leaders - many of whom backed Obama in the primary - were the chief opponents of those pacts.
Obama jumped into the anti-trade waters with Clinton even though his top economics adviser, the University of Chicago's Austan Goolsbee, has written that America's wage gap is primarily the result of a globalized information economy - not free trade.
On Feb. 8, Goolsbee met with the Canadian consul general in Chicago and offered assurances that Obama's rhetoric was "more reflective of political maneuvering than policy," according to a Canadian memo summarizing the meeting that was obtained by Fortune. "In fact," the Canadian memo said, Goolsbee "mentioned that going forward the Obama camp was going to be careful to send the appropriate message without coming off as too protectionist."
In the Fortune interview, Obama noted that despite his support for opening markets, "there are costs to free trade" that must be recognized. He noted that under NAFTA, a more efficient U.S. agricultural industry displaced Mexican farmers, adding to the problem of illegal immigration.
We "can't pretend that those costs aren't real," Obama added. Otherwise, he added, it feeds "the protectionist sentiment and the anti-immigration sentiment that is out there in both parties."
Obama also reiterated his determination to be a tougher trade bargainer. "The Chinese love free trade," he said, "but they are tough as nails when it comes to a bargain, right? They will resist any calls to stop manipulating their currency. It's no secret they have consistently encroached on our intellectual property and our copyright laws. ...We should make sure in our trade negotiations that our interests and our values are adequately reflected."
Republican nominee John McCain, for his part, is emphasizing his consistent position as a free-trader. In a press conference in Boston this week, he attacked Obama as protectionist: "Senator Obama said that he would unilaterally - unilaterally! - renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, where 33 percent of our trade exists. And you know what message that sends? That no agreement is sacred if someone declares that as president of the United States they would unilaterally renegotiate it. I stand for free trade, and with all the difficulties and economic troubles we're in today, there's a real bright spot and that's our exports. Protectionism does not work."
Last Updated: June 18, 2008: 3:00 PM EDT:
"WASHINGTON (Fortune) -- The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.
Obama says he believes in "opening up a dialogue" with trading partners Canada and Mexico "and figuring to how we can make this work for all people."
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that Obama-as the candidate noted in Fortune's interview-has not changed his core position on NAFTA, and that he has always said he would talk to the leaders of Canada and Mexico in an effort to include enforceable labor and environmental standards in the pact.
Nevertheless, Obama's tone stands in marked contrast to his primary campaign's anti-NAFTA fusillades. The pact creating a North American free-trade zone was President Bill Clinton's signature accomplishment; but NAFTA is also the bugaboo of union leaders, grassroots activists and Midwesterners who blame free trade for the factory closings they see in their hometowns.
The Democratic candidates fought hard to win over those factions of their party, with Obama generally following Hillary Clinton's lead in setting a protectionist tone.
In February, as the campaign moved into the Rust Belt, both candidates vowed to invoke a six-month opt-out clause ("as a hammer," in Obama's words) to pressure Canada and Mexico to make concessions.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper called that threat a mistake, and other leaders abroad expressed worries about their trade deals. Leading House Democrats, including Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel, distanced themselves from the candidates.
Now, however, Obama says he doesn't believe in unilaterally reopening NAFTA. On the afternoon that I sat down with him to discuss the economy, Obama said he had just spoken with Harper, who had called to congratulate him on winning the nomination.
"I'm not a big believer in doing things unilaterally," Obama said. "I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people."
Obama has repeatedly described himself as a free-trade proponent who wants to be a "better bargainer" on behalf of U.S. interests and wants agreements to include labor and environmental standards.
In May 2007, congressional Democrats and the Bush administration agreed to a plan to include environmental and international labor standards in upcoming trade agreements. Still, later that year Obama supported one agreement (Peru) and opposed three others (Panama, Colombia, South Korea). Labor leaders - many of whom backed Obama in the primary - were the chief opponents of those pacts.
Obama jumped into the anti-trade waters with Clinton even though his top economics adviser, the University of Chicago's Austan Goolsbee, has written that America's wage gap is primarily the result of a globalized information economy - not free trade.
On Feb. 8, Goolsbee met with the Canadian consul general in Chicago and offered assurances that Obama's rhetoric was "more reflective of political maneuvering than policy," according to a Canadian memo summarizing the meeting that was obtained by Fortune. "In fact," the Canadian memo said, Goolsbee "mentioned that going forward the Obama camp was going to be careful to send the appropriate message without coming off as too protectionist."
In the Fortune interview, Obama noted that despite his support for opening markets, "there are costs to free trade" that must be recognized. He noted that under NAFTA, a more efficient U.S. agricultural industry displaced Mexican farmers, adding to the problem of illegal immigration.
We "can't pretend that those costs aren't real," Obama added. Otherwise, he added, it feeds "the protectionist sentiment and the anti-immigration sentiment that is out there in both parties."
Obama also reiterated his determination to be a tougher trade bargainer. "The Chinese love free trade," he said, "but they are tough as nails when it comes to a bargain, right? They will resist any calls to stop manipulating their currency. It's no secret they have consistently encroached on our intellectual property and our copyright laws. ...We should make sure in our trade negotiations that our interests and our values are adequately reflected."
Republican nominee John McCain, for his part, is emphasizing his consistent position as a free-trader. In a press conference in Boston this week, he attacked Obama as protectionist: "Senator Obama said that he would unilaterally - unilaterally! - renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, where 33 percent of our trade exists. And you know what message that sends? That no agreement is sacred if someone declares that as president of the United States they would unilaterally renegotiate it. I stand for free trade, and with all the difficulties and economic troubles we're in today, there's a real bright spot and that's our exports. Protectionism does not work."
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Obama Has Never Marched in Pride Parade
from Hillbuzz.blogspot.com:
"Is Barack Obama Going to March in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade?
Chicago holds its Pride Parade on Sunday June 29th on Halsted in Boystown. It's the biggest Pride Parade in the Midwest. It's also, coincidentally, the weekend of the DLC Conference, also held in Chicago. Since Obama's relocated the DNC, largely, to Chicago to be closer to himself and his campaign's operations, and the DLC will also be in Chicago this weekend, we're surprised Obama has not made plans to show his commitment to the LGBT community by marching in Chicago's Pride Parade.
Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to ever march in a Pride Parade -- and she marches every year in NYC. She also has promised to be the first sitting President of the United States to march in a Gay Pride Parade.
Obama showed us last weekend he's got a pair of pretty comfy-looking sneakers, when he went out on his Chicago bike ride.
Those sneaks would be extra comfy (and would look fabulous, we're sure), marching down Halsted in support of the LGBT community.
If not in Chicago, then where?
If not at the Pride Parade, then when?
If he's not supporting the LGBT community, then why should the LGBT community support Barack Obama?"
"Is Barack Obama Going to March in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade?
Chicago holds its Pride Parade on Sunday June 29th on Halsted in Boystown. It's the biggest Pride Parade in the Midwest. It's also, coincidentally, the weekend of the DLC Conference, also held in Chicago. Since Obama's relocated the DNC, largely, to Chicago to be closer to himself and his campaign's operations, and the DLC will also be in Chicago this weekend, we're surprised Obama has not made plans to show his commitment to the LGBT community by marching in Chicago's Pride Parade.
Hillary Clinton was the first First Lady to ever march in a Pride Parade -- and she marches every year in NYC. She also has promised to be the first sitting President of the United States to march in a Gay Pride Parade.
Obama showed us last weekend he's got a pair of pretty comfy-looking sneakers, when he went out on his Chicago bike ride.
Those sneaks would be extra comfy (and would look fabulous, we're sure), marching down Halsted in support of the LGBT community.
If not in Chicago, then where?
If not at the Pride Parade, then when?
If he's not supporting the LGBT community, then why should the LGBT community support Barack Obama?"
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Friends of Barack
From WSJ.com June 11, 2008; Page A22
"Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.
A former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.
Fannie Mae tells us that Mr. Johnson did not inform the company's board of these sweetheart mortgage deals, nor did his CEO successor Franklin Raines, who also received such loans. We can understand why. Fannie bought mortgages from loan originator Countrywide, and then packaged them into securities for sale or kept the loans and profited from the interest. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was "working very closely . . . with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring."
Since Fannie was buying Countrywide's loans, under terms set by Mr. Johnson and later Mr. Raines – or by people in their employ – the fact that Fannie's CEO had a separate personal financial relationship with Countrywide was an obvious conflict of interest. The company's code of conduct required prior approval of such arrangements. Neither Mr. Johnson nor Mr. Raines sought such approval, according to Fannie.
Even if they had received waivers from the board to enjoy these perks, conscientious board members would then have wanted to disclose the waivers to investors. Post-Enron, the Sarbanes-Oxley law requires such disclosures. But even in the late-1990s, when the Friends of Angelo loans began, board members would likely have raised red flags.
Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt tells us that "the best way to deal with issues like this is not to have these kinds of relationships. From both the Countrywide and the Fannie perspective, it is simply bad policy to permit loans to 'friends' on more favorable terms than others similarly situated would be able to get."
One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote. A further federal probe would seem to be warranted, and we assume Barney Frank and his fellow mortgage moralists will want to dig into this palm-greasing from Capitol Hill.
The irony here is that Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Mozilo as part of his populist case against corporate excess, calling Mr. Mozilo and a colleague in March "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also said in March that "If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." But now this protector of the working class has entrusted his first big task as Presidential nominee to the very man who received "favors" in return for enriching Mr. Mozilo.
Yesterday, ABC News asked Mr. Obama whether he should have more carefully vetted Mr. Johnson and Eric Holder, who is working with Mr. Johnson on veep vetting. Correspondent Sunlen Miller noted Mr. Johnson's loans from Countrywide and Mr. Holder's involvement as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Said Mr. Obama: "Everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships – I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters."
Vetting Mr. Johnson's finances would have been time well spent, judging by a May 2006 report from Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo). Even if Mr. Obama considers the advisers helping him select a running mate "tangentially related" to his campaign, he might have thought twice about any relationship with Mr. Johnson.
Addressing the company's too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."
* * *
The regulator described how, despite an internal Fannie analysis that valued Mr. Johnson's 1998 compensation at almost $21 million, the summary compensation table in the firm's 1999 proxy suggested his pay was no more than $7 million. Ofheo found that Fannie had actually drafted talking points to deflect such media questions as: "He's trying to hide how much he's made, isn't he?" and "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."
To this list we would add one more, directed at Mr. Obama: Is this what you mean by bringing change to Washington?
"
"Barack Obama may have come up with a creative way to solve the housing recession: Let everyone buy property at a discount the way he did from Tony Rezko, and give everyone in America a discount mortgage the way Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide did for Fannie Mae's Jim Johnson. Team Obama's real estate and mortgage transactions are certainly a change from business as usual. They suggest old-fashioned back-scratching below even current Beltway standards.
A former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, Mr. Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.
Fannie Mae tells us that Mr. Johnson did not inform the company's board of these sweetheart mortgage deals, nor did his CEO successor Franklin Raines, who also received such loans. We can understand why. Fannie bought mortgages from loan originator Countrywide, and then packaged them into securities for sale or kept the loans and profited from the interest. Mr. Mozilo told Dow Jones in 1995 that he was "working very closely . . . with Jim Johnson of Fannie Mae to come up with a rational method of making the process more efficient by the use of credit scoring."
Since Fannie was buying Countrywide's loans, under terms set by Mr. Johnson and later Mr. Raines – or by people in their employ – the fact that Fannie's CEO had a separate personal financial relationship with Countrywide was an obvious conflict of interest. The company's code of conduct required prior approval of such arrangements. Neither Mr. Johnson nor Mr. Raines sought such approval, according to Fannie.
Even if they had received waivers from the board to enjoy these perks, conscientious board members would then have wanted to disclose the waivers to investors. Post-Enron, the Sarbanes-Oxley law requires such disclosures. But even in the late-1990s, when the Friends of Angelo loans began, board members would likely have raised red flags.
Former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt tells us that "the best way to deal with issues like this is not to have these kinds of relationships. From both the Countrywide and the Fannie perspective, it is simply bad policy to permit loans to 'friends' on more favorable terms than others similarly situated would be able to get."
One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote. A further federal probe would seem to be warranted, and we assume Barney Frank and his fellow mortgage moralists will want to dig into this palm-greasing from Capitol Hill.
The irony here is that Mr. Obama has denounced Mr. Mozilo as part of his populist case against corporate excess, calling Mr. Mozilo and a colleague in March "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis." Obama campaign manager David Plouffe also said in March that "If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors." But now this protector of the working class has entrusted his first big task as Presidential nominee to the very man who received "favors" in return for enriching Mr. Mozilo.
Yesterday, ABC News asked Mr. Obama whether he should have more carefully vetted Mr. Johnson and Eric Holder, who is working with Mr. Johnson on veep vetting. Correspondent Sunlen Miller noted Mr. Johnson's loans from Countrywide and Mr. Holder's involvement as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton Administration in the pardon of fugitive Marc Rich. Said Mr. Obama: "Everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships – I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters."
Vetting Mr. Johnson's finances would have been time well spent, judging by a May 2006 report from Fannie Mae's regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (Ofheo). Even if Mr. Obama considers the advisers helping him select a running mate "tangentially related" to his campaign, he might have thought twice about any relationship with Mr. Johnson.
Addressing the company's too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."
* * *
The regulator described how, despite an internal Fannie analysis that valued Mr. Johnson's 1998 compensation at almost $21 million, the summary compensation table in the firm's 1999 proxy suggested his pay was no more than $7 million. Ofheo found that Fannie had actually drafted talking points to deflect such media questions as: "He's trying to hide how much he's made, isn't he?" and "Gimme a break. He's hiding his compensation."
To this list we would add one more, directed at Mr. Obama: Is this what you mean by bringing change to Washington?
"
Obama's Johnson Test
From Slate.com:
"Will Obama show us the instruction manual for his new kind of politics?
By John Dickerson
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM ET Jim Johnson, the man Barack Obama has picked to lead his vice-presidential vetting team, has gotten preferential treatment for personal loans from Countrywide Financial, a company Sen. Obama and others have blamed for helping to create the subprime mortgage mess. How big a deal is this for the Democratic nominee? The Republican National Committee, as you might expect, is diving for the fainting couches. Here is an assessment, based on three different standards:
The Obama Standard
Barack Obama called out Countrywide by name on the campaign trail during the primaries. He particularly criticized the company's CEO for his excessive compensation and more generally "infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis," which he linked not only to the 2 million who lost their houses but to school districts that couldn't purchase supplies and pay teachers. This is the same CEO who gave Johnson his sweetheart deal. Obama's aides also criticized Clinton's then-campaign strategist, Mark Penn, for giving PR advice to the company.
Now the man Obama has entrusted with what he has called the most important decision of his campaign is wrapped up in Countrywide and tied to the CEO. There are lots of unanswered questions about the Johnson deal, though no evidence as yet that he did anything wrong. But the Obama standard isn't wrongdoing. It's mere connection to the company. By that standard, this is bad news.
Since Obama has just held a national seminar for 16 months on changing politics and shedding the old insider way of doing things, you might expect that he'd take these disclosures seriously, if for no other reason than to show that even when it might hurt him, he's committed to letting the light shine on his associates. Nope—his campaign has called the issue irrelevant. Double bad.
The McCain Standard
Jim Johnson is a powerful insider who has friends in high places. The Countrywide deal is evidence that they can get things done quickly and extra-smoothly for him. John McCain has lots of similarly connected friends like Johnson. Many of them raise money for him. Some of them work these kinds of connections professionally, are called lobbyists, and McCain hangs out with them. A former lobbyist is vetting his vice-presidential picks. He also has former lobbyists on his staff, some of whom worked for free while being paid their regular salary by their lobbying firms. This amounts to a subsidy (it's also legal, and Obama volunteers do it, too).
None of this should stop McCain from pointing out Obama's hypocrisy about Johnson. It makes sense for McCain to balance out the hit he's been taking for his special-interest ties by pointing out Obama's difficulty here. But because of his own operations, he can make only so much of this. If McCain gets too self-righteous, he'll open himself up to the same charges of hypocrisy Obama now faces.
The Objective Standard
There are lobbyists, and then there are friends. Both can influence the president. The latter can actually influence him more then any paid lobbyist. Far more, because influence peddling is a lot subtler than people think. Obama has called Johnson a "friend," and if he helps the young senator navigate this crucial decision (including the sticky Hillary Clinton issue), they're going to be good friends, or at the very least, Johnson will become a fixer.
Presidents, like the rest of us, rely on friends to give them trusted advice about their areas of expertise. Friends can also get their calls returned by presidents or the men and women who work for them. The advice-givers never show up on a lobbying disclosure form, but they can deeply influence a president's thinking because they come to issues with an outside-the-bubble perspective and the credibility, often, of having been right before.
This is part of the Washington system, which as a whole Barack Obama is running against and promising to change. It's also part of the Chicago system he comes from. But it's not a factor of political life that Barack Obama talks about very much. He rails against lobbyists at length, but where does he draw the boundaries for himself on these other kinds of relationships? And where should the boundaries be? How does Obama, who says his mistakes with his friend Tony Rezko represent a lapse in judgment, show us he's grown?
I'm not suggesting we have to vet every friend. But it would be great if Obama could show us the instructions for how his new kind of politics works on this front. He has a chance now. And he could see this as a political opportunity, too, to outdo McCain, who has sometimes responded to questions about his ties to lobbyists by saying that we should trust that he's never done anything that would harm the public interest. The Johnson business is hardly the national crisis the Republican National Committee claims it is. But it's worse than the brushoff Obama is giving it."
"Will Obama show us the instruction manual for his new kind of politics?
By John Dickerson
Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM ET Jim Johnson, the man Barack Obama has picked to lead his vice-presidential vetting team, has gotten preferential treatment for personal loans from Countrywide Financial, a company Sen. Obama and others have blamed for helping to create the subprime mortgage mess. How big a deal is this for the Democratic nominee? The Republican National Committee, as you might expect, is diving for the fainting couches. Here is an assessment, based on three different standards:
The Obama Standard
Barack Obama called out Countrywide by name on the campaign trail during the primaries. He particularly criticized the company's CEO for his excessive compensation and more generally "infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis," which he linked not only to the 2 million who lost their houses but to school districts that couldn't purchase supplies and pay teachers. This is the same CEO who gave Johnson his sweetheart deal. Obama's aides also criticized Clinton's then-campaign strategist, Mark Penn, for giving PR advice to the company.
Now the man Obama has entrusted with what he has called the most important decision of his campaign is wrapped up in Countrywide and tied to the CEO. There are lots of unanswered questions about the Johnson deal, though no evidence as yet that he did anything wrong. But the Obama standard isn't wrongdoing. It's mere connection to the company. By that standard, this is bad news.
Since Obama has just held a national seminar for 16 months on changing politics and shedding the old insider way of doing things, you might expect that he'd take these disclosures seriously, if for no other reason than to show that even when it might hurt him, he's committed to letting the light shine on his associates. Nope—his campaign has called the issue irrelevant. Double bad.
The McCain Standard
Jim Johnson is a powerful insider who has friends in high places. The Countrywide deal is evidence that they can get things done quickly and extra-smoothly for him. John McCain has lots of similarly connected friends like Johnson. Many of them raise money for him. Some of them work these kinds of connections professionally, are called lobbyists, and McCain hangs out with them. A former lobbyist is vetting his vice-presidential picks. He also has former lobbyists on his staff, some of whom worked for free while being paid their regular salary by their lobbying firms. This amounts to a subsidy (it's also legal, and Obama volunteers do it, too).
None of this should stop McCain from pointing out Obama's hypocrisy about Johnson. It makes sense for McCain to balance out the hit he's been taking for his special-interest ties by pointing out Obama's difficulty here. But because of his own operations, he can make only so much of this. If McCain gets too self-righteous, he'll open himself up to the same charges of hypocrisy Obama now faces.
The Objective Standard
There are lobbyists, and then there are friends. Both can influence the president. The latter can actually influence him more then any paid lobbyist. Far more, because influence peddling is a lot subtler than people think. Obama has called Johnson a "friend," and if he helps the young senator navigate this crucial decision (including the sticky Hillary Clinton issue), they're going to be good friends, or at the very least, Johnson will become a fixer.
Presidents, like the rest of us, rely on friends to give them trusted advice about their areas of expertise. Friends can also get their calls returned by presidents or the men and women who work for them. The advice-givers never show up on a lobbying disclosure form, but they can deeply influence a president's thinking because they come to issues with an outside-the-bubble perspective and the credibility, often, of having been right before.
This is part of the Washington system, which as a whole Barack Obama is running against and promising to change. It's also part of the Chicago system he comes from. But it's not a factor of political life that Barack Obama talks about very much. He rails against lobbyists at length, but where does he draw the boundaries for himself on these other kinds of relationships? And where should the boundaries be? How does Obama, who says his mistakes with his friend Tony Rezko represent a lapse in judgment, show us he's grown?
I'm not suggesting we have to vet every friend. But it would be great if Obama could show us the instructions for how his new kind of politics works on this front. He has a chance now. And he could see this as a political opportunity, too, to outdo McCain, who has sometimes responded to questions about his ties to lobbyists by saying that we should trust that he's never done anything that would harm the public interest. The Johnson business is hardly the national crisis the Republican National Committee claims it is. But it's worse than the brushoff Obama is giving it."
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
New Obama Gaffe: Where in the world is Auschwitz?
From the WashingtonPost.com Fact Checker blog: "I had an uncle who was one of the, um, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family is that when he came home he just went up in the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months."
--Barack Obama, Memorial Day speech, Las Cruces, NM.
In an attempt to burnish his credentials with America's veterans, Barack Obama has frequently talked about his grandfather "who served in Patton's army." He has now added a new episode to his World War II repertoire: the uncle who liberated Auschwitz. Unfortunately, the story shows that the presumptive Democratic nominee has a poor grasp of European history and geography.
The Facts
UPDATED TUESDAY 5:30 P.M.
Auschwitz is located in southern Poland, near the city of Krakow. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. At the time, U.S. armies were still on the western borders of Germany, a thousand miles away, regrouping after the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans had not even crossed the Rhine at this point.
The Obama campaign now says that Obama was referring to his great-uncle on his mother's side, and the camp in question was not Auschwitz, but Ohrdruf, which was part of the Buchenwald camp system in Lower Saxony. Ohrdruf was the first camp to be liberated by the Americans on April 4, 1945, and it was visited a week later by Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley. Eisenhower later wrote to his wife that he "never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality and savagery could really exist in this world."
The campaign declined to release the name of Obama's great-uncle, apparently because he is an elderly man who does not want to be disturbed by reporters. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that he served in the 89th Infantry Division which crossed the Rhine river in March 1945.
UPDATE TUESDAY 6 P.M.
The attempt to shield the name of the Obama relative who took part in the liberation of Ohrdruf lasted about an hour. According to the Associated Press, it is Charlie Payne, the brother of Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne.
Obama's Auschwitz claim, made during a Memorial Day appearance in New Mexico, was first reported in blog postings by Washington Post reporter Karl Vick and by CBS News. Neither report provided a direct quote, raising the possibility that Obama might have been misquoted. I asked Vick to go back and check his recording of the event.
The above quote is taken from a verbatim transcript. Prior to talking about Auschwitz, Obama mentioned his grandfather (the one in Patton's army), recalling that he did not like talking about the war. This led into a riff on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a term that Obama said was unknown during World War II and the Vietnam War. "People basically had to handle it on their own." He gave the example of his uncle who hid away in the attic after liberating Auschwitz.
Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think.
--Barack Obama, Memorial Day speech, Las Cruces, NM.
In an attempt to burnish his credentials with America's veterans, Barack Obama has frequently talked about his grandfather "who served in Patton's army." He has now added a new episode to his World War II repertoire: the uncle who liberated Auschwitz. Unfortunately, the story shows that the presumptive Democratic nominee has a poor grasp of European history and geography.
The Facts
UPDATED TUESDAY 5:30 P.M.
Auschwitz is located in southern Poland, near the city of Krakow. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. At the time, U.S. armies were still on the western borders of Germany, a thousand miles away, regrouping after the Battle of the Bulge. The Americans had not even crossed the Rhine at this point.
The Obama campaign now says that Obama was referring to his great-uncle on his mother's side, and the camp in question was not Auschwitz, but Ohrdruf, which was part of the Buchenwald camp system in Lower Saxony. Ohrdruf was the first camp to be liberated by the Americans on April 4, 1945, and it was visited a week later by Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley. Eisenhower later wrote to his wife that he "never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality and savagery could really exist in this world."
The campaign declined to release the name of Obama's great-uncle, apparently because he is an elderly man who does not want to be disturbed by reporters. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that he served in the 89th Infantry Division which crossed the Rhine river in March 1945.
UPDATE TUESDAY 6 P.M.
The attempt to shield the name of the Obama relative who took part in the liberation of Ohrdruf lasted about an hour. According to the Associated Press, it is Charlie Payne, the brother of Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Lee Payne.
Obama's Auschwitz claim, made during a Memorial Day appearance in New Mexico, was first reported in blog postings by Washington Post reporter Karl Vick and by CBS News. Neither report provided a direct quote, raising the possibility that Obama might have been misquoted. I asked Vick to go back and check his recording of the event.
The above quote is taken from a verbatim transcript. Prior to talking about Auschwitz, Obama mentioned his grandfather (the one in Patton's army), recalling that he did not like talking about the war. This led into a riff on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a term that Obama said was unknown during World War II and the Vietnam War. "People basically had to handle it on their own." He gave the example of his uncle who hid away in the attic after liberating Auschwitz.
Granted, it is getting late in the campaign. The candidates are tired, and prone to making silly mistakes. Many Americans might have problems distinguishing Buchenwald and Ohrdruf from Auschwitz. But should we not expect more from a Harvard-educated presidential candidate? Is it too much to ask that an aspiring commander-in-chief knows (1) that Auschwitz (like many of the other Nazi death camps) is in Poland, and (2) that the eastern advance of the U.S. Army in World War II stopped on the river Elbe? Let me know what you think.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Lesson for Obama: Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed
From NYT Op-Ed on May 22, 2008 by Nathan Thrall abd James Wilkins: "IN his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy expressed in two eloquent sentences, often invoked by Barack Obama, a policy that turned out to be one of his presidency’s — indeed one of the cold war’s — most consequential: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Kennedy’s special assistant, called those sentences “the distinctive note” of the inaugural.
They have also been a distinctive note in Senator Obama’s campaign, and were made even more prominent last week when President Bush, in a speech to Israel’s Parliament, disparaged a willingness to negotiate with America’s adversaries as appeasement. Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy’s legacy: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev.”
But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.
Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”
But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.” Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was “very unwise” for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.
Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.
Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”
A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.
If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate."
Nathan Thrall is a journalist. Jesse James Wilkins is a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia
They have also been a distinctive note in Senator Obama’s campaign, and were made even more prominent last week when President Bush, in a speech to Israel’s Parliament, disparaged a willingness to negotiate with America’s adversaries as appeasement. Senator Obama defended his position by again enlisting Kennedy’s legacy: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, because that’s what he did with Khrushchev.”
But Kennedy’s one presidential meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, suggests that there are legitimate reasons to fear negotiating with one’s adversaries. Although Kennedy was keenly aware of some of the risks of such meetings — his Harvard thesis was titled “Appeasement at Munich” — he embarked on a summit meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June 1961, a move that would be recorded as one of the more self-destructive American actions of the cold war, and one that contributed to the most dangerous crisis of the nuclear age.
Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”
But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.” Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was “very unwise” for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.
Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.
Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”
A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.
If Barack Obama wants to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps, he should heed the lesson that Kennedy learned in his first year in office: sometimes there is good reason to fear to negotiate."
Nathan Thrall is a journalist. Jesse James Wilkins is a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Democrats Who Reject Obama
From noquarterusa.net on May 22, 2008 by Gene Lyons: "If Hillary Clinton had no other reason to keep running for the Democratic presidential nomination, it would be to demonstrate that Tim Russert, Keith Olbermann, Maureen Dowd, David Broder and the Beltway media gasbags don’t decide American elections.
Last week, Sen. Barack Obama, the supposedly inevitable Democratic nominee, lost the West Virginia primary by 41 points. Democrats haven’t taken the presidency without winning the Mountain State since 1916. To use a geographically appropriate metaphor, if there has ever been a canary in coal mine primary, that was it. Naturally, the media consensus saw a meaningless result in a race they’d already called for Obama. Evidently, bitter West Virginia rednecks don’t watch cable-TV.
In 2000, the same pundit chorus urged Al Gore to quit in Florida for the sake of the country (and the Republican party). Everybody knows how that worked out. Today, Gore’s a Nobel laureate. George W. Bush, like Obama a uniter, not a divider, became the most unpopular, ineffective president in U.S. history. Ever heard any media princelings explain how they went so comprehensively wrong? Me neither.
If nominated, Obama can’t possibly defeat Sen. John McCain without bringing Clinton voters to him. Recently, however, I’ve been hearing from many passionate Democrats who say they can’t and won’t vote for him in November. So I asked a few to explain why.
Mine is no scientific survey. Ranging from 26 to 86, my correspondents live in seven states, north, south and midwest. They don’t know each other personally. None participates in politics except on a local, volunteer basis. I chose them because they’re unusually articulate.
Most think Obama a sure loser in the McGovern, Dukakis tradition. They believe he’s totally unqualified. “I‘ve voted for every Democrat from President to dog-catcher since 1952. That will end with Obama,” insists H., in Maine. “He won’t get 150 electoral votes, more than he deserves. The Democratic party’s been teetering on the edge of extinction. Obama’s arrogance will kill it…
“Just four years out of the state senate. If he were white or female, his candidacy would be a joke. Imagine if he’d opted to run for vice-president with Hillary. McCain would lose, Democrats would come close to 60 Senate seats and pick up 35 in the House. The Democratic left’s need to swoon after eight years of a moron, coupled with unbridled Clinton-hatred, will produce a disaster for the party and country.”
It’s the Obama campaign’s cynical use of race beginning in South Carolina that’s the deal-breaker for others. “He is making his way to Denver by dividing our party over race, which is maybe the most idiotic campaign tactic ever,” writes C. in Kansas. “This time the witch hunt is coming from our side. It’s heartbreaking. Obama supporters want you to think Bill and Hillary Clinton are lifelong members of the KKK. The audacity of hope campaign has had to audacity to go there…This fall, they’ll try to make nice and talk unity, but the people they alienated in the most hateful way won’t be there. They deserve to lose for being so callous and childish.”
J. in Florida agrees. “Obama and his supporters’ use of the ‘race card’ against the Clintons (with the help of the in-the-tank media) is sickening. Now we have vile, racist, crazed-for-power Hillary. Obama means to avoid the ‘divisiveness’ of the Clinton years by blaming it on them. That’s a despicable lie, and he knows it. The only way of avoiding divisiveness is to cave to the Republican agenda, which I believe he’s more than eager to do.”
“He and his supporters,“ J adds, “have systematically sacrificed the central constituency of the Democratic Party–the poor and working class–on the altar of constituencies who look to politics for reaffirmation of their identity: college students and childish Sixties neolibs. (The African-American constituency makes sense, so no gripes there.)”
By abandoning the principle of universality in health insurance, most think Obama has guaranteed that meaningful reform cannot be achieved. Z in Georgia adds that Obama’s vagueness on economic issues foretells disaster. “He has no perceptible position on the economy other than: ‘We can do better. Yes we can. Say it with me.’ I foresee broken campaign promises followed by belt-tightening austerity measures in a one-term Presidency. In short, Jimmy Carter in a better-tailored sweater.”
“I view the Obama candidacy as a narcissistic endeavor by a mediocre politician dividing Democrats along social vs. economic progressive lines,” J insists. “He’s forcing a choice between winning in 2008 and possibly saving Roe vs. Wade and promoting gay marriage versus abandoning the poor and working class.”
“I’ve decided I won’t help Obama and his personality cult transform the Democratic party into an organization that represents only the interests of rich social liberals.”
What do I think? I suspect most will grudgingly return by November, but that non-African-American working class voters won’t."
Last week, Sen. Barack Obama, the supposedly inevitable Democratic nominee, lost the West Virginia primary by 41 points. Democrats haven’t taken the presidency without winning the Mountain State since 1916. To use a geographically appropriate metaphor, if there has ever been a canary in coal mine primary, that was it. Naturally, the media consensus saw a meaningless result in a race they’d already called for Obama. Evidently, bitter West Virginia rednecks don’t watch cable-TV.
In 2000, the same pundit chorus urged Al Gore to quit in Florida for the sake of the country (and the Republican party). Everybody knows how that worked out. Today, Gore’s a Nobel laureate. George W. Bush, like Obama a uniter, not a divider, became the most unpopular, ineffective president in U.S. history. Ever heard any media princelings explain how they went so comprehensively wrong? Me neither.
If nominated, Obama can’t possibly defeat Sen. John McCain without bringing Clinton voters to him. Recently, however, I’ve been hearing from many passionate Democrats who say they can’t and won’t vote for him in November. So I asked a few to explain why.
Mine is no scientific survey. Ranging from 26 to 86, my correspondents live in seven states, north, south and midwest. They don’t know each other personally. None participates in politics except on a local, volunteer basis. I chose them because they’re unusually articulate.
Most think Obama a sure loser in the McGovern, Dukakis tradition. They believe he’s totally unqualified. “I‘ve voted for every Democrat from President to dog-catcher since 1952. That will end with Obama,” insists H., in Maine. “He won’t get 150 electoral votes, more than he deserves. The Democratic party’s been teetering on the edge of extinction. Obama’s arrogance will kill it…
“Just four years out of the state senate. If he were white or female, his candidacy would be a joke. Imagine if he’d opted to run for vice-president with Hillary. McCain would lose, Democrats would come close to 60 Senate seats and pick up 35 in the House. The Democratic left’s need to swoon after eight years of a moron, coupled with unbridled Clinton-hatred, will produce a disaster for the party and country.”
It’s the Obama campaign’s cynical use of race beginning in South Carolina that’s the deal-breaker for others. “He is making his way to Denver by dividing our party over race, which is maybe the most idiotic campaign tactic ever,” writes C. in Kansas. “This time the witch hunt is coming from our side. It’s heartbreaking. Obama supporters want you to think Bill and Hillary Clinton are lifelong members of the KKK. The audacity of hope campaign has had to audacity to go there…This fall, they’ll try to make nice and talk unity, but the people they alienated in the most hateful way won’t be there. They deserve to lose for being so callous and childish.”
J. in Florida agrees. “Obama and his supporters’ use of the ‘race card’ against the Clintons (with the help of the in-the-tank media) is sickening. Now we have vile, racist, crazed-for-power Hillary. Obama means to avoid the ‘divisiveness’ of the Clinton years by blaming it on them. That’s a despicable lie, and he knows it. The only way of avoiding divisiveness is to cave to the Republican agenda, which I believe he’s more than eager to do.”
“He and his supporters,“ J adds, “have systematically sacrificed the central constituency of the Democratic Party–the poor and working class–on the altar of constituencies who look to politics for reaffirmation of their identity: college students and childish Sixties neolibs. (The African-American constituency makes sense, so no gripes there.)”
By abandoning the principle of universality in health insurance, most think Obama has guaranteed that meaningful reform cannot be achieved. Z in Georgia adds that Obama’s vagueness on economic issues foretells disaster. “He has no perceptible position on the economy other than: ‘We can do better. Yes we can. Say it with me.’ I foresee broken campaign promises followed by belt-tightening austerity measures in a one-term Presidency. In short, Jimmy Carter in a better-tailored sweater.”
“I view the Obama candidacy as a narcissistic endeavor by a mediocre politician dividing Democrats along social vs. economic progressive lines,” J insists. “He’s forcing a choice between winning in 2008 and possibly saving Roe vs. Wade and promoting gay marriage versus abandoning the poor and working class.”
“I’ve decided I won’t help Obama and his personality cult transform the Democratic party into an organization that represents only the interests of rich social liberals.”
What do I think? I suspect most will grudgingly return by November, but that non-African-American working class voters won’t."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
ABC News on Obama's Flip-Flop: Obama's Evolving Take on Meeting With Iran
From ABC News: By RICK KLEIN
May 20, 2008 —
"Barack Obama's original answer seemed crystal clear: last July, asked whether he would meet with the "leaders" of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition," during his first year as president, he quickly answered yes.
"I would," Obama, D-Ill., said at the CNN/YouTube debate. "And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."
Obama has not renounced his commitment to meet directly with the leaders of rogue nations, including Iran. But in recent weeks, his top aides and advisers have sought to add caveats to his promise, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has made Obama's debate answer a central campaign issue.
Obama Camp Offers Nuanced Approach
The Obama campaign is now offering a more nuanced approach that would not necessarily include a presidential meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and that stresses diplomatic work that would take place before any such meetings take place.
Asked about Obama's original statement Tuesday morning on CNN, former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a top Obama adviser and supporter, said top-level meetings would not be immediate -- and would not happen without preliminary extensive diplomatic work.
"I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," said Daschle. "Of course, there are conditions that we [would] involve in preparation in getting ready for the diplomacy. ... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us. That's really what they're saying, what Barack is saying."
Susan Rice, a top Obama foreign policy adviser, said Monday that Obama's meetings with Iranian leaders might not include Ahmadinejad.
"He said he'd meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. He hasn't named who that leader will be," Rice said on CNN. "It would be the appropriate Iranian leadership at the appropriate time -- not necessarily Ahmadinejad."
Candidate Defends Position
Obama told ABC News' Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday that he sees no contradiction in the statements, explaining that he has always said that lower-level diplomatic contacts would lay the groundwork for a presidential meeting.
"I have to say I completely disagree that people have been walking back from anything," Obama said. "They may be correcting the characterizations or distortions of John McCain or others of what I said. What I said was I would meet with our adversaries, including Iran, including Venezuela, including Cuba, including North Korea, without preconditions, but that does not mean without preparation."
On CNN, Tuesday, Obama echoed Rice, saying he may not meet with Ahmadinejad.
"I think this obsession with Ahmadinejad is an example of us losing track of what's important," he said. "I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
"Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don't even know how much power he is going to have a year from now," he added. "He is not the most powerful person in Iran. And my expectation, obviously, would be to meet with those people who can actually make decisions in terms of actually having them stand down on nuclear weapons or stopping funding [of] Hamas or Hezbollah or meddling in the affairs of Iraq."
Iran's highest-ranking political leader isn't the president -- it's the supreme leader, who is selected by the country's religious leadership.
Obama began making clear that he would engage in "preparations" before a meeting starting shortly after the July debate, after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted his answer as displaying naiveté about the diplomatic process.
Still, as recently as September, he reiterated his promise to meet with Ahmadinejad himself. Asked about that commitment in the midst of a firestorm over Columbia University's decision to invite the Iranian president to speak, Obama indicated that he stood by it.
"Nothing's changed with respect to my belief that strong countries and strong presidents talk to their enemies and talk to their adversaries," Obama said. "I find many of President Ahmadinejad's statements odious and I've said that repeatedly. And I think that we have to recognize that there are a lot of rogue nations in the world that don't have American interests at heart. But what I also believe is that, as John F. Kennedy said, we should never negotiate out of fear but we should never fear to negotiate."
Last week, in South Dakota, Obama sought to explain what he meant at last July's debate when he agreed to meetings "without preconditions."
"Preconditions, as it applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are, essentially, what Iran views and many other observers would view as the subject of the negotiations," Obama told reporters.
"The point is that I would not refuse to meet until they agree to every position that we want, but that doesn't mean that we would not have preparation," he continued. "The preparation would involve starting with low level, lower-level diplomatic contacts, having our diplomatic core work through with Iranian counterparts -- an agenda. But what I have said is that, at some point, I would be willing to meet."
McCain's Sharp Critique
McCain has focused intensely on Obama's answer at the debate last summer, while ignoring his subsequent attempts to clarify his position.
"Sen. Obama wants to sit down with [Ahmadinejad] unconditionally, face to face," McCain told reporters in Miami, Tuesday. "It enhances Ahmadinejad. What are they going to talk about, the destruction of Israel?"
While Obama has said he has been consistent throughout the past year, even some Democrats detect an evolving position.
"This is a fellow who, I think, shorthanded an answer that, in fact, was the wrong answer, in my view, saying, 'I would, within the first year' -- it implied he'd personally sit down with anybody who wanted to sit down with him," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a former presidential candidate, who is now neutral in the race, said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
"That's not what he meant," Biden continued. "That's not what he has said, since then, for the last year, or thereabouts. And so, I think, that he's fully capable of understanding what's going on."
ABC News' Sunlen Miller and Bret Hovell contributed to this report."
May 20, 2008 —
"Barack Obama's original answer seemed crystal clear: last July, asked whether he would meet with the "leaders" of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition," during his first year as president, he quickly answered yes.
"I would," Obama, D-Ill., said at the CNN/YouTube debate. "And the reason is this: that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them -- which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration -- is ridiculous."
Obama has not renounced his commitment to meet directly with the leaders of rogue nations, including Iran. But in recent weeks, his top aides and advisers have sought to add caveats to his promise, as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has made Obama's debate answer a central campaign issue.
Obama Camp Offers Nuanced Approach
The Obama campaign is now offering a more nuanced approach that would not necessarily include a presidential meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and that stresses diplomatic work that would take place before any such meetings take place.
Asked about Obama's original statement Tuesday morning on CNN, former Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., a top Obama adviser and supporter, said top-level meetings would not be immediate -- and would not happen without preliminary extensive diplomatic work.
"I would not say that we would meet unconditionally," said Daschle. "Of course, there are conditions that we [would] involve in preparation in getting ready for the diplomacy. ... 'Without precondition' simply means we wouldn't put obstacles in the way of discussing the differences between us. That's really what they're saying, what Barack is saying."
Susan Rice, a top Obama foreign policy adviser, said Monday that Obama's meetings with Iranian leaders might not include Ahmadinejad.
"He said he'd meet with the appropriate Iranian leaders. He hasn't named who that leader will be," Rice said on CNN. "It would be the appropriate Iranian leadership at the appropriate time -- not necessarily Ahmadinejad."
Candidate Defends Position
Obama told ABC News' Jake Tapper in an interview Tuesday that he sees no contradiction in the statements, explaining that he has always said that lower-level diplomatic contacts would lay the groundwork for a presidential meeting.
"I have to say I completely disagree that people have been walking back from anything," Obama said. "They may be correcting the characterizations or distortions of John McCain or others of what I said. What I said was I would meet with our adversaries, including Iran, including Venezuela, including Cuba, including North Korea, without preconditions, but that does not mean without preparation."
On CNN, Tuesday, Obama echoed Rice, saying he may not meet with Ahmadinejad.
"I think this obsession with Ahmadinejad is an example of us losing track of what's important," he said. "I would be willing to meet with Iranian leaders if we had done sufficient preparations for that meeting.
"Whether Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with right now, we don't even know how much power he is going to have a year from now," he added. "He is not the most powerful person in Iran. And my expectation, obviously, would be to meet with those people who can actually make decisions in terms of actually having them stand down on nuclear weapons or stopping funding [of] Hamas or Hezbollah or meddling in the affairs of Iraq."
Iran's highest-ranking political leader isn't the president -- it's the supreme leader, who is selected by the country's religious leadership.
Obama began making clear that he would engage in "preparations" before a meeting starting shortly after the July debate, after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted his answer as displaying naiveté about the diplomatic process.
Still, as recently as September, he reiterated his promise to meet with Ahmadinejad himself. Asked about that commitment in the midst of a firestorm over Columbia University's decision to invite the Iranian president to speak, Obama indicated that he stood by it.
"Nothing's changed with respect to my belief that strong countries and strong presidents talk to their enemies and talk to their adversaries," Obama said. "I find many of President Ahmadinejad's statements odious and I've said that repeatedly. And I think that we have to recognize that there are a lot of rogue nations in the world that don't have American interests at heart. But what I also believe is that, as John F. Kennedy said, we should never negotiate out of fear but we should never fear to negotiate."
Last week, in South Dakota, Obama sought to explain what he meant at last July's debate when he agreed to meetings "without preconditions."
"Preconditions, as it applies to a country like Iran, for example, was a term of art because this administration has been very clear that it will not have direct negotiations with Iran until Iran has met preconditions that are, essentially, what Iran views and many other observers would view as the subject of the negotiations," Obama told reporters.
"The point is that I would not refuse to meet until they agree to every position that we want, but that doesn't mean that we would not have preparation," he continued. "The preparation would involve starting with low level, lower-level diplomatic contacts, having our diplomatic core work through with Iranian counterparts -- an agenda. But what I have said is that, at some point, I would be willing to meet."
McCain's Sharp Critique
McCain has focused intensely on Obama's answer at the debate last summer, while ignoring his subsequent attempts to clarify his position.
"Sen. Obama wants to sit down with [Ahmadinejad] unconditionally, face to face," McCain told reporters in Miami, Tuesday. "It enhances Ahmadinejad. What are they going to talk about, the destruction of Israel?"
While Obama has said he has been consistent throughout the past year, even some Democrats detect an evolving position.
"This is a fellow who, I think, shorthanded an answer that, in fact, was the wrong answer, in my view, saying, 'I would, within the first year' -- it implied he'd personally sit down with anybody who wanted to sit down with him," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., a former presidential candidate, who is now neutral in the race, said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.
"That's not what he meant," Biden continued. "That's not what he has said, since then, for the last year, or thereabouts. And so, I think, that he's fully capable of understanding what's going on."
ABC News' Sunlen Miller and Bret Hovell contributed to this report."
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Obama's vulnerable on natioanl security
From Chicago Sun-Times on May 20, 2008 by Steve Huntly: "Barack Obama says the United States should not negotiate with Hamas "unless they recognize Israel, renounce violence and are willing to abide by previous accords" that Israel reached with neighboring Arab states and the Palestinians.
Which of those objections does not apply to Iran? The Democratic presidential candidate has said he's willing to meet, "without precondition," with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The difference between Iran and Hamas, Obama says, is that Iran is a country and Hamas is a terrorist organization. It's also true that the State Department describes Iran as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism," a provider of "extensive funding, training and weapons" to Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups, and an opponent of the Middle East peace process with "a high profile role in encouraging anti-Israel terrorist activity -- rhetorically, operationally and financially."
Obama further muddied the waters last week when he told David Brooks of the New York Times that Hamas and Hezbollah need to understand "they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims."
What would be the "legitimate claims" of Hamas, an organization founded for the purpose of the destruction of Israel? What are the "legitimate claims" of Hezbollah, also dedicated to the death of Israel, as well as serving as the agent of Iran and Syria in trying to kill democracy in Lebanon?
Obama has asserted unequivocal backing for Israel. But his "legitimate claims" remark gives you pause, making you wonder a bit about his worldview. Would the "legitimate claims" of Hamas be on the table in "no precondition" talks with Iran? National security has been a weakness for Democratic presidential candidates and doubly so for Obama because of his inexperience. Only four years ago he was an Illinois legislator.
That vulnerability explains the touchy reaction from Obama and his supporters to President Bush's speech in Israel likening negotiations with "terrorists and radicals" to the 1930s appeasement of the Nazis. Obama's defenders immediately jumped to argue that the problem with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain wasn't that he talked with Hitler, but what he did in those meetings.
The problem is a little more complicated than that. Chamberlain entered those talks without the simple precondition that the integrity of Czechoslovakia was not negotiable. Besides leading to the sellout of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain's flying to Munich to talk to Hitler undermined the fragile German opposition to Hitler. Military leaders, convinced his intention to go to war over the Sudeten issue would lead to defeat, plotted to overthrow Hitler.
William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is scathing in condemning the generals for failing to depose Hitler, but he wrote, "If, as the conspirators claim, their plans were on the point of being carried out, the announcement of Chamberlain's trip to Munich certainly cut the ground from underneath their feet." He added "such a golden opportunity never again presented itself to the German opposition to dispose of Hitler."
Presidential meetings carry consequences, for good and ill. Leaders are subject to misjudgment and miscalculation. Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev saw John Kennedy as weak after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and left a 1961 summit over Berlin with his belief about the young president confirmed. According to the New York Times, "Kennedy naively thought he could make a breakthrough with face-to-face talks." Two months later, the Berlin Wall went up. The next year, Khrushchev moved to put missiles in Cuba. He was wrong about Kennedy, but it took the Cuban missile crisis to convince him. This is not an argument against summits, only a cautionary tale of how they can go wrong.
The issue here is not whether America should at some diplomatic level engage rogue nations like Iran. The issue is whether a president should hold talks without preconditions with the world's worst despots."
Which of those objections does not apply to Iran? The Democratic presidential candidate has said he's willing to meet, "without precondition," with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The difference between Iran and Hamas, Obama says, is that Iran is a country and Hamas is a terrorist organization. It's also true that the State Department describes Iran as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism," a provider of "extensive funding, training and weapons" to Hamas, Hezbollah and other groups, and an opponent of the Middle East peace process with "a high profile role in encouraging anti-Israel terrorist activity -- rhetorically, operationally and financially."
Obama further muddied the waters last week when he told David Brooks of the New York Times that Hamas and Hezbollah need to understand "they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims."
What would be the "legitimate claims" of Hamas, an organization founded for the purpose of the destruction of Israel? What are the "legitimate claims" of Hezbollah, also dedicated to the death of Israel, as well as serving as the agent of Iran and Syria in trying to kill democracy in Lebanon?
Obama has asserted unequivocal backing for Israel. But his "legitimate claims" remark gives you pause, making you wonder a bit about his worldview. Would the "legitimate claims" of Hamas be on the table in "no precondition" talks with Iran? National security has been a weakness for Democratic presidential candidates and doubly so for Obama because of his inexperience. Only four years ago he was an Illinois legislator.
That vulnerability explains the touchy reaction from Obama and his supporters to President Bush's speech in Israel likening negotiations with "terrorists and radicals" to the 1930s appeasement of the Nazis. Obama's defenders immediately jumped to argue that the problem with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain wasn't that he talked with Hitler, but what he did in those meetings.
The problem is a little more complicated than that. Chamberlain entered those talks without the simple precondition that the integrity of Czechoslovakia was not negotiable. Besides leading to the sellout of Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain's flying to Munich to talk to Hitler undermined the fragile German opposition to Hitler. Military leaders, convinced his intention to go to war over the Sudeten issue would lead to defeat, plotted to overthrow Hitler.
William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is scathing in condemning the generals for failing to depose Hitler, but he wrote, "If, as the conspirators claim, their plans were on the point of being carried out, the announcement of Chamberlain's trip to Munich certainly cut the ground from underneath their feet." He added "such a golden opportunity never again presented itself to the German opposition to dispose of Hitler."
Presidential meetings carry consequences, for good and ill. Leaders are subject to misjudgment and miscalculation. Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev saw John Kennedy as weak after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and left a 1961 summit over Berlin with his belief about the young president confirmed. According to the New York Times, "Kennedy naively thought he could make a breakthrough with face-to-face talks." Two months later, the Berlin Wall went up. The next year, Khrushchev moved to put missiles in Cuba. He was wrong about Kennedy, but it took the Cuban missile crisis to convince him. This is not an argument against summits, only a cautionary tale of how they can go wrong.
The issue here is not whether America should at some diplomatic level engage rogue nations like Iran. The issue is whether a president should hold talks without preconditions with the world's worst despots."
Monday, May 12, 2008
Obama's Inability to Hire Good Help Rears Its Head … Again
From Jake Tapper's Political Punch on May 14, 2008: "We started covering Sen. Barack Obama's inability to hire good staffers in June 2007, when he blamed staffers for some opposition research trying to link Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, to outsourcing in India; for injecting some venom in the David Geffen/Hillary Clinton fight; and for missing an event with firefighters in New Hampshire.
In December, we noted again that Obama was blaming the answers on a 1996 questionnaire on a staffer; and was blaming his touring with "cured" ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin (which antagonized gays and lesbians) on bad vetting by his staff.
Those five buck-passing incidents were apparently not enough.
Yesterday, in an interesting New York Times look at Obama's rise in Chicago politics, we learned that in 2004 some Jewish supporters became alarmed to learn that in a questionnaire Obama refrained from denouncing Yasir Arafat, or from expressing strong support for Israel's security fence.
Reports the Times: "In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that 'none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.'"
In January, during MSNBC's presidential debate in Las Vegas, Obama was asked about a document put together by one of his South Carolina staffers that listed comments made by the Clinton campaign that some perceived to be attempting to stoke racial fires. "In hindsight, do you regret pushing this story?” asked Tim Russert.
"Our supporters, our staff get overzealous," Obama said. "They start saying things that I would not say, and it is my responsibility to make sure that we're setting a clear tone in our campaign.”
In February in a meeting with the Chicago Tribune, Obama was asked about an earmark that went to the University of Chicago while his wife Michelle Obama worked there.
"I don’t think that I was obligated to recuse myself from anything related to the university," Obama said, adding, "when it comes to earmarks because of those concerns, it’s probably something that should have been passed on to [U.S. Sen.] Dick Durbin, and I think probably something that slipped through the cracks. It did not come through us, through me or Michelle, and Michelle has been very careful about staying separate and apart from any government work. But you could make a good argument that this is something that slipped through our cracks, through our screening system.”
In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko's business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.
The letter, Obama said, "was essentially a form letter of the sort that I did all time. And that I wasn’t, by the way, aware of.”
A reporter asked: You weren't aware that he was associated with the project?
Responded Obama: "I wasn't even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew...This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”
The Sun-Times also pointed out that in November 2006 Obama estimated that Rezko had raised somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for him during his political career.
But since that answer, Obama has given back almost $160,000 in Rezko-related contributions.
"The original estimate was based on, I asked my staff to find what monies they attributed to Rezko, and this was the figure given to me," Obama said.
So, for those keeping track at home, that's ten instances of Obama publicly blaming his staff for various screw-ups.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!
(You of course could also add Austan Goolsbee, Samantha Power, Gordon Fischer, and retired Gen. Tony McPeak.)
That would be 14. We will continue to keep track.
And for the record, yet again, let me state that I find Sen. Obama's staff unfailingly competent and polite, courteous and efficient, and I once again express my regret that Sen. Obama does apparently not feel the same way."
In December, we noted again that Obama was blaming the answers on a 1996 questionnaire on a staffer; and was blaming his touring with "cured" ex-gay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin (which antagonized gays and lesbians) on bad vetting by his staff.
Those five buck-passing incidents were apparently not enough.
Yesterday, in an interesting New York Times look at Obama's rise in Chicago politics, we learned that in 2004 some Jewish supporters became alarmed to learn that in a questionnaire Obama refrained from denouncing Yasir Arafat, or from expressing strong support for Israel's security fence.
Reports the Times: "In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that 'none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.'"
In January, during MSNBC's presidential debate in Las Vegas, Obama was asked about a document put together by one of his South Carolina staffers that listed comments made by the Clinton campaign that some perceived to be attempting to stoke racial fires. "In hindsight, do you regret pushing this story?” asked Tim Russert.
"Our supporters, our staff get overzealous," Obama said. "They start saying things that I would not say, and it is my responsibility to make sure that we're setting a clear tone in our campaign.”
In February in a meeting with the Chicago Tribune, Obama was asked about an earmark that went to the University of Chicago while his wife Michelle Obama worked there.
"I don’t think that I was obligated to recuse myself from anything related to the university," Obama said, adding, "when it comes to earmarks because of those concerns, it’s probably something that should have been passed on to [U.S. Sen.] Dick Durbin, and I think probably something that slipped through the cracks. It did not come through us, through me or Michelle, and Michelle has been very careful about staying separate and apart from any government work. But you could make a good argument that this is something that slipped through our cracks, through our screening system.”
In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko's business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.
The letter, Obama said, "was essentially a form letter of the sort that I did all time. And that I wasn’t, by the way, aware of.”
A reporter asked: You weren't aware that he was associated with the project?
Responded Obama: "I wasn't even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew...This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”
The Sun-Times also pointed out that in November 2006 Obama estimated that Rezko had raised somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for him during his political career.
But since that answer, Obama has given back almost $160,000 in Rezko-related contributions.
"The original estimate was based on, I asked my staff to find what monies they attributed to Rezko, and this was the figure given to me," Obama said.
So, for those keeping track at home, that's ten instances of Obama publicly blaming his staff for various screw-ups.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!
(You of course could also add Austan Goolsbee, Samantha Power, Gordon Fischer, and retired Gen. Tony McPeak.)
That would be 14. We will continue to keep track.
And for the record, yet again, let me state that I find Sen. Obama's staff unfailingly competent and polite, courteous and efficient, and I once again express my regret that Sen. Obama does apparently not feel the same way."
Saturday, May 10, 2008
More Obama Fumbles: Obama sacks adviser over talks with Hamas
From TimesonLine on May 10, 2008: "One of Barack Obama’s Middle East policy advisers disclosed yesterday that he had held meetings with the militant Palestinian group Hamas – prompting the likely Democratic nominee to sever all links with him.
Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.
“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.” The rapid departure of Mr Malley followed 48 hours of heated clashes between John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, and Mr Obama over Middle East policy.
Mr Obama, who has been trying to assuage suspicion towards him among the influential Jewish and pro-Israel lobby, spoke at a Washington reception marking the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence on Thursday when he promised that his commitment to the country’s security would be “unshakeable”. However, Mr McCain has high-lighted the Democrat’s pledge to negotiate directly with nations such as Iran – whose leaders talk of wiping Israel off the map – and a statement from Hamas saying that it hoped that Mr Obama would win the presidency.
This was denounced as an offensive smear by Mr Obama, who repeated earlier statements saying that Hamas was “a terrorist organisation [and] we should not negotiate with them unless they recognise Israel, renounce violence”.
He went on to suggest that Mr McCain’s attack showed that he was “losing his bearings”. This remark triggered a furious reaction from Mark Salter, the Republican’s senior adviser, who said that Mr Obama was “intentionally raising John McCain’s age as an issue” – a claim the Democrat vehemently denied. The intensity of this dispute reflects both Mr Obama’s desire to move beyond his battle with Hillary Clinton and how Republicans are already beginning to train their sights on him.
The Republican National Committee has amassed a 1,000-page dossier on Mr Obama, with researchers spending weeks in Chicago seeking fresh material. He is already being criticised for his links with Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor who has branded Israel an “apartheid system in creation”.
Mr Malley, a respected commentator on Middle Eastern issues and part of President Clinton’s negotiating team at the Camp David talks, has come under attack in recent months from right-wing bloggers. Yesterday, asked if Obama campaign was aware of his contact with Hamas, he said: “They know who I am but I don’t think they vet everyone in a group of informal advisers.”
Randy Scheunemann, Mr McCain’s foreign policy chief, suggested that Mr Malley was part of an emerging pattern in which other advisers had been repudiated after throwing confusion over policies on trade and Iraq. “Perhaps because of his inexperience Senator Obama surrounds himself with advisers that contradict his stated policies,” he said. "
Robert Malley told The Times that he had been in regular contact with Hamas, which controls Gaza and is listed by the US State Department as a terrorist organisation. Such talks, he stressed, were related to his work for a conflict resolution think-tank and had no connection with his position on Mr Obama’s Middle East advisory council.
“I’ve never hidden the fact that in my job with the International Crisis Group I meet all kinds of people,” he added.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr Obama, responded swiftly: “Rob Malley has, like hundreds of other experts, provided informal advice to the campaign in the past. He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.” The rapid departure of Mr Malley followed 48 hours of heated clashes between John McCain, the Republican nominee-elect, and Mr Obama over Middle East policy.
Mr Obama, who has been trying to assuage suspicion towards him among the influential Jewish and pro-Israel lobby, spoke at a Washington reception marking the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence on Thursday when he promised that his commitment to the country’s security would be “unshakeable”. However, Mr McCain has high-lighted the Democrat’s pledge to negotiate directly with nations such as Iran – whose leaders talk of wiping Israel off the map – and a statement from Hamas saying that it hoped that Mr Obama would win the presidency.
This was denounced as an offensive smear by Mr Obama, who repeated earlier statements saying that Hamas was “a terrorist organisation [and] we should not negotiate with them unless they recognise Israel, renounce violence”.
He went on to suggest that Mr McCain’s attack showed that he was “losing his bearings”. This remark triggered a furious reaction from Mark Salter, the Republican’s senior adviser, who said that Mr Obama was “intentionally raising John McCain’s age as an issue” – a claim the Democrat vehemently denied. The intensity of this dispute reflects both Mr Obama’s desire to move beyond his battle with Hillary Clinton and how Republicans are already beginning to train their sights on him.
The Republican National Committee has amassed a 1,000-page dossier on Mr Obama, with researchers spending weeks in Chicago seeking fresh material. He is already being criticised for his links with Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor who has branded Israel an “apartheid system in creation”.
Mr Malley, a respected commentator on Middle Eastern issues and part of President Clinton’s negotiating team at the Camp David talks, has come under attack in recent months from right-wing bloggers. Yesterday, asked if Obama campaign was aware of his contact with Hamas, he said: “They know who I am but I don’t think they vet everyone in a group of informal advisers.”
Randy Scheunemann, Mr McCain’s foreign policy chief, suggested that Mr Malley was part of an emerging pattern in which other advisers had been repudiated after throwing confusion over policies on trade and Iraq. “Perhaps because of his inexperience Senator Obama surrounds himself with advisers that contradict his stated policies,” he said. "
Monday, May 5, 2008
President Obama: The Preview?
From wsj.com By JON KELLER
May 3, 2008; Page A9:
"Sen. Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language."
-- Deval Patrick
There may not be two politicians on the national stage more alike than Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Both went to Harvard Law, are African-American politicians with mass appeal, and use soaring rhetoric to promise a bold new postpartisan politics.
But the two men differ in one critical area: Mr. Patrick has an executive record. And, unfortunately for the senator from Illinois, it reveals that the Patrick-Obama brand of politics isn't really new. It is, in fact, something akin to the failed liberalism of old, in a new vessel.
Mr. Patrick, 52, was swept into office in a landslide in 2006. He won because Democrats were energized to capture the governor's mansion and because he presented himself as an historic candidate. Having never held elective office before – though he was assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in the Clinton administration – it was easy for him to claim that he wouldn't be beholden to special interests or outmoded orthodoxies. Baby boomers, eager to make a permanent mark on the political landscape, also found the idea of electing the state's first black governor appealing.
What the Bay State got, however, is a pedestrian liberal governor who is remarkably quick to retreat in the face of pressure from the status quo.
Mr. Patrick's first cave-in came just weeks after he was elected, and before he was even sworn into office. On the campaign trail he promised to cut $735 million in wasteful spending from the state budget. But when the Democratic Senate president rebuked him for it, the governor-elect backpedalled. The Boston Globe summed it up this way: "Patrick backed off and said he didn't really mean it."
Another retreat came on a common sense issue that likely might have marked him as a true reformer had he made even a losing fight of it. Massachusetts is the only state that mandates that cops, not flagmen, direct traffic at road-construction sites. Earlier this spring, Mr. Patrick proposed loosening the requirement as a way to save taxpayers millions, but quickly recanted when the police union flooded the capitol with lobbyists. Within days, Mr. Patrick told listeners of his monthly radio show "the more I think about this, the less certain I am that we can fix this top down."
Education may be the one area where Mr. Patrick could have done the most to demonstrate that he is indeed a new man of the left. Fifteen years ago, the state enacted strict testing requirements for both teachers and students and passed reforms that encourage the creation of charter schools. The result: Massachusetts consistently places among the top performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Sticking by these bipartisan reforms – or even expanding them to help minority children in poor areas – would seem to be an easy call.
But to the delight of education unions, Mr. Patrick instead appears to be laying the groundwork to dismantle these reforms. He appointed antitesting zealot Ruth Kaplan to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she repaid his confidence recently by disparaging the college preparation emphasis of some charter schools. She said these schools set "some kids up for failure . . . Their families don't always know what's best for their children."
S. Paul Reville, chairman of the education board, has also drawn attention for his willingness to water down certification testing requirements for aspiring teachers. Under the guise of trying to overcome a teacher shortage, the administration wants to allow applicants who have failed the test three times to teach anyway. When pressed on the issue, Mr. Reville said publicly that the certification test "isn't necessarily the best venue for everybody to demonstrate their competency."
One characteristic of the Obama-Patrick brand of politics is the assertion that they can personally persuade disparate political leaders to reach a consensus. Mr. Patrick's biggest test of this claim came this year when he proposed bringing jobs to the state by allowing casino gambling in Massachusetts. The proposal angered an odd alliance of liberals and social conservatives because gambling is a highly regressive (if voluntary) tax. And it ended in defeat for the governor.
Rather than use the bully pulpit to create public pressure in favor of his proposal – Mr. Patrick told me in late March "I don't think that the way to advance most of our agenda is to do it through the media" – he lobbied lawmakers behind closed doors, using data that proved flimsy and skewed. In the end, his bill went down to a crushing defeat and, on the day of the legislature's vote, he skipped town to ink a $1.35 million book deal at a Manhattan publishing house.
What should trouble Mr. Obama the most is that the stirring rhetoric of Mr. Patrick's 2006 campaign, now being recycled by the Illinois senator (at times, word for word), is no longer connecting with Massachusetts voters. A mid-April poll found that 56% of the state's voters disapprove of the governor's performance. Even among left-leaning Democrats, more than four in 10 disapprove of Mr. Patrick.
Voters in Massachusetts had hoped Mr. Patrick's reformist promises and appealing style would mean a makeover for a tired political culture that has long since stopped producing satisfactory results. Instead, they, along with voters in southern New Hampshire and northern Rhode Island (which receive Boston news), now seem wary of the Obama-Patrick connection. These areas turned out heavily for Hillary Clinton in the presidential primaries and helped her carry all three states.
Mr. Obama has self-servingly said of himself and Mr. Patrick, "We are the change we've been waiting for." But what Mr. Patrick has demonstrated in office is that once the initial rush of making history has waned, these fresh faces seem to offer little change beyond the rhetoric."
May 3, 2008; Page A9:
"Sen. Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language."
-- Deval Patrick
There may not be two politicians on the national stage more alike than Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. Both went to Harvard Law, are African-American politicians with mass appeal, and use soaring rhetoric to promise a bold new postpartisan politics.
But the two men differ in one critical area: Mr. Patrick has an executive record. And, unfortunately for the senator from Illinois, it reveals that the Patrick-Obama brand of politics isn't really new. It is, in fact, something akin to the failed liberalism of old, in a new vessel.
Mr. Patrick, 52, was swept into office in a landslide in 2006. He won because Democrats were energized to capture the governor's mansion and because he presented himself as an historic candidate. Having never held elective office before – though he was assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in the Clinton administration – it was easy for him to claim that he wouldn't be beholden to special interests or outmoded orthodoxies. Baby boomers, eager to make a permanent mark on the political landscape, also found the idea of electing the state's first black governor appealing.
What the Bay State got, however, is a pedestrian liberal governor who is remarkably quick to retreat in the face of pressure from the status quo.
Mr. Patrick's first cave-in came just weeks after he was elected, and before he was even sworn into office. On the campaign trail he promised to cut $735 million in wasteful spending from the state budget. But when the Democratic Senate president rebuked him for it, the governor-elect backpedalled. The Boston Globe summed it up this way: "Patrick backed off and said he didn't really mean it."
Another retreat came on a common sense issue that likely might have marked him as a true reformer had he made even a losing fight of it. Massachusetts is the only state that mandates that cops, not flagmen, direct traffic at road-construction sites. Earlier this spring, Mr. Patrick proposed loosening the requirement as a way to save taxpayers millions, but quickly recanted when the police union flooded the capitol with lobbyists. Within days, Mr. Patrick told listeners of his monthly radio show "the more I think about this, the less certain I am that we can fix this top down."
Education may be the one area where Mr. Patrick could have done the most to demonstrate that he is indeed a new man of the left. Fifteen years ago, the state enacted strict testing requirements for both teachers and students and passed reforms that encourage the creation of charter schools. The result: Massachusetts consistently places among the top performers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Sticking by these bipartisan reforms – or even expanding them to help minority children in poor areas – would seem to be an easy call.
But to the delight of education unions, Mr. Patrick instead appears to be laying the groundwork to dismantle these reforms. He appointed antitesting zealot Ruth Kaplan to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she repaid his confidence recently by disparaging the college preparation emphasis of some charter schools. She said these schools set "some kids up for failure . . . Their families don't always know what's best for their children."
S. Paul Reville, chairman of the education board, has also drawn attention for his willingness to water down certification testing requirements for aspiring teachers. Under the guise of trying to overcome a teacher shortage, the administration wants to allow applicants who have failed the test three times to teach anyway. When pressed on the issue, Mr. Reville said publicly that the certification test "isn't necessarily the best venue for everybody to demonstrate their competency."
One characteristic of the Obama-Patrick brand of politics is the assertion that they can personally persuade disparate political leaders to reach a consensus. Mr. Patrick's biggest test of this claim came this year when he proposed bringing jobs to the state by allowing casino gambling in Massachusetts. The proposal angered an odd alliance of liberals and social conservatives because gambling is a highly regressive (if voluntary) tax. And it ended in defeat for the governor.
Rather than use the bully pulpit to create public pressure in favor of his proposal – Mr. Patrick told me in late March "I don't think that the way to advance most of our agenda is to do it through the media" – he lobbied lawmakers behind closed doors, using data that proved flimsy and skewed. In the end, his bill went down to a crushing defeat and, on the day of the legislature's vote, he skipped town to ink a $1.35 million book deal at a Manhattan publishing house.
What should trouble Mr. Obama the most is that the stirring rhetoric of Mr. Patrick's 2006 campaign, now being recycled by the Illinois senator (at times, word for word), is no longer connecting with Massachusetts voters. A mid-April poll found that 56% of the state's voters disapprove of the governor's performance. Even among left-leaning Democrats, more than four in 10 disapprove of Mr. Patrick.
Voters in Massachusetts had hoped Mr. Patrick's reformist promises and appealing style would mean a makeover for a tired political culture that has long since stopped producing satisfactory results. Instead, they, along with voters in southern New Hampshire and northern Rhode Island (which receive Boston news), now seem wary of the Obama-Patrick connection. These areas turned out heavily for Hillary Clinton in the presidential primaries and helped her carry all three states.
Mr. Obama has self-servingly said of himself and Mr. Patrick, "We are the change we've been waiting for." But what Mr. Patrick has demonstrated in office is that once the initial rush of making history has waned, these fresh faces seem to offer little change beyond the rhetoric."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)