Chris Stirewalt

Morning Must Reads -- Dare to dither

Associated Press -- Obama said to want revised Afghanistan options President Obama inverst General Patton’s axiom about military strategy: Obama is looking for a perfect plan to be executed at some indefinite point in the future on Afghanistan rather than a good one that could be executed today. Writers Anne Geran and Ben Feller report that just as it seemed the president had all abut announced his decision to put 35,000 more troops in Afghanistan, he changed course and has asked for a new set of options. The process has gone on so long that Obama must be stalling for a more advantageous moment in which to announce his plan or really intends to micromanage the strategy if...

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Morning Must Reads -- Ft. Hood killer's radical sympathies were no secret

Washington Post -- Hasan e-mails to cleric didn't result in inquiry Writers Phillip Rucker, Carrie Johnson, and Ellen Nakashima and their colleagues at the Post have been all over the Ft. Hood shootings. Tremendous coverage. As we learn more about Nidal Hasan it becomes harder to imagine how his behavior in the years leading up to the shooting did not trigger an investigation or discharge – a lecture to colleagues about the need to allow Muslim soldiers to be excused from service, the online glorification of suicide bombers, and now, email exchanges with his former Imam, Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical cleric who would later praise Hasan’s rampage as the model for any Muslim...

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Morning Must Reads -- Harried Reid

Wall Street Journal -- Health Bill Faces Senate Heat As Examiner colleague Susan Ferrechio observed today “[House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi lost almost 15 percent of her members. If Reid loses one member of his 60-vote majority, his bill might be doomed.” That’s the conclusion reached by Janet Adamy and Naftali Bendavid and everyone else looking at the Senate prospects on health care today: the House passage of an extreme bill by a tiny margin will rile up moderate members of the Senate who can now be more demanding. There’s running room to the right on a final compromise bill but none to the left (Dennis Kucinich was the only liberal “no” vote). The...

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TARP funds taking on unemployment... in Germany

General Motors (majority owner, US taxpayers) is trying to rescue its European subsidiary Opel after backing out of a plan to sell the company to a consortium led by auto-equipment maker Magna. In order to get clear of the sale, GM cut a deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to pour billions into Opel. Merkel had to sign off on the deal because Germany had provided a bridge loan to Opel in order to carry the company over until the sale could be completed. German labor unions are up in arms over GM's reversal and Merkel was under pressure to get something back. Merkel was in town this week and after a meeting with President Obama and a phone call with him Wednesday,...

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Morning Must Reads -- Unemployment hits home for Democrats

Wall Street Journal -- Democrats Confront Coalition Strains Is it time for Democrats to galvanize the base or reach out to the middle? With election results causing new anxieties in the party over the president’s big agenda, Democrats are looking for a new direction. In the short term, the answer from the White House/DNC will be to try to get beyond the dithering/bickering phase and pass something/anything on health care – water it down, get it passed, and start campaigning for 2010 and talking about jobs. As I argue in my column today, not seeming obsessed with the economy and unemployment has been a major mistake for President Obama. Writers Peter Wallsten and Jonathan...

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Morning Must Reads -- After the Hopium wears off

Wall Street Journal -- In Vote, Watch the Intensity Factor Voters today will choose the governors of Virginia and New Jersey, the representatives of House districts in New York and California, the mayors of New York City, Atlanta, and Detroit, and whether to allow gay marriage in Maine and Washington state and 24 other ballot initiatives (casino gambling, medical marijuana, etc.) across the land. But only three – New York’s House race, and the governorships – really matter on the national level because they are in places the president won handily last year and now see hotly contested elections. The voters in Virginia and New York’s 23rd Congressional District...

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If the French think Obama is haughty...

Steven Erlanger has an interesting piece in today's New York Times talking about Euro frustration with President Obama's foreign policy methods and priorities. But it was this passage that seemed so funny to me: "A lot of the problem is the fault of the Europeans themselves, said Hubert Védrine, a former French foreign minister. 'Europe for Obama is not a priority, not a problem and not a solution for his problems,' he said in an interview here. 'Obama keeps a distance and has a kind of hauteur' with European leaders, Mr. Védrine said. 'But that’s not a sufficient reason for Europeans to act like spectators' as Mr. Obama tries to cope with his...

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Morning Must Reads -- The Creigh Deeds of Kabul

New York Times -- Off-Year Races May Provide Insight Writer Adam Nagourney provides a useful tip sheet on the big off-year races being contested on Tuesday. He wastes a good bit of copy asking whether or not there are lessons to be learned, but then gives us the stuff. In my column today I argue that the biggest surprise of them all – the New York congressional race that has turned into a free for all – may help get the Republican Party off its keister. But it’s the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia that will hold the data over which political operatives will endlessly pore. “1) Virginia. Mr. Obama won this state, becoming the first presidential...

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Real congressional genius

In honor of today's revelation about the depth of the ethical issues Rep. John Murtha and his cronies on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee are facing for their connections to the PMA lobbying firm, I offer you this video homage to "Mr. Really in Your Face Earmarker." Time to kick back with a cold Bud Light, congressman. For one of the best from real commercial series click...

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Morning Must Reads -- Growth, but still feeling fluish

Washington Post -- Obama seeks study on local leaders for troop decision Writers Scott Wilson and Greg Jaffe look at the way in which the president is preparing his announcement of a mini-surge in Afghanistan. It’s so detailed that Obama is breaking down the leadership structures and security needs of all the Afghan provinces. There are some shades of micromanagement here, but there’s also evidence of an effort to deal with Afghanistan regionally and cut out the middleman in Kabul. “The review group once included intelligence officials, generals and ambassadors, but it has recently narrowed to a far smaller number of senior civilian advisers, including [Vice...

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New low in White House name calling: Bush administration = the Redskins

I didn't notice this gem in Josh Gerstein's piece on the common refrain in Washington "What if George W. Bush had done that?": “As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since...

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Congressman's questionable real-estate deal now in foreclosure

Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., once got into hot water for the huge gains he and his wife racked up on investment properties with allegations of hidden income. Back then, Mollohan said that the reason for his multi-million jump in assets from 2000 to 2004 was because of his wife's real estate acumen. The National Legal and Policy Center found that the value of one the 27 condos in DC which the congressman and his wife were part owners increased from between $2,002 and $30,000 to between $2 million and $10 million in just 10 years. Of particular note in the Mollohans' holdings was a beach home worth millions on North Carolina's Bald Head Island, owned in conjunction with a former staffer...

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Obama will stick with embattled OSHA nominee if he knows who pays the bills

Liberal discontentment with President Obama knows many forms, and will no doubt grow as he continues to, in labor-union terms, "slow wobble" the jobs on Afghanistan, gay marriage, Guantanamo, etc. And if it weren't for the self-preservation instincts that have brought the liberal Left back together to defend Obama from conservative attacks, the president's approval with his own party would already be substantially lower. One particular area of frustration for liberals is the president's failure to stand by his men. Green jobs czar/conspiracy theorist Van Jones and federal art publicist/propoganda enthusiast Yosi Sergent were both men of the Left who the administration kissed...

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Obama won’t win by calling opponents cowards

During his current media bombardment, President Obama is wisely downplaying the charges of racism his allies have been making. He told CNN’s John King that race wasn’t “the overriding issue” for the opponents of his health care plan. Not exactly an exoneration of his critics’ racial attitudes, but at least an acknowledgment that there is more than bigotry at work. What Obama says is really driving the negative response to his policies is fear. Fear of “big changes.” Fear of “uncertainty.” The president likes to equate the resistance he’s facing with that met by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. It’s nice that Obama...

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The Left overplays the race card for Obama

It's too bad that the first black president wasn't a conservative. Not that there wouldn't have been charges of racism and some actual racism, too. But it would have finally dispelled the old myth about the racist Right and the tolerant Left. As it is, many liberals who once complained about being labeled unpatriotic for their vituperative opposition to George W. Bush are suggesting that anyone who opposes the policies of President Obama is a racist. Jimmy Carter, who at age 85 has still not tired of inflicting damage to his own party, suggested in an MSNBC interview that the broad-based opposition that has met Obama's proposals is racist. "I think it's bubbled up to the surface...

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Left swallows defeats to pave way for victory

It will be the $900 billion cost of President Obama's health plan that will cause the most problems among Democrats. Deciding whom to tax, hiding the fact that they are pushing the national debt past 100 percent of our gross domestic product, and trying to wiggle out of the political blame for Medicare cuts should keep the majority party busy through much of the fall. An already long battle for liberals is only just beginning as the Congressional Budget Office keeps dumping boiling oil on the advancing forces of do-gooderism. The idea that giving away health care saves money is so laughable that the phrase "bend the cost curve" may become the "mission accomplished" of the Obama...

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Obama picks a fight with talk radio - and loses

Democrats beat Republicans soundly in 2008. But they're losing the fight with their current opponent - conservatives on the Internet, radio, and television. It was the wrong battle for President Obama and his party to pick in the first place, but the policy decisions and mistakes made since the Democratic takeover have shifted the battle to even less favorable terrain. Worse still, the fight is only just beginning. The strategy early on in the administration was to mock talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Remember the weeks of discussion over whether Limbaugh was the head of the GOP? That was back in the days when the White House was feeling invincible and thought it was a grand...

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Obama was a health-care "myth" buster in 2004 too

If you're wondering what it would sound like if President Obama actually debated health care reform, this audio from 2004 gives a good idea. In it, then state Sen. Brack Obama went after Republican Sen. Peter Roskam (now a congressman from suburban Chicago) over the Illinois Health Care Justice Act. Roskam suggested that the Obama-sponsored bill, which created a panel that later recommended an individual insurance mandate, a public insurance option and generous subsidies for Illinois in 2007. The state legislature has sat on the proposal since then. But at the time, Republicans have argued that it was a back door to having a single-payer system once private insurers were put out of...

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White House says no one "bemoaned" Bush vacations?

The president is going to add another min-vacation to his August break next week with a a four-day weekend at Camp David. No big deal. But the administration, ever sensitive to criticism, had to rationalize the time at the presidential retreat, with Spokesman Bill Burton saying that the vacation week has been newsier than expected considering the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. From Politico: "'When you're president, you've always got that job,' Burton said. On Monday, Burton pointed to former President George W. Bush's vacation habits to defends scattered criticism of Obama's August schedule 'As I recall, the previous president [took] quite a bit of vacation himself, and I don't...

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With Teddy gone, liberals want fire from Obama

With the passing of their last great champion, American liberals will have to decide whether it’s time to renew the fight or accept being sold out again. If President Barack Obama wants to get his administration on track, he had better hope for the latter. Liberals loved Ted Kennedy because he did not apologize for his liberalism or try to hide it under euphemisms. He made them feel good about their views, which he said were not just necessary, but right. The frustrations of 40 years of thwarted liberal aims thundered in his voice. Whether he was savaging George W. Bush’s foreign policy or demanding an increase in the minimum wage, Kennedy didn’t sound like some...

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Morning Must Reads -- Heath Care on a Left Wing and a Prayer

Wall Street Journal -- New Rx for Health Plan: Split Bill Writers Jonathan Weisman and Naftali Bendavid give the first useful glimpse at the Democratic playbook for unilateral passage of major changes to the health-care system. Since getting all 60 Democrats in the Senate to support a plan that is anything but happy talk and some handouts seems unlikely, party leaders are doping out the strategy for jamming through a government health-insurance plan using the nuclear option of a 50-vote procedural measure reserved for budget matters. It would be winning ugly, and perhaps even a Pyrrhic victory, so many Democrats say that it should be avoided at all costs. But the White House is facing...

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Losing confidence in Afghanistan

Something of a signal moment with the release of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows for the first time more than half of Americans think that the Afghan war is not worth fighting. The survey says that 51 percent of Americans think the war has not been worth fighting compared to 47 percent who do. Just a month ago, 51 percent supported the war and 45 percent opposed it . In December, the same poll showed 55 percent thought the war was worth fighting and 39 percent did not. In the latest poll, Republicans held steady around 70 percent supporting the war in both July and August. Democrats, meanwhile, turned against the war. They went from 41 percent in support to 27 percent in...

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Morning Must Reads -- Off Message. Off Balance. Just Plain Off.

New York Times -- Alternate Plan as Health Option Muddies Debate Muddy is an understatement. In trying to get the health debate back under control, the White House has made a total hash of the discussion. The good news for team Obama is that no one is talking about who gets to “pull the plug on granny.” The bad news is that the one point on which the president was clear about health care – he wanted a new national health plan funded in part by cuts in Medicare – is now another mystery. The secretary of health and the White House press secretary expressed openness to non-profit, highly regulated, private health co-ops designed on the template of public...

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Boehner rips Tauzin for giving in to big government "bully"

This afternoon, Minority Leader John Boehner sent a letter to PhRMA president and former Republican Rep. Billy Tauzin over the deals the congressman turned drug lobbyist has cut with the White House. Boehner also sent the letter to Tauzin's board. Here's the letter: The Honorable Billy Tauzin PhRMA 950 F Street NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 Dear Billy, Appeasement rarely works as a conflict resolution strategy. This is as true in the arena of policymaking as it is in schoolyards across America. When a bully asks for your lunch money, you may have no choice but to fork it over. But cutting a deal with the bully is a different story, particularly if the “deal”...

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Morning Must Reads -- Public Option Bait and Switch

New York Times -- ‘Public Option’ in Health Plan May Be Dropped If only writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg had read her colleague David Kirkpatrick’s Thursday piece about how the White House had been working intimately with the Senate Finance Committee on a compromise health care bill that doesn’t initially include a new national health plan. Perhaps the Times has cut reporter subscriptions in these hard times, but had she read Kirkpatrick’s piece, perhaps Stolberg would have been less credulous about the administration’s Sunday roll out of its openness to dropping a public option. Conservatives are calling it a surrender and liberals say it’s a...

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Obama fighting for his presidency, not reform

The big question for President Barack Obama right now isn't about health care, but his own political survival. If he fails to deliver health legislation, Obama will prove right those who said he was in over his head. That would make him something of a lame duck after only seven months in office. But if he does manage to squeeze a bill out of Congress, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. By delivering unwanted changes to unwilling voters on a life-or-death issue, the president would squander the goodwill he earned during the campaign. Voters now say passing nothing would be better than any of the plans stewing in Congress, so it's hard to imagine that lawmakers will return from their recess...

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Morning Must Reads: Granny Pulls the Plug on Obama

Obama Injects Himself Into Health Talks, Despite Risks Writer David Kirkpatrick confirmed from sources what many have understood for months – that the White House will support a compromise health plan being crafted in he Senate Finance Committee, even though it lacks the public option the president has repeatedly demanded. Health lobbyists and Capitol Hill insiders told Kirkpatrick that the White House has been a shadow negotiator in the ongoing talks in Sen. Max Baucus’ offices, while letting the rest of the process work itself out. The first challenge for the White House is to get anything at all passed, which seems less likely given the plummeting approval ratings for...

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By the time we got to Woodstock...

I've gotten remarkable response to my column today "Boomer bust hinders Democrats' aims." A small fraction has been ugly, but that's mostly from reactionaries who are fighting the culture war as a win/loose proposition -- it's going to either be an American theocracy or an Aquarian explosion: "I am sorry you grew up in a hardcore Christian family that didn't let you be yourself and chided you when you thought outside of the box. I did too. The only difference is that once I reached adulthood I began thinking critically on my own. You can do it to and so can the rest of America" -- etc. I didn't mention religion or even Republicans (and to clarify, my folks let me...

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Boomer bust hinders Democrats' aims

Baby Boomers may take some perverse pleasure in helping to trash an American culture that they thought was too stuffy anyway. But the real disaster of the Me Generation is the death of serious political debate. This week is the 40th anniversary of Woodstock -- the high-water mark for the generation born immediately after World War II. This week will also see the 64th anniversary of the apex of their parents' generation -- Victory Over Japan Day. A big, dirty party for 400,000 bourgeois bohemians versus total victory in a war that killed 417,000 American troops. Heavy, dude. The myth of Woodstock as an "Aquarian explosion" propagated by the film that came out the year after...

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Obama forgets who's speaking truth to power

Liberals struggle to govern because no one has found a way to be powerful and oppressed at the same time. President Barack Obama is trying to push back against the chorus of dissent on his health plan, whatever it turns out to be. The only thing he really seems to insist on is that the plan includes a government-run insurance option paid for, in part, by reducing spending on Medicare and other existing government plans. Unfortunately for Obama, the government plan and the Medicare cuts are what have everybody so out of sorts. The summer swoon for the president's poll numbers continues, and even Americans who agree with the president's health goals think he and Congress have handled the...

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Grumbling about elites in the Hillbilly Firewall

CLINTON, W.Va. The first phase of the recession may be over, but recovery has not visited America’s industrial heartland. And the country that’s being imagined in Washington doesn’t leave much room for smokestack brawn. In an economy structured around low-wage service jobs and high-paying “knowledge worker” jobs, there isn’t much room for the American yeomanry. The past 35 years have seen the upper Ohio Valley’s status greatly reduced, but the current moves by the political elite are the most aggressive yet and come after a period of elevated expectations. The time for green shoots in the upper Ohio Valley was a few years ago, when energy...

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John Thune's workmanlike Republicanism

There are some tremors of optimism rumbling through the Republican Party these days. The generic ballot for the 2010 congressional elections is about even, and Democrats are preparing for a defensive cycle after eight years on offense. The gleam has come off President Barack Obama, now seen as a conventional politician, not a transcendent figure. But Republicans are still very worried, and with good cause. The Democrats' loss has not become their gain. Voters still have misgivings about the party that gave them the Iraq war and runaway deficits. Sticker shock at the fiscal recklessness of the Democrats hasn't erased the bad memories of the GOP's big-spending ways under President George W....

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Pelosi falls to the back of the pack of speakers

In an era of symbolic breakthroughs, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is closing in on a dubious achievement — being the least effective leader of the House in the modern era. Since the 1920s, when Speaker Nicholas Longworth rescued the position from a brief period of irrelevancy, the office of speaker has been held by political heavyweights. The 17 speakers since Longworth have mostly maintained or enhanced the power and prestige of the post, but with a train wreck taking shape in the House, Pelosi may be remembered for diminishing the office. And when historians inspect the record of the lady from California, they will find that hubris and empty talk sealed her fate. In seven months, the...

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Obama missed his moment to fix health care

President Barack Obama says his Republican foes have no plan for health care. In fact, they do. They just don’t want to bring it up right now. And one can hardly blame them. The core of the conservative idea on health care is taxing health benefits. John McCain offered a version in 2008 that included a $5,000-per-family tax credit to offset the switch. Obama brutalized McCain for his suggestion. It was the ugliest phase of the Obama campaign, featuring a lot of scaremongering about how McCain’s plan amounted to a “trillion-dollar” tax on the middle class based on a “radical” idea that could have a “catastrophic” effect on health...

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When he isn't winning, Obama turns to whining

It seems that Americans are a little tired of Barack Obama, and the feeling may be mutual. Believing they had elected a postmodern medicine man for the Oprah era, voters are recoiling from Obama's attempt to become a PG-13 version of Lyndon Johnson. His poll numbers have slid mostly because people are suffering economically. Obama promised to heal their pain and failed. He may yet succeed, but for now, disillusionment hangs like a pea-soup fog over the land. In France, they call Nicolas Sarkozy the "omnipresident" because he is seemingly everywhere doing everything at once. Obama is more of the commenter in chief, with something to say about everything from Michael Jackson's...

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Obamacare: The fast and the furious

The health care testimony of the director of the Congressional Budget Office sounded almost desperate. There was poor Douglas Elmendorf — Larry Summers’ protegé, Brookings Institution liberal, Pelosi-picked, Harvard mega-wonk — practically begging his bosses in Congress to just slow down a little. Elmendorf wants actual health care reform — the kind that President Barack Obama used to talk about. The kind that covers the uninsured, gets people into doctors’ offices instead of emergency rooms, and is paid for in a responsible fashion. But now the White House and the Democratic leadership in Congress will take whatever they can get as long as it...

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When in doubt, soak the rich, whoever they are

The productive Americans who pay for government are precariously close to becoming a political irrelevancy. The only good news for them is that the folks trying to take their money may have jumped the gun. And in the showdown between resentment and entitlement, timing is everything. The current recession is so big and bad that people are anxious about the future, but it hasn't been terrible or long enough to change the balance between the producers and the takers. One reason liberal economists are so nostalgic for the Great Depression is that the depth of despair in the nation -- a quarter of able men out of work and upheaval of the old social order -- made lawmakers and voters open to...

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Rangel just wants to keep the faith, baby

The White House and the Senate have spent four months dithering over how to fund an expansion of subsidized health care, but it was a no-brainer for Charlie Rangel and his team on the House Ways and Means Committee. That's because Rangel believes his job is to take money from people who have it and give it to people who don't, like his Harlem constituents. President Barack Obama wanted to do much the same thing, but in a high-minded, pro-growth, post-partisan sort of way. Rangel isn't post-anything. Rather than finding some euphemism for sharing the wealth -- a tax on "gold-plated" health benefits, lowering the deduction for charitable giving, etc. -- Rangel is doing...

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Admiral Obama dithers on the poop deck

Like an armada making its uncertain way through rough seas, the Obama administration's agenda is fast approaching the point of no return. Sailing into a headwind of worsening unemployment, mounting public skepticism, and anxieties on Capitol Hill, the temporizing admiral of the fleet must choose whether to risk utter ruin or turn back for safer waters. We know President Barack Obama to be audacious about his own advancement, but he has never shown a tendency to be bold on big ideas. He is a conciliator and a mender of hurt feelings for the Oprah era. He talked big to achieve the presidency, but since his election has been more comfortable in his old role of mediator. But to get the two...

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Palin can't win unless she stops the drama

Sarah Palin learned a lot of things in her time as John McCain's running mate -- about the savagery of the media; about the duplicity of politicos; about her own gifts as a politician. But she did not learn the most important lesson of 2008: no drama. The passing months show how right Barack Obama's critics, starting with Hillary Clinton, were about his inexperience. But his supreme overconfidence prevents the caution humility would suggest. The waves are well over the bow of the ship of state now, yet Obama's White House seems to change course almost hourly. What hasn't happened is much unnecessary drama. There were the income tax problems, and Clinton's team at State has started...

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Obama can’t delay breaking tax pledge

Telling voters about a tax increase is like telling your spouse you strayed — there’s no good time or way to do it. But, as the governor of South Carolina continues to ably prove, some options are worse than others. It’s no longer a question of if President Barack Obama will have to come clean about breaking his campaign promise not to raise taxes on families who make less than $250,000. The president once believed he had a slick way to pay for universal coverage. First, he would lower the tax deductions for rich people who donate money to charities. Then, he could add the proceeds from global warming fees to cover the more than $600 billion he said his plan would...

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Sanford can’t save Democrats on ethics woes

Writing and rewriting Michael Jackson’s obituary distracted the media from the latest draft of its preferred death notice — that of the Republican Party. But now that we are down to the sad minutiae of Jackson’s life and death, some of the cameras have swung back around to the tale of the terminally weird Gov. Mark Sanford. Sanford’s midlife meltdown pales in comparison with Jackson’s lifelong soap opera. But for political journalists, the Sanford affair is too perfect to pass up. The Republican-led impeachment of Bill Clinton is the central event in the professional lives of most of the media folks working in Washington today. To them, the story was really...

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Global warming fire sale means trouble for Dems

Global warming legislation came back to life this week like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster lurching from the operating table. Speaker Nancy Pelosi opted to reanimate the stitched-together brute that makes angry mobs of both environmentalists and capitalists and did so by making the bill even less attractive to both groups. Part of the reason was to get the cap-and-trade proposal out of the way before the big battle for health care, but it’s also part of a new “get tough” approach coming from the White House and the speaker’s office. Last week was dismal for the Democrats. Polls showed the public is quickly losing faith in the idea of a stimulus and bailout...

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How the stimulus put health care in critical condition

Washington is already sick of health care, and Dr. Obama’s course of treatments is just getting started. It’s true that a bill may still pass this year, but Democrats from the president on down are dramatically reducing expectations. We were told this was the year for health care because with a Democratic mega-majority and past detractors — the health care industry and big business — ready to make a deal, a bill could move fast enough not to get bogged down. As President Barack Obama said, “The stars are aligned.” That was just May 12, but the astrological charts seem to have already been mislaid. Since then, Americans have seen none of the...

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Obama must do more than avoid Clinton’s mistakes

Bill Clinton’s legacy may have been on life support after his wife’s failed bid for the presidency, but Virginia voters pulled the plug when they repudiated the candidacy of his man, Terry McAuliffe. Clinton helped McAuliffe raise $7 million for the contest and made multiple visits to the Old Dominion to stump for his erstwhile bagman at the Democratic National Committee. The former president believed he could still deliver the Democratic nomination in America’s most-watched election of 2009. Hardly. Virginia voters gave the Clinton candidate an even worse time Tuesday than they did in 2008 when the former president barnstormed through rural and black precincts for...

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Scandal could derail Democratic dreams

The Republican Party’s fall from dominance in 2002 to utter collapse in 2008 is mostly attributed to the GOP either being too conservative or not conservative enough. But Republicans were mostly incoherent on domestic policy during their six-year ride to the bottom. Whether it was pandering to baby boomers with a prescription drug benefit or stoking the fires of the gay marriage debate, amassing and retaining power was the GOP’s only evident priority. When Republican members were taking bribes or in the thrall of lobbyists or even propositioning House pages, congressional leaders tried to avoid the swift investigations and appropriate disciplinary action that would have...

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Obama administration tries railroading General Motors

The Obama administration is dropping a cool $8 billion on improving long-distance passenger rail service in the United States. President Barack Obama’s goal is to get back what America had decades ago — a large, reliable passenger rail network that kept people off overburdened highways. It would be a propitious time for Obama to consider why America went from having the greatest railroad service in the world to having sorry old Amtrak creaking along, still managing to lose money despite a $1.5 billion annual subsidy. As General Motors enters into an Obamafied version of bankruptcy, the company is suffering from the same ills that killed passenger rail service: over-powerful...

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Impatience drives Obama to expand his powers

Perhaps President Barack Obama spent so little time in the Senate because he has little tolerance for the glacial pace at which Congress was designed to move. The nation might have profited if Obama had been patient enough to make it through his first term. Even if he had just moved some meaningful legislation or missed fewer than 308 votes before vaulting to the presidency, Obama would have been better equipped. Instead, Obama has wildly overestimated the ability of Congress to achieve his massive first-year agenda. As a result of his frustrations, Obama is embarking on a breathtaking expansion of executive power. Many said it was too much for Congress to tackle the president’s...

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Obama tries spin moves to dodge Notre Dame tacklers

A politician as good as Barack Obama knows his opponent’s argument better than he knows his own. But while Obama may have enough rhetorical command of conservatism to build straw men or to ingratiate himself to a hostile audience, he still does not understand what really animates the Right. Obama tried to dodge the resurgent issue of abortion in his commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame on Sunday, explaining that people who disagree can still work together. Obama pointed to the favored Democratic common ground of reducing the number of abortions while retaining unlimited access to the procedure. To make his point, and to show respect for his hosts, Obama invoked...

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Will Obama get in trouble looking for trouble?

President Barack Obama came to American voters as a community organizer who could build consensus to tackle the hardest issues. He ran, not on his slight record, but on his personality. For his early followers, it was his temperament that won them over and his temperament that made them stay. Last November, his “famously unflappable temperament” was mainly responsible for catapulting Obama to the most exalted position of power in the world. As The Washington Post said when endorsing then-Senator Obama last fall: “Mr. Obama’s temperament is unlike anything we’ve seen on the national stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a...

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There’s trouble on the Left for Democrats

If there are any more revelations about what Nancy Pelosi knew of interrogating terrorists, she may have to up the ante from a truth commission to an inquisition. Because if she again gets called out for knowing more than she let on, Pelosi would have to get Dick Cheney in leg irons to prevent a revolt on the Left. The speaker is already having a tough time keeping liberals off her back since former CIA boss Porter Goss and others shed light on the 2002 briefings Pelosi received. Pelosi’s position is that she knew waterboarding was an approved practice, but not that it had been employed. Some feel certain she knew more. And among those who take Pelosi at her word, liberals...

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Specter finds the joke’s on him if Ridge runs

Rather than getting the last laugh, Sen. Arlen Specter has become the butt of Washington’s biggest joke. And if Tom Ridge decides to jump in the race to replace him, Specter’s recent embarrassment will be a deadly serious matter. Specter believed his new Democratic brethren would honor him for defecting to their side. Instead he was humiliated — stripped of his seniority on Senate committees and sent to the back bench with the freshmen. Specter negotiated his switch for months — including no fewer than 15 conversations with Vice President Joe Biden. He even won a public promise that he would get to keep his status from Majority Leader Harry Reid. But by...

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Obama wants a social engineer for high court

The White House and The New York Times are assuring Americans that President Barack Obama wants the next Supreme Court justice to be a pragmatist. If you think of the law as a sick patient and the justices of the high court as country doctors, then pragmatism sounds pretty good. The most effective, least disruptive way to fix the problem is what everyone wants from a sawbones. But what if you don’t agree with the diagnosis? When legal scholars talk about a pragmatic justice, they’re talking about someone who isn’t bound by the law as written. In rendering a decision, he or she considers the context of the case and outside factors, like the greater social good. But as...

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Four reasons for (a little) GOP optimism

Conservative Republicans are putting on a brave face about Arlen Specter’s departure, and correctly pointing out that the only difference will be that he’ll now be stabbing them in the front, not the back. But if the rats are leaving, the ship must be sinking. With Specter aboard, congressional Democrats, strangely timid despite their largest majority in 30 years, are feeling emboldened. Specter has promised to be as feckless a Democrat as he was a Republican. But when alleged comedian Al Franken becomes a senator, the magic number of 60 on procedural votes will give Democrats the kind of control they enjoyed under presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Specter will be...

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Memo release puts Obama in political bind

President Barack Obama said that while he wanted to see the whole truth come out about what kind of interrogation tactics were used on the Sept. 11 plotters and other terrorists, he did not want to see the matter become “politicized.” But by releasing four memos from the Bush Justice Department providing CIA agents with guidance on working over the bad guys, Obama has ensured that it will be a dominant political issue for months to come. It would have been helpful for Obama if the memos were a little more shocking. As it is, the Left remains convinced that there is more to learn about Dick Cheney’s dark arts. And those on the Right and in the middle are underwhelmed...

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Is Obama’s EPA crackdown threat hot air?

President Barack Obama has chosen global warming as the ground on which to make his first tough political stand. And to win the battle, he must convince Congress and the voting public that he is willing to utterly wreck the U.S. economy in the name of climate protection. By allowing the Environmental Protection Agency to classify carbon dioxide as a danger to human health, the president hopes to force moderate Democrats to back his plan to charge companies $646 billion over the next decade for the right to emit greenhouse gases. The president’s message to lawmakers: Either back the White House plan, or he will let Climate Czarina Carol Browner and the carbon crusaders at the EPA...

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Obama looks to close the gap between his popularity and his policies

After weeks of criticism from the left and the right about the size, priorities and execution of his agenda, President Barack Obama has yet to yield on any substantial point. But if Obama wants to keep his plans intact as Democratic members of Congress grow restive and Republicans become more defiant, he must close a widening gap between his personal popularity and public support for his policies. When he held his first prime-time news conference six weeks ago, the president was mostly selling his $787 billion stimulus plan. Since then, the administration has been busy on fiscal, military and social issues. But it’s his $3.6 trillion budget — including global warming fees...

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