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Obama Appointments Reveal His Inexperience

Monday, Nov. 24, 2008

By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

It is still hard to believe, but if Hillary Clinton's "confidantes" are to be trusted, Barack Obama is about to appoint her secretary of state and she is about to accept. This appointment represents the betrayal capstone of Obama's promise to be the "change we can believe in."

Having upended the Democratic Party, largely over his different views on foreign policy and the war in Iraq, he now turns to the leader of the ancient regime he ousted, derided, mocked, and criticized to take over the top international-affairs position in his administration.

No longer, apparently, does he distrust Hillary's "judgment," as he did during the debates when he denounced her vote on the Iraq war resolution. Now, all is forgiven. After everything Obama says he stood for, the only change he apparently truly believes in is a fait accompli.

Apart from the breathtaking cynicism of the appointment lies the total lack of foreign-policy experience in the new partnership. Neither Clinton nor Obama has spent five minutes conducting any aspect of foreign policy in the past.

Neither has ever negotiated anything or dealt with diplomatic issues. It is the blonde leading the blind.

And then there is the question of whether we want a secretary of state who is compromised, in advance, by her husband's dealings with repressive regimes in Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Dubai, the U.A.E., Morocco, and governments about which we know nothing.

These foreign leaders have paid the Clinton family millions of dollars — directly and through the Clintons' library and/or foundation — funds they can and have used as personal income.

How do we know that she can conduct foreign policy independently even if it means biting those who have fed her and her husband? But the most galling aspect of the appointment is that it puts Obama in the midst of an administration that, while he appointed it, is not his own.

Rather, he has now created a government staffed by Clinton people, headed by Clinton appointees, and dominated by Hillary herself. He has willingly created the same untenable situation as that into which Lyndon Johnson stepped when JFK was assassinated in 1963.

Johnson inherited a Cabinet wholly staffed by Kennedy intimates with Bobby himself as attorney general.

LBJ had no choice and had to spend two years making the government his own. But Obama had all the options in the world and chose to fence himself in by appointing Hillary as secretary of state, Clinton Cabinet member Bill Richardson for Commerce, Clinton staffer Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, Clinton buddy (and top lobbyist) Tom Daschle to HHS, and Bill's deputy attorney general, Eric Holder, to Justice.

Presidents Clinton and Lincoln similarly appointed what Doris Kearns Goodwin has famously called a "team of rivals" to staff their Cabinets and administrations.

Lincoln named all of his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination to senior posts in his Cabinet, and Clinton staffed his White House and much of his Cabinet with ambassadors to other wings of the Democratic Party.

George Stephanopoulos was his ambassador to House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, Harold Ickes his emissary to organized labor, Al Gore his delegate to the environmentalists, Leon Panetta his liaison with congressional committee chairmen, Ron Brown his man in the black community, and Henry Cisneros as his go-between with the Hispanic community.

In each case, the president acted to bolster his ties with the factions of his own party because he feared how he would fare with his party in total control of Congress. Neither the Republicans of 1861 nor the Democrats of 1992 saw the president from their own party as their natural leaders.

Lincoln's colleagues had chosen him only after a deadlock between the two front-runners had paralyzed the convention. Clinton got the nomination only after Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, the party's favorite, had pulled out. Each man was elected with barely 40 percent of the vote. So each felt constrained to share power with their rivals.

While Obama was not the early favorite of his party, he does not need to defer so ostentatiously to those who fought him for the nomination. His general election mandate clearly entitled him to name who he pleased. But he has chosen to nominate men and women with no loyalty to him and no real stake in his future.

And standing above all his appointees like a president-in-exile is Hillary Clinton.

If Obama needed any warning about how Hillary will play the game, he need only look at how she handled her appointment. She forced Obama to see her by publicly complaining that she had not heard from him.

When he raised the possibility of her appointment to state, she then leaked word that it was in the works. Even the announcement of her appointment was not made by Obama but leaked by Hillary's "confidants."

Hillary will be a loose cannon as secretary of state, vindicating her own agenda rather than that of the president and burnishing her own image at every turn. Not since Cordell Hull in the '30s have we had a secretary so interested in running for president.

Not since William Jennings Bryan in the 1910s have we had a defeated nominee named as secretary. Obama will not be able to control Hillary nor will he be able to control his own administration with Emanuel as chief of staff. He will find that his appointees will march to the beat of their own drummer — if he is lucky — and Hillary's if he is not.

Either Obama has chosen to put himself in this untenable situation because he is not wise in the ways of Washington or because he plans to be little more than a figurehead. Given his campaign, neither seems likely. But his promise of change has proven so bankrupt that maybe the rest of his candidacy is too.

© 2008 Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Change - still on the way?

Change Is Landing in Old Hands

By JOHN HARWOOD
New York Times News Service

AS he sought the presidency for the last two years, Barack Obama liked to say that “change doesn’t come from Washington — change comes to Washington.”

Nearly three weeks after his election, he is testing voters’ understanding of that assertion as he assembles a government whose early selections lean heavily on veterans of the political era he ran to supplant. He showed that in breathtaking fashion by turning to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his bitter primary rival and the wife of the last Democratic president, for the post of secretary of state.

Mr. Obama will bring pieces of Chicago to the White House in the form of longtime advisers like Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod. But even after vowing to turn the page on the polarized politics of the baby boom generation, he’s made clear that service in the Beltway wars of the last 20 years is not only acceptable, but in some cases necessary for his purposes.

At the same time, it raises a question: Could the 47-year-old president-elect ultimately find himself pulled toward the Washington folkways he has vowed to surmount?

In Mrs. Clinton’s case, the president-elect was bringing a formidable former rival into his camp, evidently calculating that her political constituency, brains and experience in the White House and Senate outweighed the fact that she had been on what he considered the wrong side in voting to authorize the Iraq war. In office, he would rely on her toughness to execute his diplomatic initiatives — some of which, she argued during the Democratic primaries, would be naïve and ill advised.

The same preference for battle-tested stature was evident in his selection of Tom Daschle to lead the charge for health care reform as health and human services secretary. As the second-ranking Senate Democrat, Mr. Daschle had an up-close look at how President Bill Clinton’s drive for universal coverage fell apart in the early 1990s.

Mr. Obama’s top candidate for attorney general, Eric Holder, lived through the turbulence at the Clinton Justice Department; his leading prospect for budget director, Peter Orszag, now in the Congressional Budget Office, has seen the partisan budget skirmishes of the Clinton and Bush years. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, worked in the Clinton White House to achieve passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement that Mr. Obama, as a candidate, criticized. His choice for Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is seen as a new-generation choice over Larry Summers, Treasury secretary under Mr. Clinton; still, Mr. Geithner worked at Treasury under three presidents, including Mr. Clinton.

But advisers to Mr. Obama say he is not undercutting his vision of change. Instead, they say, he has concluded that those experiences can be marshaled to improve his odds of achieving his own goals.

“He’s not looking for people to give him a vision,” said Mr. Axelrod, who will be a senior White House adviser. “He’s going to put together an administration of people who can effectuate his vision.”

That breezy formulation disregards the received wisdom of Pennsylvania Avenue. For years, Washington insiders have used the phrase “personnel is policy” for the assumption that the prior loyalties and political tastes of a president’s cabinet and White House staff heavily influence what those appointees are eager, or able, to get done.

Because he personally embodies historic change, Mr. Obama has considerable latitude to eschew symbolic gestures in choosing subordinates. But he also has little choice but to lean on the Clinton presidency’s infrastructure.

In winning 7 of 10 presidential elections from 1968 to 2004, Republicans accumulated and continually replenished a cadre of experienced executive branch officials. Even reform-minded Democrats acknowledge the need for such expertise in a government that has grown increasingly complex, and especially in managing America’s role in the global economy of the 21st century. In the last generation, the only Democratic administration aside from Mr. Clinton’s was that of Jimmy Carter, whom some still fault for relying on an inexperienced inner circle from Georgia.

“You have to be either very young or naïve to believe change begins with erasing the slate,” said William Galston, a top Clinton domestic policy aide who remains outside Mr. Obama’s circle. “The world doesn’t work that way. The way to ensure that nothing changes is to place people in positions of authority who are incapable of effecting change — whatever their good intentions may be.”

Mr. Obama, he added, is “placing an extremely high premium on actually getting the job done.”

That doesn’t answer the question of what the job actually is. Using the “personnel is policy” formulation, some Republicans hope that the combination of Clinton veterans and Mr. Obama’s pledge of bipartisan comity foreshadows centrist compromise on national problems that have long appeared intractable.

“The next couple of years are going to go to the pragmatists,” said Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, a former Republican Party chairman. “The problems we are facing are not amenable to ideological solutions.”

In his health care proposal, to take one notable example, Mr. Obama has opened the door to a cross-party conversation by omitting a government mandate for universal coverage. That earned him attacks from Mrs. Clinton and John Edwards during the Democratic primaries, but avoids one ideological poison pill that Republicans would otherwise target.

Yet some Obama advisers and allies caution against projecting outcomes from the president-elect’s style or appointments — which include transition team members with ties to the lobbying industry that Mr. Obama condemned on the campaign trail. Just as a new manager can improve the won-loss record of a baseball team with familiar players, an Obama spokesman, Robert Gibbs, argued, a new chief executive can produce different results on Pennsylvania Avenue.

In that view, Mr. Obama could adopt Clintonites without Clintonism — at least the incremental Clintonism that marked the former president’s second term.

“Barack Obama never offered himself as an ideologue — he’s a pragmatist and a problem solver,” Mr. Axelrod explained. But he added: “We are not living in a time that allows for incrementalism. His goal is to form bipartisan consensus. I don’t think that goal is more important than achieving a result.”

That mindset helps explain the distinction between Mr. Obama’s post-election phase, so far at least, and Mr. Clinton’s after he defeated the first President Bush in 1992.

In response to federal deficits, President-elect Clinton sidetracked plans for a middle-class tax cut and disappointed some liberal supporters. As the journalist John Harris recounts in “The Survivor,” the “bells of hope” that Mr. Clinton’s team called for across the land on the eve of his inauguration drew a sour response from the columnist Mary McGrory: “The bell-ringing seemed a little pretentious to hail great change — when the evidence mounts that there will be precious little.”

Notwithstanding the economic crisis and the unplanned $700 billion federal bailout this fall, Mr. Obama has given no indication yet that he’s scaling back his plans for expanding health coverage, cutting taxes for the middle class and raising them for investors, or investing in alternative energy and infrastructure.

“We are at a moment that is not familiar to Washington, of learning the difference between a transactional president and a transformational one,” said Andy Stern, a labor leader who in recent years helped fracture the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to create a breakaway “Change to Win” union federation. “What Barack Obama has created by this campaign was not only the idea that we can do big things — but we have to do big things.”

To that end, Mr. Obama aims to mobilize his army of donors and volunteers to sustain political pressure and prevent either the administration or the Democratic Congress from faltering. Aides acknowledge the potential for disappointment if backers conclude that Washington’s version of change becomes “Not so fast” or “No, we can’t.”

“There’s certainly going to be consternation about a lot of decisions that he makes, and understandably so,” said Mr. Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, who’s expected to play a role in mobilizing the Obama forces. “They’re not just going to roll over and do whatever Barack Obama tells them.”

At the same time, allies say, Mr. Obama and his new team don’t plan to roll over for conventional notions of what’s possible in Washington — whatever they’ve done in the past.

“It’s not just the left that demands real change — it’s the average middle-class American,” concluded Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, who has led the effort to swell the ranks of Senate Democrats in the last two elections. “Rahm Emanuel knows how much change is needed.”

John Harwood is co-author with Gerald F. Seib of “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power,” published this year by Random House.

Beavers

Eager beavers return to Scottish roots

21 November 2008

By JENNY HAWORTH
ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT, THE SCOTSMAN

Opinions are divided over the reintroduction of beavers to Scotland 400 years after being hunted to extinction. Some believe their return will only bring destruction. But for others their arrival is a historic triumph that will lead to the first extinct mammal to be reinstated in the wild in the UK.

Either way, the beaver is back some 400 years after they were hunted to extinction. Four beaver families have arrived in the UK ahead of their re-establishment in Scotland.

The animals – originally from the Telemark region of Norway – were flown into London's Heathrow Airport, but now face six months in quarantine before they are released into the wild in the spring.

The trial project by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) will see 17 of the creatures – four sets of parents and their offspring – released in Knapdale Forest, mid-Argyll, after they have spent six months in quarantine in pens in Devon.

Simon Jones, project manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, said: "We are excited to get the trial under way and really see what benefits beavers can bring."

The idea of bringing back the beaver was first mooted in Scotland 10 years ago, and Rob Thomas, conservation and research manager at RZSS, is relieved it has finally happened.

"For over 10 years, a lot of people have put a lot of work in trying to swing the political will to allow this project to go ahead," he said. "It's started and stopped in the past and this is by far the most developed point this project has ever got to. It's almost the point of no return."

He said there are many benefits of bringing beavers back to Scotland. As well as attracting tourists – with plans for a new visitor centre and hides for late-night viewing of the nocturnal creatures – they could benefit Scotland's ecology.

He said the animals would create new wetland habitats, by building dams that cause rivers to flood, which would benefit numerous species, from frogs and toads, to wetland birds, voles, insects and some fish.

Michael Russell, the environment minister, added his support to the project. "This is the latest stage in a truly exciting development for wildlife watchers, not just in Scotland, but around the world."

However, Brian Davidson, the director of the Association of Salmon Fisheries Boards, thinks beavers might cause havoc for migratory fish, such as salmon and sea trout, by building dams that block their routes to spawning sites.

"Beavers tend to build dams in quite small water courses and this is where salmon and sea trout tend to spawn," he said.

"The fisheries boards have got legal powers to maintain the free passage of fish, so there is potential conflict."

Nick Yonge, clerk to the River Tweed Commission, is equally worried about the possible impact on the angling industry, which on the Tweed alone brings £18 million to the economy.

"I'm worried that in our successors' lifetimes they will rue the day that these things were ever let wild," he said. He thinks a full-scale risk-assessment is needed.

"If you don't do that, what we are effectively doing is setting up a huge experiment in Scotland on the basis that some people think beavers are wonderful. I think we are morally obliged to undertake this research."

Jane Karthaus, from the Confederation of Forest Industries, warned that in some Baltic countries where beavers have returned after being wiped out, they have multiplied so rapidly that they have had to be culled.

"Should we really be introducing a species that we may ultimately have to kill to keep under control? Is that morally and ethically responsible?"

And she worried about the impact on landowners. She added: "There will be areas where they fell trees, make dams and flood a bit of land.

"If we want to create more wetland, let's chose a spot and do it in a managed way. Landowners and land managers have enough issues to deal with without having a new one."

A spokesman for NFU Scotland called for compensation for any economic loss suffered by farmers or crofters. Mr. Thomas confirmed that compensation would be paid if substantial damage was caused by the beavers, but he added that he did not "anticipate" that it would be a significant issue.

The beavers will be monitored, with the possibility of another trial in a second location in 2012. If the trial is deemed unsuccessful, the beavers will be gathered up and returned to Norway.

Lochside lodges will be kit homes

Special homes stocked with carrots and turnips will be built for the beavers before they arrive in Knapdale Forest.

Each beaver family will be released into its own home, known as a lodge, on the edge of a loch.

The lodge, made of straw, will have a willow gate, which the animals will gnaw through in their own time, when they are ready to explore.

The lodges will be built far enough apart for the beavers to have their own territories, but they will all be well within the trial area in Knapdale.

It is anticipated the animals could continue to use the lodges as their permanent homes, but equally could build a new one nearby, or explore further afield.

By 2010, the project organisers believe the young beavers, known as "kits", from different families could have met and started to breed.

They could then spread out, building new lodges for their own families.

Beaver families usually consist of four to six animals. The animals are vegetarian, eating mostly grass and herbs during summer and bark from broad-leaved trees in winter.

They construct dams in rivers and streams so they can then build a home in the still pool of water created by blocking the flow.

Rob Thomas, from the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said it was difficult to predict how the animals will behave when they are released, but Knapdale Forest provided an ideal habitat, meaning it was unlikely they will stray further afield, at least for the first year.

It has been agreed with British Waterways Scotland that any beavers that stray down to the nearby Crinan Canal will be removed and returned to the trial area, in case they cause damage.

Mr. Thomas thinks it is more likely they will disperse further into the forest, in the direction away from the canal.

Biologists spent two months capturing the creatures, at night, in Norway.

They ventured out in boats on rivers, armed with flashlights and jumped into the water when they spotted the animals, using specially designed nets to catch them.

This is so sad

Obama has more threats than other presidents-elect

Saturday - Nov 15, 2008

Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president's security is so sensitive.

Earlier this week, the Secret Service looked into the case of a sign posted on a tree in Vay, Idaho, with Obama's name and the offer of a "free public hanging." In North Carolina, civil rights officials complained of threatening racist graffiti targeting Obama found in a tunnel near the North Carolina State University campus.

And in a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner," said the sign, since taken down.

In the security world, anything "new" can trigger hostility, said Joseph Funk, a former Secret Service agent-turned security consultant who oversaw a private protection detail for Obama before the Secret Service began guarding the candidate in early 2007.

Obama, of course, will be the country's first black president, and Funk said that new element, not just race itself, is probably responsible for a spike in anti-Obama postings and activity. "Anytime you're going to have something that's new, you're going to have increased chatter," he said.

The Secret Service also has cautioned the public not to assume that any threats against Obama are due to racism.

The service investigates threats in a wide range. There are "stated threats" and equally dangerous or lesser incidents considered of "unusual interest" — such as people motivated by obsessions or infatuations or lower-level gestures such as effigies of a candidate or an elected president. The service has said it does not have the luxury of discounting anything until agents have investigated the potential danger.

Racially tinged graffiti — not necessarily directed at Obama — also has emerged in numerous reports across the nation since Election Day, prompting at least one news conference by a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Georgia.

A law enforcement official who also spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly said that during the campaign there was a spike in anti-Obama rhetoric on the Internet — "a lot of ranting and raving with no capability, credibility or specificity to it."

There were two threatening cases with racial overtones:

In Denver, a group of men with guns and bulletproof vests made racist threats against Obama and sparked fears of an assassination plot during the Democratic National Convention in August.

Just before the election, two skinheads in Tennessee were charged with plotting to behead blacks across the country and assassinate Obama while wearing white top hats and tuxedos.

In both cases, authorities determined the men were not capable of carrying out their plots.

In Milwaukee, police officials found a poster of Obama with a bullet going toward his head — discovered on a table in a police station.

Chatter among white supremacists on the Internet has increased throughout the campaign and since Election Day.

One of the most popular white supremacist Web sites got more than 2,000 new members the day after the election, compared with 91 new members on Election Day, according to an AP count. The site, stormfront.org, was temporarily off-line Nov. 5 because of the overwhelming amount of activity it received after Election Day. On Saturday, one Stormfront poster, identified as Dalderian Germanicus, of North Las Vegas, said, "I want the SOB laid out in a box to see how 'messiahs' come to rest. God has abandoned us, this country is doomed."

It is not surprising that a black president would galvanize the white supremacist movement, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who studies the white supremacy movement.

"The overwhelming flavor of the white supremacist world is a mix of desperation, confusion and hoping that this will somehow turn into a good thing for them," Potok said. He said hate groups have been on the rise in the past seven years because of a common concern about immigration.

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Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington and Jerry Harkavy in Standish, Maine, contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Jan. 20, 2009

Crowd of 1 million could attend Obama inauguration

Thursday, Nov 13, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is expected to draw 1 million-plus to the capital, and already some lawmakers have stopped taking ticket requests, and hotels have booked up.

Some people are bartering on Craigslist for places to stay for the Jan. 20 ceremony when the Illinois senator takes the oath of office. They are offering cash or even help with dishes for residents willing to open up their homes.

The National Park Service, which is planning for an inaugural crowd of at least 1 million, will clear more viewing space along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. Jumbo TV screens will line the National Mall so people can watch the inauguration and parade, Park Service spokesman David Barna said.

The District of Columbia's delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is urging planners to use arenas and stadiums to help with overflow crowds wanting to view the ceremonies on big-screen TVs. She is also urging churches to hold viewing parties.

"You can't judge by past inaugurations. It's going to break all the records," Norton said. "They're going to come with or without tickets. ... It's each man and woman for himself."

The city's police chief, Cathy Lanier, said organizers brought in an additional 3,000officers from forces around the country to help with the last inauguration. This time, the request probably will be for about 4,000 officers.

Because of a lawsuit, people should have more standing room along the crowded parade route. War protesters sued after President George W. Bush's last inauguration, forcing the government to open up more free public viewing space between the Capitol and White House.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled in March that the Park Service violated its own rules by giving preferential treatment in ticketing for bleacher seats along the parade route for supporters of the government over its critics. Friedman wrote the inauguration "is not a private event."

New rules to be issued Monday will lower the number of ticketed bleacher seats along the parade route from 20,000 seats to 8,700, leaving much more of the route open to people without tickets, Barna said.

Seat tickets had sold for between $15 and $150 in 2005 to help pay for the inaugural parade. Details for the 2009 parade tickets have not been set because Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee, which organizes the parade, is being formed.

There will also be designated "free speech" areas for protesters along the parade route, Barna said.

The inauguration has been designated a National Special Security Event, giving the U.S. Secret Service the lead in coordinating all law enforcement agencies to secure the event. Working together are 58 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

The largest crowd ever recorded on the National Mall was for President Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 inauguration. At the time, the Park Service estimated 1.2 million people descended on the area. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan's inauguration drew about 500,000 people, and President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration drew about 800,000 people, according to Park Service estimates.

Of course, the crowds can always thin out. Ronald Reagan's second swearing-in ceremony had to be moved indoors, and the parade was canceled when the temperature dropped below 10 degrees (with a wind chill at 10 degrees to 20 degrees below zero. John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961 came with a blanket of snow; still, 1 million people turned out.

Congressional offices are reporting tens of thousands of requests for the 240,000 free tickets for the inauguration ceremony. As of Thursday, Nov. 13, the office of Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., had received 26,000 requests. Webb sent a letter Thursday to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who heads the Joint Congressional Inaugural Committee, requesting that Virginia's proximity to Washington be considered in its allotment.

EBay Inc., the parent company of listing and sales sites eBay, StubHub and Kijiji, said it will not allow tickets to the inauguration to be sold on its Web sites. The company made the decision after meeting with committee representatives, eBay spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe told The Associated Press.

The inauguration will come at the end of a holiday for federal workers, following Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 19. Many area schools and some universities have canceled classes or are considering it.

___

Associated Press writers Kamala Lane in Washington, Joe Mandak in Pittsburgh and Steve Szkotak in Richmond, Va., and news researcher Judith Ausuebel contributed to this report.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

'Magnanimous leader'

Bush handing over power to Obama with grace
By Ben Feller

Tue Nov 11, 6:24 AM EST

No matter how people remember President Bush's time in office, let there be no doubt about how he wants to end it: gracefully.

Never mind that Democrat Barack Obama spent all that time deriding Bush for "failed policies," or mocking him for hiding in an "undisclosed location" because he was too unpopular to show up with his party's own candidate, John McCain. This is transition time. Outgoing presidents support the new guy.

And on that front, Bush is going well beyond the minimum. He has embraced the role of statesman with such gusto that it has been hard to miss.

The result is that Bush's last image at the White House will be one of a magnanimous leader. Whether it will improve his legacy is another matter.

"This has been a very good moment late in his presidency, and, I think it's fair to say, much appreciated by the nation," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, the home of Bush's planned presidential library.

On Monday at the White House, Bush warmly welcomed Obama, whose dominant win last week was largely seen as a referendum on the Bush years.

The two leaders spent more than an hour discussing domestic and foreign policy in the Oval Office. And then Bush gave Obama a personal tour all around.

The world saw video images that were replayed all day and night: Bush and first lady Laura Bush greeting Obama and his wife, Michelle, as if they were old friends; Bush strolling with the president-elect along the famous Colonnade adjacent to the Rose Garden, both men waving and smiling.

Translation: Smooth transition.

The scene was the latest in a flurry of moves by Bush, all designed to show he is serious about making Obama's start a success on Jan. 20.

Mere hours after Obama handily ended eight years of Republican rule, Bush commended Americans for making history. "They chose a president whose journey represents a triumph of the American story — a testament to hard work, optimism and faith in the enduring promise of our nation," Bush said.

If that effusiveness wasn't enough, he called Obama's win an inspiring moment and said it will be a "stirring sight" when the whole Obama family arrives.

Then Bush called together about 1,000 employees on the South Lawn and told them to embrace the transition earnestly. This could have been handled in a press release, or even an internal memo to staff. Instead, it was a big, showy expression of support for Obama, with Bush's Cabinet standing behind him.

"The peaceful transfer of power is one of the hallmarks of a true democracy," Bush said. "And ensuring that this transition is as smooth as possible is a priority for the rest of my presidency."

In case anyone missed the point, Bush underscored it in his Saturday radio address. He pledged an "unprecedented effort" to help Obama take power.

Obama's team is noticing. "So far, cooperation has been excellent," said transition chief John Podesta, a veteran of Bill Clinton's White House.

It was Bush's father, the 41st president, who bitterly lost to Clinton in 1992. But George H.W. Bush ordered his top aides to cooperate with Clinton's transition team. He was quoted at the time as saying, "Let us all finish the job with the same class with which we served."

Echoes of that comment can be found in nearly ever statement his son has made since Obama won election one week ago.

"I think grace is a very good word for the way Bush is responding. And I'd say there's a little bit of the fact that there's a Bush 41 and a Bush 43," said Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at The Brookings Institution and the author of a new book about presidential transitions.

"There is now a presidency stamped in their DNA," Hess said. "There is a very exclusive club of people who have been president, and they know they may be called on if there's a crisis. They even somehow bond with other former presidents with whom they were not particularly friendly."

The former President Bush and Clinton, in fact, have become friends and successful humanitarian partners. The two have raised millions of dollars for victims of hurricanes in the United States and an Asian tsunami.

Back in the day when Clinton was president-elect, he deferred to Bush 41 and said, "America has only one president at a time." The line sounds familiar: Obama has been saying the same thing about the current President Bush.

Presidents take transitions seriously because they know the world is watching. The goal is to show that the same petty politics that can define an election will not undermine the transfer of power in a democracy.

In other words, statesmanship is expected.

What's more, Bush has indicated he takes this transition particularly seriously because the nation is in such precarious times. Obama does not inherit a decision about how to spend a budget surplus. Instead, his government will face red ink, an economy in shambles and wars ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"In calmer times, presidents incoming and outgoing have allowed their emotions to run more freely, to show some displeasure and tension," Jillson said. "Bush is aware enough to know that the times don't permit that."

All this doesn't just help Obama. Bush's cooperative approach could serve him well, too. It puts him on the right side of public sentiment.

Ending a tumultuous second term on a positive note certainly can't hurt his standing as he returns to private life.

But it won't be enough to alter Bush's legacy, said Hess, who worked in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations and advised Presidents Ford and Carter.

"The encyclopedia is still going to read: `George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, who created a war in Iraq' or `who let the country be flooded by Katrina,'" Hess said. "It's not going to be, `George W. Bush, who left the office gracefully.'"

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Ben Feller covers the White House for The Associated Press.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Looking ahead to 2012

The Great Republican Hope?

By Jon Brooks, The Buzz Log

Which young, thin, non-white, Ivy League-educated politician who has a foreign-sounding name and prominent ears is changing the face of politics as we know it?

Oh … and whose name is not Barack Obama?

Whuh?

That’s right, the president-elect may hold a monopoly on current buzz, but some in the GOP are looking to their own whiz kid to lead them out of the proverbial wilderness the Democrats have just left behind.

His name is Bobby Jindal, and he’s the 37-year-old Indian American governor of Louisiana.

Right now, for most people, handicapping 2012 probably feels like re-watching the previews right after sitting through a seven-hour movie. Yet some Republicans looking to resurrect their party from the ashes of Tuesday’s electoral conflagaration are already turning to the conservative Jindal, at least at the search box.

Jindal’s name has surged 350 percent in searches this week, tied with Mitt Romney and second only to Sarah Palin in 2012-related political queries. Buzz patrons are also reading up on the rising star in a bevy of speculative articles about the future of the GOP.

Jindal has consistently stated he's focused only on winning the 2011 re-election in Louisiana. But UPI is already calling the governor and his family “the other Obamas.”

Presumptuous, perhaps. But in 2004, who'd have thought that a first-term African American senator with a last name that rhymed with the country's enemy number one and a middle name that matched enemy number two's would be our next president?

Stay tuned.

Jon Brooks, The Buzz Log


Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc.

'Mutts like me'

Obama shows ease discussing race


Saturday - Nov 8, 2008

It popped out casually, a throwaway line as he talked to reporters about finding the right puppy for his young daughters.

But with just three offhanded words in his first news conference as president-elect, Barack Obama reminded everyone how thoroughly different his administration — and inevitably, this country — will be.

"Mutts like me."

By now, almost everyone knows that Obama's mother was white and his father was black, putting him on track to become the nation's first African-American president. But there was something startling, and telling, about hearing his self-description — particularly in how offhandedly he used it.

The message seemed clear — here is a president who will be quite at ease discussing race, a complex issue as unresolved as it is uncomfortable for many to talk about openly. And at a time when whites in the country are not many years from becoming the minority.

Obama made the remark as he revealed his thinking in what is becoming one of the highest-profile issues of this transition period: What kind of puppy will he and his wife, Michelle, get for their daughters as they move into the White House.

Because Malia, 10, has allergies, the family wants a low-allergy dog. But Obama said they also want to adopt a puppy from an animal shelter, which could make it harder to find a breed that wouldn't aggravate his daughter's problem.

"Obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me," Obama said with a smile. "So whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."

In his first post-election news conference, the man who will be president in just over two months described himself as a mutt as casually as he may have poked fun at his jump shot.

If he thought nothing of such a remark in his first news conference, doesn't that signal that over the next four years, the country is likely to hear more about race from the White House — and from the perspective of a black man — than it ever has before?

It's not necessarily that he will make a crusade about the issue once he takes office. There was little sign of that in his election campaign, in which he ran on issues like the economy with a broad appeal to all Americans.

But it does underscore that the president-elect clearly does not see race as a subject best sidestepped or discussed in hushed tones. To Obama, race in all its complications has long been a defining part of his life, and he is comfortable talking about it.

The timing seems fortuitous. Obama will be sworn in as the country is rapidly becoming more racially diverse. The latest government projections indicate that by 2042, white people will make up less than half the nation's population.

Blacks have been elected to local and statewide office in growing numbers in recent years, a sign that the country is becoming more tolerant. Obama lost the white vote to Republican John McCain by 12 percentage points, according to exit polls of voters — a better showing than Democrat John Kerry's 17-point deficit with whites four years ago.

Still, a conversation about race over the next four years that is more open and explicit than the country has ever heard from its president can't be bad, can it?

Obama's comment was all the more noteworthy coming from a man who just ended a presidential campaign in which he stayed relentlessly on-message and made few comments that could be hurled against him. This is a man who can limit himself to saying exactly what he wants to say — usually.

One remark that did haunt him came during his long-running primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Speaking at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama said some residents of depressed rural areas get bitter and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Eager to avoid slips like that in the campaign's closing days, Obama usually avoided reporters and seldom departed from prepared remarks.

At his news conference Friday, Obama seemed less guarded. But that led to another eyebrow-raising moment.

Obama told reporters that he has turned for advice to all "living" former presidents. But he then joked, "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances."

The former first lady actually has not been linked to conversations with the dead. President Reagan's former chief of staff, Donald Regan, did write that she set her husband's schedule with the help of an astrologist.

Obama called Mrs. Reagan late Friday to apologize.

Ironically, Obama's remarks came just a day after Italy's Premier Silvio Berlusconi, in an apparent joke, described Obama as "young, handsome and even tanned." Critics called the comment racist, while Berlusconi defended it as a compliment.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Inside out

Obama shows switch in tone

By LIZ SIDOTI and NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press

CHICAGO – Barack Obama is signaling a shift in tactics and temperament as he moves from candidate to president-elect, picking sharp-elbowed Washington insiders for top posts. His choice Thursday for White House chief of staff — Rahm Emanuel, a fiery partisan who doesn't mind breaking glass and hurting feelings — is a significant departure from the soft-spoken, low-key aides that "No-Drama Obama" surrounded himself with during his campaign. And transition chief John Podesta, like Emanuel, is a former top aide to Bill Clinton and a tough partisan infighter, though less bombastic than the new chief of staff.

The selections are telling for Obama, who campaigned as a nontraditional, almost "post-partisan" newcomer. People close to him say the selections show that Obama is aware of his weaknesses as well as his strengths and knows what he needs to be successful as he shifts from campaigning to governing.

"No one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel," said Obama, who also spoke by phone with nine world leaders Thursday.

Obama, who survived a long contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, also has made it clear he will rely heavily on veterans of her husband's eight-year administration, the only Democratic presidency in the past 28 years. Podesta was President Clinton's chief of staff, and several other former Clinton aides are on Obama's short lists for key jobs, Democratic officials say. Some of them helped write a large briefing book on how to govern, assembled under Podesta's supervision.

Obama himself brims with self-confidence, to the point that some people view him as arrogant. But to a greater degree than many presidents, he appears willing to lean on Washington insiders associated with other politicians.

Still, he is also certain to bring to the White House a cadre of longtime aides.

Emanuel accepted Obama's offer with a gesture of bipartisanship, addressing part of his statement to Republicans. "We often disagree, but I respect their motives," Emanuel said. "Now is a time for unity, and, Mr. President-elect, I will do everything in my power to help you stitch together the frayed fabric of our politics, and help summon Americans of both parties to unite in common purpose."

That would come as news to some Republicans.

In contrast to Obama's collegial style and that of his top campaign advisers, Emanuel is known as a foul-mouthed practitioner of brass-knuckled politics who relishes both conflict and publicity. He once mailed a dead fish to a political foe.

But he also earned a reputation for pragmatic efficiency, whether the goal was winning House elections for Democrats or working with Republicans to enact Clinton's centrist political agenda.

"Rahm knows Capitol Hill and has great political skills," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. "He can be a tough partisan but also understands the need to work together."

House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio was less kind. He called his appointment an "ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil and govern from the center."

Democrats say Obama is self-assured enough to acknowledge his limitations by the appointments he makes.

"I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm not good at. I know what I know, and I know what I don't know," Obama once told Pete Rouse as he prepared to move up from Illinois state senator to the U.S. Senate.

Thus, when Obama was elected to the Senate, he picked Rouse, a press-averse former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to run his Capitol Hill office. When Obama embarked on his presidential campaign, he chose advisers with presidential campaign experience like the studious David Plouffe as campaign manager and the even-keeled David Axelrod as chief strategist.

Axelrod is likely to get a job as a top adviser at the White House, and Robert Gibbs is the likely pick for press secretary. Gibbs has been Obama's longtime spokesman and confidant, at his side from his 2004 Senate campaign through the long days on the presidential campaign trail.

In Emanuel, Obama has chosen a fellow Chicagoan who intimately knows both the White House and Congress, as a former political and policy aide for President Clinton and a current Illinois congressman who is the No. 4 Democrat in the House.

Obama frequently sought Emanuel's advice during the presidential race, according to one campaign official.

Emanuel said he weighed family and political considerations before accepting the job on Thursday, according to Democratic officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid angering Obama. He will have to resign his congressional seat and put aside hopes of becoming speaker of the House.

With the selection, Democrats say Obama seemed to recognize he may have his work cut out for him in taming the House: Liberals may try to push their own agenda, not necessarily Obama's. They say Emanuel is someone who not only can stand up to Congress but also maneuver through it to achieve a chief executive's goals.

And, Emanuel provides something Obama lacks — a temperament and willingness to snarl, even at his boss' allies.

To varying degrees, the party's liberals and labor leaders are wary of Emanuel. He helped Clinton push the North American Free Trade Agreement through the House, angering the left.

Nonetheless, Democrats praised the selection. Said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.: "He is the perfect choice. He knows the Hill, he knows substance, he knows politics, and most importantly, he can get the job done."

Even before Tuesday's election, Obama had turned to Podesta to start laying the foundation of an Obama administration. His role became official Wednesday with the announcement that he, along with Rouse and close Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett would lead the transfer of power and chair a transition advisory board stocked with longtime Democratic Party hands.

Separately on Thursday, Obama met privately at the FBI office in Chicago with U.S. intelligence officials, preparing to become commander in chief. He received his first president's daily brief, a document written mostly by the Central Intelligence Agency and including the most critical overnight intelligence. It is accompanied by a briefing from top intelligence officials.

Later, Obama met with his transition team leaders who are tasked with building his entire administration in 10 weeks.

Obama advisers said the president-elect was emphasizing care over speed, with no plans to announce Cabinet positions this week.

Names of people said to be under consideration by the transition team spread through the rumor mill. Some Democrats say retired Marine Gen. James Jones was being discussed as secretary of state. Also, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who endorsed Obama, was said to be interested in becoming education secretary.

Obama has indicated he'd like a bipartisan Cabinet, and Republicans who are potential candidates include Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar.

The president-elect planned his first public appearances since his victory for Friday, a meeting with economic advisers followed by a news conference. Obama and his wife, Michelle, also planned to visit the White House on Monday at President Bush's invitation.

Obama planned to stay home through the weekend, with a blackout on news announcements so that he and his staff can rest after a grueling campaign and the rush of their win Tuesday night. He is planning a family getaway to Hawaii in December before they move to the White House — and to honor his grandmother, who died Sunday at her home there.

___

Liz Sidoti reported from Washington. AP Special Correspondent David Espo and Associated Press writers Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Beth Fouhy in Chicago contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Praise for President Bush

Wall Street Journal
Nov. 5, 2008

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace
What must our enemies be thinking?

By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO

Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush. The proposition is only one example of the classless disrespect many Americans have shown the president.

According to recent Gallup polls, the president's average approval rating is below 30% -- down from his 90% approval in the wake of 9/11.

To be sure, Mr. Bush is not completely alone. His low approval ratings put him in the good company of former Democratic President Harry S. Truman, whose own approval rating sank to 22% shortly before he left office. Despite Mr. Truman's low numbers, a 2005 Wall Street Journal poll found that he was ranked the seventh most popular president in history.

Just as Americans have gained perspective on how challenging Truman's presidency was in the wake of World War II, our country will recognize the hardship President Bush faced these past eight years -- and how extraordinary it was that he accomplished what he did in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.

Mr. Bush has endured relentless attacks from the left while facing abandonment from the right.

This is the price Mr. Bush is paying for trying to work with both Democrats and Republicans. During his 2004 victory speech, the president reached out to voters who supported his opponent, John Kerry, and said, "Today, I want to speak to every person who voted for my opponent. To make this nation stronger and better, I will need your support, and I will work to earn it. I will do all I can do to deserve your trust."

Those bipartisan efforts have been met with crushing resistance from both political parties.

The president's original Supreme Court choice of Harriet Miers alarmed Republicans, while his final nomination of Samuel Alito angered Democrats. His solutions to reform the immigration system alienated traditional conservatives, while his refusal to retreat in Iraq has enraged liberals who have unrealistic expectations about the challenges we face there.

It seems that no matter what Mr. Bush does, he is blamed for everything. He remains despised by the left while continuously disappointing the right.

Yet it should seem obvious that many of our country's current problems either existed long before Mr. Bush ever came to office, or are beyond his control. Perhaps if Americans stopped being so divisive, and congressional leaders came together to work with the president on some of these problems, he would actually have had a fighting chance of solving them.

Like the president said in his 2004 victory speech, "We have one country, one Constitution and one future that binds us. And when we come together and work together, there is no limit to the greatness of America."


Mr. Shapiro is an investigative reporter and lawyer who previously interned with John F. Kerry's legal team during the presidential election in 2004.

Copyright ©2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

The New First Family

Sleepovers coming to the White House

By JODI KANTOR, New York Times
November 6, 2008

When Verna Williams called to congratulate Michelle Obama on Wednesday morning, she half-jokingly offered to stop calling her old law school buddy "Meesh" and start calling her "Mrs. Obama."

Michelle Obama, the soon-to-be First Lady, dissolved into giggles and countered with a few title ideas of her own -- ones too silly to mention to a newspaper reporter, Williams said.

One day after the presidential election, the Obama family of Chicago's Hyde Park is only beginning to figure out how to become the first family of the United States.
As the first black president and his family, they will be a living tableau of racial progress, and friends say they are acutely aware that everything they say and do -- the way they dress, where Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, go to school, even what kind of puppy they adopt -- will brim with symbolic value.

"Here's an intact black family, a happy family, with beautiful kids and a loving extended family," Williams said, "and they happen to live in the executive mansion."
For President-elect Barack Obama and his family, leaving Chicago means dismantling the protective cocoon they have built around them.

Throughout the campaign, Malia and Sasha, who will become the youngest White House occupants in decades, spent many hours in their grandmother's tiny South Side apartment, in the same building where their mother was raised. Their private school at the University of Chicago is laced with neighbors and allies who watch over the girls with loving vigilance.

When the girls and their mother have needed an escape, they could retreat to the backyards of longtime friends, where they jumped rope or turned up the volume on their iPods and danced with abandon to songs by Soulja Boy and Beyonce. Michelle Obama, a creature of the South Side and of habit, has spent nearly every Saturday for the past 10 years with the same two friends and their collective brood of children.

Now, all of that must change.

On Wednesday afternoon, Michelle Obama spoke with First Lady Laura Bush, who invited her and her daughters to visit the White House soon. The hunt for a new school begins now, Michelle Obama told friends Wednesday. In Hyde Park, she has a reputation as a fiercely attentive mother, one who watches Malia's footwork closely at soccer games while other parents drift and gossip over coffee. Friends say she will apply the same scrutiny to her daughters' transition to Washington.

"Because she is Michelle, she will manage that, she will direct it," said Sandra Matthews, instead of relying on others to research schools.

As parents, the Obamas believe in giving their daughters some sway over decisions that affect them, she said. And so, note to headmasters: The preferences of Malia (pronounced mah-LEE-ah), a solemn-eyed Harry Potter fan, and Sasha, the family ham, could weigh heavily. (Although the Obamas could send their daughters to one of the capital's public schools, many Washingtonians expect them to look closely at Georgetown Day School or Sidwell Friends, which Chelsea Clinton attended.)

While the Obama White House will surely entertain the usual dignitaries and heads of state, the most prized guests might be the girls' friends. "We may see sleepovers at the White House, groups of young girls in their sleeping bags hanging out with Sasha and Malia," Williams said.

'Come join us'

Instead of trying to create an entirely new social world in Washington, friends predict that the Obamas will transport some of their Hyde Park world to the capital. On the campaign trail, they were accompanied by bands of relatives and friends. In part so the Obama girls could have familiar playmates, everyone brought their families along too.

The attitude of the Obamas is "come join us on this adventure," said John Rogers, a finance company founder who has done so a few times.

The Obamas will come to Washington with a fifth family member, one who has so far remained mostly out of the spotlight. Marian Robinson, Michelle Obama's mother, is a widow and retired bank secretary who has served as the girls' chief caretaker during their mother's frequent absences. Aides say they do not yet know whether Robinson will formally move into the White House, but it is certain that Malia and Sasha's grandmother will be near at hand and available when their parents have to travel.

"They are extremely close to their grandmother," Matthews said. "That's why Michelle has been able, with the ease and peace of mind, to be gone."

Once Michelle Obama has settled her girls, she has said, she will move on to the matter of exactly what sort of first lady she wants to be. Although she dresses with unusual care -- in both designer clothing and the off-the-rack styles she has become known for -- friends say she has only a certain amount of patience for the domestic arts. She is a get-it-done-efficiently Rachael Ray type, they say, not given to elaborate Martha Stewart-like efforts.

As first lady, Michelle Obama has said, she plans to make herself an advocate for working parents, particularly military families, urging better access to child care for all. As a first lady trying to juggle public duties with two young children, she will be a living illustration of the very issue she describes.

"She's going to be engaging in the balancing act herself," said Doris Kearns Goodwin, the presidential historian.

But in one respect, the Obamas' family life will now become much easier. Since 1996, when he was elected to the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has spent long periods away from home, and by his own admission, he is a part-time parent at best. The last six years have been a particularly punishing set of marathons, as he ran for a U.S. Senate seat, then spent weekdays in Washington, then traveled on the presidential campaign trail for nearly two long years.

His election will help realize a long-held, cherished family dream: For the next four years, the Obamas will finally eat dinner together.

© 2008 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Advice to McCain re Concession Speech

Note to John McCain: Read this before conceding.

By Ted Scheinman
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, at 10:20 AM ET

Sometime after sundown on Tuesday, barring a political upset of historic proportions, John McCain will address his supporters on the lawn of the Phoenix Biltmore to concede the 2008 presidential election. The concession formula is pretty simple: Accept tearful, painfully drawn-out applause; crack self-deprecating joke; congratulate opponent (and stanch booing that accompanies every mention of said opponent); pledge yourself to the cause of unity; and thank your family, your supporters, God, and the American people (though not necessarily in that order).
This formula calls for brevity, focus, and graciousness, qualities that have not always been evident in the McCain campaign. Here are a few things he can learn from previous losers—and a few ways the "consummate maverick" can close his campaign with words that actually matter.

Put Country First
Models: Adlai Stevenson, Hillary Clinton, Dan Quayle

A candidate whose slogan has been "Country First," McCain will need a special take on the obligatory call for patriotic unity. His best bet? A jarring fusion of Adlai Stevenson and Dan Quayle. Stevenson, whose 1952 concession speech is a sterling example of the rhetoric of defeat, memorably intoned: "I urge you all to give General Eisenhower the support he will need to carry out the great tasks that lie before him. I pledge him mine. We vote as many, but we pray as one." That's a classy line—even better than Bob Dole's description of Bill Clinton in 1996 as "my opponent and not my enemy."

But after seeking to link Barack Obama to the two greatest American fears of the last century (terrorism and communism), McCain's got a long walk to the high road. He might win some bipartisan cred by examining Hillary Clinton's June 7 primary concession speech—or, if he wants to stay on his side of the aisle, Dan Quayle's astute but ever-so-slightly backhanded 1992 observation: "If [Clinton] runs the country as well as he ran his campaign, we will be all right."

Make It Funny
Models: Bob Dole, Al Gore

For a standard of dignified humor, McCain should turn to Bob Dole's concession speech in 1996. Trying to hush his supporters so he could finish a sentence, Dole admonished: "You're not going to get that tax cut if you don't be quiet." It was a warm, sportsmanlike moment, the kind for which McCain once had a knack.

When it comes to good sportsmanship, the model is Al Gore in 2000, who led with a joke after a month of hard-fought legal battles: "Just moments ago, I spoke with George W. Bush and congratulated him on becoming the 43rd president of the United States. And I promised him that I wouldn't call him back this time." McCain should be able to muster some non-Janet Reno-related humor. (Potential joke: "If I ever need a good nonlicensed plumber, I know who to call.")

Talk Straight
Model: John McCain

This one's a long shot. But it would make for a landmark, distinctly nonboilerplate speech—one that avoids excessive references to Joe the Plumber, mavericks, and bear DNA. McCain can state plainly that Obama is neither a terrorist nor a communist (see: Country First) and that any discussion of "real" and "nonreal" Americas is fatuous. In his own defense and with only minimal disingenuousness, McCain can touch on his record of campaign-finance reform (George Will be damned!) and observe firmly but without bitterness that his commitment to public funds put him at a colossal disadvantage. He can't go too far here—don't expect him to acknowledge any possible downsides to his pick of a No. 2, for example—but we could hear something refreshing nonetheless. McCain could easily acknowledge that the majority of Americans—plumbers, pundits, and those in between—want something different, and that Obama promises to provide it.

Exhort the Youth
The model: Michael Dukakis, George H.W. Bush

Again, the key here is salvaging a sense of decency and worth in politics—all the more crucial after a campaign based on such a thorough eviscerating of the individuals and institutions of Washington. Addressing the "young people" of America after his defeat in 1988, Dukakis said: "There is nothing you can do in this world more fulfilling and more satisfying than giving of yourself to others and making a contribution to your community and your state and your nation and your fellow citizens." Four years later, George H.W. Bush urged the same demographic not to "be deterred, kept away from public service by the smoke and fire of a campaign year or the ugliness of politics."

Show Some Empathy
Model: Abraham Lincoln via Adlai Stevenson

McCain is at his best as the underdog who—with a nod and, yes, a wink—sees something nobler than the brawl. For the last two months, he's been in the thick of it. In the early hours of Nov. 5, perhaps, we'll get a version of McCain who looks further than the next 24-hour news cycle. His most important job may be to provide some measure of visceral closure for his base—which provided this campaign with some of its scarier moments—not for the sake of making them feel good but to restore a sense of fellowship between them and their Obama-voting countrymen. McCain needs both to show his supporters he knows how they feel—and how important it is to move on. For this task, there are few passages better than Adlai Stevenson's invocation of Abraham Lincoln in his concession speech, delivered in Springfield, Ill., in 1952:
Someone asked me as I came in, down on the street, how I felt, and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell—Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.

Ted Scheinman is the online producer of the Washington City Paper. He can be reached at tscheinman@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2203721/

Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Chicago Tribune endorses Obama

For the first time in its 161-year history, the Chicago Tribune has endorsed a Democrat for President:

However this election turns out, it will dramatically advance America's slow progress toward equality and inclusion. It took Abraham Lincoln's extraordinary courage in the Civil War to get us here. It took an epic battle to secure women the right to vote. It took the perseverance of the civil rights movement. Now we have an election in which we will choose the first African-American president . . . or the first female vice president.

In recent weeks it has been easy to lose sight of this history in the making. Americans are focused on the greatest threat to the world economic system in 80 years. They feel a personal vulnerability the likes of which they haven't experienced since Sept. 11, 2001. It's a different kind of vulnerability. Unlike Sept. 11, the economic threat hasn't forged a common bond in this nation. It has fed anger, fear and mistrust.

On Nov. 4 we're going to elect a president to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.

The strongest candidate to do that is Sen. Barack Obama. The Tribune is proud to endorse him today for president of the United States.
On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen the policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that.

Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them.

We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator to an inspiring U.S. senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.

The change that Obama talks about so much is not simply a change in this policy or that one. It is not fundamentally about lobbyists or Washington insiders. Obama envisions a change in the way we deal with one another in politics and government. His opponents may say this is empty, abstract rhetoric. In fact, it is hard to imagine how we are going to deal with the grave domestic and foreign crises we face without an end to the savagery and a return to civility in politics.
This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

The Tribune in its earliest days took up the abolition of slavery and linked itself to a powerful force for that cause--the Republican Party. The Tribune's first great leader, Joseph Medill, was a founder of the GOP. The editorial page has been a proponent of conservative principles. It believes that government has to serve people honestly and efficiently.

With that in mind, in 1872 we endorsed Horace Greeley, who ran as an independent against the corrupt administration of Republican President Ulysses S. Grant. (Greeley was later endorsed by the Democrats.) In 1912 we endorsed Theodore Roosevelt, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate against Republican President William Howard Taft.

The Tribune's decisions then were driven by outrage at inept and corrupt business and political leaders.

We see parallels today.

The Republican Party, the party of limited government, has lost its way. The government ran a $237 billion surplus in 2000, the year before Bush took office -- and recorded a $455 billion deficit in 2008. The Republicans lost control of the U.S. House and Senate in 2006 because, as we said at the time, they gave the nation rampant spending and Capitol Hill corruption. They abandoned their principles. They paid the price.

We might have counted on John McCain to correct his party's course. We like McCain. We endorsed him in the Republican primary in Illinois. In part because of his persuasion and resolve, the U.S. stands to win an unconditional victory in Iraq.

It is, though, hard to figure John McCain these days. He argued that President Bush's tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible, but he now supports them. He promises a balanced budget by the end of his first term, but his tax cut plan would add an estimated $4.2 trillion in debt over 10 years. He has responded to the economic crisis with an angry, populist message and a misguided, $300 billion proposal to buy up bad mortgages.

McCain failed in his most important executive decision. Give him credit for choosing a female running mate--but he passed up any number of supremely qualified Republican women who could have served. Having called Obama not ready to lead, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. His campaign has tried to stage-manage Palin's exposure to the public. But it's clear she is not prepared to step in at a moment's notice and serve as president. McCain put his campaign before his country.

Obama chose a more experienced and more thoughtful running mate--he put governing before politicking. Sen. Joe Biden doesn't bring many votes to Obama, but he would help him from day one to lead the country.
McCain calls Obama a typical liberal politician. Granted, it's disappointing that Obama's mix of tax cuts for most people and increases for the wealthy would create an estimated $2.9 trillion in federal debt. He has made more promises on spending than McCain has. We wish one of these candidates had given good, hard specific information on how he would bring the federal budget into line. Neither one has.

We do, though, think Obama would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect.

We know first-hand that Obama seeks out and listens carefully and respectfully to people who disagree with him. He builds consensus. He was most effective in the Illinois legislature when he worked with Republicans on welfare, ethics and criminal justice reform.

He worked to expand the number of charter schools in Illinois--not popular with some Democratic constituencies.

He took up ethics reform in the U.S. Senate--not popular with Washington politicians.

His economic policy team is peppered with advisers who support free trade. He has been called a "University of Chicago Democrat"--a reference to the famed free-market Chicago school of economics, which puts faith in markets.

Obama is deeply grounded in the best aspirations of this country, and we need to return to those aspirations. He has had the character and the will to achieve great things despite the obstacles that he faced as an unprivileged black man in the U.S.

He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions.

When Obama said at the 2004 Democratic Convention that we weren't a nation of red states and blue states, he spoke of union the way Abraham Lincoln did.

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation's most powerful office, he will prove it wasn't so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama's name to Lincoln's in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

Organic Foods

Nov. 1, 2008

Budgets Squeezed, Some Families Bypass Organics

By Andrew Martin

Once upon a time, sales of organic and natural products were growing in double digits most years. Enthusiastic grocers and venture capitalists prowled the halls of trade shows looking for the next big thing. Grass-fed beef? Organic baby food? Gluten-free energy bars?

But now, shaky consumer spending is dampening the mood. It turns out that when times are tough, consumers may be less interested in what type of feed a cow ate before it got chopped up for dinner, or whether carrots were grown without chemical fertilizers — particularly if those products cost twice as much as the conventional stuff.

Whole Foods Market, a showcase for the natural and organic industries, is struggling through the toughest stretch in its history. And the organic industry is starting to show signs that a decade-long sales boom may be coming to an end.

The sales volume of organic products, which had been growing at 20 percent a year in recent years, slowed to a much lower growth rate in the last few months, according to the Nielsen Company, a market research firm. For the four-week period that ended Oct. 4, the volume of organic products sold rose just 4 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

“Organics continue to grow and outpace many categories,” the Nielsen Company concluded in an October report. “However, recent weeks are showing slower growths, possibly a start of an organics growth plateau.”

If the slowdown continues, it could have broad implications beyond the organic industry, whose success spawned a growing number of products with values-based marketing claims, from fair trade coffee to hormone-free beef to humanely raised chickens. Nearly all of them command a premium price.

While a group of core customers considers organic or locally produced products a top priority, the growth of recent years was driven by a far larger group of less committed customers. The weak economy is prompting many of them to choose which marketing claim, if any, is really important to them.

Among organic products, those marketed to children will probably continue to thrive because they appeal to parents’ concerns about health, said Laurie Demeritt, the president and chief operating officer of the Hartman Group, a market research firm for the health and wellness industry. But products that do not have as much perceived benefit, like processed foods for adults, may struggle.

The economy has “crystallized the tradeoffs that consumers are willing to make,” she said. “Fair trade is nice, but fair trade may fall off the shopping list where organic milk may not.”

Thomas J. Blischok, president of consulting and innovation for Information Resources, a market-research firm, said shoppers were not moving entirely away from categories like organic products in the grocery store. But they are becoming more selective, buying four or five products instead of seven or eight, he said.

Mr. Blischok conducted a survey of 1,000 consumers in the first half of the year and found that nearly two-thirds said they were cutting back on nonessential groceries and nearly half said they were buying fewer organic products because they were too expensive. Such consumer attitudes have compounded problems for Whole Foods Market, the Austin, Texas, chain that served as a launching pad for many organic and natural brands. The company’s stock has dropped by more than 70 percent since the first of the year, and analysts expect more grim news when fourth-quarter earnings are announced next week.

Recently in Boston, on the sprawling convention floor of the Natural Products Expo East, some vendors said they had been hurt by the economic malaise and others said they had not yet felt the impact.

Several of them noted that Whole Foods Market faces a broad array of problems, including increased competition from traditional grocers, and should not be viewed as a proxy for the whole industry. But many also worried that if the economy continues to flounder, consumers — particularly those who only occasionally shop for their products — may decide they can no longer afford to let their conscience dictate their shopping list.

Theresa Marquez, the chief marketing executive for Organic Valley, which sells primarily dairy products, said she was not worried about core customers because they were so committed to buying organic.

“I’m not sure the periphery — those that purchase perhaps only four or so times a month — will break the industry,” she said in an e-mail conversation after the convention. “But I am concerned that those periphery customers are important to the growth of the industry and without them, organic growth is sure to go flat.”

Organic Valley’s sales have slowed in the last four months, in part because of price increases, company officials said.

Robert Atallah, the owner of Cedarlane Foods, which makes organic and natural frozen meals, said his business had slowed in the last 18 months, a problem he attributed to increased competition and the economy. He said that he believed a newly developed line of products could help sales but cannot convince buyers for grocery chains to commit.

“The morale of buyers is so low, they don’t want to buy anything,” he said. “It’s a sick feeling all the way around. People don’t know if their job is going to be there.”

But others said they had not yet noticed a slowdown and were optimistic that sales would remain steady — or possibly improve — as consumers ate fewer meals in restaurants and devoted more time to cooking. Some store-brand manufacturers said they were thriving as consumers looked for cheaper alternatives to branded products.

“People aren’t going on vacation, they aren’t going to buy a car, so maybe they’ll buy a luxury item that is affordable,” said Dary Goodrich, chocolate products manager for Equal Exchange, a worker-owned fair trade organization offering tea, coffee and chocolate from small-scale farmers. “Right now, we aren’t seeing a slowdown, but it’s a concern.”

In interviews with consumers around the country, some said they were spending as much or more at the grocery store, including on organic products, in part because they have curbed restaurant meals. Karen Jenson, 35, said she was buying as much organic food but shopping at four different stores to find deals.

“The apples right now are really cheap here because they are in season,” she said, standing outside the Linden Hills Co-op in Minneapolis.

But some others said they were cutting back on organic food to save money.

Joni Heard, a 29-year-old mother of two who lives in central Florida, said that in the past she would buy organic milk, cheese and produce but had cut back because it was too expensive.

“I’m a stay-at-home mom and my husband — you never know if he’s going to be laid off,” she said in an interview, explaining that her husband works in construction. “I can’t justify spending $2 or $3 more for a single item.”