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Monday, November 9, 2009
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Traveling in Ohio, President Bush yesterday firmly defended his Iraq policy, urging Congress not to take action until after progress reports scheduled for September. However, media reports this morning suggest Bush and his Administration are fighting a losing battle. The Wall Street Journal, for example, says Bush "dug in his heels," but amid "a veto threat and advisers coming to the Capitol to meet with Senate Republicans, the White House signaled continued nervousness about shaky support in its party." The Politico says the Bush White House is "on the defensive and, according to many Republicans, running short on time." NBC Nightly News said in its lead story that "with each passing day he faces a skeptical Congress and a skeptical public," and political analyst Dick Morris, writing in The Hill, says Bush "faces a stark choice: If he doesn't begin pulling out, his party will lose the White House, lose Congress by stunning and likely filibuster-proof margins, and his tax cut and education reforms will be repealed. His footsteps will be obliterated from history. It will be as if he never served. And if Bush doesn't get it in time, there are enough sensible Republican senators to give him a wake-up call."
Fox News' Special Report reported "some political experts say the best thing the President can do now is to change the subject. So in Ohio today he talked about his goal of making the country less dependent on Middle East oil." But those Bush comments about oil were soundly ignored in press accounts. The Washington Post says Bush's comments "appeared aimed at quieting the growing clamor among GOP allies," the Washington Times describes the President as "beset by decreasing Republican support," and the New York Times terms him "fearful of a Republican rebellion." The Kansas City Star reports Bush "dug in...against demands for change" despite "eroding support within his party," and McClatchy notes that he "contended...that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al Qaida in Iraq," a "violent Iraqi insurgent group," adds the story, "that didn't exist until after the 2003 US-led invasion." USA Today notes Bush also "warned of the consequences of failure in Iraq and noted the potency of insurgents: 'They thrive on chaos. ... It enables them to more likely achieve their objectives.'" The San Francisco Chronicle says "most everyone in Washington believes the surge of 30,000 troops in Iraq that began last January is nearing its end," but "the White House insisted Tuesday that it is only beginning." The Boston Globe, AP, Financial Times, Baltimore Sun and Bloomberg, among other media outlets, run similar stories this morning.
Round One: The Webb Amendment As Bush pleaded for time, Senate Democrats were busy launching their new drive to pull US troops out of Iraq. Fox News' Special Report reported the Senate Democrats' "gambit," in the form of an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill, "would require the President to keep troops home longer between deployments thereby limiting future Iraq troop options." The author of the amendment is Virginia Democrat Jim Webb and press accounts suggest it will not pass. The Hill reports the "increasingly divided" Republicans "found unity yesterday in a growing procedural battle," as "efforts to move toward the first of a host of Iraq-related votes broke down yesterday when Republicans demanded that the amendments should have 60 votes in order to win adoption to the overall bill. They argued that by agreeing to the 60-vote threshold, it would ensure the controversial measures could clear any procedural roadblock that could hobble the bill." USA Today, Roll Call, Washington Times, Detroit News and Christian Science Monitor all conclude the measure will not garner 60 votes in the Senate. The Washington Post, meanwhile, headlines its story "In GOP, Growing Friction On Iraq," and says GOP leaders face "crumbling support for the war among their own members."
The Chicago Tribune says there are "a dozen Republicans in the spotlight." The Democratic strategy, "since the start of this year, has been to keep putting pressure on Republicans, forcing them to face difficult votes as they answer to constituents who are increasingly restive about the war. The hope, Democratic leaders said, is that GOP lawmakers eventually will abandon President Bush and support Democratic calls to end the war."
The AP, meanwhile, reports "one of the president's staunchest supporters [Sen. Kit Bond] bluntly said" yesterday that "the administration pursued the wrong policy for years after toppling Saddam Hussein. ... Asked later who bore responsibility for the error, Bond said, 'Ultimately, obviously, the president.'" And "in a further sign of eroding GOP support, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., called for the troops to come home next year."
McCain Doesn't Mince Words On the same day his presidential campaign underwent a radical and some believe fatal staff overhaul, Sen. John McCain came home from Iraq and headed for the Senate floor. There, says The Politico, the "visibly tired" McCain "lit into the 'liberal left' for advocating retreat in Iraq and then went behind closed doors to brawl with a fellow GOP senator over the war." In "what one senator called 'the most serious fight that I have seen in my time in the Senate,' McCain clashed with Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) over the Arizona senator's assertion that the most dangerous threat facing US troops in Iraq was Al Qaeda members." Voinovich "shot back that Al Qaeda 'wouldn't be in Iraq' if American forces weren't there, according to people who witnessed the exchange." The Politico does not offer details of the "fight" beyond that. The Washington Post quotes McCain saying on the Senate floor, "I've seen this movie before from the liberal left in America, who share no responsibility for what happened in Cambodia when we said no." The Los Angeles Times runs a similar report.
Lieberman: Al Qaeda In Iraq "On The Run." Asked about his contention that US is "winning in Iraq," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said on CNN's Situation Room, "What I mean is that we've got the enemy, Al Qaeda, on the run. We've chased them out of Anbar province, where they were going to create the capital for the Islamist Republic of Iraq. We've chased them now to Diyala. All of this is possible because of the surge."
In testimony before a congressional committee Tuesday, three former surgeons general testified yesterday that they faced political pressure from the administrations they served. Media reports, however, focus primarily on the testimony of Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who until recently served under the current president. The Los Angeles Times notes the House hearing came only "two days before a Senate panel is to meet to consider the nomination of Kentucky cardiologist Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr. to succeed Carmona." Holsinger already "has drawn political fire from leading Democrats and major gay and lesbian organizations."
The TV and print stories on Carmona's remarks portray the Bush Administration in a starkly negative light and Carmona's complaints as part of a pattern of political interference with scientific matters. The Washington Post, for example, calls Carmona "the most prominent voice among several current and former federal science officials who have complained of political interference," and mentions similar comments by the leader of the National Institutes of Health's task force on stem cells, Story Landis, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, NASA scientist James E. Hansen and Susan F. Wood, an assistant FDA commissioner. The CBS Evening News also said Carmona is "not the first to claim censorship at the hands of Bush appointees."
ABC World News called the hearing "extraordinarily blunt," and NBC Nightly News reported Carmona "lashed out" at the Administration, and noted '"two other former Surgeon Generals, C. Everett Koop, appointed by President Reagan and David Satcher," appointed by Bill Clinton, also "said they struggled against political interference." But "all agreed it's worse than ever now." The AP notes Carmona "told lawmakers that all surgeons general have had to deal with politics but none more so than he." For example, "he said he wasn't allowed to make a speech at the Special Olympics because it was viewed as benefiting a political opponent. However, he said was asked to speak at events designed to benefit Republican lawmakers." Why were the Special Olympics singled out by the Bush team? The New York Times reports Carmona said "officials...discouraged him from attending...because...of that charitable organization's longtime ties to a 'prominent family' that he refused to name. ... When asked after the hearing if that 'prominent family' was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, 'You said it. I didn't.'"
Responding, the AP reports, the White House "said Carmona was given the authority and had the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans." The Wall Street Journal notes a Department of Health and Human Services statement that says, "This administration gave Dr. Carmona ample opportunity to communicate his views to the American people, and he routinely did so."
Lewinsky Scandal Sex Report Barred While media coverage of yesterday's hearing deals overwhelmingly with Carmona, ABC World News noted an interesting tidbit from the testimony of Dr. David Satcher, who was surgeon general in the Clinton Administration. Satcher, said ABC, "revealed that in the midst of the Lewinsky scandal, he was not allowed to release a report on responsible sexual behavior."
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In an interview with the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune yesterday, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said the US "faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer." Chertoff is quoted as saying, "I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk. ... Summertime seems to be appealing to" al Qaeda. Chertoff "indicated that his remarks were based on 'a gut feeling' formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose." ABC World News opened its broadcast last night with a description of Chertoff's remarks to the Tribune, and reported that "senior US intelligence officials" believe "a small Al Qaeda cell could be on its way to the United States or may already be here." According to ABC, the White House "has convened an urgent, multi-agency meeting for Thursday afternoon, to deal with the new threat.'
According to the AP, a Senate appropriations committee chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin "moved...to cut off funding for Vice President Dick Cheney's office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules." The Panel "refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president's budget until Cheney's office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information." The AP notes that Cheney's office "argues that the offices of the president and vice president are exempt from the order because they are not executive branch 'agencies.' ... But Durbin insisted that Cheney's office is explicitly covered because the order applies to 'any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.'" In a piece for The Politico illustrating the left's dwindling patience, Cenk Uygur, co-host of 'The Young Turks' on Air America Radio, notes that a new poll "indicates for the first time that a majority of Americans want Vice President Cheney impeached. ... Meanwhile, the so-called opposition party has promised that they will not even consider this option. That's beyond weird."
New Cheney Book Noted The Washington Times, in its "Inside The Beltway" column, reports that a new book by conservative journalist Stephen Hayes, "Cheney: A Revealing Portrait of America's Most Powerful Vice President," describes: Cheney's drunken driving arrests, as well as "the 'incident' that nearly got him blackballed from working in Gerald Ford's White House; how he flunked out of Yale; his strained relationship with the Fourth Estate; his disagreement with President Bush on the dismissal of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; the costliest mistakes in postwar Iraq; and how it came to be that he was chosen in the first place as Mr. Bush's running mate."
The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call this morning publishes an interesting analysis of DC-based organizations that push campaign finance reform. The groups analyzed were the League of Women Voters, Democracy 21, Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Campaign Finance Institute, Center for Responsive Politics, Public Citizen and Common Cause. It turns out "campaign finance reform has become a big business during the past decade, complete with hefty six-figure executive salaries and multimillion-dollar budgets for the groups that bird-dog the issue." Roll Call adds that "during a recent three-year period, presidents, chief executive officers and executive directors...saw their overall compensation - including salary, health insurance and pension payments -- increase by 25 percent, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service documents filed by the eight groups," with "higher-ups at the eight organizations" making "an average of $179,000 in overall pay in 2005. The median executive salary and benefits package for the groups was about $171,000."
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Sen. John McCain's campaign has been struggling lately amid low polling and weak fundraising, but it is getting saturation exposure in the media today. Unfortunately for the campaign, it is not the kind of attention that any politician wants. In what media reports are describing as an ominous sign for McCain's presidential bid, the CBS Evening News reported that two of McCain's top aides, manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver "announced they were leaving the campaign immediately, a result of staff tensions fueled by campaign cash woes. ... But money woes are only part of the problem. His Iraq views are at odds with more and more in his own party and McCain is a sponsor of the dead for now immigration reform bill that has incensed many conservatives." McClatchy says that in addition to Nelson and Weaver, deputy manager Reed Galen and political director Rob Jesmer also resigned. McClatchy calls Weaver's exit "especially striking" since he "was central to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign and molded McCain's image then as an independent-minded straight-talker." The resignations "come scarcely one week after McCain laid off dozens of campaign staffers across the country after a disappointing second quarter of fundraising." According to USA Today, the announcement regarding the resignations was made while McCain "was on the Senate floor defending Bush's Iraq war policies."
The AP reports McCain's campaign said Mark Salter, "a top aide whom some consider the senator's alter ego, will continue to advise him and the campaign without pay, an arrangement worked out last week. But two officials said Salter's adviser role will be limited to McCain's official Senate duties." The AP is also reporting that finance director Mary Kate Johnson resigned yesterday.
Fox News' Special Report reported McCain "says they were not fired." McCain was shown saying, "It was a collective decision. We sat down and talked about it and decided what was best for the campaign and we think the campaign is going fine." According to Fox News, Rick Davis, who will take over campaign manager "clashed more than once with a lot of other senior advisers including those who have now left. It was Davis who said that John McCain could raise $100 to $120 million this year."
According to a front-page story in the Washington Post, the news "came after several tense meetings before and after a recent trip to Iraq in which McCain expressed dissatisfaction to his high command over what he regarded as mismanagement of operations and excessive spending in the face of weaker-than-projected fundraising. ... A staff that once numbered about 120 is now down to about 50, and more departures among senior staff members are possible, according to Republicans with knowledge of the internal changes." The Wall Street Journal reports, "After an initial overhaul last week that laid off lower-level workers at headquarters and in the states, Mr. McCain returned Friday from a sixth trip to Iraq and decided the changes hadn't gone far enough."
ABC World News said McCain "has been stewing for weeks, over a campaign that was spending too much money, not raising enough money and had tarnished his image as an independent maverick...and took him from front-runner a year ago, to now fourth or fifth place in the national polls." The New York Times says McCain's "friends" said he is "agitated and humiliated at finding himself the central figure in a political drama that has seen him fall from Republican Party front-runner to a candidate forced to insist Tuesday that he was not dropping out."
Pundits Declare McCain Candidacy Dead. The shake-up is seen as more evidence that McCain's 2nd presidential campaign is in serious trouble. The Los Angeles Times quotes Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report who said "I don't know how they right the ship." The Times adds that "outside Washington, political experts viewed the resignations as part of a general decline in McCain's candidacy, which has suffered from a lack of enthusiasm among the GOP's conservative base and from his support for the Iraq war and immigration reform." The Hill, a DC-insider publication, says "the wheels came off...McCain's presidential campaign yesterday as high-level staffers resigned amid infighting and acrimony." The New York Daily News reports McCain "pledged to stay in the presidential race, but GOP insiders consigned him to also-ran status."
In a blog posting on the website of The Politico, Mike Allen said, "Top Republicans were skeptical the" McCain shakeup will work. U.S. News & World Report added on its website that Washington-based GOP strategist Ed Rogers said that with the resignations, McCain's campaign looks like it is "spiraling downward." The New York Sun reports that "pundits viewed the shake-up as another nail in...McCain's campaign coffin."
The moves yesterday come after significant staff cuts in key states over the last two weeks. For example, the Detroit Free Press adds that on Tuesday, "it was clear" McCain's "Michigan political apparatus had largely been dismantled -- its phone disconnected and its paid staff reduced considerably. Whether McCain's state campaign office in Grand Rapids was even open was unclear, and McCain's state director for the campaign wasn't saying."
However, not everyone was negative on the dismissals. The influential DC-insider publication Roll Call says "McCain loyalists insisted Tuesday that the maverick Senator whose popularity soared aboard the 'Straight Talk Express' in 2000 hasn't reached the end of the road yet. 'This is far from obituary time,' said Sen. Richard Burr, one of the nine Senate colleagues who have endorsed McCain's White House bid." The New York Post reports, "Advisers and supporters widely agreed that the removal of Nelson and Weaver is good news and a clear result of the campaign's disastrously poor performance."
While the attention of most of the political world was focused on John McCain's campaign shake-up, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama yesterday fought yesterday to lay out the most attractive Iraq plan for Democratic primary voters. The Chicago Tribune reports that in Des Moines yesterday, Obama "chided his Democratic presidential rivals for vehemently opposing the Iraq war after initially voting to authorize it, contending real leaders don't get any 'do-overs' on an issue as monumental as war. At the same time, speaking only a few blocks away," Clinton "called for a quick pullout of U.S. troops in Iraq, citing a lack of progress that is expected to be detailed in a White House-issued report." The New York Daily News reports that Obama "threw the sharpest jabs, reminding people he opposed the looming war in 2002 when the idea was still popular."
The Washington Post reports Clinton "repeated her commitment to ending the U.S. involvement in the war if she is elected president. 'It is time to begin ending this war -- not next year, not next month -- but today,' she said. 'We have heard for years now that as the Iraqis stand up, our troops will stand down. Every year, we hear about how next year they may start coming home. Now we are hearing a new version of that yet again from the president as he has more troops in Iraq than ever and the Iraqi government is more fractured and ineffective than ever,' Clinton said." The Des Moines Register reports, "President Bush should begin bringing the troops home from Iraq immediately instead of continually postponing setting a date," Clinton said in her speech, asserting that "it's time to end a war 'fought for power, revenge and personal advantage.'"
The AP reports Obama, meanwhile, "told a crowd of about 500 that an upcoming report on the war's progress will show that Iraq's political leaders have not achieved any of the goals. 'I think it is time for all of us to acknowledge that we have to find a responsible but certain way to start bringing our combat troops home and stop having them in the midst of a civil war,' he said."
Fox News' Special Report reported last night that former Sen. Fred Thompson will not announce his presidential candidacy in July as previously reported, but "look for the first week of August for Thompson to get in -- quite possibly with former McCain staffers in tow."
A new American Research Group telephone survey of 600 likely Illinois Democratic primary voters conducted July 6-9 shows local Sen. Barack Obama leading the Democratic race for president in Illinois with 37%, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton (who is originally from the state) with 33% and John Edwards with 10%. On the GOP side, the ARG telephone survey of 600 likely Illinois Republican primary voters shows Rudy Giuliani leading with 30%, followed by Fred Thompson with 21%, John McCain with 12% and Mitt Romney with 11%.
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Jay Leno: "John Edwards is on the campaign trail. He's now doing something called his poverty tour where he is visiting people who have no money and no hope. In fact, his first stop today? John McCain's headquarters."
Jay Leno: "Contrary to popular belief, June is not the biggest month for weddings. I always thought it was. July is. July is the biggest month. Did you know that? Yeah? In fact, did you know this? 70% of all Rudy Giuliani marriages are in July."
David Letterman: "The one thing I'll say from this guy from Louisiana, this David Vitter, at least he went to a professional and left the congressional pages alone, you know what I'm saying?"
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