Media commentators are casting President Bush's appearance with Sen. John McCain at a fundraiser as a political risk for the GOP nominee. Most reports also suggest McCain and the White House tried to minimize any PR damage to the campaign by keeping cameras out of the event. The Arizona Daily Star, for example, says "the prime goal of President Bush's visit here Tuesday was to raise money for...McCain. The second was to do it quietly. By the end of the day, it appeared he'd succeeded at both." The Daily Star adds "a private fundraiser attended by nearly 500 people was expected to have generated millions for the campaign, possibly more than $3.5 million, said Tucsonan Mike Hellon, a co-chair of McCain's Arizona campaign. " Moreover, "unlike Bush's previous visits to the state...this four-hour stop was a relatively guarded one." The fundraiser "was completely closed -- underlining, critics said, the struggle the Arizona senator and presumptive GOP presidential nominee faces running in the shadow of an unpopular president."
CNN's The Situation Room reported, "The bottom line is all this is likely to give Democrats more fodder for what they like to say when they call the Republican candidate McBush, but the fact is, the truth is not quite so black and white." On the environment, McCain has "broken dramatically with the president, calling for caps on carbon emissions and suggesting Mr. Bush has not shown leadership on global warming."
The CBS Evening News noted Barack Obama "had something to say about the McCain fund-raiser today. Let's take a listen." Obama was shown saying, "No cameras. No reporters. And we all know why. Senator McCain doesn't want to be seen hat in hand with the president whose failed policies he promises to continue for another four years."
Fox News' Special Report reported that "with no one yet sure how much of an asset he is beyond his fund-raising, Mr. Bush made the trip alone. All three McCain fund-raisers in Arizona and Utah are closed to the press, and McCain himself is only attending one of them, a scheduling coincidence says campaign adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer." The Washington Post reports, "The same ground rules will cover Bush's trip to Utah on Wednesday, where he will appear with former presidential candidate Mitt Romney to woo big-money Republican donors to McCain's cause. ... Whether McCain can continue soaring above his ailing party, or will find himself crashing down to Earth with it, could determine whether Republicans retain control of the White House next year."
Media reports are casting Sen. McCain's speech on nuclear disarmament as a sign the presumptive GOP nominee is distancing himself from President Bush. The Denver Post, for example, titles its story "McCain Breaking With Bush," and notes "McCain's move in Denver to further distance himself from...Bush came only a few hours before the president headlined a fundraiser for the Arizona senator in Phoenix." In his remarks at the University of Denver "during a four-day swing through Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, McCain said it was time the country stopped going it alone and returned to a 'tradition of innovative thinking, broad-minded internationalism and determined diplomacy, backed by America's great and enduring power to lead.'"
The New York Times also reports McCain "distanced himself from the Bush administration on Tuesday by vowing to work more closely with Russia on nuclear disarmament and by calling for a reduction in tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. ... Like his Democratic competitors, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. McCain also called for a world free of nuclear weapons, and he cited as his model the standard bearer of the Republican party, former President Ronald Reagan."
The Financial Times reports, "McCain indicated at least the possibility of signing up to international treaties long rejected by the Bush administration in particular the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty." McCain "aides hope the senator's focus on peaceful nuclear non-proliferation will appeal to moderate voters and disarm critics who label him a warmonger."
The AP notes McCain also "called Tuesday for talks with China to negotiate a temporary halt to production of nuclear weapons-grade material," but "cautioning against relying solely on force or merely on talks, McCain proposed a bipartisan push to strengthen a broad array of international arms treaties and nuclear monitoring. And he criticized past administrations, both Democratic and Republican, for failing to halt the spread of nuclear weapons."
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NBC Nightly News reported, "One week from tonight, Brian, five months after the Iowa caucuses, Barack Obama needs just about forty delegates to secure the nomination. There are eighty-six delegates that are available in Puerto Rico on Sunday, Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. He will get those. Now, enter Michigan and Florida. There's a meeting this coming Saturday which will have a deal unseating some of the delegates from Michigan and Florida, which means Obama will have to pick up probably another forty delegates. There are over two hundred superdelegates left, he only needs forty of them. They have identified them. The Obama campaign will claim a mathematical lock on the nomination one week from tonight, Wednesday morning at the latest."
Democratic Rules Committee Seeks To Resolve Florida, Michigan Issue The Politico reports that the Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee on Saturday will "try to work out a compromise Saturday to try to seat" Florida and Michigan "in some form or fashion. It will be difficult, and the 30 members of the committee, who come from all over the nation, have been warned to keep their hotel rooms Saturday night, because the meeting may go into Sunday." The "huge problem is what happens if one side or another does not like the rules committee's compromise. In that case, the controversy would go to the 186-member Credentials Committee, which will convene in July or August." And if "that happens, the party will be presented with a possible train wreck: Whatever the Credentials Committee decides will have to be voted on by the Convention in late August as its first order of business. And this could create what the media might love but the party dreads: a floor fight in Denver."
The Wall Street Journal reports, "Sen. Barack Obama is hoping the housing mess can help sway the November election. The Democratic front-runner pitched his plans to stem the crisis during a visit on Tuesday to Nevada, the state with the highest rate of home foreclosures and a swing state that President Bush narrowly carried in 2000 and 2004." The "mortgage crisis has played a central role in the presidential primary between Sen. Obama and his Democratic rival, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton. Both have laid out detailed plans to aid families facing foreclosures and criticized Arizona Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, for his view that the government shouldn't get too involved in the crisis." But "lately...the housing slump has taken a back seat to vigorous debates over foreign policy sparked by comments Sen. Obama has made about meeting with leaders of rogue nations." Obama "is emphasizing his housing plans in Western swing states hit hard by the mortgage crisis. These states have mostly voted Republican in recent elections, but the Obama campaign is counting on victories there in November."
The Los Angeles Times reports Obama "criticized...McCain on two tracks Tuesday, linking him to the policies of the Bush administration and deriding his economic proposals as proof that he was 'out of touch with the struggles of working people.'" Obama, "in the midst of a three-day swing of potential Western battleground states, used the struggles of a Las Vegas family facing foreclosure over skyrocketing mortgage payments to illustrate what has emerged as a key theme of his campaign -- the nation's sputtering economy."
The AP reports Barack Obama's campaign "said Tuesday the candidate mistakenly referred to the wrong Nazi death camp when relating the story of a great-uncle who helped liberate the camps in World War II. The Democratic presidential candidate said the story is accurate except that the camp was Buchenwald, not Auschwitz." The AP adds Obama's "mistaken mention of the camp on Monday quickly generated Internet chatter, ranging from puzzlement to outrage. The Republican Party demanded an explanation."
Fox News' Special Report (5/27, Garrett) reported Obama's campaign "tried to clean up a sizable Memorial Day gaffe about his family's role in liberating a notorious Nazi concentration camp." Barack Obama: "I had an uncle who was one of the -- who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months." Garrett: "Obama's point dealt with the need for more mental health services for today's veterans, but it was built on false history, both about his family and World War II."
Sen. Hillary Clinton's remark about Bobby Kennedy's assassination continued to resonate on the cable political shows. Typical of the conversation: Roger Simon of Politico.com said on MSNBC's Hardball, "The first rule about talking about political assassination is you never talk about political assassination. ... Especially if you're searching for a reason to stay in the race, you don't want anyone to think it's because you think something terrible will happen to your chief opponent." Also on MSNBC's Hardball, Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times said, "I think, in a way, Barack Obama could be a really big beneficiary of this remark because it gives him, if he's looking for one, a really powerful reason to not offer her the vice presidency on the ticket."
The New York Times reports the Democratic Party "is struggling to raise money for its convention in Denver on Aug. 25-28, with fund-raising by the host committee falling far short of the party's goals and lagging behind the Republicans' efforts for their convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul." So far, the Denver host committee "is about $15 million short of the $40.6 million it must raise by June 16. With only $25 million raised so far, the committee is scrambling to offer a new round of special deals for corporate underwriters, as well as to devise a backup plan should the fund-raising fall short and plans for the convention need to be scaled down."
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Former press secretary Scott McClellan's book on his White House service, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," to be released Monday, is already generating a media stir in the form of markedly negative press for the Bush White House. After The Politico ran a short review of the book, which offers a highly negative view of several presidential aides, other media outlets and cable news channels quickly picked up the story. The White House had no formal response, but was expected to rebut McClellan's claims. Former Bush aides Karl Rove and Frances Townsend, however, ventured onto the airwaves to dispute his former colleague's recollections. The Politico reports McClellan "writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush 'veered terribly off course,' was not 'open and forthright on Iraq,' and took a 'permanent campaign approach' to governing at the expense of candor and competence." McClellan "charges that Bush relied on 'propaganda' to sell the" Iraq war, and says Karl Rove and Scooter Libby "held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them -- and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts."
The New York Times reports McClellan says in his book that Bush "'convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,' and has engaged in 'self-deception' to justify his political ends." McClellan writes "the decision to invade Iraq was a 'serious strategic blunder,' and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made. That, he says, was 'a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed.'"
The Washington Post, on its front page, notes McClellan says "the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated 'political propaganda campaign' led by President Bush and aimed at 'manipulating sources of public opinion' and 'downplaying the major reason for going to war.'" McClellan "describes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as being deft at deflecting blame, and he calls Vice President Cheney 'the magic man' who steered policy behind the scenes while leaving no fingerprints."
The Wall Street Journal reports McClellan says "the White House took part in an 'endless effort to manipulate public opinion to their advantage' in promoting the invasion of Iraq." McClellan "says that he 'unknowingly passed along false information' in his press briefings, including strong denials from Karl Rove and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby that they had no role in the outing of Central Intelligence Agency spy Valerie Plame."
Appearing on CNN's Anderson Cooper, former White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend said, "First of all, people need to understand as an adviser the President, I or Scott have a responsibility to voice concerns on policy issues. Scott never did that as best I can remember and best I know from my White House colleagues... and for him to do this now strikes me as self-serving and unprofessional."
On Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, Karl Rove said last night that the charge he and Libby coordinated their story on the Plame affair in a meeting was "a little irresponsible if this is an accurate depiction of what's in the book. ... Both of our attorneys told us not to talk to anybody in the White House about anything connected with that, and so we didn't. But Scooter and I came into contact every other day on things like the selection of judges or a particular policy issue or the Vice President's travel schedule or a draft of a presidential speech that we were commenting on." Asked about McClellan's claim that Rove "misled him about your level of involvement in the Valerie Plame case," Rove said, "That's simply not true."
On CNN's "In The Open", commentator Gloria Borger said, "It's kind of the first real nasty kiss and tell we've received out of this White House." While there has not been "any reaction on the record yet" from the White House, it is "very clear just from e-mailing folks that they are going to push back hard on this. And they are going to say that this is clearly a disgruntled former staffer trying to essentially clean up his own reputation."
Reports out yesterday added to the gloom about the US economy. The CBS Evening News led its broadcast saying "Americans are in a real funk about the economy and their own finances. And here are two big reasons: A report today says the biggest investment most of us ever make, our homes, has fallen in value this year by more than 14 percent, the biggest drop in at least two decades. And gasoline prices are setting records by the day. Today, it's a nationwide average $3.94 a gallon. All that has helped to sink consumer confidence in the economy to the lowest level in nearly 16 years." NBC Nightly News also led with the story. There was, said NBC, "a lot of information about the economy today, none of it very good. ... If it feels like the worst housing market in a generation, today's numbers proved it."
The Wall Street Journal notes the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index for the first quarter of 2008 "showed prices for existing homes nationwide declined 14.1% from a year earlier, compared with a year-to-year drop of 8.9% in the fourth quarter." In addition, "a separate S&P index that tracks 20 major metropolitan areas on a monthly basis showed home prices dropped 14.4% in March from a year earlier and 2.2% from February." USA Today reports, "With home prices falling at their fastest pace in at least 20 years, economists warned Tuesday that further declines are likely yet to come." The New York Times sees "few signs of a turnaround emerging," ABC World News said the housing downbeat goes on," and the CBS Evening News, AP, Financial Times, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, run similar stories. In addition, in a front-page article, the Washington Post also reports that "despite the 2005 passage of a law that made it more difficult and expensive to file for personal bankruptcy, more Americans are choosing bankruptcy over destitution" in a "story of a crippled economy, one in which people owe more than they can pay to their creditors."
The AP, meanwhile, reports President Bush, "sounding upbeat as consumer confidence swooned, said Tuesday that the government's effort to stimulate the economy is just starting to kick in. 'It's going to make a positive contribution to economic growth,' Bush declared, referring to a package of rebate checks for families and tax breaks for business." Bush also prodded "Congress to extend his first-term tax cuts, which are due to expire in 2010. The Democratic-led Congress has shown little interest."
Gasoline May Have Hit Peak Offering a glimmer of hope to beleaguered US consumers, USA Today reports, "The average price of gasoline took a big jump the past week, but it might have been the last gasp of the recent, unrelenting stream of fuel price records. The nationwide weekly average for a gallon of regular was $3.937, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Tuesday." However, "a separate study tracking daily prices shows most of the jump came late last week, petered out over the Memorial Day weekend and was barely alive Tuesday. 'History is on the side of those looking for a respite,' says Tom Kloza, oil analyst at consultant Oil Price Information Service."
The CBS Evening News reported last night that "the stress of war in Iraq and Afghanistan is affecting a growing number of US troops" as new Pentagon figures out Tuesday "show nearly 14,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder were diagnosed in the military last year, a nearly 50 percent increase from the year before." The New York Times says that the report "showed...the hardest-hit services last year were the Marines and Army, the two forces bearing the brunt of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan." The Washington Post reports, "The increase brings the total number" of US troops "diagnosed by the military with PTSD after serving in one of the two conflicts from 2003 to 2007 to nearly 40,000." But military officials "cautioned that the numbers represent only a small fraction of all service members who have PTSD because not included are those diagnosed by Department of Veterans Affairs workers or civilian caregivers, and those who avoid seeking care out of concern over stigma or damage to their careers."
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The late-night talk-shows were re-runs last night.
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