Amid the overwhelmingly negative coverage on the US economy, some press reports are casting President Bush's comments on the health of the economy and the US banking system as overly optimistic. McClatchy, in a dispatch titled "A Gloomy Day For The Economy, Except At The White House," reports the economic "turmoil" yesterday "clouded Bush's effort to use his first news conference since April to provide reassurance." The President "remained cautiously upbeat, sometimes with a gritty stay-the-course line, sometimes by telling folksy tales to illustrate his points."
The AP notes the President also "defended his insistence that the US economy was not in a recession, even though many economists believe it is," and USA Today reports, "Despite soaring gas and food prices and big declines in the stock market, the president insisted that 'our economy has demonstrated remarkable resilience,'" and "cited a 5.5% unemployment rate, slow first-quarter growth and expanding trade and productivity as reasons for consumers to have confidence." In a follow-up analysis, USA Today notes "It's a message that's been delivered by presidents before in times of economic trouble. 'Herbert Hoover kept telling the country during the Depression that "things are sound, it's the usual business cycle, and it will turn in the right direction,"' said presidential historian Robert Dallek."
Bill O'Reilly, on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor said, "The economy is wobbling badly. People are scared." The President was shown saying, "I'm not an economist. But I do believe we are growing. I can remember, you know, this press conference here, people yelling recession this, recession that, as if you are economists. I'm an optimist." O'Reilly added, "Well, he is also a rich guy. The question is: Should people who aren't rich guys be worried? ... He came across a little arrogant there, the President did. ... The economy is frightening a lot of people."
All three network newscasts led with the story. NBC Nightly News reported, "In part because of the pictures airing for two days now showing people waiting in lines outside their bank to get their money out, the President today decided to talk to the American people and emphasize a sound US economy." NBC Nightly News also said Bush, "a self-professed optimistic guy...tried to accentuate the positive." The CBS Evening News reported "Bush tried today to reassure the country about the economy. He said it is growing, if slowly," but "it's a tough sell as the bad economic news just keeps coming. In fact, a CBS News/'New York Times' poll finds two out of three Americans believe the economy is getting worse."
ABC World News reported, "A day after Americans witnessed the spectacle of a run on a major bank, Washington's top policymakers were out in force, hoping to quell the crisis of confidence. At the White House today, the President was asked point-blank, is the American banking system in trouble?"
The Washington Post says Bush "blamed congressional Democrats for not acting quickly enough to tackle the nation's economic troubles." But the "appearance -- Bush's first full press conference in nearly three months -- underscores the extent to which economic problems are bedeviling the White House."
The Wall Street Journal, however, says "Bush struck a sympathetic note" regarding public anxiety over the economy, and "promised 'tough decisions' if they become necessary, while emphasizing that the administration intends the" GSEs "to remain shareholder-owned."
House Democrats Mull Second Stimulus The Wall Street Journal reports House Democrats "want to inject at least $50 billion into the economy through another economic-stimulus bill, which is likely to include a second round of checks for middle-income people." A second measure "probably wouldn't have the same bipartisan momentum as the first $168 billion bill, which was passed in February." Many of the proposals "being floated by Democrats this time are ones President George W. Bush and other Republicans rejected in the last go-round." Meanwhile, the Washington Times notes Bush insisted "that facts, not fear, need to drive efforts to stimulate the flagging economy."
USA Today reports Democrats "controlling Congress ratcheted up expectations Tuesday for additional legislation to jump-start the dragging economy. 'We will be proceeding with another stimulus package,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after meeting with several economists." And in a front-page news analysis piece titled, "Americans May Be Losing Faith In Free Markets," the Los Angeles Times reports that "spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society. ... Now, to a degree not seen in years, politicians and outside experts are looking with favor at more, not less, government involvement in the economy."
Dow Industrials Fall Below 11,000 The AP reports Wall Street "ended a whipsaw day mostly lower, as fears of escalating instability in the financial sector kept investors on edge despite a steep retreat in oil. The Dow "fell 92.65, or 0.84 percent, to 10,962.54. It was the blue chips' lowest close since July 21, 2006." The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today run similar reports.
After President Bush vetoed a bill that would cancel a 10.6% cut in Medicare payments to doctors, both houses of Congress quickly voted to override the President. The Los Angeles Times calls it a "swift rebuke to President Bush" as the House "voted 383 to 41 to block the president's veto. A short time later, the Senate voted 70 to 26 to reject Bush's objections to the bill." Bush and "many Republicans opposed the bill because funds to prevent the cut in doctor payments will come from more than $12 billion in payment cuts to private insurance companies that offer coverage under the private Medicare Advantage program, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield."
The Wall Street Journal reports the "new law is a victory for Democrats after a partisan standoff that dragged on for weeks." The passage "is also a win for doctors, among other lobbying interests, largely at the expense of health insurers." The Washington Post reports with "organized medicine and other lobbies promoting the popular measure in an election year, Republicans broke heavily from the White House."
USA Today /AP reports Bush "has vetoed bills nine times, and Congress has had the muscle to override him only on a water projects bill and twice on farm legislation." The Hill notes that in "both chambers, more Republicans voted to override the veto than voted for the bills, underscoring how GOP lawmakers have grown more emboldened to buck Bush, a lame-duck president, during an election year."
The New York Times calls Bush's veto "futile," adding that his message "to the House said that he objected to the bill because it was 'fiscally irresponsible' and relied on 'short-term budget gimmicks' that do not address the long-term fiscal soundness of the Medicare program."
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The New York Times reports President Bush on Tuesday said Iraq "wanted to include an 'aspirational goal' for the departure of most foreign troops there in any agreement authorizing future American operations, but he reiterated his opposition to what he called 'an artificial timetable for withdrawal.'" The President's remarks "reflected the growing doubt within the administration that the United States could negotiate the sweeping long-term agreement that would clear the way for American troops to operate in Iraq for many years to come." Bush also faced questions about "the unruly border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," prompting him to "rebut criticism from Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who on Tuesday accused the administration of having a 'single-minded and open-ended focus' on Iraq."
Foreign Islamists Flocking To Afghanistan The Christian Science Monitor reports, "This week's brazen and deadly attack on a US-Afghan outpost in an area near the Pakistani border is raising new concerns that foreign fighters bent on fighting the West are retraining their sights from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan." Intelligence suggests "Islamist extremists are adjusting their international fight to hit the United States and the West where they perceive them to be weakest."
US Success In Iraq Seen As "Very Likely" If Commitment Firm Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War, and Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the US Army, write in the Wall Street Journal, "All of the most important objectives of the surge have been accomplished in Iraq. The sectarian civil war is ended; al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been dealt a devastating blow; and the Sadrist militia and other Iranian-backed militant groups have been disrupted." If "America remains firm in its commitment to success in Iraq, success is very likely. ... The most serious error would be to withdraw American forces too rapidly."
The New York Times reports President Bush "has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision. But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, SC, must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there."
The Washington Post calls the court's ruling in al-Marri's case "a new setback to the Bush administration," by granting him the right to "petition a civilian court to review the evidence against him." But "at the same time, the divided US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed the president's wartime power to hold accused combatants apprehended in the United States without trial, reversing a previous ruling by a panel of its own judges." The AP also reports the court's ruling.
Gitmo Interrogation Video Released A video taken at Guantanamo Bay that depicts the interrogation of a then 16-year-old Canadian detainee named Omar Khadr was released by Khadr's attorney on Tuesday. All three networks reported last night on the video, which NBC Nightly News reported is "the first video ever released to the public of an actual interrogation at Guantanamo Bay." The interrogator "is Canadian [and] so is the terrorist suspect, a sixteen-year-old Canadian accused of throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan."
ABC World News reported, "The video is raw and emotional: A 16-year-old prisoner, desperate and afraid, lifting his shirt to show battle wounds and complaining to a Canadian interrogator about his treatment." The video of Khadr was released by his Canadian lawyers "who hope to create public sympathy for the young man," now 21, who "has been detained at the naval base nearly six years." The AP, New York Times and Washington Post run similar reports on the video.
The Wall Street Journal reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "faced more pressure to ease a congressional ban on expanded offshore drilling for oil, as both Republicans and Democrats sought to show they are responding to high energy prices." Reid "said he is ready to move a bill targeting what he called 'greedy speculators,' which would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission greater authority to regulate energy futures, particularly over-the-counter swaps markets and foreign exchanges operating in the U.S. But Republicans said they may try to block that legislation if it doesn't include measures to allow new domestic oil production."
However, The Hill says Reid "on Tuesday sought to cut off any shift among Senate Democrats toward more oil drilling as an answer to high energy prices, saying a strong majority of the conference remains opposed." Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor reports, "Bush and Congress traded accusations Tuesday over who's more to blame for America's latest oil crisis and offered different assessments of the need to lift a long-standing moratorium on new offshore oil drilling."
Moratorium's End May Have Little Impact The Financial Times reports, "No one knows the extent of US oil and natural gas reserves in the offshore and Arctic areas that are off-limits to drilling." So "even though President George W. Bush on Monday lifted a presidential ban on drilling on the US outer continental shelf, it does not mean a big jump in US production is in the offing."
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With both candidates giving rival speeches on national security yesterday, the battle between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain over what to do in Iraq and Afghanistan reached a fevered pitch. The primary fault line is whether the surge is succeeding (Obama says it has not; McCain says it is) and whether withdrawing from Iraq is better or worse for the situation in Afghanistan. The story got heavy play in both print and broadcast media, with the Washington Post, for example, reporting in a front page story that the two candidates "offered sharply different assessments" of the situation in Iraq, "with Obama saying Iraq is a distraction from the fight against terrorism and McCain calling it a proving ground for tactics needed to beat back a resurgent Taliban."
NBC Nightly News reported, "And as Obama prepares for his first foreign trip since running for president, he insisted that despite reduced violence from the surge, Iraq continues to be a distraction from Afghanistan." Obama said, "As I warned at the outset, Iraq's leaders have not made the political progress that was the purpose of the surge." The CBS Evening News showed Obama saying, "This war distracts us from every threat that we face and so many opportunities we could seize."
The CBS Evening News also reported, "At a town meeting in New Mexico, Senator McCain said his opponent is wrong to make pledges before his trip" to Iraq. McCain was shown saying, "In my experience, fact-finding missions usually work best the other way around. First you assess the facts on the ground, then you present a new strategy." The Washington Times reports McCain "ridiculed Sen. Barack Obama for scrubbing his campaign Web site of past criticisms about the U.S. troop 'surge' into Iraq, and lashed his Democratic presidential opponent for laying out strategies on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before consulting with military leaders on the ground."
The Chicago Tribune (7/16, Dorning) reports that McCain "argued that Obama's opposition to last year's increase in troop deployments to Iraq had been proved wrong by the sharp drop in sectarian killings. 'Today we know Sen. Obama was wrong. The surge has succeeded,' McCain said." Obama, meanwhile, "argued that the claim of success for the troop 'surge' made by McCain and Bush 'misconstrues what is necessary to succeed in Iraq and stubbornly ignores the facts of the broader strategic picture that we face.'"
Bush Says Obama Should Listen To US, Iraqi Officials The Los Angeles Times reports President Bush, "easing away from his stated effort to avoid the presidential campaign debate, offered some advice to" Obama as he "contemplates a trip to Iraq: Stay away from politics and pay attention to the advice of U.S. and Iraqi officials there." With "such groups as MoveOn.Org 'banging on the candidates,' Bush said any politician making recommendations for new policy in Iraq should listen to what U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces there, have to say, along with the views of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and other Iraqi leaders."
DeMint Urges Obama To Hold Hearings On Afghanistan McClatchy reports that South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R) "injected himself into the presidential debate on national security by writing" Obama "a letter Tuesday urging the two senators hold hearings on Afghanistan." Obama chairs "the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on European affairs, and DeMint is its senior Republican member. The subcommittee has jurisdiction to convene hearings on Afghanistan because NATO troops there are allied with U.S. forces."
Five new sets of national polling data out in the past 24 hours show Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by between 2 and 9 points. A CBS Evening News /New York Times poll of 1,796 adults taken July 7-14 shows Obama leading McCain 45%-39%. An ABC World News /Washington Post poll of 1,119 adults taken July 10-13 shows Obama leading McCain 50%-42% among registered voters, but only 49%-46% among the smaller sample of likely voters. A Quinnipiac University poll of 1,725 likely voters taken July 8-13 shows Obama leading McCain 50%-41%. The Rasmussen Reports automated presidential tracking poll of 3,000 likely voters taken July 11-13 shows Obama leading McCain 49%-47% including leaners. The Gallup daily presidential tracking poll of 2,637 registered voters taken July 12-14 shows Obama leading McCain 47%-43%.
The AP reports Sen. Barack Obama said yesterday that the New Yorker's "satirical cover depicting him and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals doesn't bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans." On CNN's Larry King Live, Obama said, "You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things. And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America's all about." The New York Daily News adds that Obama "has spent the better part of the past 18 months debunking false Internet rumors that he's Muslim and defending his patriotism. He's Christian, but Obama said he's been derelict in pointing out how hurtful these attacks are to Muslim Americans."
However, in a New York Times guest column, Timothy Egan says, "The furor over this week's New Yorker cover...boils down to this: We get it, but what will those folks in fly-over country think?" The answer is "that they get it as well. Irony, it turns out, does cross the Hudson River. And if they don't get it, if they see the cover as affirmation of the sludge they've heard on talk radio or certain cable outlets, they're never going to vote for Barack Hussein Obama anyway."
Sen. Barack Obama, looking to burnish his foreign policy credentials with a Middle Eastern Swing later this month, is also aiming to do so in a new ad. The AP reports Obama is up on the air in 18 states with a 30-second ad in which Obama says, "The single most important national security threat that we face is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican, to help lock down loose nuclear weapons." The Indianapolis Star reports, "The ad is aimed at achieving two goals: Emphasizing Obama's foreign policy stances, something he is focusing on throughout this week as he prepares for a trip to Iraq, and appealing to independent voters and moderate Republicans who want to see more bipartisan cooperation. In addition, it's one more piece of evidence that Obama is earnest about trying to win Indiana's 11 electoral votes," as Sen. Lugar is quite popular in his home state of Indiana.
On Fox News' Hannity and Colmes, influential former GOP Rep. John Kasich said conservatives have "forgiven" Sen. John McCain "on his taxes vote, they've been concerned about his campaign finance reform, some of his positions on drilling. They've accepted it. But I'm going to tell you, if amnesty" for illegal immigrants "somehow gets communicated, I'm going to tell you he's going to lose his base." Later Kasich added, "If he screws around on this immigration issue and if he begins to waffle on it, and suggest that we're going to have some sort of amnesty and we're not going to secure the border first, I'm telling you, they're going to leave in droves." He's been able to hold on to that conservative base. I was on this show a long time defending his record, but he better be careful here."
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Jay Leno: "President Bush spoke about the economy today. Did you hear what President Bush said today? He said, 'I am not an economist.' Not an economist? He's barely even a president."
Jay Leno: "Yesterday, President Bush lifted the executive ban on drilling for oil in certain parts of the country. ... Now, don't confuse that with President Clinton. He was the first to lift the executive ban on drilling in the Oval Office. That was totally different."
David Letterman: "Well, you know, we're in the middle of a banking crisis. Today on television, President Bush assured Americans that he is taking steps to resolve the financial crisis. Well, that's good enough for me. Come on, let's go to the park."
Conan O'Brien: "For the second time in two days, John McCain has referred to current events in Czechoslovakia, a country that officially ceased to exist in 1993. Yeah. Afterwards, McCain said, 'You know, the same thing happened the last time I went to Mesopotamia.'"
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