Print and broadcast media are reporting that Defense Secretary Bob Gates will continue on in the Obama Administration for at least one year. ABC World News reported Gates "will stay on for at least the first year of the new Obama Administration." NBC Nightly News also said Gates "will now likely remain in office at the Pentagon for at least another year," while the CBS Evening News reported "the official announcement is expected early next week. The Chicago Tribune also reports the story.
On its front page, the Washington Post reports, "Some sources described a 'rolling transition,' in which Gates would stay on during a phased changeover of key political appointees at the Pentagon. Others said he could stay in the job indefinitely." The Politico says "Gates has been negotiating with Obama emissaries over his deputies" and "how the Pentagon will be run." The Wall Street Journal also reports the story.
Media analyses last night and this morning generally praised Gates' performance at DOD, and cast Obama's decision in markedly positive terms. The Chicago Tribune reports that "along with his non-partisan appeal, Gates is valued as a careful steward whose execution of White House policy."
The Politico reports "the selection of a member of President George W. Bush's inner circle allows Obama to deliver on his promise of a bipartisan Cabinet, even though Gates has an intelligence background and has not been an active Republican."
CNN's The Situation Room reported Gates' "appeal...is obvious. He's probably the most admired member of the Bush cabinet, winning plaudits for his pragmatic approach and willingness to hold people accountable." On its front page, the New York Times reports, "Some Democrats who have advised his campaign quietly complained that he was undercutting his own message and risked alienating war critics who formed his initial base of support."
Also on its front page, the Washington Post reports the move could "probably disappoint some on the left of the Democratic Party, who would prefer a clear and sharp break with Bush-era policies." Bloomberg News, AP, AFP and Washington Times also report the story.
On MSNBC's Hardball, Richard Wolffe of Newsweek said Gates "has been trying to maneuver for this one for a long time. He got a lot of support on the Hill. He convinced the incoming Administration."
And meanwhile, The Politico reports Democratic sources "said they also expect James Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, to be named deputy secretary of State; Susan Rice, Obama's senior foreign policy adviser on the campaign, to be named US ambassador to the United Nations; and retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Command and a veteran of the NSC, Central Intelligence Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff, to be named the director of national intelligence." ABC World News also reported that that "Dr. Susan Rice, currently at the Brookings Institution, no relation to Condoleezza Rice, will take over as the UN ambassador."
ABC World News reported that it has learned Hillary Clinton's nomination as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration "is a done deal."
Bill Clinton For Senate? Meanwhile, Authors Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac write in the Washington Post, "Amid the blizzard of résumés blanketing Washington as the Obama era dawns, there is a superbly qualified candidate for full employment whose name has been overlooked. We refer, of course, to William Jefferson Clinton, America's 42nd chief executive and commander in chief." Should Hillary Clinton get the Secretary of State nod, "New York Gov. David Paterson could send her husband to the U.S. Senate."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
President-elect Obama appointed Peter Orszag to head the White House's Budget office. In doing so, he also pledged a serious effort to get Federal spending under control once the economic crisis has eased. As the AP reports,, "Obama said...that recovery efforts will trump deficit concerns when he takes office in January. Yet he pledged a 'page-by-page, line-by-line' budget review to root out unneeded spending." Media coverage of Obama's remarks about spending were markedly positive last night and this morning.
ABC World News, for example, said Obama "sounded like a deficit hawk, almost like his old opponent John McCain, saying he would trim wasteful programs from a budget that, in his words, 'bleeds billions.'" Obama, added ABC, "wanted to make sure that American people and Wall Street got the message. Budget reform, he said, is not an option. It's a necessity." The CBS Evening News said "Obama indicated serious belt tightening lies ahead, for friends and foes alike," and the Chicago Tribune reports Obama "threw a dash of reality at any home-state friends and former colleagues who might be expecting a shipment of pork from his White House. ... One could almost hear jaws dropping in City Hall and in Springfield, places that have long thrived on political clout to deliver big-ticket projects and taxpayer money."
The New York Times reports, "Advisers to Mr. Obama and to Congressional leaders say they have hardly begun to figure out what kind of process they could devise to enforce fiscal discipline. But Obama advisers, in particular, consider it essential to signal that Democrats are not using the economic crisis to go on a spending binge without concerns for future deficits." The Politico notes "conservatives in the congressional Blue Dog Coalition were among the first Democrats to applaud his calls for fiscal discipline," and their "adulation isn't an accident. Both as candidate and president-elect, Obama and his advisers have reached out to fiscally conservative Democrats such as Cooper." The Washington Post, USA Today, Christian Science Monitor, McClatchy, AFP, The Hill and the Financial Times run similar stories,
More skeptical was the tone of the Wall Street Journal coverage. In a story titled "Obama Pledges Fiscal Discipline," the Journal says "Obama didn't provide many specifics, and he gave little sense of how he would tackle entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Few experts believe the budget deficit can be brought under control without trimming spending on these programs." In a similar report, the Los Angeles Times reports that "for Obama and Orszag to achieve any substantial savings, they will need to squarely confront the whopping chunk of the budget that got little attention in the news conference: massive entitlement programs covering Social Security and healthcare." Yet "budget experts applauded Obama's plan to subject federal spending to rigorous scrutiny."
To scant national media coverage, President Bush yesterday defended his decision to depose Saddam Hussein during a visit to Fort Campdell, KY. The CBS Evening News was the only network newscast to mention, in a brief report, Bush's "sentimental return...to Fort Campbell, the Kentucky Army base he went to just before his first Thanksgiving in office back in 2001. This month 10,000 soldiers have returned to Fort Campbell from Iraq, and the president told them job well done. After his speech, he sat down for lunch with the troops." The AP, meanwhile, refers Bush to delivering an "impassioned defense" of the war, and adds the President also "thanked troops for their service and gave encouragement to thousands of soldiers getting ready to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan." Said Bush, "The war in Iraq is not over. ... But we're drawing closer to the day when our troops can come home. And when they come home, they will come home in victory."
Another AP dispatch says the President "got a warm welcome," and "despite low approval ratings nationally," he received "plenty of cheers and applause during what is likely his last visit as president to the base." The New York Times also notes Bush received "thunderous applause from thousands of soldiers," and that he "boasted Tuesday of military successes in Afghanistan and Iraq and said he had helped bring democracy to both countries." WKRN-TV of Nashville last night showed the President saying, "The work you have done and are going to do is historical work. You see, the consequences of success in Iraq will resonate far beyond that country's borders. It will resonate when your children and grandchildren begin to study the history of peace."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
The outcome in the Minnesota Senate race could depend on validly-marked ballots that went unrecorded by voting machines, which are thought to favor Democrat Al Franken. The Wall Street Journal reports the Democrats' "best shot of winning a 59th seat in the U.S. Senate may depend on Minnesota ballots that don't seem to have been cast for either major party's candidate. Most of these 35,000 ballots were probably cast by voters who abstained because they didn't like either" Franken or Republican Sen. Norm Coleman "political experts said. But vote-counting machines also may not have read valid markings on a few of the 2.9 million ballots cast on Election Day. Where that is the case, some political experts said, the hand recount now under way is likely to favor Mr. Franken."
Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports there were "a pair of developments involving absentee ballots." Itasca County officials said "that they would reconsider absentee ballots that had been neglected or mistakenly rejected." And Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman "proposed a process for reconsidering rejected absentee ballots that would partly skirt the Canvassing Board: Have local elections officials review such ballots and identify those possibly improperly rejected." With "82 percent of ballots cast recounted by Tuesday evening and the number of challenged ballots climbing past 3,600, Coleman's lead over Franken stood at 231 votes."
Fox News Special Report reported Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is slated to campaign with "Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss next Monday in his runoff with Democrat Jim Martin. The AP notes that Palin "is popular with Georgia's conservative base. She and John McCain carried the state in the Nov. 4 general election."
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Rudy Giuliani and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile were in Georgia yesterday, campaigning for Chambliss and Martin, respectively. In a posting on the 'Political Insider' blog on the website of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Jim Galloway relates that when Brazile was "asked if President-elect Barack Obama should head to Georgia to" campaign for Martin, she responded, "No. I think President-elect Obama is doing what he must do and what he needs to do - it's to focus on his transition."
And on MSNBC's Hardball, host David Shuster asked outgoing DNC Chairman Howard Dean why Barack Obama was not going to campaign for Martin. Dean said, "Barack has cut radio ads. He kept all his offices open in Georgia, his campaign offices, and converted them to offices that would help Jim Martin become the next senator from Georgia. ... But, you know, unlike what was happening in '92, we are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And, so, I don't see how anybody can fault the president-elect for focusing here on the economy and not getting involved in politics."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
The Hill reports, "Ohio state Sen. Steve Stivers (R) has expanded his lead in the state's 15th congressional district race to 594 votes after vote counts in Madison County have been finalized." Stivers' lead "grew by 115 votes with the additional Madison County totals."
Sen. John McCain on Tuesday announced his intention to seek reelection to a fifth Senate term in 2010. The AP reports McCain "said he looks back on his losing presidential campaign with pride and will make a formal announcement of his re-election bid in the future."
The Politico reports McCain also "defended his campaign decisions to pick Sarah Palin as his running mate and not focus on President-elect Barack Obama's association to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at a press conference Tuesday in Phoenix." Said McCain, "I think that Gov. Palin's future is very bright in the Republican Party."
The Washington Post reports McCain "said he looks forward to returning to the Indian Affairs Committee and to making another visit to Iraq and Afghanistan."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
Jay Leno: "Barack Obama's people are trying to lower expectations for the new Obama Administration, you know, because everybody thinks he's going to be able to fix things all at once. So the expectations are very high," but if "they want to lower expectations, quit hiring the Clinton people and keep some of those Bush people on."
Jay Leno: "The Big Three automakers are now talking about driving back to Washington in December. Remember the big uproar last week" when "they all flew to Washington in private jets? Well, now they're going to carpool. No, this is true. And to make sure there aren't any problems, they're driving a Toyota."
Jay Leno: "I tell you," the "economy is bad. ... In fact, today -- you know the White House turkey? Turned down the pardon. Said all his money's in the market. Nothing left to live for."
Jay Leno: "Well, an estimated 271 million turkeys were raised in United States this year. ... That's not even counting the turkeys" that "are here illegally."
David Letterman: Top Ten Signs President Bush Doesn't Care Anymore: "10. Hasn't taken off his Iron Man costume since Halloween.
9. The menu for the White House Thanksgiving dinner? Corn dogs and Beefaroni.
8. Drew a picture of Garfield on Dick Cheney's bald head.
7. He's barely trying to ruin the economy anymore.
6. Spent the entire weekend in the Oval Office pardoning himself.
5. Saw Osama at Arby's drive-thru but didn't feel like chasing him.
4. Spends cabinet meetings scanning classifieds for next job.
3. Primary focus is surpassing Hank Paulson's high score on 'Guitar Hero.'
2. Asking Obama, 'How soon can you bail me out of the White House?'
1. Started dating hefty interns."
Sign up here to get the US News Political Bulletin emailed to you each morning at 8 a.m.
Top
Click image for larger view.
Smart analysis, insightful reporting, in-depth perspective—in a new, digital format.
Log in | Buy Now | See sample
View sample page 2View sample page 3View sample page 4View sample page 5advertisement
Get your POLITICALBULLETIN
Click image for larger view.
Smart analysis, insightful reporting, in-depth perspective—in a new, digital format.
Log in | Buy Now | See sample
View sample page 2View sample page 3View sample page 4View sample page 5Embed exclusive U.S. News headlines, rankings, columns, and blog postings to your Web site, blog, or social network.
advertisement
Use of this Web site constitutes acceptance of our Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Policy.
