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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (2614)	8/19/2007 5:37:01 PM
From: MJ	Respond to of 149317

Good article. mj

To: stockman_scott who wrote (2614)	8/20/2007 8:56:32 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Here is Rove at it again. In 2004, he managed to trick the Democrats into choosing a weaker candidate by attacking Kerry even before the Dems went to the polls. He is doing the same now. And he surely is not going away. Not if Hillary is the Democratic nominee. ============================================ Attack on Clinton straight from Rove playbook? BY PETER WALLSTEN Los Angeles Times August 20, 2007 WASHINGTON - Day after day last week, outgoing White House political strategist Karl Rove delivered slashing attacks on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner. Her health care record was "spotty and poor," he declared. Her candidacy was "fatally flawed," he said, and no one with her negative poll numbers "has ever won the presidency." Why did Rove, who often stays in the background, step forward to deliver such public attacks - especially when Democrats haven't begun to choose their presidential candidate for 2008 and the election is more than a year away? The answer might seem obvious: Rove saw Clinton as a formidable opponent and wanted to get his licks in early. For high-level campaign professionals like Rove, however, that kind of thinking may be way too simple. The decision to focus on Clinton to the exclusion of other potentially formidable Democratic standard-bearers such as Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois offered a rare glimpse into a world where things are not always what they seem - the world of modern-day electioneering, whose denizens often prefer going from A to B by way of Z. In this case, Rove's weeklong broadside against Clinton, which he repeated in multiple appearances on television talk shows yesterday, looks suspiciously like an exercise in reverse psychology that his team employed three years ago when it was preparing for President George W. Bush's re-election. The ploy was described by Rove lieutenant Matthew Dowd during a post-mortem conference at Harvard University the month after Bush defeated the Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. In the run-up to the Democratic National Convention, at a time when it was not yet clear who Bush's opponent would be in November 2004, Rove and his aides had begun to fear that their most dangerous foe would be then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. With his Southern base, charismatic style and populist message, they believed, Edwards could be a real threat to Bush's re-election. But instead of attacking Edwards, Rove's team opened fire at Kerry. Their thinking went like this, Dowd explained: Democrats, in a knee-jerk reaction to the GOP attacks, would rally around Kerry, whom Rove considered a comparatively weak opponent, and make him the party's nominee. Thus Bush would be spared from confronting Edwards, the candidate Republican strategists feared most. Is Rove playing a similar game against Clinton now? The White House declined to make Rove available to comment for this story. But political strategists said Rove's visibility suggests he has no intention of fading from the game next year. "I haven't known Karl to do many things accidentally or spontaneously," said Dowd, who has broken ties with Bush, Rove and others and expressed disappointment in the president's leadership and political tactics. "He may be right, but I'm not convinced," Dowd said of Rove's apparent strategy. Clinton is "smart, able, she's got very smart people around her and she knows how to be disciplined," he said. Bob Shrum, the top strategist for Kerry's 2004 campaign, said "too little attention has been paid to what Rove is doing" and that he is clearly "not just casually chatting because he's retiring." But Shrum said Rove was forging a "dangerous" strategy if he was banking on an easy general election win over the former first lady. newsday.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (2614)	8/23/2007 10:27:48 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

The Pragmatic Obama He's Shaping the Debate on Foreign Policy By David Ignatius Thursday, August 23, 2007; Page A19 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Sen. Barack Obama is getting polite applause at best when he tells the delegates at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention here this week that in running for president, "I know I am running to become commander in chief." And then he tries to convince this intensely skeptical audience that he's the right man for the job. Obama reminds them that he opposed the war in Iraq, even though most of the delegates doubtless supported it. He lauds the soldiers fighting there even as he criticizes the Bush administration civilians who have managed the war. He says that we have "no good options in Iraq" and that the United States must be careful about how it withdraws. He warns that when a president sends soldiers to war next time, the country must be united enough to sustain the fight. The vets certainly aren't cheering wildly when Obama is done, but to judge from the dozens who rush up to meet him, he seems to have reassured this conservative audience that he's not a left-wing devil. When a local reporter asks him if he's surprised by the "warm response" he got, Obama displays the almost eerie self-confidence that has marked his rise as a candidate. Obama has indisputable star power. Travel with him on the campaign trail and you see the high-voltage connection he can establish with people. When he walks through a hotel lobby or jumps out of his motorcade in shirtsleeves to greet an impromptu crowd, the persona is closer to a rock star than a typical politician. And for all the loose talk about whether Obama is "black enough," I saw many dozens of African Americans here crowd around him with obvious pride and passion. Obama is now attempting to translate this charisma into a serious political movement -- one that would allow him not simply to win the Democratic nomination but also to govern effectively as president. He is emphasizing defense and foreign policy, where voters have often not trusted Democrats to protect the country. And as he did in his speech here, he's putting more substance into his pitch than candidates often do. Indeed, you can argue that over the past month, Obama has been shaping the foreign policy debate for the Democrats -- and getting the best of the arguments. By last Sunday's televised debate in Iowa, nobody else seemed eager to challenge Obama's postulate that "strong countries and strong presidents meet and talk with our adversaries." And there was little repetition, either, of the tut-tutting that greeted his statement that he would be prepared to go after al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan, with or without President Pervez Musharraf's blessing. Sen. Hillary Clinton's stance has been more cautious, seeking to convey a general but vaguely defined sense that her toughness and experience would make her a strong president. Obama is taking the opposite tack. Obama added some new (and potentially controversial) foreign policy details in an interview Tuesday afternoon, before he hopped a plane for his next stop, in New Hampshire. He said he expects there will still be U.S. troops in Iraq when the next president takes office, and he is discussing with his advisers how this residual force should be used. "For getting out in an orderly way, withdrawing one to two brigades a month is realistic," he said. With 20 combat brigades in Iraq, that would imply a withdrawal schedule of at least a year. So what should the remaining troops do? Obama says he would support keeping U.S. forces in and around Iraq for protection of U.S. personnel there, for counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, for protecting Iraq's borders and perhaps for continued training of Iraq's military if that country's political situation permits. He also said U.S. troops should be available to help stop any future "bloodbath" in Iraq, but only as part of a wider international effort. And what of diplomatic contacts with America's adversaries, such as Iran? Obama said he would talk to Iranian leaders about stabilizing Iraq, where he says they have a common interest; about halting Iranian terrorist activities in Iraq; and about the Iranian nuclear program. He said he would make suspension of nuclear enrichment by Iran a topic for discussions rather than a condition for talks, as it is for the Bush administration. Obama is deftly managing to outflank his Democratic rivals on both the left and right on key foreign policy issues. That may be a piece of political opportunism on his part, but a top Obama adviser gives it a different spin, which may reveal the essence of the man: "He is totally pragmatic. He asks what would work and what wouldn't." washingtonpost.com