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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (40334)	1/14/2010 1:04:22 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The President's Bait-and-Switch Operation Which campaign promises has he kept? JANUARY 13, 2010, 11:11 P.M. ET. By KARL ROVE Americans learned last year that President Obama discards campaign promises like most people discard used Kleenex. Among the pledges he cast aside were reducing the deficit, reining in federal spending, not allowing lobbyists to work in his administration, increasing taxes only on those who make more than $250,000, and opposing "government-run health care" because it is "extreme." This year, Mr. Obama is picking up where he left off. Consider presidential signing statements. Since Andrew Jackson, presidents of both parties have told Congress that while they are signing a bill into law, they intend to ignore specific provisions because they involve unconstitutional restrictions on the executive branch or are otherwise problematic. A president's power to do this springs from his oath of office, through which each new chief executive promises to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Because of Washington's hyperpartisan atmosphere, President George W. Bush drew heated criticism from Democrats for his signing statements. Among his toughest critics was Barack Obama, who in a questionnaire for the Boston Globe in 2007 accused Mr. Bush of "clear abuse" in using signing statements "to avoid enforcing certain provisions . . . the President does not like." He promised not to use signing statements to "nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law." Yet Mr. Obama started issuing signing statements shortly after taking office. Democratic Reps. Barney Frank and David Obey called him out on it in a letter to the White House complaining that they were "chagrined" that Mr. Obama was issuing signing statements. Recently, the Obama administration admitted that after receiving the letter from Messrs. Frank and Obey, it stopped the practice. But the president still has aides examine each bill to identify provisions the administration will disregard. It's just that Team Obama isn't telling Congress which provisions it is ignoring. It's right for him to defend the office of the presidency. The problem is that he is doing it in a way that violates his own standards of transparency and accountability. This hypocrisy has not gotten much attention. But another act of duplicity has. During his campaign, Mr. Obama pledged that any negotiations on health-care legislation would be broadcast on C-SPAN, "so the American people can see what the choices are," and not conducted behind closed doors. "Such public negotiations," he said, were "the antidote" to "overcoming the special interests and the lobbyists who . . . will resist anything that we try to do." Internet publisher Andrew Breitbart collected videotape of Mr. Obama making the same promise eight different times in 2007 and 2008—evidence that this was not a hasty or ill-considered pledge. It was supposed to epitomize the "change" that was at the core of the Obama campaign. Now, however, the final negotiations on health-care reform are being conducted behind closed doors and there's no formal legislative conference between the House and Senate, which would guarantee Republicans at least a few seats at the table. This bill is not only being written in secrecy, it is being written by an anonymous group of Democrats. We can therefore throw Mr. Obama's commitment to bipartisanship onto his mountain of broken promises. Instead, he's practicing hardball politics, aiming for a health-care bill that gets just enough Democrats to jam it through Congress with lighting speed before the American people's justified anger gets even hotter than it already is. This is dangerous, both for the country which gets saddled with a lousy piece of legislation and for Democrats, who will bear sole responsibility for the bill's deep cuts in Medicare, rising insurance premiums, increased taxes, and decline in the quality and availability of health care. Maybe it was naïve for Mr. Obama to make the C-SPAN promise. But it was his pledge to do business in a different way, and it likely helped him win over swing voters. Mr. Obama even talked this week about "changing the way Washington works." But we can see that Mr. Obama's preferred style is backroom legislative drafting and what that style produces—sweetheart deals like Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson's "Cornhusker Kickback" and dozens of other special-interest provisions that benefit one state or a group at the expense of good policy. Mr. Obama should insist that every last payoff be removed from whatever bill is cobbled together. This all plays into a broader narrative: Mr. Obama is not the centrist or new-style bipartisan leader he presented himself to be. On many of the most basic issues raised in the campaign, and in describing the kind of leadership he would practice, Mr. Obama misled voters. Americans will overlook a lot of things when it comes to politicians—but being on the receiving end of a giant bait-and-switch game isn't one of them. Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions). online.wsj.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (40334)	1/28/2010 2:24:50 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The State of the Union Is No 'Reset' Button Presidential ratings usually drop after the speech. JANUARY 27, 2010, 10:29 P.M. ET. By KARL ROVE It was a tense moment in the West Wing. Less than a year into a new president's term, a Senate seat was slipping to the opposition and taking with it the balance of power in the upper chamber. The president's agenda was suddenly at risk. If this sounds like Republican Scott Brown's upset victory in Massachusetts last week, it was actually Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords's defection in 2001. Mr. Jeffords's decision to bolt the party cost the GOP not the 60th vote, but a razor-thin majority. Yet following the defection, George W. Bush passed his signature tax-cut package, No Child Left Behind education reform, and a budget that cut in half the growth of discretionary domestic spending from the sizzling 16% rate of President Bill Clinton's last budget. As congressional Democrats back away—for now—from Mr. Obama's health-care agenda, it is worth asking if this president's agenda is really aligned with what Americans want. This was supposed to be a historic presidency. But if it's undone by the loss of the 60th Senate Democrat, was Mr. Obama actually prepared for the challenges of governing? The Massachusetts defeat, Mr. Obama said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week," caused him "to try to reset the tone" in his State of the Union address because "we had lost some of that sense of common cause that existed a year ago." But that "sense of common cause" wasn't lost. It was abandoned when Mr. Obama attempted to do things he hadn't prepared Americans for, such as a government takeover of health care, and when he failed to revive the flagging economy. Now Mr. Obama wants to hit the reset button with his State of the Union address. But since World War II, presidential job approval ratings have dropped an average of 1.8 points after a president's first State of the Union speech. Over the past 25 years, presidents have experienced virtually no change—an average drop of 0.1 points in Gallup's job approval ratings—after giving a State of the Union address. That indicates that last night's teleprompter special is unlikely to stop Mr. Obama's decline. Mr. Obama entered 2010 with 49% job approval, according to Gallup. That's down from 67% last January. Those who strongly disapprove of his performance outnumber those who strongly approve by 41% to 26%, according to Rasmussen's latest poll. Mr. Obama's slide over the past year has been led by independents (whose support is down 17 points since last January), seniors (down 19 points), those making $60,000 to $90,000 a year (down 19 points), Republicans (down 23 points) and conservatives (down 24 points). On the generic ballot, a measure of party strength, Republicans lead Democrats by five points in National Public Radio's latest poll and by eight points in Rasmussen's latest survey. These numbers are worse than Democrats faced at this point in 1994. If Democrats fare better this year than they did 16 years ago, it will likely only be because they have fewer open seats to defend and because they are taking their challengers more seriously than they did in 1994. One of Mr. Obama's first reactions to last week's Massachusetts debacle was to install his 2008 campaign manager as an über-election czar for Democrats. But the White House tried to boost Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia last year. They lost anyway. It probably didn't help Democratic morale when the White House complained it was blindsided by Mr. Brown's victory. Politico reports the White House had the Democratic Party spend $2.2 million on surveys and focus groups in just a 10-month span last year. That money was supposed to let Team Obama see these things coming. Mr. Obama's problems are not political management, but policy. They won't be solved by faux fiscal restraint, mini-ball proposals for the middle class, and angry pretensions to populism. By his own Office of Management and Budget numbers, Mr. Obama has raised the baseline of discretionary domestic spending by a total of $115 billion since his inauguration, bumping it up midway through the 2009 fiscal year budget and then increasing it again for the 2010 fiscal year. Mr. Obama is now calling for a spending freeze to save $15 billion for fiscal year 2011. That's nice, but it freezes in place a 24% increase in discretionary, nonsecurity domestic spending. The president would also exempt from a freeze the $512 billion that has yet to be spent from last year's stimulus package. To present such a proposal as a serious attempt at restraining spending is to reveal a low opinion of the intelligence of ordinary Americans. Mr. Obama has squandered the "sense of common cause" he talked about on Sunday that many felt at his inauguration. In the week leading up to his State of the Union, he did little to rekindle that spirit or reverse his sinking fortunes. Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions). online.wsj.com Just a Communication Problem? •President Obama's approval rating, January 19-25, 2009: 67% •President Obama's approval rating, January 11-17, 2010: 50% •Americans disapproving of President Obama, January 19-25, 2009: 13% •Americans disapproving of President Obama, January 11-17, 2010: 43% Source: Gallup