Wall Street Journal – Obama Says U.S. Poised for New Chapter of Engagement
Wrapping up his trip to Europe and Turkey, President Barack Obama today focused on the cultural, holding a town hall with college students and visiting religious sits in Istanbul. He continued his call for new global unity.
“Mr. Obama told the college students he sees nothing wrong with setting his sights high on goals such as mending relations with Iran and eliminating the world of nuclear options — two cornerstone issues of his trip.
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‘Some people say that maybe I’m being too idealistic,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘But if we don’t try, if we don’t reach high, we won’t make any progress.’”
Milbank – Pentagon Chief Calls for Cuts; Congress Opens Fire
Dana Milbank sat in on SecDef Robert Gates’ announcement of massive cuts to programs like missile defense and the F-22 Raptor and a shift to buying more of existing technologies and away from developing new systems.
“Nursing a sniffle and occasional cough, he spent a full hour detailing the terrible things he would do to lawmakers’ beloved programs. It was the sort of thing a Democratic administration almost certainly wouldn’t have attempted without a holdover from the Bush Pentagon to give the effort credibility — and even now it’s a long shot.
“‘I expect the e-mails are already coming out from Congress complaining about the cuts to programs that various lawmakers support,’ the Associated Press’s Anne Gearan said. ‘Do you feel like you’re walking into a buzz saw?’
‘My hope,’ Gates replied, is “that the members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole.”
There’s a first time for everything, Mr. Secretary.”
Miami Herald — U.S.-Cuba policy takes center stage as summit nears
Feeling good about diplomacy, the White House hinted that a bilateral talk with Hugo Chavez might be on the agenda for the president’s trip to Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas next week.
The major concession the administration seems to be offering to placate Chavez and others hostile to U.S. interests is a new, friendlier policy toward Cuba.
The leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus headed down to Havana for a chat with Cuba’s hereditary dictator, Raul Castro. And the allegedly living previous dictator, Fidel Castro, wrote an op-ed in the state controlled media declaring victory in the long struggle between the U.S. and Cuba.
“Pressed on whether Washington might go beyond its already stated intent to lift travel restrictions for Cuban Americans, [White House adviser to the upcoming Summit of the Americas Jeffrey] Davidow said U.S. policy toward Cuba is undergoing strategic review.
”We are engaged in a continual evaluation of our policy and how that policy could help result in a change in Cuba that would bring about a democratic society,” said Davidow, a former ambassador to both Mexico and Venezuela.
New York Times — Poll Finds New Optimism on Economy Since Inauguration
A new poll from the Times and CBS shows that after being unified in despondency, Americans are dividing again into liberal and conservative groups. Writers Adam Nagourney and Margaret Thee-Brennan share the results of the poll, which surveyed about 1,000 Americans, not registered or likely voters.
The results showed higher approval rating for President Obama’s job performance than almost any recent poll, and a strong sentiment for high taxes on the rich and government economic intervention.
It also showed that things are getting back to normal. About the same percentage of Americans thought the country was on the right track today as they did at this point in George W. Bush’s first term. In fact, even a poll sampled to put Obama in a favorable light, shows deeper divisions between left and right than at any other recent moment.
You had Reagan Democrats and some Clinton Republicans, but Obama is doing it pretty much just his party.
The danger for the president is that if fears on the economy abate, his agenda may falter – Rham Emanuel’s crisis might go to waste.
“Even as Americans strongly support Mr. Obama, they do not necessarily support all of his initiatives. For example, 58 percent disapprove of his proposal to bail out banks. But the percentage of respondents who said they thought it would benefit all Americans, rather than only bankers, jumped from 29 percent in February to 47 percent now, signaling that the White House might be making progress in changing perceptions of the plan.
And as Mr. Obama has proposed a vast expansion in spending and programs, 48 percent of Americans said they preferred a smaller government providing fewer services, while 41 percent preferred a bigger government with more services.”
Wall Street Journal — Political Donations Slide Amid Slump
Writers Brody Mullins and T.W. Farnham are right that political donations from corporate PACs are down 6 percent over this time in the last off year (2007). But what they show us only in a chart is that they are actually up substantially over the same period in 2005 – the analogous year.
What the numbers reveal is that despite “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” execs are coughing up money for politics.
With the RNC out-raising the DNC and Republican senate candidates getting special attention from donors, it may be that the business experiment with deeper bipartisanship that began in 2006 may be losing momentum.
“Another reason behind the decline may be that donors are taking a breather after the most expensive campaign in history. Further, when Democrats took over Congress in 2006, after more than a decade out of power, corporate PACs rushed to send donations to Democratic leaders in early 2007 to curry favor with a party they had long ignored.”
