The Times — President Obama will employ all his gifts to avoid sign of a snub
With the G-20 about the get underway in London, all the world leaders are doing their parts. Nicolas Sarkozy is threatening to walk out. Dmitry Medvedev is looking tough flying a jet – like a 5’2” Vladimir Putin – and Barack Obama is brushing up on his diplomacy. After an embarrassing meeting at the White House with British PM Gordon Brown in which the Obamas gave Brown a box of DVDs in exchange for a pen holder carved from the timbers of a ship that led the fight against the international slave trade, team Obama is looking to not sink the politically waterlogged Brown.
Writer Tom Baldwin explains the dance that begins as soon as the president touched down in London today.
“Mr Obama knows that every gesture on his trip this week will be scrutinised for evidence of another government humiliation. And a scheduled meeting with David Cameron is already being reported as a coup for the Conservatives.
Not so, insisted the White House, which emphasised that while Mr Obama “is spending 30 minutes on Wednesday with Cameron, he is devoting “some three hours . . . with Prime Minister Brown.’”
Washington Post — Blame for Downturn Not Fixed on Obama
The latest poll from The Post and ABC News show President Barack Obama with a better job approval rating (66 percent) than the average of all their reputable competitors by a margin of seven points.
And writers Jon Cohen and Dan Baltz work hard to show that voters mostly blame Wall Street fat cats – not Obama – for the country’s economic woes.
But even in the rosier Post numbers, Obama is still down in key categories and fewer than half of voters approve of the way the “federal government” is handing the downturn.
“Overall, almost two in three Americans, 64 percent, said they have confidence that Obama’s economic policies will improve the economy, but that number has dropped since he took office and began to implement his ideas. Before his inauguration, 72 percent were confident that his economic agenda would lead to a recovery. Now, after two months of vigorous debate about his stimulus package and ambitious budget blueprint, confidence has decreased by 13 points among independents and by a similar amount among Republicans.”
New York Times — Contracts Now Seen as Being Rewritable
The contract has made it through a lot – from the era of Hastings to the era of hip hop – as the basis of common law. But it may not get out of the Panic of 2009 intact.
Writers Mary Williams Marsh and Jonathan Glater explain how since the federal government started busting contracts on Wall Street, local governments have been following suit. The writers excuse the unprecedented business as being needed to “cut through the red tape” and battle an “economic crisis.” But the ripple effect of toying with concept of the contract is plain – contracts have no value if their very purpose of binding people to commitments even when honoring them is unpleasant can be invalidated.
Washington’s move on Detroit isn’t expected to help allay voter worries that something fundamental and valuable is being taken away.
“Now, though, officials in the Obama administration may be looking ahead to a rescue of the automakers, an enormous challenge that could be simplified, from the government’s point of view, if kept out of court and under tight administration control. That would make it easier to change the terms of contracts governing retiree benefits, said David L. Gregory, a law professor at St. John’s University in New York.
‘The issue is, how can the government calibrate and contour and control the process of reorganization,’ without the time, expense and compromise inherent in bankruptcy, Mr. Gregory said. ‘The executive branch is proposing to do what the bankruptcy courts have had the exclusive prerogative to do.’”
Washington Post — Insurgent Threat Shifts in Pakistan
Fixing Pakistan’s problem with Islamists is considered central to the Obama administration’s effort in Afghanistan. But new incidents indicate that we may not be fighting the Global War on Terror anymore, but radial Muslims are still fighting their war with terror.
Writer Pamela Constable, back in Central Asia after her time spent covering illegal immigration in the Washington suburbs, explains how a brazen attack on a police station is part of a worsening trend.
If the Islamists succeed, the war in Afghanistan may escalate far beyond what the President outlined last week.
“The assault in the once-peaceful Punjabi heartland came four weeks after an attack in Lahore in which gunmen opened fire on a visiting Sri Lankan cricket team, killing seven people. The latest attack raised new questions about the vulnerability of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed Muslim state with a weak civilian government that only recently emerged from a decade of military rule. Lahore, home to more than 10 million people, is a bustling provincial capital and is generally considered the cultural heart of the country.”
Politico — N.Y. 20: Election or Rorschach test?
It’s voting time for the campaign-weary folks of the Hudson River Valley along upstate New York’s eastern border. Now-Sen. Kristen Gillibrand’s former House seat is up for grabs and so is the right to dominate the political news cycle for days to come with talk about either a resurgence or deepening dominance.
The Republicans are running a tassled statehouse fixer who doesn’t live in the district. The Democrats are running a venture capitalist from Missouri.
But it’s not about them. As writer Charles Mathesian explains, it’s about Barack Obama, Joe Biden (who is in heavy-rotation radio ads toting his deep love for the region forged during Syracuse law school), and maybe most of all, RNC chairman Michael Steele, who has been all over the district and spent lots of party money there.
“Few party officials will say that it’s a must-win for Steele, but it’s hard to imagine this contest being viewed any other way. While the New York race is one of four House special elections on the horizon, it is the only one where the GOP has a legitimate chance of winning. A loss will mean the long knives will be drawn for Steele, who will have little, other than a series of public gaffes, to show for his first two months in office.
A win here will be an enormous psychological boost for the GOP, and thanks to his commitment of resources and time — he traveled to the district twice — Steele will be able to claim the lion’s share of credit for it.”
