Obama acting increasingly presidential

Not 'a minute to waste' in addressing economic woes, the president-elect says.
By Peter Grier, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington - At a time when millions of worried Americans are looking to Washington for economic and political leadership, President-elect Obama appears to be acting more presidential and less "-elect" by the day.
As he unveiled his team of economic advisers Monday, Mr. Obama emphasized that action to try to stimulate the economy is coming. While he remained deferential to the current administration, he said he wanted to hit the ground running and in general conveyed an air of imminent control over ongoing US financial-rescue efforts.
Obama seems to recognize the obvious: The state of the US economy – indeed, the world economy – is so fragile that repair efforts will dominate his initial years in office. His success or failure could well end up defining his entire White House term.
"That work starts today. The truth is, we don't have a minute to waste," said Obama at his economic personnel announcement.
The US has only one president at a time. Obama does not yet have his hands on any of the US government's levers of power. But given the evident efficiency so far of his transition efforts, and the fact that the next Congress will be firmly in Democratic control, it is reasonable for him to emphasize his own policy proposals to fill a perceived power vacuum in the nation's capital, says Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of "What Do We Do Now?," a just-published book on presidential transitions.
"The promise of him getting a very fast start is very real," says Mr. Hess.
As he rolled out his new team for the cameras, Obama emphasized one aspect of each one's résumé, perhaps as an attempt to portray them as complementary parts of a whole.
As expected, President-elect Obama announced that he has picked New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner as his nominee to be the next Secretary of the Treasury.
While Mr. Geithner is a veteran of financial crises, Obama talked of Geithner's international experience, pointing out that the New York Fed president lived in Africa as a child and has lived and worked throughout Asia.
"The reality is that the economic crisis we face is no longer just an American crisis, it is a global crisis, and we will need to reach out to countries around the world to craft a global response," said Obama.
Next, Obama talked about Larry Summers, who will coordinate administration economic efforts from within the White House, as someone who has long talked about income inequality and the problems of the middle class.
Obama said that efforts to bolster the middle class will be the "core" of his economic policies.
Christina Romer, who will be chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, is both an economist and an economic historian, said Obama. Ms. Romer, currently a top official at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in particular has studied how the US recovered from the Depression, said Obama.
Obama also announced that Melody Barnes will serve as director of his White House Domestic Policy Council and that he will talk about further nominations and prospective efforts to control federal spending at a follow-up announcement on Nov. 25.
Overall, the President-elect's theme was urgency.
He said he would "honor the commitments made by the current administration," signaling that he will not attempt to modify or undo Bush administration bailouts already proposed or completed.
He declined to specify how large a stimulus package he would request from Congress. But he did indicate that in general it would be, well, large. "It's going to be costly," he said.
Obama sounded sympathetic to the problems of the auto industry, saying "We've got to make sure that it is there and that the workers and suppliers and the businesses that rely on the auto industry stay in business."
At the same time, he said that he was "surprised" that the US automakers did not have a "better-thought-out proposal" when they arrived in Washington earlier this month to beg for a bailout.
"The auto industry needs to present us with some clarity about the dollar figures they are talking about," said Obama.
Overall, the president-elect expressed confidence that the US could weather the current crisis.
"We've done it before," he said.

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Clinton Camp Fabricated Initial Obama Offer

In the New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew sheds some more light on the behind-the-scenes wrangling between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the Secretary of State post:
Obama's meetings with Hillary Clinton and John McCain about playing important roles in his presidency indicated his imagination and his shrewdness, although sources close to Obama say he did not offer her the job of secretary of state when they met. He had said during the campaign that he wanted various views in his government, and in turning to his own former competitors, Obama was at the same time magnanimous and seeking to keep them close. Both were in a position to cause him difficulty in the Senate--Clinton, in particular, had kept her constituency intact (through HillPAC) and was planning her own Senate agenda, including her own health care program, no matter what Obama proposed. But Clinton lacks the seniority, and therefore a committee position from which to get her proposals taken up by the Senate. (She tried to get a special subcommittee appointed, but Edward M. Kennedy, who has his own health care plan and is chairman of the committee with jurisdiction over the issue, blocked her, offering her later a role concerning health insurance.) McCain had indicated that he wanted to help Obama in the Senate, and by taking him up on it, Obama has both flattered and coopted him.

Mrs. Clinton's and her closest advisers' turning a suggestion by the President-elect that she might, among other things, head the State Department into an "offer" and reports that she was agonizing over whether to accept it, did not please officials in Chicago, some of whom hoped that issues over disclosure of Bill Clinton's post-presidential record might block the appointment. But the former president's camp blocked that by promising to cooperate with requests for information and to accept limits on his activities, including clearance of speaking engagements abroad. Statements by the Hilary camp on November 21 saying that "she's ready" for the position but then backtracking, saying that some matters were "under discussion," typified the whole mess, the only snag thus far in an otherwise unusually smooth transition involving impressive choices--an object lesson to Obama (which he had reason to know already) that getting involved with the Clintons is rarely uncomplicated.
Read more about Clinton's potential Secretary of State position here.
Elizabeth Drew writes:

Obama understood the point—which eludes some presidential candidates—that running is about governing, that there should be a seamless connection between the two. The best way to judge presidential candidates—aside from whether one basically agrees with their values—is to try to envision them governing. Will they inspire people to follow them? What kind of people do they have around them? How do they run their campaign? The wise candidate, the one who sees long, will run the campaign as a preparation for the presidency. In Obama's case, from what we have been able to observe up to this point, there will be a straight line from his campaigning to his governing. At their convention, Republicans mocked Obama for having been a community organizer (apparently thinking this was some sort of airy-fairy occupation, not real work); they were defeated by the community organizer—and they will discover that the country is being governed by one. Obama's understanding that change comes from building a popular mandate from the ground up made his the best-organized campaign, the most methodical in marshaling support, attracting volunteers, and establishing field offices in the various states. It ran rings around both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

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How Dems Can Keep the Party Going

Much of the sweeping victories enjoyed by the Democratic Party this November have been credited to three major catalysts: Barack Obama, for his campaign and fundraising efforts; the campaign committees, for their influential fifty-state-strategy; and President Bush, for producing the most opposition-friendly political climate since Richard Nixon.
These post-election acknowledgments ignore one crucial factor. In the past two years the progressive movement has built an infrastructure that, while still in its relatively nascent stages, can be tremendously influential.
Groups like Progressive Accountability, CAP Action Fund, National Security Network, Women's Voices Women's Vote, Brave New Films and others (many of them unions), went largely unheralded during the election cycle. But behind the scenes, they put in place a system that churned up opposition research, helped influence the media, charted out the electoral landscape, and was often seamless in delivering a message. In short, they beat the GOP at its own game.
And yet, weeks after their work is finished, there is uncertainty about what's next.
The Obama team has the resources to maintain its strategic advantages. The DNC is committed to continuing the 50-state-strategy even after Howard Dean's departure. But Democratic officials are still exploring ways to ensure that an infrastructure that took more than a decade to assemble remains intact.
"The Democratic Party now has, for the first time in a generation, superior infrastructure and really good research," Paul Begala, a famed strategist who often worked with these groups, told me a few weeks ago. "As a Democrat I want the party to continue to do that. And I feel very confident that they will. If you believe, as I do, that politics is about ideas, how you argue and channel those ideas matters most. It is more important than knocking on doors, because once you knock on a door and someone answers what do you tell them?"
The benefits of a stable infrastructure -- which includes outside groups, shared data, coordinated communications, and systems that harness young talent -- are painfully clear. Beyond keeping voters active, it can give the party tremendous leverage over both lawmakers and the press. A veteran of the Clinton years recalled how each day during that administration, Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson "were echoing the RNC's talking points and we were beaten to the punch."
"We didn't have a capacity to get out there on a moment's notice," he added. "We didn't have our 'own' media."
Obama does, to a large extent, have that capacity. His email list and website reach millions of people -- many of whom are as devoted to him as to any political philosophy. But even his campaign used ideologically aligned groups as an occasional crutch. And a source close to the president-elect says he is sincerely interested in keeping that infrastructure in place.
"The Obama team is committed to sustaining this outside advocacy effort," this strategist told me.
The first question facing Democrats is how to centralize this portion of the party without a galvanizing election. Howard Dean, the departing Democratic National Committee chair, has an answer.
"Do it through here," he said of the DNC in an interview last week. "I'd like to consider this becoming a grassroots organization, not just to win elections but to win programs, to get programs passed... to push out a president's message and go door-to-door for health care reform, and for climate change."
"Campaigns are not for education," he added. "They are for winning. Afterwards, governing is for education. And there is enormous potential among the grassroots community for educating by reaching out to people."
Dean may be pushing against prevailing wisdom, which suggests that elections are about learning. But in many regards he is right. An example of when infrastructure proved remarkably effective as an "education" tool is the debate over privatizing Social Security in 2005 -- when progressive groups of all colors (labor, veterans, women's issues, etc...) punched holes in Bush's proposals with a largely coherent message. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the immigration debate, in which a lack of cohesion allowed GOP groups to derail any moderate or progressive reform proposal.
But a centralizing force for the Democratic infrastructure is only helpful if there is enough money to build it. During the presidential campaign, Obama could not legally coordinate with outside groups. But he successfully convinced the Democratic financiers to channel their money to him and few else. The draining of the swamp forced many organizations to scale back their election season ambitions.
Now, without the prevailing need to get a Democrat in the White House and with a debilitating economic crisis stifling the most politically philanthropic, there may not be enough loot to keep these outside organizations operating.
"Every group on the left and probably every group on the right will have to face the problem that we just whipped out a trillion of stock assets among the wealthy donors of the right and left. And it is quiet possible that many progressive donors will think, oh, well, our job is done," said Bob Borosage, co-director of Campaign for America's Future, in a recent phone interview.
And yet, Borosage himself adds the caveat: having been in the political wilderness for so long, the progressive id now dictates that nothing should be taken for granted. There is, he says, an understanding that all the gains made in the last few years could be lost just as quickly. A fallout and consolidation may be likely -- the White House, for starters, will hire away many of the best staffers from these outside groups. But it shouldn't be debilitating.
Sure enough, in a diary written for the Huffington Post days after the election, Gara LaMarche, a major Democratic donor, sounded the call to arms when it came to bolstering the party's infrastructure.
LaMarche wrote: "To govern effectively and promote his agenda on economic security, energy, expanded health coverage, education, the restoration of civil liberties and other matters, Obama will need to keep his army mobilized. Doing this is as important as drafting legislation and picking cabinet secretaries."

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Who is the Decider?

President-elect Barack Obama is assembling a deeply experienced team of top economic advisers whose key members firmly believe that limited government spending combined with free markets can create lasting prosperity.
But those advisers will take over at a moment that Obama says requires just the opposite: New financial regulations and generally unthinkable levels of deficit spending are in the offing as the new administration prepares to battle the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression.
"Right now, our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle. The turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for families and businesses on Main Street, and as folks produce less and consume less, that just deepens the problems in our financial markets," Obama said in introducing his economic team at a news conference yesterday. "These extraordinary stresses on our financial system require extraordinary policy responses."
To fashion the government's response, Obama has turned to people who have been associated with more market-oriented approaches. Timothy F. Geithner, 47, Obama's choice for Treasury secretary, is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has been a key player in negotiations aimed at saving some of the nation's largest financial institutions.
Lawrence H. Summers, whom Obama tapped to direct his National Economic Council, served eight years in the Clinton administration, including a year and a half as Treasury secretary. He has argued that the economic boom enjoyed during much of Clinton's presidency was largely a consequence of shrinking federal deficits.
Both Summers and Geithner are proteges of Robert E. Rubin, Summers's predecessor as Treasury secretary and current Citigroup director and counselor, whose views in favor of free trade, deregulation and reduced deficits have come to define the economic approach of the Clinton years.
Christina D. Romer, an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley who is an expert on tax policy and the nation's recovery from the Depression, has been selected to lead Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. "She has the principal required characteristic of a CEA chair: the ability to clearly explain unpleasant and somewhat complex truths about the world to powerful people without making them mad," said Bradford DeLong, another Berkeley economist.
"These are great choices," said Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist for ChannelCapitalResearch.com, an investment research firm. "Right now, economics is the key thing. He is looking for experienced technocrats, despite the fact that some come from the right or the left."
Obama plans to ask his team to implement a huge stimulus plan -- estimates run as high as $700 billion over the next two years -- that would include money to rebuild crumbling bridges, roads and mass transit systems and jump-start a "green" economy by investing in alternative energy. Obama has said those initiatives are intended not just to carry the nation through the economic downturn but also to lay the foundation for a period of growth.
Obama says the infusion is needed to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs in an economy that this year shed about half that number, causing the nation's unemployment rate to spike to its highest level in 14 years. In the past, such heavy government spending on top of already-record budget deficits would raise strong objections, probably from the key members of Obama's economic team. But in the current climate, Obama's approach has been widely embraced.
"The world has evolved, and so has this group of folks," said Larry Mishel, president of the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute. "Issues of where people were eight to 10 years ago, that is just history. I'll tell you why: Right now, no one is talking about accelerating globalization. Everybody is talking about national health care. Nobody is talking about balancing the budget. Everybody is talking about rebuilding the labor movement. A higher minimum wage, all sorts of things that were problematic from an earlier period, are just not there anymore."
Some liberal economists wonder privately whether the past policy preferences of Obama's top economic advisers could prove problematic. But others say Obama's choices reflect his confidence in his ability to set the direction he wants them to pursue.

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Adrift With Two Captains

By Eugene Robinson
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
Having two presidents is starting to feel like having no president, and that's the situation we'll face until Inauguration Day. Heaven help us.
President Bush spent the weekend in Lima, Peru, at a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, conferring with Pacific Rim leaders who had no reason to pay attention to anything he said. Bush did, however, cut a dashing figure in a traditional Peruvian poncho. Yesterday morning, minus the poncho, he was back home lending his imprimatur to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's latest diving catch to save the global economy from utter ruin -- this time, the massive bailout of Citigroup.
A couple of hours later, the other president, Barack Obama, presented his new, high-powered economic team. Obama made a point of saying that the prospective officials -- led by Timothy Geithner, his pick to head Treasury -- would start working immediately. Obama also made clear that there's very little they can do except monitor the situation, study possible solutions and develop a plan to be enacted after Jan. 20. We can't afford another month or more of drift, Obama said. But I'm afraid that's just what we're going to get.
The problem, and it's becoming serious, is that no one is prepared to orchestrate a comprehensive program to stabilize the financial system, put a floor under housing prices and keep the economy from sinking into a long, punishing recession.
Bush could and should do it -- he is still president, and preventing economic collapse is part of the job description. But he won't. It's ironic that after being so aggressive and proactive in other areas, the Decider is so indecisive and passive about the economy. He has limited his role to signing off on whatever Paulson says is necessary -- most recently, $20 billion in cash and $306 billion in guarantees for Citigroup, a move that Bush apparently approved during his flight home from Peru.
In part, Bush's inaction stems from ideology. If the free market is always right, it ought to correct itself and get back on course. All the government really needs to do is take care of a few emergencies such as Bear Stearns, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, IndyMac, AIG, Wachovia, Citigroup . . . and, of course, whatever comes next. Not the auto companies, however: In Bush-world, the firms that created the toxic mortgage-backed securities that threaten to bring down the global financial system are somehow morally superior to the companies that created the Mustang, the Malibu and the minivan.
I don't think ideology explains it all, though. Even if he wanted to make a real run at righting the economy, at this point Bush has neither the energy nor the credibility to make it happen. Frankly, he comes off as less a lame duck than a cooked goose.
That leaves the other president, who has plenty of energy and credibility -- but no authority. Bush said he called Obama to inform him of the Citigroup bailout, but informing isn't the same as consulting. Obama said his new economic team will be monitoring the situation and giving him daily reports on where things stand. He could save them the trouble and just watch CNBC or Bloomberg all day.
Obama said he believes a huge economic stimulus is needed "right away." But he knows that won't happen -- it's unlikely that anything big enough could get through the outgoing Congress, and, in any event, a big stimulus is not something that Bush is willing to support. Obama said that "we cannot hesitate and we cannot delay," but he knows full well that hesitation and delay are all but inevitable. And he knows full well that by the time he gets the power to shape events, the economic situation might be much worse than it is now.
James Baker, the former secretary of state and current Republican eminence grise, made an amazing suggestion on "Meet the Press" Sunday -- that Bush and Obama develop and announce a joint economic rescue program. It was a stunning acknowledgment of how weak the Bush presidency has become and how dangerous it would be to spend the next two months meandering from crisis to crisis.
But that's the road we're on. When I get frustrated with Paulson's zigzags and reversals, with his overnight decisions to buy huge companies or write hundred-billion-dollar checks, I remind myself that he doesn't really have a president to work for. The poor man may stumble here and there, but he's dancing as fast as he can.

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