Obama Is Killing the GOP With Kindness

Now that Barack Obama and John McCain met on Monday, it's looking increasingly as though McCain will be offered a position by Obama. Where will Obama's team of rivals idea end? Will Dick Cheney be offered a post as well?

Maybe Hillary Clinton and McCain won't serve in the Obama administration, after all. Bill Clinton's manifold business activities, if that's the right term, may render it too complicated for Hillary to pass muster. And whether she really wants the post remains an open question.

But it's clear that Obama is taking a radically different approach to the presidency than George W. Bush. Where Bush sought to polarize, Obama is taking the opposite approach. He wants to embrace the opposition in order to create his own kind of stealth presidency. Instead of trying to crush an already enfeebled Republican opposition, Obama is seeking to further weaken it by depriving it of an enemy -- himself. Democrats who worry that Obama is selling out to the opposition may have it backwards. His ingenious approach could end up marginalizing the GOP for decades. Tapping Cheney might be going one step too far, but could a post for the Decider himself be far behind?

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Iraqi Premier Defends Security Accord

BAGHDAD — For the first time since his government approved a three-year security agreement with the United States, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki publicly defended the pact in a televised address on Tuesday night, reassuring Iraqis that representatives from all sects had been involved in the negotiating process and that the agreement was the best option available for Iraq.
The 12-minute speech came six days before Parliament is scheduled to vote on the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq for the next three years.
In a separate action on Tuesday, the Iraqi cabinet announced that it had set a firm date, Jan. 31, for elections in all provinces except the three that make up Kurdistan and the province of Tamim, which includes the ethnically charged city of Kirkuk.
In his address, Mr. Maliki acknowledged that the negotiations were difficult, but said there were few alternatives to the current pact. “I’d like to say candidly we have our own assessments, but at the same time this is a strong beginning to get back the full sovereignty of Iraq in three years,” he said.
He described the contents of the agreement in broad terms and said, “no detainees anymore, no detention centers anymore, or American prisons for Iraqis, no searches or raids of buildings or houses, until there is an Iraqi judicial warrant and it is fully coordinated with the Iraqi government.”
Mr. Maliki also attacked opponents of the pact for suggesting over the past few days that the bargaining had gone on in secret, apparently a response to politicians who said they were surprised by the contents of the agreement.
“I feel sad that the opponents or even those who agreed with the pact released statements that are far away from reality,” he said.
In a culture deeply imbued with conspiracy, Mr. Maliki repeatedly vowed that there were no secret side agreements to the pact, the text of which was published in local newspapers on Tuesday.
Supporters of the agreement, including most Shiite and Kurdish legislators, are in a delicate position. While they say that they have the majority needed to succeed in Parliament, a simple mathematical victory is not enough; all acknowledge the need for widespread support.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shiite cleric in Iraq, who has advocated national unity consistently since the 2003 invasion, reiterated his insistence that the agreement draw support across sectarian lines.
“Any agreement that doesn’t win national consensus,” the statement read, “will not be acceptable and will be a reason for more suffering for Iraqis.” Shiite lawmakers said that the ayatollah told them on Saturday that he found the final draft of the pact satisfactory, if not ideal, but that his condition of national consent must be met.
Addressing these concerns, Mr. Maliki argued that “the consensus vote in the cabinet on the withdrawal of the forces represents a unified voice.”
The main opposition is coming from followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, who has rejected any agreement with the Americans in principle, and many Sunni politicians, who, while they are open to supporting the deal, are wary of the Shiite-led Iraqi government.
Though Sunni lawmakers are aware that Parliament has no ability to make changes to the agreement, they are seeking certain guarantees before giving their approval. These guarantees, they said, could appear in an appendix to the pact or as supplementary legislation.
Sunni lawmakers spent the day drawing up a list of demands that they intended to hand over to the Americans and the Iraqi government. Some of the demands are specific, like amnesty for the majority of the 16,000 Sunni detainees in the custody of the Americans. Others are more general, like the concern that Sunni groups will be unfairly singled out as targets by the Iraqi and American security forces.
Sunni lawmakers said they had been meeting with Americans, including the ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, to air their concerns, but added that the Americans had only listened and not responded in any specific way. The Sunnis said that they did want some sort of framework in place after Dec. 31, the expiration date for the United Nations resolution currently governing coalition forces. But they said there could be alternatives to this pact, including an extension of the resolution.
However, a senior American official in Baghdad said that the Iraqi government had “formally and categorically rejected” an extension of the resolution.
“We want to reach a solution,” Alaa Maki, a senior leader in a Sunni party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said in an interview at his office on Tuesday. “We don’t want to just put obstacles in front of Iraqi progress. But we want things to be put in the right way, so that we build on the right foundation.
“We regard this as the most important issue from 2003 until now,” he added, “because it will put the Iraqi future on paper.”

The True American's Value of Work

Bail out the auto-industry? Yes, but how?
The American auto-industry is out of date. You can earn a 160K dollar a year by making your hands dirty in the auto-industry, so, that cars have to cost a lot more than the Japanese stuff to produce. Can that make American cars better? They say so, but the right answer is no. If you make Japanese cars, you can’t pay your workers 80 dollars an hour. That will give you a lot of troubles with the union. If the workers strike you can’t make any profit. If you don’t make profit you can’t get the capital to keep your plant rolling. But there’s one shining blessing: an unemployed worker earns nothing, so, he/she doesn’t pay a lot of taxes. To pay as less taxes as possible seems to be one of the primary goals of true Americans. It is very unpatriotic to pay taxes, they say. So, closing the non-profit worthless auto-industry is partly fulfilling the American dream. The unemployed workers don’t pay taxes anymore.
What a relief!
Less government is also on the wish-list of true Americans, so, there has to be no help for the unemployed workers and they starve to death, what will decrease the unemployment numbers. And with the workers dies the knowledge. That’s fine, because without terminal stupid voters the GOP (God’s Own Party) can’t exist so education and knowledge is not what the patriotic fighters for less taxes and less government can use. If you are qualified to do good work and the work is taken away from you, you have to die. Not anybody can win in the competition, even not if you are the best and the most diligent in the world. Without work you are trash and your spouse is trash and your children are trash, perhaps you are black, yellow or gay too. Shame on you! If you die, you go to hell and what option is left? None! If you don’t work, you don’t pay taxes and you have to die. It’s unpatriotic and un-American to provide social care by spreading the wealth. So die, but keep quiet. That’s how the Founders of the Republic want it. There is no hope for you and you have to know that.
Three million people are at work in the worthless auto-industry. It’s 1% of the population. Who cares?
This is what Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has to report:

[Obama] faces an economic catastrophe not seen since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate is still a modest 6.5 percent -- a trifle by Depression standards -- but back then only about 10 percent of Americans owned stock. Now nearly 50 percent do, and 68 percent live in homes they own. They all have been severely hurt. These people may not necessarily be out of work but they are certainly out of optimism and, if they are about to retire, out of their minds with worry.
In the past week, I've spoken with a gaggle of experts, some of them in finance, some in real estate and some in just plain investments. I've interviewed media magnates, both foreign and domestic, an investment banker, a manufacturer, and a former banker. This is what I have to report: Economically, we're in a recession. Psychologically, we're in a depression. The reason: None of these experts knows what to do.
Oh, sure, most everyone thinks some sort of spending plan would be a good idea -- get to work on the infrastructure. Most of them think we've got to thaw the frozen credit system. Schemes come and schemes go, but the suddenness of the collapse -- last year, the head of Goldman Sachs earned $68.5 million; this year, about $68 million less -- has produced a severe loss of faith in what once seemed an economic system blessed by God himself. Something has gone wrong. But what?
The solution is out there... somewhere. But it will take time and trial to find it. Obama knows this. It was one of the things he mentioned on "60 Minutes." But what he might not appreciate is that among his many gifts, the one that might matter most is how close he can come to Rooseveltian enthusiasm -- that optimism, that capacity for empathy that made so many ordinary people love this rich man and stick with him. Lincoln, a sometimes melancholy and somber man, belongs, as Edwin M. Stanton said, "to the ages." Roosevelt belongs to ours.

The other option is Sarah Palin, leading lady of God's Own Party and the solution to all misery: no palling around with terrorists, no abortion, no gay marriage less government and less taxes. Eh... do something? Yeah: pray!

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Financial Crisis Tab Already In The Trillions

Given the speed at which the federal government is throwing money at the financial crisis, the average taxpayer, never mind member of Congress, might not be faulted for losing track.

CNBC, however, has been paying very close attention and keeping a running tally of actual spending as well as the commitments involved.

Try $4.28 trillion dollars. That's $4,284,500,000,000 and more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation, based on our computations from a variety of estimates and sources*.
Not only is it a astronomical amount of money, its' a complicated cocktail of budgeted dollars, actual spending, guarantees, loans, swaps and other market mechanisms by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and other offices of government taken over roughly the last year, based on government data and news releases. Strictly speaking, not every cent is a direct result of what's called the financial crisis, but it is arguably related to it.

Some 68-percent of the sum falls under the Federal Reserve's umbrella, while another 16 percent is the under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, as defined under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, signed into law in early October. (The TARP alone is bigger than virtually any other US government endeavor dating back to the Louisiana Purchase. See slideshow.)

"Financial Crisis Balance Sheet"

Government Entity Sum in Billions of Dollars Federal Reserve (TAF) Term Auction Facility 900 Discount Window Lending Commercial Banks 99.2 Investment Banks 56.7 Loans to buy ABCP 76.5 AIG 112.5 Bear Stearns 29.5 (TSLF) Term Securities Lending Facility 225 Swap Lines 613 (MMIFF) Money Market Investor Funding Facility 540 Commercial Paper Funding Facility 257 (TARP) Treasury Asset Relief Program 700 Other: Automakers 25 (FHA) Federal Housing Administration 300 Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac 350 Total 4284.5 Note: Figures as of Nov. 13, 2008

Hill Heavy Hitters Filling Obama’s West Wing Line-up

'Change' Candidate Nods to Experience
By Alec MacGillis, Washington Post Staff Writer ,Tuesday, November 18, 2008

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to defend himself against charges of inexperience by calling for fresh perspective in Washington. "The American people . . . understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result," he would say to big applause.
But as the president-elect's White House team takes shape, it is becoming clear that Obama in fact sees value in having plenty of the "same old folks" around to help him. After selecting as his chief of staff Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a House power broker and Clinton White House veteran, Obama over the weekend added several other top advisers with deep seasoning in Washington and on Capitol Hill in particular.
Although Obama has shown a fondness for surrounding himself with big thinkers and visionary experts, his White House hires suggest that his West Wing, at least, will place a premium on skilled legislative practitioners.
Congressional Democrats are taking the hires of Hill veterans as an encouraging sign that Obama -- the first member of Congress to be elected president since John F. Kennedy -- plans to work closely with them, which they regard as a welcome change from Bush's administration, which even many Hill Republicans said left them out of the loop.
The staff choices "represent a new era in cooperative relations between the White House and Congress," said Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). "It bodes well for an extraordinary period of legislative accomplishment -- for creating an atmosphere in which legislative victories will be maximized."
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the Hill expertise is particularly needed given the shaky economy. "It sends a very clear message . . . that he is ready to work with us from Day One," she said. "We need to get past the 'getting to know you' phase quickly, and this helps get that done."
But some veterans of Republican White Houses are asking how Obama's promise of a clean break with the past squares with his elevation of so many Washington insiders skilled in partisan warfare.
"This is more 'Groundhog Day' than a fresh start," said Peter Wehner, a former senior adviser to Bush who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Wehner said he thinks Obama is trying to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which stumbled early on, but he warned against "overlearning history." "It's reassuring having people who have been around the block -- it means he'll step on fewer banana peels in the early going," he said. But "this just doesn't have the feel of a political transformation," he added.
Other veterans of GOP administrations said Obama could yet prove an agent of change -- on his own.
"The transformative part of his presidency is the president himself," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and supported Obama. "The most important voice for change is his. And change is accomplished in our system not by erasing all of the lines on paper but by having people who understand government's structure and so can reinforce lines that have been wrongfully distorted or broken in terms of separation of powers."
Obama adviser Anita Dunn made a similar case. "What you're seeing is the same kind of approach he took to his campaign -- some new people, some old people, like Goldilocks," she said. "What you see is someone who is not going to make some of the mistakes administrations have made in the past of not understanding how to get things done in Washington. People who say 'Where's the change?' need only look at the president of the United States . . . the person at the top who sets the tone and the priorities."
The latest hires include Pete Rouse, an understated but highly regarded Hill veteran who will be a senior adviser in the White House after 30 years on the Hill -- 19 working for Thomas A. Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, and four as Obama's chief of staff. Hired as deputy White House chiefs of staff are Mona Sutphen, who worked for a D.C. consulting firm after serving on Clinton's National Security Council, and Jim Messina, who was the Obama campaign's chief of staff after serving in the same capacity for Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is helping lead the way on health-care legislation.
Hired as Obama's top congressional liaison is Phil Schiliro, another highly regarded Hill veteran who in 25 years there served as Daschle's policy director and, most recently, as chief of staff to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Selected as White House counsel is Greg Craig, who served in the State Department under Clinton and acted as his counsel during his impeachment but broke with the Clintons to endorse Obama.
These experienced Washington hands will be joined by Obama's top confidants from Chicago -- David Axelrod, his chief campaign strategist, and Valerie Jarrett, a businesswoman and close family friend who is helping direct the transition alongside former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. She will serve as Obama's senior adviser and public liaison.
Several White House veterans said the mix represented a healthy combination of new blood and D.C. experience -- not unlike what Ronald Reagan brought in 1980, when he combined Washington hands such as James A. Baker III and Kenneth M. Duberstein with confidantes Edwin Meese III and Michael K. Deaver.
Obama, having collected relatively few loyalists during his rapid rise, has shown an eagerness to hire the best available people regardless of personal connections or ideology, the veterans said. The clearest example was his success persuading Rouse, who was looking for work after Daschle's 2004 defeat, to join the office of a freshman senator.
"Obama understands that in order to be an effective president, you need to win battles on Capitol Hill," said Duberstein, who was Reagan's chief of staff. "What he seems to be putting in place is a mixture of people who know how to get things done in Washington along with people who have known him for many years. That fits with what he has campaigned on . . . which is shrewdly bringing people together. It is all about putting together a pragmatic governing coalition and having the people on hand who know how to get things done."
Duberstein disagreed that Washington veterans undercut the change that the country voted for Nov. 4. "What the American people are saying is: 'Enough of the stalemate and gridlock. Get people in there who know what they are doing,' " he said.
Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's first chief of staff, praised Obama for filling so many White House jobs so quickly. But he warned that having so much Hill experience on the team could give it too much of a legislative mind-set.
"A member of Congress holds hearings and healthy debates before he makes a decision. A president doesn't have that luxury," he said. "He is required to make snap decisions. Members of Congress can be much more deliberative, where a president has to be decisive. If you're a senator, you're one-hundredth of one-half of a decision. When you're president, you're 100 percent of a decision. You have to be more nimble."
Leon Panetta, who was Clinton's chief of staff, dismissed this concern. "It doesn't take very long before you develop an executive mind-set. On Capitol Hill you usually have 535 different [bosses], and at the White House you only have one boss -- and you learn that real fast," he said. "I just look at it from the point of view of having people who can hit the ground running. With all the problems the country faces, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to have people who understand how Washington works."

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What about Bill Clinton?

Aides and advisers to the Clintons feel comfortable that the vetting of Bill Clinton will not disqualify Hillary from becoming Secretary of State, and argue that the former president could be a tremendous asset both to his wife and Barack Obama in the future administration.

Nevertheless, there is a concern that critical media coverage could sour the Obama and Clinton camp's view of the arrangement and hurt Sen. Clinton's chances of ending up at the post.

In conversations on Monday, officials noted that Bill Clinton has long expected that much of his work during the past eight years would be opened to public scrutiny if his wife were to win the presidential election. Moreover, they added, the former president already had made a substantial share of his financial record public -- including every paid speech he has delivered since leaving the White House -- in accordance with congressional disclosure laws that impact his wife. But there still exists the possibility that a post-presidential arrangement, whether through Clinton's library or global initiative fund, could prove cosmetically problematic and spur enough of a media frenzy to scuttle things.

"The next two or three days will be critical," said one aide. Another figure close to the Clintons noted that they are focused on "trying to weather this storm... If they can limit [the press fallout] around Bill, she'll get the appointment."

Officials told the Huffington Post and other outlets last week that Obama had (informally) offered Clinton the post during their meeting in Chicago. Some subsequent media accounts stated that a formal offer had not yet been extended. But aides say that is a distinction without a difference: Clinton believes, based on her meeting with Obama, that the position is hers if she wants it; moreover, aides say, Obama's transition team would not have gone through with the vetting of the former president (nor would he have agreed to it) if the idea of Hillary at State wasn't crystal clear.

There is lingering concern over Bill Clinton. The Clinton Global Initiative has raised billions of dollars from many international financial and political entities. In addition, both he and Obama (and, on occasion, he and his wife) have had clear policy disagreements that could muddle the message of the next president.

But lost amidst these potential hurdles is another obvious element: Bill Clinton could also be, if tasked correctly, a tremendous asset to Obama, observers say. A renowned diplomat with perhaps the thickest rolodex of officials around the world, the former president could at once help amplify the White House message while serving as a friendly buffer should there be a fissure between Obama and another international leader.

Take, as a case study, negotiations over a Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Clinton has a clear interest in the passage of any such measure, having received $800,000 in speaking fees from an organization promoting the trade deal. In addition, he has spoken out in favor of the Bush administration's approach, contradicting not only Obama but his own wife.

However, Clinton could be a huge help for President Obama should he try to restructure such an arrangement with the Colombians, as seems likely. Clinton is close to President Uribe and has myriad connections to prominent government officials, business leaders, and aid groups in the country. Any fallout between Uribe and the Obama administration could be lessened by Clinton's diplomatic touch, as could frictions that accompany negotiating trade deals or other political arrangements.

"This is the very interesting flip side of the problem people are starting to talk about with Bill Clinton," said Paul Blustein, a trade expert at the Brookings Institute. "The ideal outcome with the Colombia FTA is that it gets renegotiated so that Obama can support it without it looking like he just made cosmetic changes. At the same time, it has to be done in a way that preserves Uribe's dignity... to make sure he can also save his face. And Bill Clinton is certainly a master at that. He has a personal relationship with the two guys involved, which is obviously a big plus... He can go and say 'I feel your pain' [to Uribe] or something to that effect, and be believed. He's good at that."

Certainly, having Bill Clinton as a mediator requires some initial conditions to be met. For starters, his wife would be the one calling the shots -- having too many cooks in the diplomatic kitchen is both problematic and dangerous. Moreover, Bill would have to untangle his financial ties and start publicly adopting positions that were in line with the Obama administration. The former task would cost money -- but that is usually the price of public service. The latter is merely a matter of control and messaging.

"He doesn't have to be supportive or critical," said Rob Shapiro, an undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton White House. "If asked about the contradiction between his position and the president's he ought to say: 'I support the position of the president.' And if they say what about the difference, he should say: 'I support the position of the president.'"

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Ted Kennedy back to work

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