"There's a broader lesson to be learned here: Gov. Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later and as president one of the things I've learned is you can't do that," Obama told CBS News Wednesday."It's important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you've thought through the ramifications before you make them."Here is the video:
Mitt Romney’s campaign justified its secrecy in setting up a press conference in front of Solyndra’s California headquarters Thursday by warning of a conspiracy by White House officials to potentially sabotage their efforts. “We knew, if word got out, that Solyndra would do everything in their power, and the Obama administration would do everything in their power, to stop us from having this news conference,”an unnamed adviser told reporters, per CNN. Reporters raised the question of how this devious plot to derail the event would work, given that the freedom to hold a press conference in public is a fairly basic right. “Well, he’s only the president of the United States,” the adviser replied. “I mean, they could work with town officials to deny us access.” Romney alluded to similar concerns in his press conference. “I think there are people who don’t want to see this event occur, don’t want to have questions asked about this particular investment,” Romney told reporters when asked about the secrecy behind the event, according to the New York Times. DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse dismissed the claim of conspiracy as a fringe notion. “It’s actually bizarre,” he said. “I don’t want to use the term ‘weird,’ but I don't know where he would get that idea from.” Woodhouse noted the irony that Romney supporters actually interrupted an Obama campaign press conference in Boston with chants and a bubble machine earlier the same day. “He’s delusional,” another Democratic aide told TPM when asked about the charge.WTF???? Mitt Romney has to hold a super-secret press conference in front of Solyndra's headquarters because the Obama campaign may intentionally sabotage the Romney campaign's efforts to hold a press conference in front of Solyndra's headquarters? This does not make any sense. If Mitt Romney wants to hold a press conference in front of Solyndra's HQ, then he can hold as many press conferences as he wishes. Why would the Obama campaign try to stop him--because of the Solyndra loan controversy? President Barack Obama can relentlessly attack Romney on his Bain Capital record, or even his record as Massachusetts governor. Why would the Obama campaign want to stop a Romney press conference? Then again, perhaps the Romney campaign is really that paranoid. This could be another attempt by the Romney campaign to connect with conservative, conspiracy-theory crazies, while at the same time projecting the Obama campaign as engaging in such secret conspiracies. This certainly is a classic, Karl Rove trick of using your candidate's weakness against your opponent. It is also ironic that Romney campaign aids disrupted an Obama press conference today in Boston. So the question I would have to ask is really, who is the more paranoid, delusional, conspiracy-minded, and willing to crash an opposing candidate's press conference? I'll give you a hint--it ain't Barack Obama. Update: Now Mitt Romney is accusing the Obama campaign of sending staffers to disrupt Romney campaign rallies. So Mitt Romney is supposedly justified in disrupting Obama press conferences. From YouTube: Strangely enough, I have not seen any reports of Obama campaign staffers disrupting Romney campaign rallies or press conferences though.
Senate Min. Leader Mitch McConnell and House Min. Leader John Boehner both signaled support for at least some part of a GOP-led move to repeal health care legislation today, suggesting the GOP will run on the issue in the fall campaign.
"I can tell you with the campaign that will continue with the American people, I think the slogan will be 'Repeal and Replace,'" McConnell told reporters after a weekly lunch with fellow members of the GOP Conference.
In a statement following Pres. Obama's bill signing today, Boehner added: "Republicans will continue to stand on principle, hold President Obama accountable for his promises, and fight to repeal this government takeover of health care so we can start over on common-sense reforms that lower costs for families and small businesses."
They are the first 2 members of GOP leadership to hint at embracing a repeal move. Until today, GOPers have been hesitant to support such a move, worrying Dems will tag them for opposing the more popular parts of the bill, and several members of House leadership have suggested a partial repeal while keeping some more popular sections of the bill intact.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced a measure to repeal health care legislation. In the House, Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Steve King (R-IA), Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) have introduced a similar bill aimed at reversing the new law.
McConnell introduced DeMint's bill under a Senate rule that allows it to immediately be placed on the upper chamber's calendar.
Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday.
McCain and another Republican senator decried the effect health reform legislation has had on the Senate, a day after the House passed the upper chamber's bill.
GOP senators emerged Monday to caution that the health debate had taken a toll on the institution, warning of little work between parties the rest of this year.
"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
President Obama signed major health care legislation into law on Tuesday. Doug Mills/The New York TimesWASHINGTON —With the strokes of 20 pens, President Obama signed his health care overhaul — the most sweeping social legislation enacted in decades — into law on Tuesday during a festive, at times raucous, White House ceremony.
“We have just now enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care,” Mr. Obama declared in the East Room, before an audience of more than 200 Democratic lawmakers, White House aides and others who rode a yearlong legislative roller-coaster ride that ended with Sunday night’s House passage of the bill. They interrupted him repeatedly with shouts and standing ovations.
Moments later, the president sat down at a table, and affixed his left-handed, curlicue signature, almost letter by letter, to the measure, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, using 20 pens that he intended to pass out to key lawmakers and others as mementoes.
He was surrounded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other top Democratic leaders, as well as some special guests: 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Seattle, who became an advocate for health care reform after his mother died without health insurance, and Connie Anderson, the sister of Natoma Canfield, the Ohio cancer survivor whose struggle to pay skyrocketing premiums became a touchstone of Mr. Obama’s campaign to overhaul the system.
Vicki Kennedy, the widow of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had been a driving force for health care legislation before his death last year, was also by Mr. Obama’s side. Mrs. Kennnedy wore a blue plastic bracelet around her wrist that said “TedStrong,” and appeared emotional after the ceremony.
“I know how happy he would be,” she said of her husband, adding, “It was so meaningful for him, in a very personal way.”
And in the audience sat Mr. Kennedy’s son, Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island. He was also there, carrying a gift for the president: a copy of a bill his father introduced in 1970 to provide national health insurance. On it, the younger Mr. Kennedy had written a personal message to Mr. Obama.
For Mr. Obama, the bill signing marks a high point of his presidency. For the many House members in the audience, it marks the end of a trying, chapter, and they let the president know it as he remarked that many had “taken their lumps during this difficult debate.”
(Reuters) - Less than 24 hours after the House of Representatives gave final approval to a sweeping overhaul of healthcare, attorneys general from several states on Monday said they will sue to block the plan on constitutional grounds.
Republican attorneys general in 11 states warned that lawsuits will be filed to stop the federal government overstepping its constitutional powers and usurping states' sovereignty.
States are concerned the burden of providing healthcare will fall on them without enough federal support.
Ten of the attorneys general plan to band together in a collective lawsuit on behalf of Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.
"To protect all Texans' constitutional rights, preserve the constitutional framework intended by our nation's founders, and defend our state from further infringement by the federal government, the State of Texas and other states will legally challenge the federal health care legislation," said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, in a statement.
The Republican attorney generals say the reforms infringe on state powers under the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, who plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, said Congress lacks authority under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce to force people to buy insurance. The bill also conflicts with a state law that says Virginians cannot be required to buy insurance, he added.
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In addition to the pending lawsuits, bills and resolutions have been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures seeking to limit or oppose various aspects of the reform plan through laws or state constitutional amendments, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
So far, only two states, Idaho and Virginia, have enacted laws, while an Arizona constitutional amendment is seeking voter approval on the November ballot. But the actual enactment of the bill by President Barack Obama could spur more movement on the measures by state lawmakers.
The House of Representatives passed the sweeping health care bill with a narrow margin, securing a significant victory for President Obama, who lobbied hard this week for the controversial legislation.
The vote was certain after the House Democratic leadership finalized a deal this afternoon with anti-abortion Democrats to vote for the health care bill in exchange for an executive order from Obama affirming no federal funding for abortion.
The House today voted on two separate pieces of legislation. One, the Senate health care bill and second, the amendments to that bill made by House members and Obama.
The bill now goes to the president's desk to sign, after which it will become law. The White House has not yet decided where or when Obama will sign the Senate health care bill, which he needs to do before the "fixes" to that bill begin to be debated in the Senate, though White House officials say it will not be this evening.
As the last speaker before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said that by passing the bill, Congress would be taking a historic step.
"We will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare and now, tonight, health care for all Americans," Pelosi said.
Unlike many liberal blogs, I'm encouraged by the spending freeze and thrilled by the debt commission idea. But to my mind, none of this makes any sense unless Obama passes a core political test.
Does he have the courage to insist that healthcare reform is not dead? Does he use his clout to pressure the Senate to give the House some signs that the reconciliation strategy can work? Does he use every ounce of political capital to pass this bill, the cornerstone of his reform agenda, the failure of which will mean the end to any grappling with the health insurance crisis for another generation.
If he cannot do that, if he punts on this bill, or if he is passive and uncommitted, then those of us who placed hope in his leadership skills will have to acknowledge we hoped too much. The test of leadership is sometimes staying a course even when all the polls and pols have turned against it on a dime. There are times when a president should preside; but there are also times when he must lead.
I have one simple test: if the health bill dies from neglect and irresolution, Obama is no leader.
He is a follower. He cannot vote present on this one. He has majorities in both Houses and a landslide victory and he is unable to deliver on a core priority in his first year. That's a definition of a failed presidency and it is why the GOP - with nothing to offer the country - decided to make it his Waterloo. They knew and know how gutting this bill and killing reform and suffocating any serious change in this country is their way to a nihilist victory. And such a victory would not be a vindication of Republican policy right now. It would be a perfectly reasonable response to a Democratic party palpably incapable of governing and a president clearly unable to deliver.
If he cannot do this, he does not have the fortitude to be a successful president. And his weakness on this will be rightly interpreted as weakness everywhere else. That applies to foreign policy as well, with Netanyahu and Khamenei and Chavez and Sarkozy all watching to see what this guy is made of.
These are dark times as the forces of reaction and resistance redouble their efforts to prevent any reform on any issue. Obama was elected to break through that impasse. If he cannot deliver, he must cede to someone who can.
WASHINGTON — President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.
The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks.
But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.
“A lot of our caucus won’t like it but I don’t think we have any choice,” said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. “After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents’ abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we can’t afford to be spending more than Obama.”
WASHINGTON - After Barack Obama's first six weeks as president, the American public's attitudes about the two political parties couldn't be more different, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.
Despite the country's struggling economy and vocal opposition to some of his policies, President Obama's favorability rating is at an all-time high. Two-thirds feel hopeful about his leadership and six in 10 approve of the job he's doing in the White House.
"What is amazing here is how much political capital Obama has spent in the first six weeks," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. "And against that, he stands at the end of this six weeks with as much or more capital in the bank."
By comparison, the Republican Party — which resisted Obama's recently passed stimulus plan and has criticized the spending in his budget — finds its favorability at an all-time low. It also receives most of the blame for the current partisanship in Washington and trails the Democrats by nearly 30 percentage points on the question of which party could best lead the nation out of recession.
These high marks for Obama come at a time when Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the economy. Only seven percent say they're satisfied about the state of the economy, which is an all-time low in the poll. What's more, a whopping 76 percent believe the economy still has a ways to go before it hits rock bottom.
Obama, Hart says, "has done a Herculean job in raising the spirits and mood of the American public against what is an economic tsunami."
According to the poll, part of the reason why Obama's numbers remain high despite these economic concerns is that the public doesn't blame the president for the current state of the economy. Eighty-four percent say this is an economy Obama inherited, and two-thirds of those people think he has at least a year before he's responsible for it.
"That's a long leash," McInturff says. "It normally doesn't last that long. But believe me, that's a good place to start."
Yet McInturff cautions that while these numbers suggest a patient public, "Americans are notoriously impatient people."
Just 26 percent view the Republican Party positively, which is an all-time low for the party. That's compared with 49 percent who have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
In addition, a combined 56 percent say the previous Bush administration deserved "almost all" of the blame or a "major part" of the blame for the partisanship in Washington, and a combined 41 percent say the same of congressional Republicans.
By contrast, only 24 percent say that of congressional Democrats and just 11 percent say that of the Obama administration.
Also, the public overwhelmingly believes the GOP's opposition to Obama's policies and programs is based on politics: 56 percent say they're trying to gain political advantage, versus 30 percent who say they're standing up for their principles.
Finally, Americans don't seem to have confidence in the Republican Party when it comes to the economy. By a 48-20 percent margin, they think the Democratic Party would do a better job of getting the country out of the recession.
Republicans, Hart argues, "have been tone deaf to the results of the 2008 election... They never heard the message. They continue to preach the old-time religion."
McInturff, the GOP pollster, agrees. "These are difficult and problematic numbers."
House and Senate negotiators reached agreement today on a stimulus plan with a cost of about $789 billion after scaling down the versions passed by both houses, congressional leaders announced.
"The differences between the Senate and House versions were resolved," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters this afternoon.
He said the final version "creates more jobs than the original Senate bill and spends less than the original House bill." The bill passed by the Senate yesterday totaled $838 billion. The House version approved last week had a price tag of $819 billion.
House and Senate negotiators, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reid, huddled this morning to try to iron out the final details on the massive package in advance of a formal House-Senate conference this afternoon in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Room off the Senate floor. Democrats hoped the conference would produce quick agreement and set the legislation on a glide path to passage in the House tomorrow and the Senate over the weekend.
The agreement on a trimmed stimulus package came as Obama continued his public exhortations to lawmakers to send him legislation he can sign into law.
"Enacting this plan is both urgent and essential to our recovery," he said at a construction site in Fairfax County. "The time for talk is past."
NEW YORK - Investors are frustrated with the government’s latest bank bailout plan — and showing it by unloading stocks.
The major stock indexes fell more than 4 percent Tuesday, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which tumbled 382 points. Financial stocks led the market lower, a sign of how concerned Wall Street is about the government’s ability to restore the health of the banking industry.
Traders and investors said the lack of specifics from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on how the government will direct more than $1 trillion in public and private support was troubling.
The plan is aimed at restoring proper functioning to credit markets, which seized up over worries about bad debt after the September bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The latest plan calls for a government-private sector partnership to help remove banks’ soured assets from their books. It would also boost an effort to unclog the credit markets that govern loans to consumers and businesses.
“The good news is they are going to spend a trillion dollars, the bad news is they don’t know how,” said James Cox, managing partner at Harris Financial Group.
“They built this up as being a panacea,” he said. “There was so much hope pinned on them to do a good job. The expectations have been so high. It’s hard to live up to.”
Investors also questioned whether this plan, which followed previous efforts in the final months of 2008, would work. Some selling was to be expected, however, as stocks rose sharply last week ahead of the announcement.
Geithner’s speech “basically puts a spotlight on the fact that the government has no idea how to fix the problem,” said Jeff Buetow, senior portfolio manager at Portfolio Management Consultants. “People bought on rumor and hope, and now they’re selling on reality.”
PRINCETON, NJ -- The American public gives President Barack Obama a strong 67% approval rating for the way in which he is handling the government's efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill, while the Democrats and, in particular, the Republicans in Congress receive much lower approval ratings of 48% and 31%, respectively.
These findings, based on Gallup Poll interviews conducted Feb. 6-7, underscore the degree to which Obama appears to be maintaining the upper hand over his opponents from a public opinion perspective as he and congressional leaders wrangle over the precise form and substance of a new economic stimulus plan. (Recent Gallup polling also shows that a slight majority of Americans in general favor the idea of passing a stimulus plan of around $800 billion, a sentiment that has stayed constant over the last several weeks.)
Obama will address the stimulus issue before a nationwide audience on Monday night with his first prime-time news conference. He will also conduct town-hall meetings this week in Elkhart, Ind., and Fort Myers, Fla., as part of his efforts to help sell his view of the urgency of passing a stimulus package. The new Gallup data certainly suggest that these public relations efforts will find a generally receptive audience.
The data in particular show the sharp divide between the public's views of how Obama has handled efforts to pass a stimulus bill and its views of how the Republicans have handled this -- a divide that quantitatively produces a 36-point approval gap.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A new national poll suggests that three out of four Americans approve of the job Barack Obama's doing as President — but the economic stimulus package he's trying to push through Congress is not nearly as popular.
Seventy-six percent of those quesioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday give President Obama a thumbs-up when it comes to the way he's performing his duties, with 23 percent disapproving of the way Obama's handling his job as president.
Three out of four Democrats support the bill, but that number drops to 51 percent for self-identified independents, and just 32 percent for Republicans. Nearly seven in ten Republicans questioned oppose the bill.
"Partisanship is alive and well — not just in the House and Senate, but in the rank-and-file as well," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The partisan split that has been a staple of American public opinion for decades is alive and well."
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Sixty-four percent of those polled say the current bill being debated in the Senate would help the economy a lot or somewhat, with 36 percent feeling that the package would not help the economy much or at all.
"The public may be lukewarm on the stimulus package because they only see limited benefits from it," Holland said. "Sixteen percent say it would help the economy a lot, but 48 percent foresee only some improvements if the bill passes."
Previous research has suggested that there is a sharp partisan divide concerning almost everything involved with the massive economic stimulus plan. The sense of urgency that it be passed is no exception.
Only 29% of Republicans are willing to say that passing a new stimulus bill is critically important, contrasted with the nearly two-thirds of Democrats who hold this view.
Still, a clear majority of Republicans say it's at least important to pass the bill.
Ginsburg, 75, had the surgery at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. She will remain in the hospital for seven to 10 days, said her surgeon, Dr. Murray Brennan, according to a release issued by the court.
In 1999, Ginsburg had surgery for colon cancer and had chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The only woman on the court, she has been a justice since 1993.
The pancreatic cancer was discovered during a routine, annual exam late last month at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
President Barack Obama took office with a strong prospect that his first four years in office could bring two or more openings on the high court, though he may well be replacing aging liberal justices with younger ones.
Barring the unexpected, the court's balance of power — four on the left, four on the right, one in the middle leaning right [Kennedy is the swing vote] — is not likely to change significantly.
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Chances are, Obama's first appointment will be a woman — especially if it's to take the place of Ginsburg, the only woman on the court. And, like Ginsburg, she will be liberal leaning.
Like every sitting justice, she also probably will be a federal appeals court judge. Obama has a number of options along those lines, including these five:
* Judge Diane Wood of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.
* Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
* Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
* Pam Karlan, a law professor at Stanford University.
* Judge Margaret McKeown of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
Either Wardlaw or Sotomayor would be the court's first Hispanic justice.
WASHINGTON — Spurred by a dismal unemployment report for January, senators were close to reaching an accord on Friday evening on an economic stimulus program of some $800 billion sought by President Obama to pull the country out of the worst recession in years.
Democrats appeared to have succeeded, after a long day of private negotiations and intense public debate, to have won the support of enough Republicans to move the package toward a final vote. Assuming there is a final vote, passage would be assured.
Exact outlines of the accord were not immediately available, but the senators reportedly agreed to cut some spending and strip out some business tax cuts to gain enough Republican support.
Once the Senate votes on the package, differences between the Senate legislation and a considerably different version passed recently by the House would have to be reconciled. President Obama has said he hopes all that can be accomplished in time for him to sign the measure within 10 days.
Three centrist Republicans, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, were said to be among the senators being wooed by Democrats, whose efforts were bolstered by Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, who is a former Congressman from Illinois.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, and Mr. Emanuel reportedly met with Ms. Collins and Mr. Specter Friday evening to smooth out any remaining wrinkles. Soon afterward, Mr. Reid conferred with his fellow Democrats to gain their approval.
The Senate negotiations and day-long public debate were given new urgency by the announcement on Friday morning that 598,000 jobs were lost in January. Democratic lawmakers said it was time to stop quibbling about the exact parameters of the legislation, which mixes safety net spending, tax cuts and a huge infusion of dollars into federal programs.
At least one prominent former Bush official has the following message for President Obama: I don’t care if it’s warm enough to grow orchids in the Oval Office. Put your suit jacket on.
In an interview scheduled to run Wednesday night, Andrew H. Card Jr. told the syndicated news show Inside Edition that “there should be a dress code of respect” in the White House and that he wished Mr. Obama “would wear a suit coat and tie.”
Mr. Card, who was George W. Bush’s first chief of staff, becomes the first member of that famously buttoned-up administration to criticize the more relaxed Obama dress code.
According to Inside Edition’s Web site, Mr. Card also said:
“The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”
Mr. Card went on to add that, while he would not criticize Mr. Obama for his appearance, “I do expect him to send the message that people who are going to be in the Oval Office should treat the office with the respect that it has earned over history.”
As the Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported last week, Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush have, among other distinctions, drastically different views on White House dress codes.
The knives are already out just two weeks after Bush left the White House, as some of his closest friends and former aides begin lobbing sharp criticisms at the Obama administration.
The comments mark a departure from the general rules of decorum that held sway during the final weeks of the Bush administration, when the departing president and his aides made a point of fostering a cordial relationship with the Obama team. Bush himself has refrained from criticism so far, making no public remarks since returning to Texas.
"It's certainly unbecoming, especially for a former vice president," Thomas E. Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, said in reference to the remarks by Cheney and others. "It reinforces the fact that there's a lot of bitterness about the low public standing of Bush and the administration as they left office, and the soaring standing of Barack Obama. A lot of these people are still caught up in these ideological battles and can't let go."
Other historians and political experts say that, in general, former presidents and their senior aides tend to withhold public criticism during the start of a successor's term, although there have been anomalies. While a defeated Al Gore laid low in 2001, former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton -- a new senator from New York -- publicly attacked Bush in March of that year for allegedly attempting to "turn back the clock on the Clinton administration."
This year, the hard feelings among some Bush supporters began to flare immediately after Obama's inaugural address, which included some implicit criticism of Bush and his tenure. GOP consultant and former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon wrote in a blog posting after Bush's trip home Jan. 20 that some felt Obama took "unnecessary shots" and used "borrowed ideas," although he also stressed that Bush himself expressed no concerns. Longtime Bush advisers Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett offered similar views in interviews and appearances.
Then Gonzales, who resigned as Bush's attorney general under a cloud of scandal in 2007, told National Public Radio that he disagreed with testimony from attorney general nominee Eric Holder, who said the CIA interrogation technique called waterboarding was torture.
Holder "needs to be careful in making a blanket pronouncement like that," Gonzales said, because it could affect the "morale and dedication" of intelligence officials.
Presidential historian Robert Dallek said the wave of criticism "speaks to their defensiveness," noting that Bush spent much of his last two months in office defending his rocky White House tenure.
"This was an administration that left so much under a cloud," Dallek said. "They're just continuing a pattern of aggression in defending their failed record, which is what the current judgment is among most Americans."
WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — President Obama urged House Democrats tonight to set aside their differences with the Senate and Republicans in order to push forward quickly with the stimulus package. At times, he sounded irritated with critics who contended the bill was too big or its purpose wrong-headed.
And while he was indeed before a friendly audience, or, as the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, phrased it, “among family,” Mr. Obama sought to chide his former congressional colleagues just a little bit:
“These aren’t just statistics. This is not a game, this is not a contest for who’s in power, who’s up and who’s down. These are your constituents. These are families you know and you care about. I believe it is important for us to set aside some of the gamesmanship in this town and get something done.”
I've said this elsewhere and I think it's worth saying again. After watching Obama, and seeing him handle this first GOP onslaught, I'm coming to the conclusion that this coming-late-to-the-game is a feature, not a bug. I think this is the way he rolls. And it's frustrating to watch but might be crazy like a fox.
Remember the Wright week? It looked like he was sunk. But he waited (it seemed too long?) and when he did the speech in Philadelphia, it not only neutralized the Wright story, it killed it dead, and turned it into a positive. It was an amazing piece of ju-jitsu and may have won him the election.
Obama lets the other side shoot first. Give it their best shot. Makes them show their game. Cause after a couple of days, he knows their game and how to beat it. He doesn't come out swinging, he formulates a plan, the best plan, the right plan. A few days into the GOP game, they've laid down all their best cards, they're out of ammunition and here comes Obama with an answer to everything they've said, and they have nothing to come back with. And because he gave them the hand of friendship at first, they're in a worse position.
It's high-risk, high-stakes. I really think it's his thing to hold back and force the other guy to play first. I don't have the stomach or the cojones to play the game that way. I'm starting to think Obama does, and that's why he wins.
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