US Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during a special naturalization ceremony at the Department of Justice in Washington last month. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
Does someone at White House want Eric Holder gone? (+video)
Is somebody at the White House trying to push Attorney General Eric Holder out? As in, out of his job, into the private sector?
That’s one reading of a Sunday New York Times story that’s still got people in D.C. buzzing.
First off, we’ll say that no one currently in the administration is quoted in the piece as saying anything like “Holder should quit to save us grief.” But an unnamed “Democratic former official” does say that, pretty much.
“The White House is apoplectic about him, and has been for a long time,” says this anonymous source of Mr. Holder.
One of the administration’s main complaints about the attorney general is that he “does not manage or foresee problems,” adds this source.
This is hearsay, right? The Times reporter hasn’t actually heard anybody in the White House express those views – only a secondary source who claims to have heard them expressed. That weakens the case, as any lawyer will tell you.
But anonymous carping through the media is a time-honored Washington way of easing out officials who have become a liability. It’s supposed to give said official a hint without anyone directly telling them. That way, there’s deniability. The White House can say the person is stepping down of their own accord.
And Holder has definitely been producing some bad headlines for the Obama team. In particular, many Republicans and some Democrats charge that Holder may have committed perjury by telling Congress under oath that he’d never heard of any “potential prosecution” of reporters under the Espionage Act, when he’d signed off on a Justice Department warrant for the communications records of Fox News reporter James Rosen that named the journalist as an espionage co-conspirator.
“I think he’s taken actions that demand explanation,” said Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona on CBS's “Face the Nation.”
Lots of Democrats say all this talk is blowing things way out of proportion. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland pointed out over the weekend that Mr. Rosen hasn’t been prosecuted. The real target of the warrant was Rosen’s source in the government, said Representative Van Hollen.
“It is often the practice in cases where you have investigations that you target somebody for the purpose of gathering information with never having any intention of prosecuting them,” Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.”
President Obama still has Holder’s back, say administration officials for the record. Firing him now, or pushing him out, would be just giving in to partisan critics, in this view. And the AG has powerful personal defenders in the West Wing, including special assistant to the president Valerie Jarrett.
But Holder’s longtime critics prefer to see the New York Times story as the precursor to an internal campaign to ease Holder out.
“Assuming this is a smoke signal from the White House, it indicates that Barack Obama won’t ask Holder to leave.... However, it’s a big hint that the West Wing won’t be too engaged in defending him and would like to see him leave on his own,” writes Ed Morrissey on the conservative Hot Air! website. “It’s not quite a shove, at least not yet, but it’s certainly a nudge.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California holds up a document as he speaks to IRS official Lois Lerner on Capitol Hill in Washington last month. He said on Sunday that Lerner's refusal to answer questions at the hearing suggested that the IRS scandal 'was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters.' (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Smoking gun in IRS scandal? Rep. Darrell Issa says he's close. (+video)
For all intents and purposes, the only politically relevant fact in the IRS scandal is the still-unanswered question of who, ultimately, decided to harangue tea party groups with reams of extra paperwork during the 2012 election season.
The Obama administration has suggested that a few "rogue agents" in one Cincinnati office were to blame. And the evidence, so far, has appeared to at least partly support that claim. Media reports have painted a picture of an office overwhelmed by the task of sorting through which tax-exempt groups were actually playing according to the arcane rules of US tax law and which were not. Disproportionately, it seems, conservative groups got the runaround.
Yet what has been lacking from the Republican viewpoint is — if not a smoking gun, precisely — then at least a steaming teacup. Where was the evidence that "rogue agents" were, in fact, dutiful subordinates, carrying out a clear plan of political recrimination that had its origins all the way back in Washington?
On Sunday, the House Republican tasked with carrying out that chamber's investigations offered his strongest claim yet that the IRS scandal was part of a broader Obama administration conspiracy.
"As late as last week, the administration's still trying to say there's a few rogue agents in Cincinnati, when in fact the indication is they were directly being ordered from Washington," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California on CNN's "State of the Union."
His evidence? Partial transcripts of the closed-door testimony to Congress of IRS employees in the Cincinnati office.
According to one transcript, an employee was asked if the scandal could be the work of a few local rogue agents. "It's impossible," the employee said. "As an agent we are controlled by many, many people. We have to submit many, many reports. So the chance of two agents being rogue and doing things like that could never happen."
The interrogator then asked: "With respect to the particular scrutiny that was given to tea party applications, those directions emanated from Washington, is that right?"
"I believe so," the IRS employee said.
Yet Issa and fellow Republicans were careful not to go too far Sunday. Scandals are Washington's political potboilers, after all, and the authors try to leave every Sunday morning chapter on a cliffhanger.
When Candy Crowley, the host of "State of the Union," pushed Representative Issa for a clearer link — evidence of a direct order from Washington — he said his committee was following a paper trial to try to establish facts, but the White House had not yet supplied subpoenaed documents.
It is part of an established Washington tradition. Congressional investigators from one party ask presidents for reams of documents in the name of transparency, presidents of the other party tell Congress to buzz off, saying Congress is on a political witch hunt, and the scandal survives for another week.
In the meantime, Issa was careful not to specifically accuse anyone of anything — while making it clear that he doesn't trust the Obama administration.
He cited Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS division on tax-exempt organizations, who last month refused to answer questions posed by Issa's committee, invoking her constitutional right not to incriminate herself.
"The reason that Lois Lerner tried to take the fifth is not because there is a rogue in Cincinnati, it's because this is a problem that was coordinated in all likelihood right out of Washington headquarters and we're getting to proving it," he added.
At one point, he even called White House spokesman Jay Carney a "paid liar."
"My gut tells me that too many people knew that this wrongdoing was going on before the election," he said. "And at least by some sort of convenient benign neglect, allowed it to go on through the election — allowed these groups, these conservative groups, these, if you will, not friends of the president, to be disenfranchised through an election."
The idea that the Obama administration has played the part of an enabler, allowing a vindictive partisan culture to flourish in the American bureaucracy, was echoed by other Republicans Sunday morning.
"The culture of the president calling tea party groups terrorists and tea-baggers, and that entire culture has been cultivated by the president and his people, and everyone has been following," said Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on "Fox News Sunday."
Added Republican strategist Karl Rove on ABC's "This Week": "People sitting in Cincinnati, Laguna Niguel, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., listen to people like Sen. Max Baucus, Sen. Chuck Schumer, President Obama. When President Obama goes out in 2010 and calls these groups ‘a threat to democracy,’ he’s blowing a dog whistle.”
Rove also said further investigation would reveal further discrimination.
“We’re going to find that the IRS targeted conservative political groups, not liberal groups, and that they targeted specific individuals,” he said.
Democratic strategist David Plouffe, also on "This Week," rebutted the charges.
“There’s been no suggestion — the [IRS] inspector general said there was no politics involved in this,” he said. “This was not an effort driven by the White House. It would be the dumbest political effort of all time.”
At least on that point, perhaps, both sides can agree.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks in Washington, April 2. Clinton is still the 2016 frontrunner, new poll shows. (Cliff Owen/AP/File)
Hillary Clinton approval plummets. Benghazi? (+video)
Hillary Rodham Clinton is still the 2016 frontrunner, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. The newly ex-secretary of State leads Sen. Rand Paul (R) of Kentucky by eight points, 49 to 41 percent, in survey results. She’s ahead of former Florida GOP Gov. Jeb Bush by 48 to 40 percent.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden, another possible Democratic contender in 2016, trails possible Republican opponents in the Quinnipiac results. He’s behind Senator Paul by four points, 39 to 43 percent. He lags Mr. Bush by 38 to 44 percent.
But the Quinnipiac numbers aren’t all green lights and roses for Mrs. Clinton. They show a big drop in her favorability rating from previous surveys. Back in February, Quinnipiac had her at an all-time favorability high. Sixty-one percent of respondents had a positive opinion of her, with only 34 percent judging her unfavorably. The latest poll shows a drop of nine points, with a positive/negative split of 52 to 40 percent.
It’s possible that her popularity has been hurt by Republican complaints that the Obama administration did not do enough to protect US diplomats in Libya and subsequently misled the public about the nature of the fatal attack on a US building in Benghazi.
“The drop in her favorability is substantial among men, Republicans and independent voters. One reason for her drop may be that 48 percent of voters blame her either a little or a lot for the death of the American ambassador in Benghazi,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in a statement.
It’s important to remember that this just one poll, however. And other surveys show a slightly different picture. A Pew survey from earlier this month showed that the public as a whole has paid little attention to the congressional hearings on Benghazi.
“Fewer than half (44%) of Americans say they are following the hearings very or fairly closely, virtually unchanged from late January when Hillary Clinton testified,” concludes a Pew overview of that survey.
And Clinton’s favorability ratings were still quite high in April, according to Gallup data. Gallup had her at a 64 to 31 percent favorable/unfavorable split, giving her much better numbers than her then-boss, President Obama.
An alternative explanation for her poorer showing in the Quinnipiac poll is partisanship. The numbers show that some self-identified Republicans who had backed Clinton are drifting home to candidates of their own party, note Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Brooke Brower on NBC’s First Read blog.
The NBC trio notes that Clinton has also lost some support among independents. But with women voters she leads both Paul and Bush by some 20 percentage points, while trailing among male voters by single digits.
“If she runs and if that gender gap persists, she’d be VERY DIFFICULT to beat,” according to First Read.
Then there’s this final caveat: Don’t take all these numbers too seriously. It’s early yet, so early that 2016 presidential polls may be more entertainment than useful indictors.
At this point in the cycle, polls in 2008 also showed Hillary Clinton the presidential leader, points out University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. In 2000, they pointed to Al Gore. In 1988, Teddy Kennedy or Gary Hart seemed the likely victor.
“Have a good laugh reading polls on ’16 Prez. AT THIS TIME in cycle polls got every open contest wrong 1960-08,” Sabato tweeted on Thursday.
President Obama waves as he boards Air Force One before his departure from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Thursday. Political controversy appears to be dragging down Obama's approval rating, a new poll indicates. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Obama approval rating slides: Scandals taking toll? (+video)
Is political controversy dragging down President Obama’s approval rating? That’s what the results of a new Quinnipiac University poll appear to indicate.
The survey finds Mr. Obama’s job performance numbers underwater, with 45 percent approving of his presidential actions and 49 percent disapproving. That represents a reversal from a May 1 Quinnipiac survey, when 48 percent of respondents approved of Obama’s performance and 45 percent disapproved.
Obama’s standing with self-identified Republicans and Democrats stayed pretty much the same. The difference in the latest poll was independents, who gave the president a negative 37 percent to 57 percent rating, compared with a negative 42 percent to 48 percent rating on May 1.
This slide occurs at a time when the White House has been dogged by criticism about its actions in the wake of last September’s fatal attacks on a US building in Benghazi, Libya, the apparent targeting of conservative nonprofit groups by the IRS, and the Justice Department’s surreptitious investigation of journalists’ communications.
In the Quinnipiac survey, a plurality of voters dismissed the Libya investigation as “just politics.” They appeared to take the IRS matter much more seriously, however. By a margin of 76 percent to 17 percent, respondents said a special prosecutor should investigate the IRS charges.
“There is overwhelming bipartisan support for a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, in a press release.
It’s important to note, however, that this is just one poll. The RealClearPolitics rolling average of major polls still has Obama’s rating above water (barely), with 48.7 percent approving of his actions and 48 percent approving.
Some other individual surveys that asked questions over the same days as Quinnipiac found much different results. Gallup’s latest rolling job approval rating, which includes responses collected up until May 28, has a 50 percent positive score for the president, with 43 percent disapproving of his job performance.
That’s not any different from the beginning of the month. On May 1, Gallup reported an identical 50 percent to 43 percent Obama job-performance split.
The bottom line is that it still may be too early to tell if current political controversies will be a continued drag on Obama’s polls. Overall, the RealClearPolitics average has bounced around over the past month, showing no clear trend of either down or up.
This image taken from video shows Congresswoman Michele Bachmann making a video announcement on her website. Bachmann, the staunchly conservative ex-presidential candidate who once called Barack Obama 'anti-American,' said Wednesday, she will not seek re-election in the House of Representatives. (michelebachmann.com/AP)
Will Michele Bachmann retirement save the GOP money? (+video)
Will Michele Bachmann’s impending retirement from the House save the Republican right wing money? That’s the interesting thesis David Freddoso offered at the blog Conservative Intelligence Briefing on Wednesday.
Mr. Freddoso says he thinks Ms. Bachmann is sincere about her political values, many of which he shares. But he adds that it’s a good thing for the GOP that conservative small donors now won’t be spending more than $10 million to reelect her to a safe Republican House seat every two years.
“Campaign money is a limited resource, and Michele Bachmann may hold a lifetime record for wasting it,” Freddoso writes.
It’s true that Bachmann has long been one of the most skilled fundraisers in US politics. She’s had to be, as her controversial and at times inaccurate statements on everything from the effect of vaccinations to John Wayne’s birthplace have sometimes helped her Democratic opponents in a Minnesota district that otherwise leans GOP.
She raised almost $15 million for her House race in 2012, for instance. (That’s separate from the $9 million she raised for her presidential bid.) She spent about $12 million of this cash to barely win reelection over Democratic opponent Jim Graves, who spent only $2.3 million.
“The race was the third most expensive in the House in 2012 in terms of funds raised as well as money spent,” notes Russ Choma at the Open Secrets campaign finance blog.
That’s been the pattern of Bachmann’s past races, too. In 2010 she spent $12 million to win 52 percent of the vote in a district that GOP presidential candidate John McCain won by nine percentage points.
What conservatives need are not more Bachmanns, but more like-minded candidates who can hold safe seats easily “so that they’re not competing for money that could go to conservatives running for shakier seats,” writes Freddoso.
He’s surely right that Republicans will spend less money on Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District seat in the future, with as much if not more chance of electoral success. The question is whether Bachmann herself will continue to raise as much money as she has in the past, and if so, what she’ll use it for.
Remember, political fundraising isn’t limited to actual candidates. Sarah Palin’s leadership Political Action Committee, SarahPAC, raised $5 million for the 2012 election cycle, despite the fact that the former Alaska governor opted not to run for president herself. Bachmann has such an organization, too – her MICHELE PAC raised $1.4 million in 2012. It’s already received about $212,000 for 2014.
Of course, she may need that money for lawyers. The FBI is reportedly investigating whether leadership PAC funds were improperly used to pay presidential staff expenses, among other things.
Legal problems aside, Bachmann is likely to remain a fundraising powerhouse. That’s because of her national profile. According to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, in the last election cycle 86 percent of her big-dollar donations came from individuals who did not live in Minnesota. She had substantial donor support from Texas, California, and Florida.
Half of the money she raised for her presidential bid came from small, unitemized contributions of $200 or less, according to CQ Roll Call Political “Moneyline.”
“She still has funds available to maintain a base of national support for her ideas and positions,” writes Moneyline’s Kent Cooper.
Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder looks on during a rookie minicamp practice session at Redskins Park on May 5 in Ashburn, Va. (Evan Vucci/AP/File)
Redskins name change: Will Congress make team act?
Can Capitol Hill get the Washington Redskins to change their name? That’s a live question in D.C. Wednesday since 10 members of Congress have sent a letter asking for such a switch to Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell, Redskins sponsor FedEx, and all the other NFL franchises.
The word “redskin” is offensive to many native Americans, said the lawmakers in their missive.
“Native Americans throughout the country consider the ‘R-word’ a racial, derogatory slur akin to the ‘N-word’ among African Americans or the ‘W-word’ among Latinos,” the letter said.
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Hmm. Will this be the push that finally gets Mr. Snyder to act? After all, this is a long-running issue. The nickname is already the subject of a legal challenge from a group that wants to strip the team of trademark protection. Native American groups themselves have complained that the team name is a slur that should not be allowed.
Furthermore, the politics of the group that sent the letter is pretty interesting. For the most part, it reflects the membership of the Congressional Native American Caucus. While most of the signers are Democrats, at least one – Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, an enrolled member of the Chickasaw nation – is Republican, giving the effort a bipartisan tinge.
Plus, there’s a precedent. A Washington sports team changed its name in the mid-1990s in part due to worries that it had become offensive. That was the former Washington Bullets, whose owner, Abe Pollin, decided that the name spoke too much of violence, and changed it to Wizards in 1995.
But to be honest, we don’t think the Redskins are going to follow suit, at least not yet. Ten members of Congress do not really constitute a very big pressure group. There are 435 lawmakers in the House chamber, after all. That means 425 did not sign the letter.
And Daniel Synder is not Abe Pollin. He’s stubborn, and he grew up in the Washington area as a rabid fan, watching the Redskins in their Joe Gibbs glory days while eating off a TV tray in front of the set. He’s become a wealthy communications businessman, but the team is his toy. “Redskin” may be his “Rosebud," a word that evokes his past.
“We will never change the name of the team,” he told USA Today earlier this month.
That’s a vow he’s unlikely to break. This is a man who sued for libel after the Washington City Paper ran an article titled, “The Cranky Redskins Fan Guide to Dan Snyder” (he later dropped the suit). This is a man who has banned fan signs from FedEx field. This is a man who lured Mr. Gibbs out of retirement for a second coaching stint, after Gibbs had been off the field for 11 years.
“I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season,” Snyder told USA Today.
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President Obama points to lipstick marks on his collar in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday night. 'A sign of the warmth is the lipstick on my collar,' he said. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Obama lipstick on collar: Who put it there? (+video)
Why did President Obama have lipstick on his collar when he rose to make remarks at a White House reception Tuesday night?
Because an enthusiastic supporter had put it there accidentally, that’s why. He referred to that right up top as his way of softening up the crowd. Truth be told, he was already pretty happy to be there, as it was a celebration for Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Having been raised in Hawaii, Mr. Obama is something of a Pacific Islander himself.
Anyway, the president began by thanking everybody for the warmth of his reception.
“A sign of the warmth is the lipstick on my collar,” he said.
Then he said he knew the culprit, and he asked to see a woman named Jessica Sanchez.
“It wasn’t Jessica. It was her aunt. Where is she?” he said as the room dissolved in laughter.
Obama then made the obvious point that he did not want to get in trouble with the first lady on this.
“That’s why I’m calling you out right in front of everybody,” he said to the aunt in question.
The president had to say something about the smear, right? It was a pretty obvious lip imprint, right up there near his necktie. It was going to show up in pictures and become the subject of a thousand gossip blogs.
If Obama’s reelection campaign showed anything, it is that he and his advisers understand the power of nontraditional media and their ability to shape the president’s image. All those appearances by him and Michelle on everything from “The View” to “Dr. Oz” were a big part of his campaign strategy. A lipstick smear? That’s good for a week of special reports on “Ellen.” Reddit would probably have done another of its crowd-source analysis things, measuring the parameters of the smear and then comparing them to pictures of lips in the crowd, eventually proving beyond a doubt that it could only have come from Joe Biden, or something like that.
Of course we’ve got our own conspiracy theory: Political guru David Axelrod had somebody put it there on purpose. A speechwriter then scripted impromptu remarks on the stain for Obama, loosening up the crowd and distracting the news media from the IRS scandal, Justice-ordered seizure of reporters' phone records, and so forth.
If so, this post is proof: mission accomplished.
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (r.), seen here at the University of Kentucky in Lexington in March, is tied with Sen. Mitch McConnell in the 2014 Senate race, according to Public Policy Polling. Ms. Grimes has not yet announced that she is running for the seat. (Roger Alford/AP/File)
Mitch McConnell tied in new poll. Does he miss Ashley Judd yet?
Does Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell miss Ashley Judd yet?
We ask this because there’s a new poll out showing the GOP Kentucky lawmaker, who is up for reelection in 2014, tied with a potential Democratic opponent who is not a movie star: Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
The survey from generally Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows Senator McConnell and Ms. Grimes both draw 45 percent of voters in a hypothetical matchup. That represents a slide on McConnell’s part, according to the PPP data. The firm had him leading Grimes by 4 points in April and 7 points last December.
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“McConnell’s early positive advertising has done nothing to improve his prospects for reelection and in fact this is actually the weakest position PPP has found him in yet,” writes Tom Jensen, PPP polling director.
If you remember, actress/activist Ms. Judd was considering running against McConnell herself. Some Bluegrass State Dems were eager for her to make the race, given that she could raise lots of money and generate news coverage with minimal effort.
But in late March she announced she wouldn’t do it.
“After serious and thorough contemplation, I realize that my responsibilities & energy at this time need to be focused on my family,” Judd tweeted at the time.
Why would McConnell wish for the co-star of “Tooth Fairy” as his opponent? Because she would have been easy to run against, that’s why.
Karl Rove’s American Crossroads "super political-action committee" put up an ad in February that previewed some of the themes McConnell likely would have used against her in a Republican-leaning state. It portrayed Judd as a tool of President Obama, a Hollywood liberal, and a resident of Tennessee to boot.
That last bit could have been a killer. Judd has made her principal residence in Tennessee for some time, and she was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention last year from Tennessee, not her home state.
You can be sure that before Election Day 2014 rolled around the McConnell team would have made sure every person in Kentucky had seen the clip of Judd saying, “and it just clicked – Tennessee is home,” until they were hearing those words in their sleep.
Now that won’t happen. And the Senate minority leader is tied (maybe – it’s just one poll) with an opponent who has much less baggage.
Of course, Grimes has not yet decided whether she’ll challenge McConnell, either. The daughter of a former Kentucky Democratic Party chairman, she’s in her first term and is not that well known in her own right around the state.
That last fact is why the PPP poll may overstate McConnell’s electoral weakness, points out Philip Bump at The Atlantic Wire.
It’s true that McConnell isn’t wildly popular in Kentucky. He’s spent lots of time on national issues at the expense of cultivating his base. But Grimes is a relative blank slate. The PPP poll showed a plurality of 42 percent of respondents had no favorable or unfavorable opinion of Grimes.
“How she is perceived by the public is largely an open question, in other words – and it’s one that could be defined by McConnell (with his deep pockets and his opposition research-performing staffers, not to mention the national party machine) as easily as by Grimes’ campaign."
In others words, she’d get hammered, too. Or will get hammered, if she decides to run. The McConnell team is probably cutting ads right now.
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President Obama is greeted by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie upon arrival at Atlantic City International Airport in Atlantic City, N.J., to visit areas damaged by superstorm Sandy, Oct. 2012. Obama with Christie at his side, will visit the recovering coast on Tuesday, in an effort to reinforce a message of effective government, bipartisanship, and economic opportunity. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP/File)
Obama visits Jersey shore today. Will he play skee ball? (+video)
President Obama is visiting the Jersey shore Tuesday. No, he and Michelle and the girls aren’t on vacation – for that they’re going to Martha’s Vineyard later in the summer. Mr. Obama is touring New Jersey beach communities ravaged by superstorm Sandy to see how rebuilding efforts are progressing.
He and Gov. Chris Christie (R) probably will stroll a bit of boardwalk somewhere to help promote the fact that the shore has reopened for business. There’s no word yet on whether cotton candy or skee ball will be involved.
Governor Christie’s taken a lot of criticism from fellow Republicans for hosting Obama, if you remember. Some in the party even blame Christie’s praise of Obama, along with the federal disaster response, for Mitt Romney’s loss last November.
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But fewer pixels have been spent on Obama’s role in this bromance. What’s in it for him?
After all, in a political sense the president is building up a possible successor from the other party. If the moderate Christie can win the Republican nomination, he’d probably be a formidable foe for Obama’s side in 2016.
Well, for one thing the Jersey shore stroll shows Obama as bipartisan. It’s a rare moment nowadays when the president gets to engage with Republicans of any sort in a common response to a problem. That’s partly why he traveled to Moore, Okla., on Sunday to meet with officials there and console victims of last week’s tornadoes.
New Jersey is also the heart of a densely populated region. If Christie runs on a national ticket, he’d probably take his home state, but Obama wants his party to remain as popular there as possible – for upcoming midterm elections and state races, if nothing else.
But the big reason Obama wants to appear heavily engaged in Jersey reconstruction is the fairly obvious one: Disaster response is a basic function of government on all levels, from municipalities to the Oval Office. It is something that voters all across the country pay close attention to and judge in a fairly nonpartisan manner. If Obama looks like he’s shortchanging New Jersey (and Oklahoma) to a certain extent, they’ll notice that in Ohio.
Remember hurricane Katrina, and the perceived slow federal response, and “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”? Of course you do. George W. Bush was widely criticized for his actions in the wake of Katrina, including patting his embattled FEMA director, Michael Brown, on the back, rhetorically speaking. Obama does not want that to happen to him.
Georgetown University political scientist Daniel Hopkins wrote an interesting piece on the political fallout of natural disasters for Washington Post’s Wonkblog. In summarizing various studies on the subject, Mr. Hopkins found that voters don’t blame politicians for events beyond their control, such as the disasters themselves. But they do pay close attention to how politicians act in the aftermath.
“Multiple studies indicate that when incumbents act in voters’ interests in the wake of a disaster, they are rewarded with increased support. After disasters, people rise to the occasion, and so do voters,” Hopkins concluded.
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President Obama makes a point about his administration's counterterrorism policy at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, Thursday. Obama reiterated his commitment in a counterterrorism speech Thursday and outlined steps he would take to close the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (Larry Downing/Reuters)
Obama vows again to close Guantánamo: What are the sticking points? (+video)
Six years after he first vowed to close the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Obama reiterated his commitment in a counterterrorism speech Thursday and outlined steps he would take to close the camp.
Mr. Obama indicated plans to slow down the war on terror, as he pledged to curb controversial practices like drone strikes as well as renew the efforts to close Guantánamo. But questions remain about how the president will handle a controversial and complex closure.
“History will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it,” Obama said. “Imagine a future – 10 years from now or 20 years from now – when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children?”
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Since February, 103 of the camp’s 166 detainees have been engaged in a hunger strike to protest years of indefinite detention without formal charges. Some 32 strikers are being force-fed.
The hunger strike, which entered its 100th day last week, “affected the president’s thinking and played into the impetus for the speech,” according to a report in Politico.
Eighty-six detainees were cleared for release at least three years ago but are still being held because of a 2010 executive order barring detainee transfers to Yemen, where Al Qaeda is still active. This situation at Guantánamo has been an oft-cited grievance among opponents of the military prison.
Playing a lesser role in the decision to shutter Gitmo, and one that is less publicized, is the cost associated with housing detainees at the 11-year-old facility: $900,000 per detainee per year, costing taxpayers more than $150 million every year, according to a CNN report. By comparison, a typical federal prison inmate costs taxpayers about $25,000 per year.
“There is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened,” Obama said in his remarks Thursday. “To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system, and we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee.”
The president’s specific pledges included:
• Rescinding the executive order banning detainee transfers to Yemen, where a majority of the Guantánamo detainees are from.
• Asking Congress to lift restrictions on detainee transfers.
• Appointing an envoy at the State and Defense Departments to move detainee transfers forward.
• Calling on the Defense Department to identify a location where military commissions could be held on mainland US soil, instead of at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Nonetheless, many questions remain on how the president would execute a closure. Among them:
• How will the administration handle detainees who are too dangerous to release but who cannot be prosecuted because of scant or inadmissible evidence?
• How will it ensure detainees transferred overseas do not return to the US to engage in terrorist activities?
• How will the US handle terror suspects captured in the future?
This much is clear: As the president renews efforts to close Guantánamo, he will be navigating new legal and logistical issues in the war on terror.
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