November 16, 2010

Obama: Better off as a lame duck? - USA Today

A couple of pollsters have an odd suggestion for President Obama, if he wants to get something done with the new, more Republican Congress.

Announce he won't run for re-election.

Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell write in The Washington Post:

If the president goes down the re-election road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose

Schoen polled for former President Bill Clinton. Caddell worked for President Jimmy Carter, but has since been more of a political independent.

We rather doubt their analysis, however -- it's hard to see how Obama gains any leverage over congressional Republicans or Democrats by making himself a lame duck.

There will be many books about the Obama administration in the years ahead, and we can't help but wonder if one of them will be the president's diary.

The evidence that Obama keeps a diary is in Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside The Obama White House, which is scheduled to be on the shelves tomorrow.

"Sometimes, I keep notes, I keep a diary, and I was looking over some old volumes that I had written," Obama told author Richard Wolffe, according to an account in Politico.

Wolffe writes:

There was often speculation that a writer like Obama would keep extensive journals of his own unlikely journey from the Illinois state senate to the presidency ... But the speculation was never confirmed, and Obama's aides appeared to know little about what their boss was writing, if anything.

No doubt such diary entries would form the basis of a future autobiography, just as his Chicago journals were the foundation for his memoir, 'Dreams from My Father.' But they also suggested something about Obama's self-reflective moments. They were the result of a methodical harvesting of other people's ideas and words: a conscious effort to weave his own thoughts and experiences into some kind of literary compendium. They also served to reinforce his self-image, as a self-disciplined, strategic mind that could find solutions to emotional challenges.

When President Obama and the Republicans meet this week to discuss the George W. Bush tax cuts, he will have a question for them about extensions for the wealthy.

"If they feel very strongly about it, then I want to get a sense of how they intend to pay for it," Obama told reporters yesterday as Air Force One made its way back from Asia.

Obama supports extending the tax cuts for the middle class, but raises a deficit objection for Americans who make more than $200,000 a year, and couples who make more than $250,000.

"I believe it is a mistake for us to borrow $700 billion to make tax cuts permanent for millionaires and billionaires," Obama said. "It won't significantly boost the economy, and it's hugely expensive. So we can't afford it."

The lame duck Congress needs to resolve the issue soon: The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year.

After his 10-day trip through Asia, President Obama turns to what might be his biggest foreign policy challenge: The war in Afghanistan.

Obama flies at the end of this week to Lisbon, Portugal, for a NATO summit devoted to Afghanistan. The weekend meeting will feature a new administration plan to shift more responsibility to the Afghans over the next 18-to-24 months, and to end all U.S. combat operations by 2014.

The new 2014 date that Obama administration officials have begun to float would be a goal of the gradual withdrawal process that Obama wants to begin in July of 2011.

The NATO summit comes as Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai -- who has often been at odds with the Obama administration -- says he wants a lower profile American presence as soon as possible.

"The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai told The Washington Post. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan ... to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life."

In the wake of a bad election, President Obama says he is returning to "first principles," including bipartisanship, dealing with wasteful federal spending, and explaining his actions better to the American people.

"I spent the first two years trying to get policy right based on my best judgment about how we were going to deal with the short-term crisis and how we were going to retool to compete in this new global economy," Obama told reporters aboard Air Force One, flying back Sunday from his Asia trip.

Speaking nearly two weeks after an election in which his Democratic Party lost control of the U.S. House, Obama added:

In that obsessive focus on policy, I neglected some things that matter a lot to people, and rightly so: maintaining a bipartisan tone in Washington; dealing with practices like earmarks that are wasteful at a time where everybody else is tightening their belts; making sure that the policy decisions that I made were fully debated with the American people and that I was getting out of Washington and spending more time shaping public opinion and being in a conversation with the American people about why I was making the choices I was making.

So I think, moving forward, I'm going to redouble my efforts to go back to some of those first principles. And the fact that we are out of crisis -- although still, obviously, in a difficult time -- I think will give me the capacity to do that.

President Obama talks this week with Republicans about extending the George W. Bush tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and White House adviser David Axelrod began laying down some markers on the Sunday talk shows.

Axelrod said Obama opposes the "permanent" extension of those tax cuts for individuals making more than $200,000 a year, and couples who make more than $250,000 -- but a temporary extension may be up for discussion.

"The bottom line is he wants to sit down and talk about this," Axelrod said on NBC's Meet The Press.

Obama meets with congressional leaders from both parties Thursday at the White House.

In case you were wondering if President Obama will seek re-election: Top adviser David Axelrod confirmed today he will leave the White House in the first half of next year to start organizing Obama's 2012 campaign.

"Sometime in the spring, late winter, early spring, I'll be going back -- coming back here -- to Chicago and beginning to work on that project," Axelrod told Fox News Sunday today.

Axelrod,who did the interview from his hometown of the Chicago, has often discussed going back to the Windy City to start the president's re-election bid, associates have said. The veteran political consultant ran Obama's successful 2008 presidential campaign.

There's been a lot of talk about extending the George W. Bush tax cuts before the end of the year, but President Obama has identified another big goal for the upcoming lame duck session of Congress: The pending Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia.

"I reiterated my commitment to get the START Treaty done during the lame duck session, and I've communicated to Congress that it is a top priority," Obama said after a meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Japan, wrapping up his 10-day Asia trip.

Some Senate Republicans have balked at the proposed treaty, saying it could undercut U.S. missile defense plans.

Obama and aides figure they have a better chance of ratification of the treaty in the lame duck Senate; the new Senate that opens next year will have six more Republicans.

President Obama is winging his way back to Washington, but not before receiving some spiritual nourishment in Japan.

Obama visited the 44-foot-high Great Buddha statue of Kamakura, returning to a spot he visited when he was 6 years old.

"The first time I was here, I was this big," Obama said, putting his hand up to his waist.

The copper Buddha statue, constructed in 1252, weighs 93 tons, and is seated in the lotus position, meditating. The statue is a sacred site.

"It is wonderful to return to this great treasure of Japanese culture," Obama wrote in the guest book. "Its beauty has stayed with me for many years."

View the original article here