I just heard on CNBC that Republican Senator Judd Gregg has withdrawn from consideration as Commerce Secretary. He cited both the stimulus package and the census as areas where his differences with the Obama administration would make it difficult for him to effectively serve as a member of Obama’s cabinet.
Category: Politics (Page 20 of 35)
Barack Obama’s first news conference ranks up there as one of the best presidential news conferences I’ve ever seen. He was thorough and eloquent in all of his answers. He knew his facts, and he was very clear with his arguments. He continued his tone of bipartisanship, yet he made it clear he wouldn’t take political cheap shots from a party that just doubled our national debt over the past eight years.
He did not hold back when discussing the gravity of the crisis we are facing, and he made it clear that extraordinary efforts would be needed on many fronts. This situation will not be fixed by one policy proposal. We need to attack this on many fronts.
It’s a stark contrast to the past eight years, and we now have a president who is able to project competence and analytical skills. He was able to explain his positions with clarity, and he avoided sound bites in favor of long answers that actually answered the questions.
Some Republicans are giddy over the partisan fight that occured with respect to the stimulus package, but they are overmatched in this fight and will likely regret making this a partisan issue.
President Obama took responsibility for the Tom Daschle fiasco by using words you would never hear from the previous president.
This is a pretty big blow to the Obama team. Tom Daschle was a great choice to head President Obama’s efforts to reform our health care system, as his experience as Senate Majority leader would have been very useful in getting the legislation through Congress.
Some have observed that President Obama’s Inaugural Address didn’t meet his high standards for powerful speeches. Yet other have noted that Obama wanted to stress the need to get serious about the problems facing our nation. It was time to get to work.
Joe Klein points out that Obama has continued with this tone during his first week in office.
Just as he could have opted for the adrenaline rush of grand rhetoric in his Inaugural Address but didn’t, he could have turned any of the profoundly serious actions of his first week into a whiz-bang photo opportunity. He could have planted solar panels and a wind turbine on the White House roof or blasted the Bush Administration as he signed an Executive Order banning torture or lacerated the bankers who got us into the economic mess. But that’s not his style, apparently. He has reversed the tactical, win-the-news-cycle sensibility of recent presidencies. During his first week in office, at least, he opted for strategy and substance over showbiz.
Which is not to say there weren’t symbolic gestures. But the groups Obama lavished his attention on were an unlikely bunch: diplomats, Muslims and Republicans. The gestures involved a geographic humility that was a clean break from the presidential past: he went to the State Department, to the Capitol, and appeared on the Al Arabiya television network before granting an interview to any of the American channels. In each case, the gesture was made more for its long-term effect than its short-term bang.
The President visited the State Department on his second full day in office to send a message: diplomacy will now take precedence over military force in U.S. foreign policy — and his Administration’s will be a diplomacy of constant, persistent attention to the world’s problem areas rather than slapdash summitry. The occasion for Obama’s visit was the announcement of two special envoys, Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, both of whom represent a silent reproach to the Bush Administration. Holbrooke will have the near impossible task of untangling the mess in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a problem exacerbated by recent American inattention to detail in the area. (The deterioration toward chaos in Pakistan, especially, surprised some of the President’s closest aides.)
There is much that needs to be done, and fixing these problems will take time. I suspect that the American people will be patient as Obama demonstrates a willingness to attack these problems in a serious, bi-partisan manner.
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