WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 30, 2011
4:12pm EDT
By Mark Hosenball
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama has signed a
secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking
to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on
Wednesday.
Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two
or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the
matter.
Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize
secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White
House declined immediate comment.
News that Obama had given the authorization surfaced as the President and other
U.S. and allied officials spoke openly about the possibility of sending arms
supplies to Gaddafi's opponents, who are fighting better-equipped government
forces.
The United States is part of a coalition, with NATO members and some Arab
states, which is conducting air strikes on Libyan government forces under a U.N.
mandate aimed at protecting civilians opposing Gaddafi.
In interviews with American TV networks on Tuesday, Obama said the objective was
for Gaddafi to "ultimately step down" from power. He spoke of applying "steady
pressure, not only militarily but also through these other means" to force
Gaddafi out.
Obama said the U.S. had not ruled out providing military hardware to rebels.
"It's fair to say that if we wanted to get weapons into Libya, we probably
could. We're looking at all our options at this point," the President told ABC
News anchor Diane Sawyer.
U.S. officials monitoring events in Libya say that at present, neither Gaddafi's
forces nor the rebels, who have asked the West for heavy weapons, appear able to
make decisive gains.
While U.S. and allied airstrikes have seriously damaged Gaddafi's military
forces and disrupted his chain of command, officials say, rebel forces remain
disorganized and unable to take full advantage of western military support.
SPECIFIC OPERATIONS
People familiar with U.S. intelligence procedures said that Presidential covert
action "findings" are normally crafted to provide broad authorization for a
range of potential U.S. government actions to support a particular covert
objective.
In order for specific operations to be carried out under the provisions of such
a broad authorization -- for example the delivery of cash or weapons to
anti-Gaddafi forces -- the White House also would have to give additional
"permission" allowing such activities to proceed.
Former officials say these follow-up authorizations are known in the
intelligence world as "'Mother may I' findings."
In 2009 Obama gave a similar authorization for the expansion of covert U.S.
counter-terrorism actions by the CIA in Yemen. The White House does not normally
confirm such orders have been issued.
Because U.S. and allied intelligence agencies still have many questions about
the identities and leadership of anti-Gaddafi forces, any covert U.S. activities
are likely to proceed cautiously until more information about the rebels can be
collected and analyzed, officials said.
"The whole issue on (providing rebels with) training and equipment requires
knowing who the rebels are," said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA Middle East
expert who has advised the Obama White House.
Riedel said that helping the rebels to organize themselves and training them how
use weapons effectively would be more urgent then shipping them arms.
According to an article speculating on possible U.S. covert actions in Libya
published early in March on the website of the Voice of America, the U.S.
government's broadcasting service, a covert action is "any U.S. government
effort to change the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a
hidden way."
ARMS SUPPLIES
The article, by VOA intelligence correspondent Gary Thomas, said covert action
"can encompass many things, including propaganda, covert funding, electoral
manipulation, arming and training insurgents, and even encouraging a coup."
U.S. officials also have said that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose leaders despise
Gaddafi, have indicated a willingness to supply Libyan rebels with weapons.
Members of Congress have expressed anxiety about U.S. government activates in
Libya. Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudis to
mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later
ended up in the hands of anti-American militants.
There are fears that the same thing could happen in Libya unless the U.S. is
sure who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee,
Rep. Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan
rebels fighting Gaddafi "at this time."
"We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing
out guns and advanced weapons to them," Rogers said in a statement.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by David Storey)
WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 30, 2011
10:07am EDT
By Alister Bull
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will set an
ambitious goal on Wednesday to cut U.S. oil imports by a third over 10 years,
focusing on energy security amid high gasoline prices that could stall the
country's economic recovery.
Obama will outline his strategy in a speech after spending days explaining
U.S.-led military action in Libya, where fighting, accompanied by popular unrest
elsewhere in the Arab world, has helped push gasoline prices toward $4 a gallon.
Discussing the speech, the Democratic president said the country must increase
its energy independence.
"What we were talking about was breaking the pattern of being shocked at high
prices and then, as prices go down, being lulled into a trance, but instead
let's actually have a plan," Obama told party activists in New York late on
Tuesday.
"Let's, yes, increase domestic oil production, but let's also invest in solar
and wind and geothermal and biofuels and let's make our buildings more efficient
and our cars more efficient. Not all of that work is done yet, but I'm not
finished yet. We've got more work to do," Obama said.
The White House says this is a deliberate turn toward energy security and will
be followed by other events to highlight his strategy.
"He'll be laying out the goal ... that in a little over a decade from now we'll
reduce the amount of oil we import from the rest of the world by about a third,"
a senior administration official told reporters in Washington.
Obama will lay out four areas to help reach his target of curbing U.S.
dependence on foreign oil -- lifting domestic energy production, encouraging the
use of more natural gas in vehicles like city buses, making cars and trucks more
efficient, and encouraging biofuels.
U.S. LOVE OF DRIVING CHEAPLY
Analysts and experts said Obama's goal was ambitious, and not surprising.
"All U.S. presidents since the early 1970s have outlined ambitious plans to
reduce their reliance on imported oil. It is not the first time and probably
won't be the last," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at the Banque Saudi
Fransi.
Truly reforming U.S. energy use would involve sweeping changes, including
possibly fuel taxes to encourage Americans to change their habits, analysts
said.
"The whole U.S. model is based on you having your car and being able to travel
from A to B cheaply," said Harry Tchilinguirian, the head of commodity markets
strategy at BNP Paribas.
While polls show Americans have mixed feelings about getting entangled in a
third Muslim country, with the United States still engaged in Iraq and
Afghanistan, they are clearly worried by high gas prices before the summer
driving season.
The latest measures of consumer confidence have also been dented by rising
energy prices, which sap household spending and could derail the U.S. recovery
if prices stay high enough for a long time, hurting Obama's re-election
prospects.
A Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday showed that 48 percent of
American voters disapprove of Obama's job performance, and 50 percent think he
does not deserve to be re-elected in 2012, compared with 42 percent who approve
and 41 percent who feel he does deserve to be re-elected.
Those were his lowest ratings ever, Quinnipiac said.
Voters also oppose the U.S. involvement in Libya by 47-41 percent, according to
the survey, which was concluded on Monday, as Obama addressed the nation about
Libya. It said voters say 58-29 percent Obama has not clearly stated U.S. goals
there.
"The president certainly understands the extra burden that rising gas prices put
on millions of Americans already going through a tough time," the administration
official said.
Some analysts reckon Obama may tap America's emergency oil stockpiles if U.S.
oil prices hit $110 a barrel. Prices were hovering just under $105 a barrel in
late Tuesday trade.
Over half of the petroleum consumed by the United States is imported, with
Canada and Mexico the two largest suppliers, followed by Saudi Arabia and
Venezuela.
The Department of the Interior estimates millions of acres (hectares) of U.S.
energy leases are not being exploited by oil companies and the White House wants
that to change.
This argument also helps the administration push back against Obama's Republican
opponents, who claim he is tying the hands of the U.S. energy industry by
denying leases and restricting offshore drilling in the wake of the 2010 BP Gulf
of Mexico oil spill.
"Part of our plan is to give new and better incentives to promote rapid,
responsible development of these resources," the official said, but declined to
go into greater detail before Obama speaks speech at 11:20 a.m. (1520 GMT).
In addition, the official said Obama will set a goal to break ground "on at
least four commercial-scale cellulosic or advanced bio refineries over the next
two years."
(Additional reporting by Tim Gardner and Patricia Zengerle;
Editing by Eric Walsh and Vicki Allen)
WASHINGTON
| Wed Mar 30, 2011
9:44am EDT
Reuters
By Corbett B. Daly
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to kill President
Barack Obama's signature program to help struggling homeowners avoid
foreclosure.
A bill to terminate the program was approved on a 252-170 vote. But the bill is
unlikely to clear the Senate.
It was the last in series of four measures brought forward by newly empowered
House Republicans to end government assistance for homeowners hurt by the
housing crisis.
Republicans argued the foreclosure prevention plan, known as the Home Affordable
Modification Program, is ineffective and not worthy of taxpayer support amid
soaring budget deficits. The vote broke largely along party lines.
The program, which offers incentives for lenders to modify loans, was launched
to great fanfare in the spring of 2009. The Obama administration had hoped it
would permanently lower mortgage payments for 3 million to 4 million homeowners.
But fewer than 600,000 borrowers have received permanent loan modifications, and
the program has been widely criticized as ineffective from critics on both the
left and the right.
"The HAMP program is a failure," said Representative Patrick McHenry, the North
Carolina Republican who sponsored the bill. "If we can't eliminate this failed
program, what program can we eliminate?"
Analysts see the votes as an effort by Republicans, who last seized control of
the House in an election in November with an anti-bailout, anti-spending
message, to score points with their political base.
The White House has already threatened to veto the measure. However, it is
unlikely to come to that since Democrats, who retained control of the Senate,
largely opposed the measure. Both the House and Senate would have to approve the
bill for it to reach the president's desk.
About $30 billion has been set aside for the program from the government's $700
billion financial rescue fund, but only about $1 billion of that has been spent
so far.
Democrats argued the program should be fixed, not killed.
"The absence of any program leaves people worse off," said Representative Barney
Frank, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.
Even as the Obama administration argues for keeping HAMP in place, it is
pressing forward on a separate track that could result in much larger aid for
struggling homeowners.
Big U.S. banks are meeting with federal officials and state attorneys general at
the Justice Department on Wednesday as they negotiate what could turn into a
multi-billion dollar settlement over alleged abuses by the companies that
collect mortgage payments.
The banks and authorities are expected to discuss a settlement proposal that the
state officials sent out earlier this month, which called on banks to treat
borrowers better and to reduce loan balances for some struggling homeowners.
A group of 50 state attorneys general and about a dozen federal agencies are
probing bank mortgage practices that came to light last year, including the use
of "robo-signers" to sign hundreds of unread foreclosure documents a day.
On March 3, state attorneys general leading the probe sent banks the outline of
a proposed settlement endorsed by some federal agencies, including the Justice
Department, the Housing and Urban Development Department and Treasury staff
setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The banks that received the proposal and that will have representatives at
Wednesday's meeting are Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Citigroup
Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and Ally Financial, according to sources briefed on the
meeting.
(Additional
reporting by Dave Clarke; Editing by Carol Bishopric)
March 29, 2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — Samantha Power took the podium at Columbia
University on Monday night sounding hoarse and looking uncomfortable. In two
hours, President Obama would address the nation on Libya and Ms. Power, the
fiery human rights crusader who now advises Mr. Obama on foreign policy, did not
want to get out in front of the boss.
“I’m not going to talk much about Libya,” she began, though when it came time
for questions she could not help herself. “Our best judgment,” she said,
defending the decision to establish a no-fly zone to prevent atrocities, was
that failure to do so would have been “extremely chilling, deadly and indeed a
stain on our collective conscience.”
That the president used almost precisely the same language was hardly a
surprise. For nearly 20 years, since her days as a young war correspondent in
Bosnia, Ms. Power has championed the idea that nations have a moral obligation
to prevent genocide. Now, from her perch on the National Security Council, she
is in a position to make that case to the commander in chief — and to watch him
translate her ideas into action.
“She is clearly the foremost voice for human rights within the White House,”
said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, “and she has
Obama’s ear.”
The Irish-born Ms. Power, 40, functions as kind of an institutional memory bank
on genocide; her 2002 book on the topic, “A Problem from Hell,” won the Pulitzer
Prize. While she was by no means alone in advocating military intervention in
Libya — Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state, was a pivotal voice —
the president’s decision to pursue that course is something of a personal
triumph for her.
It is also a public relations headache. Critics say Ms. Power is pushing the
United States into another Iraq. (Ms. Power, like Mr. Obama, was a vocal
opponent of that war.) American Thinker, a conservative blog, complains that Mr.
Obama has “outsourced foreign policy” to Ms. Power.
Ms. Power, who declined an interview, is trying to maintain a low profile, still
seared, perhaps, by the memory of how she flamed out as an Obama campaign
adviser by calling Mrs. Clinton “a monster.” The women have patched it up — the
late diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke, friend to Mrs. Clinton and mentor to Ms.
Power, arranged a reconciliation — and Ms. Power arrived at the White House
determined to “stay in her lane,” in the words of one friend, and avoid
headlines.
Yet for all her efforts to shun the spotlight, there has long been a whiff of
celebrity about her. Aside from her Pulitzer and two Ivy League degrees (Yale
undergraduate, Harvard Law), she has posed in an evening gown for Men’s Vogue
and once played basketball with George Clooney. The Daily Beast calls her “the
femme fatale of the humanitarian assistance world.”
When she married the constitutional law scholar Cass Sunstein — he now runs the
White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — Esquire dubbed them
“The Fun Couple of the 21st Century” and photographed them on the squash court,
in tennis whites.
She arrived in Bosnia as a freelance journalist at age 22, “a flame-haired,
freckled girl with guts,” in the words of one reporter who knew her. Diplomats
admired her intellect and passion. She was not shy about haranguing American
officials for what she saw as the United States’ failure to act.
“She would argue that the failure of the Clinton administration to engage in
airstrikes against the Serbs, and to take military action to stop the genocide
was immoral,” said Peter W. Galbraith, ambassador to Croatia at the time.
He recently turned the tables on Ms. Power, sending her an e-mail in which he
warned her not to let Libya become “Obama’s Rwanda,” a reference to former
President Bill Clinton, who has expressed deep regret over failing to intervene
to prevent atrocities there. Mr. Galbraith said Ms. Power, having learned the
lesson that “when you’re inside government, you live with constraints,” did not
reply.
Ms. Power is sensitive to any notion that she has outsize influence with the
president; the White House took pains on Tuesday to say that her speech echoed
the president’s, not the other way around.
The United States did not go to war in Libya because “there was some dramatic
meeting in the Oval Office where everybody tried to persuade the president not
to do this, and Samantha rolled in with her flowing red hair and said, ‘Mr.
President, I stand here alone in telling you that history calls upon you to
perform this act,’ ” said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch, a friend.
Mr. Obama sought her out in early 2005, when he was a new senator and had just
read her book. After a four-hour dinner, they found themselves so much in sync
that she volunteered to take a leave from her Harvard professorship to work for
him.
The book argues that genocides — in places like Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia
and Rwanda — have occurred because governments averted their eyes and
individuals made conscious choices not to intervene. “The most common response,”
Ms. Power wrote, “is, ‘We didn’t know.’ This is not true.”
As a journalist, she was one of the first to chronicle the bloody ethnic
cleansing in Sudan. In 2004, on assignment for The New Yorker, she visited
refugee camps in Chad and slipped into rebel-held areas in Darfur, to interview
survivors and see villages that were burned to the ground. Some experts say her
work helped persuade President George W. Bush to apply the label genocide to the
situation.
But if Ms. Power was able to prick the collective conscience of elected
officials as an outsider, on the inside she has confronted the difficulties of
making policy in a complex environment with competing demands.
She has been successful in urging the Obama administration to embrace
Congressional legislation calling for the arrest of the leader of the Lord’s
Resistance Army, which enslaves children as guerrilla fighters. As of last year,
the White House has a full-time staff member devoted to monitoring atrocities —
a position Ms. Power pushed for. But in Darfur, violence has escalated as the
administration has shifted its attention to south Sudan.
On Libya, Ms. Power’s critics — and even some admirers — suggest she may be
helping to set a precedent that will invariably fail. “I think what she is doing
is good,” said Bill Nash, a retired Army general who commanded forces in Bosnia.
“But I suspect it is more black and white to her than the real world portrays.”
In her long-scheduled speech at Columbia on Monday night, Ms. Power did not
dwell on such questions. Rather, she gave a bland recitation of Mr. Obama’s
human rights policy. When it was over, she was mobbed by book-toting
autograph-seekers. When she spied a gaggle of reporters, she cupped her hands to
her temples and lowered her head as if to say: no questions.
WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 25, 2011
7:07pm EDT
Reuters
By Patricia Zengerle and Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told U.S.
lawmakers on Friday American military forces are not seeking to topple Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi from power but are engaged in a limited effort to protect
civilians.
After days of complaints that he had not properly consulted Congress, Obama and
top aides held an hour-long conference call from the White House Situation Room
and briefed Democratic and Republican leaders.
Lawmakers said Obama stuck to his position that while U.S. policy favors
Gaddafi's departure, the U.S. involvement in support of a U.N. Security Council
resolution was limited to stopping Gaddafi from killing Libyans opposed to his
rule.
Both Democrats and Republicans had questioned Obama's handling of the six-day
conflict. The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner,
charged that Obama committed forces to battle without properly defining the
mission.
Obama will address the American people about the Libyan mission on Monday at
7:30 p.m. EDT, the White House said, when he speaks at the National Defense
University in Washington.
On Friday, Obama told lawmakers about plans for the U.S. transfer of military
command and control of the Libyan operation to NATO and progress so far, the
White House said.
"The goals here were very very limited. We are not trying to go and get involved
in a war with Libya, and force militarily, a change of leadership,"
Representative Adam Smith, senior Democrat on the House of Representatives Armed
Services Committee, told CNN. "We were simply trying to stop a humanitarian
crisis."
Senator John McCain, the Senate Armed Services Committee's top Republican,
raised concerns on the call on whether the U.S. intervention was enough to force
Gaddafi from power.
"Senator McCain supports the decision to intervene militarily in Libya, but he
remains concerned that our actions at present may not be sufficient to avoid a
stalemate and accomplish the U.S. objective of forcing Gaddafi to leave power,"
McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said.
BOEHNER: MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE
Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said the speaker "still believes much more needs
to be done by the administration to provide clarity, particularly to the
American people, on the military objective in Libya, America's role, and how it
is consistent with U.S. policy goals."
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Obama told lawmakers that the
"limited" intervention had saved lives. She said lawmakers will receive a
classified briefing from the administration next week.
Many liberals in Obama's Democratic Party oppose a third war in the Muslim world
on top of U.S. troop commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Two House members, Republican Justin Amash and Democrat Dennis Kucinich, plan to
introduce separate pieces of legislation to halt U.S. military operations in
Libya. But it was uncertain whether either would be brought to a vote, and
Congress is unlikely to act on anything right away.
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz told reporters in Washington that the United
States was increasingly confident Libya's National Transitional Council was on
the right track, but was still not ready to formally recognize it as France has
done.
Cretz said the United States was considering further steps to support the
opposition, including its request for arms transfers, but that no decisions had
been reached.
"The full gamut of potential assistance that we might offer both on the
nonlethal and the lethal side is a subject of discussion within the U.S.
government, but there have been no final decisions made," Cretz said.
A U.S. official said rebel leaders indicated they are trying to garner financial
support from Gulf state governments. But several U.S. and European officials
said little outside aid was going to the Libyan opposition.
A European national security official said the rebels still have access to more
weapons looted from government arsenals than they are capable of using to their
full capacity.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Andrew Quinn, Steve
Holland,
and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Vicki Allen)
March 18, 2011
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American
foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister
of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even
as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.
Only the day before, Mrs. Clinton — along with her boss, President Obama — was a
skeptic on whether the United States should take military action in Libya. But
that night, with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces turning back the rebellion
that threatened his rule, Mrs. Clinton changed course, forming an unlikely
alliance with a handful of top administration aides who had been arguing for
intervention.
Within hours, Mrs. Clinton and the aides had convinced Mr. Obama that the United
States had to act, and the president ordered up military plans, which Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hand-delivered to the White House
the next day. On Thursday, during an hour-and-a -half meeting, Mr. Obama signed
off on allowing American pilots to join Europeans and Arabs in military strikes
against the Libyan government.
The president had a caveat, though. The American involvement in military action
in Libya should be limited — no ground troops — and finite. “Days, not weeks,” a
senior White House official recalled him saying.
The shift in the administration’s position — from strong words against Libya to
action — was forced largely by the events beyond its control: the crumbling of
the uprising raised the prospect that Colonel Qaddafi would remain in power to
kill “many thousands,” as Mr. Obama said at the White House on Friday.
The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha
Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr.
Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for
military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on
condition of anonymity. Ms. Power is a former journalist and human rights
advocate; Ms. Rice was an Africa adviser to President Clinton when the United
States failed to intervene to stop the Rwanda genocide, which Mr. Clinton has
called his biggest regret.
Now, the three women were pushing for American intervention to stop a looming
humanitarian catastrophe in Libya.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, one of the early advocates for military
action in Libya, described the debate within the administration as “healthy.” He
said that “the memory of Rwanda, alongside Iraq in ’91, made it clear” that the
United States needed to act but needed international support.
In joining Ms. Rice and Ms. Power, Mrs. Clinton made an unusual break with
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who, along with the national security
adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and the counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, had
urged caution. Libya was not vital to American national security interests, the
men argued, and Mr. Brennan worried that the Libyan rebels remained largely
unknown to American officials, and could have ties to Al Qaeda.
The administration’s shift also became possible only after the United States won
not just the support of Arab countries but their active participation in
military operations against one of their own.
“Hillary and Susan Rice were key parts of this story because Hillary got the
Arab buy-in and Susan worked the U.N. to get a 10-to-5 vote, which is no easy
thing,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert with the Center for
American Progress, a liberal group with close ties to the administration. This
“puts the United States in a much stronger position because they’ve got the
international support that makes this more like the 1991 gulf war than the 2003
Iraq war.”
Ever since the democracy protests in the region began three months ago, the
Obama administration has struggled to balance America’s national security
interests against support for democratic principles, a struggle that has left
Mr. Obama subject to criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. And by
taking a case-by-case approach — quickly embracing protesters in Tunisia,
eventually coming around to fully endorse their cause in Egypt, but backing the
rulers in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen — the administration at times has
appeared inconsistent. While calling for Colonel Qaddafi’s ouster,
administration officials indicated Mr. Obama was more concerned with unfolding
events in Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt than with removing the Libyan leader.
There was high drama right up to the surprising Security Council vote on
Thursday night, when the ambassador for South Africa, viewed as critical to
getting the nine votes needed to pass the resolution, failed to show up for the
final vote, causing Ms. Rice to rush from the chamber in search of him.
South Africa and Nigeria — along with Brazil and India — had all initially
balked at authorizing force, but administration officials believed they had
brought the Africans around. Mr. Obama had already been on the phone pressing
President Jacob Zuma of South Africa to support the resolution, White House
officials said. Eventually, the South African representative showed up to vote
yes, as did the Nigerian representative, giving the United States one vote more
than required. Brazil and India, meanwhile, joined Russia, China and Germany in
abstaining.
The pivotal decision for Mr. Obama came on Tuesday though, after Mrs. Clinton
had called from Paris with news that the Arab governments were willing to
participate in military action. That would solve one of Mr. Gates’s concerns,
that the United States not be viewed on the Arab street as going to war against
another Muslim country.
Mrs. Clinton “had the proof,” one senior administration official said, “that not
only was the Arab League in favor, but that the Emirates were serious about
participating.”
During a meeting with Mr. Obama and his top national security aides — Ms. Rice
was on video teleconference from New York; Mrs. Clinton from Paris — Ms. Rice
sought to allay Mr. Gates’s concern that a no-fly zone by itself would not be
enough to halt Colonel Qaddafi’s progress, recalled officials attending the
meeting.
“Susan basically said that it was possible to get a tougher resolution” that
would authorize a fuller range of options, including the ability to bomb Libyan
government tanks on the road to Benghazi, the rebel stronghold in the east,
administration official said.
“That was the turning point” for Mr. Obama, the official said. The president was
scheduled to go to a dinner with military veterans that night; he told his aides
to draw up military plans. And he instructed Ms. Rice to move forward with a
broader resolution at the Security Council.
She already had one ready — drawn up the week before, just in case, officials
said. Besides asking for an expanded military campaign, Ms. Rice loaded up the
resolution with other items on the American wish list, including the
authorization to use force to back an arms embargo against Libya. “We knew it
would be a heavy lift to get any resolution through; our view was we might as
well get as much as we could,” Ms. Rice said in a telephone interview.
On Wednesday at the Security Council, Russia put forward a competing resolution,
calling for a cease-fire — well short of what the United States wanted. But the
French, who had been trying to get a straight no-fly resolution through,
switched to back the tougher American wording. And they “put it in blue” ink —
U.N. code for calling for a vote.
“It was a brilliant tactical move,” an American official said. “They hijacked
the text, which means it could be called to a vote at any time.”
On Thursday, the South Africans, Nigerians, Portuguese and Bosnians — all of
them question marks — said they would support the tougher resolution.
Even after getting the Security Council endorsement, Mr. Obama made clear that
the military action would be an international effort.
“The change in the region will not and cannot be imposed by the United States or
any foreign power,” the president told reporters at the White House on Friday.
“Ultimately, it will be driven by the people of the Arab world.”
March 18, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
TRIPOLI, Libya — Four New York Times journalists missing in Libya since
Tuesday were captured by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and will be
released, the Libyan leader’s son Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi told Christiane
Amanpour in an ABC News interview early Friday.
Like many other Western journalists, the four had entered the rebel-controlled
eastern region of Libya over the Egyptian border, without visas, to cover the
insurrection against Colonel Qaddafi.
“They entered the country illegally and when the army, when they liberated the
city of Ajdabiya from the terrorists and they found her, they arrest her because
you know, foreigners in this place,” Mr. Qaddafi said, according to the
transcript of the interview, which took place shortly after the United Nations
Security Council approved military action against Libyan government forces. “But
then they were happy because they found out she is American, not European. And
thanks to that, she will be free tomorrow.”
Mr. Qaddafi was apparently referring to Lynsey Addario, a photographer, but
Libyan government officials told the State Department on Thursday evening that
all four would be released.
The Libyan government allowed the journalists to call their families on Thursday
evening.
The journalists are Anthony Shadid, The Times’s Beirut bureau chief and a
two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent; two photographers, Tyler
Hicks and Ms. Addario, who have extensive experience in war zones; and a
reporter and videographer, Stephen Farrell, who in 2009 was captured by the
Taliban in Afghanistan and rescued by British commandos.
“We’re all, families and friends, overjoyed to know they are safe,” said Bill
Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We are eager to have them free and
back home.”
After The Times reported having lost contact with the journalists on Tuesday,
officials with the Qaddafi government pledged that if they had been detained by
the government’s military forces they would be located and released unharmed.
March 18,
2011
The New York Times
By ELISABETH BUMILLER,
DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
WASHINGTON
— President Obama ordered Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi on Friday to implement a
cease-fire immediately and stop all attacks on Libyan civilians or face military
action from the United States and its allies in Europe and the Arab world.
In one of the most forceful statements he has issued from the White House Mr.
Obama said that his demands were not negotiable: Colonel Qaddafi had to pull his
forces back from major cities in Libya or the United States and its allies would
stop him. The president said that he was forced to act because Colonel Qaddafi
had turned on his own people and had shown, Mr. Obama said, “no mercy on his own
citizens.”
The president said that with the passage on Thursday night of a United Nations
Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Colonel Qadaffi
to protect Libyan civilians, the United States would not act alone, and in fact
that France, Britain and Arab nations would take the lead. That is the clear
desire of the Pentagon, which has been strongly resistant to another American
war in the Middle East. Mr. Obama said flatly that American ground forces would
not enter Libya.
“Muammar Qaddafi has a choice,” he said. “The United States, the United Kingdom,
France and Arab states agree that a cease-fire must be implemented immediately.
That means all attacks against civilians must stop.”
“Let me be clear, these terms are not negotiable,” Mr. Obama said in the East
Room of the White House. “If Colonel Qaddafi does not comply with the
resolution, the international community will impose consequences. The resolution
will be enforced through miitary action.”
He set no deadline and gave no hint when the military action would commence, but
said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would travel to Paris on
Saturday to consult with allies on further action. An allied military strike
against Libya did not appear to be imminent.
Specifically, Mr. Obama said, Colonel Qaddafi must stop his troops from
advancing against the town of Benghazi and pull them back from other cities, and
water, electricity and gas supplies must be allowed in, as well as other
humanitarian aid.
He spoke as the United States, Britain and France pushed forward against Libya
on Friday as they declared that a cease-fire abruptly announced by Colonel
Qaddafi’s government was not enough, and as reports came in from the region of
continuing attacks in some places.
Mrs. Clinton, echoing remarks hours earlier by Prime Minister David Cameron of
Britain, said in Washington on Friday morning that the United States would be
“not responsive or impressed by words.”‘ She said that the allies would “have to
see actions on the ground, and that is not yet at all clear.”
Those actions included, she said, a clear move by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces away
from the east, where they were threatening a final assault on the rebels’
stronghold in Benghazi.
Only hours after the United Nations Security Council voted late Thursday to
authorize military action and a no-fly zone, Libya executed a remarkable
about-face on Friday, saying it would call an “immediate cease-fire and the
stoppage of all military operations” against rebels seeking to oust Colonel
Qaddafi.
But people fleeing the eastern city of Ajdabiya said government forces were
still bombing and conducting other assaults at 4 p.m. local time.
A spokesman for the rebels, Mustafa Gheriani, said that attacks continued
against both that city and Misurata, in the west, according to news agency
reports. “He’s bombing Misurata and Ajdabiya from 7 a.m. this morning until
now,” Mr. Gehriani said, according to The Associated Press.
The announcement of cease-fire came from Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa after
Western powers said they were preparing imminent airstrikes to prevent Libyan
forces from launching a threatened final assault on Benghazi.
In London, Mr. Cameron told the BBC of Colonel Qaddafi: “We will judge him by
his actions, not his words.”
Mr. Cameron told the House of Commons that the British Air Force would deploy
Tornado jets and Eurofighter Typhoon warplanes, “as well as air-to-air refueling
and surveillance aircraft.”
“Preparations to deploy these have already started, and in the coming hours they
will move to airbases from where they can take the necessary action,” Mr.
Cameron said.
The Typhoon is a fighter jet armed with air-to-air missiles for shooting down
airplanes, as well as laser-guided bombs for targets on the ground. The Tornado
is especially well suited for attacking runways — that was its first combat
mission, in the Persian Gulf war, when the planes swooped in to bomb runways in
Iraq, facing thick anti-aircraft defenses that shot down several of the planes.
In Paris the French foreign ministry spokesman, Bernard Valero, said that
Colonel Qaddafi “begins to be afraid, but on the ground, the threat hasn’t
changed.” He added, “We have to be very cautious.”
Earlier François Baroin, a French government spokesman, told RTL radio that
action would come “rapidly,” perhaps within hours, after the United Nations
resolution authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.
But he insisted the military action was “not an occupation of Libyan territory.”
Rather, he said, it was intended to protect the Libyan people and “allow them to
go all the way in their drive, which means bringing down the Qaddafi regime.”
Other French officials said that Mr. Baroin was speaking to heighten the warning
to Colonel Qaddafi, and that in fact any military action was not that imminent,
but was still being coordinated with allies including Britain and the United
States.
Obama administration officials said that allied action against Libya had to
include the participation of Arab countries and were insistent, as one senior
official put it, that the red, green and black of Arab nations’ flags be
prominent in military operations. As of Thursday night, the United States said
it had firm commitments from both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to
contribute fighter jets to the effort, and that Jordan had also agreed to take
part, although to what extent was not yet clear by Friday.
The administration also spoke to Egyptian officials about taking part but Egypt
— the leading military power of the Arab world — was concerned that air strikes
could endanger some million Egyptians who live in Libya. In addition, protesters
only last month toppled the 30-year regime of President Hosni Mubarak and
Egypt’s transitional military government remains fragile.
Administration officials said it remained unclear on Friday morning which
country would take the lead as the air traffic controller of an operation that
might involve waves of fighter jets from multiple countries in the skies above
Libya, taking turns or at the same time. But the United States was expected to
play a major role, as were Britain and France.
President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Mr. Cameron will attend the meeting in
Paris on Saturday with European, European Union, African Union and Arab League
officials to discuss Libya, Mr. Sarkozy’s office announced. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations will also take part, his office said.
Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, which had supported the
no-fly proposal, told Reuters on Friday: “‘The goal is to protect civilians
first of all, and not to invade or occupy.”
Apparently pulling back from the increasingly bellicose statements that came as
recently as Thursday from Colonel Qaddafi and his son Seif al-Islam, Mr. Koussa
— his hands shaking as he read a statement at a news conference in Tripoli on
Friday afternoon — said the Qaddafi government would comply with the United
Nations resolution by halting combat operations.
“Libya has decided an immediate cease-fire and the stoppage of all military
operations,” Mr. Koussa said. He did not take questions.
It was not immediately possible to confirm that military action. Mr. Koussa did
not say whether the Libyan government intended to restore water, electricity and
telecommunications to Misurata.
He expressed “our sadness” that the imposition of a no-fly zone would also stop
commercial and civilian aircraft, saying such measures “will have a negative
impact on the general life of the Libyan people.”
And he called it “strange and unreasonable” that the resolution authorized the
use of force against the Qaddafi government, “and there are signs that this may
indeed take place.” Mr. Koussa called the resolution a violation of Libyan
sovereignty as well as of the United Nations charter, and repeated a call for a
“fact-finding mission” to evaluate the situation on the ground.
Government minders told journalists in Tripoli on Friday that they could not
leave their hotel for their own safety, saying that in the aftermath of the
United Nations vote, residents might attack or even shoot foreigners. The extent
of the danger was unclear.
Shortly before Mr. Koussa spoke Mr. Cameron told Parliament in London: “This is
about protecting the Libyan people and saving lives. The world has watched
Qaddafi brutally crushing his own people. We expect brutal attacks. Qaddafi is
preparing for a violent assault on Benghazi.”
“Any decision to put the men and women of our armed forces into harm’s way
should only be taken when absolutely necessary,” he said. “But I believe that we
cannot stand back and let a dictator whose people have rejected him kill his
people indiscriminately. To do so would send a chilling signal to others.”
“The clock is now ticking,” Mr. Cameron said. “We need a sense of urgency
because we don’t want to see a bloodbath in Benghazi.” Responding to criticism
from members of Parliament about getting Britain involved militarily, Mr.
Cameron retorted: “To pass a resolution like this and then just stand back and
hope someone in the region would enforce it is wrong.”
Before the cease-fire was announced, the Libyan leader signaled his intentions
in Benghazi.
“We will come house by house, room by room,” Colonel Qaddafi said Thursday on a
radio call-in show before the United Nations vote. It’s over. The issue has been
decided.” To those who continued to resist, he vowed: “We will find you in your
closets. We will have no mercy and no pity.”
In a television broadcast later, he added: “The world is crazy, and we will be
crazy, too.”
Before Mr. Koussa’s announcement of a cease-fire, forces loyal to Colonel
Qaddafi unleashed a barrage of fire against Misurata, news reports said, while
his son was quoted as saying government forces would encircle Benghazi.
Eurocontrol, Europe’s air traffic control agency, said in Brussels on Friday
that Libya had closed its airspace. It was not immediately clear whether
loyalist troops had begun honoring the cease-fire.
The Security Council vote seemed to have divided Europeans, with Germany saying
it would not take part while Norway was reported as saying it would. In the
region, Turkey was reported to have registered opposition, but Qatar said it
would support the operation.
On Thursday night in New York, after days of often acrimonious debate played out
against a desperate clock, and with Colonel Qaddafi’s troops within 100 miles of
Benghazi, the Security Council authorized member nations to take “all necessary
measures” to protect civilians, diplomatic code words calling for military
action.
Diplomats said the resolution — which passed with 10 votes, including that of
the United States, and abstentions from Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India
— was written in sweeping terms to allow for a wide range of actions, including
strikes on air-defense systems and missile attacks from ships.
Benghazi erupted in celebration at news of the resolution’s passage. “We are
embracing each other,” said Imam Bugaighis, spokeswoman for the rebel council in
Benghazi. “The people are euphoric. Although a bit late, the international
society did not let us down.”
A Pentagon official said Thursday that decisions were still being made about
what kind of military action, if any, the United States might take with the
allies against Libya. The official said that contingency planning continued
across a full range of operations, including a no-fly zone, but that it was
unclear how much the United States would become involved beyond providing
support.
That support is likely to consist of much of what the United States already has
in the region — Awacs radar planes to help with air traffic control should there
be airstrikes, other surveillance aircraft and about 400 Marines aboard two
amphibious assault ships in the region, the Kearsarge and the Ponce.
The Americans could also provide signal-jamming aircraft in international
airspace to muddle Libyan government communications with its military units.
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Washington, David D. Kirkpatrick from
Tripoli, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim
from eastern Libya; Dan Bilefsky from the United Nations; Mark Landler from
Washington; Steven Erlanger from Paris; Julia Werdigier from London; Helene
Cooper from Washington; and Steven Lee Myers from Tunis.
Thu, Mar 17 2011
WASHINGTON | Thu Mar 17, 2011
7:28pm EDT
By Jeff Mason and Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Thursday
he had requested a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear facilities, maintaining
his support for atomic energy while seeking to apply lessons from the crisis in
Japan.
Obama expressed confidence that Japan would recover from the earthquake, tsunami
and nuclear emergency that have seemed to overwhelm its government, but said
radiation from a stricken plant there posed a "substantial risk" to people
nearby.
He pledged to support Japan while Washington also seeks to aid and evacuate
Americans from the country.
"In the coming days, we will continue to do everything we can to ensure the
safety of American citizens and the security of our sources of energy," he told
reporters at the White House. "And we will stand with the people of Japan as
they contain this crisis, recover from this hardship, and rebuild their great
nation."
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman Gregory Jaczko said the United
States was working to provide ideas and possibly equipment to help Japan cool
its overheating Daiichi nuclear power plant about 240 km (150 miles) north of
Tokyo.
He stressed that it could take weeks to succeed in cooling the reactor down.
"This is something that will likely take some time to work through, possibly
weeks, as eventually you remove the majority of the heat from the reactors and
then the spent fuel pool," Jaczko told a briefing at the White House.
His agency will carry out the U.S. review Obama requested. The commission will
meet on Monday to begin discussions about it, a NRC spokesman said.
"Our nuclear power plants have undergone exhaustive study, and have been
declared safe for any number of extreme contingencies," Obama said. "But when we
see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this
event, and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our
people."
The U.S. nuclear industry said it was taking steps to protect the country's
nuclear plants from a catastrophe like the one in Japan. Nuclear energy provides
about 20 percent of U.S. electricity.
The Nuclear Energy Institute said company officials representing all 104 of the
U.S. nuclear reactors have agreed to a plan to make sure all companies are
prepared for catastrophic events like natural disasters or explosions.
The companies will verify that plants can cope with flooding and situations
where there is a total loss of electricity to the plants. They will also inspect
equipment needed to respond to fires and floods.
"These are the actions we are taking now," Anthony Pietrangelo, the chief
nuclear officer at the institute, told reporters on a teleconference.
Obama stressed that the United States did not expect harmful radiation to reach
its shores or territories and told Americans they did not need to take
precautions other than staying informed.
CONDOLENCES, EVACUATION
The president, who leaves for South America on Friday, signed a condolence book
at the Japanese Embassy and said his administration felt "great urgency" to
help.
While providing that help, the U.S. government has sent charter planes to
evacuate U.S. citizens and relatives of embassy and military personnel.
The two countries' governments have offered differing views over the danger zone
around the plant.
The State Department recommended that U.S. citizens within 50 miles of the plant
leave or stay indoors. Tokyo has asked people living within 12 miles to evacuate
and those between 12 miles and 18 miles to stay indoors.
Obama referred to that difference without criticizing the Japanese government.
"Even as Japanese responders continue to do heroic work, we know that the damage
to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to
people who are nearby," Obama said.
"That is why yesterday we called for an evacuation of American citizens who are
within 50 miles of the plant. This decision was based upon a careful scientific
evaluation."
U.S. officials said they were continuing to help evacuate Americans who want to
leave the reactor area and were sending 14 buses to an area north of Sendai.
The Pentagon announced plans for a voluntary evacuation of U.S. military
families from Honshu, Japan's largest island. A spokesman for U.S. forces in
Japan estimated that around 20,000 dependents would be eligible.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn, Phil Stewart, Timothy
Gardner, Ayesha Rascoe and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Xavier Briand)
March 10, 2011
Reuters
By MARK LANDLER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — In the Middle East crisis, as on other issues, there are two
Barack Obamas: the transformative historical figure and the pragmatic American
president. Three months after a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself aflame and
ignited a political firestorm across the Arab world, the president is trumping
the trailblazer.
With the spread of antigovernment protests from North Africa to the strategic,
oil-rich Persian Gulf, President Obama has adopted a policy of restraint. He has
concluded that his administration must shape its response country by country,
aides say, recognizing a stark reality that American national security interests
weigh as heavily as idealistic impulses. That explains why Mr. Obama has dialed
down the vocal support he gave demonstrators in Cairo to a more modulated call
for peaceful protest and respect for universal rights elsewhere.
This emphasis on pragmatism over idealism has left Mr. Obama vulnerable to
criticism that he is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the Arab
street protesters. Some say he is failing to bind the United States to the
historic change under way in the Middle East the way that Ronald Reagan forever
cemented himself in history books to the end of the cold war with his famous
call to tear down the Berlin Wall.
“It’s tempting, and it would be easy, to go out day after day with cathartic
statements that make us feel good,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national
security adviser, who wrote Mr. Obama’s soaring speech in Cairo to the Islamic
world in 2009. “But ultimately, what’s most important is achieving outcomes that
are consistent with our values, because if we don’t, those statements will be
long forgotten.”
On Thursday, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, deflected
calls for more aggressive action in Libya, telling reporters what American
officials have been saying privately for days: despite pleas from Libyan rebels
for military assistance, the United States will not, at least for now, put its
pilots in harm’s way by enforcing a no-flight zone over the country.
Not only is intervention risky, officials said, but they also fear that in some
cases, it could be counterproductive, provoking a backlash against the United
States for meddling in what is a homegrown political movement.
A senior administration official acknowledged the irony of Mr. Obama’s dilemma;
he is, after all, the first black president, whose election was hailed on the
Arab street, where many protesters identify their own struggles with the civil
rights movement.
“There is a desire for Obama — not the American president, but Obama — to speak
to their aspirations,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
But, he added, “his first job is to be the American president.”
So Mr. Obama has thrown his weight behind attempts by the royal family of
Bahrain, the home of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, to survive, although protesters say
their demands have not been met. He has said little about political grievances
in Saudi Arabia, a major oil supplier, where there were reports on Thursday of a
violent dispersal of Shiite protesters. And he has limited White House critiques
of Yemen, where the government is helping the United States root out a terrorist
threat, even after that government opened fire on demonstrators.
The more cautious approach contrasts sharply with Mr. Obama’s response in North
Africa, where he abandoned a 30-year alliance with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and
has demanded the resignation of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. But Mr. Obama
is balancing his idealistic instincts against his reluctance to use military
action in Libya, where the United States does not have a vital strategic
interest. Mr. Donilon noted that the administration needed to keep its focus on
the broader region, where allies like Egypt loom large.
The time is coming, administration officials said, for Mr. Obama to make another
major speech taking stock of the upheaval. But its central message is not yet
set, and there is likely to be lively debate about questions like whether the
president should admit American complicity in propping up undemocratic
governments in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
“I don’t honestly think it would change much,” said a second senior official,
who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “It isn’t
going to change the perception of the United States one way or the other. What
will continue to affect the perception of the United States is what we do now.”
The White House will send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Egypt and
Tunisia next week, where officials said she would congratulate the protesters
for sweeping out their leaders peacefully and offer aid to revive the nations’
economies. She had planned to stop in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, but canceled,
officials said, because King Abdullah is too ill to meet her.
This underscores one of the difficulties the United States faces in dealing with
Saudi Arabia, a crucial ally that is run by an aging, infirm ruling family that
has refused to open the political system. Instead, the king tried to mollify his
people by doling out $36 billion worth of pay raises, unemployment checks and
housing subsidies.
Bahrain poses a different problem. There, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has
pledged to enter a dialogue with the protestors, after having unleashed its
security forces on them. Officials said Mr. Obama persuaded King Hamad to pull
back his forces, which they said won the United States goodwill from the mostly
Shiite demonstrators. But the talks have failed to get off the ground, and now
some Shiites feel the Americans have sided against them.
“There is a sense among many Bahraini reformers that the U.S. is a bit too eager
to praise progress toward dialogue and reform that has not yet happened, and
that the premature praise is easing pressure on the government,” said Tom
Malinowski, the head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.
“Striking a very balanced, and in many ways, neutral approach is recognized by
many people in the region as not being with them, or on their side,” said J.
Scott Mastic, the head of Middle East and North Africa for the International
Republican Institute. “It’s very important that we be seen as supporting the
demands of the people in the region.”
How Mr. Obama manages to do that while also balancing American interests is a
question that officials acknowledge will plague this historic president for
months to come. Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be
the president of China. As one official put it, “No one is scrutinizing Hu
Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
Elisabeth Bumiller and Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels,
Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell from Paris and Judy Dempsey from Berlin.
March 6,
2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
STERLING,
Va. — As a Republican congressman prepares to open hearings on the threat of
homegrown Islamic terrorism, President Obama’s deputy national security adviser
visited a mosque here on Sunday to reassure Muslims that “we will not stigmatize
or demonize entire communities because of the actions of a few.”
The White House billed the speech by the adviser, Denis McDonough, as a chance
for the administration to lay out its strategy for preventing violent extremism.
But the timing was no accident; Mr. McDonough was in effect an emissary from the
White House to pre-empt Representative Peter King of New York, the Homeland
Security Committee chairman, who has promised a series of hearings beginning
Thursday on the radicalization of American Muslims.
“In the United States of America, we don’t practice guilt by association,” Mr.
McDonough told an interfaith but mostly Muslim audience of about 200 here at the
All Dulles Area Muslim Society, known as the Adams Center. “And let’s remember
that just as violence and extremism are not unique to any one faith, the
responsibility to oppose ignorance and violence rests with us all.”
Mr. McDonough made no explicit mention of the hearings or Mr. King. But his
speech came on a day when the back-and-forth over Mr. King’s plans crescendoed,
from the airwaves of Washington’s Sunday morning talk shows to the streets of
Manhattan to this northern Virginia suburb, an area packed with Muslim
professionals, many of whom are extremely wary of Mr. King and his plans.
In Washington, Mr. King, who represents parts of Long Island, faced off on CNN
with Representative Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat and one of only two
Muslims in Congress. Mr. Ellison said he would testify at Mr. King’s hearing on
Thursday despite his deep conviction that it was wrong for Congress to
investigate a particular religious minority.
In New York, 500 people demonstrated near Times Square to protest the hearings
and to call on Mr. King to expand his witness list to include other groups.
“That’s absolute nonsense,” Mr. King said in a telephone interview, adding that
Al Qaeda was trying to radicalize Muslims and that its effort was the leading
homegrown terrorism threat.
“The threat is coming from the Muslim community,” he said, “the radicalization
attempts are directed at the Muslim community. Why should I investigate other
communities?”
As the Times Square demonstrators held up placards declaring “Today I am a
Muslim too,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic
Understanding, and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam who is a co-founder of a project
to develop an Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero, addressed
the crowd.
“To single out Muslim Americans as the source of homegrown terrorism and not
examine all forms of violence motivated by extremist belief — that, my friends,
is an injustice,” Rabbi Schneier said.
Mr. King and Mr. McDonough each took pains on Sunday to say that he had no
quarrel with the other. “We welcome any involvement in the issue,” Mr. McDonough
said of the hearings. “It’s an important issue.”
Mr. King said that he and Mr. McDonough had spoken recently and that he did not
disagree with any element of Mr. McDonough’s speech at the mosque.
For weeks, Muslims have been expressing deep anxiety over the hearings, which
Mr. King has titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim
Community and That Community’s Response.”
He said witnesses would include Mr. Ellison; Representative Frank R. Wolf,
Republican of Virginia; and Zudhi Jasser, a Phoenix physician and founder of the
American Islamic Forum for Democracy. (Dr. Jasser made headlines last year when
he was publicly critical of Mr. Obama’s statement supporting Muslims’ right to
build a mosque and Islamic center near ground zero.)
In addition, Mr. King said on Sunday that he would call as witnesses two
relatives of people who had been radicalized. He would not name them, but said
that one had a nephew who was murdered and that the other had a son who
committed “horrible crimes.” He said they would detail “how this happened, what
it did to their families, what it did to the community, how this originated in
mosques.”
The congressman said additional hearings — he is not certain how many there will
be — would most likely focus on topics like radicalization in prisons and the
flow of foreign money into mosques. But because Mr. King has not been specific
about his plans, rumors are swirling.
“Everybody I talk to worries about it,” Mr. Ellison said during his Sunday
morning appearance with Mr. King on “State of the Union” on CNN. He added, “It’s
absolutely the right thing to do for the chairman of the Homeland Security
Committee to investigate radicalization, but to say we’re going to investigate a
— a religious minority and a particular one, I think, is the wrong course of
action to take.”
Yet for many Muslim leaders, the initial outrage and fear is giving way to a
determination to participate in the testimony and shape the outcome. Rizwan
Jaka, a board member of the Adams Center here, said leaders of mainstream
mosques were eager to testify about their cooperation with law enforcement.
“We’re ready to dialogue,” Mr. Jaka said. “We feel that we want to make sure we
are part of the solution.”
Many counterterrorism officials say maintaining the trust of American Muslims is
critical to attracting tips and foiling plots.
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of ignoring the Islamic nature
of terrorism by preferring terms like “violent extremism,” a term that Mr.
McDonough used frequently in Sunday’s speech.
“We have a choice,” Mr. McDonough said. “We can choose to send a message to
certain Americans that they are somehow ‘less American’ because of their faith
or how they look.”
“If we make that choice,” he added, “we risk feeding the very feelings of
disenchantment that may push some members of that community to violent
extremism.”
Mr. Obama has said from the outset of his presidency that he wants to reach out
to Muslims; during a major speech in Cairo in June 2009, he called for a “new
beginning” with the Muslim world. But the decision to weigh in at this moment —
days before Mr. King’s hearings — is a tricky one for a president. Many
Americans erroneously believe that Mr. Obama is Muslim (he is Christian), and he
seems to generate controversy whenever he dips into such waters, as with the
Manhattan mosque last year.
Mr. Jaka, of the Adams Center, said the White House had asked whether Mr.
McDonough could come to deliver the administration’s message. Sunday’s event, in
a brightly lighted gymnasium, was rife with interfaith symbolism; it began with
a color guard ceremony led by Boy Scouts, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance
and a reading from the Koran.
Mr. McDonough opened his speech by talking about his own Roman Catholic roots;
his parents had 11 children, one of whom is now a priest.
“The bottom line is this,” Mr. McDonough said. “When it comes to preventing
violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not
part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.”
Joseph Berger
contributed reporting from New York.
This article
has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 7, 2011
An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to Representative Keith
Ellison
as the only Muslim in Congress. There is another, Representative André
Carson of Indiana.
March 6, 2011
The New York Times
By MATT WALD and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON – President Obama is considering opening up the
nation’s strategic oil reserve as the administration grapples with how to deal
with rapidly rising gas prices amid unrest in the Middle East, the White House
chief of staff, William Daley, said on Sunday.
“It’s something that only has been done on very rare occasions,” Mr. Daley said
on “Meet the Press” on NBC, adding, “It’s something we’re considering.”
Administration officials have sent mixed signals in the last several days about
the possibility of opening the reserve, which is a rare step. Energy Secretary
Stephen Chu said on Friday that the administration was monitoring prices, but he
seemed reluctant. “We don’t want to be totally reactive so that when the price
goes up everybody panics and when it goes back down everybody goes back to
sleep,” he said. A few days earlier, Mr. Chu said that the administration was
watching closely, but expected oil production that had been lost in Libya
because of unrest there would be made up by production elsewhere.
Recently, though, five Democratic senators have called for opening the reserve,
which is in several salt domes along the Gulf Coast. On Feb. 24, three
Democratic House members from New England, where oil is used not only for
gasoline but also home heating, wrote to Mr. Obama that while other exporters
could increase production, “They also profit from oil price spikes and therefore
have little incentive to quickly respond with the increased supply needed to
calm markets.”
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve was established in response to the Arab Oil
Embargo of 1973-1974. It was tapped most recently In September 2008 to respond
to hurricanes Gustav and Ike. At that time the Energy Department worked out
“exchanges” with oil companies whose normal flows had been interrupted; The oil
companies later made restitution, , with interest, in oil. The last time oil
from the reserve was sold to cope with supply interruptions was in 2005, after
Hurricane Katrina.
Emergency sales were also made in January 1991, to calm global markets as the
United States invaded Kuwait, which had been occupied the previous year by Iraq.
The United States has been building the reserve gradually over the years,
although it has not grown as fast as imports have. The government suspended
acquisitions when oil prices were approaching a peak in 2008, before the
recession began. In that case, as today, the early calls came from members of
Congress who said that consumers needed price relief and that acquisitions for
the reserve were helping to drive prices higher. Prices eventually rose to more
than $140 a barrel; lately prices for the American benchmark crude, West Texas
Intermediate, have exceeded $100. It closed Friday at $104.42 a barrel for April
delivery. At times, the price has been sensitive to relatively small changes in
supply.
The Obama administration’s budget plan for the fiscal year that begins in
October calls for additional sales from the reserves, because one of the
underground salt domes used to store oil needs repair work, and thus must be
partially emptied. But Congress has not begun work on that budget request. By
law, though, the President does not need Congressional approval to open the
reserve in case of supply interruption.
February 23, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — President Obama, in a striking legal and
political shift, has determined that the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law
that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional, and
has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court, the
administration said Wednesday.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the decision in a letter to
members of Congress. In it, he said the administration was taking the
extraordinary step of refusing to defend the law, despite having done so during
Mr. Obama’s first two years in the White House.
“The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual
orientation” should be subjected to a strict legal test intended to block unfair
discrimination, Mr. Holder wrote. As a result, he said, a crucial provision of
the Defense of Marriage Act “is unconstitutional.”
Conservatives denounced the shift, gay rights advocates hailed it as a
watershed, and legal scholars said it could have far-reaching implications
beyond the marriage law. For Mr. Obama, who opposes same-sex marriage but has
said repeatedly that his views are “evolving,” there are political implications
as well. Coming on the heels of his push for Congress to repeal the “don’t ask,
don’t tell” law barring the military from allowing gay people to serve openly,
the administration’s move seems likely to intensify the long-running cultural
clash over same-sex marriage as the 2012 political campaign is heating up.
“This is a great step by the Obama administration and a tipping point for the
gay rights movement that will have ripple effects in contexts beyond the Defense
of Marriage Act,” said Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American
Civil Liberties Union. “It will reach into issues of employment discrimination,
family recognition and full equality rights for lesbian and gay people.”
But some conservatives questioned Mr. Obama’s timing and accused him of trying
to change the subject from spending cuts to social causes. Others portrayed the
Justice Department’s abandonment of the Defense of Marriage Act as an outrageous
political move that was legally unjustified.
“It is a transparent attempt to shirk the department’s duty to defend the laws
passed by Congress,” Representative Lamar Smith, the Texas Republican who is
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “This is the
real politicization of the Justice Department — when the personal views of the
president override the government’s duty to defend the law of the land.”
While the issue at hand is whether gay couples in the eight states that already
legally recognize same-sex marriage may be discriminated against by the federal
government, the administration’s decision raised anew the more fundamental
question of whether same-sex couples should have a right to marry.
Mr. Obama takes a nuanced position on same-sex marriage, and the White House was
careful to say on Wednesday that his position on that issue — he favors civil
unions — remains unchanged. Many advocates of same-sex marriage, though,
perceived the administration’s new legal stance as a signal that Mr. Obama would
soon embrace their cause.
Polls show the public is broadly supportive of equal rights for gay people —
with the exception of the right to marry. Nearly 90 percent of Americans favor
equality of opportunity in the workplace, and more than 60 percent favored
overturning “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the public remains evenly divided on
same-sex marriage.
Tobias B. Wolff, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who has advised Mr.
Obama on gay rights issues, said Wednesday’s decision may have bought the
president some time with gay rights leaders, many of whom have been deeply
critical of his position on the marriage issue.
“He has said that he has been struggling with the issue, and I think he has
earned a certain benefit of the doubt,” Mr. Wolff said.
But the move also sharpened criticism of Mr. Obama from the right. Senator
Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the shift was “clearly based more
on politics than the law.”
While Mr. Obama has called for Congress to repeal the marriage law, in court his
administration has supported the constitutional right of Congress to enact such
a measure. But his legal team was forced to take a second look at the
sustainability of that position because of two recent lawsuits challenging the
statute. The Justice Department must file responses to both suits by March 11.
For technical reasons, it would have been far more difficult — both legally and
politically — for the administration to keep arguing that the marriage law is
constitutional in these new lawsuits. To assert that gay people do not qualify
for extra legal protection against official discrimination, legal specialists
say, the Justice Department would most likely have had to conclude that they
have not been historically stigmatized and can change their orientation.
The development floored Edith S. Windsor, an 81-year-old widow who filed one of
the two new lawsuits in New York. Ms. Windsor is seeking the return of about
$360,000 in estate taxes she had to pay because the federal government did not
recognize their marriage when her wife died two years ago. The couple married in
Toronto.
“It’s almost overwhelming,” Ms. Windsor said in an interview. “I don’t know what
it means in terms of what follows. But the very fact that the president and the
Department of Justice are making such a statement is mind-blowing to anybody gay
or anybody who is related to anybody gay. I think it removes a great deal of the
stigma. It’s just great.”
If the courts agree with the administration’s view of how to evaluate gay-rights
claims of official discrimination, it could open the door to new legal
challenges to many other government policies that treat gay people unequally —
including federal laws that make it easier for noncitizen spouses to apply for
legal residency and state laws governing who may adopt a child.
While it is rare for an administration not to defend the constitutionality of a
statute, it happens occasionally. Congress may opt to appoint its own lawyers to
defend the law, or outside groups may try to intervene. And while the Justice
Department’s lawyers will no longer defend the law in court, Mr. Holder said the
administration would continue to enforce the act unless Congress repeals it or a
court delivers a “definitive verdict against the law’s constitutionality.”
The administration’s change in position grew out of an internal debate, first
reported in January by The New York Times, over how to respond to the two
lawsuits filed last year that challenged the 1996 act.
The same-sex marriage reversal followed weeks of high-level deliberations, first
in the Justice Department’s Civil Division, and then at the White House.
The lawsuits were brought by people including Ms. Windsor, whose same-sex
marriages are recognized as legal by state law, but who have been denied certain
federal benefits granted to opposite-sex married couples. The plaintiffs,
represented by the A.C.L.U. and Glaad — Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders
— contended that such treatment violated their right to equal protection of the
law.
In previous cases, the Justice Department defended the act by citing precedents
that directed judges to uphold any law that treats gay people unequally unless a
challenger can prove there is no conceivable rational basis for the act. But the
two new cases were filed in districts covered by the federal appeals court in
New York, one of the few circuits that lack such a precedent.
As a result, the administration, for the first time, confronted the difficult
question of how much protection gay people, as a group, should receive against
official discrimination.
Mr. Holder said Justice and White House officials had concluded that gay people
qualified for the greater protection afforded to a handful of classes, like race
or gender. Under that test, discrimination is presumed to be unconstitutional,
and Mr. Holder said it was untenable to keep defending the marriage law.
On paper, President Obama’s new $3.7 trillion budget is encouraging. It makes
a number of tough choices to cut the deficit by a projected $1.1 trillion over
10 years, which is enough to prevent an uncontrolled explosion of debt in the
next decade and, as a result, reduce the risk of a fiscal crisis.
The questions are whether its tough choices are also wise choices and whether it
stands a chance in a Congress in which Republicans, who now dominate the House,
are obsessed with making indiscriminate short-term cuts in programs they never
liked anyway. The Republican cuts would eviscerate vital government functions
while not having any lasting impact on the deficit.
What Mr. Obama’s budget is most definitely not is a blueprint for dealing with
the real long-term problems that feed the budget deficit: rising health care
costs, an aging population and a refusal by lawmakers to face the inescapable
need to raise taxes at some point. Rather, it defers those critical issues, in
hopes, we assume, that both the economy and the political environment will
improve in the future.
For the most part, Mr. Obama has managed to cut spending while preserving
important government duties. That approach is in stark contrast to Congressional
Republicans, who are determined to cut spending deeply, no matter the
consequences.
A case in point: the Obama budget’s main cut — $400 billion over 10 years — is
the result of a five-year freeze in nonsecurity discretionary programs, a slice
of the budget that contains programs that are central to the quality of American
lives, including education, environment and financial regulation.
But the cuts are not haphazard. The budget boosts education spending by 11
percent over one year and retains the current maximum level of college Pell
grants — up to $5,500 a year. To offset some of the costs, the budget would
eliminate Pell grants for summer school and let interest accrue during school on
federal loans for graduate students, rather than starting the interest meter
after graduation.
Those are tough cutbacks, but, over all, the Pell grant program would continue
to help close to nine million students. The Republican proposal would cut the
Pell grant program by 15 percent this year and nearly half over the next two
years.
The Obama budget also calls for spending on green energy programs — to be paid
for, in part, by eliminating $46 billion in tax breaks for oil, gas and coal
companies over the next decade. Republicans are determined not to raise any
taxes, even though investing for the future and taming the deficit are
impossible without more money.
The budget would also increase transportation spending by $242 billion over 10
years. It does not specifically call for an increased gas tax to cover the new
costs, though it calls on Congress to come up with new revenues to offset the
new spending. Republicans want to eliminate forward-looking programs like
high-speed rail.
The budget is responsible in other ways. It would cap the value of itemized
deductions for high-income taxpayers and use the savings to extend relief from
the alternative minimum tax for three years so that the tax does not ensnare
millions of middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers for whom it was never
intended. For nearly a decade, Congress has granted alternative minimum tax
relief without paying for it.
House Republicans want to leave military spending out of their budget-cutting
entirely, but Mr. Obama’s budget reduces projected Pentagon spending by $78
billion over five years. If anything, Mr. Obama could safely have proposed
cutting deeper, as suggested by his own bipartisan deficit panel.
The bill for the military is way too high, above cold-war peak levels, when this
country had a superpower adversary. There’s a point where the next military
spending dollar does not make our society more secure, and it’s a point we long
ago passed.
Mr. Obama’s budget also includes a responsible way to head off steep cuts in
what Medicare pays doctors. It would postpone the cuts for two years and offset
that added cost with $62 billion in other health care savings, like expanding
the use of cheaper generic drugs.
But not all of Mr. Obama’s cuts are acceptable. The president is proposing a
reduction by nearly half in the program that provides assistance to low-income
families to pay for home heating bills. Shared sacrifice need not involve the
very neediest.
Ideally, budget cuts would not start until the economic recovery is more firmly
entrenched. But the deficit is a pressing political problem. The Obama budget is
balanced enough to start the process of deficit reduction, but not so draconian
that it would derail the recovery.
The same cannot be said for the plan put forward by Republicans last week. It
would amputate some of government’s most vital functions for the next seven
months of fiscal year 2011. (They haven’t even gotten to next year yet, never
mind the more distant future.)
Real deficit reduction will require grappling with rising health care costs and
an aging population, which means reforms in Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security, as well as tax increases to bring revenues in line with obligations.
Mr. Obama’s budget does not directly address those big issues, but doing so
would require a negotiating partner, and Mr. Obama, at present, does not have
one among the Republican leaders in Congress. His latest budget is a good
starting point for a discussion — and a budget deal — but only if Republicans
are willing participants in the process.
February 14, 2011
The New York Times
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON – President Obama, pivoting at midterm from costly
economic stimulus measures to deficit reduction, on Monday released a fiscal
year 2012 budget that projects an annual deficit of more than $1 trillion before
government shortfalls decline to “sustainable” levels for the rest of the
decade.
Still, annual deficits through fiscal year 2021 will add a combined $7.2
trillion to the federal debt, Mr. Obama’s budget shows – after allowing for $1.1
trillion in deficit-reducing spending cuts and tax increases that the president
proposes over the 10-year period. As he acknowledges, after 2021, an aging
population and rising medical costs will drive deficits again to unsustainable
heights.
The budget reflects Mr. Obama’s cut-and-invest agenda: It creates winners and
big losers as he proposes to slash spending in some domestic programs to both
reduce deficits and make room for increases in education, infrastructure, clean
energy, innovation and research to promote long-term economic growth and global
competitiveness.
The president is unveiling his budget to emphasize one of the winners: He will
do so on Monday morning during a visit to a middle school and technology center
in Baltimore.
Among the losers are programs that Mr. Obama has supported, even expanded, in
the past: Popular programs for home-heating aid to poor families and for
community services block grants would be cut in half, and a multi-state Great
Lakes cleanup project would lose a quarter of its money compared to 2010.
Pell grants for needy college students would be eliminated for summer classes,
and graduate students would start accruing interest immediately on federal
loans, though they would not have to pay until after they graduate; both changes
are intended to help save $100 billion over 10 years to offset the costs of
maintaining Pell grants for 9 million students, according to administration
officials.
Officials contrast the administration’s budgetary approach with that of House
Republicans, who are voting this week to slash the current year’s spending by
much larger amounts, sparing few programs from cuts and increasing spending on
none.
“The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend,” said a senior
administration official on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity to brief
reporters on the budget in advance of Mr. Obama’s Monday announcement of the
spending plan. “We both agree we should cut. The question is how we cut and what
we cut.”
For the administration’s part, the official said, “It requires cutting programs
that in a different environment we would not want to cut.”
For the current fiscal year 2011, which ends Sept. 30, the Obama budget projects
a deficit of more than $1.6 trillion, a level equal to nearly 11 percent of the
gross domestic product, making it the largest shortfall since the end of World
War II. That projection has swelled recently mostly due to the big tax cut deal
that Mr. Obama and Congressional Republican leaders agreed to in December to
spur the still-fragile economic recovery. It included a payroll tax cut this
year for all Americans.
The deficit for fiscal year 2012 is projected to be more than $500 billion less,
$1.1 trillion, due largely to the end of some of those tax cuts and of the
two-year stimulus package that Mr. Obama signed into law soon after taking
office. Economic growth and deficit-reduction measures account for a lesser
share of the expected improvement.
The 2012 deficit will be the fourth and final year it is projected to exceed $1
trillion.When Mr. Obama took office in January 2009, the deficit for that year
was projected to be – and ultimately was -- $1.3 trillion. A similarly large
shortfall followed for 2010. After this year’s spike to $1.6 trillion, the
president’s budget charts a decline from the trillion-dollar level after 2012 --
to a low of $607 billion in fiscal year 2015 -- before the annual deficits, in
dollars, start inching up again.
Compared to the size of the economy, as economists prefer to measure, the annual
deficits would decline from a projected 10.9 percent of gross domestic product
this year to 7 percent in 2012. By 2015, Mr. Obama projects, the deficit would
be just above his target of 3 percent – the level that many economists consider
sustainable because it means deficits are not growing any faster than a healthy
economy.
Of the $1.1 trillion in net deficit reduction that Mr. Obama claims over the
next decade with his budget, two-thirds would be from cuts in spending and a
third from higher revenues.
The lower spending mostly would derive from Mr. Obama’s proposed five-year
freeze of the same narrow category of so-called non-security discretionary
spending that Republicans are cutting. His freeze would save an estimated $400
billion through 2021.
Mr. Obama also would reduce the Pentagon’s five-year spending plans by $78
billion, reflecting savings recommended by his Defense secretary, Robert Gates.
Separately, war costs are declining, administration officials said, largely due
to the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Neither Mr. Obama nor Republicans are tackling the large entitlement programs –
Medicare, Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security -- whose growing
costs are driving projections of unsustainable long-term debt. But Mr. Obama
does propose to save $62 billion from Medicare and Medicaid by squeezing
care-providers’ reimbursements and expanding federal health programs’ use of
generic drugs.
But those savings, by the administration’s accounting, would offset for two
years the costs of preventing a scheduled big reduction in payments to
physicians who treat Medicare patients. Typically Congress just blocks the
mandated pay cuts for doctors and simply adds the expense to the deficit.
Similarly, Mr. Obama proposes to stop another favorite Washington budget
gimmick: Adding to the deficit the recurring costs of preventing the alternative
minimum tax, which is intended for affluent taxpayers, from hitting middle-class
households. He would offset the roughly $300 billion revenue loss from fixing
the tax for three years, raising a like amount over 10 years by limiting
deductions for upper-income people in the top two tax brackets.
That tax increase for affluent Americans would account for the bulk of the
revenues that Mr. Obama counts in his $1.1 trillion of net deficit reduction.
The rest includes $46 billion over 10 years from eliminating a dozen tax breaks
for oil, gas and coal companies to offset the costs of clean-energy initiatives.
February 12, 2011
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER,
MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER
This article is by Helene Cooper, Mark Landler and David E.
Sanger.
WASHINGTON — Last Saturday afternoon, President Obama got a jarring update from
his national security team: With restive crowds of young Egyptians demanding
President Hosni Mubarak’s immediate resignation, Frank G. Wisner, the envoy who
Mr. Obama had sent to Cairo only days before, had just told a Munich conference
that Mr. Mubarak was indispensable to Egypt’s democratic transition.
Mr. Obama was furious, and it did not help that his secretary of state, Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Mr. Wisner’s key backer, was publicly warning that any credible
transition would take time — even as Mr. Obama was demanding that change in
Egypt begin right away.
Seething about coverage that made it look as if the administration were
protecting a dictator and ignoring the pleas of the youths of Cairo, the
president “made it clear that this was not the message we should be delivering,”
said one official who was present. He told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to
take a hard line with his Egyptian counterpart, and he pushed Senator John Kerry
to counter the message from Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Wisner when he appeared on a
Sunday talk show the next day.
The trouble in sending a clear message was another example of how divided Mr.
Obama’s foreign policy team remains. A president who himself is often torn
between idealism and pragmatism was navigating the counsel of a traditional
foreign policy establishment led by Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Biden and Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates, with that of a younger White House staff who worried
that the American preoccupation with stability could put a historic president on
the wrong side of history.
In fact, Mr. Obama never did take the extraordinary step of publicly calling on
Mr. Mubarak to resign.
In interviews over the past week, participants and the people they consulted
described the tension inside the administration, tension that fed the perception
that there was confusion on the Potomac. Time and again, the administration
appeared to tack back and forth, alternately describing Mr. Mubarak as a
stalwart ally and then a foe of meaningful political change. Twelve days ago,
Mr. Obama was announcing that Mr. Mubarak had to begin the transition “now”;
last weekend his chief diplomat was telling reporters that removing Mr. Mubarak
too hastily could undermine Egypt’s transition to democracy.
Inside the White House, the same youthful aides who during his campaign pushed
Mr. Obama to challenge the assumptions of the foreign policy establishment were
now arguing that his failure to side with the protesters could be remembered
with bitterness by a rising generation.
Those onetime campaign aides included Denis McDonough, the sharp-tongued deputy
national security adviser; Benjamin J. Rhodes, who wrote the president’s seminal
address to the Islamic world in Cairo in June 2009; and Samantha Power, the
outspoken Pulitzer Prize winner and human rights advocate who was once drummed
out of the campaign for describing Mrs. Clinton as a monster.
All agreed that Egypt, facing a historic popular revolt, needed to begin a
genuine transition to democracy. The debate was how to deploy American influence
on a volatile and fast-changing situation — to at least temporarily shore up a
faltering ally proposing a gradual transition in the interests of stability, or
to signal more support for a new generation of Egyptians demanding faster and
more decisive change.
Despite the fervor on the streets of Cairo, and Mr. Obama’s occasional tough
language, the president always took a pragmatic view of how to use America’s
limited influence over change in Egypt. He was not in disagreement with the
positions of Mr. Wisner and Mrs. Clinton about how long transition would take.
But he apparently feared that saying so openly would reveal that the United
States was not in total sync with the protesters, and was indeed putting its
strategic interests first. Making that too clear would not only anger the
crowds, it could give Mr. Mubarak a reason to cling to power and a pretext to
crush the revolution.
It was not only Mr. Wisner’s and Mrs. Clinton’s comments that threw the
administration off message. Mr. Biden told an interviewer that he did not
believe Mr. Mubarak was a dictator — words he quickly regretted, officials say.
As the administration struggled to craft a message, it was playing to multiple
audiences — the crowds in Tahrir Square who wanted Mr. Obama to be their
champion; neighboring allies who feared instability and that revolutionary
fervor would spill across their borders; and home audiences on the left and the
right who saw this as a test of whether he would restore democracy promotion to
the top of the foreign policy agenda.
Mrs. Clinton and some of her State Department subordinates wanted to move
cautiously, and reassure allies they were not being abandoned, in part
influenced by daily calls from Israel, Saudi Arabia and others who feared an
Egypt without Mr. Mubarak would destabilize the entire region. Some of these
allies were nervous in part because they believed that the United States had
cheerleaded the protesters in Tunisia.
In fact, some of the differences in approach stemmed from the institutional
biases of the State Department versus those of the White House. The diplomats at
the State Department view the Egyptian crisis through the lens of American
strategic interests in the region, its threat to the 1979 peace accord between
Egypt and Israel and its effects on the Middle East peace process.
The White House shared those concerns, officials said, but workers in the West
Wing also worried that if Mr. Obama did not encourage the young people in the
streets with forceful, even inspiring language, he would be accused of
abandoning the ideals he expressed in his 2009 speech in Cairo.
For her part, Mrs. Clinton, too, has called for radical change in the Arab
world. In January, on a trip to Qatar, she issued a scathing critique of Arab
leaders, saying their countries risked “sinking into the sand” if they did not
undertake swift political reforms. She said that stagnant economies and the
bulge in the youth population was a recipe for the kind of unrest that later
convulsed Tunisia and Egypt. And during a meeting at the White House on Jan. 29,
officials said, Mrs. Clinton pushed for the administration to adopt language
that would clearly lay the groundwork for Mr. Mubarak’s departure.
But she also expressed concern later that a hasty exit of Mr. Mubarak could
complicate Egypt’s transition to democracy given the lack of a political culture
there. Added to that, many foreign policy experts worried — and still worry —
that Egyptians are even now faced with a choice between the military on one side
and the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group, on the other.
For Mr. Obama, the turning point came on Feb. 1, when he watched Mr. Mubarak
give a defiant speech on television and then called him to make the point that
if the Egyptian leader thought he could avoid reform, he was mistaken. He
stopped short of calling for Mr. Mubarak to resign, but the next morning, he
instructed his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, to not to shy away from his demand
that day that meaningful reform must begin “now.”
“I want you to be clear that I meant what I said when I said ‘now,’ ” Mr. Obama
told his aides, according to a senior administration official. The result was
Mr. Gibbs’ line that “now started yesterday,” which appeared to harden the
administration’s position even more.
But it also angered the administration’s allies, who made their displeasure
clear in a flood of calls. It was in that tense atmosphere that Mrs. Clinton
left on Feb. 4 for a security conference in Munich without Thomas E. Donilon,
the national security adviser, who was initially supposed to attend, too.
The surprise speaker was Mr. Wisner, who addressed the group by video link just
days after returning from Cairo, where he went to deliver Mr. Obama’s message in
person to Mr. Mubarak, whom he had known well when he was the American
ambassador to Egypt.
Mr. Wisner comes from the old school of nurturing American relationships around
the world. And he warned the audience in Munich that “you need to get a national
consensus around the preconditions of the next step forward,” and that, in the
remarks that so angered Mr. Obama, Mr. Mubarak “must stay in office in order to
steer those changes through.”
In Munich, Mrs. Clinton and other Western officials put their emphasis on the
“orderly” part of an “orderly transition” in Egypt. Mrs. Clinton ticked off the
list of hurdles that had to be surmounted: Political parties had to be created,
leaders had to emerge from an opposition that had been suppressed for 30 years,
the Constitution needed to be amended and voter rolls assembled.
She said the process should move “as expeditiously as possible under the
circumstances,” but added, “That takes time.”
Mrs. Clinton’s message, officials said, was conflated later with Mr. Wisner’s.
Administration officials insist that Mr. Obama was angered by Mr. Wisner’s
remarks, not by Mrs. Clinton’s. But speaking to reporters on the flight home
from Munich, Mrs. Clinton echoed at least part of Mr. Wisner’s argument, warning
that Mr. Mubarak’s abrupt resignation could prompt a chain of events, stipulated
by the Egyptian Constitution, which would lead to elections in two months — far
too short a time.
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines, said, “The secretary sees the
need for profound transformation in the Middle East – and sees it as consistent
with both our values and long-term interests.” But he added, “She is also very
mindful of the challenges and seeks to insure it proceeds in a way where
people’s aspirations are realized and not thwarted; where lives are valued and
not lost.”
Back in Washington, though, Mr. Obama was moving quickly to counteract the
rhetoric coming from Munich. The White House recruited Senator Kerry, the
chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who appeared on the NBC News
program “Meet the Press” and declared that Mr. Wisner’s comments "just don’t
reflect where the administration has been from day one.”
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Kerry played down the administration’s mixed
messages. “A little confusion came out of Munich,” he said. “Apart from that,
they calibrated it appropriately, to try to give the process room without making
it an American process.”
February 11, 2011
The New York Times
By NADA BAKRI
BEIRUT — Across the Arab world on Friday, thousands of people
poured into the streets to celebrate the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak
of Egypt after nearly three weeks of demonstrations against his almost 30-year
rule.
In Beirut, gunfire broke out and crowds of people waved Egyptian flags. In
Yemen, they gathered in front of the Egyptian Embassy chanting, “Wake up rulers,
Mubarak fell today.” In Gaza, they fired shots in the air and set off fireworks.
But in a telling sign of the divide between the rulers and the ruled, the
region’s leaders, presidents and monarchs remained largely silent.
The popular uprising that started four weeks ago in Tunisia had claimed its
second autocratic government, this time in the largest country in the Arab
world. With more protests planned in coming days, some governments were clearly
worried they could be next.
“All the regimes are shaking now,” said Fawaz Traboulsi, a prominent Lebanese
writer and columnist. “They are becoming more and more fragile. This is just the
beginning.”
Several leaders met with their advisers late into the night on Friday, devising
strategies for coping with the demands for change in their own countries. While
those meetings were private, their public responses so far have relied on a
combination of tactics including denunciations of the protesters as foreign-led,
offers of monetary and other concessions to undercut complaints of injustice,
and the generous deployment of tear gas, truncheons and other blunt instruments
of repression.
Saudi Arabia has been the most outspoken in its opposition to the protesters,
assailing those in Egypt for what it described as foreign meddling in Egypt’s
affairs.
King Abdullah accused the Egyptian protesters last week of “meddling in the
security and stability of Arab and Muslim Egypt.” And the foreign minister,
Prince Saud al-Faisal, said Thursday in Morocco that he was astonished “at what
we see as interference in the internal affairs of Egypt by some countries.”
In Bahrain, King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa on Friday ordered the equivalent of
$2,650 be given to every Bahraini family. He is facing a “Day of Rage” protest
on Monday. Analysts there say he may announce reforms in a speech on Saturday.
“Arab people discovered their ability to make change,” said Nabeel Rajab, a
human rights activist in Bahrain. “And with Egypt in the leadership once again,
the change will reach all the Arab world.”
In Yemen, after protests that drew thousands into the streets of the capital,
Sana, on Friday, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was expected to announce more
concessions soon, opposition leaders said. Last week, he declared that he would
suspend constitutional amendments allowing him to remain in power for life, a
longstanding demand of the Islamist-led opposition, and promised that his son
would not inherit his rule.
He has also raised salaries for the military and civil servants, cut income
taxes in half and ordered price controls.
In Iraq, officials have reduced their salaries, and in Algeria, the government
has promised to lift the state of emergency that has been the law since 1992.
Syrian officials lifted a ban on Facebook and Youtube this week, tools Egyptian
protesters used to great effect. Human rights advocates warned that the move
could make it easier for the government to monitor its opponents. Still,
residents of a Damascus suburb celebrated Mr. Mubarak’s ouster with fireworks on
Friday, Reuters reported, a bold stance in a country ruled by emergency law for
nearly five decades.
The only governments in the region that seemed to have embraced the protests
without reservation were those led by Islamists. In Lebanon, a Hezbollah
statement said, “Hezbollah congratulates the great people of Egypt on this
historic and honorable victory which is a direct result of their pioneering
revolution.”
In Gaza, the Palestinian militant group Hamas went further, calling on the new
Egyptian leadership to open the borders with Gaza and reconsider its ties with
Israel.
On the streets of Arab cities, the joy was sometimes tempered with tristesse for
those still under authoritarian governments.
“As much as I was happy, I felt sad for Arabs,” said Shawqi al-Qadi, a Yemeni
opposition leader. “Why are we ruled by people who are so hated and disgusted by
their people? How did that happen to us?”
And wistfulness.
“I wish I was an Egyptian today,” said Jammal Amar, 23, a Beirut university
student. “What happened makes us confident that we can revolt against injustice
and oppression and prevail.”
Contagious as the enthusiasm was, the obstacles to another Tunisia or another
Egypt remain daunting.
On Friday, those obstacles were perhaps most visible in Algeria, where thousands
of police officers in riot gear mobilized in the center of the capital, Algiers.
They were preparing to put down an opposition march planned there on Saturday.
February 11, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — President Obama heaped praise on the peaceful
protesters who deposed Hosni Mubarak on Friday, declaring, “Egypt will never be
the same,” even as his national security team acknowledged that the swift
uprising would almost certainly upend American strategy in the Middle East.
Standing in the foyer of the White House, where just a week before he had
started to press Mr. Mubarak for immediate reforms without calling for his
resignation, Mr. Obama described the Egyptian uprising as a model of nonviolence
and moral force “that bent the arc of history.” While comparing the 18-day
protests to Gandhi’s peaceful resistance to British rule, the fall of the Berlin
Wall and the student protests that brought down a dictator in Indonesia, he also
set out a series of benchmarks that he said he expected the Egyptian military to
follow, warning that “nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.”
“That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency
law, revising the Constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible,
and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free,” he said.
“Above all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table.”
Mr. Obama’s tone was optimistic, and he promised the crowd in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square — which was listening to his brief broadcast live via Egyptian state
television — continued American support for Egypt. That support, however, is
likely to take new forms: Administration officials agreed that the $250 million
in economic aid was a pittance compared with the $1.3 billion in annual military
aid, and the White House and the State Department were already discussing
setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties. Under
Egypt’s current Constitution, alternatives to Mr. Mubarak’s National Democratic
Party are all but banned.
In his remarks, Mr. Obama promised “whatever assistance is necessary” to pursue
a “credible transition to a democracy.”
But as he spoke, White House officials were assessing the longer-term impact of
street revolutions that have deposed two dictators in less than a month,
starting with the ouster of Tunisia’s leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Middle
East leaders from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen have moved to pre-empt similar
uprisings.
In Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of which depended heavily on Mr. Mubarak,
officials were blistering in their criticism of Washington, arguing that the
United States abandoned a long-time ally without first building in guarantees
that Egypt’s revolution could not be hijacked by religious extremists.
In his final press briefing at the White House on Friday, Robert Gibbs, Mr.
Obama’s press secretary, told reporters, “I think it’s important that the next
government of Egypt, as we’ve said in here many times, recognize the accords
that have been signed with the government of Israel.” But other officials have
acknowledged privately that if Egypt turns into a noisy democracy that includes
the Muslim Brotherhood, there will undoubtedly be political debate in Egypt
about whether the 1979 peace accord with Israel should remain in force.
“We don’t think that there is any real chance the Egyptian military would have
any interest in seeing the peace accord walked back,” one of Mr. Obama’s senior
aides said this week. “But it’s a warning we must issue.”
The Saudis, like Mr. Mubarak himself, portrayed the uprising as the creation of
“foreign powers,” which was widely interpreted as code words for Washington and
other Western powers.
“We are astonished however at what we see as interference in the internal
affairs of Egypt by some countries,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince
Saud al-Faisal, said Thursday, as Mr. Mubarak was still clinging to power. In an
unusually direct shot at the White House, he said, “We are shocked to see that
there are countries pre-empting even the will of the Egyptian people,” never
addressing the fact that the protests in Egypt seemed both widespread and
homegrown.
While there are few signs yet of protests gathering steam in Saudi Arabia, the
government there has taken steps to raise wages and try to keep the contagion
from spreading across its own desert.
Yemen and Syria, according to an analysis circulating in the White House, could
be more vulnerable. But even as administration officials worried about how the
protests could spread, they seemed to be all but inviting it in Iran.
White House officials were clearly relishing the discomfort the uprising has
created for Iran’s leaders.
On Friday, White House officials noted that the Iranians, who initially greeted
the protests in Egypt because they were aimed at a secular leader who had helped
isolate Tehran, had changed their minds. They were blocking broadcasts by the
BBC, and putting some opposition leaders under house arrest.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all but urged Iranians to go out onto
Tehran’s streets, in a repeat of the June 2009 demonstrations: “I say to our
Iranian friends, Let your people march. Let your people speak. Release your
people from jail. Let them have a voice.”
Just a week ago, trying to coax Mr. Mubarak to transfer his powers or leave
office, Mr. Obama called the Egyptian leader a “patriot” who cared deeply about
his country. On Friday, after Mr. Mubarak slipped out of Cairo, Mr. Obama
mentioned him only once.
Instead, he focused his comments on the young people in the streets, and a
military that “would not fire bullets” into the crowds that gathered in Tahrir
Square, also known as Liberation Square. He struck a decidedly optimistic tone
about Egypt’s future, repeating lines from his own presidential campaign in
2008, saying that Egyptians could now create a government that “represented
their hopes and not their fears.”
Even some outsiders who have been critical of the administration’s mixed
messages during the Egyptian crisis — from its early declarations to Egypt as
“stable” to its wavering on whether reform could happen with Mr. Mubarak still
in office — said Mr. Obama struck the right tone on Friday. “He has done better
than his government has done,” said Robert Kagan, a conservative scholar and
essayist at the Brookings Institution.
But there are widespread concerns in Washington about the weeks ahead, starting
with the worry that once Tahrir Square clears, the military might try to
recreate a state it would dominate. “It is going to be critical to make sure the
military remains true to the transition,” Senator John Kerry, chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations committee, said in an interview. “If that is secured
quickly, then I believe the process can flow quite smoothly.”
Mr. Kagan said he thought the risks were relatively small.
“Once the military decided they were not going to kill people in the streets, I
don’t know what leverage they have. If they tried to re-establish the military
dictatorship that Egypt has had for years, it would be pretty difficult.”
February 10, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — President Hosni Mubarak’s refusal to step down on
Thursday, after a day of rumors galvanized the crowds in Cairo, confronts the
Obama administration with a stark choice: break decisively with Mr. Mubarak or
stick to its call for an “orderly transition” that may no longer be tenable.
On a day of dashed hopes in Egypt, the administration’s attempts to balance the
democratic aspirations of the protesters against a fear of contributing to
broader instability in the Middle East collided head-on with Mr. Mubarak’s
defiant refusal to relinquish his office.
To some extent, Mr. Mubarak opened the door for President Obama to appeal even
more directly to the protesters, some of whom have felt betrayed by the
administration’s cautious approach, saying it placed strategic interests ahead
of democratic values. In his speech, Mr. Mubarak said he would not brook foreign
interference, suggesting that he was digging in his heels after days of prodding
by the United States for “immediate, irreversible” change.
Mr. Obama’s remarks earlier in the day, in which he celebrated the hopes of a
“young generation” of Egyptians, were broadcast in Cairo, drawing cheers from
the protesters.
“The administration has to put everything on the line now,” said Thomas
Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who has been among
several outside experts advising the White House on Egypt in recent days.
“Whatever cards they have, this is the time to play them.”
In its first reaction, the administration offered few overt signs of a change in
policy. While criticizing the move as insufficient, it made no direct call for
Mr. Mubarak’s resignation. But in a statement, the White House called on his
government to explain “in clear and unambiguous language” how a transition of
power would take place.
Mr. Obama watched Mr. Mubarak’s speech on board Air Force One, returning from a
trip to Michigan, the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said. As soon as he arrived
at the White House, Mr. Obama huddled with his national security aides. The
administration appeared as taken aback by Mr. Mubarak’s speech as the crowds in
Tahrir Square. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta,
testified before the House of Representatives on Thursday morning that there was
a “strong likelihood” that Mr. Mubarak would step down by the end of the day.
American officials said Mr. Panetta was basing his statement not on secret
intelligence but on media broadcasts, which began circulating before he sat down
before the House Intelligence Committee. But a senior administration official
said Mr. Obama had also expected that Egypt was on the cusp of dramatic change.
Speaking at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, he said, “We are
witnessing history unfold,” adding, “America will do everything we can to
support an orderly and genuine transition to democracy.”
The chaotic events on Thursday called much of the administration’s strategy in
dealing with the Egyptian crisis into question. For days, the administration has
pinned its hopes on a transition process managed by the Egyptian vice president,
Omar Suleiman. But Mr. Suleiman followed Mr. Mubarak on television, aligning
himself squarely with his boss, urging the protesters to decamp, go back to work
and stop watching foreign satellite TV channels. That extravagant show of
loyalty may doom any chances for Mr. Suleiman to function as an honest broker in
the transition — something on which the administration had been counting, in
part because it has good relations with Mr. Suleiman, a former head of Egyptian
intelligence.
“The administration had been looking toward Suleiman to handle the orderly part
of the orderly transition,” said Martin S. Indyk, the director of foreign policy
at the Brookings Institution. “But this week, he raised doubts about whether he
had made the conversion to a democrat. And now Mubarak has dragged Suleiman down
with him, in the eyes of the protesters.”
For the administration, as for the crowds, it was a day of keen anticipation,
followed by intense confusion. CNN was on in offices across Washington, with
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials waiting for a
speech that they believed would be a major step forward in the crisis.
Shortly after the speech, Egypt’s ambassador to Washington, Sameh Shoukry, said
he called the White House to say that Mr. Mubarak had in fact delegated his
powers to Mr. Suleiman — a move that was hardly clear in a lengthy address that
focused more on his refusal to be ousted.
“He now has all the authorities bestowed on the president by the Constitution,”
Mr. Shoukry said of Mr. Suleiman in an interview, including command of the
military. Mr. Mubarak, the ambassador said, retains the power to amend the
Constitution, dissolve Parliament and dismiss the cabinet. And Mr. Mubarak could
always take power back.
Defending Mr. Suleiman, Mr. Shoukry said, “The vice president’s statements
indicated his desire to fulfill the reform process and continue the dialogue
with the opposition.”
Mr. Panetta’s rather firm declaration to Congress about Mr. Mubarak’s exit came
at an awkward moment. American officials said Mr. Obama was unhappy about some
of the recent judgments of American spy agencies, in particular the conclusion
that President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia would remain in power and that
Tunisian security forces would come to his defense.
Defending the C.I.A.’s work on Thursday, Mr. Panetta said that the agency last
year issued nearly 400 reports about simmering tensions in the Middle East, and
the “potential for disruption.” Mr. Panetta compared the difficulty of making
intelligence judgments to forecasting earthquakes: even mapping the fault lines
cannot give you precise information about the next earthquake.
Still, Mr. Panetta said that his agency needed to better understand the
“triggers” that can set off events like the protests in Egypt. He said that he
had asked C.I.A. station chiefs for “better collection on issues like popular
sentiments, issues like the strength of the opposition, issues like what is the
role of the Internet in that particular country” and similar topics.
Speaking to the same House panel, the director of national intelligence, James
R. Clapper, gave spy agencies a grade of “B-plus, if not A-minus” for their
recent Middle East forecasting. But, he cautioned, “We are not clairvoyant.”
President Barack Obama issued this statement on Thursday in
response to developments in Egypt:
The Egyptian people have been told that there was a transition of authority, but
it is not yet clear that this transition is immediate, meaningful or sufficient.
Too many Egyptians remain unconvinced that the government is serious about a
genuine transition to democracy, and it is the responsibility of the government
to speak clearly to the Egyptian people and the world. The Egyptian government
must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine
democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity.
As we have said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be
determined by the Egyptian people. But the United States has also been clear
that we stand for a set of core principles. We believe that the universal rights
of the Egyptian people must be respected, and their aspirations must be met. We
believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political
change, and a negotiated path to democracy. To that end, we believe that the
emergency law should be lifted. We believe that meaningful negotiations with the
broad opposition and Egyptian civil society should address the key questions
confronting Egypt’s future: protecting the fundamental rights of all citizens;
revising the Constitution and other laws to demonstrate irreversible change; and
jointly developing a clear roadmap to elections that are free and fair.
We therefore urge the Egyptian government to move swiftly to explain the changes
that have been made, and to spell out in clear and unambiguous language the step
by step process that will lead to democracy and the representative government
that the Egyptian people seek. Going forward, it will be essential that the
universal rights of the Egyptian people be respected. There must be restraint by
all parties. Violence must be forsaken. It is imperative that the government not
respond to the aspirations of their people with repression or brutality. The
voices of the Egyptian people must be heard.
The Egyptian people have made it clear that there is no going back to the way
things were: Egypt has changed, and its future is in the hands of the people.
Those who have exercised their right to peaceful assembly represent the
greatness of the Egyptian people, and are broadly representative of Egyptian
society. We have seen young and old, rich and poor, Muslim and Christian join
together, and earn the respect of the world through their non-violent calls for
change. In that effort, young people have been at the forefront, and a new
generation has emerged. They have made it clear that Egypt must reflect their
hopes, fulfill their highest aspirations, and tap their boundless potential. In
these difficult times, I know that the Egyptian people will persevere, and they
must know that they will continue to have a friend in the United States of
America.
February 7,
2011
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— President Obama urged American businesses on Monday to “get in the game” by
letting loose trillions of dollars that they are holding in reserve, saying that
they can help create a “virtuous cycle” of more sales, higher demand and greater
profits that will put people back to work.
“If there is a reason you don’t believe that this is the time to get off the
sidelines — to hire and invest — I want to know about it. I want to fix it,” Mr.
Obama said in a speech to business leaders at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In the speech, Mr. Obama pledged to eliminate unneeded regulations and simplify
the tax code, but said companies had responsibilities to help the economy
recover.
“Ultimately, winning the future is not just about what the government can do to
help you succeed,” he said. “It’s about what you can do to help America
succeed.”
The president’s comments came as he sought to reassure members of the business
community that he was not their adversary and to mend fences with their forceful
lobbying advocate in Washington.
“I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly,” Mr. Obama said, alluding to
the contentious relationship he has had with the Chamber of Commerce over the
past two years. “I strolled over from across the street, and, look, maybe if we
had brought over a fruitcake when I first moved in, we would have gotten off to
a better start. But I’m going to make up for it.”
The chamber has fiercely opposed most of Mr. Obama’s health care and banking
agenda and spent more than $50 million during last year’s midterm elections to
cast the president and his party as anti-business and a threat to capitalism.
But the chamber, too, is eager to tone down the rhetoric, according to senior
officials there. At the height of the high-profile fight with the White House,
several big-name companies left its board, citing concern about the chamber’s
opposition to the administration’s efforts.
Thomas J. Donohue, the Chamber of Commerce’s president, has in the past warned
of a “regulatory tsunami” that will result from Mr. Obama’s policies. In
particular, he told reporters after the November elections last year that the
health care law would produce hundreds of new burdens on American businesses.
But in introducing Mr. Obama, Mr. Donohue emphasized his group’s desire to work
with the administration in areas where they might agree. Those include
increasing free trade and exports, investing in technology and infrastructure
and reducing the nation’s debt.
“I reaffirm the American business community’s absolute commitment to working
with you and your administration to advancing our shared priorities,” Mr.
Donohue said.
Mr. Obama’s remarks reflected the careful effort of a White House eager to seem
more pro-business but anxious about the accusations of betrayal by some of the
Democratic president’s most liberal allies.
The president’s basic message to the business community — “I get it,” he said of
the profit-making imperative — was joined with an admonition that corporate
America must feel some sense of duty as well. That effort to walk a political
line appeared to please neither side completely on Monday.
Mr. Obama’s suggestion that businesses can help the economy recover by spending
their reserves was met with skepticism by some in the audience. Harold Jackson,
a executive at Buffalo Supply Inc., a medical supply company, called it naïve.
“Any business person has to look at the demand to their company for their
product and services, and make hiring decisions,” Mr. Jackson said. “I think
it’s a little outside the bounds to suggest that if we hire people we don’t
need, there will be more demand.”
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader in the Senate, said
in remarks Monday that “we’ll just have to wait and see whether the
administration’s actions support its rhetoric.” Mr. McConnell urged Mr. Obama to
prove his intentions to help the business community by doing more to push free
trade agreements with Colombia and Panama.
At the same time, Mr. Obama’s decision to address the chamber in the first place
has upset liberal groups, who say the president is consorting with the very
forces they believe have worked to undercut his policies.
Public Citizen, a liberal group in Washington, issued a statement condemning the
president’s comment that he would “go anywhere” in the world to promote trade, a
line that prompted one of the few moments of applause from the crowd of business
leaders.
“It’s unclear what is more mortifying: President Barack Obama choosing the club
of America’s notorious job-offshorers to talk about the importance of creating
American jobs, or his rallying of his fiercest political opponents to help him
overcome the majority of Americans who oppose more-of-the-same job-killing trade
agreements,” said Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade
Watch.
Erica Payne, the founder of the Agenda Project, a liberal organization in New
York, said: “Two weeks ago, the president promised that he would work to rebuild
people’s faith in government. Meeting with the biggest lobbyists in the country
is hardly a step in the right direction.”
In an interview after Mr. Obama’s speech, Ms. Payne said the president’s speech
had “many words, little content.”
February 7,
2011
Filed at 8:56 p.m. EST
Tjhe New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The Obama administration is proposing short-term relief to states saddled
with unemployment insurance debt, coupled with a delayed increase in the income
level used to tax employers for the aid to the jobless.
The administration plans to include the proposal in its budget plan next week.
The plan was described late Monday by a person familiar with the discussions on
the condition of anonymity because the budget plan is still being completed.
Rising unemployment has placed such a burden on states that 30 of them owe the
federal government $42 billion in money borrowed to meet their unemployment
insurance obligations. Three states already have had to raise taxes to begin
paying back the money they owe. More than 20 other states likely would have to
raise taxes to cover their unemployment insurance debts. Under federal law, such
tax increases are automatic once the money owed reaches a certain level.
Under the proposal, the administration would impose a moratorium in 2011 and
2012 on state tax increases and on state interest payments on the debt.
In 2014, however, the administration proposes to increase the taxable income
level for unemployment insurance from $7,000 to $15,000. Under the proposal, the
federal unemployment insurance rate would be adjusted so that the new higher
income level would not result in a federal tax increase, the person familiar
with the plan said.
States, however, could retain their current rates, meaning employers could face
higher unemployment insurance taxes beginning in 2014.
Though the administration could face criticism for enabling states to increase
taxes, the thrust of the administration's argument is that federal taxes would
not increase and that the move is fiscally prudent because the federal
government ultimately would be repaid at a faster rate than if it did nothing.
The person who described the plan said only 13 of the 30 states that owe the $42
billion would be expected to repay their share of the money in the next nine
years under current conditions. The administration's proposal would allow 15
more states to repay the money, this person said.
February 5, 2011
9:40 pm
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — As Sarah Palin delivered a weekend
address here, paying tribute to Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth,
she directed a forceful line of criticism at President Obama and his
administration, though she did not mention the crisis in Egypt. But in a
subsequent television interview, she took Mr. Obama to task for his handling of
the matter.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Ms. Palin told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call, and it seems for many of us trying
to get that information from our leader in the White House, it seems that that
call went right to the answering machine.”
The early-morning phone call that Ms. Palin mentioned was reprised from the 2008
Democratic presidential primary fight, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton aired
a stinging television ad suggesting that Mr. Obama lacked foreign policy
experience. To drive home the point, the commercial showed a telephone ringing —
unanswered — in the middle of the night.
Three years later, Mrs. Clinton is deeply entwined in the diplomatic crisis in
Egypt as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state. (These days, if there are any 3 a.m.
phone calls, it probably means that the situation was elevated to the attention
of the White House, where the telephone is answered around the clock.)
In an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms.
Palin criticized the Obama administration for failing to explain “to the
American public what they know.” In an excerpt of the interview released
Saturday evening on the network’s Web site, Ms. Palin declared: “Now, more than
ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House.”
This is a transcript, provided by the network, of Ms. Palin’s response to Mr.
Brody’s question about how she believes the president has handled the situation
in Egypt:
“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what
they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will
be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is
that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to
understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so
volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other
countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we
need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it
is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with.
And, we do not have all that information yet.”
At her appearance here in Santa Barbara on Friday evening, Ms. Palin spoke for
about 30 minutes and did not take questions from the audience or reporters.
She spoke exclusively to Mr. Brody in a 10-minute interview following the
speech. Asked what she might do differently if she decided to run for president,
Ms. Palin said: “I would continue on the same course of not really caring what
other people say about me or worrying about the things that they make up, but
having that thick skin and a still spine.”
February 5, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and STEVEN ERLANGER
MUNICH — The Obama administration on Saturday formally threw
its weight behind a gradual transition in Egypt, backing attempts by the
country’s vice president, Gen. Omar Suleiman, to broker a compromise with
opposition groups and prepare for new elections in September.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking to a conference here, said
it was important to support Mr. Suleiman as he seeks to defuse street protests
and promises to reach out to opposition groups, including the Muslim
Brotherhood. Administration officials said earlier that Mr. Suleiman and other
military-backed leaders in Egypt are also considering ways to provide President
Hosni Mubarak with a graceful exit from power.
“That takes some time,” Mrs. Clinton said. “There are certain things that have
to be done in order to prepare.”
Her message, echoed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister
David Cameron of Britain, was a notable shift in tone from the past week, when
President Obama, faced with violent clashes in Cairo, demanded that Mr. Mubarak
make swift, dramatic changes.
Now, the United States and other Western powers appear to have concluded that
the best path for Egypt — and certainly the safest one, to avoid further chaos —
is a gradual transition, managed by Mr. Suleiman, a pillar of Egypt’s existing
establishment, and backed by the military.
Whether such a process is acceptable to the crowds on the streets of Cairo is
far from clear: there is little evidence that Mr. Suleiman, a former head of
Egyptian intelligence and trusted confidant of Mr. Mubarak, would be seen as an
acceptable choice, even temporarily. Opposition groups have refused to speak to
him, saying that Mr. Mubarak must leave first.
But Mrs. Clinton suggested that the United States was not insisting on the
immediate departure of Mr. Mubarak, and that such an abrupt shift of power may
not be necessary or prudent. She said Mr. Mubarak, having taken himself and his
son, Gamal, out of the September elections, was already effectively sidelined.
She emphasized the need for Egypt to begin building peaceful political parties
and to reform its constitution to make a vote credible.
“That is what the government has said it is trying to do,” she said. “That is
what we are supporting, and hope to see it move as orderly but as expeditiously,
as possible, under the circumstances.”
Mrs. Clinton expressed fears about deteriorating security inside Egypt, noting
the explosion at a gas pipeline in the Sinai Peninsula, and uncorroborated media
reports of an earlier assassination attempt on Mr. Suleiman.
The report was mentioned at the conference by Wolfgang Ischinger, a retired
German diplomat who is the conference chairman, just as Mrs. Clinton began
taking questions at the gathering of heads of state, foreign ministers, and
legislators from the United States, Europe, and other countries.
American officials said they have no evidence that the report is accurate. But
Mrs. Clinton picked up on it and said it “certainly brings into sharp relief the
challenges we are facing as we navigate through this period.”
A senior Republican senator at the meeting, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina,
voiced support for the administration’s backing for a gradual transition in
Egypt, saying that a Suleiman-led transitional government, backed by the
military, was probably the only way for Egypt to negotiate its way to elections
in the fall.
“What would be the alternative?” he asked.
Mrs. Clinton emphasized that American support for Mr. Suleiman’s plan should not
be construed as an effort to dictate events. “Those of us who are trying to make
helpful offers of assistance and suggestions for how to proceed are still at the
end on the outside looking in,” she said.
But in a hectic morning of diplomacy, Mrs. Clinton was clearly eager to build
support for this position. She met with Mr. Cameron, Mrs. Merkel, and Turkey’s
foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who said the views of Turkey and the United
States were “100 percent identical.” Mr. Obama spoke by phone Friday with Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on a deliberate process was repeated by Mrs. Merkel and
Mr. Cameron. Mrs. Merkel harkened to her past as a democracy activist in East
Germany, recalling the impatience of protestors, after the fall of the Berlin
Wall in 1989, to immediately join democratic West Germany. But the process took
a year, and it was time well spent, she said.
“There will be a change in Egypt,” she said, “but clearly, the change has to
shaped in a way that it is a peaceful, a sensible way forward.”
Mr. Cameron said introducing democracy in Egypt “overnight” would fuel further
instability, saying the West needed to encourage the development of civil
society and political parties before holding a vote.
“Yes, the transition absolutely has to start now,” Mr. Cameron said. “But if we
think it is all about the act of holding an election, we are wrong. It is about
a set of actions.”
Mrs. Clinton highlighted the dangers of holding elections without adequate
preparation. To take part in Egypt’s new order, she said, political parties
should renounce violence as a tool of coercion, pledge to respect the rights of
minorities, and show tolerance. The White House has signaled that it is open to
a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that Israeli officials
and others warn could put Egypt on a path to extremism.
“The transition to democracy will only happen if it is deliberate, inclusive,
and transparent,” she said. “The challenge is to help our partners take
systematic steps to usher in a better future, where people’s voices are heard,
their rights respected, and their aspirations met.”
“Revolutions have overthrown dictators in the name of democracy, only to see the
process hijacked by new autocrats who use violence, deception, and rigged
elections to stay in power,” Mrs. Clinton said.
She also underlined the need to support Egypt’s state institutions, including
the army and financial institutions, which she said were functioning and
respected. Economic pressures are building in Egypt, she said, which has been
paralyzed by days of street demonstrations.
While this meeting was dominated by the political change sweeping through the
Middle East, the United States and Russia also formally put into force New
Start, a strategic arms control treaty passed by the Senate in December after a
long political battle by President Obama.
Mrs. Clinton and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, exchanged legal
documents ratifying the treaty, which puts new limits on strategic nuclear
warheads, heavy bombers, and launch vehicles. The United States and Russia have
45 days to trade details on the number, location, and technical specifications
of their arsenals. Inspection can begin in 60 days.
Relations between the United States and Russia began to thaw at this meeting in
2009, when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for the countries to
“reset” their relationship after the chilly Bush years.
In addition to the ratification of New Start, the day saw a meeting of the
Quartet, a group that deals with the Middle East and comprises the United
States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations. This meeting was
intended to reaffirm support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, even
amid the turmoil in Egypt and the Arab world.
The United States was reluctant to hold the meeting, a senior Western diplomat
said, but the Europeans in particular wanted to make the point that change in
the Middle East was a new opportunity for peace, and that stagnation between
Israel and Palestine was a bad signal.
“Our analysis is because of the events in Egypt we must react and send a signal
the peace process is alive,” the European diplomat said. Another quartet meeting
will follow in the next month, he said.
Mrs. Clinton deflected a question about how the turmoil would affect Israel or
the peace process. In its eagerness to avoid the issue, the administration lined
up with Turkey. Mr. Davutoglu said, “It is better not to talk about
Israel-Palestine now. It is better to separate these issues.”
February 4, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — President Obama has criticized American spy
agencies over their performance in predicting and analyzing the spreading unrest
in the Middle East, according to current and former American officials.
The president was specifically critical of intelligence agencies for misjudging
how quickly the unrest in Tunisia would lead to the downfall of the country’s
authoritarian government, the officials said.
The officials offered few details about the president’s concerns, but said that
Mr. Obama had not ordered any major changes inside the intelligence community,
which has a budget of more than $80 billion a year. On Friday, a White House
spokesman said spy agencies had given Mr. Obama “relevant, timely and accurate
analysis” throughout the crisis in the Middle East.
But questions about the recent performance of spy agencies expose a tension that
has played out since the C.I.A.’s founding in 1947: how to balance the task of
analyzing events overseas to warn officials in Washington about looming crises
with the mission of carrying out covert operations around the globe.
Some officials have focused their criticism on intelligence assessments last
month that concluded, despite demonstrations in Tunisia, that the security
forces of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali would defend his government.
Instead, the military and the police did not, and Mr. Ben Ali and his family
fled to Saudi Arabia.
One American official familiar with classified intelligence assessments defended
the spy agencies’ Tunisia analysis.
“Everyone recognized the demonstrations in Tunisia as serious,” said the
official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing
classified intelligence reports. “What wasn’t clear even to President Ben Ali
was that his security forces would quickly choose not to support him.”
One former American official said that in recent weeks Mr. Obama urged
intelligence officials to ensure that spy agencies were devoting as much effort
to “long-term analysis” as they were to carrying out operations against Al
Qaeda, including the C.I.A.’s bombing campaign using armed drone aircraft.
On Thursday, senior lawmakers pressed a top C.I.A. official on Capitol Hill
about whether Mr. Obama had been given enough warning about the perils of the
growing demonstrations in Cairo, and whether spy agencies had monitored social
networking sites to gauge the extent of the uprising.
The same day, America’s senior military officer said in a television interview
that officials in Washington had been surprised by how rapidly unrest had spread
from Tunisia to Egypt.
“It has taken not just us, but many people, by surprise,” said Adm. Mike Mullen,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during an appearance on “The Daily Show.”
Several American officials said that after Tunisia’s government collapsed,
intelligence analysts renewed their focus on gauging the impact that the chaos
could have on Egypt, America’s most important ally in the Arab world.
Some C.I.A. veterans said it was wrong to conclude that because the spy agency
had stepped up paramilitary operations in recent years, it had lost focus on the
job of analyzing global events for the White House and Congress.
“The Egypt analysts in the C.I.A. aren’t picking targets in Pakistan; that’s
just not the way the agency operates,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former C.I.A.
assistant director for analysis.
Still, Mr. Lowenthal said that intelligence officials for decades had to endure
the wrath of American presidents who blamed them for misjudging the events of
the day — and that it was their obligation to accept the criticism.
“If you are an intelligence officer, you say, ‘Yes sir, thank you very much,
sir,’ ” he said.
January 28, 2011
The New York Times
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — Administration officials say that President
Obama, largely silent about gun control since the Tucson shooting carnage, will
address the issue soon, potentially reopening a long-dormant debate on one of
the nation’s most politically volatile issues.
The officials did not indicate what measures, if any, Mr. Obama might support;
with Republicans in control of the House and many Democrats fearful of the gun
lobby’s power, any legislation faces long odds for passage. Among the skeptics
is the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.
Still, Mr. Obama has come under increased pressure to speak out from gun-control
advocates, including urban Democrats in Congress and liberal activists and
editorial writers. They would like him to at least support a bill that would
restore an expired federal ban on the sort of high-capacity ammunition magazine
that was used in the Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson that killed six people and
injured 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona.
The advocates, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, were critical
after Mr. Obama did not propose any measures in his State of the Union address
Tuesday night to address gun violence. In interviews since, senior White House
advisers have said without specifics that Mr. Obama would address the issue in
coming weeks, though just how has not been decided.
“I wouldn’t rule out that at some point the president talks about the issues
surrounding gun violence,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told
reporters on Wednesday. “I don’t have a timetable or, obviously, what he would
say.”
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, separately told reporters that
Mr. Obama would “no doubt” speak out before long.
Mr. Bloomberg, who is co-chairman of a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns,
said in his weekly radio address on Friday that he was newly “encouraged”
because “some of the president’s staff said that he was planning a speech on the
problem and on guns and what he would do, and I think that’s great if he does
that.”
When several White House aides were asked about that comment, each referred to
Mr. Gibbs’s earlier comment.
Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat of New York who has introduced
legislation to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, said she was hopeful
that Mr. Obama would now respond to “the pressure that’s been coming out from
all the different groups and almost every paper I know of.”
Such a ban was part of a broader law banning many assault weapons that was
enacted in 1994 by a Democratic-controlled Congress and allowed to expire 10
years later when Republicans were in control. Many Democrats have shied from gun
legislation ever since 1994, blaming the loss of their House and Senate
majorities that year partly on the assault weapons ban, which enraged the gun
lobby, in particular the National Rifle Association.
Ms. McCarthy, who won election in 1996 as a gun-control crusader, three years
after her husband was killed and her son injured by a man who opened fire on
passengers on a Long Island commuter train, said, “I don’t see how anybody could
get the assault weapons ban passed in this kind of climate with the N.R.A.”
But a ban on high-capacity magazines is possible, she said, adding, “If I didn’t
think I could pass something, I wouldn’t push as hard as I’ve been pushing.”
Mr. Obama supported gun-control legislation as a state senator in Illinois, and
as a presidential candidate he opposed laws allowing concealed weapons and
endorsed those requiring tougher background checks of gun buyers and a permanent
assault weapons ban. But as president he has been a big disappointment to
gun-control groups.
A year ago, one of the main groups, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence,
gave him an “F” for his first year in office. Its report cited, among other
things, his signing of a law permitting people to carry concealed weapons in
national parks and in checked luggage on Amtrak trains, and his failure to name
a director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“Not only did he not champion the cause, he actually signed bad legislation into
law,” said Dennis A. Henigan, vice president of the Brady Campaign.
Mr. Obama recently nominated Andrew Traver, chief of the firearms bureau’s
Chicago office, as director of the agency. Mr. Traver immediately drew N.R.A.
opposition, throwing his Senate confirmation into jeopardy. And the
administration recently proposed rules to require gun sellers in states
bordering Mexico to report multiple sales of rifles and shotguns, to stem gun
trafficking to Mexican drug cartels.
Mr. Henigan called those actions “encouraging signs.” He added, “The White House
has certainly been sending signals that it realizes that it can’t go forward
avoiding the word ‘gun,’ which is basically what it did for two years.”
January 28,
2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON
— President Obama has balanced on a political tightrope for two years over the
Defense of Marriage Act, the contentious 1996 law barring federal recognition of
same-sex marriages. Now, two new federal lawsuits threaten to snap that rope out
from under him.
Mr. Obama, whose political base includes many supporters of gay rights, has
urged lawmakers to repeal the law. But at the same time, citing an
executive-branch duty to defend acts of Congress, he has sent Justice Department
lawyers into court to oppose suits seeking to strike the law down as
unconstitutional.
The two lawsuits, however, have provoked an internal administration debate about
how to sustain its have-it-both-ways stance, officials said. Unlike previous
challenges, the new lawsuits were filed in districts covered by the appeals
court in New York — one of the only circuits with no modern precedent saying how
to evaluate claims that a law discriminates against gay people.
That means that the administration, for the first time, may be required to take
a clear stand on politically explosive questions like whether gay men and
lesbians have been unfairly stigmatized, are politically powerful, and can
choose to change their sexual orientation.
“Now they are being asked what they think the law should be, and not merely how
to apply the law as it exists,” said Michael Dorf, a Cornell University law
professor. “There is much less room to hide for that decision.”
James Esseks, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer helping with one case,
said the new suits could be game-changing.
The Obama legal team has not yet decided what path to take on the lawsuits,
according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the
internal deliberations. But the Justice Department must respond by March 11. The
debate has arisen at a time when Mr. Obama has signaled that his administration
may be re-evaluating its stance.
As a candidate, Mr. Obama backed civil unions for gay people while opposing
same-sex marriage. But last month, after Congress — in the final hours before
Republicans took control of the House — repealed the law barring gay men,
lesbians and bisexuals from serving openly in the military, he told The
Advocate, a magazine that focuses on gay issues, that his views on marriage
rights “are evolving.”
“I have a whole bunch of really smart lawyers who are looking at a whole range
of options,” Mr. Obama said, referring to finding a way to end the Defense of
Marriage Act. “I’m always looking for a way to get it done, if possible, through
our elected representatives. That may not be possible.”
Since 2003, when the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing gay sex, the
legal landscape for same-sex marriage has shifted. Eight states now grant
marriage licenses to same-sex couples or recognize such marriages if performed
elsewhere. But under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government cannot
recognize those relationships.
That has raised a crucial question: Is it constitutional for the federal
government to grant certain benefits — like health insurance for spouses of
federal workers, or an exemption to estate taxes for surviving spouses — to some
people who are legally married under their state’s laws, but not to others,
based on their sexual orientation?
The Constitution declares that everyone has a right to equal protection by the
law. But many laws treat some people differently from others. Courts uphold such
policies as constitutional if they can pass a test showing that the
discrimination is not invidious.
A law singling out an ordinary class — like owners of property in a district
with special tax rates — gets an easy test. It is presumed valid, and a
challenge is dismissed unless a plaintiff proves that the law advances no
conceivable rational state interest.
But a law focusing on a class that has often been subjected to unfair
discrimination — like a racial group — gets a hard test. It is presumed invalid
and struck down unless the government proves that officials’ purpose in adopting
the law advances a compelling interest.
Gay-rights groups contend that the marriage act ought to be struck down under
either test. Last year, a federal judge in Massachusetts agreed, saying it was
unconstitutional even under the easy test’s standards.
But the Obama administration, which appealed that ruling, contends that a
plausible argument exists for why the act might be constitutional. Justice
Department officials say they have a responsibility to offer that argument and
let courts decide, rather than effectively nullifying a law by not defending it.
Justice officials have argued that the marriage act is justified, under the easy
test’s standards, by a government interest in preserving the status quo at the
federal level, allowing states to experiment. And in its brief appealing the
Massachusetts ruling, the department stressed seven times that a “binding” or
“settled” precedent in that circuit required the easy test.
But for the new lawsuits, no such precedent exists. The Obama team has to say
which test it thinks should be used. Courts give a class the protection of the
hard test if it has been unfairly stigmatized and if its members can choose to
leave the class, among other factors. By those standards, it could be awkward,
especially for a Democratic administration, to proclaim that gay people do not
qualify for it.
But under a hard test, the administration’s argument for upholding the marriage
law would be weaker, legal specialists say, in part because when lawmakers
enacted it in 1996, they mentioned only in passing an interest in preserving the
federal status quo as states experimented.
Some conservatives have accused the administration of throwing the fight by not
invoking other arguments, like morality. And in particular, lawmakers’ primary
focus in 1996 was “encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing.”
But the administration’s filings in other cases disavowed that rationale, noting
that infertile heterosexuals may marry and citing studies that children raised
by same-sex parents are as likely to be well-adjusted as those raised by
heterosexuals.
M. Edward Whelan III, a former Bush administration lawyer, said the Obama team’s
rejection of the children-based rationale amounted to “sabotage.”
Another possible path, legal specialists say, would be to urge the judges to
adopt the easy test because courts elsewhere have done so, without laying out
any full legal analysis of how to think about gay people as a class.
Gay-rights supporters, however, call that option dishonest: those cases largely
derived from decisions before the Supreme Court’s 2003 sodomy ruling. The
premise that it was constitutional to criminalize gay sex short-circuited
appraisal of protections for gay people from lesser forms of official
discrimination.
“We think there is only one answer the government and the court can come to if
they apply the test conscientiously, and that is that the government must have
to prove why it needs to treat gay people differently,” said Mr. Esseks, the
A.C.L.U. lawyer.
“And if the government has to have a real reason, as opposed to a made-up
reason, we don’t think there is any way that the government wins.”
John Schwartz contributed reporting from New York.
Both President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, in power for three
decades, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen, in power for 23 years, should have
seen this coming. They didn’t — or didn’t care. Both countries share similar
pressures: huge numbers of young people without jobs, growing outrage over
abusive security forces, corrupt leaders, repressive political systems.
Their people are right to demand more from their governments. The status quo is
unsustainable and the result, perhaps inevitable, has been an explosion of
protests and rioting in the streets of both countries.
Egypt, with Mr. Mubarak in charge, is an American ally and a recipient of nearly
$1.5 billion in aid annually. It is the biggest country in the Arab world and
was the first to make peace with Israel. Yemen is home to a dangerous Al Qaeda
affiliate and has given the United States pretty much free rein to go after the
extremists.
All of which leaves Washington in a quandary, trying to balance national
security concerns and its moral responsibility to stand with those who have the
courage to oppose authoritarian rulers. American officials must already be
wondering what will happen to the fight against Al Qaeda if Mr. Saleh is
deposed. And what will happen to efforts to counter Iran and promote
Arab-Israeli peace if Mr. Mubarak is suddenly gone?
We won’t try to game Yemen’s politics. Even in Egypt, it’s impossible to know
who might succeed Mr. Mubarak. He has made sure that there is no loyal
opposition and little in the way of democratic institutions.
In the past, Washington has often pulled its punches on human rights and
democracy to protect unholy security alliances with dictators, like Ferdinand
Marcos of the Philippines. There came a time when it was obvious that the Marcos
tie was damaging American security interests and President Ronald Reagan — along
with a people power revolution — played a role in easing him peacefully out of
power.
Whether that point comes with Mr. Mubarak is now up to him. So far, he has shown
arrogance and tone-deafness. He has met the spiraling protests with spiraling
levels of force and repression. On Friday, in a sign more of weakness than
strength, the government shut down Internet access and cellphone service. The
protestors were undeterred.
Early Saturday, Mr. Mubarak ordered all of his ministers to resign and said his
new government would accelerate reforms. He would be far more persuasive if he
lifted the communications blackout, reeled in his security forces, allowed
credible candidates to compete for president this year, and ensured a free and
fair election.
Cables released by WikiLeaks show that the Obama administration has been
privately pushing Mr. Mubarak to wake up, release jailed dissidents and pursue
reforms. Unfortunately, those private exhortations did not get very far.
The administration struggled to get its public message right this week. On
Thursday, it made clear that while Mr. Mubarak is a valuable ally, it is not
taking sides but is trying to work with both the government and the protesters.
By Friday, the White House said it was ready to “review” aid to Egypt — after
Mr. Mubarak cut most communications, called out the army and effectively put
Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading opposition figure and former leader of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, under house arrest.
Mr. Obama will have to be willing to actually cut that aid if Mr. Mubarak turns
the protests into a bloodbath and fails to open up Egypt’s political system.
January 28, 2011
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday put Egypt’s embattled leader, Hosni
Mubarak, on notice that he should not use his soldiers and the police in a
bloody crackdown on the protests in Egypt, edging away from a close American
ally whose cities have erupted in protest.
Addressing the nation from the White House after a day of rage across Egypt, Mr.
Obama said he called Mr. Mubarak and told him “to refrain from any violence
against peaceful protesters” and to turn a “moment of volatility” into a “moment
of promise.” Declaring that the protesters have universal rights, he said, “The
United States will continue to stand up for the rights of the Egyptian people.”
Mr. Obama’s brief remarks came as a blunt reply to Mr. Mubarak, who spoke to his
own people just one hour before and mixed conciliation with defiance as he
dismissed his government but vowed to stay in office to stabilize Egypt.
Faced with images of riot police officers using tear gas and water cannons
against protesters, the Obama administration has moved from tentative support to
distancing itself from Mr. Mubarak, its staunchest Arab ally, saying it would
review $1.5 billion in American aid and warning him that he must confront the
grievances of his people.
Mr. Obama noted that in Mr. Mubarak’s speech, he promised to expand democracy
and economic opportunity. “He has a responsibility to give meaning to those
words,” Mr. Obama said. He called on Mr. Mubarak to open a dialogue with the
demonstrators, though he did not go as far as to urge free and fair elections.
Illustrating the delicate balance that the administration faces with Egypt, Mr.
Obama referred to the joint projects of the two countries. He also urged the
demonstrators to “express themselves peacefully.”
But the firmness of the president’s comments signaled that the crisis in Egypt
had passed a “critical turning point,” in the words of one senior American
official. Regardless of whether Mr. Mubarak survives, this official said, the
upheaval has already transformed Egyptian politics and how the United States
will handle a leader long seen as a stable anchor in a turbulent region.
The announcement that the administration would review its aid was the first
tangible sign that the United States was keeping Mr. Mubarak at arm’s length.
The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, declined to give details about the
review, except to say that the American “assistance posture” would depend on
events “now, and in the coming days.”
Egypt is the fourth-largest recipient of American foreign aid, after
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel, and just ahead of Iraq. It is a critical
partner on issues like the Israel-Palestinian peace process and a bulwark
against Islamic extremism in the Arab world. The administration has also relied
on Egypt to give an Arab stamp of approval to Iraq’s fledgling government.
The mushrooming protests confront the administration with one of the most
nettlesome foreign policy dilemmas it has faced, forcing it to abandon the
careful balance that Mr. Obama and his predecessors have struck between
supporting the democratic aspirations of the Egyptian people while reaffirming
ties with Mr. Mubarak. This same calculation has governed American dealings with
other Arab allies led by entrenched autocratic rulers, notably Saudi Arabia and
Jordan.
In each case, the overriding concern is that the same people who are clamoring
for change could choose leaders who are hostile to the United States, or are
even extremists.
Still, standing by Mr. Mubarak for fear of what could come after him could lead
to “resentment towards the United States that could last another three decades,
like Iran,” said Martin S. Indyk, a Middle East peace negotiator in the Clinton
administration. Laying out the American dilemma, Mr. Indyk said, “If we don’t
back Mubarak and the regime falls, and the Muslim Brotherhood takes control of
Egypt and breaks the peace treaty with Israel, then it could have dramatic
negative ramifications for American interests in the Middle East.”
The administration also reacted sharply to the Egyptian government’s
extraordinary move to shut down the Internet, social networking Web sites,
texting and other wireless communications. Mr. Obama called on the government to
reverse the steps, which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described as
“unprecedented.”
American officials tried to call the Egyptian Ministry of Communications for an
explanation on Friday, but they were unable to reach anyone on a landline phone,
said a senior administration official.
At the White House on Friday afternoon, Mr. Obama dropped in on a meeting of his
top national security advisers in the Situation Room. The group included Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mrs. Clinton and Thomas E. Donilon, the national
security adviser. During that session, Mr. Obama decided to call Mr. Mubarak and
address the American people.
Also on Friday, the State Department issued a travel alert, warning American
citizens to avoid going to Egypt, or if there, to stay in one place.
Officials from the Pentagon were consulting with their Egyptian military
counterparts, Mr. Gibbs said. The role of the military, officials said, was most
likely to be decisive in the coming days — in particular, if the protests
continue and the government orders soldiers to open fire on civilians.
Senior Egyptian military commanders cut short a visit to the Pentagon on Friday
and were headed to Cairo as the Egyptian Army was deployed to put down protests
in the country’s streets, American military officials said.
The chief of staff of Egypt’s armed forces, Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan, was due to
meet this Monday with Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and remain with his delegation in Washington through next Wednesday. But
as the protests intensified on Friday, he and his group headed for the airport.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden said he did not consider Mr. Mubarak a “dictator” and
stopped short of calling him to step down. He said the Egyptian government
should respond to demands that are “legitimate,” drawing criticism from those
who said he was calling their legitimacy into question.
On Friday evening, Mr. Obama avoided the question of whether Mr. Mubarak needed
to go. “Ultimately,” he said, “the future of Egypt will be decided by the
Egyptian people.”
Helene Cooper and Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting.
President
Obama is smart to extend an olive branch to American businesses. Our economic
success depends on businesses investing, growing and creating new jobs. From
expanding exports to improving infrastructure, government and businesses share
important goals.
From a purely pragmatic political standpoint, reaching an entente with corporate
leaders will make it easer to defuse the hostility he has faced. Some of it has
been purely partisan and ideological, from groups like the United States Chamber
of Commerce, which deployed millions to unseat Democrats in the Congressional
elections last year.
Still, Mr. Obama must take care not to let his agenda be taken over entirely by
corporate interests. They do not belong to the only constituency he serves.
Appointing William Daley to be a business-friendly White House chief of staff
seems a good idea; so does drafting Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric to lead
his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. It’s fine to promise to weed out stupid
business regulations, though past administrations that have done the same have
found that most of the regulations aren’t stupid.
But Mr. Obama should keep in mind that the interests of corporations and their
bosses are not necessarily always aligned with those of the country. All he
needs to do is look at the pile of uninvested cash on which nonfinancial
businesses are sitting — nearly $2 trillion — while the national unemployment
rate remains above 9 percent.
Satisfying business interests can be tricky. Mr. Obama wants, for example, to
reduce the 35 percent top corporate tax rate. That might sound like music to
corporate ears, but it could easily run into powerful opposition. That’s because
the president has rightly linked the reduction in the marginal tax rate to
closing the loopholes in the tax code that allow many corporations to pay much
less in taxes than they should.
Despite the high corporate tax rate, taxes on corporate income only raise an
amount equal to 2.1 percent of the gross domestic product. That is way below the
3.5 percent of G.D.P. raised, on average, across the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. It puts the United States near the bottom of
industrial nations. Even the most promising areas for cooperation — like
increasing exports — are tricky. Business groups are right to urge the
administration to obtain Congressional approval for the trade agreements with
Colombia and Panama that were signed during the administration of George W.
Bush. But Mr. Obama has been unwilling to face down trade unions and has placed
the deals on the back burner.
President Obama should bring his party on board and pass the trade agreements.
He should consult closely with business on his plans to invest in public
infrastructure. But this is a two-way street. Some business lobbying groups have
fought Mr. Obama on ideological, not policy grounds, opposing major initiatives
tooth and nail, including health care reform. As Mr. Obama reaches out to them,
corporate interest groups must abandon the politics of division and gridlock and
reach back out to him.
This nation faces huge problems — putting millions of
Americans back to work, investing to compete in a 21st-century global economy
and wrestling down a long-term budget deficit that threatens everyone’s future.
Ever since the 2010 campaign, we have heard precious little in the way of
serious solutions — mostly just smoke-and-mirrors spending cuts from Republicans
and their usual clamor for more tax cuts for the wealthy.
Tuesday night’s State of the Union address was President Obama’s chance to rise
above that pinched vision, to help Americans understand that while government
cannot do everything, it is indispensable in reviving the economy, spurring
innovation, educating Americans and keeping them healthy and making the nation
competitive globally.
Mr. Obama took on those issues, and the Republicans, squarely. Rebutting their
single-minded focus on slashing discretionary domestic spending, Mr. Obama said
we have to “stop pretending” that cutting this kind of spending “alone will be
enough.”
The speech was a chance for Mr. Obama to talk about the need for government
investment in highways and railroads, schools and new, clean-energy industries.
And we were encouraged that Mr. Obama set national goals in these areas — 85
percent of the nation’s energy should come from clean energy by 2035; 80 percent
of Americans should have access to high-speed rail within 25 years; and 98
percent should have access to high-speed wireless within five years.
These are grand, and expensive, ideas, and it was vital that Mr. Obama talked
about the need to pay for new spending.
He proposed eliminating taxpayer subsidies for oil companies, for example, to
help pay for his clean-energy initiative. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” the
president said, “but they’re doing just fine on their own. So instead of
subsidizing yesterday’s energy, let’s invest in tomorrow’s.”
Mr. Obama also is calling for extending his proposed three-year freeze on some
discretionary programs to five years. The White House said that would create
$400 billion in savings over 10 years — a deep cut at a bad time, but far saner
than Republican calls to slash spending so deeply that it would surely cripple
the recovery.
The White House said Mr. Obama needed to make some proposal like that to remain
in the debate. That is likely true. But he also made clear that there is no
long-term solution without cutting military spending and mandatory spending on
Medicare and Social Security.
He made a strong case for ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy when they
expire in two years. “Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships
away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break,”
he said.
That’s important, but letting high-end tax breaks expire won’t raise enough
revenue to pay for needed investments or reduce long-term deficits. Mr. Obama
proposed to simplify both the corporate income tax and the personal income tax,
but he did not call for raising other taxes. Americans may not want to hear that
taxes have to go up, but until Mr. Obama and other political leaders are willing
to say so, credible deficit reduction will remain out of reach.
Mr. Obama’s speech offered a welcome contrast to all of the posturing that
passes for business in the new Republican-controlled House. On Tuesday, House
Republicans pushed through a resolution calling for reducing spending on
domestic programs to 2008 levels. In a fragile economy, cutting spending on
transportation, education, scientific research, food safety and childhood
nutrition will do huge damage.
At times Tuesday night, Mr. Obama was genuinely inspiring with a vision for the
country to move forward with confidence and sense of responsibility. Americans
need to hear a lot more like that from him.
WASHINGTON — The crosscurrents inside the Republican Party
were on fresh display Tuesday evening with the unusual sight of two lawmakers
delivering responses to the State of the Union address.
In the party’s official reply, which immediately followed President Obama’s
speech, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget
Committee, said the country faced “a crushing burden of debt.” He vowed that
Republicans, after assuming control of the House this year, would honor their
pledge to provide Americans “a better choice and a different vision.”
“Americans are skeptical of both political parties, and that skepticism is
justified — especially when it comes to spending,” Mr. Ryan said, striking a
conciliatory tone as he vowed to work with the president to find cuts. “So hold
all of us accountable.”
But Mr. Ryan, who was designated by Speaker John A. Boehner to respond to the
president, did not have the last word. Representative Michele Bachmann of
Minnesota, who founded the Tea Party Caucus last year, gave a response of her
own in a message to the Tea Party Express, one of the movement’s largest groups
of activists.
“For two years,” Ms. Bachmann said, “President Obama made promises, just like
the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still we have high unemployment,
devalued housing prices and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing.”
She stood in front of a chart, which she used to illustrate how federal spending
has increased in the Obama administration. The broadcast was delayed for several
minutes, and after Ms. Bachmann finally arrived in front of the cameras, she
glanced offstage throughout her six-minute speech.
While the speech from Ms. Bachmann was initially to be carried only on the Web
site of the Tea Party Express, her speech was elevated when CNN provided live
coverage after Mr. Ryan’s remarks. The dueling responses, which privately
angered several leading Republicans, highlighted the potential fissures inside
the party as Republicans face the challenges of governing in a time of severe
budget constraints.
Mr. Ryan, a rising figure inside the party who has become a leading Republican
voice on budget cuts, characterized the nation’s fiscal outlook as urgent and
dire. He did not dwell upon his often-discussed plan to overhaul Social Security
and other entitlement programs — ideas that are controversial even inside his
own party — but instead focused on differences with the White House,
particularly the health care law.
“Health care spending is driving the explosive growth of our debt. And the
president’s law is accelerating our country toward bankruptcy,” Mr. Ryan said.
“Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal
crisis.”
He delivered his remarks from the Budget Committee hearing room on Capitol Hill,
where many of the difficult debates will take place as lawmakers decide how to
try to control spending. He offered few specific ideas in his 10-minute address,
saying that the role of the government “is both vital and limited.”
While Mr. Ryan’s remarks had the blessing of his party’s leadership, and were
intended to serve as a blueprint for a way forward, aides said Ms. Bachmann had
not shared her comments in advance with Republican leaders or sought their
approval, but rather was speaking on behalf of leaders of the Tea Party Express.
“I’m here at their request,” she said, “and not to compete with the official
Republican remarks.”
For all the speculation leading up to President Obama’s second State of the
Union address, the most profound shift in the speech turned out not to be a move
from left to center, as some had predicted, but rather a move away from
legislative priorities in favor of telling a broader American story.
After two years of getting dragged down into the arcane details of lawmaking,
the man who rocked two Democratic conventions with his soaring language signaled
that he was ready to reach for grand themes once again.
Mr. Obama delivered a narrative of American life that evoked images of
Depression-era murals and cold-war newsreels, rather than hammering away at
specific laws he had passed or planned to propose. He harked back to sputnik,
the Apollo project and the intercontinental railroad. He made a case for public
investment, not with specific proposals but by describing a futuristic America —
one million electric vehicles by 2015, 80 percent clean energy by 2035, access
to high-speed rail for 8 out of 10 Americans within 25 years.
“We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices, the
nation of Edison and the Wright Brothers, of Google and Facebook,” Mr. Obama
said. Illustrating his intention to modernize the federal bureaucracy for the
information age, the president said that “the last major reorganization of the
government happened in the age of black-and-white TV.”
“We do big things,” the president said repeatedly in a closing riff about the
American journey.
Last year, in his first State of the Union address, Mr. Obama spent much of his
time, as he had as president to that point, discussing the merits of his
economic program and pushing Congress to pass bills to create jobs and overhaul
the health care system. By contrast, on Tuesday night, he dwelled for barely two
paragraphs on the health care law, which is bound to transform the American
economy, for better or worse.
Mr. Obama is hardly the first modern president to sweep into the White House on
the strength of a compelling storyline, only to lose himself in the minutiae of
Congressional wrangling. President Bill Clinton, too, surrounded himself largely
with Capitol Hill veterans and hurled himself into legislative negotiations when
he took office in 1993.
Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton broadened his focus after losing control of both the
House and the Senate in 1994. In his second State of the Union speech, Mr.
Clinton returned to the idea of his “new covenant” between government and
citizens, a theme he had used when he first announced his candidacy years
earlier.
If anything, though, Mr. Obama has been even more immersed in business on the
other side of Pennsylvania Avenue — and less engaged in any sustained pitch to
the public. This is probably because he himself was a senator, the first
directly elected to the presidency in almost a half-century.
It may also be because Mr. Obama’s advisers were sensitive to the suggestion,
which trailed him during the campaign, that he preferred pep rallies and
uplifting rhetoric to the business of governing, with which he had limited
experience. It probably seemed prudent, at a time of economic crisis, to avoid
the appearance that Mr. Obama was planning to orate the country back to health.
This strategy yielded, by any measure, a remarkable string of legislative
victories, not limited to the roughly $880 billion stimulus plan and the health
care law. But it also allowed the connection between Mr. Obama and an inspired
electorate to atrophy. And in the absence of an ongoing public explanation of
the president’s policies, confusion set in — even among a lot of his supporters
— about why Mr. Obama wanted to spend all this money and what kind of political
philosophy he really espoused.
“The irony, of course, is that he was ubiquitous and constantly in people’s
faces,” said Don Baer, a communications director in the Clinton White House.
“But he wasn’t consciously explaining and pounding a narrative to the country
about where we were and where we were going.”
Since the November elections, though, Mr. Obama has seemed inclined to pivot
toward a more expansive notion of the presidency. His top hires in the past
several weeks, including William Daley to be chief of staff and Gene Sperling to
be his top economic policy adviser, have deep experience not just in government
but also in Democratic campaigns. The White House’s newest senior adviser, David
Plouffe, was the architect of Mr. Obama’s high-tech and historic 2008 campaign,
built on a model of grass-roots support that bypassed the traditional party
apparatus.
In describing his State of the Union approach to reporters before Mr. Obama’s
speech last night, senior White House aides used the terms “story” and “painting
a picture,” but they declined to discuss the specific proposals that might be
coming in the weeks ahead, or even whether those proposals would be included in
Mr. Obama’s budget or in separate bills. Their fear now seems to be not that Mr.
Obama might be viewed as too lofty or imprecise in his governing vision, but
that he might come to seem like an American prime minister — a legislative
technocrat rather than a visionary leader.
No doubt the details will come soon enough, and no doubt they will prove
divisive. (“We will argue about everything,” Mr. Obama said on Tuesday.) But the
argument this time seems more likely to resonate outside the halls of Congress,
in a far grander debate.
TUCSON — The shooting rampage here drew an early mention in
Tuesday’s State of the Union address, with President Obama saying, “Tucson
reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a
part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political
preference.”
Mr. Obama went on to say that “the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so
different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance
to be fulfilled.”
All over Tucson, people were listening to the president’s words, and they seemed
to appreciate that they had hardly been forgotten in the wake of the Jan. 8
shooting.
In the cafeteria of University Medical Center, where many of the wounded were
treated, late-shift workers sat around a tiny television, some of them
misty-eyed as Mr. Obama mentioned the shooting.
At the Safeway supermarket where the shooting took place as Representative
Gabrielle Giffords held a meet-and-greet event, about half a dozen people stared
somberly at flowers and other offerings left at the entrance by well-wishers.
“In the last couple weeks, we’ve been coming closer together in Tucson,” said
Rosemary Barajas, 27.
Inside the Safeway, which was closed for more than a week after the shooting,
Charles Levine, a pharmacist, listened to the president’s words on the radio as
he shuffled through papers. Mr. Levine had been in the store when the bullets
rang out and had seen all of the commotion that day. “He’s saying it,” Mr.
Levine said approvingly.
Ron Barber, an aide to Ms. Giffords who was injured in the shooting and who
watched the address from bed, said, “There’s so many people who responded
heroically and who saved lives that morning, and it’s wonderful that they were
acknowledged.”
Mr. Barber, who was standing near Ms. Giffords when the shooting began and
suffered two bullet wounds, was particularly pleased that Tracy Culbert, the
nurse who treated Ms. Giffords, was invited to the speech. Ms. Culbert had been
his nurse, too. “She was outstanding,” he said.
Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting from Tucson.
January 25, 2011
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — At a moment when the momentum in Washington is
driving toward slashing budgets and shrinking government, President Obama argued
on Tuesday evening that the politics of austerity, mindlessly applied, would
amount to a pre-emptive surrender to China, India and a raft of smaller
competitors who are investing while Americans are cutting.
It is a theme Mr. Obama has struck repeatedly since the Democrats’ devastating
losses in the midterm elections exactly 12 weeks ago. He warned soon after that
America must “step up our game,” and on Tuesday night he told Congress and the
nation that this is “our generation’s Sputnik moment.”
With those words, Mr. Obama was defining the ideological battle of the coming
year: strikingly different views of the role of government, even as both sides
agree that cuts will be necessary.
To the new Republican majority in the House, the path to restoring American
“competitiveness” — the word itself is something of a Rorschach test — includes
slashing taxes and getting the government out of the way. To Mr. Obama, even a
leaner federal government must play a central role in guiding the country’s
economic future, helping the United States to confront the rising economic
powers that ate away at America’s lead while the country was distracted in the
post-Sept. 11 decade.
“South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do,” Mr. Obama
said, ticking off the list of how America had fallen behind. “Countries in
Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is
building faster trains and newer airports.” He noted at another point that the
world’s biggest private solar research facility and fastest supercomputer were
now in China.
Mr. Obama is hardly the first president to try to rekindle the spirit of
cold-war competition in an effort to force Americans to set aside political
differences and join together to face a common threat to their prosperity and
security.
“Americans are prone to cycles of belief in their own decline,” Joseph Nye wrote
in his newest exploration of America’s status in the world, “The Future of
Power.”
Mr. Obama was clearly seeking to pull America out of its latest funk, arguing
that no country has a deeper bench, better universities or a more
entrepreneurial spirit. But he also portrayed those as fragile assets, and his
bet is that Americans expect their government to preserve the country’s lead, a
view that puts him in direct competition with Tea Party-fueled calls for a
diminished Washington.
In his speech, Mr. Obama tried once again to differentiate between his
short-term tactics to get the country working again — which led him to agree to
extending tax cuts, including many he believes to be unwise — and a long-term
strategy of selective investment and deficit reduction.
“Let’s make sure that what we’re cutting is really excess weight,” Mr. Obama
said, in what may be the line in his hourlong speech that was most directed at
the Tea Party caucus. “Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in
innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing
its engine. It may feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long
before you’ll feel the impact.”
In some ways his warning was reminiscent of the Obama style circa 2008. As a
candidate, he prided himself on ignoring the passions of the moment, not letting
hyperventilation on cable television or predictions of impending political doom
drive his tactics, much less his strategy. His coolness, his detachment, seemed
a political virtue after eight years of an intensely ideological presidency.
But this is a different moment, and it is far from clear that the formula that
worked so well two years ago retains much potency today. As several of his own
aides concede — especially those who have left the White House or are preparing
to — Mr. Obama failed to rally the country behind his strategy for combating the
most marked economic crisis since the Great Depression. His health care victory
came at a tremendous cost. Foreclosures and a jobless rate of just under 10
percent seemed a symptom of national drift, downward.
Only with his speech in Tucson two weeks ago, in response to the actions of a
gunman who shot a congresswoman in the head and caused a nation to question the
proper limits of political divisiveness, did he begin to turn the narrative back
in his direction.
Now his challenge is to win the argument against those who say that when
government intervenes in the economy, it is usually for the worse. While
directly hailing the wonders of free enterprise — an effort to beat back his
opponents’ charge that he is a socialist in capitalist clothing — he made the
case that at moments, government intervention has been inspired.
“Because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research,
throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and
inventors with the support that they need,” he said. “That’s what planted the
seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer
chips and GPS.”
But that is an argument that President Bill Clinton could have made, and often
did, 15 years ago. What Mr. Obama stepped around is the reality of American
competition today — that innovation, education and infrastructure are necessary
ingredients for global competitive success, but no guarantee. Many of the
technologies on which Mr. Obama is depending are the product of joint ventures
that combine American ideas, European design and Asian manufacturing. That is
something few in this Congress may want to hear, much less finance, given that
many of the jobs those innovations create do not go to Americans.
“We do big things,” Mr. Obama repeated, twice, as he concluded his speech. That
has been a hallmark of America, especially in the past century. Yet Mr. Obama
has all but said that his biggest challenge is to take a country that often
seems to want to retreat into its shell and force it to do big things again.
One of his subtexts on Tuesday night was that doing big things these days may
require a bit more humility, a lot more work, and some international partners
that Americans rarely thought about 20 years ago but whose competition they have
now grown to fear.
January 25, 2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON — President Obama challenged Americans on Tuesday
night to unleash their creative spirit, set aside their partisan differences and
come together around a common goal of outcompeting other nations in a rapidly
shifting global economy.
In a State of the Union address to a newly divided Congress, Mr. Obama outlined
what he called a plan to “win the future” — a blueprint for spending in critical
areas like education, high-speed rail, clean-energy technology and high-speed
Internet to help the United States weather the unsettling impact of
globalization and the challenge from emerging powers like China and India.
“The rules have changed,” he said.
But at the same time he proposed budget-cutting measures, including a five-year
freeze in spending on some domestic programs that he said would reduce the
deficit by $400 billion over 10 years.
Drawing a stark contrast between himself and Republicans, who are advocating
immediate and deep cuts in spending, Mr. Obama laid out a philosophy of a
government that could be more efficient but would still be necessary if the
nation was to address fundamental challenges at home and abroad.
“We need to out-innovate, outeducate and outbuild the rest of the world,” he
said. “We have to make America the best place on earth to do business. We need
to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our
people will prosper.”
Just weeks after the shooting in Tucson that claimed six lives and left
Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, gravely injured, Mr.
Obama received a reception that was muted and civil.
There were no boos or a shout of “You lie!” as in speeches past. Many
Republicans and Democrats sat side by side — the first time anyone here can
remember such mixing — and nearly all wore black-and-white lapel ribbons in
honor of the dead and injured. Ms. Giffords’s colleagues held a seat open for
her.
The president’s speech, lasting slightly more than an hour, lacked the loft of
the inspirational address he delivered in Tucson days after the shooting. But it
seemed intended to elevate his presidency above the bare-knuckled legislative
gamesmanship that has defined the first two years of his term.
Reaching out to Republicans who have vowed to end the pet projects known as
“earmarks,” Mr. Obama pledged to veto any bill that contained them. He tried to
defuse partisan anger over his health care measure with humor, saying he had
“heard rumors” of concerns over the bill, and he reiterated his pledge to fix a
tax provision in the measure that both parties regard as burdensome to
businesses.
He drew sustained applause when he declared that colleges should open their
doors to military recruiters and R.O.T.C. programs now that “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell,” the policy barring gay men and lesbians from serving openly, has been
repealed.
And he tried to charm Republicans by weaving the new House speaker,
Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, into his narrative about American
greatness, citing Mr. Boehner’s rise from “someone who began by sweeping the
floors of his father’s Cincinnati bar” as an example of “a country where
anything is possible.”
Still, the good will lasted only so long. Moments after Mr. Obama finished
speaking, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House
Budget Committee, delivered the official Republican response, in which he
criticized Mr. Obama as doing too little to attack the deficit.
And Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who delivered her own
Republican critique with the backing of the Tea Party wing, complained that
instead of creating “a leaner, smarter government,” Mr. Obama had created “a
bureaucracy that tells us which light bulbs to buy.”
The president sought to use Tuesday night’s address to shed the tag of
big-government liberal that Republicans have placed on him, and to reclaim the
mantle of a pragmatic, postpartisan leader that he used to ride to the
presidency in 2008.
With one eye toward his 2012 re-election campaign, Mr. Obama offered a rosy
economic vision. The president who once emphasized the problems he had inherited
from his predecessor was instead looking forward and making the case that the
nation had at long last emerged from economic crisis.
“Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock
market has come roaring back,” Mr. Obama said. “Corporate profits are up. The
economy is growing again.”
The speech was light on new policy proposals, reflecting both political and
fiscal restraints on the administration after two years in which it achieved
substantial legislative victories but lost the midterm elections, failed to
bring the unemployment rate below 9 percent and watched the budget deficit rise
sharply.
Mr. Obama did not address gun control, a hotly debated topic after the shooting
in Tucson.
He did not lay out any specific plans for addressing the long-term costs of
Social Security and Medicare, the biggest fiscal challenges ahead. He backed an
overhaul of corporate taxes but spoke only in passing about the need to simplify
the tax code for individuals. He called for legislation to address illegal
immigration but provided no details.
He called for an end to subsidies for oil companies and set a goal of reducing
dependence on polluting fuels over the next quarter-century, but without any
mechanism to enforce it. And in a speech largely devoted to economic issues, he
talked only generally about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As he drew a contrast between the United States and other nations, Mr. Obama
gave a nod to the nation’s high unemployment rate, arguing that “the world has
changed” and that it was no longer as easy as it once was for Americans to find
a good and secure job.
Government itself, he said, needs to be updated for the information age. “We
can’t win the future with a government of the past,” he said.
He packaged his message in optimistic, almost nationalistic phrasing, saying the
country had always risen to challenges.
“So yes, the world has changed,” Mr. Obama said. “The competition for jobs is
real. But this shouldn’t discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember, for
all the hits we’ve taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting
our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the
world.”
He continued: “No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more
successful companies, or grants more patents to inventers and entrepreneurs. We
are home to the world’s best colleges and universities, where more students come
to study than any other place on earth.”
Mr. Obama outlined initiatives in five areas: innovation; education;
infrastructure; deficit reduction; and a more efficient federal bureaucracy. He
pledged to increase the nation’s spending on research and development, as a
share of the total economy, to the highest levels since John F. Kennedy was
president, and vowed to prepare an additional 100,000 science and math teachers
over the next 10 years.
He proposed new efforts on high-speed rail, road and airport construction and a
“national wireless initiative” that, administration officials said, would extend
the next generation of wireless coverage to 98 percent of the population.
“Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped,” Mr. Obama
said. “South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries
in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China
is building faster trains and newer airports.”
Saying it was imperative for the nation to tackle its deficit, Mr. Obama
reiterated his support for $78 billion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget over
five years, in addition to the five-year partial freeze on domestic spending.
But he did not adopt any of the recommendations of the bipartisan fiscal
commission he appointed to figure out ways to bring the deficit under control.
Mr. Obama headed into the speech in surprisingly good political shape, given the
drubbing Democrats took in the November elections. His job approval ratings are
up — in some polls, higher than 50 percent. The public is feeling more
optimistic about the economy, voters are giving Mr. Obama credit for reaching
out to Republicans in a bipartisan way, and the president won high marks for his
speech in Tucson after the shooting.
“There’s a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause,” Mr. Obama said Tuesday
night. “Amid all the noise and passions and rancor of our public debate, Tucson
reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a
part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political
preference.”
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress,
distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
Tonight I want to begin by congratulating the men and women of the 112th
Congress, as well as your new Speaker, John Boehner. (Applause.) And as we mark
this occasion, we're also mindful of the empty chair in this chamber, and we
pray for the health of our colleague -- and our friend -– Gabby Giffords.
(Applause.)
It's no secret that those of us here tonight have had our differences over the
last two years. The debates have been contentious; we have fought fiercely for
our beliefs. And that's a good thing. That's what a robust democracy demands.
That's what helps set us apart as a nation.
But there's a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and
passion and rancor of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who
we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater -–
something more consequential than party or political preference.
We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every
race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as
one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a
little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and
that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled.
That, too, is what sets us apart as a nation. (Applause.)
Now, by itself, this simple recognition won't usher in a new era of cooperation.
What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be
determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work
together tomorrow. (Applause.)
I believe we can. And I believe we must. That's what the people who sent us here
expect of us. With their votes, they've determined that governing will now be a
shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from
Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all -– for
the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.
At stake right now is not who wins the next election -– after all, we just had
an election. At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this
country, or somewhere else. It's whether the hard work and industry of our
people is rewarded. It's whether we sustain the leadership that has made America
not just a place on a map, but the light to the world.
We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have
ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up.
The economy is growing again.
But we have never measured progress by these yardsticks alone. We measure
progress by the success of our people. By the jobs they can find and the quality
of life those jobs offer. By the prospects of a small business owner who dreams
of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a
better life that we pass on to our children.
That's the project the American people want us to work on. Together. (Applause.)
We did that in December. Thanks to the tax cuts we passed, Americans' paychecks
are a little bigger today. Every business can write off the full cost of new
investments that they make this year. And these steps, taken by Democrats and
Republicans, will grow the economy and add to the more than one million private
sector jobs created last year.
But we have to do more. These steps we've taken over the last two years may have
broken the back of this recession, but to win the future, we'll need to take on
challenges that have been decades in the making.
Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good
job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn't
always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your
neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you'd have a job for life, with a
decent paycheck and good benefits and the occasional promotion. Maybe you'd even
have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company.
That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I've seen it
in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts
on once busy Main Streets. I've heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've
seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear -– proud men and women who
feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game.
They're right. The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in
technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business. Steel mills
that once needed 1,000 workers can now do the same work with 100. Today, just
about any company can set up shop, hire workers, and sell their products
wherever there's an Internet connection.
Meanwhile, nations like China and India realized that with some changes of their
own, they could compete in this new world. And so they started educating their
children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science. They're
investing in research and new technologies. Just recently, China became the home
to the world's largest private solar research facility, and the world's fastest
computer.
So, yes, the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this
shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember -– for all the hits
we've taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline,
America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world. (Applause.)
No workers -- no workers are more productive than ours. No country has more
successful companies, or grants more patents to inventors and entrepreneurs.
We're the home to the world's best colleges and universities, where more
students come to study than any place on Earth.
What's more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea -–
the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny. That's
why centuries of pioneers and immigrants have risked everything to come here.
It's why our students don't just memorize equations, but answer questions like
"What do you think of that idea? What would you change about the world? What do
you want to be when you grow up?"
The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As
Robert Kennedy told us, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement."
Sustaining the American Dream has never been about standing pat. It has required
each generation to sacrifice, and struggle, and meet the demands of a new age.
And now it's our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and
industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the
rest of the world. (Applause.) We have to make America the best place on Earth
to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our
government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future.
(Applause.) And tonight, I'd like to talk about how we get there.
The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of
us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the
new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn't know that something
called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do -- what
America does better than anyone else -- is spark the creativity and imagination
of our people. We're the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in
offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook.
In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It is how we make our
living. (Applause.)
Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not
always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout our
history, our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with
the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds for the Internet.
That's what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS. Just think
of all the good jobs -- from manufacturing to retail -- that have come from
these breakthroughs.
Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a
satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The
science wasn't even there yet. NASA didn't exist. But after investing in better
research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave
of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.
This is our generation's Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to
reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of
the Space Race. And in a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that
helps us meet that goal. We'll invest in biomedical research, information
technology, and especially clean energy technology -– (applause) -- an
investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create
countless new jobs for our people.
Already, we're seeing the promise of renewable energy. Robert and Gary Allen are
brothers who run a small Michigan roofing company. After September 11th, they
volunteered their best roofers to help repair the Pentagon. But half of their
factory went unused, and the recession hit them hard. Today, with the help of a
government loan, that empty space is being used to manufacture solar shingles
that are being sold all across the country. In Robert's words, "We reinvented
ourselves."
That's what Americans have done for over 200 years: reinvented ourselves. And to
spur on more success stories like the Allen Brothers, we've begun to reinvent
our energy policy. We're not just handing out money. We're issuing a challenge.
We're telling America's scientists and engineers that if they assemble teams of
the best minds in their fields, and focus on the hardest problems in clean
energy, we'll fund the Apollo projects of our time.
At the California Institute of Technology, they're developing a way to turn
sunlight and water into fuel for our cars. At Oak Ridge National Laboratory,
they're using supercomputers to get a lot more power out of our nuclear
facilities. With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on
oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric
vehicles on the road by 2015. (Applause.)
We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking
Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil
companies. (Applause.) I don't know if -- I don't know if you've noticed, but
they're doing just fine on their own. (Laughter.) So instead of subsidizing
yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's.
Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if
businesses know there will be a market for what they're selling. So tonight, I
challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: By 2035, 80 percent of America's
electricity will come from clean energy sources. (Applause.)
Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas.
To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans
to work together to make it happen. (Applause.)
Maintaining our leadership in research and technology is crucial to America's
success. But if we want to win the future -– if we want innovation to produce
jobs in America and not overseas -– then we also have to win the race to educate
our kids.
Think about it. Over the next 10 years, nearly half of all new jobs will require
education that goes beyond a high school education. And yet, as many as a
quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school. The quality of our
math and science education lags behind many other nations. America has fallen to
ninth in the proportion of young people with a college degree. And so the
question is whether all of us –- as citizens, and as parents –- are willing to
do what's necessary to give every child a chance to succeed.
That responsibility begins not in our classrooms, but in our homes and
communities. It's family that first instills the love of learning in a child.
Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done. We need
to teach our kids that it's not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves
to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair. (Applause.) We need to
teach them that success is not a function of fame or PR, but of hard work and
discipline.
Our schools share this responsibility. When a child walks into a classroom, it
should be a place of high expectations and high performance. But too many
schools don't meet this test. That's why instead of just pouring money into a
system that's not working, we launched a competition called Race to the Top. To
all 50 states, we said, "If you show us the most innovative plans to improve
teacher quality and student achievement, we'll show you the money."
Race to the Top is the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a
generation. For less than 1 percent of what we spend on education each year, it
has led over 40 states to raise their standards for teaching and learning. And
these standards were developed, by the way, not by Washington, but by Republican
and Democratic governors throughout the country. And Race to the Top should be
the approach we follow this year as we replace No Child Left Behind with a law
that's more flexible and focused on what's best for our kids. (Applause.)
You see, we know what's possible from our children when reform isn't just a
top-down mandate, but the work of local teachers and principals, school boards
and communities. Take a school like Bruce Randolph in Denver. Three years ago,
it was rated one of the worst schools in Colorado -- located on turf between two
rival gangs. But last May, 97 percent of the seniors received their diploma.
Most will be the first in their families to go to college. And after the first
year of the school's transformation, the principal who made it possible wiped
away tears when a student said, "Thank you, Ms. Waters, for showing that we are
smart and we can make it." (Applause.) That's what good schools can do, and we
want good schools all across the country.
Let's also remember that after parents, the biggest impact on a child's success
comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom. In South Korea,
teachers are known as "nation builders." Here in America, it's time we treated
the people who educate our children with the same level of respect. (Applause.)
We want to reward good teachers and stop making excuses for bad ones.
(Applause.) And over the next 10 years, with so many baby boomers retiring from
our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science
and technology and engineering and math. (Applause.)
In fact, to every young person listening tonight who's contemplating their
career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if
you want to make a difference in the life of a child -- become a teacher. Your
country needs you. (Applause.)
Of course, the education race doesn't end with a high school diploma. To
compete, higher education must be within the reach of every American.
(Applause.) That's why we've ended the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that went
to banks, and used the savings to make college affordable for millions of
students. (Applause.) And this year, I ask Congress to go further, and make
permanent our tuition tax credit –- worth $10,000 for four years of college.
It's the right thing to do. (Applause.)
Because people need to be able to train for new jobs and careers in today's
fast-changing economy, we're also revitalizing America's community colleges.
Last month, I saw the promise of these schools at Forsyth Tech in North
Carolina. Many of the students there used to work in the surrounding factories
that have since left town. One mother of two, a woman named Kathy Proctor, had
worked in the furniture industry since she was 18 years old. And she told me
she's earning her degree in biotechnology now, at 55 years old, not just because
the furniture jobs are gone, but because she wants to inspire her children to
pursue their dreams, too. As Kathy said, "I hope it tells them to never give
up."
If we take these steps -– if we raise expectations for every child, and give
them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they are born until
the last job they take –- we will reach the goal that I set two years ago: By
the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of
college graduates in the world. (Applause.)
One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of
students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the
children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of
their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and
yet they live every day with the threat of deportation. Others come here from
abroad to study in our colleges and universities. But as soon as they obtain
advanced degrees, we send them back home to compete against us. It makes no
sense.
Now, I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of
illegal immigration. And I am prepared to work with Republicans and Democrats to
protect our borders, enforce our laws and address the millions of undocumented
workers who are now living in the shadows. (Applause.) I know that debate will
be difficult. I know it will take time. But tonight, let's agree to make that
effort. And let's stop expelling talented, responsible young people who could be
staffing our research labs or starting a new business, who could be further
enriching this nation. (Applause.)
The third step in winning the future is rebuilding America. To attract new
businesses to our shores, we need the fastest, most reliable ways to move
people, goods, and information -- from high-speed rail to high-speed Internet.
(Applause.)
Our infrastructure used to be the best, but our lead has slipped. South Korean
homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and
Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building
faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our
nation's infrastructure, they gave us a "D."
We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental
railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the Interstate
Highway System. The jobs created by these projects didn't just come from laying
down track or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town's new
train station or the new off-ramp.
So over the last two years, we've begun rebuilding for the 21st century, a
project that has meant thousands of good jobs for the hard-hit construction
industry. And tonight, I'm proposing that we redouble those efforts. (Applause.)
We'll put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We'll
make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects
based [on] what's best for the economy, not politicians.
Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to
high-speed rail. (Applause.) This could allow you to go places in half the time
it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying –-
without the pat-down. (Laughter and applause.) As we speak, routes in California
and the Midwest are already underway.
Within the next five years, we'll make it possible for businesses to deploy the
next generation of high-speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of all Americans.
This isn't just about -- (applause) -- this isn't about faster Internet or fewer
dropped calls. It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age.
It's about a rural community in Iowa or Alabama where farmers and small business
owners will be able to sell their products all over the world. It's about a
firefighter who can download the design of a burning building onto a handheld
device; a student who can take classes with a digital textbook; or a patient who
can have face-to-face video chats with her doctor.
All these investments -– in innovation, education, and infrastructure –- will
make America a better place to do business and create jobs. But to help our
companies compete, we also have to knock down barriers that stand in the way of
their success.
For example, over the years, a parade of lobbyists has rigged the tax code to
benefit particular companies and industries. Those with accountants or lawyers
to work the system can end up paying no taxes at all. But all the rest are hit
with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and
it has to change. (Applause.)
So tonight, I'm asking Democrats and Republicans to simplify the system. Get rid
of the loopholes. Level the playing field. And use the savings to lower the
corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years –- without adding to our
deficit. It can be done. (Applause.)
To help businesses sell more products abroad, we set a goal of doubling our
exports by 2014 -– because the more we export, the more jobs we create here at
home. Already, our exports are up. Recently, we signed agreements with India and
China that will support more than 250,000 jobs here in the United States. And
last month, we finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at
least 70,000 American jobs. This agreement has unprecedented support from
business and labor, Democrats and Republicans -- and I ask this Congress to pass
it as soon as possible. (Applause.)
Now, before I took office, I made it clear that we would enforce our trade
agreements, and that I would only sign deals that keep faith with American
workers and promote American jobs. That's what we did with Korea, and that's
what I intend to do as we pursue agreements with Panama and Colombia and
continue our Asia Pacific and global trade talks. (Applause.)
To reduce barriers to growth and investment, I've ordered a review of government
regulations. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we
will fix them. (Applause.) But I will not hesitate to create or enforce
common-sense safeguards to protect the American people. (Applause.) That's what
we've done in this country for more than a century. It's why our food is safe to
eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe. It's why we
have speed limits and child labor laws. It's why last year, we put in place
consumer protections against hidden fees and penalties by credit card companies
and new rules to prevent another financial crisis. (Applause.) And it's why we
passed reform that finally prevents the health insurance industry from
exploiting patients. (Applause.)
Now, I have heard rumors that a few of you still have concerns about our new
health care law. (Laughter.) So let me be the first to say that anything can be
improved. If you have ideas about how to improve this law by making care better
or more affordable, I am eager to work with you. We can start right now by
correcting a flaw in the legislation that has placed an unnecessary bookkeeping
burden on small businesses. (Applause.)
What I'm not willing to do -- what I'm not willing to do is go back to the days
when insurance companies could deny someone coverage because of a preexisting
condition. (Applause.)
I'm not willing to tell James Howard, a brain cancer patient from Texas, that
his treatment might not be covered. I'm not willing to tell Jim Houser, a small
business man from Oregon, that he has to go back to paying $5,000 more to cover
his employees. As we speak, this law is making prescription drugs cheaper for
seniors and giving uninsured students a chance to stay on their patients' --
parents' coverage. (Applause.)
So I say to this chamber tonight, instead of re-fighting the battles of the last
two years, let's fix what needs fixing and let's move forward. (Applause.)
Now, the final critical step in winning the future is to make sure we aren't
buried under a mountain of debt.
We are living with a legacy of deficit spending that began almost a decade ago.
And in the wake of the financial crisis, some of that was necessary to keep
credit flowing, save jobs, and put money in people's pockets.
But now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact
that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every
day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government
that does the same.
So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic
spending for the next five years. (Applause.) Now, this would reduce the deficit
by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary
spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was
President.
This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we've frozen the salaries of
hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I've proposed cuts to
things I care deeply about, like community action programs. The Secretary of
Defense has also agreed to cut tens of billions of dollars in spending that he
and his generals believe our military can do without. (Applause.)
I recognize that some in this chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I'm
willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without. But let's
make sure that we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.
(Applause.) And let's make sure that what we're cutting is really excess weight.
Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is
like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you
feel like you're flying high at first, but it won't take long before you feel
the impact. (Laughter.)
Now, most of the cuts and savings I've proposed only address annual domestic
spending, which represents a little more than 12 percent of our budget. To make
further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending
alone will be enough. It won't. (Applause.)
The bipartisan fiscal commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I
don't agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress. And
their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive
spending wherever we find it –- in domestic spending, defense spending, health
care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes. (Applause.)
This means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare
and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficit.
The health insurance law we passed last year will slow these rising costs, which
is part of the reason that nonpartisan economists have said that repealing the
health care law would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. Still,
I'm willing to look at other ideas to bring down costs, including one that
Republicans suggested last year -- medical malpractice reform to rein in
frivolous lawsuits. (Applause.)
To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to
strengthen Social Security for future generations. (Applause.) We must do it
without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with
disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without
subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock
market. (Applause.)
And if we truly care about our deficit, we simply can't afford a permanent
extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. (Applause.)
Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our
students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It's not a
matter of punishing their success. It's about promoting America's success.
(Applause.)
In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify
the individual tax code. (Applause.) This will be a tough job, but members of
both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join
them. (Applause.)
So now is the time to act. Now is the time for both sides and both houses of
Congress –- Democrats and Republicans -– to forge a principled compromise that
gets the job done. If we make the hard choices now to rein in our deficits, we
can make the investments we need to win the future.
Let me take this one step further. We shouldn't just give our people a
government that's more affordable. We should give them a government that's more
competent and more efficient. We can't win the future with a government of the
past. (Applause.)
We live and do business in the Information Age, but the last major
reorganization of the government happened in the age of black-and-white TV.
There are 12 different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five
different agencies that deal with housing policy. Then there's my favorite
example: The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh
water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater.
(Laughter.) I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked. (Laughter
and applause.)
Now, we've made great strides over the last two years in using technology and
getting rid of waste. Veterans can now download their electronic medical records
with a click of the mouse. We're selling acres of federal office space that
hasn't been used in years, and we'll cut through red tape to get rid of more.
But we need to think bigger. In the coming months, my administration will
develop a proposal to merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government
in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America. I will submit
that proposal to Congress for a vote –- and we will push to get it passed.
(Applause.)
In the coming year, we'll also work to rebuild people's faith in the institution
of government. Because you deserve to know exactly how and where your tax
dollars are being spent, you'll be able to go to a website and get that
information for the very first time in history. Because you deserve to know when
your elected officials are meeting with lobbyists, I ask Congress to do what the
White House has already done -- put that information online. And because the
American people deserve to know that special interests aren't larding up
legislation with pet projects, both parties in Congress should know this: If a
bill comes to my desk with earmarks inside, I will veto it. I will veto it.
(Applause.)
The 21st century government that's open and competent. A government that lives
within its means. An economy that's driven by new skills and new ideas. Our
success in this new and changing world will require reform, responsibility, and
innovation. It will also require us to approach that world with a new level of
engagement in our foreign affairs.
Just as jobs and businesses can now race across borders, so can new threats and
new challenges. No single wall separates East and West. No one rival superpower
is aligned against us.
And so we must defeat determined enemies, wherever they are, and build
coalitions that cut across lines of region and race and religion. And America's
moral example must always shine for all who yearn for freedom and justice and
dignity. And because we've begun this work, tonight we can say that American
leadership has been renewed and America's standing has been restored.
Look to Iraq, where nearly 100,000 of our brave men and women have left with
their heads held high. (Applause.) American combat patrols have ended, violence
is down, and a new government has been formed. This year, our civilians will
forge a lasting partnership with the Iraqi people, while we finish the job of
bringing our troops out of Iraq. America's commitment has been kept. The Iraq
war is coming to an end. (Applause.)
Of course, as we speak, al Qaeda and their affiliates continue to plan attacks
against us. Thanks to our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, we're
disrupting plots and securing our cities and skies. And as extremists try to
inspire acts of violence within our borders, we are responding with the strength
of our communities, with respect for the rule of law, and with the conviction
that American Muslims are a part of our American family. (Applause.)
We've also taken the fight to al Qaeda and their allies abroad. In Afghanistan,
our troops have taken Taliban strongholds and trained Afghan security forces.
Our purpose is clear: By preventing the Taliban from reestablishing a
stranglehold over the Afghan people, we will deny al Qaeda the safe haven that
served as a launching pad for 9/11.
Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control
of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government
will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of
the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we
will work with nearly 50 countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And
this July, we will begin to bring our troops home. (Applause.)
In Pakistan, al Qaeda's leadership is under more pressure than at any point
since 2001. Their leaders and operatives are being removed from the battlefield.
Their safe havens are shrinking. And we've sent a message from the Afghan border
to the Arabian Peninsula to all parts of the globe: We will not relent, we will
not waver, and we will defeat you. (Applause.)
American leadership can also be seen in the effort to secure the worst weapons
of war. Because Republicans and Democrats approved the New START treaty, far
fewer nuclear weapons and launchers will be deployed. Because we rallied the
world, nuclear materials are being locked down on every continent so they never
fall into the hands of terrorists. (Applause.)
Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the
Iranian government now faces tougher sanctions, tighter sanctions than ever
before. And on the Korean Peninsula, we stand with our ally South Korea, and
insist that North Korea keeps its commitment to abandon nuclear weapons.
(Applause.)
This is just a part of how we're shaping a world that favors peace and
prosperity. With our European allies, we revitalized NATO and increased our
cooperation on everything from counterterrorism to missile defense. We've reset
our relationship with Russia, strengthened Asian alliances, built new
partnerships with nations like India.
This March, I will travel to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador to forge new
alliances across the Americas. Around the globe, we're standing with those who
take responsibility -– helping farmers grow more food, supporting doctors who
care for the sick, and combating the corruption that can rot a society and rob
people of opportunity.
Recent events have shown us that what sets us apart must not just be our power
-– it must also be the purpose behind it. In south Sudan -– with our assistance
-– the people were finally able to vote for independence after years of war.
(Applause.) Thousands lined up before dawn. People danced in the streets. One
man who lost four of his brothers at war summed up the scene around him: "This
was a battlefield for most of my life," he said. "Now we want to be free."
(Applause.)
And we saw that same desire to be free in Tunisia, where the will of the people
proved more powerful than the writ of a dictator. And tonight, let us be clear:
The United States of America stands with the people of Tunisia, and supports the
democratic aspirations of all people. (Applause.)
We must never forget that the things we've struggled for, and fought for, live
in the hearts of people everywhere. And we must always remember that the
Americans who have borne the greatest burden in this struggle are the men and
women who serve our country. (Applause.)
Tonight, let us speak with one voice in reaffirming that our nation is united in
support of our troops and their families. Let us serve them as well as they've
served us -- by giving them the equipment they need, by providing them with the
care and benefits that they have earned, and by enlisting our veterans in the
great task of building our own nation.
Our troops come from every corner of this country -– they're black, white,
Latino, Asian, Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim.
And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American
will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love.
(Applause.) And with that change, I call on all our college campuses to open
their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the
divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.
(Applause.)
We should have no illusions about the work ahead of us. Reforming our schools,
changing the way we use energy, reducing our deficit –- none of this will be
easy. All of it will take time. And it will be harder because we will argue
about everything. The costs. The details. The letter of every law.
Of course, some countries don't have this problem. If the central government
wants a railroad, they build a railroad, no matter how many homes get bulldozed.
If they don't want a bad story in the newspaper, it doesn't get written.
And yet, as contentious and frustrating and messy as our democracy can sometimes
be, I know there isn't a person here who would trade places with any other
nation on Earth. (Applause.)
We may have differences in policy, but we all believe in the rights enshrined in
our Constitution. We may have different opinions, but we believe in the same
promise that says this is a place where you can make it if you try. We may have
different backgrounds, but we believe in the same dream that says this is a
country where anything is possible. No matter who you are. No matter where you
come from.
That dream is why I can stand here before you tonight. That dream is why a
working-class kid from Scranton can sit behind me. (Laughter and applause.) That
dream is why someone who began by sweeping the floors of his father's Cincinnati
bar can preside as Speaker of the House in the greatest nation on Earth.
(Applause.)
That dream -– that American Dream -– is what drove the Allen Brothers to
reinvent their roofing company for a new era. It's what drove those students at
Forsyth Tech to learn a new skill and work towards the future. And that dream is
the story of a small business owner named Brandon Fisher.
Brandon started a company in Berlin, Pennsylvania, that specializes in a new
kind of drilling technology. And one day last summer, he saw the news that
halfway across the world, 33 men were trapped in a Chilean mine, and no one knew
how to save them.
But Brandon thought his company could help. And so he designed a rescue that
would come to be known as Plan B. His employees worked around the clock to
manufacture the necessary drilling equipment. And Brandon left for Chile.
Along with others, he began drilling a 2,000-foot hole into the ground, working
three- or four-hour -- three or four days at a time without any sleep.
Thirty-seven days later, Plan B succeeded, and the miners were rescued.
(Applause.) But because he didn't want all of the attention, Brandon wasn't
there when the miners emerged. He'd already gone back home, back to work on his
next project.
And later, one of his employees said of the rescue, "We proved that Center Rock
is a little company, but we do big things." (Applause.)
We do big things.
From the earliest days of our founding, America has been the story of ordinary
people who dare to dream. That's how we win the future.
We're a nation that says, "I might not have a lot of money, but I have this
great idea for a new company." "I might not come from a family of college
graduates, but I will be the first to get my degree." "I might not know those
people in trouble, but I think I can help them, and I need to try." "I'm not
sure how we'll reach that better place beyond the horizon, but I know we'll get
there. I know we will."
We do big things. (Applause.)
The idea of America endures. Our destiny remains our choice. And tonight, more
than two centuries later, it's because of our people that our future is hopeful,
our journey goes forward, and the state of our union is strong.
Thank you. God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
(Applause.)
January 25, 2011
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and CARL HULSE
WASHINGTON — It was a new day in Congress. Or at least a new
night. In a powerful break with tradition, lawmakers crossed party lines to sit
Republican and Democrat, side by side, as the president addressed them.
Row by row, many women in bright red, the men in their traditional dark suits,
Republicans and Democrats filed onto the House floor and slipped into unfamiliar
territory on Tuesday night. There was Senator John McCain, Republican of
Arizona, sitting on the Democratic side of the House aisle between Senator John
Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Tom Udall, of New Mexico. (Senator Joseph I.
Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, was kept close at hand, on an aisle
seat.) Senator Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat of Louisiana, buddied up to Senator
Olympia J. Snowe of Maine on the Republican side.
Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, took no part in the bipartisan
ritual, and sat in an aisle seat next to fellow Republican leaders, including
Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
Representative Michele Bachmann, the Minnesota Republican and Tea Party hero who
would later deliver a rebuttal to the president’s remarks, was sitting solo and
made no move toward the aisle as President Obama entered the chamber. But after
he reached out to her, they shared a brief handshake.
The new seating chart clearly caused some confusion among members as to how to
behave. When Mr. Obama would say something that normally would have spurred
Democrats to stand, some did, others refrained, and Republicans sometimes
followed their lead. For some, the idea of sitting together meant standing — two
Texas representatives, Michael McCaul, a Republican, and Henry Cuellar, a
Democrat, spent the entire speech on their feet in the middle of an aisle.
The signs of partisanship clearly did not fade with the light of Tuesday’s sun —
when the president mentioned cutting subsidies to oil companies, Representative
Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, formed a one-man standing ovation, while
one Republican heckled mildly from the back of the room.
The assembled lawmakers seemed less inclined to join in the usual stream of
sustained, loud clapping that have marked past addresses given in the chamber.
While that helped to speed Mr. Obama’s remarks along (still, they ran more than
an hour), the unorganized applause also created some asymmetry throughout the
chamber, with members popping up separately from their silent seatmates.
The biggest bipartisan beloved line of the night was Mr. Obama’s exhortation to
eliminate paperwork for small-business owners, which caused even Ms. Bachmann,
who sat largely silent and frowning through out the evening, to rise.
The idea of having Democrats and Republicans sit together at the State of the
Union — proposed by the centrist group Third Way to transcend partisanship —
gathered frantic steam in the hours leading up to the speech. As evening
approached and the Capitol was bathed in klieg and moonlight, members madly
tweeted about who they would sit with, looked for a last-minute date, and, in at
least one case, blew off a suitor.
Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and the House majority
leader, made a last-ditch invite to Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the
former speaker, to sit with him. She replied via Twitter: “I thank @GOPLeader
for his #SOTU offer, but I invited my friend Rep. Bartlett from MD yesterday &
am pleased he accepted.” Mr. Cantor, whose proposal to Ms. Pelosi, seemed as
much dare as courtesy, ended up with his colleague from Richmond, Representative
Bobby Scott.
In the category of perhaps they have already spent enough time together,
Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican, said he would not be sitting with
his son, Rand Paul, the new Republican senator from Kentucky. “We haven’t made
it a big issue,” said the senior Mr. Paul, who was the Libertarian candidate for
president in 2008.
He said the speech was not all that relevant to him regardless of who was
nearby. “I want to cut the government by 60 or 70 percent,” he said. “We are not
talking the same language.”
The mood in the chamber seemed less charged than last year, with less partisan
furor and less pomp. When the president congratulated John A. Boehner, the House
Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, nearly every member stood, as they did
seconds later when the president mentioned Representative Gabrielle Giffords,
the Arizona Democrat who was critically injured in a shooting Jan. 8 in Tucson.
Ms. Giffords’s chair was left empty between two members — one Republican, one
Democrat — among the Arizona delegation.
Virtually every member Congress displayed black-and-white ribbons in honor of
the six who died and 13 injured in the Tucson shooting.
Sitting up in the gallery with the first lady, Michelle Obama, was Daniel
Hernandez, an intern to Ms. Giffords whose administering of first aid is
credited with helping to save her life; members of the family of the youngest
victim, 9-year-old Christina- Taylor Green; and Dr. Peter Rhee, the director of
the trauma center at the University of Arizona Medical Center in Tucson, where
Ms. Giffords and others were treated.
Mindful that every important member of government was under one dome, nothing
was left to chance. Security was tight; bomb-sniffing dogs roamed the Capitol
and hazmat suits and stretchers were piled up.
Every branch of government was largely represented; Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr. led five other members of the Supreme Court into the chamber, even
after last year’s scolding by Mr. Obama over a court decision on
campaign-finance issues. Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas did not attend. Mr. Roberts cracked several smiles; Ruth Bader
Ginsberg appeared frail.
And then, it was over, with just House pages left to clean up the desks.
Obama
Sends Pro-Business Signal With Adviser Choice
January 21,
2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
and ANAHAD O’CONNOR
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — President Obama, sending another strong signal that he
intends to make the White House more business-friendly, named a high-profile
corporate executive on Friday as his chief outside economic adviser, continuing
his efforts to show more focus on job creation and reclaim the political center.
Here in the birthplace of General Electric, Mr. Obama introduced the new
appointee, Jeffrey R. Immelt, the company’s chairman and chief executive
officer, who will serve as chairman of his outside panel of economic advisers.
Mr. Immelt succeeds Paul A. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, who is
stepping down.
The selection of Mr. Immelt, who was at Mr. Obama’s side during his trip to
India last year, and again this week during the visit of President Hu Jintao of
China, is the latest in a string of pro-business steps taken by the president.
He has installed William M. Daley, a former JPMorgan Chase executive, as his
chief of staff; is planning a major speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce next
month; and just this week ordered federal agencies to review regulations with an
eye toward eliminating some.
Together, the moves amount to a carefully choreographed shift in strategy for
the White House, both substantively and on the public relations front. Mr. Obama
has started making the case that the United States has moved past economic
crisis mode and is entering “a new phase of our recovery,” which demands an
emphasis on job creation.
And with corporate profits healthy again, the president has begun engaging
business leaders more on what it will take for them to start investing again in
new plants and equipment and stepping up hiring.
As he moves into the second half of his term and lays the foundation for his
2012 re-election campaign, Mr. Obama is trying to frame the national
conversation on the economy around this crisis-to-job-creation narrative.
Republicans, who have spent their first weeks of the new Congress talking about
repealing Mr. Obama’s health care bill and cutting federal spending, have given
the president an opening to do so.
The themes the president struck here, on competitiveness and the turning point
in the economy, are expected to be at the heart of the State of the Union
address he will deliver Tuesday.
“The past two years were about pulling our economy back from the brink,” Mr.
Obama said, standing against the backdrop of a huge generator in a well-lighted
plant, with a giant American flag hanging from the ceiling.
“The next two years, our job now is putting our economy into overdrive.”
He went on, “Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can
take root and folks can find good jobs and America is leading the global
competition that will determine our success in the 21st century.”
It is not clear how much substantive influence Mr. Immelt’s new role will give
him. Under Mr. Volcker, the panel met relatively infrequently, and Mr. Volcker
at times appeared frustrated by a lack of access to the inner circles of White
House decision-making.
The appointment of Mr. Immelt, who will retain his posts at G.E., is not without
complications for Mr. Obama. G.E., one of the nation’s largest companies,
routinely has a wide variety of regulatory, trade, contracting and other issues
before the federal government, on matters as varied as television mergers,
military hardware and environmental cleanup.
During the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided $16.1 billion to
General Electric by buying short-term corporate i.o.u.’s from the company at a
time when the public market for such debt had nearly frozen. Having the chief
executive of such a company advising the White House on job creation at a time
when Mr. Obama is assuming a more deregulatory posture could further alienate
liberals and be seen as undermining the White House’s commitment to reducing the
influence of lobbyists and special interests.
Another complicating factor is union uneasiness about outsourcing by G.E.
Officials at the United Electrical Workers Union say the company has closed 29
plants in the United States and one in Canada in the past two years, eliminating
more than 3,000 jobs.
“We understand the logic of asking someone like that to step up and play a
leading role,” said Damon Silvers, the policy director for the AFL-CIO. “But
there’s a real tension there in making a G.E. executive a central figure
thinking about U.S. jobs.”
But Gary Sheffer, a General Electric spokesman, said the company has also been
shifting operations back to the United States, and has added 6,000 jobs in this
country, for a net increase. For example, Mr. Sheffer said, G.E. is moving all
of its refrigerator manufacturing business back to the United States. He said 60
percent of G.E.’s revenues come from outside the country.
At the same time, G.E.’s exports have roughly doubled in the past five years,
which makes the company a good showcase for a president who is trying to promote
trade and exports as a way to repair the battered economy. Exports were a major
theme of the president’s India trip and the state visit by President Hu; Mr.
Immelt was among the business leaders who attended a high-level meeting with Mr.
Hu, as well as the state dinner at the White House on Wednesday.
General Electric is benefiting from Mr. Obama’s emphasis on exports. When the
president was in Mumbai, he announced a string of deals involving American
companies, including a $750 million order from Reliance Power Ltd., in Samalkot,
India, for steam turbines manufactured by G.E. Those turbines will be made here
in Schenectady, a point Mr. Obama drove home in his remarks.
“This plant is what that trip was all about,” Mr. Obama said. “That new business
halfway around the world is going to help support more than 1,200 manufacturing
jobs and more than 400 engineering jobs right here in this community, because of
that sale.”
Mr. Immelt’s White House job will be as chairman of the Council on Jobs and
Competitiveness, a newly named panel that Mr. Obama is creating by executive
order; the president said Friday that he intends to name additional members,
including business and labor leaders and economists, “in the coming days.”
The change in the council’s name is intended to signify a shift in White House
focus. It will be a reconfigured version of the board that Mr. Volcker led, the
President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, of which Mr. Immelt was a member.
That body, created by Mr. Obama when he took office in the thick of the worst
economic crisis since the Great Depression, is set to expire Feb. 6.
Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York.
January 21, 2011
The New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW
President Obama is under renewed pressure from his base to demonstrate that
he is, indeed, a principled man of unwavering conviction rather than a pliant
political reed willingly bent and bowed by ever-shifting winds.
This time the issue is gun control.
Pre-presidency, Obama had been a strong supporter of gun-control initiatives.
Since then, however, he has remained curiously quiet on the issue in general and
following the Tucson shooting in particular.
The question now is: which Obama will show up at the State of the Union?
Obama, the politician, must be hesitant. He’s enjoying a surge in the polls
following a successful lame-duck session of Congress in which a few concessions
bought substantial gains. And his handling of the shooting seemed to strike the
right balance with the overwhelming majority of Americans. He’s on a roll!
Furthermore, according to a 2005 Gallup poll, gun owners are almost twice as
likely to be white as nonwhite, are more than three times as likely to be male
as female and are more likely to live in the South and Midwest than in the East
or West. Yes, you guessed it: This fits the profile of the voters Obama has lost
and needs to win back if he wants to be re-elected.
And no one wants to upset the powerful gun-rights lobby, whose campaign-finance
clout dwarfs that of the gun-control lobby. According to data from the
nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog group the Center for Responsive Politics,
the gun-rights lobby has contributed more than $24 million in election cycles
from 1990 to 2010. About 85 percent went to Republicans. By comparison, the
gun-control lobby donated less than $2 million in the same period, mostly to
Democrats.
That said, Obama the gun-control supporter surely knows how anomalous we are
among comparable nations. We are a violent society whose intense fealty to
firearms has deadly consequences. Sensible restrictions on the most dangerous
weapons could go a long way toward making us safer.
According to 2005 data from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, a comparison of
member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
for which data were available showed that the U.S. is in a league of its own,
and not in a good way. We have nearly 9 guns for every 10 people, and about 9
out of every 10 of our homicides are committed with one of those guns. No other
country even comes close.
At the moment, there is popular support for more restrictions. According to a
NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, 52 percent of Americans asked believed that laws
covering the sale of guns should be made more strict. Will Obama seize the
sentiment? This is a test of character: Will the president choose what is right
over what is convenient and speak out for what he believes in?
Next week we will see which Obama emerges: a stalwart of conviction, an exemplar
of expediency or someone still stuck in the ambiguous middle of conciliation and
pseudocourage.
January 18, 2011
The New York Times
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday ordered “a
government-wide review” of federal regulations to root out those “that stifle
job creation and make our economy less competitive,” but exempted many agencies
that most vex corporate America.
The executive order that Mr. Obama signed at the White House would not apply to
federal agencies created to be largely independent of the White House and
Congress, which includes most of those currently enforcing and writing rules for
banks and other financial institutions mandated by the regulatory overhaul law
that Mr. Obama signed last year to avoid future crises.
While it remains unclear what substantive impact Mr. Obama’s action will have,
the political underpinning was apparent.
The president has made no secret of his desire for détente with the business
community that was so alienated by the agenda of his first two years, in
particular the laws strengthening financial regulatory system and overhauling
health care and insurance. More broadly he has sought to tack to the political
center after Democrats’ defeats in the midterm elections confirmed his party’s
loss of support from independent voters.
Business and conservative groups welcomed the initiative, while liberal and
consumer-oriented groups were more wary, even critical. But each side was mostly
skeptical, as were nonpartisan policy analysts, about what might come of the
regulatory review, since Mr. Obama is following in the well-worn tracks of
presidents going back four decades, at least to Gerald R. Ford, in seeking to
respond to businesses’ complaints about burdensome government rules.
“It’s more of a talking point than a policy,” said Robert E. Litan, the vice
president for research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation, who oversees
academic research relating to entrepreneurship.
“Even if you find a rule you don’t like, and they probably will, then they’re
going to have to go through rule-making and then it’s going to take a year or
two or longer,” Mr. Litan added. “And then somebody will sue them; if it’s not
another industry it will be a consumer interest group or a Republican interest
group.”
He recalled that one of Ronald Reagan’s first acts as president was to win
repeal of a requirement for auto airbags that car-makers had fought. The
insurance industry sued, arguing that the bags would save lives and medical
costs, and ultimately won in the Supreme Court.
While administration officials denied that Mr. Obama was seeking to appeal to
business and described the order as long in the making, the president announced
it himself via an op-ed article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Obama cited the automobile fuel economy deal negotiated with automakers,
state and federal officials, auto workers and environmental advocates as an
example of how difficult regulatory questions can be resolved through
negotiation rather than confrontation. But that plan, which set a schedule for
carmakers to increase auto and light truck fuel economy over the next five
years, was possible in large part because two major American car companies —
General Motors and Chrysler — were in bankruptcy and receiving federal bailout
funds. They were not in a position to challenge the nationwide mileage
regulations.
Automakers, who returned to profitability last year, are contesting proposed new
federal fuel economy and emissions rules that would take effect beginning in
2017.
The Obama administration is also moving ahead with new regulations on greenhouse
gas emissions from large stationary sources like power plants and refineries,
but has said it would do so in a cost-effective and common-sense way. The first
stage of the program took effect earlier this month, but the Environmental
Protection Agency has said it would not impose new performance standards on such
facilities until next year and that smaller plants would be exempt for several
years.
The environmental agency has also delayed new rules governing smog and toxic
emissions from industrial boilers, in part because of stiff opposition from
industry and from newly assertive Republicans in Congress.
Business groups have welcomed the recent moves, but are wary about new clean air
regulations on mercury, coal ash and other pollutants that are due later this
year. Republicans in Congress have already announced they intend to mount a
robust challenge to the administration’s announced plans to address climate
change using executive branch rule-making authority rather than legislation.
January 13, 2011
9:32 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
10:39 a.m. | Updated
Reaction to President Obama’s speech at the memorial service
in Arizona on Wednesday night has been almost uniformly positive, even from some
of his sharpest critics.
Some conservative bloggers took shots at Mr. Obama, saying the event — at a
basketball arena with thousands of college students in the crowd — came off more
like a pep rally than a memorial service.
But aside from that, most of the conversation on cable television, Web sites and
Twitter has been about Mr. Obama getting the tone right.
Here is a sampling of the reaction:
Glenn Beck, Fox News host: He praised Mr. Obama for condemning a
rush-to-judgment about the causes of the shooting, saying: “Last night, the
president said what he should have said on Saturday. A leader says that on Day
1. But it is truly better late than never. This is probably the best speech he
has ever given, and with all sincerity, thank you Mr. President, for becoming
the president of the United States of America last night.
Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist, on Fox News: He called it a
“remarkable display of oratory and of oratorical skill, both in terms of the
tone and the content.” He added: “You could only conclude that he did exactly
what he had to do in a difficult environment.”
Pat Buchanan, former Republican speechwriter, on MSNBC: “I thought it was
splendid.”
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post columnist: “His speech at the memorial service
for the victims of Saturday’s massacre seemed not to come from a speechwriter’s
pen, but from the heart.”
Marc Thiessen, former George Bush speechwriter, in The Washington Post: He
credited the president for taking on the civility debate directly. “This was
unexpected. It was courageous. It was genuine. And the president deserves credit
for saying it.”
Jim Geraghty of the National Review, on Twitter: “Obama has never been more
presidential than he was tonight.”
John Weaver, former political adviser to Senator John McCain of Arizona, on
Facebook: “The president had exactly the right tone and was pitch perfect for
the nation last night. And, when juxtaposed against . . . well, you know who…
ahem….”
Mark Salter, the former speechwriter and senior adviser for Mr. McCain, in an
email: “It was excellent in tone, message and delivery.”
Joe Scarborough, MSNBC host and former Republican member of Congress: “If the
slings and arrows come today, and they will, it will only serve to diminish”
those who criticize the president.
Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, on ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “I
thought it was excellent. I thought he did exactly what a leader should do at a
moment like this.”
Techno, a reader, on Conservatives4Palin.com: “There is no way in getting around
it: Obama is coarse and crude and has no class. He is a lout. Why everyone
misses it is because he is considered an elitist and urbane. He’s like a dance
student that signs up for dance lessons and can’t help himself from stepping on
the toes of the instructor every second step.”
John Podhoretz, columnist for the New York Post: “If there is one thing we
expect from occasions of national mourning, it is, at the very least, a modicum
of gravity. That gravity was present in the president’s speech from first to
last — especially in the pitch-perfect response to the disgusting national
political debate over the past couple of days.”
January 13, 2011
7:35 am
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SHEAR
Wednesday was bookended by two remarkable — and remarkably
different — political performances that demonstrated the vast expanse of
America’s political landscape.
The day opened at 5 a.m. with Sarah Palin, whose seven-and-a-half minute video
statement captured with precision the bubbling anger and resentment that is an
undercurrent of the national conversation about our public discourse.
It ended with President Obama, whose plea for civility, love and compassion —
for us to all be not just better citizens but better people — exposed for the
first time the emotions of a leader who has spent two years staying cool and
controlled for a nation beset by difficult times.
The tone of the two speeches could not have been more different. The venues were
a world apart — the smallness of a rectangular video on a computer screen and
the vastness of an echo-filled basketball arena.
And they both served as a reminder of the political clash to come when the 2012
presidential campaign gets underway in earnest next year.
Whether Ms. Palin chooses to challenge Mr. Obama or not, her video reflected the
urgent feelings of her supporters. And Mr. Obama’s speech, delivered amid
sorrow, offered a fresh glimpse of the candidate who used hope as the tool to
inspire his.
Ms. Palin’s decision to post the video on the internet Wednesday morning all but
invited comparisons to the president’s previously announced appearance at the
memorial service for those slain in Arizona.
And her choice of words — most notably the accusation that her critics were
guilty of “blood libel” for the things they have said about her — made it
impossible to ignore the video as merely another statement from a politician.
“We will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our
foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of
differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined
insults,” she said.
Like Mr. Obama, Ms. Palin offered heartfelt sympathies for those who were
injured or killed by the gunman in Tucson. Her “heart broke,” she said, just as
Mr. Obama later noted that “our hearts are broken.”
“No words can fill the hole left by the death of an innocent, but we do mourn
for the victims’ families as we express our sympathy,” Ms. Palin said, looking
directly into the camera.
But the purpose of Ms. Palin’s video was clearly to send a different, more
sharp-edged message. Just 1 minute and 32 seconds into her talk, Ms. Palin
shifted gears, saying she had become puzzled and saddened by the accusations
leveled against her and others by “journalists and pundits.”
Disciplined and sophisticatedly produced, the video ended with Ms. Palin’s
resolve. “We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us
against ourselves, or weaken our solid foundation, or provide a pretext to
stifle debate,” she said. “We are better than the mindless finger-pointing we
endured in the wake of the tragedy.”
That message, in truth, was not so different from the one that Mr. Obama
delivered 15 hours later in front of more than 14,000 people at the McKale
Memorial Center.
“They believed, and I believe, we can be better,” the president said, referring
to the victims of Saturday’s shooting. And, like Ms. Palin, he rejected as far
too simplistic the idea that political speech, however harsh, was directly
responsible for the tragedy.
“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more
civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple
lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but rather because only a
more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of
our nation, in a way that would make them proud,” he said.
But what could not have been more different was the tone. Where Ms. Palin was
direct and forceful, Mr. Obama was soft and restrained. Where Ms. Palin was
accusatory, Mr. Obama appeared to go out of his way to avoid pointing fingers or
assigning blame. Where she stressed the importance of fighting for our different
beliefs, he emphasized our need for unity, referring to the “American family —
300 million strong.”
For the president, it was at least the fourth time he has presided as the
country’s mourner-in-chief. He delivered the eulogies at Senator Edward
Kennedy’s funeral and at the memorial for miners who died in West Virginia. And
he spoke to the nation after the shootings at an Army base Texas.
But this time, he appeared more affected by the trauma of the deaths. And none
more so than when he was talking about the death of Christina Green, a
9-year-old girl not much older than Mr. Obama’s youngest daughter.
“I want us to live up to her expectations,” he said, his voice rising. “I want
our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as
good as she imagined it. All of us — we should do everything we can to make sure
this country lives up to our children’s expectations.”
Eyes glistening, the president was forced to take a long pause to compose
himself.
He talked about the “process of aligning our actions with our values” and that
what really matters in life “is how well we have loved and what small part we
have played in making the lives of others better.”
Mr. Obama’s advisers had suggested earlier in the day that the president might
avoid all mention of the swirling controversy — made even more intense by Ms.
Palin’s video — over the nation’s heated rhetoric.
But he did not, in the end, duck the issue.
Instead, Mr. Obama echoed the calls for greater civility and fresh reflection
about the nature of public discourse. But he did so while urging all sides to
abandon what he called “the usual plane of politics and point scoring and
pettiness that drifts away in the next news cycle.”
He is likely to be disappointed. Even as he spoke, Twitter messages and emails
flew across the internet, with one side assailing the other. And Ms. Palin will
likely find little hope in the barrage of criticism that greeted her video.
Unless — or until — Ms. Palin runs for president and wins the Republican
nomination, there are not likely to be many single days in which the two very
different politicians are on display in such dramatic ways.
January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin broke her silence on Wednesday and
delivered a forceful denunciation of her critics in a video message about the
Arizona shootings, accusing commentators and journalists of “blood libel” in a
frenzied rush to blame heated political speech for the violence.
As she sought to defend herself and seize control of a debate that has been
boiling for days, Ms. Palin awakened a new controversy by invoking a phrase
fraught with religious symbolism about the false accusation used by anti-Semites
of Jews murdering Christian children. It was unclear whether Ms. Palin was aware
of the historical meaning of the phrase.
“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own,” Ms. Palin said. “Especially
within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not
manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and
violence that they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
The video from Ms. Palin, running nearly eight minutes, was recorded in her home
television studio in Alaska and released early Wednesday morning. Her words
dominated the political landscape for nearly 12 hours before President Obama
arrived in Tucson to speak at a memorial service honoring the six dead and 14
injured in the shootings.
For Ms. Palin, a former Alaska governor, the video provided one of the clearest
signs yet that she is carefully tending to her image as she decides whether to
seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. And it showed her continued
determination to do so on her own terms and under her own control, without
responding to questions or appearing in a public forum.
She spoke in a somber tone, absent the witticisms often woven into her political
speeches, as she sought to contain a debate that had linked her — unfairly, she
argued — with the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords,
Democrat of Arizona.
In the midterm elections last year, Ms. Palin used a map with cross hairs over
several swing Congressional districts, which Ms. Giffords highlighted in a
television interview at the time as an example of overheated political speech.
In the video statement, Ms. Palin rejected criticism of the map, and sought to
cast that criticism as a broader indictment of the basic rights to free speech
exercised by people of all political persuasions.
“We know violence isn’t the answer,” Ms. Palin said, sitting against a backdrop
of a fireplace and an American flag. “When we take up our arms, we’re talking
about our votes.”
The video stirred an emotional response from some Democratic lawmakers, Jewish
groups and even some fellow Republicans, who said it was in poor taste for Ms.
Palin to deliver her statement on a day that was devoted to remembering victims
of last weekend’s shooting. The video played throughout the day on cable
television and on the Internet.
Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to President George W. Bush who has
become a frequent critic of Republicans, said that the tone of Ms. Palin’s
message was not appropriate for the moment of national grief and that she had
missed an opportunity to be seen as a leader.
“Sarah Palin seems trapped in a world that is all about confrontation and
bravado,” Mr. Dowd said. “When the country seeks comforting and consensus, she
offers conflict and confrontation.”
Advisers to Ms. Palin did not respond to interview requests on Wednesday, and
she did not cite any specific examples of what she considered to be unfair
coverage or commentary. Ms. Palin offered her deep condolences for victims of
the shooting, then went to on dismiss suggestions that political speech should
be toned done. She did not mention the shooting suspect, Jared L. Loughner, by
name, but said that the violence could not be blamed on talk radio or those who
participated in political debate.
“There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act
of this deranged apparently apolitical criminal,” Ms. Palin said. “And they
claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when
was it less heated — back in those calm days when political figures literally
settled their differences with dueling pistols?”
Ms. Palin also turned to the words of former President Ronald Reagan, saying
that society should not be blamed for the acts of an individual. She said she
had spent the last several days “praying for guidance,” as she sorted out the
lessons of the Arizona tragedy.
“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty
rather than the lawbreaker,” Ms. Palin said. “It is time to restore the American
precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
The video, which seemed to be aimed at appealing to her committed supporters
rather than winning over her critics, contained several references to the
country’s “foundational freedoms” and the intentions of the nation’s founders.
Twice, she called the United States “exceptional,” a frequent dig at Mr. Obama,
whom conservatives accuse of not believing in the concept of “American
exceptionalism.”
The White House did not comment on Ms. Palin’s statement, and the president did
not mention her in his address on Wednesday evening.
“President Obama and I may not agree on everything,” she said, “but I know he
would join me in affirming the health of our democratic process.”
January 12,
2011
The New York Times
By GAIL COLLINS
Maybe
President Obama was saving the magic for a time when we really needed it.
We’ve been complaining for two years about the lack of music and passion in his
big speeches. But if he’d moved the country when he was talking about health
care or bailing out the auto industry, perhaps his words wouldn’t have been as
powerful as they were when he was trying to lift the country up after the
tragedy in Tucson.
“Our hearts are broken, and yet our hearts also have reason for fullness,” he
said, in a call to action that finally moved the nation’s focus forward.
The days after the shootings had a depressing political rhythm. There was the
call for civility, followed by the rapidly escalating rhetoric over whose fault
the incivility was, which climbed ever upward until Wednesday when you had a
congressman from Texas claiming that the F.B.I. was hiding information on the
gunman’s political beliefs because the truth would embarrass the White House.
For me, Obama’s best moment came when he warned that “what we can’t do is use
this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another.” In his honor, I am
not saying a word about Sarah Palin’s video.
But, politically, there’s a challenge about where we go from here. You can’t
expect the Republican majority in Congress to give up on killing the health care
reform law, although it might be a nice step if the leadership urged its members
to stop saying that God wants to see repeal.
The president, who was going for great, universal themes, didn’t make any
suggestions.
Let me offer one really, really modest one. Congress should have an actual
debate about Representative Carolyn McCarthy’s bill to reduce gun violence.
You will notice I just said have a debate. And the bill does not even control
guns. It simply bans the sale of the special bullet clip that allowed the Tucson
gunman to shoot 20 people without reloading.
McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son permanently injured when a gunman
using a pistol with a similar — but less powerful — kind of clip opened fire on
the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. “That’s why I came to Congress,” she said on
Wednesday. But so far she has collected co-sponsors only from the same small
band of members who always support this kind of legislation.
Members of Congress are so terrified of the political power of the National
Rifle Association that the Democrats, when they were in power, declined even to
give McCarthy’s bill a hearing. This is the chance for the Republicans to prove
that they’re braver.
All John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has to do is say that in the wake of
the Tucson tragedy he wants to demonstrate that Congress is open to a serious
and mature discussion of ways that it might have been avoided, or mitigated.
That might include proposals to better identify people with potentially violent
mental illnesses. And it certainly would also have to involve a conversation
over a technology that can turn a pistol into the equivalent of a somewhat
slow-moving machine gun.
McCarthy’s bill might not have saved Representative Gabrielle Giffords from
being shot. But it has to be worth talking about whether it could have saved
some of her constituents.
So far, most of the proposals from members of Congress for practical action to
reduce gun violence have been directed at protecting themselves. Representative
Peter King of New York introduced a bill to ban anyone from carrying a gun in
the vicinity of a federal official. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois
suggested reversing a recent cut in members’ office budgets and tacking on
another 10 percent increase to pay for improved security. Representative Dan
Burton of Indiana urged enclosing the House gallery in Plexiglas. And two
members vowed to carry their pistols with them when they go about the people’s
business back in their districts.
Following the president’s lead, I would argue that Congress has the capacity for
higher purpose.
“I believe we can be better,” he said. “Those who died here — those who saved
lives here — they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the
world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”
In that light, I believe members of Congress can have a hearing and a civilized
debate on a bill that is modest and relevant but that is opposed by a
hyperpowerful lobbying group that scares the daylight out of them.
Maybe they could do it just to prove it to themselves that they can.
January 12, 2011
11:25 pm
The New York Times
By NATE SILVER
President Obama’s speech in Tucson tonight seems to have won
nearly universal praise. I suspect it will be remembered as one of his best
moments, almost regardless of what else takes place during the remainder of his
presidency.
As I’ve mentioned before, this was the first tragedy of this kind that happened
in the Twitter Age. From almost the first moment that word about the massacre
broke, people had all sorts of theories — often expressed in no more than 140
characters — about the shooter and his motivations.
Some of the theories — such as those that tried to place Jared L. Loughner
somewhere on the traditional left-right political spectrum — ran the risk of
being presumptuous on the basis of what we knew at the time. And indeed, as more
has become known about Mr. Loughner, some of them do not seem to be well
supported by the evidence.
Still, nobody seemed to have been chastened much. Instead, after Sarah Palin’s
videotaped statement — I would recommend The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin
for a judicious take on the particulars of it — the discourse about the tragedy
almost seemed to be lapsing into self-parody.
The cynic in me wants to say that, in this context, this was a relatively easy
speech for Mr. Obama to deliver (in a political sense rather than an emotional
one). Nobody seemed to be playing the role of the adult in the room or moving us
toward closure, which provided Mr. Obama with an opportunity to do so. Mr. Obama
played that role very well tonight, although I suspect that almost all of his
predecessors would have done the same.
At the same time, Mr. Obama’s decision to focus in some detail on the victims of
the tragedy — not just Gabrielle Giffords but the others, and not just in a
perfunctory way but in one that seemed heartfelt — showed a lot of dexterity for
the emotional contours of the moment. And at times, his speech showed an
intellectual dexterity as well. This passage, in which Mr. Obama refocused the
discussion about civil discourse without trivializing the tragedy, struck me as
especially strong:
And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more
civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple
lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and
honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a
way that would make them proud.
I’m going to avoid speculating for now on the political implications of the
speech, except to say that much of what takes place during a president’s term,
and much of what ultimately affects public perception about whether it was a
success or a failure, stems from unplanned contingencies that are ultimately
outside of his control. But certain types of contingencies suit the temperaments
of certain types of presidents especially well, and this seems to have been one
such case for President Obama.
January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
TUCSON — When President Obama took the stage here Wednesday to
address a community — and a nation — traumatized by Saturday’s killings, it
invited comparisons to President George W. Bush’s speech to the nation after the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the memorial service President Bill Clinton led
after the bombing of a federal office building killed 168 people in Oklahoma
City in 1995.
But Mr. Obama’s appearance presented a deeper challenge, reflecting the tenor of
his times. Unlike those tragedies — which, at least initially, united a mournful
country and quieted partisan divisions — this one has, in the days since the
killings, had the opposite effect, inflaming the divide.
It was a political reality Mr. Obama seemed to recognize the moment he took the
stage. And it was one he seemed determine to address, with language that
recalled a central part of Mr. Obama’s appeal as a presidential candidate in
2008.
He called for an end to partisan recriminations, and a unity that has seemed
increasingly elusive as each day has brought more harsh condemnations from the
left and the right, starting here in Arizona but rippling across the nation.
“What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one
another,” he said. “That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of
us do so with a good dose of humility.”
While some on the left sought to link the killing to the Tea Party movement or
to heated speech from prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin, Mr. Obama
pointedly noted that there was no way to know why the gunman opened fire,
killing 6 people and injuring 14, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
“For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious
attack,” he said. “None of us can know with any certainty what might have
stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner
recesses of a violent man’s mind.”
On a day when Ms. Palin posted a video accusing commentators of committing
“blood libel” by suggesting her commentary had enabled the crime, Mr. Obama —
speaking at times like a political leader, at times like a preacher — urged his
audience and the nation to avoid recriminations, to “honor the fallen” by moving
forward and by “making sure we align our values with our actions.”
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we
are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of
those who think differently than we do, it’s important for us to pause for a
moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals,
not in a way that wounds,” Mr. Obama said.
When it comes to being emotive, Mr. Obama may never match Mr. Clinton or Mr.
Bush. His voice sometimes wavered, but he is not the kind of leader whose eyes
tear up at public events. Yet these are tougher times and he was, here and
across the country, speaking to a tougher audience.
Even as it began, some conservative commentators were posting comments
criticizing the memorial service for being overly partisan and more like a pep
rally, and there were some boos in the hall when Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican,
spoke. Those reactions would have been hard to imagine, say, in the days after
the Oklahoma City bombing.
“Last time there was uniform revulsion,” said Don Baer, who was the chief
speechwriter in the White House for Mr. Clinton in 1995 and helped write Mr.
Clinton’s speech. “This time, in the interest of condemning vitriol, all sides
have become vitriolic. In some ways the country is more in need of a unifying
voice that says, ‘Enough already.’ ”
Mr. Baer said that made the demands on Mr. Obama different than those on Mr.
Clinton, and made Mr. Obama’s return to the language of his campaign — the call
for an end to partisan rancor — so logical.
“The best message for President Obama,” Mr. Baer said, “is the one that brought
him to national attention from the start: That there is not a red America or a
blue America but a United States of America.”
The speeches Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton gave were seen as turning points in their
presidencies. Wednesday night’s event seemed less about Mr. Obama’s presidency
and more about the state of this country. His calls during the campaign for an
end to brutal partisanship appeared to carry little weight these past two years
in Washington. There is no way to know if his similar call on Wednesday, under
tragic circumstances, will have more traction.
January 12, 2011
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER and JEFF ZELENY
TUCSON — President Obama offered the nation’s condolences on
Wednesday to the victims of the shootings here, calling on Americans to draw a
lesson from the lives of the fallen and the actions of the heroes, and to usher
in a new era of civility in their honor.
The president directly confronted the political debate that erupted after the
rampage, urging people of all beliefs not to use the tragedy to turn on one
another. He did not cast blame on Republicans or Democrats, but asked people to
“sharpen our instincts for empathy.”
It was one of the more powerful addresses that Mr. Obama has delivered as
president, harnessing the emotion generated by the shock and loss from
Saturday’s shootings to urge Americans “to expand our moral imaginations, to
listen to each other more carefully” and to “remind ourselves of all the ways
that our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized, at a time when we
are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of
those who think differently than we do,” he said, “it’s important for us to
pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way
that heals, not a way that wounds.”
The president led an overflow crowd at the evening service at the University of
Arizona in eulogizing the six people who died on Saturday and asking for prayers
for the wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who the
authorities said was the target of an assassination attempt.
He warned against “simple explanations” and spoke of the unknowability of the
thoughts that “lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.” He
suggested that the events should force individuals to look inward, but also that
they should prompt a collective response against reflexive ideological and
social conflict.
While the tone and content were distinctly nonpolitical, there were clear
political ramifications to the speech, giving Mr. Obama a chance, for an evening
at least, to try to occupy a space outside of partisanship or agenda.
“If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure
it’s worthy of those we have lost,” Mr. Obama said. “Let’s make sure it’s not on
the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away
with the next news cycle.”
In Washington, members of the House reconvened for the first time since the
shooting, setting aside a partisan health care debate to honor the lives of the
victims.
The memorial service in Tucson took on the form of a national catharsis,
including a presidential reading from the Book of Psalms. Thousands of students
and others in the crowd cheered at several points during Mr. Obama’s 32-minute
address, which sometimes had the feel of a rally dedicated to the Arizona
victims.
“If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more
civility in our public discourse,” Mr. Obama said, “let us remember that it is
not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy — it did not — but
rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up
to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”
The president spoke after stopping to visit Ms. Giffords in her hospital room.
He said he was told that shortly after his visit, Ms. Giffords opened her eyes
for the first time, a moment that was witnessed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand,
Democrat of New York; Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California; and
other lawmakers who were there to pay their respects.
“Gabby opened her eyes for the first time,” Mr. Obama announced. “Gabby opened
her eyes!”
The scene inside McKale Memorial Arena was a mix of grief and celebration, where
a capacity crowd of 14,000 gathered beneath championship banners for the
University of Arizona Wildcats. The service, which was televised nationally on
the major broadcast and cable news networks, gave the president an opportunity —
and burden — to lead the nation in mourning during prime time.
Aides said Mr. Obama wrote much of the speech himself late Tuesday night at the
White House. Laden with religion nuance, the speech seemed as though Mr. Obama
was striking a preacher’s tone with a politician’s reverb.
The remarks came hours after former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a potential
Republican rival to Mr. Obama in 2012, issued a sharp condemnation of the
criticism that has been leveled against her in the days since the shooting. In a
video message that filled the airwaves on Wednesday, she accused pundits and
journalists of committing “blood libel” in a rush to place blame.
“There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act
of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political
debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently,” Ms. Palin said. “But when
was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally
settled their differences with dueling pistols?”
Since the shooting, Mr. Obama has spoken to many of the victims’ family members
on the telephone, conversations that he helped spin into life lessons. In his
speech, he told stories of each of the fallen victims: John Roll, a federal
judge; Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck and Dorwan Stoddard, all retirees who had
gone to hear their congresswoman speak; Gabe Zimmerman, a 30-year-old
Congressional staffer; Christina Taylor Green, a 9-year-old with a budding
interest in politics.
He also praised the people who rushed to the scene outside the Safeway
supermarket, including the two men who wrestled the suspect, Jared L. Loughner,
to the ground; the woman who seized his ammunition; and the intern who rushed to
Ms. Giffords’s side to try to stem the bleeding.
“We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat
one another is entirely up to us,” Mr. Obama said. “I believe that for all our
imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that
divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”
The first lady, Michelle Obama, traveled to Arizona for the memorial service
and, with the president, visited family members and victims in hospital rooms
and in private sessions before the memorial. At the service, she sat next to
Mark Kelly, the astronaut who is married to Ms. Giffords, often reaching over to
hold his hand.
The president was surrounded by a bipartisan group that included Justice Anthony
Kennedy; retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a native of Arizona; and Senators
John McCain and Jon Kyl and Gov. Jan Brewer, all Republicans. A bipartisan
Congressional delegation from Washington also was seated nearby.
In Washington, House Republicans and Democrats met separately with the
sergeant-at-arms and with officials from the United States Capitol Police and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who urged them to appoint a security
coordinator in their home districts and to reach out to local law enforcement
agencies for assistance, while also staying in contact with officers at the
Capitol.
Several lawmakers described the message from law enforcement experts as telling
them to use common sense, and that protecting all 535 members of Congress from
largely unpredictable threats was a somewhat unmanageable task.
The president’s speech marked the third time since taking office that he had led
the country in mourning. In November 2009, he eulogized the 13 soldiers who were
shot at Fort Hood, Tex., and five months later he traveled to West Virginia to
remember the 29 men who were killed in the nation’s worst coal mining disaster
in four decades.
Here in Tucson, he saved his final words for Christina Green, the 9-year-old who
wanted to meet her representative in Congress on Saturday.
“If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today,” Mr.
Obama said, as the girl’s family, seated nearby, held hands. “We place our hands
over our heart,” Mr. Obama said, promising to work to forge “a country that is
forever worthy of her gentle happy spirit.”
Helene Cooper reported from Tucson, and Jeff Zeleny from
Washington. David M. Herszenhorn, Janie Lorber and Jennifer Steinhauer
contributed reporting from Washington.
Following is a text of President Obama’s prepared address on
Wednesday to honor those killed and wounded in a shooting on Jan. 8, as released
by the White House.
To the families of those we've lost; to all who called them
friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered
tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an
American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand
by you tomorrow.
There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.
But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the
fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that
Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy
pull through.
As Scripture tells us:
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered
outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free
speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our
founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as
to carry their concerns to our nation's capital. Gabby called it "Congress on
Your Corner" – just an updated version of government of and by and for the
people.
That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman's
bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too
represented what is best in America.
Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this
university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench
by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and
rose to become Arizona's chief federal judge. His colleagues described him as
the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from
attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to
his Representative. John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three
sons, and his five grandchildren.
George and Dorothy Morris – "Dot" to her friends – were high school sweethearts
who got married and had two daughters. They did everything together, traveling
the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year
honeymoon. Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their
Congresswoman had to say. When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine,
instinctively tried to shield his wife. Both were shot. Dot passed away.
A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in
the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3
children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter. A gifted quilter,
she'd often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos
of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A
Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.
Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago.
They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were
widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy's daughters put it,
"be boyfriend and girlfriend again." When they weren't out on the road in their
motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the
Mountain Avenue Church of Christ. A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent
his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux. His final act of
selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.
Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was
people. As Gabby's outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her
constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they
had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government
was working for ordinary folks. He died doing what he loved – talking with
people and seeing how he could help. Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and
Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next
year.
And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green. Christina was an A
student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer. She often proclaimed that she
wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl
on her Little League team, no one put it past her. She showed an appreciation
for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, "We are so
blessed. We have the best life." And she'd pay those blessings back by
participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.
Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing. Our hearts are broken – and yet,
our hearts also have reason for fullness.
Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the
shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday. I
have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where
our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak. And I can tell
you this – she knows we're here and she knows we love her and she knows that we
will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.
And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others. We are grateful
for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby's office who ran through the chaos to
minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive. We are grateful
for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload. We are grateful for
a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer's
ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives. And we are grateful for the doctors
and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who'd been
hurt.
These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of
battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or
physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of
our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday
morning.
Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us. It
raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is
required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to
their memory?
You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand
explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of
that which seems senseless. Already we've seen a national conversation commence,
not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from
the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much
of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the
future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.
But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time
when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the
feet of those who think differently than we do – it's important for us to pause
for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that
heals, not a way that wounds.
Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things
happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, "when I
looked for light, then came darkness." Bad things happen, and we must guard
against simple explanations in the aftermath.
For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious
attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those
shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a
violent man's mind.
So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will
not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge
old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.
But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one
another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of
humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this
occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more
carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the
ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.
After all, that's what most of us do when we lose someone in our family –
especially if the loss is unexpected. We're shaken from our routines, and forced
to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging
parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made
for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once
in awhile but every single day?
So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look
forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we
live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us.
We may ask ourselves if we've shown enough kindness and generosity and
compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing
right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in
order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting
time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or
fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in
bettering the lives of others.
That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions
– that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires. For those who were
harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family
300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but we surely see
ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding
love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis
– she's our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize
not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who
embodied America's fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our
public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating,
sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a
more perfect union.
And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so
trusting, so energetic and full of magic.
So deserving of our love.
And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and
debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. Let's
make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and
pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.
The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be
better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and
parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher
in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because
a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more
civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a
nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to
live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who
knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each
other's ideas without questioning each other's love of country, and that our
task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that
we bequeath the American dream to future generations.
I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here –
they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I
know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all
our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that
divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
That's what I believe, in part because that's what a child like Christina Taylor
Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of
our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just
starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping
her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public
service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her
congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role
model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or
vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as
she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this
country lives up to our children's expectations.
Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that
day to be pictured in a book called "Faces of Hope." On either side of her photo
in that book were simple wishes for a child's life. "I hope you help those in
need," read one. "I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and
sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles."
If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And
here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as
Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy
spirit.
May God bless and keep those we've lost in restful and eternal peace. May He
love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of
America.
January 10, 2011
5:03 pm
The New York Times
By HELENE COOPER
President Obama is, so far, keeping his distance from the debate over whether
vitriolic political discourse contributed to the attack in Arizona that killed
six people and wounded 14 people, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.
During remarks at the White House on Monday with President Nicolas Sarkozy of
France, Mr. Obama said he is mourning the victims and trying to offer solace.
“Right now, the main thing we’re doing is to offer our thoughts and prayers to
those who’ve been impacted, making sure that we’re joining together and pulling
together as a country,” Mr. Obama told reporters. His aides said he has been
making phone calls to the families of those killed in the Arizona attack.
Mr. Obama said there will likely be a memorial service for the victims of the
Arizona shooting sometime soon, but he didn’t say when. He is expected to speak
at a service on Friday for Richard Holbrooke, the special representative to
Afghanistan and Pakistan who died last month.
During his remarks at the White House on Monday, Mr. Obama steered clear of the
political finger-pointing that has been underway in Washington since Jared Lee
Loughner, 22, was arrested in the shooting rampage in Tucson on Saturday.
The president and First Lady Michelle Obama led a moment of silence at 11 a.m.,
during which they gathered alongside White House staff members to remember the
people killed and wounded in Arizona. This is only the second time in his
presidency that Mr. Obama has assumed the role of comforter-to-the-country. The
first was In November 2009, when 13 people were shot and killed at Fort Hood,
Tex.
Besides calling the family members, Mr. Obama has also made a round of calls to
congressional leaders.
January 10,
2011
11:20 am
The New York Times
By DAVID HERSZENHORN
President
Obama led the nation in a moment of silence on Monday, standing somberly with
his wife, Michelle, their heads bowed, overlooking the South Lawn of the White
House.
Mr. and Mrs. Obama stepped outside the White House and with the toll of a single
bell by a Marine guard, silence fell in Washington and across the nation.
On the steps of the East Front of the Capitol, hundreds of Congressional aides,
gathered to mark the moment honoring the victims of the shooting in Arizona. The
dead included a member of their own ranks, Gabriel Zimmerman, the director of
community outreach for Ms. Giffords, who had been organizing the sort of
constituent event that many staff members have attended themselves without much
concern about public safety.
Most lawmakers remained in their home states and districts.
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, observed the moment of silence
with students at Martha Layne Collins High School in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Mr.
McConnell told the students “violence has no place in the Democratic process,
and this heinous crime will not deter any of us from carrying out our duties.”
January 3,
2011
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON
— President Obama’s legal advisers, confronting the prospect of new restrictions
on the transfer of Guantánamo detainees, are debating whether to recommend that
he issue a signing statement asserting that his executive powers would allow him
to bypass the restrictions, according to several officials.
If Mr. Obama were to issue such a statement, it could represent a more
aggressive use of unilateral executive powers than what he exerted in his first
two years in office. The issue has arisen as the Republican Party takes control
of the House.
Last month, while still under Democratic control, Congress included the detainee
transfer restrictions — which would make it harder for the administration to
achieve its goal of closing the prison at the military base in Guantánamo Bay,
Cuba — in a major defense bill it sent to Mr. Obama. He could act on the measure
by the end of the week.
One provision bars the military from using its funds to transfer detainees to
the United States, making it harder to prosecute them in federal court. Another
prohibits the transfer of detainees to any other country unless the defense
secretary, Robert M. Gates, certifies that the country has met a strict set of
security conditions.
The deliberations over whether Mr. Obama should challenge those provisions were
reported Monday by ProPublica, an investigative journalism site, and were
confirmed by several officials familiar with the discussions.
Before the vote on the bill last month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. told
Congress that the restrictions would be “an extreme and risky encroachment on
the authority of the executive branch.” But lawmakers included them in the final
legislation anyway, and Mr. Obama is considered unlikely to veto the measure
because it authorizes billions of dollars for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
One option on the table, according to officials familiar with the deliberations,
is for Mr. Obama to sign the bill into law but declare his opposition to the
detainee transfer restrictions — which expire Sept. 30, at the end of the
current fiscal year — by simply arguing that they are bad policy.
But the administration is also considering whether he should go further by
issuing a signing statement — a formal document recording a president’s
interpretation of a new law for the rest of the executive branch to follow —
asserting that he has the constitutional power to disregard the restrictions.
Under the latter approach, the president would assert that as the head of the
executive branch and commander in chief, his prosecutorial discretion and
wartime powers would allow him to lawfully bring detainees into the United
States for trial or to transfer them to other countries as he sees fit.
It remained unclear whether the administration would actually carry out a
detainee transfer despite the restrictions, or whether it would merely assert,
as an abstract matter, that Mr. Obama had the authority to do so.
In 2002, under President George W. Bush, the Justice Department’s Office of
Legal Counsel wrote that Congress has no power to limit the transfer of
detainees because “the president has plenary constitutional authority, as the
commander in chief, to transfer such individuals who are captured and held
outside the United States to the control of another country.” The Bush
administration rescinded that memorandum five days before leaving office.
During that era, Mr. Obama and many future members of his legal team criticized
the Bush administration as taking too sweeping a view of executive power. They
also criticized Mr. Bush for his frequent use of signing statements to claim a
constitutional right to override laws.
Mr. Bush attached such statements to about 150 bills during his eight years in
office, challenging about 1,200 provisions — around twice the number challenged
by all previous presidents combined. Among the most contentious was an assertion
that he had the power to lawfully override a statute banning torture.
In 2006, the American Bar Association declared that presidents should veto
legislation they view as flawed rather than issue signing statements, which the
group portrayed as “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional
separation of powers.” One member of the Obama legal team, Harold Koh, the State
Department legal adviser, was a member of a task force that developed that
declaration.
But several other future members of the Obama legal team argued at the time that
signing statements were lawful and appropriate so long as the president invoked
only mainstream legal theories. Mr. Obama adopted the latter approach, pledging
greater restraint.
Early in his presidency, he issued several signing statements that made
relatively uncontroversial challenges. But he has not issued any since June
2009, when lawmakers of both parties expressed outrage over a statement he
attached to a bill saying that he could disregard requirements imposed on
certain negotiations with international financial institutions.
January 1,
2011
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
HONOLULU —
President Obama has accomplished something extraordinary during his Hawaiian
escape from Washington: his White House has gone dark for more than a week.
Here on Oahu, where Mr. Obama and his family are staying in a luxury oceanfront
rental home in the sleepy town of Kailua, the president is cloaked in the
comfort of a news-free zone. The public does not see much of him, except for
when he is zipping by in his armored sport utility vehicle, and it does not much
seem to care.
Images of the president at leisure — sharing a Hawaiian shave ice with daughters
Malia and Sasha, golfing, dining out with his wife — have trickled out,
orchestrated by aides who have also taken care to allow pictures of the
president at church and visiting the troops on Christmas Day. His advisers
calculate that there has been roughly one photo opportunity every day and a
half.
News photographers are grousing. They were kept at a safe distance and given
strict instructions to put away their telephoto lenses when the Obama family
went snorkeling on Tuesday at the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, where green sea
turtles and fish in all shapes and colors dart in and out of a coral reef. (The
president does not want to be photographed with his shirt off, and the preserve
is closed on Tuesdays, so the public was not around, either.)
Mr. Obama spent Thursday on the island’s North Shore, which is famous for its
monster waves and the sweet, succulent shrimp that are sold from trucks on the
side of the road. But there was no presidential sighting; he was tucked away at
the beachfront home of his childhood friend Bobby Titcomb, who throws an annual
barbecue for the Hawaiian White House.
On Friday, the president played golf — his fourth round so far this trip — and
he spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home, a gathering that included a talent show
with family and friends, an annual Obama tradition. Again, no photos.
“There haven’t been many pictures, and there haven’t been many stories,” said
Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton. “Part of it is that the allure is
gone. The president and his family on vacation are less interesting; the Camelot
glow is gone, so people just don’t care as much.
“And I think the White House is extraordinarily cautious about getting the right
pictures out there, not sending the wrong message, because going off to Hawaii
two years into a recession when a lot of people are unemployed does not come off
well,” he said. “You don’t want the president bodysurfing when the public
doesn’t have a job.”
Mike McCurry, who served as one of President Bill Clinton’s press secretaries,
says the one image the public has not seen thus far this trip is of Mr. Obama
reading. “Believe me,” Mr. McCurry said, “by the time the vacation is over,
you’ll have a picture of him studying some manual.”
Maybe, maybe not. As has been reported, Mr. Obama brought along Lou Cannon’s
biography of Ronald Reagan, another president who was confronted with a divided
Congress. But he also brought two novels, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De
Zoet,” a historical romance by David Mitchell about a Dutchman in Edo-era Japan,
and “Our Kind of Traitor,” by the spy novelist John le Carré. The president’s
wife makes a brief guest appearance in the le Carré book; in one passage,
characters cannot visit the gardens of the Champs-Élysées in Paris because
“Michelle Obama and her children are in town.”
Fortunately for Mr. Obama, no crisis has demanded his attention, as was the case
last year when a Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a passenger jet that
was bound for Detroit.
And the people of Oahu seem content to let the president be. Gov. Neil
Abercrombie explained their attitude in a recent interview by describing a
drawing by Corky Trinidad, an acclaimed political cartoonist here who died in
2009. It shows Mr. Obama sleeping on a beach next to an endangered Hawaiian monk
seal, a creature that Hawaiians know must not be disturbed.
“There was a little rope around them,” Mr. Abercrombie said, “and people were
putting their fingers up to their mouths going, ‘Shhhh.’ ”
Analysts say Mr. Obama’s Hawaiian disappearing act carries little political
risk, in part because the public has just watched him slog through a difficult
but productive lame-duck session of Congress. And there is an upside to peace
and quiet for a president who is wrapping up one rough year and preparing for
another, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in
Maryland who studies the presidency and the press.
“The amount of time that he has had by himself is important for thinking and
long-range planning,” Professor Kumar said. “You can do a type of thinking in
these kinds of circumstances that you can’t at the White House. It just gives
you time to develop perspective.”
Advisers to Mr. Obama, who is scheduled to leave here for Washington on Monday
night, say he is indeed giving some thought to a range of topics: his State of
the Union address, expected in late January; his budget; his legislative agenda;
his relations with Congress; and a staff reshuffling that will include the
selection of a new deputy chief of staff and a replacement for Lawrence H.
Summers, the president’s top economic adviser, who returned to Harvard to teach.
But Mr. Obama has not risked any public utterances on these or other matters;
his announcement on Wednesday that he was bypassing the Senate to make six
recess appointments was done with a news release.
“They have managed to figure out how to really go into what amounts to a full
lid on the news,” Mr. McCurry said with a degree of admiration. He said Mr.
Obama is smart to lie low, because the public is not paying attention anyway. “I
think what’s worse is when they try to make some pretense that they’re actually
doing work in between golf rounds.”
