OCTOBER 14, 2014, 10:10 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2014, 11:02 PM BY CHARLES STILE RECORD COLUMNIST THE RECORD
A visit by Barack Obama once had the buzz of Beatlemania.
When he visited New Jersey, crowds were packed with college kids who hoisted cameras and chanted “Yes We Can,” and the stages bulged with Democratic officials eager to bask in his glow.
But as Obama returns to New Jersey today for the first time in 16 months, his popularity is in a tailspin. And instead of headlining a campaign rally in a civic center, he will be escorted into a pricey, closed-door fundraiser in Union County, a visit that is supposed to draw donors and not attention. And the Democrats are more than happy to keep it that way.
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell is an eight-term Democrat from Paterson running for reelection against Republican Dierdre G. Paul, a Montclair State University professor, and he said his campaign polling detected a noticeable drop in Obama’s numbers. For Pascrell, the Obama effect has forced him to navigate – keep his distance from Obama on some issues but not abandon him altogether, which could potentially alienate hard-core Democrats who remain loyal to Obama.
“You have a choice if you are a Democratic candidate. You can run away from the president, you can embrace everything he does, or you can say it like it is,” Pascrell said last week while campaigning in Fort Lee. “When I agree with him, I agree with him; when I don’t agree with him, I say so.”
The president who could electrify crowds four years ago is now radioactive. With Obama besieged by multiple foreign policy crises and his popularity in free fall, Democratic candidates around the country are taking measures to separate themselves from the party’s standard-bearer.
Barack Obama’s first speech to the UN was filled with the giddy hopes that won him the presidency in the first place. “More than at any point in human history, the interests of nations and peoples are shared,” he told world leaders in 2009.
Five years later, it was a greyer and more sombre Mr Obama who warned the UN this week about the “generational task” of defeating Islamist militants in the Middle East, two days after he launched his first air strikes in Syria. “The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force,” he said.
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Replete with George W Bush-style rhetoric about a “network of death” and “this brand of evil”, Mr Obama’s speech this week was an effort to reboot his flagging presidency.
In political terms, the more martial Mr Obama was trying to shake of the Jimmy Carter aura that has been hanging over his White House; the steady corrosion of leverage at home and influence abroad in the face of Middle East turmoil that slowly leaves an incumbent looking impotent.
Posted by: : Paul EbelingPosted on: September 14, 2014
Vast Majority Do Not Believe US Will Defeat ISISNearly 70% of Americans surveyed do not believe the United States will succeed in wiping out Islamic State (ISIS) militants, according to a new NBC News/WS-J/Annenberg poll.
According to the poll, 68% have “very little” or “just some” confidence in US President Barack Hussein Obama’s goal of eliminating the threat of ISIS. Just 28% had “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in Mr. Obama’s goals.
62% say they support the used of air power against ISIS in Syria as laid out by the president in last Wednesday’s prime time address to the nation, 22% oppose the plan.
“The bottom line: The president has made his case to the American public, and like other presidents who faced war and peace issues, support usually follows,” Democratic pollster Peter Hart said of the survey he helped conduct. “The difference in this military encounter is that, right out of the box, Americans are skeptical if this will work.”
The poll showed that just 38% of Americans think Mr. Obama is doing an effective job on foreign policy.
A poll from last week showed that 65% think action against ISIS is in America’s interest. That number rose to 68% after some of those polled were re-contacted after Mr. Obama’s speech.
More Doctors, Supplies and Portable Hospitals Planned for Africa
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama plans to dramatically boost the U.S. effort to mitigate the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, including greater involvement of the U.S. military, people familiar with the proposal said.
Mr. Obama is expected to detail the plan during a visit Tuesday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, these people said. Among the possible moves: sending additional portable hospitals, doctors and health-care experts, providing medical supplies and conducting training for health workers in Liberia and other countries.
Mr. Obama also is expected to urge Congress to approve the request he made last week for an additional $88 million to fund his proposal.
“There’s a lot that we’ve been putting toward this, but it is not sufficient,” Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said in an interview Sunday. “So the president has directed a more scaled-up response and that’s what you’re going to hear more about on Tuesday.”
NRA boss LaPierre: Americans fear their country ‘off the rails’ under Obama
Wayne LaPierre’s message targets middle class worried about U.S. direction, security, freedom
Association has unleashed a multimillion-dollar TV advertising campaign that its longtime leader says is aimed at messaging beyond gun rights and reaching middle-class mothers, minorities and other Americans “who believe our country is off the rails.”
The gun lobby’s campaign, launched in the last 10 days, uncharacteristically delves into issues far beyond the Second Amendment to explore the IRS scandal, media elitism and security vulnerabilities, with a call to return “good guys” to power.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.
In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.
“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.
Politico Reports MSNBC Host Al Sharpton Was Obama’s Eyes and Ears In Ferguson By Tim Graham | August 22, 2014 | 09:53
In yet more proof that MSNBC has absolutely no sense of journalistic detachment from the Obama White House or political activism in the streets, Politico’s Glenn Thrush is reporting that Team Obama was plumbing Sharpton for information he gleaned on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.
“Sharpton—so often criticized for being a self-promoter—finds himself in the unusual position of being too close to a White House that seems to be losing power by the day, ” Thrush wrote. But Sharpton is still boasting that it was his sincerity that bonded him with the president:
Over the years, the 59-year-old former Brooklyn protest leader turned MSNBC talk-show host has embraced a new identity, one that reflects his evolution from agitator to insider with all that implies. In Ferguson, Sharpton established himself as a de facto contact and conduit for a jittery White House seeking to negotiate a middle ground between meddling and disengagement.
“There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official familiar with their dealings told me. “He gets it, and he’s got credibility in the community that nobody else has got. There’s really no one else out there who does what he does.”
And the White House, as the crisis following Brown’s death seemed to flare out of control, worked extensively behind the scenes to maximize The Rev’s doing what he does, using him as both a source of information and a go-between. After huddling with Brown’s family and local community leaders, Sharpton connected directly with White House adviser and First Friend Valerie Jarrett, vacationing in her condo in the exclusive Oak Bluffs section of Martha’s Vineyard, not far from where President Obama and his family were staying. Obama was “horrified” by the images he was seeing on TV, Jarrett told Sharpton, and proceeded to pepper him with questions as she collected information for the president: How bad was the violence? Was it being fueled by outside groups—and could Sharpton do anything to talk them down? What did the Brown family want the White House to do? [Italics in the original.]
If anything, the Ferguson crisis has underscored Sharpton’s role as the national black leader Obama leans on most, a remarkable personal and political transformation for a man once regarded with suspicion and disdain by many in his own party. It’s a status made all the more surprising given that Obama, America’s first black president, ran on a platform of moving beyond the country’s painful racial divisions while Sharpton is the man who once defined those divisions for many Americans.
What brought them together, according to numerous sources I’ve spoken with about this over the years, is a shared commitment to racial justice, and a hardheaded pragmatism that has fueled their success. “He realized I wasn’t as irrational or as crazy as people thought,” Sharpton told me in an interview this week, and indeed Sharpton not only visits the White House frequently, he often texts or emails with senior Obama officials such as Jarrett and Attorney General Eric Holder, the first African American to hold that job and who, like Sharpton, views the Ferguson crisis as a pivotal one in Obama’s presidency.
“I’ve known Al since he was 12 years old, and he’s arrived at the level he always wanted to arrive at, which is gratifying,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a colleague and sometimes rival, told me. “He’s the man who’s the liaison to the White House, he’s the one who’s talking to the Justice Department….”
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“He’s calculating … he gets the game,” Sharpton recently told an associate when asked about why he’s bonded with Obama.
“The relationship evolved over time,” Sharpton explained to me. “I realized he was just a different kind of guy. … He wasn’t going to be guided by emotions. He was not intimidated. There was no game you could play [with him]. The key for him was seeing that I wasn’t insincere, that I actually believed in the stuff I was talking about.”
As World Boils, Fingers Point Obama’s Way
By PETER BAKERAUG. 15, 2014
WASHINGTON — In this summer of global tumult, the debate in Washington essentially boils down to two opposite positions: It is all President Obama’s fault, according to his critics; no, it is not, according to his supporters, because these are events beyond his control.
Americans often think of their president as an all-powerful figure who can command the tides of history — and presidents have encouraged this image over the years because the perception itself can be a form of power. But as his critics have made the case that Mr. Obama’s mistakes have fueled the turmoil in places like Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, the president has increasingly argued that his power to shape these seismic forces is actually limited.
“Apparently,” he said in frustration the other day, “people have forgotten that America, as the most powerful country on earth, still does not control everything around the world.
Jimmy Carter has had a long-standing reputation as authoring the most ineffective foreign policy of any modern presidency.
To be honest, Carter deserves better.
When the man from Plains, Ga., moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, he came wearing the anti-establishment headdress. In particular, when it came to foreign and defense policy, Carter promised that his policies would be anything but business as usual.
America, Carter claimed, could do less in the world. So he planned to pull U.S. troops out of Korea. His foreign policy would be based on fostering “human rights” and talking peace instead of war.
From the beginning, however, almost no foreign policy initiative went right. While the Camp David accords eventually led to the 1979Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, they did not yield a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, because the Palestinians rejected them from the start. As war rages between Israel and Hamas today, the accords never delivered on the promise of delivering a road map to long-term peace.
Where Carter struggled most, however, was over relations with the Soviet Union. Moscow saw Washington’s post-Vietnam malaise as a clear sign that the American century had ended early. The Soviets went on the offensive in almost every corner of the globe.
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan galvanized Carter in a manner that has been mostly forgotten. Most Americans recall Carter’s feckless decision to pull the U.S. team out of the upcoming Olympics in Moscow, a self-defeating gesture that accomplished little. But as his presidential term neared its end, Carter apparently decided he was tired of being a foreign-policy doormat for Moscow.
He declared the “Carter Doctrine,” warning the Soviets that he would protect U.S. interests in the Middle East “by force if necessary.” And he ordered the establishment of a rapid deployment force, which would be capable of delivering a massive U.S. military capability into the Persian Gulf.
Further, Carter ordered the development of new generations of military capability and even proposed increasing defense spending, which had been in free-fall since the end of the Vietnam War.
This burst of seriousness didn’t save his presidency. The poor state of the U.S. economy, coupled with the embarrassment of the hostage situation at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, crippled his re-election efforts. Still, Carter left office amid signs that he had learned from his mistakes.
A common joke among conservatives during the 2012 campaign was that if Obama got re-elected, Americans would see what Carter’s second term would have looked like. But Carter might have been a bolder president in his second term. Obama, on the other hand, clearly has not. His second-term agenda has lurched from embarrassment to failure and back again.
Further, Obama has shown no signs of acknowledging that his own policies have contributed much to the reversals he has suffered on virtually every front, from managing Moscow to the mushrooming threat of transnational terrorism.
In no corner of the world had Obama seen more setbacks than in the Middle East. And he is running out of time to clean up his mess before leaving office.
Most of what Obama has broken can’t be fixed. But he could give the next U.S. president a fighting chance by following Carter’s example and doing something.
Reversing the atrophy of American military capabilities would be a start. He could also work to build solid relations with the countries the U.S. will need to build a solid foundation for a Middle East policy. The U.S. needs a string of strong bilateral alliances from Turkey to Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, Niger, Tunisia, and Algeria to help restore stability to the Middle East and North Africa.
For now, however, comparing Obama to Carter is an insult to Carter.
Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.
“We’re in the summer of our discontent,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Americans are cranky, unhappy… It is with everything going on the world.”
Yet because this discontent differs – among Democrats, Republicans, and independents – Hart cautions that Americans still aren’t likely to be storming the polls on Election Day in November.
“We’re unhappy, but we aren’t coalescing around an issue,” he said.
Indeed, 57 percent of respondents told pollsters that something upsets them enough to carry a protest sign for a day.
“The public seems have moved beyond the plaintive cry of ‘Feel our pain!’ to the more angry pronouncement of ‘You are causing our pain!’”
Obama military downsizing leaves U.S. too weak to counter global threats, panel finds
An independent panel appointed by the Pentagon and Congress said Thursday that President Obama’s strategy for sizing the armed services is too weak for today’s global threats.
The National Defense Panel called on the president to dump a major section of his 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and write a broader strategy that requires the military to fight on multiple fronts at once.
It also said the shrinking U.S. armed forces, which are being downsized to fit that strategy and budget cuts, is a “serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States.” The forces’ numbers spelled out in Mr. Obama’s QDR are “inadequate given the future strategic and operational environment.”
The warning comes as Mr. Obama is under criticism from many Republicans and some Democrats for his standoff policy toward Syria and his limited response to a June offensive by an al Qaeda offshoot that has gobbled up swaths of territory in Iraq.
Congress authorized the panel of outside experts to review the QDR, a strategy for shaping the active and reserve force. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel appointed the co-chairmen: former Defense Secretary William Perry, who served under President Bill Clinton, and retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, who ran U.S. Central Command during the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
‘I,’ ‘Me,’ ‘My’—Obama Uses First Person Singular 199 Times in Speech Vowing Unilateral Action July 11, 2014 – 8:56 PM
Not counting instances when he quoted a letter from a citizen or cited dialogue from a movie, President Barack Obama used the first person singular–including the pronouns “I” and “me” and the adjective “my”–199 times in a speech he delivered Thursday vowing to use unilateral executive action to achieve his policy goals that Congress would not enact through the normal, constitutional legislative process.
“It is lonely, me just doing stuff,” Obama said at the speech in Austin, Texas, according to the official transcript and video posted on the White House website.
“I’m just telling the truth now,” Obama told the crowd. “I don’t have to run for office again, so I can just let her rip. And I want to assure you, I’m really not that partisan of a guy.”
This means Warren: Obama backs challenger to Hillary
President Obama has quietly promised Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren complete support if she runs for president — a stinging rebuke to his nemesis Hillary Clinton, sources tell me. (Klein/The New York Post)
Supreme Court rules against Obama in contraception case
Some corporations have religious rights, a deeply divided Supreme Court decided Monday in ruling that certain for-profit companies cannot be required to pay for specific types of contraceptives for their employees. The 5-4 decision on ideological lines ended the high court’s term with a legal and political setback for a controversial part of President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law. (Mears, Cohen/CNN)
US aircraft carrier moves toward Iraq as violence escalates
By Kate Tummarello – 06/14/14 01:05 PM EDT
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is bringing U.S. military forces closer to Iraq as anti-government insurgents gain ground in the fight against Iraqi troops.
On Saturday, Hagel ordered aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush to be moved into the Persian Gulf, bringing it closer to Iraq, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a statement.
“The order will provide the Commander-in-Chief additional flexibility should military options be required to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq,” according to the spokesman.
The spokesman said the aircraft carrier, currently located in the North Arabian Sea, is being accompanied by a guided-missile cruiser and a guided-missile destroyer and is expected to reach its destination “later this evening.”
The navy’s movement comes as militants led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria attack Iraqi troops.
Those troops were trained by the U.S., prompting some to call on the U.S. to reengage in Iraq.
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