Government Executive - Authors - Jill Lawrence

Rubio Alienates Some Other Republicans by Advocating Government Shutdown

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 10:01:12 -0400

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida won praise from the Republican establishment and lost tea-party support by playing a lead role in this year's push for immigration reform. Now he's turned that dynamic on its head by joining Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky at the forefront of a drive to shut down the government unless Obamacare is defunded.

Rubio's pendulum swing may or may not ultimately appease those angry about the pivotal help he provided to win passage of the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill, with its path to citizenship for most undocumented immigrants. What's already certain is that some establishment figures who applauded him on immigration, including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, are now serving up disapproval. Other Republican critics of the shutdown threat include Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Richard Burr of North Carolina, as well as 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Business lobbyists are also dismissive, with several telling National Journal that Rubio & Co. are ignoring facts on the ground—to wit, a Democratic president and Senate. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer called the defunding effort "nuts." Commentary writer Peter Wehner, a White House aide during the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations, got personal with a column headlined "Marco Rubio's Folly."

What's more, Rubio may be sowing confusion about his political identity as he heads toward a widely expected run for president in 2016. Would he be an establishment contender, along the lines of a Chris Christie, Scott Walker, or Jeb Bush, or an insurgent like Paul or Cruz? "It appears right now as if the path is not clear for Rubio. And sometimes if one foot is in each camp, neither camp adopts you as their own," says University of New Hampshire political scientist Dante Scala, an expert on the state's first-in-the-nation primary.

What set off Wehner was Rubio's assertion to radio host Mark Levin last week that "if you're willing to fund this thing, you can't possibly say you're against it." In other words, he'll vote against a bill to keep the government running unless the measure cuts off money for President Obama's health care law.

"So is that the new Rubio standard?" Wehner asks. "Are we to believe he supported every item funded in every budget bill he voted for while serving in the Florida Legislature? Or that in the future he'll support every program of every budget he votes for in the United States Senate?"

Wehner also takes issue with Rubio's damn-the-politics attitude toward a government shutdown unless the president agrees to defund Obamacare, and questions whether Rubio and the other members of what he calls "the Suicide Caucus" are tethered to reality, given that Obama and the Democratic Senate will never "pull the plug" on that signature achievement.

Being a ringleader on the road to a government shutdown could well be riskier than being a cheerleader for a path to citizenship. There are plenty of GOP presidential prospects who share Rubio's views on immigration, or have similar views, or will by 2015, when the party's dire need for Hispanic outreach and votes in a national race becomes impossible to ignore. Furthermore, whether it succeeds or fails, immigration reform will be in the rearview mirror by then and not all that salient to the national conversation.

"Time would do the best for Marco Rubio, more than anything," says Craig Robinson, a GOP strategist in Iowa, home of the first caucuses of the primary season. And he'll need that time if he's going to bring conservatives back into his fold. "I think it is going to be a while before they're mesmerized by Marco Rubio again," says Robinson, who runs a website called The Iowa Republican.

Rubio ran against Obamacare in his 2010 campaign and has been a consistent opponent of the Affordable Care Act. Also, after voting once for a stopgap budget measure to keep the government running, he has since voted against all such measures, called continuing resolutions. He's now saying he will vote for a second CR, due next month, but only if it defunds Obamacare. "There's a lot of grassroots support for this position. You've seen most of the conservative organizations supporting this, as well as leading conservatives outside of Congress saying that this is the right approach," says Rubio spokesman Alex Conant. He also says of Rubio, "It would be weird if he wasn't fighting to repeal Obamacare."

But that misses the point. Pretty much all the Republicans in Congress oppose the health care law. It's the government-shutdown threat most of them are questioning, because, unlike the outside groups and individuals, they are worried about the real-world impact of such a drastic development—on Americans and on the GOP.

Veteran Republican strategist Rich Galen says Rubio, Cruz, and Paul are showing a lack of seasoning by inviting such a confrontation. "The ramifications of something like that are far broader than what it sounds like," Galen says. He should know. He experienced the 1995-96 shutdown, and the political damage it did to his party, as a top aide to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

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What If John Kerry Outperforms Hillary Clinton as America’s Top Diplomat?

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 11:00:00 -0400

Hillary Rodham Clinton happened to be in Washington during a week of front-page headlines about how her successor had nudged Israeli and Palestinian officials back to the negotiating table. So far, Secretary of State John Kerry has merely orchestrated talks about talks, but they are the first ones in three years, so it’s still a milestone of sorts.

Kerry’s investment of time and capital could evaporate at any moment, of course—he concedes there is “no shortage of passionate skeptics” about this latest round of preliminaries. But there’s also a small chance that he and President Obama could be headed for a historic achievement. In which case, Kerry could end up overshadowing Clinton as America’s top diplomat. How would that affect her place in history or, more immediately, a 2016 presidential bid?

Clinton gets credit from State Department watchers on many fronts, from improving America’s post-Bush image around the world to integrating women into departmental decision-making. She has fans across the political spectrum. Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the liberal National Security Network, says Clinton’s “signal achievement was to restore a sense of U.S. leadership and engagement on the diplomatic side as opposed to the military side.” Steven Bucci, director of the Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls her “the best friend the Department of Defense had in Washington. She was a masterful coordinator.” She also had record-breaking stamina—112 countries visited and nearly 957,000 miles logged during 401 days on the road.

Yet even some Clinton admirers acknowledge the absence of a breakthrough, headline-grabbing accomplishment—no Marshall Plan, no détente with the Soviets, no Dayton Accords. The most memorable moment of her tenure was a tragic one, the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012. Republicans intend to use the incident to attack Clinton if she runs for the White House in 2016, and there is no single achievement that would be a counterbalance.

Perhaps none of this will matter. While Kerry deserves credit, many observers note that certain forces made the present moment different and more conducive to Israeli-Palestinian talks. “This is not happening because of changes in leadership at the State Department or policy changes in the United States,” says Stan Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist who advises Israeli as well as U.S. politicians. “It’s probably more about Israeli politics than anything else.”

Several key players are in the hunt for legacies, starting with Obama, a lame duck. “If you can get something accomplished in the Middle East, you go out in style,” says political scientist Zeev Maoz, a Middle East expert at the University of California (Davis). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also have his eye on history, and on reinventing himself, after an unexpectedly close call in last January’s elections. Kerry, 69, is a former senator and a failed 2004 Democratic presidential nominee with a lifetime of involvement in foreign affairs. This job is the capstone of his career and likely his last chance to make a mark.

Clinton has already notched several historic firsts—including first first lady to be elected senator and first competitive female presidential candidate—and is mulling another White House campaign. “If you thought you might want to run for president some day, you would not want to jump into something as time-consuming, as fraught in American domestic politics, as the Middle East,” Hurlburt says.

After missteps and failures in a first-term Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, Obama signaled renewed interest when he gave a rousing speech to Israeli students in Jerusalem in March. But he is leaving the heavy lifting this time to Kerry, presumably until there is reason for him to step in to close a deal. That’s in contrast to his first term, when Obama took ownership of major policy initiatives and Clinton was a team player. Neither of them formulated an overarching strategy to handle the Arab Spring, instead responding to individual countries as situations arose.While Clinton’s tenure yields no obvious presidential campaign slogan or bumper sticker,

While Clinton's tenure yields no obvious presidential campaign slogan or bumper sticker, her efforts will be useful as “the credentialing that shows her global experience,” Greenberg says. So will the book Clinton plans to publish about her years as secretary of State. It’s due June 1, a few weeks after the end of the nine-month commitment Kerry extracted from the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to keep talking.

“If he is successful, or close, Kerry will get a huge amount of credit, and he’ll deserve that. It’ll be a wonderful personal and political redemption as well as being a major help to U.S. interests in the region,” Hurlburt says. But it won’t affect a Clinton run, she adds. “People are going to be focused back on Clinton primarily on domestic concerns. They’re not going to go after her and say, ‘Why didn’t she get Middle East peace?’ It’s like that joke about Jesus walking on water—that shows he can’t swim.”

In fact, Clinton could benefit if Kerry somehow manages to achieve what eluded her and Obama in his first term. If she runs and wins the Democratic nomination, she would need to persuade swing voters to sign on for what they would surely see as an extension of Obama’s administration and policies. A historic success and a rise in Obama’s approval rating would not hurt that argument at all.

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What Took So Long for These 3 Senators to Get Presidential Buzz?

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 09:31:28 -0400

Dean Genth knew he was making mischief when he invited Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to keynote the North Iowa Democrats' 10th annual Wing Ding fundraiser. He thought of her as a neighbor from the state next door and an inspiring example for Iowa, which has yet to elect a woman to the Senate or the House. But a second-term senator whose name is showing up with increasing frequency on lists of 2016 presidential prospects, speaking at a high-profile political event only about 2.5 years before the Iowa caucuses that launch the nomination race—well, he says, he wasn't surprised when his press release "kicked up a little bit of a dust storm."

If you're thinking, why Amy Klobuchar, the real question should be, why not? The same goes for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. All three have suddenly become staples of Democratic buzz and short lists, right along with Hillary Rodham Clinton. And while they may not be making as many headlines as Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, or Ted Cruz, they have the records and resumes to be taken just as seriously.

The three hot Republican prospects all are first-term senators elected in 2010 or, in Cruz's case, 2012. By contrast, Klobuchar and Gillibrand were first elected to Congress in 2006 (Klobuchar to the Senate, Gillibrand to the House, before she was named to succeed Clinton in January 2009). Warren was already a national figure when she was elected last year. Yet until recently, the Democratic names in heavy circulation as potential alternatives to Clinton were Vice President Joe Biden, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.

Everyone knows the old joke about every senator looking in the mirror and seeing a president, and polls suggest Americans are more than ready for a woman president. So why didn't Gillibrand, Warren, and Klobuchar emerge sooner? It would be easy to blame sexism, but there are plenty of reasons unrelated to their gender. First off, they aren't governors, a CEO-type leadership position that is a frequent rung on the ladder to the White House (four of the six most recent presidents were governors). And they don't tend toward flashy gestures, like Paul's attention-grabbing filibuster protesting President Obama's drone policy. Nor do they bring ethnic or racial diversity to the presidential mix in the way of Obama in 2008. The GOP has a wealth of such prospects for 2016, including Rubio, Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the only female Republican who gets routine mentions.

And then, of course, there's Clinton, who will be receiving an award at the Wing Ding next month but has not said yet whether she will attend. Her commanding position in the field, as a former first lady, senator, secretary of State, and near-nominee in 2008, has kept the spotlight off other female prospects.

"It has nothing to do with them, their qualifications, or their ability to mount a real campaign. It has more to do with insider perceptions and the strength of Hillary Clinton," says Democratic strategist Jeff Liszt, who polled for the Madam President project sponsored by EMILY's List. "People have been so focused on Hillary."

That's different from the wide-open field on the GOP side. "You see a lot of folks newer to the political scene who are getting a lot of attention because there's no one big heavyweight there. Anybody who even thinks about booking a flight to Iowa, people immediately assume they are running for president," says Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson. She adds that if you're a Democrat with presidential aspirations, "you have to be pretty open about what your ambitions are" or risk being ignored amid the Hillary hoopla.

There are at least two blogs devoted entirely to the 2016 presidential race (yes, already) and all three women have made it onto their lists of possibles. The analysts who run the blogs, Dave Catanese at TheRun2016.com and Christian Heinze at prez16.com, say their choices are educated guesses based on research and signals from the politicians themselves. Klobuchar and Gillibrand are frequent guests on cable shows, for instance. All three women were on the Madam President list compiled by EMILY's List in May. And while Klobuchar's visit with Iowans at the Democratic convention last year could be interpreted as a neighborly gesture, that doesn't explain her meeting with delegates from the early primary state of South Carolina.

As for substance, Klobuchar won national awards for fighting crime, making drunk driving a felony, and improving school safety during two terms as Hennepin County attorney (which includes Minneapolis). In the Senate, she has championed consumer protection and promoted bipartisanship; she says she has introduced two-thirds of her bills with Republicans. "Her leadership style is different from Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. I don't think that's a liability, I think that's an asset," says Liszt.

Like Rubio, who was central to the formulation and passage of comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate, Gillibrand has been a pioneer on transparency (the first senator, she says, to post her official public schedule, personal financial disclosure, federal earmark requests, and annual tax returns online). She was in the forefront of efforts to repeal the military's don't ask, don't tell policy and now is leading a drive to remove sexual-assault cases from the military chain of command. She has bucked senior Democrats with her proposal to have such allegations handled by a separate prosecutor's office, and is close to securing majority support.

Warren, a former Harvard professor, oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as the bank bailout, conceived and proposed a consumer financial protection agency, saw it enacted into law in 2010, and got it off the ground. Then, having been deemed too controversial to head the new bureau, she headed home to run for the Senate. Warren has a strong liberal populist base and a broad national fundraising network, and in her first six months has gone her own way on issues such as bank regulation and student loans. That's created some headaches for her party, but she's a piker compared to the confrontational Cruz.

Catanese says there's space for up to three female candidates if Clinton decides not to run. "There's such a strong desire for a woman to be president in many Democratic constituencies, that I believe the pressure on Gillibrand and Klobuchar to run would be enormous if Hillary doesn't," he says. "Elizabeth Warren has the most hearts and minds on the left, but she's a freshman and may not be interested in the huge leap."

Klobuchar has the least national presence of the trio. Heinze offered this rationale for including her on his list: "She's a relatively pragmatic female from a Midwestern state who's a very good politician and gets along with everybody. If Hillary doesn't run and Democrats want to nominate a woman, Klobuchar would seem to be a more electable general-election candidate than someone like Elizabeth Warren."

She would also be valuable on any ticket in the role for which she jokes that Minnesota is best known: producing vice presidents. A popular female senator from a swing state—it's practically a no-brainer, especially if she has already shown an interest in national office and the ability to handle the pressure that comes with it.

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Analysis: Senate Deal Doesn’t Help Obama on Judges, and That’s What Matters Most

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 09:23:27 -0400

Senate Republicans are letting President Obama fill a few important slots in his administration, but they haven’t given an inch where it really counts—on the federal judges who could define his legacy for generations.

Judicial nominees were never going to escape the tyranny of the filibuster and the 60 votes needed to pave the way to confirmation. The Democrats’ threatened “nuclear option”—to change filibuster rules to speed nominees through the upper chamber with a simple majority—wasn’t going to apply to prospective judges. And neither does the deal senators struck that gives Obama his administration picks and preserves the filibuster.

That means Obama remains at risk of losing his best chance to influence history after he’s gone.

The judiciary is “every president’s lasting legacy,” says Michael Gerhardt, director of the University of North Carolina Center on Law and Government. Indeed, federal judges, whose rulings shape every area of American life, typically outlast the presidents who appointed them by years, even decades. And in most cases, especially on controversial issues, their legal outlooks over the long term tend to mirror the worldviews of the presidents who picked them.

But Obama might be the exception to the rule. The slow pace of Obama’s nominations to federal trial and appeals courts and Republican resistance to his choices both before and after they are made could reduce the impact of his two terms.

“For the first time since 1992, there have been more than 60 vacancies for five straight years” on federal trial courts, “the workhorses of our system,” says Alicia Bannon, counsel for the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “That has very serious implications for the functioning of our trial courts and for President Obama’s legacy.”

When Obama came into office, 60 percent of federal judges had been named by Republicans and 40 percent by Democrats. Judicial scholar Russell Wheeler of the Brookings Institution says Obama’s appointments had shifted that ratio to 49 percent Republican – 51 percent Democratic. Six months ago, Wheeler predicted Obama might be able to get to 58 percent. But now? “I may have been overly optimistic,” he says, citing the slow pace of nominations and confirmations.

There are 17 vacancies on U.S. Appeals Courts, also called Circuit Courts, and seven nominees are pending. There are 68 vacancies on U.S. District or trial courts, and 22 nominations pending. Numerically, Wheeler says, Obama is doing about the same as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on confirmation of appellate judges.

Not so in the District Courts, Wheeler says. Obama’s district judge choices have waited much longer: an average 223 days from nomination to confirmation, up from 164 days during Bush's tenure to this point and 98 days during Clinton’s.

Obama has been criticized from all corners for being slow to make nominations in the first place. “He hasn’t taken lower courts that seriously,” says Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network. But some observers suspect at least part of the slow pace stems from Republican senators refusing to agree in advance on nominees from their states, as has been routine in the past.

The statistics seem to support the argument. Wheeler found that in the cases of 14 vacancies involving states with two GOP senators, it has taken an average of 349 days for Obama to nominate a successor; that compares with 197 days for 17 vacancies in states with two Democratic senators. There is also a disparity for district courts—434 days for states with GOP senators, 390 for those with Democrats. “We can only speculate,” Wheeler says, “but the difference leads you to believe there’s something going on here.”

While Obama’s overall numbers are in line with Bush and Clinton on Appeals Court judges, Republicans are giving him a particularly hard time on nominations to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. There’s no mystery why: It is often a springboard to the Supreme Court and its workload encompasses a broad sweep of federal agencies and issues, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Labor Relations Board, the constitutionality of Obama’s recess appointments, and executive power in general.

One Obama nominee to the court, Caitlin Halligan, withdrew in the face of a filibuster threat. Another, Sree Srinivasan, was confirmed in May. In June, when Obama nominated three people as a package to fill out other vacancies on the court, GOP Sen. Charles Grassley accused him of trying to “pack” the court and introduced a bill to reduce its size. The fate of the Obama Three is unclear, but without them, Democrats are nearly certain to lose ground on the already conservative court. All four active GOP appointees are under age 70, compared with only two of four named by Democrats. Of the six senior appointees who still hear cases, one is a Democrat age 73 and five are Republicans ages 67 to 78. Democratic retirements after 2016 could well be filled by a GOP president.

How much does any of this matter? A lot.

First of all, federal judges deal with virtually every issue of our times: from abortion, gay, gun, property, consumer, disability, women’s and civil rights; to capital punishment, civil liberties, and the regulation of workplaces, businesses, Wall Street, the environment, and campaign finance.

Second, there really is an ideological gulf between judges named by Democratic and Republican presidents, and it’s especially evident in rulings on provocative subjects. “Ideally, if the judges are all trying to look at the law in a neutral way, they will come to similar conclusions. But we know that’s not the case,” says Severino.

Headlines from time to time highlight judges making decisions that might have surprised the presidents who named them: the Ronald Reagan appointee who ruled that California’s gay-marriage ban was unconstitutional; the George W. Bush appointee who was the deciding vote in a 2-1 Appeals Court decision upholding the 2010 Affordable Care Act; and, as the marquee example, Chief Justice John Roberts serving as the deciding vote to uphold the health law when it reached the Supreme Court.

But on the hot-button issues that divide the judiciary as well as the nation, judges named by liberal and conservative presidents are truer to type. In 2010-11, for example, three federal judges named by Democrat Bill Clinton upheld the 2010 health law while two named by Republicans George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan ruled it unconstitutional. A 2006 analysis of more than 19,000 votes by federal judges in Are Judges Political? concluded, “Republican appointees and Democratic appointees agree more often than they disagree.” But it said that the opposite is true “in ideologically contested cases, involving the most controversial issues of the day.” Overall, Democratic appointees took a liberal position 52 percent of the time, compared with 40 percent for GOP appointees.

This year’s The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back From Liberals, by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, says, “Every single federal judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush or President George W. Bush was either a member or approved by members of the Federalist Society,” a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers formed in 1982 to counter the influence of “orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.” Not surprisingly, a 2004 study of George W. Bush’s judicial appointees found that “they are among the most conservative on record.”

Obama can point to the important addition of Srinivasan to that D.C. Appeals Court and the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices. Srinivasan is 46, Elena Kagan is 53, and Sonia Sotomayor is 59. Their ages pretty much guarantee they will be on the scene for years if not decades after Obama is term-limited out of office in January 2017. Still, that will be cold comfort—and a huge victory for conservatives—if Obama can’t put his stamp on the federal bench by the time he steps down.

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Is Hillary Clinton Peaking Too Soon?

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 09:49:22 -0400

Crack organizers from President Obama's campaigns are the latest political honchos to join the Clinton-for-President movement and, like others involved, they say they are just trying to make things "Ready for Hillary" if she decides to run. But the bandwagon effect is fueling an "inevitability" narrative that damaged Clinton in 2008, and is allowing her no reprieve from politics.

The Ready for Hillary super PAC announcement of a partnership with 270 Strategies, coming on top of earlier testimonials from prominent Democrats, feeds the impression that the non-existent Clinton campaign is a runaway train about to reach top speed (albeit without an engineer at the controls). Former Clinton campaign aide Mo Elleithee says the actual significance of the new partnership is merely that "there are a lot of people that want her to run. That's all it means. She is not in this race yet and there's no guarantee that she ever will be."

The early and intense focus on Clinton recalls 2008, when she was wrongly assumed to be the prohibitive frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. The constant spotlight now means Clinton remains a political target even as friends and associates say she is trying to focus on advocacy, speeches, and writing a book about her tenure as secretary of state. "What they're doing is fantastic," Elleithee says of Ready for Hillary, but "I do think it is adding to the hyper-politicization of every move she makes." He says her advocacy for women, children, and families, a lifelong crusade, is more important to her right now than politics.

Still, even as she tries to exit the arena for at least a brief respite, Clinton is taking care to maintain her political viability, as her husband once said in another context. She's not joining boards or giving speeches in controversial venues. Her upcoming memoir will discuss "how to navigate the challenges of the 21st century." There are indications a 2016 campaign would not involve Mark Penn, who was emblematic of the failures of her 2008 primary race. And according to one Clinton family adviser, there is a recognition that the 2008 campaign marked the end of an era. "They're very sensitive" about the need to run a "forward-looking, modern campaign" in 2016 that takes into account the revolutions in technology and other campaign tools, the adviser said.

At this point, the only apparent decision the former senator and secretary of state has made is to keep her options open. Clinton associates say she does not need to make a decision on running until late next year or early 2015. In the meantime, they view Ready for Hillary as a useful vehicle to channel grassroots energy and support for Clinton.

Harold Ickes, a Clinton family friend and former deputy White House chief of staff, has raised money for Ready for Hillary in Washington and New York and received no indication the Clintons are pleased or displeased. "If they were unhappy, there are ways to make that known," he says, and adds: "I'm not asking people to put big money into it, because nobody knows if she's going to run or not."

Ickes says the modest amounts being raised are for things like operational expenses, web ads and, now, 270 Strategies. Ready for Hillary said Wednesday that the firm, founded by Obama campaign veterans Jeremy Byrd and Mitch Stewart and named for the number of electoral votes it takes to win the presidency, will lead its organizing strategy and build its field operation. The idea, said senior adviser Craig Smith, is that if and when Clinton makes a decision, "she'll have the grassroots army she needs to pave her way to victory and the White House."

Stewart says the new grassroots organization will be an aid to Clinton in her deliberations. "I don't view our role with Ready for Hillary as pressuring her," he says. "We really view our role here as building the space so she can make the decision. And one of the factors is, 'Will there be support for my candidacy?'"

The partnership with Ready for Hillary is a no-lose proposition for 270 Strategies. As one party strategist put it, "This is where the money is" at the moment. And if Clinton ultimately chooses not to run, the lists and infrastructure built by the 270 Strategies team will be among the most valuable resources in politics.

Stewart confirms that Ready for Hillary is not a volunteer gig for his firm but declines to say how much time will be devoted to this client, beyond "the time necessary" to apply the expertise he and other Obama veterans have accumulated. He says a vast majority" of Clinton supporters likely will hold the same values as other Democratic candidates, making the 270 Strategies prep work valuable to them if Clinton passes on a race.

Like others interested in a Clinton bid, Ickes sees the 270 Strategies development as irrelevant to whether it happens or not. His list of factors is almost perfectly balanced between pro and con.

On one side of the ledger, "the presidential bug is a very hard bug to kill." Furthermore, "my very strong sense is that she would like to see a woman president in her lifetime, and when you look at the landscape, it's a pretty short list. Maybe even a list of one."

And yet, "she'll be 69 if she runs," facing the rigors of a campaign followed by the rigors of being president for four or eight years. "We have watched presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama literally grow white hair in front of our eyes faster than paint drying," he says. In addition, "You look out and you wonder how much can presidents get done these days?"

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When Blocking Nominees Comes Back to Haunt Politicians

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 08:29:09 -0400

About the time Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions was lacing into the Senate's Gang of Eight immigration reform package and offering dozens of amendments in committee, some Democrats may have been ruing the day their party helped deep-six his appointment to a federal court. Republicans could be forgiven for having similar regrets when Elizabeth Warren won a Senate seat after they had successfully headed off any chance for her to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

When it comes to blocking nominations, sometimes partisans might want to be careful what they wish for. The fate of Richard Cordray, who has the job Warren didn't get, is likely at stake this month and could turn into another example of unintended consequences. If the GOP continues to block permanent status for him, his possible alternatives include challenging Ohio Gov. John Kasich or succeeding U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Donald Berwick, whom Republicans refused to confirm as permanent head of the massive agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid, is already running for governor of Massachusetts. He says he wants to make the state a model for jobs, education and cost-effective health care.

Sessions was elected to the Senate in 1996, a decade after eight Democrats and liberal Republicans Arlen Specter and Charles "Mac" Mathias voted 10-8 in the Judiciary Committee to kill his nomination by President Reagan as a district judge. Their rationale at the time had to do with accusations of racial insensitivity against Sessions, based in part on sworn statements in which he called the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union "un-American" and "communist inspired."

Now, from his perches as senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee and third-ranking on Judiciary, the very committee that dashed his ambitions in 1986, Sessions has been a leading voice against immigration reform, the Affordable Care Act, and spending on safety net programs. He has attacked the immigration bill on populist grounds (it will hurt low-wage American workers) and moral ones (we shouldn't give illegal immigrants amnesty and access to all the benefits of legal citizens). He also took umbrage at the Gang of Eight process. "Somebody needs to ask questions about this bill," he said on CNN. "They don't get to write a bill in secret, and we all roll over and have it passed without examination." The bill passed the Senate, but Sessions' critiques previewed the storm awaiting reform proposals in the House.

Warren was an unsparing critic of the financial industry as chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP. She proposed the idea of the consumer bureau and set it up when it was first created, as part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. But she was such a lightning rod and so unlikely to be confirmed that President Obama did not nominate her to be its inaugural director. That catapulted her into a Senate race, which she won despite a deluge of banking and financial industry contributions for then-Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. The next battle was to keep Warren off the Senate Banking Committee. Wall Street lost that one, too.

The GOP and Wall Street "victory" in keeping Warren off the CFPB seems awfully pyrrhic at this point. Her six-year term guarantees her a Senate platform through 2018, she's probably a lock for reelection in her blue state, and some Democrats even see her as a potential presidential candidate. Warren has already made headlines twice for going after regulators she views as too soft on banks. Settlements are fine, she told them at a hearing in February, but oversight agencies have "a lot less leverage" if they never take banks to trial for breaking the law.

Cordray is caught in an increasingly tangled web of complications. Republicans have refused to confirm any CFPB director until the structure of the new agency is changed, while Democrats have refused so far to make any changes. Another layer of uncertainty was added last month when the Supreme Court said it would hear arguments on the constitutionality of appointments presidents make when Congress is in recess. Such appointments don't require confirmation, but are temporary.

Obama installed Cordray as a recess appointment when Republicans blocked his initial nomination in 2011, and renominated him this year. A vote is likely this month, possibly accompanied by a showdown over whether to preserve the filibuster in its current form. Unless Cordray is confirmed, he'd have to leave his job at the end of the year.

At least two future paths for Cordray involve promotions. Some Ohio insiders say the former Ohio attorney general is a possible successor to Holder, who has said he will not be staying for Obama's entire second term. Cordray is also a liberal favorite for governor, based on his policies and victories in statewide races for treasurer and attorney general. He hasn't made moves toward running, but he hasn't ruled it out, either. Kasich achieved a career high of 54 percent approval in a Quinnipiac Poll taken June 18-23, but may have become more vulnerable after signing a controversial budget June 30 that tightens restrictions on abortion and cuts funding for Planned Parenthood.

Berwick is a pediatrician and a longtime health-care innovator who was president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for nearly 20 years. He says he received his education in politics in Washington, when Republicans – accusing him of favoring health-care rationing, which he vehemently denies -- twice refused to confirm him as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Obama gave him a recess appointment to run the half-million-worker agency with an $820 billion budget, but he had to leave in 2011 when the temporary appointment expired. As Berwick told a Fox interviewer last month in Boston, "I've been in the cauldron."

Berwick's gubernatorial odds are long; his Democratic primary opponents could eventually include members of Congress and state attorney general Martha Coakley, and Republicans have strong potential contenders in Brown, recent Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and former health care CEO Charles Baker, who lost a race for governor in 2010.

But if Berwick were to become governor, he says he'd make sure his state sets a good example for others trying to achieve seamless and less expensive health coverage. "Massachusetts is four to five years ahead of the country," Berwick said on Fox, referring to the state's 2006 law that provided the template for "Obamacare." "We have to succeed in health care reform in this state or there are consequences…"

Failure would feed into Republican assertions that Obamacare is a recipe for soaring health costs and dampened economic growth. They could not have foreseen the unlikely entry into politics of a candidate determined and uniquely qualified to prove them wrong.

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Argo and a New Resolve to Hold Iran Accountable for 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:23:06 -0400

Dozens of senators are receiving a gut-wrenching Father's Day letter this week from a group launching its first collective action as Capitol Hill advocates: the spouses and children of 52 Americans taken hostage in Iran in 1979 and held for 444 days.

Inspiring the new activism is a Senate bill that the hostages, their families, their advocates, and many members of Congress see as the best chance in 32 years to finally hold Iran accountable for the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the hostage crisis that followed, and to compensate the victims for their sacrifices.

The 1979 attack, depicted in frightening detail in the opening scenes of Argo, winner of the best-picture Oscar in February, is seen now as the first of many terrorist acts in the name of Islam since then. With the failure of the host government to protect foreign diplomats, the incident also foreshadowed last year's deadly attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Other terrorism victims have won lawsuits against nations that sponsored terrorism, and have been awarded damages from frozen assets. But that route has been unavailable to the 1979 hostages because of a ban on lawsuits against Iran in the Algiers Accords signed by then-President Jimmy Carter to secure their release.

Courts have knocked down congressional attempts to override or strike down the ban. Now, with the ex-hostages aging and 13 already dead, Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., are sponsoring a bill to compensate them and their families through a temporary 30-percent surcharge on the fines paid by companies that violate U.S. sanctions by doing business with Iran.

The former hostages and their families will likely never get one of the things they really want, which is an apology from Iran. But the Isakson bill would sting Tehran a bit by making it more expensive to conduct business with the country, while providing each former hostage up to $4.4 million (based on a maximum $10,000 for each day of captivity). For hostages who have died, the money would go to their families.

The State Department fought for years to uphold the Algiers Accords, concerned about the future credibility of agreements signed by U.S. presidents. But the Isakson bill does not undercut or reverse the agreement, and the department has signaled it is open to the new legislative approach. "They've been very cooperative and helpful so far," Isakson told National Journal.

The bill avoids other controversial issues -- using taxpayer money and increasing the federal deficit -- by financing the hostage reparations with a temporary surcharge. It would last until the hostages and families had received the money they were due, likely after two to three years.

Secretary of State John Kerry was receptive to the proposal last year when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and it has support from current Chairman Robert Menendez, D-N.J., as well as ranking member Bob Corker, R-Tenn., according to Isakson. In fact, when asked if anyone in the Senate had expressed opposition, Isakson replied, "Not to me."

He said it would be hard to overestimate the impact of Argo. "Seeing is believing," he said, adding it also helps that the hostage families are getting involved. "I never predict anything, but I feel very good about ... the odds of getting it done this year," he said.

‘NEVER CAME HOME’

Though the 50 men and two women seized at the U.S. Embassy were released the day Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, "many never truly came home," more than 80 hostage relatives from 27 states and the District of Columbia said in the Father's Day letter, which was shared with National Journal. “They were shells of the people that left for Iran to represent our nation.”

They said the trauma of the captivity has reverberated throughout their lives and those of the former hostages.

"Help us find some measure of closure," they wrote. "Grant us reparations so that, in what is for many of us our old age, sickness and infirmity, we can know the peace that will come from the support of our country."

Several wives and daughters who signed the letter told National Journal that this is the first time they have ever lobbied for action as a group. Unlike the 9/11 widows or Newtown families, they are not concentrated in a geographical location, but are scattered all over the country. Also, as foreign service and military families, they have not had the resources to make regular trips to Washington. That is even harder now "as we are all aging," said Anita Schaefer, adding that her husband -- retired Air Force Col. Tom Schaefer -- is 83 and "coming to the end of his life."

Furthermore, some people had worked at the U.S. Embassy for only a few days when it came under attack and they were taken hostage. There were "no big friendships" among the hostages or their families, said Schaefer, whose husband was the defense and air attaché.

"No tight bonds," added Barbara Rosen, wife of former hostage Barry Rosen, the press attaché. She said her husband has been on medication for 30 years and that she herself was shaking as she recounted the family's ordeal to National Journal this week. Her fingers are crossed that Congress will finally bring closure, she said, but her experience over the years is that she sits down with a lawmaker or aide, relives the pain and trauma as she tells her story, "and then nothing happens."

The promise of the Isakson-Blumenthal bill, the urgency of old age, and in some cases death have inspired some relatives to enter or return to the public arena. "Dick is dead, so obviously I can't say, 'Well, you take care of all this,'" said Dorothea Morefield, whose husband, Richard, the consul general at the embassy, died in 2010. "It's long overdue that Congress understands what was done to us. It's high time they came forward and said, 'We appreciate what you all went through and we are willing now to make some kind of restitution.' "

Barbara Feth, daughter of the late Army Col. Leland Holland, who was the military attaché at the embassy, said the symbolism would be significant. She called it a chance for Congress to "acknowledge that this horrible thing happened" and send a message to the ex-hostages and their families that "you represented us well."

The letter to senators is by necessity generic, but the specifics of haunted lives are very much present and not past for former hostages and their families. Morefield said that her husband, confused and pulling out his IVs on his deathbed, went into hysterics when his hands were restrained and shouted for her to escape. "He thought he was back in Iran," she said. "Those days and hours of being tied -- the minute he was restrained in his movements, it took him right back into that situation. It certainly did not contribute to a peaceful death."

Jennifer Knight, daughter of former hostage Donald Sharer, a naval air attaché at the embassy, recalled coming home alone at age 8 to field multiple calls from reporters asking about her father being taken hostage. She gave her mother all the messages and later asked, "Mom, what is a hostage?" She cried as she talked about her loss of innocence -- "8 years old, sitting in front of the TV wondering, is tonight the night they're going to execute my dad?" When he came home, "he was totally different," she said. "A functioning alcoholic. He drank himself to sleep every night. It was horrible."

Allyssa Keough Stevens, another hostage's daughter, also cried as she heard Knight's story for the first time on the conference call with National Journal. "I'm sorry you had to go through it," she said through tears. Her father, William Keough, headed an American school in Islamabad and happened to be visiting the embassy the day of the attack. A year after his release, he was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. He died on his daughter's birthday -- Nov. 27 -- in 1985.

After years on a roller coaster along with the other families, Knight said she is "very optimistic" that this time will be different. How can members of Congress look at the situation, she said, and not ask themselves: "How can we let these man and women die without letting them know that their efforts were not in vain?"

Stevens said she hesitates to use the word optimism in any context involving the hostages, since nothing has led to success in the past. "I would like to feel like this is the best effort ever," she said. "I believe this is a very good effort, a very fair effort." So good and so fair, she added, that "anybody on the Hill who is not behind this needs to say why. I want to know why. Face some family members and say why."

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Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting for Public Opinion to Turn Against Obama

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:52:34 -0400

Another day, another poll showing that President Obama's job-approval rating is not collapsing under the weight of scandals and controversies. Why is he holding steady? Will it last? And will Republicans take any cues from his staying power?

Given the noise level on Capitol Hill, cable TV, and social media, Obama's 50 percent-plus showings in recent polls from CNN, Pew, and ABC/Washington Post seem somewhat surprising. But two veteran political pollsters, one from each party, say that Obama can expect to maintain his standing as long as there's no evidence that he was involved in the two big furors of the moment: the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny, and the Justice Department seizing Associated Press phone records as part of a leak investigation.

Republican Bill McInturff and Democrat Stan Greenberg agree that Obama is in a relatively strong position short of "a real set of facts that implicates the president," as Greenberg put it. The reasons include Obama's steadfast coalition of blacks, Latinos, and young people, and a Washington tradition of leaving the president in the dark.

The president's core base has kept his approval rating in the mid-40s or higher through the five years of his presidency, McInturff says, and won't desert him. He calls that unusual, and you only have to look back one administration to see why. George W. Bush had job-approval ratings in the 20s and 30s for most of his second term. Obama's job approval could drop over time due to the controversies, McInturff says, "but will they restructure his job approval? Not with the information we have today."

The IRS mess is edging ever closer to Obama, with the news that his White House counsel and other top administration officials knew about an inspector general investigation into IRS targeting nearly a month ago. But White House spokesman Jay Carney says Obama was not told. "There was nothing the president could or should do" until the official findings were released, he said, and Obama moved fast once that happened last week.

That seems preposterous to some, and has at the least made Obama seem disengaged, but McInturff calls it a plausible scenario. "People don't want to tell the president bad news," he says. "If things get messy, the furthest thing from your mind is, 'Oh, I think the president needs to know about this.' " He says he expects Americans to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, as they have to past presidents. "People say he can't know everything. They don't expect him to. Nobody could."

Of course, that all could change with new information. With Congress in investigative mode on the IRS, the AP incident, and last year's fatal attacks on U.S. personnel in Benghazi, there remains the prospect of more shoes dropping. In the meantime, both parties are claiming political advantage. The trio of controversies is giving the GOP "enormous fuel" in its drive to recruit House and Senate candidates for 2014, McInturff says.

Greenberg sees an empowered tea party that could be instrumental in nominating unelectable candidates—the same problem the GOP has had in the past. "It's a very mixed bag of whether the energy created here helps Republicans," he says. The other problem for the opposition, as Greenberg sees it, is that the GOP probes and rhetoric are landing in a framework of "months and months of Republican gridlock motivated by partisanship." To much of the public, he says, this just seems like more of the same.

The favorability gap between Obama and the Republican Party is substantial, with views of Obama well above 50 percent favorable in most polls and Republicans hovering at 60 percent unfavorable. The generally good impression of Obama is periodically reinforced by events in and out of his control. For instance, his commencement address at Morehouse, a college for black men, was a highly personal speech about overcoming adversity, his own fatherless childhood and his not always constructive race-consciousness, and the need to take personal responsibility to break cycles of poverty and broken families. Clips of the speech on the network news served to remind people not just of the history he represents but of the personal qualities that hold appeal across party lines.

The tornado in Oklahoma is also intruding on the news cycle in a way that shows Obama at his most caring. "The people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them as long as it takes," he said Tuesday, his words similar to what he said after Hurricane Sandy, the Newtown shootings, the Boston bombings, and the Texas plant explosion.

After Sandy, which devastated parts of New York and New Jersey, Obama's approval ratings rose. But that's unlikely to happen with the tornado. McInturff points out that it did not happen in an international media center with hundreds of reporters to cover it. And let's face it, Gov. Mary Fallin is no Chris Christie. Still, the tornado story is so tragic and compelling that it has forced the media off its exclusive scandal focus, at least temporarily.

Obama himself will be changing the subject in a big way on Thursday, when he gives a speech on counterterrorism that the White House says will address drones and the Guantanamo Bay prison. It would not be surprising if Obama discussed the AP phone records controversy as well. All of this will inevitably be inflammatory, which also means that it will get heavy coverage. And any day people see Obama talking about protecting the country, rather than fending off questions about the IRS and whether he's a modern-day Richard Nixon, is one more day he's helping rather than hurting his presidency.

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Analysis: How Obama Could Start Fixing the IRS

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:49:49 -0400

The Internal Revenue Service needs a new leader—and fast.

The agency hasn't had a commissioner since November, and now it doesn't have an acting commissioner, either. Although lawmakers had been asking about reports that conservative groups were targeted for onerous extra scrutiny, the acting commissioner, Steven Miller, didn't share the information when he later learned that to be the case. President Obama said Wednesday that Miller's resignation had been requested and accepted.

"It's important to institute new leadership that can help restore confidence going forward," Obama said. But he didn't say who that person or persons might be.

The president's failure to nominate a new commissioner over the past few months was negligent, but it also gives him an opportunity. Announcing an impressive nominee soon would be another sign that the White House is serious about opening a new chapter at the IRS and trying to rebuild trust—in the IRS, the whole administration, and the federal government in general.

It's not hard to imagine Senate Republicans slowing confirmation proceedings to a crawl. After all, why rush to clean up a mess that reflects incredibly badly on Obama, his administration, and his party? Especially when it could help the GOP in the 2014 House and Senate elections, and in fact is already in use as a campaign tool?

As the National Republican Congressional Committee put it Wednesday, referring to the IRS's role enforcing tax penalties for people who don't buy insurance under "Obamacare," "How can we trust that an agency who has already committed an outrageous abuse of power with a 'dominant role' in an entitlement program that will have control over our health care?"

The committee branded the Affordable Care Act "calamitous" and its rollout "nothing short of an unmitigated disaster," a bit of hyperbole, as the rollout of the act's main features doesn't start until Oct. 1. Still, it's a politically effective link that will at the very least energize conservatives already infuriated by the new law.

That said, the right IRS nominee might attract some GOP support. And with reaction by Obama and his administration focused so far on investigating and correcting past IRS abuses, announcing a nominee would be a high-profile move that looks to the future.

IRS commissioners and acting commissioners over the past 150 years have been, to understate the case, obscure. Michael Knoll, codirector of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said the commissioner's post is "generally very much an administrative job" that requires a good manager, but that Obama might want "somebody with a little more gravitas up there at the top to send the right signal" at this point, both internally and to the public. "It's a world with a lot of minefields," Knoll said. Being perceived as partisan, he said, is "incredibly damning" for an agency that everyone in the country has to deal with and "you're relying on people's good faith" to pay their taxes.

Ideally, the next IRS commissioner would be a well-known player who is familiar with both taxes and politics. A former member of Congress who served on a House or Senate committee dealing with taxes would be perfect, especially if that former member is a Republican. My personal dream candidate would be former Sen. Olympia Snowe, 66, a Republican centrist who served on the Senate Finance Committee. Another prominent choice would be Republican former Rep. Bill Thomas, 71, the former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

A couple of former staff people are also worth mentioning. One is Sheila Burke, who was chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole for 11 years and on the staff of the Finance Committee for six years, including three as deputy staff director. The other is Steve Bell, an aide to former Sen. Pete Domenici for 25 years and a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee. State tax directors may be another fertile hunting ground, although unlikely to produce names familiar to the country or even to Washington insiders.

The IRS job is thankless under any circumstances, much less these, and in all likelihood isn't exalted enough for most former members or even former senior staff to consider. But with the FBI investigating potential criminal violations and a series of oversight hearings in the offing, Obama should be looking for a white knight, someone who can give the IRS a fresh start and Americans some reassurance that this agency in particular—"given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives," as he put it—is in good hands.

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Why the AP Phone Records Bombshell Could Threaten Eric Holder's Job

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Tue, 14 May 2013 09:24:34 -0400

The bombshell disclosure that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors could be dramatic enough to move even the phlegmatic Obama administration to action. Three concurrent scandals or controversies are just too many. Could that mean we will be bidding farewell soon to Attorney General Eric Holder?

Think about it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA director David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta all were in place on Sept. 11, 2012, when four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi. But now all of them are out of office and out of reach to be forced out for symbolic accountability purposes. And any of those departures would have been symbolic, since none of them have been held personally responsible for any failures.

There’s a similar situation at the Internal Revenue Service, enmeshed in a developing scandal for subjecting groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names to extra scrutiny starting in 2010. The IRS commissioner at the time was Douglas Shulman, a Bush appointee who departed last November,right after the election. The acting commissioner is a 25-year veteran named Steven Miller. It wouldn’t make much of a splash to force him to step aside for another acting commissioner. (Update: That's not to say there aren't questions about his role. The Washington Post reported Monday night that Miller, like Shulman, learned of the targeting problem in May 2012 but did not share the information with Congress).

Which brings us to Holder. The attorney general has been in the middle of controversies over whether to shut down Guantanamo Bay prison and whether to try suspected terrorists in U.S. courts. He has defended the U.S. right to wage drone strikes, to stage the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, and to use lethal force against a leader of al-Qaida who was also U.S. citizen.

He also was a lightning rod for conservative complaints about Fast and Furious, a federal sting that allowed U.S. weapons to fall into the hands of suspected gun smugglers on the theory that they could then be tracked to Mexican drug cartels. Instead, hundreds of the guns went missing, and many of them have been linked to crimes. One of them was the December 2010 killing of Brian Terry, a border patrol agent. Holder ended up being held in contempt of Congress, although he was not directly involved in the operation, run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Now we have the phone-records case, which the AP labeled a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its constitutional rights to gather and report the news. The news service suggested the move may have been part of a criminal investigation into who leaked the AP information about a CIA operation in Yemen that blocked an al-Qaida plan to explode a bomb on a plane headed for America. The story was published last year on May 7.

It is unclear how Holder fits into the latest firestorm, but he's a battered survivor of many controversies and this could be the one that finally convinces him or Obama that it's time to go.

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Will George W. Bush Ever Get Historians on His Side?

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:37:54 -0400

Nearly 60 percent of the historians and political scientists in a 2006 Siena College survey rated George W. Bush’s presidency a failure -- an unscientific sampling that echoed public dismay over Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war. Adding insult to injury, two-thirds of the 744 respondents said he did not have a realistic chance of improving his standing.

Bush’s presidential library, being dedicated Thursday at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, is the first step toward trying to prove their prediction wrong. It’s only fitting that the man who coined the word “decider” would feature a “Decision Points Theater” designed, the library website says, to “take the visitor ‘inside’ the decision-making process” as his administration dealt with the 9/11 attacks, Iraq, Katrina, and failing banks.

Visitors may come away with more appreciation for the difficult choices Bush faced, and perhaps remember what they liked about him as a man and a politician. But his place in presidential history is another matter, one judged purely on his record and legacy. And Bush is not faring well by those measures.

The former Texas governor was rated one of the nation’s five worst presidents—39^th of 43—in a Siena College ranking by 238 presidential scholars in 2010. He was a marginally better 36^th in a 2009 C-SPAN ranking by 64 students of the presidency.

There is precedent for presidents to rise in historic esteem, usually after someone writes a biography based on new information or fresh thinking, or weak successors make them look smart by comparison. This group is led by Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, for instance, was No. 8 in the C-SPAN survey and No. 7 in a 2012 Newsweek ranking by 10 historians, and has been in Siena’s top 10 since 1994. Yet in 1962, 18 months after his term ended, a panel of 75 historians rated Eisenhower toward the bottom of the average/mediocre category, below even Herbert Hoover. “By and large these 12 believed in negative government, in self-subordination to legislative power,” historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote in The New York Times. “They were content to let well enough alone or, when not, were unwilling to fight for their programs or inept at doing so.”

Views of Eisenhower began to change 20 years later with the publication of The Hidden Hand Presidency, by Fred Greenstein. The Journal of Politics called it “an important corrective” to dismissive views of Eisenhower’s leadership skills. Jim Newton, author of the 2012 book Eisenhower: The White House Years, says people had the impression that Eisenhower was “captive” to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles—yet declassified documents show Eisenhower was in touch with Dulles three to four times a day and very much guiding U.S. foreign policy.

“He was a much more active leader of his administration than people understood at the time,” Newton told National Journal. “People regarded him as genial and affable, a sort of grandfatherly figure. They did not appreciate what a shrewd, calculating president he was.”

Likewise, “Truman has made a huge comeback,” says Robert Dallek, who wrote a short 2008 Truman biography for a series on American presidents. Truman’s standing was substantially aided by Merle Miller’s Plain Speaking, an oral biography published in 1974, and Truman, David McCullough’s epic 1992 “valentine,” as Dallek put it in an interview (his book was one-fifth the length of McCullough’s 1,117-page opus).

Truman’s successors also contributed to recognition of his strengths. His straight-shooter quality could hardly have been a greater contrast to Richard Nixon. He also is credited with a containment policy that, except for his intervention in Korea, avoided war in the quest to defeat Communism. Instead, through the Marshall Plan and NATO, he helped Europe become a strong U.S. partner and ally.

Bush and Lyndon Johnson rejected containment when they made ill-advised decisions to pour troops into Iraq and Vietnam. That has made Truman look all the wiser, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Eisenhower's advisers repeatedly urged him to go to war or take covert action in Indochina, Germany, Iran, Guatemala and Indonesia, Newton said, but he resisted the pressure. “You can think of Eisenhower’s geopolitical military record as almost the opposite of Bush. He was extremely reluctant to commit American forces to battle,” he said. Eisenhower's legacies instead include building an interstate highway system that helped fuel the middle class and economic expansion.

It is possible that documents and archives will reveal Bush in a more positive light, but there’s no getting around the fact that his decisions on Iraq and on fiscal policy have led to huge problems. He not only committed U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 9/11, his decision to invade Iraq kicked off a 10-year war of choice that has destabilized the Middle East and drained the United States of blood, treasure, and the will to intervene abroad. He cut taxes across the board and borrowed money to pay for the wars as well as a new prescription-drug program for seniors. That led to a ballooning deficit and debt, and left the country ill-positioned to deal with the Great Recession that set in toward the end of his term.

It’s not that there weren’t accomplishments during the Bush era. He receives deserved praise for his international drive to fight AIDS, and his controversial No Child Left Behind Act institutionalized the overdue concept of accountability in U.S. education. The even more controversial legal and military methods he adopted to fight terrorists have been largely validated by the Obama administration, which has in many cases continued their use. And he was a pioneer in pushing for comprehensive immigration reform, a worthy cause that has now been revived.

But all of that is overshadowed by the deficits, the economic collapse, and, above all, Iraq. “Ultimately, what will drive how he’s viewed is how the Iraq experiment turns out,” says Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar and longtime Bush-watcher at the University of Texas-Austin. “The mismanagement of Iraq will always be there, but it will fade if Iraq turns into a flower of democracy.”

Even if that mirage becomes reality years or decades from now, the fact that Bush chose to invade Iraq will weigh heavily on historians as they rank him against the many presidents, from John Adams (who rejected his party’s calls to declare war on France) to Truman and Eisenhower, who tried to avoid rather than start wars.

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Analysis: Obama Wasted a Big Chance to Sell His Economic Vision

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:52:00 -0400

Talk about wasted opportunities. To my mind, President Obama’s interview with ABC News certainly qualifies.

Good Morning America is the nation’s No. 1 morning show. It had nearly 6 million viewers as of late last month. Not a bad forum for making your best argument.

Instead, Obama and George Stephanopoulos, a former White House aide in the Clinton administration, talked almost entirely in the cerebral, inside-Washington policy and strategy terms befitting two cerebral, inside-Washington strategists and policy wonks. In other words, Obama talked to Stephanopoulos instead of his audience.

Analogies and connections and details were missing. The human impact was missing. Even talking points seemed to be missing. I’d also take issue with Obama’s downbeat assessment of whether a grand fiscal bargain is achievable. Don’t we need a little presidential optimism and encouragement at this point? Where’s that yes-we-can spirit?

And I haven’t even gotten to “my goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance” or “we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.” It’s not that those statements aren’t necessarily true or authentic. But there are so many other things Obama could have said instead.

For instance: We all want to balance the budget, but if we do it the way Paul Ryan suggests, it could cost us 2 million jobs in 2014.

Or: My goal is to balance the budget, but the deep cuts supported by Republicans like Paul Ryan would make it take longer to do that because so many people would lose their jobs and have to stop paying taxes.

Or: Paul Ryan and I both want to balance the budget, but I want to make sure we get there without people losing their jobs or health care.

Or: The Paul Ryan plan sounds good but we can see that deep spending cuts are making the economy worse in European countries like Greece, which has a 60 percent youth unemployment rate.

Or: The best way to get to a balanced budget is with gradual cuts, because that will allow the economy to keep growing and more people will have jobs and be able to keep paying taxes.

Obama actually did say something along those lines once during the interview. “My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we’re gonna be bringin’ in more revenue,” he said.

It would have been better if he had said “bringin’ in more taxes to help reduce the deficit.” It would have been even better if that had not come right after the part about how he’s not chasing a balanced budget—a self-contained sentence perfectly tailored to feed Republican assertions, and public perceptions, that Democrats are spendthrifts.

Hand it to the loyal opposition, never slackers when it comes to seizing the moment. “Dismissive” and “astonishing,” a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner told ABC. Boehner weighed in Wednesday with a release headlined “President Obama Declares: No Debt Crisis, No Spending Problem, No Balanced Budget.” The Republican National Committee chimed in, as did National Review's Jim Geraghty. "When it comes to chasing a balanced budget, President Obama is not exactly Inspector Javert," Geraghty wrote.

Obama's balanced-budget sentence recalls “you didn’t build that” in its richness as a gift to the GOP. The “build that” sentence — so beloved by conservatives that it was the theme of an entire night at the Republican convention — was more a matter of careless diction on the campaign trail as Obama made an often stated point that businesses depend on government services such as roads and schools. The president’s budget statement may not have been a misstatement, but polls show why it was a mistake.

In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last month, Republicans bested Democrats in only three issue areas: reducing the federal deficit, controlling government spending, and ensuring a strong national defense. A Bloomberg poll last month had 35 percent approving of how Obama was handling the deficit, versus 55 percent who approved of Republicans. In a Quinnipiac poll last month, 39 percent trusted Obama more to cut federal spending and 48 percent trusted Republicans more.

Obama’s shortcomings as a communicator are not new (where is the secretary of explaining stuff when you need him?) and this incident will pass. But in the fifth year of his presidency, Obama could still use a media coach, or at least someone to make sure he stops taking opportunities to miss opportunities.

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Analysis: White House Tours Are Fun to Talk About, but Jobs Are the Real Sequester Casualty

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:34:28 -0500

Republicans are having a great time ridiculing the Obama administration for canceling White House tours as $85 billion in automatic federal spending cuts take hold. They’ve got questions for the White House: Why not instead cancel golf, or calligraphy, or the president’s upcoming vacation? They've also got advice for disgruntled tourists: Come on over to the Capitol for a tour, we’ll show you a good time.

Fact-checkers, meanwhile, have been in overdrive debunking many of the dire claims President Obama and his allies have made about the impact of the across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester. The White House, which says it’s trying to save on Secret Service costs by canceling the tours, is losing the current round of public-relations competition.

But Republicans should be as worried as the White House about what’s on its way. Job losses and furloughs at some point will hit every town and county they represent, followed by more job losses due to decreasing demand for goods and services. Eventually the cuts will start showing up in a higher national unemployment rate and a lower gross domestic product. And then the real public-relations contest begins. Not the one about canceled White House tours; the one about who owns this mess — the president, the GOP, or both.

It would all be quite amusing, except that it’s dead serious. Just ask Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton, who visited the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday to plead against closure of the air traffic control tower at an airport his Arizona city operates. Each of the approximately 200 small regional airports on the potential cut list is, no doubt, above average to its patrons. The one right outside Phoenix has “unique foreign policy implications” because it is used by NATO for military training exercises, Stanton says.

If the feds don’t relent, the only way to keep controllers on the job would be for someone else to pick up the tab. If it’s Phoenix, that means cuts somewhere else in the city budget. “People are going to feel this,” Stanton says of the sequester. “The impact won’t be immediate, but it’s going to be there.”

Local media across the country are beginning to publicize the impact of spending cuts on parks, schools, airports, food banks, seniors meal plans, student aid, domestic-violence programs, Coast Guard patrols, defense contractors, and the military. Pentagon cancellations range from ship deployments to a performance by the Navy Sea Chanters Chorus at a high school in Topeka, Kan.

There is a lot of talk around Washington about how to amend or replace the sequester to avoid some of the pain and economic damage of its meat-ax approach. The possibilities range from allowing Obama or Cabinet secretaries — or at least the Defense secretary — some flexibility in making the cuts to a full-fledged grand-ish bargain replacing the sequester with cuts, tax reform and entitlement trims. But all that's a lot more complicated than the sad tale of sixth-graders in Waverly, Iowa, who were told their White House tour was canceled. Their disappointment was irresistible to the media and to 14 GOP senators who wrote to the White House to protest the cancellations. The president should suspend “his own wasteful golf outings” rather than the tours, said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.

Rush Limbaugh summed up the current state of play in his inimitable way, juxtaposing the tour cancellations with Obama’s budget-focused dinner the other night with a dozen Republican senators. “We're shutting down White House tours while Obama takes a 20-vehicle caravan one-half a mile? By the way, that's how far the trip was from the White House to dinner with the Republican ruling-class guys last night: Half a mile!” Limbaugh said. He added: “They wanted people sad and let down, and they wanted people blaming the Republicans for it. And it's backfiring, not working.”

True, but the barely suppressed GOP glee at the White House fumbles, and the cavalier acceptance of the sequester by some Republicans, is also bound to backfire. The White House may have been overly dramatic in some of its sequester rhetoric, Stanton says, but “you owe it to the American people to explain what will happen.” He predicts that over time the prevailing sentiment among Americans will be “now we understand what the administration was talking about.” At that point, White House tours will be the last thing on their minds.

(Image via kropic1/Shutterstock.com)

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'Argo' Is Great, But 52 American Hostages Are Still Looking for Justice

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:36:33 -0500

Army Col. Leland Holland would sometimes talk about his 444-day hostage ordeal in Iran “like it was a good old fish story,” says his son, John. But other times, recalling how he was beaten with rubber hoses and telephone books, he’d get angry. The memory of picking a lock with a paper clip, making his way to the roof, and breathing fresh air could bring him to tears. Three times after he retired from active duty, his family found him kneeling in the corner of the basement, face to the wall, hands clasped together over his head as if handcuffed, reliving in his nightmares the ordeal of being interrogated.

Ben Affleck’s celebrated film, Argo, has spotlighted a desperate CIA scheme that enabled six U.S. Embassy employees to escape post-revolutionary Iran disguised as a Canadian film crew. Holland was part of a far less fortunate group, the 52 Americans who didn’t make it out of the embassy when militants stormed it on Nov. 4, 1979, and were held hostage for 444 days.

Argo has been showered with honors, topped by a best-picture Oscar at the Academy Awards. There’s no dispute that it is historically inaccurate and ignores a larger tragedy to focus on a tiny sliver of success associated with a humiliating chapter in the nation’s history. But give Argo its due. The film is serving to remind the country of a time, a place, and a debacle at what could be a pivotal moment in the history of the Iranian hostage crisis.

The former hostages and their advocates are mobilizing for a Capitol Hill push that they hope will be the final chapter in a 33-year quest for relief and for justice. In a few weeks, members of Congress will receive a packet of information that includes powerful statements and videos from the former hostages and their survivors. Some will be telling their stories publicly for the first time.

Read the rest of this story at NationalJournal.com.

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The case for Jennifer Granholm as Labor secretary

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 08:17:53 -0500

President Obama says he’s very concerned about income inequality. If he wants to elevate that issue in his second term, he should consider naming Jennifer Granholm as his next Labor secretary.

The Current TV host and former two-term Michigan governor would be a highly symbolic choice, given that her Republican successor recently signed a law making Michigan—birthplace of the organized labor movement—a right-to-work state.

She would also be a practical choice. It was during Granholm’s tenure as governor that the auto industry sank into decline and, with Obama’s bailout, began its comeback. She is favorably viewed in the labor community for looking to clean energy as a source of manufacturing jobs. She signed an energy package requiring that 10 percent of Michigan’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015 and tried to make the state a center for alternative-energy investment, manufacturing, and production.

Granholm, a lawyer and a professor at the University of California (Berkeley), also has a good reputation with unions on labor issues. She “promoted labor-management cooperation in her role as governor vis-a-vis state employees and worked with both management and union in the auto industry,” Elizabeth Bunn, organizing director of the AFL-CIO, told me in an e-mail. Bunn also said Granholm understands the need for “balanced trade agreements” and “a national economic policy that is not based on competition among states for jobs through tax-cutting bidding wars.”

Perhaps most important, Granholm would be a real attention-getter as a public advocate for unions, workers and the middle class. She gave one of the best speeches at the Democratic convention last summer (maybe not the best way to win over Republican senators for a confirmation vote, but who could forget her dig at GOP nominee Mitt Romney, “The cars get the elevators and the workers get the shaft”?) and for the past year she has hosted Current TV’s The War Room.

There are of course other prospects for Labor secretary, some of whom have deep roots in the labor movement and who would, like Granholm, add diversity to Obama’s cabinet. Among them are former Rep. Betty Sutton of Ohio, a labor lawyer, who lost her reelection race last year; Arlene Holt-Baker, executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, and Patricia Smith, solicitor of labor at the Labor Department.

What sets Granholm apart is her stature as a former governor, her ease in front of the camera, and her familiarity with the broad range of economic issues facing the country. At an agency often viewed as a backwater, she’d have the potential to be a breakout Labor secretary in the mold of Robert Reich—a far glitzier Reich. As The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman memorably summed up her convention performance, “Part union boss, part Tina Turner.”

Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the AFL-CIO who was associate deputy secretary of Labor under Reich, described Granholm as “a serious person, good relationships with labor and business, smart, good political instincts/experience and a ‘player,’ plus the media likes her and she handles herself well.” He added: “All would be great” for the department.

Union membership is shrinking as more states pass right-to-work laws and more industries locate and expand in those states. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday that only 11.3 percent of the workforce was unionized last year, down from 11.8 percent in 2011 and 20.1 percent in 1983. The New York Times, citing a Rutgers study, says the 2012 membership was the lowest share since 11.1 percent in 1912.

So unions are in need of a champion. And it turns out that Granholm may need a job. When Al Jazeera bought Current TV earlier this month, she announced she would be leaving her War Room gig in a few weeks.

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Analysis: Second-term exodus leaves zero Hispanics in Cabinet

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:16:57 -0500

Forget all the caterwauling about women (a bit of which, admittedly, came from me). The impending departures of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar leave President Obama’s Cabinet with zero Hispanics, setting off nervous tremors among Latinos and underscoring the inch-deep Democratic bench in that demographic.

Even before the latest developments, the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of 30 large groups, was concerned about lack of Latino representation in the administration and told Obama so in a letter last November. The coalition sent the president another letter Wednesday, complete with 19 names for him to consider for his second-term Cabinet.

“After Secretaries Solis and Salazar announced that they will be stepping down as the heads of their respective departments, our apprehension is amplified,” NHLA Chairman Hector Sanchez said in the follow-up. With a historic policy debate on immigration approaching, he wrote, “your Cabinet can ill-afford to not have the unique perspective and voice of high level Latino members. At this critical time our voices need to be amplified, not diminished.”

Obama named Sonia Sotomayor as the first Latina justice to the Supreme Court, and his domestic policy director is Cecilia Munoz. But that doesn’t cut much ice at this point with NHLA, which is suddenly much further away from its goal of seeing at least three Hispanic Cabinet members.

Three appears unlikely. Still, Obama does have opportunities to make up some ground in future appointments. So far there are vacancies at the departments of Commerce, Interior, Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency, and there will likely be another with the widely expected departure of Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

The diversity report on the Cabinet exodus to date, including Chu, is as follows: Three of seven women are leaving, as are one of three African-Americans, one of two Asians, and two of two Hispanics.

The political irony of Obama’s situation has got to tickle Republicans. They may be having trouble winning the votes of minorities and women, but they are doing noticeably better than Democrats when it comes to diversity in the jobs that typically lead to bigger things. High on the GOP roster are two Hispanic senators (Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas) and two Hispanic governors (Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico).

Prominent Latinos in the Democratic fold include Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Some are more feasible Cabinet prospects than others. Menendez, the only Hispanic Democrat in the Senate, is in line to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee within weeks or even days. Becerra was just elected chair of the House Democratic Caucus and is the only Latino in his party’s House leadership.

Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and Energy secretary, has been the subject of several investigations, one of which prompted him to withdraw as a prospective Commerce secretary in 2009. Villaraigosa, who got his start in the labor movement, has been mentioned as a potential pick for Labor or Commerce secretary, though his tenure has been rocky.

Democrats have two up-and-coming Texas stars in the Castro twins, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro and newly elected Rep. Joaquin Castro. But they are 38, and it would be a reach to put either of them in charge of a Cabinet department now. The same is true of New Mexico’s Hector Balderas, 39, a former prosecutor and state legislator whose 2006 win in an election for state auditor made him the country’s youngest Latino in statewide office.

The names the Hispanic leadership coalition sent to the White House include Richard Carmona, the former surgeon general who came close to winning a Senate seat last year in Arizona; Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina; Univision president Cesar Conde; longtime labor leader Linda Chavez-Thompson; Promerica bank founder Maria Contreras-Sweet; and assorted current and former members of Congress. The list runs the gamut, from real contenders to dubious long shots, but it’s a start for an administration sorely in need of binders full of Latinos.

(Image via Lilac Mountain / Shutterstock.com)

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Does Obama Need Romney's Binder Full of Women?

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:00:00 -0500

The White House photo of the day on Wednesday showed President Obama meeting with eight “senior advisers,” three of them women. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Who would have thought the nation’s first black president would have an optics problem? But his parade of second-term nominations so far is white, male, and of a certain average age (62.3, to be exact), and The New York Times is taking note with an article and a photo that shows Obama meeting with 10 men.

Obama initially named four women to his Cabinet and he’s losing half of them so far: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and, as of Wednesday evening, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. He still has Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security and Kathleen Sebelius at Health and Human Services. His administration also continues to include U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose position is considered “Cabinet level.” Lisa Jackson is resigning as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, but that is not a Cabinet-level job.

At lower levels, Obama has a decent record on women. The Times reports that 35 percent of all high-level political appointees outside the White House are female, about equal to Bill Clinton’s administration (and higher than 25 percent under George W. Bush). Obama has done even better at some departments; the Times cites Treasury, where 57 percent of appointees are men, compared with 60 percent under Clinton and 64 percent under Bush.

But a confluence of factors is making the frat-house syndrome seem worse than it is.

Obama has in recent days nominated Sen. John Kerry to go to State, former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Defense secretary, and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to head the CIA, and is naming White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew as his next Treasury secretary. All white, all guys.
Hillary Clinton is leaving. Yes, I know I already said that. But she is such a powerful symbol and role model that her absence will leave a void larger than just one woman. In addition, her departure means that men will be in charge at State, Treasury, Defense and Justice—the top four Cabinet posts, ranking fourth through seventh in the presidential line of succession (after the vice president, House speaker and president pro tempore of the Senate).
Three women in the running for top jobs, or who should have been serious candidates, have been passed over. Foremost is Rice, reportedly Obama’s top choice to succeed Clinton, but unable to convince key Republicans she did not mislead the public on the murders of U.S. personnel in Benghazi. Former Deputy Defense Secretary Michele Flournoy was a top candidate for the Pentagon job, but Obama chose Hagel. Lael Brainard, Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, much talked about in some circles to succeed outgoing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is losing out to Lew.
The Obama White House, by some accounts, hasn’t always been a wonderful place for women to work. Christina Romer, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, told author Ron Suskind that she was routinely outmaneuvered and at one particular meeting “felt like a piece of meat.” Suskind quoted former communications director Anita Dunn as saying that the White House could legally be classified as “a genuinely hostile workplace for women,” though she later said she had told him it was not hostile.
Obama is a guy’s guy. He likes sports. A lot. And his 100-plus golf outings since taking office have been scandalously short of women. According to Mark Knoller of CBS News, the unofficial recorder of all things numerical that involve the White House, Obama’s golfing partners have included women only three times: once in October 2009, once in October 2010, and once this month during the president’s Hawaii vacation, when his foursome included Allison Davis. As for his other favorite game, basketball, has he played with any women? “Only his daughters, that we know of,” Knoller said, though he cautioned that information is limited. (Update: Knoller emails Thursday that "Allison" turns out to be a man, so we're back down to two female golf partners).

Say Obama wants to make a grand gesture; what jobs are left? If he names a female labor secretary to succeed Solis, that will keep him at the status quo. But it’s not a top job and it’s one many women have held. Plus Solis is Hispanic, so now there’s that to worry about as well.

The only immediate opening with stature roughly equivalent to secretary of State, Defense, or Treasury is Lew’s job as White House chief of staff. To name a woman, Obama would have to throw top mentionees Ron Klain (former chief of staff to Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joe Biden) and Denis McDonough (currently deputy national-security adviser) under the bus. He does have some logical female options, starting with Nancy-Ann DeParle and Alyssa Mastromonaco. Both now hold the title of deputy chief of staff.

Obama’s nominations to date make sense, given his commitments to multilateralism, diplomacy, ending two wars, cautious intervention abroad, institutionalizing the war on terror, getting military and entitlement spending under control, and other ideas he hopes will outlast him. Here’s one more: In Bill Clinton’s words, a Cabinet that “looks like America.”

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6 reasons Obama chose Chuck Hagel

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:00:00 -0500

Back at the 2004 Republican convention, when then-Sen. Chuck Hagel was weighing whether to run for president, he paid a call on the Iowa delegation. His obligatory joke about his devotion to ethanolwent over well. But then, to the puzzlement of some in the room, he started talking to his conservative breakfast audience about the United Nations and the need for multilateralism in tackling world problems.

Needless to say, that wasn’t quite what we were hearing from the convention stage, or for that matter from anyone else in the GOP. Hagel didn’t run for president. But as it turns out, his remarks ended up laying groundwork for a different kind of future--as a potential Defense secretary in the Obama administration.

There are well-known controversies associated with Hagel’s expected nomination, involving everything from climate change and gay rights to Israel, Iraq, and Iran. But unlike the case of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who withdrew as a potential secretary of State nominee amid criticism from Republicans, President Obama is pressing forward with Hagel.

Given the huge battles looming over immigration, the national debt and other issues, I urged Obama not to pick a fight over Rice. What’s different about Hagel? Here are six possibilities:

Obama does not want to be seen as caving twice to GOP attacks, Rice followed by Hagel. More important, he had a solid alternative for secretary of State in Sen. John Kerry. Hagel is unique in several ways, among them that he is a decorated Vietnam War veteran. The two other top candidates for Defense secretary, Ashton Carter and Michele Flournoy, did not serve in the military.
Hagel would be a solid ally at the Pentagon. Obama has had his share of tensions with the military, as many accounts have made clear, including retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s new memoir and the Rolling Stone article that led to his resignation. Hawks in Congress have also been highly critical of Obama. Hagel would be a counterweight to demands for more troops and more intervention around the world, particularly in Iran.
Hagel shares Obama's caution about military intervention. Although he voted to authorize an invasion of Iraq, Hagel had reservations and later became a sharp critic of the war. All indications are he would be supportive now if Obama decides to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan more quickly than planned. Immediately after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Hagel said that Obama has “got to start heading toward the exits." The pursuit of bin Laden and al-Qaida was "the reason we invaded Afghanistan” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hagel told theLincoln (Neb.) Journal Star, not the pursuit of the Taliban. "We have lost our purpose, our objective. We are in a universe of unpredictables and uncontrollables," he said.
Hagel would add a tinge of bipartisanship to Obama’s Cabinet. He angered many Republicans with his vociferous objections to the Iraq war, declined to back GOP nominee John McCain in 2008 and criticized last year's Republican hopefuls for being in “race to say who would bomb Iran first.” Still, his overall record in Congress was conservative. In 2007, when Hagel was still weighing a presidential bid, American Conservative Union Chairman David Keene told The Washington Times that Hagel is “bright, decent and conservative on almost all issues.” He said that Hagel’s lifetime ACU rating was over 85, “and we consider anyone who scores 80 or above a fairly reliable conservative.”
Obama and Hagel like and trust one another. They traveled together to Iraq in 2008, and Hagel defended him that year against campaign-trail attacks. “Obama and I got to know each other pretty well in the Senate even though he wasn’t there very long,” Hagel said last year in an interview with al-Monitor, an English-language website covering the Middle East. “I have the highest regard for him in every way. I think he’s one of the finest, most decent individuals I’ve ever known, and one of the smartest.”
Senators are sometimes inclined to give deference to their own in a confirmation process. But Hagel's blunt run in public life has provoked discomfort and dismay amongRepublicans and Democrats alike. The former senator from Nebraska has a lot of reassuring and persuading to do before he can count on winning that deference from former colleagues and others in the chamber he left four years ago.

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Analysis: Newtown Rampage Proves a Turning Point for Obama

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:29:00 -0500

The latest slaughter of innocents and those who tried to protect them may not turn out to be a tipping point for the country. But President Obama has left no doubt that it was a tipping point for him.

Forgive Republicans if they’d like to see this year end as quickly as possible. It was somehow fitting that even as House Speaker John Boehner was reportedly offering concessions Sunday on talks to avoid the fiscal cliff, Republicans were splintering on Twitter and TV over Obama’s impassioned call to action on gun control.

Not that Obama mentioned gun control in his speech at a memorial for the 20 children and six adults killed in a shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn. He didn’t. But as Atlantic associate editor Brian Fung pointed out on Twitter, Abraham Lincoln didn’t mention slavery in the Gettysburg Address, either.

Obama was clear enough when he said that this was his fourth speech to comfort a community after a mass shooting, and that we are not doing enough to keep our children safe. He was clear enough when he said that he would use the power of his office to try to prevent future massacres.

“We can’t accept events like this as routine,” Obama said. “Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?"

The message came through loud and clear to conservatives. “Appropriate: citing scripture, detailing the bravery, and expressing sorrow. Not appropriate: spending 3 minutes calling for gun control,”tweeted GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. Added Michael Biundo, a former aide to presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, “Mr. President, with all due respect, we needed you to be a father tonight, not a policy preacher.” But other Republicans seemed to be having watershed moments of their own. GOP fundraiser Caroline Wren said she was breaking with her GOP friends. “He's exactly right, gun violence must be addressed. The time is now,” she tweeted.

I confess I was prepared for Obama to present an encore of his performance in Tucson after the Gabby Giffords shooting – an emotional, eloquent, non-committal speech that drew on faith without promising action. I was prepared to argue that it would be inappropriate for him to do anything but that on Sunday night in a community gripped by such pain. How could he, when he did not know the politics of anyone in the room? How could he risk offending people who had suffered unimaginable losses?

But Obama proved me wrong. Speaking as both a parent and a president, he made his case in plain language devoid of political rhetoric, stripped down to bare common sense: This can’t go on. Mass shootings cannot become routine and accepted in America. We’ve got to protect our children. We’ve got to take what steps we can.

It was one of the highest profile moments of Obama’s presidency, and he didn’t waste it for fear of igniting anger among gun-rights lobbyists and enthusiasts. He used it to start the process of winning hearts, minds and support for a sea change in gun politics.

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Analysis: Picking a fight over Susan Rice would not serve the country

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 09:12:08 -0500

President Obama has said many times that “part of a president’s job is to be able to deal with more than one thing at once.” But another part of a president’s job is setting priorities, and with the U.S. economy hanging in the balance, installing Susan Rice as secretary of state shouldn’t be one of them.

A newly reelected president has a limited amount of political capital that should be expended wisely. You may disagree with George W. Bush’s failed 2005 pushes on comprehensive immigration reform or private Social Security accounts, but you can’t argue that these were small ideas. Nor were Obama’s first-term drives for a massive stimulus package, health reform and an overhaul of financial regulations in the wake of the Wall Street collapse. Agree or disagree, they were fundamental and important.

Going to the mat on a personnel matter like Rice, by contrast, would be more about ego and base pacification than what’s important for the country.

It’s not that Republicans have a particularly strong case against the U.N. ambassador and her unfortunate round of Sunday show appearances on Benghazi. But her inability to win over several GOP senators in one-on-one meetings did not inspire confidence. And as many have noted, her record and temperament are problematic in some respects. Beyond that, as much as Obama may like and respect Rice, there are other good candidates for the job, topped by Senate Foreign Relations chairman John Kerry.

In other words, a confrontation over Rice is unnecessary. It would also be counterproductive.

As former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer put it, “Nothing is isolated in the presidency. Every action has an interaction with other events.” Obama is “playing a firm hand” in the fiscal cliff standoff and trying to get Republicans to buckle on tax rates, said Fleischer, who worked for Bush. “If he also says Republicans need to buckle on Rice, all his actions would poison the well.”

Obama is not only insisting that Republicans agree to raise marginal tax rates on household income above $250,000, he’s also telling them to forget about staging a repeat of the 2011 debt ceiling standoff. “We can't afford to go there," he said at a Business Roundtable meeting on Wednesday. “If Congress in any way suggests that they’re going to tie negotiations to debt ceiling votes and take us to the brink of default once again as part of a budget negotiation … I will not play that game.”

That’s just a small sampling of the struggles ahead. Negotiations on tax reform, spending cuts, entitlement reform and long-term debt reduction likely will take up much of 2013. Immigration reform looms as another difficult issue. Obama probably will also have the opportunity to name more Supreme Court justices, setting the stage for confirmation fights in the Senate. Then there is the inevitable tug-of-war over regulations and spending associated with the new Affordable Care Act.

That lineup offers plenty of moments more appropriate than a Rice nomination to go all tough and recalcitrant.

Far from a macho-style leader, Obama has dealt throughout his political career with perceptions of weakness. In his first term, Republicans accused him of bowing, apologizing and “leading from behind” in international affairs even as he accelerated drone attacks and ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Liberals denounced his repeated attempts to reach bipartisan deals on health and budget legislation, though some now are coming to see the health law and 2011 budget deal as wins.

Obama has kept moving at his own pace in his own way, meanwhile, seemingly unconcerned about his image or leadership brand. If the past is a guide, he’s not likely to start worrying now. Just this week, referring to Rice, Bloomberg Television’s Julianna Goldman asked him: “Would it look like a sign of weakness if you did not appoint her to secretary of state?”

“No,” the president said. He called Rice “highly qualified” but added: “I’m going to make a decision about who’s going to be the best secretary of state, given we’ve got a changing world.”

The rest of his answer reflected very careful thinking. First, he won’t be like Bush having to withdraw the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, or the late George McGovern having to back off his 1,000 percent support of initial vice presidential pick Tom Eagleton. Obama has kept his options open. As he told Bloomberg, “Susan Rice has done a great job as U.N. ambassador, but I haven’t made a decision about secretary of state.”

Second, right after he said that, Obama pivoted to what everyone knows is the main event. “The most important thing we can do for national security, though, is to get our economy on track,” he said.

That’s an enormously complicated and contentious challenge all by itself. The president may well conclude that there’s no reason to alienate his negotiating partners by initiating a personnel fight that could end up damaging Rice’s reputation and ability to serve as well as the odds of securing the country’s fiscal future.

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Why Debate Moderators Matter

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:26:00 -0400

The platonic ideal of a presidential-debate moderator is like the psychoanalyst who uses silence as a therapeutic tool. He or she sits out of sight of the patient, opens the session with a general question, and doesn’t say much beyond “Tell me more about that” and “Time’s up.” The technique is meant to elicit intelligent self-scrutiny. The political version of this platonic shrink is a studiously neutral, almost invisible moderator who lets the candidates have at each other.

In the real world, that model doesn’t always cut it. A good debate is one that sheds light—not just on candidates’ personalities and temperaments, as the first presidential smackdown did this month but also on their records and plans for the nation. A moderator needs to seize what opportunities become available with an eye toward the ultimate goal of illumination. This is an active vision that requires flexibility, sharp-elbowed questions, and dogged follow-ups. A debate cannot be considered a success if voters are hit with an avalanche of unchallenged claims, counterclaims, numbers, and misrepresentations.

Some debate experts and partisans have nothing but praise for Jim Lehrer’s restraint in the first presidential debate. A moderator should set the table for discussion, they say, not confront participants or get in the way if they are engaging each other. Nor should the presider be required to clear things up. “A moderator is not there to fact-check in real time. That’s not the job,” says Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who heads the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

From the viewer’s standpoint, however, Lehrer achieved mixed results. He indulged in Beltwayspeak that must have bewildered many. (“Do you want to repeal Dodd-Frank?” “What about Simpson-Bowles? Do you support Simpson-Bowles?”) And he laid out generic questions that invited free-form candidate exchanges. (“What are the major differences between the two of you about how you would go about creating new jobs?” “Do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?”) Debate specialists say that if President Obama had been present in the moment to make his arguments against Mitt Romney more forcefully, we’d all be talking about that terrific Denver debate and the wisdom of Lehrer’s approach.

But Obama seemed absent, and Lehrer did not try to bring him forth. On one hand, the result was revealing. “You had a power vacuum on that stage that Romney very quickly figured out and jumped on and took advantage of,” says Northeastern University’s Alan Schroeder, author of Presidential Debates: 50 Years of High-Risk TV. Obama had “the same opportunity to grab the reins and make it his own,” Schroeder says, but didn’t. Lehrer’s style exposed a possible Obama leadership deficit that polls are now picking up. On the other hand, the debate was misleading. Among other things, Obama and Romney had a confusing discussion about Medicare and, according to FactCheck.org, Romney’s performance included five “whoppers” on clean energy alone.

The generic table-setter has been Lehrer’s trademark throughout a moderating career that started in 1988. “The first topic tonight is what separates each of you from the other,” was his opening to President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot back in 1992. That approach raises two problems, says debate expert Mitchell McKinney of the University of Missouri. One, it makes Lehrer too predictable, allowing candidates to game out what to expect from him. And two, without focused follow-ups and strict enforcement of time limits, Lehrer’s style can allow candidates to “meander and go in whatever direction they want.”

That certainly wasn't how Martha Raddatz of ABC News handled the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. A veteran journalist well versed in foreign and domestic policy, Raddatz was energetic and participatory. All indications are that her style, not Lehrer's, will be on display in the two remaining presidential debates.

Like Radatz, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, who will moderate the Oct. 22 presidential debate on foreign policy in Boca Raton, Fla., has shown what an engaged moderator can accomplish. He was relatively noninterventionist in the 2004 face-off between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, but he was spontaneous and followed up on several issues. And throughout the debate—here was the real contrast between him and Lehrer—Schieffer’s questions were pointed. Given Social Security’s finances, he asked Kerry, how could he promise to not cut benefits? “What part does your faith play on your policy decisions?” he asked Bush. And to Bush, jumping on an issue raised by Kerry, “Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade?”

Adjudicating between Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama in 2008, Schieffer again brought a sharp edge. And he repeatedly interjected follow-ups to pin them down on specifics and make them answer the questions he had asked. “I know how to eliminate programs,” McCain said. “Which ones?” Schieffer shot back.

The next presidential debate, on Tuesday, will have a town-hall format. Everyday Americans will be asking the questions, and history suggests they won’t be pointed. But CNN’s Candy Crowley, the moderator, told CNN colleague Suzanne Malveaux that she plans to shape the debate. Once the audience member asks a question, she said, “there is then time for me to say, ‘Hey, wait a second. What about x, y, z?’ … They launch the discussion, and then the moderator furthers the discussion.”

Crowley, host of CNN’s Sunday talk show State of the Union, is an experienced interviewer, but this will be her debut as moderator of a general-election presidential debate. “We know you will take control,” Malveaux told her. Crowley responded by raising her hands to show two pairs of crossed fingers. Her goal is clear, and so is her prep work. She’s been studying “the holes in their arguments,” as she put it—evidence that the next moderator intends to mix it up.

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This article appeared in the Saturday, October 13, 2012 edition of National Journal.

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Rick Santorum suspends presidential bid

Jill Lawrence, National Journal — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:34:56 -0400

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, the socially conservative former senator who was Mitt Romney’s chief remaining rival for the GOP nomination, said on Tuesday he was suspending his White House bid.

Santorum announced his decision in Gettysburg, a day after his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, was released from the hospital. It was the second time the toddler, who has a severe genetic disorder called Trisomy 18, had been hospitalized during his campaign.

A campaign staffer told National Journal that Santorum broke the news to staff in a 1:30 p.m. conference call. His wife, Karen, also got on the phone to thank everyone for their hard work. A source on the call said Santorum didn't mention whether he would endorse Romney.

Santorum notched a belated 34-vote victory in the lead-off Iowa caucuses after a recount, and went on to win primaries and caucuses in Minnesota, Colorado, Missouri, North Dakota, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. But as of Tuesday he had only 285 convention delegates toward the 1,144 needed to clinch the nomination, less than half of Romney’s total, according to an Associated Press count.

Polls showed Santorum was in for a tough fight April 24 in his home state primary in Pennsylvania. He had called it a must-win and was trying to make a comeback after a stinging defeat in 2006. That year, he lost his bid for re-election to the Senate by 17 points.

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