Obama’s tough stance on Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

Forget the velvet glove, America’s Afghanistan policy will be all iron fist from now on. President Obama intends to make a sharp break from his predecessor’s strategy-committing more troops and focusing exclusively on the war. That means the development and reconstruction programs that have been a staple of Canada’s involvement will be put on the backburner. And Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been put on notice that he will lose Western backing unless he cracks down on the rampant corruption in his government.

The New York Times

“Americans are not your enemy”

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 10:04 AM - 4 Comments

U.S. President Barack Obama has sat down for a long interview with Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based television news network: “I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state—I’m not going to put a time frame on it—that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, that allows for trade with other countries, that allows the creation of businesses and commerce so that people have a better life.” President Obama also renewed his commitment to “address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital.”
 
Al Arabiya News Channel

Rick Warren was just the beginning

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 26, 2009 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments

Law professor, journalist and liberal activist Jonathan Turley warns Obama backers that if they were made uneasy by the sight of religious right stalwart Rick Warren delivering the inaugural invocation, they had better brace themselves for much more of the same. The new president is as dedicated to “faith-based initiatives” as his predecessor; Obama, in fact, plans to expand on George W. Bush’s program.

USA Today

Blissful ignorance

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

Barack Obama’s first few days in office have been the most publicized—and scrutinized—of any president’s in recent memory. But his intentions on a number of key policy files remain murky. For example, it’s not yet clear whether Obama believes he can end the war in Afghanistan—and, if he does believe victory is possible, when and how that can be expected to happen. Even on Iraq, from where he’s promised to withdraw U.S. troops within 16 months, Obama has added so many caveats to the pledge that it’s difficult to tell how the president will respond if things take a turn for the worse. Some domestic questions remain similarly unanswered: If long-term deficits are as “unsustainable” as he says they are, how does he plan to balance the federal budget? How will he reconcile his promise to make government more transparent with the country’s national security obsession? And after placating unions during the campaign with talk of re-opening NAFTA, what will his relationship with Big Labour be like now that he’s in the White House?

Politico

Is Obama’s honeymoon over already?

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 23, 2009 at 9:50 AM - 0 Comments

The Honeymoon phase of the Washington press corps’ relationship with President Perfect appears to be over. At issue is the way the Obama team handled the “do over” of the flubbed presidential oath, Tuesday evening, inviting a select few print reporters, but denying access to photographers and TV cameras. This Politico story suggests that noses are also out of joint over ABC’s exclusive inauguration evening interview (a brief and entirely lame stand-up backstage at the DC Neighbourhood Ball) accorded to a network that just happened to be sponsoring the event. And some people’s name cards were misspelled.

Politico

Obama’s tech-savvy staff finds White House is anything but

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 22, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 13 Comments

After running the most tech-savvy presidential campaign in U.S. history, Barack Obama’s team moved into the White House to find outdated computer software, disconnected phones, and security regulations barring everything from Facebook to outside email log-ins. The team, which used Macs throughout the campaign, found their new workspace outfitted with clunky desktops with Microsoft software outdated by six years. One aide’s transition cellphone was disconnected, forcing him to tell callers to dial his wife’s phone, and calls to the White House switchboard prompted a recording instructing callers to the presidential website. At least there were no missing letters on computer keyboards, the Post notes, as was the case when the Bush team moved in, in 2001.

The Washington Post

Postponing Khadr’s trial was the easy part

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

That didn’t take very long: While the Obamas were waltzing at their inauguration balls, the president’s staff forwarded an executive order to Guantanamo Bay, directing that all terrorist tribunals, including Omar Khadr’s, be postponed for 120 days. It is widely believed that Obama will sign a second executive order that will close the infamous prison camp—and a dark chapter in U.S. foreign policy—for good. But in the words of one senior Bush Administration official, the new commander-in-chief will have “a devil of a time” trying to make that happen. John Bellinger–a day removed from his job as legal advisor to Condoleezza Rice—says he lobbied hard to close what he describes as “a huge blackeye for the United States,” but his efforts were constantly undermined by former vice-president Dick Cheney and other hawks within the department of justice and the U.S. intelligence agencies. “The real sadness,” he says, “[was that] despite the endless debate about what to do, and a recognition by many that it was causing us real damage, we could simply not evolve into a position to close it down.” Bellinger also says that despite the vocal opposition of many western allies, “not one” offered a workable solution. And he warns that the most reasonable plan—moving the worst of the worst to military prisons on U.S. soil—will trigger “a political battle royal” because many politicians and members of the public will say “not in my backyard.” Welcome to the Oval Office, Mr. President.

BBC News

Heading back to Texas with George W.

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 6:54 AM - 0 Comments

Former Bush advisor Mark McKinnon joins the outgoing administration on the final flight back to Texas. He files a series of candid photos from the trip and writes wistfully of the end. “While I expected the president’s mood to be defiant, bitter, defensive, or vengeful toward his critics, he was anything but,” McKinnon writes. “As he toured the cabin of the airplane throughout the flight, visiting with old friends, family, and staffers, he was filled with equanimity, grace, and a generosity of spirit.”

The Daily Beast

Obama’s first 100 hours

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 10:21 AM - 0 Comments

Everyone is focused on the inauguration parties—and Michelle Obama’s hideous lime dress!—but the 44th American president is anxious to get down to business. As soon as he’s sworn in, his top aides plan to hop in a van and head to the White House while their boss enjoys the parade. On Wednesday—“Day 1,” as the Obama team has dubbed it—the new president is scheduled to meet with his economic team to talk stimulus, then with his national security advisors to discuss “next steps in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Don’t be surprised if Guantanamo Bay is no more by the end of Day 1.

Politico.com

Epic security at Obama’s inauguration

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 7:30 AM - 0 Comments

Security in Washington, D.C. will be understandably tight today. Officials say there will be as many as 25,000 police officers, security agents and National Guard troops on duty.  That includes snipers and undercover agents mingling in the crowds. The secret service has closed down wide areas of the city around the White House and U.S. Capitol building. Much of it will be off limits to any unauthorized vehicles. Bridges over the Potomac River have also be closed. And just so that nothing is missed 100 agents will be watching footage from surveillance cameras: 5,265 cameras to be exact.

MSNBC

Obama has four years to save the world

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Forget that nagging economic crisis, or niche issues like, say, health care or the war in Afghanistan. A high-profile NASA scientist says Barack Obama has only four years to take the lead on combating climate change and save the earth. Jim Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, is among a group of respected scientists who argue global warming’s effects – especially rising sea levels – are accelerating faster than was expected, and will lead to more catastrophic results by the end of the century.

The Guardian

The downside of being an Obama

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 19, 2009 at 7:58 AM - 0 Comments

Obama’s cousin, Hussein Onyango, offers tours of a mat on the dirt floor marking the spot Obama slept when he visited Kenya in 1987. Jimmy Hays Obama, 18, a distant relative, says his teachers now expect him to be more capable and his classmates expect him to buy them Fanta. His grandfather said he tells people, “Look at me, do I look like someone who has money?,” and points out his frayed pants and chronic unemployment. “The African way is that if your relative rises, he’s supposed to help all his family. I try to explain to people that in America, it’s not that way. In America, you can’t give your relatives jobs. There are laws. But they are not convinced.” Life has changed for Obama’s Kenyan relatives. On the upside, his step-grandmother has had her house spiffed up-blue trim, running water, electricity, and 24-hour-a-day security guards-part of the “Presidential Heritage Tourist Circuit.” On the other hand, who wants to live in a shrine?

The Washington Post

Barack Obama’s “Yes, you can” letter to his daughters

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 16, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

President-elect Barack Obama lays out his hopes and dreams for Malia and Sasha (along with every child in America) in a letter published in Parade magazine. As might be expected, these ambitions, expressed in campaign-trail rhetoric, are lofty: “I want for you-to grow up in a world with no limits on your dreams and no achievements beyond your reach, and to grow into compassionate, committed women who will help build that world,” he writes. 

Spoiler alert: There’s no new news about the puppy.

Parade Magazine

The secret to Obama's success revealed

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Nate Silver, the breakthrough pundit of the 2008 U.S. election, made deep statistical analysis hip with fivethirtyeight.com. He also proved remarkably prophetic, give or take a few fractions of a percent. In a new analysis he pinpoints the key to Barack Obama’s victory ad it turns out it was the cities, stupid. “If Bill Clinton was the first black president,” he writes, “then Barack Obama might be the first urban one.”

Esquire

Joe Biden on the job ahead

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 9:46 AM - 0 Comments

In laying out his plan to be more hands-on when he takes over as the VP, Joe Biden speaks critically of Dick Cheney, saying that his predecessor was largely ineffective despite wielding an immense amount of power. In the interview, his first with a major daily, Biden says part of the VP job will be to continue meeting weekly with Obama’s national security team and top-level domestic advisors, adding he wants to be “the last guy in the room on every major decision.”

The New York Times

The Bush Years: by the numbers

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

Words, especially those he attempted to assemble into sentences, were not President George W. Bush’s friends. He didn’t have much better luck with numbers—at least those compiled by the gnomes who produce Harper’s Index. Here’s a sample:
• Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172
• Amount the Justice Department spent in 2001 installing curtains to cover two seminude statues of Justice: $8,650.
• Percentage change since 2000 in U.S. emigration to Canada: +79.
Harper’s magazine

Eight years of Bushisms

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 8:56 AM - 12 Comments

Jacob Weisberg, editor of Slate, earned a spot in the history of the English language when he popularized the term “Bushisms”—coined for George W. Bush’s frequent struggles with nouns, verbs and tense. He also made a small cottage industry of it, including various Bushism books and calendars. On the eve of Dubya’s departure, Weisberg compiles the Top 25 bloopers—”I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family” comes in at No. 2—and concedes that all the broken syntax nearly made Bush endearing.

Slate

How America will fight under Obama

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

No single person, with the possible exception of the president himself, will have a greater role in deciding how the United States will confront its enemies during Barack Obama’s administration than the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. In Foreign Affairs, Gates outlines what he sees as the threats facing the United States and how they should be met: “Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies.”

Foreign Affairs

After Gitmo

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

As soon as he moves into the Oval Office, Barack Obama promises to shut down the U.S. prison camp for “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Human rights advocates are thrilled with the news (though not as thrilled, we assume, as Omar Khadr, the lone Canadian languishing at Gitmo). But closing George W. Bush’s infamous creation is not as easy as turning out the lights. The new president’s legal team must now figure out what to do with the 250 detainees still locked inside—and that process could take months, if not years. Most of the remaining prisoners are innocent men mistakenly captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, but some are hardcore jihadists, including the architects of the 9/11 attacks. If they don’t belong at Gitmo, where should they go? One suggestion surfacing this morning is to ship the worst of the worst to army bases on U.S. soil, including Camp Pendleton in San Diego and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

The Washington Times

Deep Throat's importance is overrated

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 7:20 AM - 0 Comments

Deep Throat, the parking-garage lurking super-source of the Washington Post’s Watergate investigation, is forever etched in the public imagination, in no small part because of the actor Hal Holbrook’s “goggle-eyed, cotton-mouthed portrayal of him” in the movie All the President’s Men. And the mystique only grew over the decades that the whistleblower remained anonymous, as guessing his identity became a favourite Washington parlour game. But since Mark Felt, a former FBI agent who died last month, revealed himself as Deep Throat a couple of years ago, his status as “the man who brought down the President” has been open to question. This article argues that “this most anonymous of sources was not nearly as important to Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting—or to Nixon’s demise—as we have come to believe.” And on the most important parts of the Watergate story—the White House ties to the burglary and dirty tricks—he was virtually no help at all.

The New Republic

George W. Bush presided over “lost economic decade”

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 12, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 2 Comments

New economic data suggests U.S. president-elect Barack Obama will be inheriting a far-more fragile economy than previously believed.  According to the Washington Post, George W. Bush presided over “the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades”: job formation rose a “tepid” 2 per cent, GDP increased at the slowest pace since the Truman administration and incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s (other than that of Bush’s father). Many economists, including former Bush advisers, confirm that heady economic expansion of the Bush years was a chimera propelled by interrelated booms in the housing market, consumer spending and financial markets encouraged by the administration’s unsustainable “ownership society” mantra. Meanwhile, notes Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Bush White House staffer, there was a total absence of more sustainable saving and export-led growth. As for the capper, the administration set the tone for the credit crunch. Though it inherited a modest budget surplus when Bush took office in 2001, it ran a deficit — funding itself to a significant degree with borrowed money even as the economy was growing at a healthy pace. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com and informal adviser to McCain’s campaign who dubs the period “almost a lost economic decade” provides a dire summation: “It’s sad to say, but we really went nowhere for almost ten years.”

The Washington Post

Regrets? Bush has had a few.

By Yahoo News - Monday, January 12, 2009 at 2:00 AM - 1 Comment

Outgoing US president George W. Bush gave his final press conference today, and defended his decision to invade Afghanistan, the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, and interrogation tactics used on terrorism suspects. But Bush also admitted some regrets: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and proclaiming victory under a “Mission Accomplished” banner less than two months after the war had begun.

Yahoo News

It's Not Over Yet

By John Parisella - Tuesday, December 16, 2008 at 11:36 AM - 5 Comments

Ever since Barack Obama’s election, a lot of attention has been directed at the presidential transition, during which the president-elect has treated us to a blend of cool temperament and daring nominations. Over 75 per cent of the electorate approve of Obama’s handling of the transition. But while the transition is one of the best in recent memory, elsewhere, problems are emerging: economic conditions are worsening as Congress cannot agree on a stimulus package for the US auto industry; the US economy has been in recession for nearly a year and job losses are mounting on a monthly basis; and a political scandal involving the Illinois governor and Obama’s former Senate seat has erupted, providing a temporary distraction from the problems at hand.

One would be tempted to conclude that we’ve returned to “politics as usual.” We are not talking about change as much as we did throughout the past 12 months. Yet, it must be noted that the Obama people keep moving along, putting the final touches to the new administration and continuing to use the Internet as FDR used radio and JFK used TV to communicate with the public. The Obama campaign is still collecting funds on the Internet. For them, the campaign is not over yet. Continue…

How to market a black candidate

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Friday, October 24, 2008 at 3:46 PM - 0 Comments

The New Republic has an interesting profile of Obama’s campaign strategist, David Axelrod, and his time-tested multi-part strategy for getting various black candidates elected. Also interesting: how resistant he was to take Obama on as a client. (Axelrod was also the guy who in 2004 help take one Senator John Edwards from relative obscurity to the VP slot on the Democratic ticket.)