Somehow, however, the paper managed the produce its endorsement editorial without reference to Cheney or President Bush--while making abundantly clear that conditions in the country after eight years of their leadership demanded a change.
The newspaper's editorial board wrote:
The next occupant of the White House will inherit a national economy that's collapsing and two wars our nation has been fighting for years, depleting valuable resources we need to fix a multitude of domestic problems. Far too many of our nation's citizens live paycheck to paycheck, worried about whether they'll have a job next week or if a medical crisis will bankrupt them.
By a count assembled by Editor & Publisher, that makes the pro-Obama editorial tally over McCain 250 to 110.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Ben Woloszyn / Laramie Daily Boomerang, via Associated Press
When Sarah Palin suggested that as president of the Senate, she could get in there and mix it up with the senators, the reaction was quick -- and most of it along lines suggesting she should take a quick course in government and the Constitution.
Wait a minute. Maybe she was on to something.
In an elegant (meaning short -- barely 440 words) Op-Ed in today's New York Times, Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, tells us why, although Palin was "roundly mocked for her claim," the Republican vice presidential nominee was nonetheless "probably right."
The vice president is really more of a legislative post than a job in the executive branch -- the office in the West Wing of the White House notwithstanding.
And as a member of the legislative branch, the vice president, in exercising executive power, "raises important constitutional questions related to the separation of powers."
Having wrapped that up, he says Congress should "pass a law to prohibit the vice president from exercising executive power."
He continues:
Extensive vice presidential involvement in the executive branch -- the role enjoyed by Dick Cheney and Al Gore -- is not only unconstitutional, but also a bad idea.
But that's something Cheney's critics have been saying for eight years.
During the two weeks before election day 2000, President Clinton was a busy man.
He spent nearly half his time out of town, campaigning for Democratic candidates in New York (his wife and others), Kentucky, California, back to New York, and Arkansas. He spoke at several political events in Washington, D.C., too.
There were private receptions and public rallies. And even as Al Gore, the Democrats' presidential candidate and Clinton's vice president, sought to distance himself from the president to leave no doubt about his own political identity, Clinton was aggressive -- and very out there -- on behalf of Democratic candidates.
Friday is pretty busy: Briefings at the National Security Agency, an Oval Office meeting with the secretary-general of NATO, and a ceremony bringing Albania and Croatia into the Atlantic alliance.
The president is spending this weekend at Camp David, the ultra-private presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
On Monday, he is meeting with the president of Paraguay, and, with Laura Bush, he is speaking at a White House reception marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt.
And on it goes.
What's missing?
Hint: Is there an election taking place?
When he blessed McCain's bid for the presidency last March, Bush said he would campaign for or against the Republican -- whichever would help.
That was before the Wall Street meltdown and broader global financial crisis. So, we're not likely to be seeing any picture like this one -- at the White House or anywhere -- in the next few days:
As of now, with his poll numbers continuing to bump along near record lows for an incumbent president, and even McCain structuring much of his campaign as a contrast to the last eight years, Bush is neither working for nor against his preferred successor.
He's just disappearing.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
-- James Gerstenzang
Upper photo: President Clinton at a Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza rally in 2000. Credit: Anacleto Rapping / Los Angeles Times. Lower photo: Sen. John McCain and President Bush at the White House in 2008. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / The White House.
The wives or husbands of dozens of U.S. government officials and diplomats attending the dinner, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi, were identified as a 'spouse.'
But the list identified Poe as the 'guest' of Mary Cheney, just as it identified all other attendees who were accompanied by friends rather than married spouses.
Now that Connecticut has joined Massachusetts and California in legalizing same-sex marriage, the question of how married or partnered gay couples should be described in formal affairs such as White House dinners is likely to resurface.
It's a difficult question for the White House.
As Countdown to Crawford noted last week when the Connecticut decision came down, "for more than four years, the Bush White House has run against any changes in the law that would allow gay Americans -- even his vice president's daughter -- to marry."
Speaking of the speaker, who was seated next to Berlusconi, the Columbus Day dinner proved that politics makes for interesting dinner companions.
Only hours earlier, Pelosi had set the Democrats on an economic path diverging from that favored by the White House. She called for a new stimulus package to the tune of $150 billion, setting up a likely end-of-term clash with Bush and congressional Republicans.
But the dinner itself suggested international accord: Maine lobster fondue, artichoke and reggiano cheese ravioli, lamb with crispy eggplant and Swiss chard, chocolate napoleons and Russian River cuvee.
The entertainment? The cast of "Jersey Boys."
Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons -- the real Jersey Boys from Newark (which, as anyone from Newark knows, is pronounced Nerk)-- yucked it up with the president afterward on stage.
-- James Gerstenzang
Top photo: Heather Poe and Mary Cheney. Credit: Damon Winter / Los Angeles Times.
Bottom photo: Nancy Pelosi and Silvio Berlusconi. Credit: Aude Guerrucci / EPA / Pool
For more than four years, the Bush White House has run against any changes in the law that would allow gay Americans -- even his vice president's daughter -- to marry.
Under the guidance of political maestro Karl Rove, George W. Bush even ran against gay rights in his 2004 reelection bid. The strategy: push a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and thereby stir the base of evangelicals to the polls. It worked.
Four years later, the climate has changed. Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, while not embracing the still-politically-radioactive concept of gay marriage, support rights.
Obama and his running mate Joe Biden back civil unions, along with spousal visits in hospitals, insurance benefits as partners, and rights of inheritance and adoption. At some political cost, McCain voted against the Bush administration's proposal for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, arguing that states, not judges or the federal government, should make these decisions. He also has signaled his support for legislation (an earlier version of this post said he supports the bill) to ban workplace discrimination against gays. Both presidential campaigns have reached out to gay Americans, seeking their votes. Even Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, an evangelical, sounds inclusive toward gays. "No one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed," she said during the vice presidential debate. That's one reason the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest gay Republican organization, which did not endorse Bush four years ago, are backing McCain-Palin this year.
But Bush remains passionately opposed to any movement on the issue.
Friday, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that a ban on gay marriages was illegal, putting that state in concert with decisions in Vermont, where gay unions are legal, and in California and Massachusetts, which allow gay marriages.
Vermont is the only state Bush has not visited as president, perhaps because several cities have warrants out for his arrest on war crimes. As for Massachusetts and California, well, from a Republican point of view, enough said. Bluer than blue. Template for liberal.
Now comes Connecticut, home to hedge fund operators and home design queen Martha Stewart. Could that state be the tipping point?
The White House rose to object.
"President Bush has always believed that marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman," said Karl Zinsmeister, a domestic policy advisor. "President Bush remains firmly committed to protecting the sanctity of marriage."
In a statement issued from South Carolina, where the president was traveling, Zinsmeister also said:
It’s unfortunate that activist judges continue to seek to redefine marriage by court order –- without regard for the will of the people. Today’s decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court illustrates that a federal constitutional amendment may be needed if the people are to decide what marriage means.
Asked to respond, Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans, told Countdown to Crawford:
It's unfortunate but not surprising that the Bush administration is once again talking about a federal constitutional amendment. Of course, it has no chance of going anywhere. Times have changed a lot in a short period of time. Never again will a presidential candidate make the assessment that they may be able to benefit politically by using gay and lesbian people as a divisive wedge issue. The Bush administration was wrong on the marriage amendment in 2004. And they're wrong today.
Noting that even among GOP convention delegates in St. Paul, a CBS poll found 49% support for civil unions, Sammon added: "Momentum is on our side."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Tom Olmscheid/Associated Press captures scene at the state Capitol in St. Paul, Minn., on March 21, 2006, when hundreds of demonstrators rallied against gay marriage.
Yes, elections are supposed to be about the future. But what to make of the ongoing role that President Bush is playing in the current race for his job?
He attends no rallies. He speaks not a word about the candidates in public. And to the extent he takes any apparent role in the campaign, it is still behind closed doors, raising money for the Republican Party.
Still, he's a central figure, as noted by a number of observers in the aftermath of the second presidential debate.
CNN's associate political editor Rebecca Sinderbrand noted moments after the debate ended in Nashville on Tuesday night that John McCain mentioned Bush three times, "to highlight the policies where he parted ways with the president."
Barack Obama mentioned Bush twice as much, Sinderbrand noted. And you can be sure it wasn't in an adulatory manner.
WashPost's Dan Froomkin singled out some of McCain and Obama's unfriendly references to the president, including this one: "[There] was an energy bill on the floor of the Senate loaded down with goodies, billions for the oil companies, and it was sponsored by Bush and Cheney."
The speaker? Republican McCain. He voted against the bill, he noted, and Obama supported it.
Any surprise the president isn't out there doing big rallies?
And has his dedication to enhancing the power of the executive branch under President Bush resulted, at the end of their tenure, in a weakened presidency?
A quarter-century before he became vice president, Cheney was already an astute, close-in observer of executive power.
As Gerald R. Ford's chief of staff, he ran a hands-on operation from the office at the southwest corner of the White House West Wing just a few steps from the Oval Office.
It was during the immediate post-Watergate years of Ford's presidency, when the pendulum of political power had swung back to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Cheney drew from that experience the philosophy of far-reaching executive power that he took with him when he moved into the vice president's office (next door to his original office) in 2001.
Spencer Ackerman, writing on the website of the TPMCafe Book Club, argues that the vice president is so dedicated to enhancing executive power that "he either didn't notice or didn't appreciate the steady resurgence of executive authority during the Reagan-through-Clinton years."
It's an interesting observation about Cheney, a onetime professor of political science and a lifetime student of poli sci.
By overreaching, Ackerman maintains, Cheney is leaving office "having discredited, through example, the idea of unfettered executive supremacy."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Dick Cheney with Gerald R. Ford in 1975. Credit: Associated Press
For eight years, Stephen J. Hadley has observed President Bush up close.
As the president's national security advisor throughout the second term, and on many occasions before that as the deputy national security advisor, Hadley has traveled the world with the president, has cleared brush with him in Crawford, and briefed him daily on developments around the world.
He was there for discussions leading up to the surge in Iraq. Afghanistan? 9/11? North Korea? Iran? Hugo Chavez? Human rights and the Beijing Olympics? Russia? Georgia? All were in his portfolio.
If the word "crisis" was attached to it -- save, perhaps, for the stock market and Katrina -- it is only a slight exaggeration to say there's a good chance the debate went through Hadley's office at the northwest corner of the White House West Wing.
The vantage point for tracking the president could hardly be better.
Bush, Hadley said today, is "remarkably unaffected by eight years as president in terms of who he is, what he stands for, what he thinks of himself."
He spoke with a small group of reporters in the Roosevelt Room, across a small corridor from the Oval Office.
He was responding to a question about whether in its second term the administration had adopted a more pragmatic and less ideological approach to both foreign policy and economic matters, compared with the first term.
"Situations change," Hadley said, referring specifically to the Middle East, which he said was "a very different place" these days compared with 2001. Therefore, he said, the way the administration approaches it has naturally undergone change.
Of course no presidential aide wants to say the boss has eased back on his core principles. Nor would one want to say that the boss had not grown and adapted over eight years.
Hadley put it this way: "We've tried to be flexible. We've tried to learn."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Stephen J. Hadley, left rear next to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the White House Roosevelt Room, 2006. Credit: Eric Draper / The White House
The White House moved aggressively this morning to calm jittery financial markets.
President Bush delivered a hastily scheduled pronouncement on the nation's economy on the Colonnade steps outside the Oval Office, telling reporters -- and more importantly, skittish investors, via live television coverage -- that he shared Americans' concern about the financial markets and the economy and that he would "closely monitor" the situation.
He said that the federal government had taken "extraordinary measures" in recent weeks to address the situation, moving to shore up the markets, individual companies and the economy.
The measures, some of which appear to be contrary to long-held wariness about government intervention, were "necessary and they're important, and the markets are adjusting to them," the president said, adding: "Our financial markets continue to deal with serious challenges."
He promised to take action to strengthen and stabilize the markets and to restore investor confidence.
An hour before he spoke -- and just before U.S. markets opened -- White House Press Secretary Dana Perino announced the president would speak out but would not be presenting new policy.
In a written statement, she said:
At 10:15 a.m. this morning, just outside of the Oval Office, the president will address the recent financial market developments and emphasize that he and his administration are continuing to work on efforts to promote stability in the markets. You should not expect any announcements of new policy in his remarks. The president is in regular and frequent contact with his senior economic advisers, and he will meet with Secretary Paulson later today."
Late Wednesday night, Perino's deputy, Tony Fratto, said Bush had decided to scrub his plan to travel to Alabama and Florida today and was instead sending Vice President Dick Cheney on a trip to visit a waste-to-energy plant and to raise money for Republican candidates.
For the White House transcript of the president's remarks, provided by Congressional Quarterly, click on Read Full Story...
There is nothing like a last-minute shift in a president's travel plan to signal crisis -- and to shout that a president is paying attention to the latest round of turmoil and trouble.
As of early this evening, President Bush was planning to head on Thursday to Huntsville, Ala., to tour a plant that turns garbage into energy, and to raise funds in Huntsville and later in Jupiter, Fla., for Republicans.
But shortly after 11 p.m., well ahead of the opening of U.S. financial markets and those in Europe, Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto made the sort of seemingly innocuous announcement that can send shivers through hordes of traders.
He said that rather than head out on his political mission, the president would remain in Washington "to continue to work with his economic advisors on the serious challenges confronting our financial markets."
Fratto added:
The health of our financial markets is critical to the nation's economy, and the president remains focused on taking action to stabilize and strengthen our markets and to restore investor confidence.
The spokesman said Vice President Dick Cheney would suit up and fill in for Bush at the Huntsville fundraiser, and possibly in Jupiter.
The late-night announcement was the second last-minute, dramatic turnabout in Bush's schedule in less than three weeks.
With just a day's notice, he dropped his plan to fly to Minnesota to address the Republican National Convention on Sept. 1. Instead, as Hurricane Gustav took aim at the Gulf Coast, the president flew south to check on preparations for the storm's attack.
The signal then was that the White House was paying attention to the battering the storm was about to deliver.
The signal today is that the White House is paying attention to a different sort of storm -- the hurricane battering the markets and the broader U.S. economy.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
