Top Obama strategist sees a 'titanic struggle' next year

A top former White House aide to Barack Obama sees a "titanic struggle" emerging as the Democratic incumbent confronts awful economic numbers and Republican political opposition that seems bent on defeating the guy for some reason.

David Axelrod, who used to work in the White House but has since fled back to Chicago as the reelection campaign's top political strategist, uttered his unfortunate floating metaphor to a New Hampshire audience Tuesday.

Speaking at a college in Manchester, Axelrod also used a sailing metaphor:

"In 2008, we had the wind at our backs. Now, we don't have the wind at our back. We have the wind in our faces, because the American people have the wind in their faces."

With two out of three Americans thinking the country is on the wrong track under Obama and more than half disapproving of Obama's overall job performance, exactly what winds Axelrod had in mind are left to wild speculation.

Unemployment above 9% when an 8% maximum was promised? A healthcare bill that was supposed to reduce costs but hasn't and waivers for special Americans with connections? An unfolding scandal over a half-billion dollar loan to a fundraiser's company? A fondness for regulation and a desire to raise taxes and a kind of chronic indecision over many things except giving more speeches at fundraisers appealing for more time because so much is undone?

Axelrod, a recovering newspaper reporter who used to cover Chicago politics, did not have time in his remarks to explain that those winds in Americans' faces came from his boss' failed economic stimulus and growing business fears of rampant regulations.

Because he lives and works in Chicago and helped elect Democrats of the machine that has ruled that city for 80 years, Axelrod is apparently unfamiliar with the role of a competitive opposition political party to, well, oppose incumbents with its own plans.

The Obama strategist kept a straight face as he feigned surprise that Obama opponents in Washington would actually, well, oppose the Real Good Talker's plans to spend trillions more dollars that the country doesn't have.

"We honestly thought," Axelrod said with a straight face, "when we got to Washington, we'd get some cooperation from folks across the aisle."

That kind of phony naivete sounds normal in the Windy City where uncooperative citizens can find themselves and their licensed businesses enduring a plethora of building and health inspections and citations, along with unexplained stoppages in garbage collections, etc.

In the interests of bipartisanship and passing the president's doomed jobs bill, Axelrod called the D.C. opposition "the most ideological, partisan group of Republicans in my lifetime." Axelrod was born Feb. 22, 1955.

Still, despite all those adverse winds in the Windy City and across the country, Axelrod said he was confident that President Obama would sail through these troubled waters and not become yet another Democratic president like Truman, Johnson or Carter, who were terminated by popular demand after one elected term.

“We’re on the right side of the fight and I believe we’re going to win that fight,” he said.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

Photos (from top): The Titanic. Credit: White Star Line

Edward Smith, captain of the doomed Titanic. Credit: White Star Line

An image from director James Cameron's movie "Titanic." Credit: Merie W. Wallace

Obama was warned of loan dangers long before Solyndra sank

Top economic advisors to President Obama warned him a year ago about the serious political and financial risks of the Energy Department's loan guarantee program that has resulted in taxpayers likely being responsible for the loss of $527 million loaned to the politically-connected California solar firm Solyndra.

That loan is currently under investigation by a House subcommittee and the FBI, which raided company offices earlier this month.

Obama visited the Solyndra plant in 2010, touting it as a shining example of his program to simultaneously boost the U.S. green-energy industry and create new jobs. Last winter the Energy Dept. restructured the more than half-billion dollar loan to the troubled firm.

But on Aug. 31 the company, whose major owner was also a major fundraising bundler for the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign, filed for bankruptcy and eliminated most of its 1,100 jobs.

In a detailed story posted overnight, The Times' Tom Hamburg, Kim Geiger and Matea Gold outline the danger signals set off in October 2010 when secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner and chief economic advisor Lawrence Summers warned the president that Energy's vetting process was not stringent enough to weed out troubled applicants in advance.

Energy Secy. Steven Chu, who like Obama holds a Nobel Prize, was eager to push through applications by 30 companies for the program's $17 billion. He wanted even less oversight from Treasury.

The story has developed legs for two reasons:

One, it hints at possible high-level political favoritism using taxpayer dollars in risky ventures with well-connected business people, what some have labeled "crony capitalism."

And, two, it's a classic example of the fundamental ongoing D.C. debate over government's proper role in the economy and the financial dangers to taxpayer funds inherent when officials and bureaucrats, not free market forces, pick corporate winners and losers.

Pencil this into your calendar for future political debate throughout 2012.

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 --Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Alex Brandon / Associated Press (Obama in 2010 during a visit to the now-shuttered Solyndra facility undergoing hearings on Capitol Hill); T.J. Kirkpatrick / Bloomberg (Summers).

What? California's Dianne Feinstein in poll trouble too?

Oh, no! Another Democratic senator in possible election trouble for 2012.

And from California already?

A new Field Poll just released this morning brings news that California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein is -- how can we put this in a liberal kind of way? -- approved by 41% of voters who want to see her reelected next year.

Unfortunately for her, more voters (fully 44%) disapprove of her continued employment in the U.S. Senate after 2012.

In blue California that makes for about a magnitude 5.2 quake.

The same poll finds that only 41% approve of Feinstein's job in Washington, while 39% disapprove.

That 41 approval number is the lowest the former mayor has ever had in her 20 years of no longer really living in California.

Another recent Field Poll showed many Californians are falling out of love with the teleprompter guy from Chicago. His California approval has slid below 50% for the first time ever, down to 46%.

That's a decline of about two points per month recently.

Is his slide now corroding the election prospects of even such party stalwarts as Feinstein?

Add to that the overall -- how can we say this in a polite way? -- disgust with the United States Congress (nine out of every 100 Californians now approve of those guys) and this could spell t-r-o-u-b-l-e for Democrats. They or independent allies need to lose only six seats to turn the Senate over to those people that Vice President Joe "#%$&*(@" Biden politely calls "barbarians."

Democrats next year are defending two-thirds of the 33 Senate seats on state ballots. Good luck with that at 9% unemployment.

President Obama, who's now passed Biden as the nation's most voluble, least effective job creator, is about due for another money run to Hollywood.  

Oh, look! Our pal, the well-connected Tina Daunt is writing in the Hollywood Reporter that the one-time 40-something star of the celebrity set is having real trouble now raking in the easy dough from disappointed West Coast Dems.

Maybe the 78-year-old chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee will factor that intelligence into her as yet unannounced decision on seeking a fourth term on the same ticket as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's former boss.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Mandel Ngan / Getty Images (Feinstein).

Obama's bus tour themes: Washington (not him) really screwed up and we should spend a lot more

President Obama did some real good talking the last few days out there in Iowa and Minnesota and Illinois. Well, he did a lot of talking anyway.

He made it sound as if he's been living in Peosta or Atkinson himself, the way he went on about all the misbehavior going on back there in Washington, D.C., where he has lived since January of 2005 and, since January of 2009, at taxpayer expense in the White House.

The way he described those D.C. political shenanigans, who would want to spend $745 million of someone else's money to get there? Or $1 billion more to stay there? Or pay $37.1 million of others' money to 464 aides to help him work there.

Here are a few things said by the Democrat who just spent weeks negotiating spending cuts. See if this sounds like a chastened spender whose credit rating just got downgraded:

When folks tell you that we’ve got a choice between jobs now or dealing with our debt crisis, they’re wrong. They’re wrong. We can’t afford to just do one or the other. We’ve got to do both....

We’ve got over $2 trillion worth of repairs that need to be made around the country, and I know there are some right here in this county and right here in this state. And we’ve got a lot of construction workers that are out of work when the housing bubble went bust, and interest rates are low, and contractors are ready to come in on time, under budget -- this is a great time for us to rebuild our roads and our bridges, and locks in the Mississippi, and our seaports and our airports....

I think to myself, you know what, if folks in Washington were carrying out their responsibilities the way you’re carrying out your responsibilities, we’d be just fine. We would be just fine. (Applause.)...

Of course, those folks in Washington including him are not in Washington. Congress is on recess, the same time-off Obama will begin today on another island vacation.

Now, briefly a few words about the president's fancy new armored bus. Some media folks thought they had a gotcha moment because here Obama is out touting the need for more American jobs, which everybody knows, but Obama is still saying anyway.

And it turns out the fancy $1.1 million bus was ordered through a Tennessee company but built in Canada, America's hat.

This can happen because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the kind of agreement Obama is now touting with Colombia and South Korea as a U.S.-job maker.

Obama probably forgot about that huge labor forum in Soldier Field four years ago last week.

He'd been coming under attack by Hillary Clinton and other primary opponents as full of talk but too inexperienced, too young, too naive to become president. To make his bones before the union members, Obama said that in the White House:

"I would immediately call the president of Mexico, the president of Canada, to try to amend NAFTA, because I think that we can get labor agreements in that agreement right now."

As with closing Guantanamo, Obama hasn't really gotten around to that yet. And as any Yale graduate would know, Canada doesn't have a president. It has a prime minister.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Tannen Maury / EPA (Obama rides in his new bus); Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press (Obama downs an Iowa ice cream cone).

Inside the Ames Straw Poll and what else to watch for

Oakes Ames was born to a shovel-making blacksmith in Massachusetts back in 1804, when Charles Pinckney thought he had a shot at defeating Thomas Jefferson in the first presidential election involving electoral votes.

Americans don't know much about Oakes. And for good reason.

He was a capitalist, a House member and an early Republican when there were some in the Bay State.

He was also a staunch believer in the need for a transcontinental railroad to tie this vast land together.

As it happened, so was Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president who also pushed the Capitol's construction as a sign of national unity, even during the war.

So, when the cross-country railroad idea stalled at 12 miles of track, something to do with that Civil War and money, Lincoln put the imposing Rep. Oakes Ames in charge of kicking some Union butts into action. The result, some years later, was the Union Pacific Railroad.

In tribute, Oakes Ames' last name was attached to a tiny town of 840 souls in north-central Iowa. How proud Ames must be. He never lived there. Today, about 60,000 people do, when....

Oprah volunteers for Obama 2012

Finally, an answer to the question several people have wondered about:

Has-been TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey is ready, willing and able to help reelect her fellow Chicagoan, Barack Obama, to the White House.

The billionaire made an atypical foray into politics back in 2007-08 when she supported and openly campaigned for the Illinois senator.

She helped pack the house at rallies for the newcomer and staged a glittery fundraiser at her Montecito house.

She paid a ratings dip price for her political involvement against Obama's main Democratic competitor, Hillary Clinton. But Oprah was winding down her long-run successful broadcast show by then anyway.

Now, it's dead and she's struggling to breathe energy into her OWN cable network.

About 2012, Winfrey told Politico, "If the campaign needs me, I’m happy to be of service. I’m in his corner for whatever he needs me to do.”

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Follow The Ticket via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or click this: @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle. Use the ReTweet buttons above to share any item with family and friends.

Photo: Kimberly White / Reuters, file.

White House claims Obama’s bus tour is presidential, so taxpayers will fund it

Somehow, from somewhere, a bright political strategist on the president's reelection team has come up with the idea of sending Obama out in a bus on Midwestern roads in two weeks, just like real Americans, or real Americans who can still afford a short summer road trip.

The spectacle of a passing politician's bus and waving citizens provides grand visuals for TV during the usually slow summer news days. The president of the United States might even happen upon a curbside lemonade stand operated by surprised children who deserve the kind of future he has in mind for all Americans. And more of that.

Not so good visuals of the trailing motorcade of press buses, Secret Service SUVs, SWAT team vans and communications cars. Nor the angry motorists stalled nearby because the highway and every on- and off-ramp has been closed by uniformed motorcyclists wearing large guns.

But a presidential bus tour could help refresh the image of this poll-plagued Democrat a year before his renomination for POTUS.

For weeks now Obama's only been seen at a pompous lectern lecturing members of Congress about the need to raise the national debt limit so he can make new "investments" in America's future and avoid default.

Or he's been seen reminiscing about the good old disastrous days of 2008 with Windy City poobahs who dropped $35,800 each to say they had dinner with the president.

Or Obama could not be seen in closed-door meetings with union leaders, who really liked the $787 billion stimulus plan but don't like any of this spending cut talk. As one result, Obama's job approval has never been lower.

So, on Aug. 15-17 he'll set out from somewhere and go somewhere else in a bus. You wouldn't announce your itinerary until the last minute either if you had Republicans itching to buy critical billboards along the route. And compute how few miles per gallon your big bus gets.

Political road tours do have other dangers. Remember Democrat John Edwards' bus breaking down on an icy Iowa roadside in early 2008, providing an irresistible media metaphor for his campaign on life-support?

So, where's the commander-in-chief going? Politically, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan make strong sense, although a dash into Iowa could help rain on campaigning Republicans' media parade. Yes, they're all run by Republicans now after last November's Democratic debacle. But Obama's got to retake at least two of them if he hopes to keep putting his feet up on that Oval Office desk.

However, according to Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney, the 72-hour bus trip is not political. (Laughter) No, really. Carney told doubting reporters this week, "The air of cynicism is quite thick. The idea that the president of the United States should not venture forth into the country is ridiculous."

Carney was fed such lines during his reporting days. But he persevered with the president's pitch: "It is absolutely important for the president, whoever that person is, in the past and in the future, to get out and hear from the people in different communities." Scroll down to watch Carney attempt to make that case on video.

The main trip topics will be the economy and jobs, he said. And no one would suspect the topics have anything to do with more discouraging employment figures expected out this morning.

Anyway, because the bus trip is so clearly presidential, America's taxpayers will be footing the bill for the non-political, three-day Obama odyssey through politically important Midwestern battleground states.

After all, taxpayers covered all the costs of Sarah Palin's successful One Nation bus tour back in June. Oh, wait. No, they didn't. Her political action committee paid for that.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of politics, follow The Ticket via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or click this: @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle. Use the ReTweet buttons above to share any item with family and friends.

Photos: (top) Sarah Palin. Credit: Steven Senne / Associated Press

(middle) President Obama makes an appearnace on Tuesday. Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg

Dow Jones plunges 512 points; but don't worry, President Obama's birthday parties unaffected

Uh, what in the world is going on here?

That humongous hard-fought debt ceiling deal that was supposed to settle things down in D.C. financially and politically seems to be doing precisely the opposite there and now around the world. And all within 48 hours.

Europe isn't buying the deal.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged almost 513 points today, erasing all of its gains this year, as fears grew of yet another recession before most people believed the first one was over. This White House returned to SOP immediately anyway. And George W. Bush is nowhere in sight to blame for this one.

Could Texas Rep. Ron Paul be right again?  He said: "You don’t get out of the problem of having too much debt by allowing Congress to spend a lot more."

Former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, who served on Obama's deficit commission, explained the financial battering of the U.S. as similar to crises in Portugal, Greece, Ireland, Spain and Italy.

"It is a global, global economy," he said to Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel. "It is so different from anything we have ever had in our whole history, and all of these countries have this trajectory of deficit and interest which is unconscionable and unsustainable."

Here's what the world was witnessing as it hoped to see this country start controlling its craving for fiscal cheeseburgers and fries for every meal:

Obama was so pleased with the bipartisan deal to control spending and cut the nation's $14.3 trillion national debt that he signed it in private. Within hours he was talking about spending much more on bridges, roads, clean energy and unemployment extensions.

Despite his sagging poll numbers, Obama then resumed fundraising for his reelection. He flew to Chicago for a $35,800-per-plate dinner that raised millions. He gave a 22-minute oration that still blamed what's-his-face the Texas guy from nearly three years ago, did not contain the word retrenchment and was widely applauded by Windy City fans.

Dick Durbin, another Illinois Democrat and the Senate's No. 2 ruling leader, said he's not giving up the fight for new taxes for government to spend. He wants on the new super Congress panel.

Vice President Joe Biden was out of public sight back at his Delaware home for a couple of days.

Obama's Press Secretary Jay Carney was pummeled today with questions on exactly what the president was doing to stop rising unemployment, restore consumer confidence and take control of what appears a chaotic Washington scene. Here's his reply;

"He is working very closely with his senior economic advisers to come up with new proposals to help advance growth and job creation."

Which, actually, is what many people thought the president had been doing all along during these 926 days of his presidency. To little economic effect, so far.

Carney also said Obama has planned several trips to talk with Americans about things. Sites include northern Virginia, the Midwest for a three-day bus tour and Michigan next week to talk about clean energy again.

The stock market plunge, however, was not expected to affect the White House's next pair of parties, a staff gathering this afternoon and another this evening with more friends and family to celebrate the aging Obama's well-documented birth a half-century ago today.

To help mark the happy occasion Michelle Obama sent out an email to millions of her husband's supporters. She didn't directly ask for money or mention the nation's ongoing financial troubles. She asked instead for people to sign an e-book of birthday wishes that the campaign is compiling, which will require leaving contact information.

"Every day," she said, "I see Barack make choices he knows will affect every American family. That's no small task for anyone -- and more proof that he's earning every last one of those gray hairs."

Just what every hubby wants to hear.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Mario Tama / Getty Images (New York Stock Exchange traders react to the market's plunge on President Obama's birthday, Aug. 4); Jim Young / Reuters (happy Obama at his first 50th birthday in Chicago); Win McNamee / Getty Images (Obama's birthday celebrated with a party hat at Madame Tussaud's wax museum).

 

Obama's new fundraising speech: 2008 was really bad, so I need a second term

After a rough month of enforced presidenting from within the White House, President Obama fled Washington and governing Wednesday, back to Chicago allegedly to celebrate his birthday with home folks.

But, of course, the real reason was campaigning for money, raising more of it from the Windy City for his billion-dollar reelection campaign. The Wednesday highlight was supposed to be a high-stakes dinner with the president, which isn't really dinner with the president because he just arrives late, speaks briefly and leaves without eating. The tab: $35,800 per plate.

Ticket readers get his entire expensive speech for free simply by scrolling down.

Despite enduring a newly sagging economy and the worst wrong track and job approval numbers of his presidency, this 50th birthday of Obama's is turning out to be a big deal. His Russian pal, President Dmitry Medvedev, called the other day. Jennifer Hudson sang for him Wednesday. Little Rahm Emanuel, now Mayor Emanuel, praised him highly.

Some Obama staff traveled out to Andrews Air Force Base to greet the returning POTUS at....

With debt deal done, Obama sees need now for new spending on bridges, roads, unemployment

President Obama reviewed the last few weeks for the nation today and shared his goals for the future. (Scroll down for full transcript.)

He said the debate over avoiding default was "long and contentious." He sees the deal as "an important first step" to getting the nation to "live within our means." But -- here it comes -- he said it also allows for more spending; he calls it "investments."

Back to young people, old people, sick people, unemployed, single moms, and the "balanced approach," the tax hikes he wants on those who already pay most of the taxes, which he didn't get this time but maybe next time. "That's the principle I’ll be fighting for during the next phase of this process."  

He wants to get back to creating jobs. But it won't come from easing life for business, rolling back regulations, stuff like that.

He said a lot of the nation's problems are beyond control: Japan's earthquake, the Arab spring, oil price hikes, those Europeans and their debts. He left out the Libyan war.

Obama said the different deadlines that his Treasury secretary set for default were just another Washington manufactured crisis. Oh, wait, no. He probably meant congressional disagreements over meeting his deadline.

He said the minute Congress returns from another vacation he'll be after....