He is known in some circles as the First Fan, a devotee of the Chicago Bulls, a president so passionate about sports that he went on ESPN a few months ago to announce his bracket predictions for the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
But tonight, President Obama becomes the nation's baseball guy, throwing out the first pitch at the All-Star game in St. Louis, and doing a half inning of sports commentary in the Fox TV anchor booth.
Lots of people are already giving him advice.
Baseball legend Willie Mays is traveling with the president on Air Force One from Michigan (where POTUS was pitching education) to St. Louis, th esite of the ballgame. Hard to imagine they won't talk technique.
Then there's Cardinals all-star Albert Pujols, who's slated to catch the president's debut first pitch. During pregame interviews Monday, the Cardinals' first baseman offered some advice to Obama.
"Lob it up there. Don't try to be a perfect throw,'" Pujols said. "The worst thing, if you throw any first pitch, you don't want to bounce it. That's the advice that I'm going to give. Make sure that you don't bounce it."
Before leaving Washington, Obama was asked during an Oval Office meeting whether he'd been practicing. "I think it's fair to say I wanted to loosen up my arm," he said during a photo-op with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, adding that he'd been reminiscing about that Chicago White Sox game in 2005 when he threw out the first pitch.
"I just wanted to keep it high," Obama recalled. "Now, there was no clock on it, I don't know how fast it went. If it exceeded 30 miles per hour, I'd be surprised. But it did clear the plate."
Pujols won't be the only Cardinals hero on the field for Obama's debut at a major league game. The six living Cardinals Hall of Famers -- Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst,Bruce Sutter and Ozzie Smith -- will also be on hand.
And Obama won't be the only president to make an appearance. All four living presidents -- George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter -- appear in a video that honors community service volunteers in a ceremony MLB is calling "All-Stars Among Us."
As for Obama, according to Major League Baseball, he'll be wearing a black glove specifically designed for him by Wilson. The glove includes "Obama #44" written in script and an American flag. After the first pitch, the glove will be authenticated by MLB and sent to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
And that broadcast booth appearance? Fox's Joe Buck says the president will make his cameo appearance in the bottom of the second inning. Buck promised no wild pitches about politics.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: President Obama holds up a Philadelphia Phillies jersey given to
him by Jimmy Rollins at the White House May 15, 2009, in Washington.
Obama welcomed Major League Baseball's 2008 World Champions to the
White House. Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images
The same secret weapon that rocketed "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" ahead on June 7 in the Sunday talk show ratings battle struck again last week, producing very similar results.
Yep, more tennis.
The ABC News show took the lead on July 5 when Stephanopoulos interviewed Vice President Joe Biden from Iraq, scoring 2.77 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
That same day, CBS News' "Face the Nation" had 2.43 million and "Fox News Sunday" trailed with 1.17 million. "Meet the Press with David Gregory" took the week off for NBC's broadcast of the Wimbledon's Men's Finals.
Filling in for "Face the Nation" moderator Bob Schieffer last week was CBS News analyst John Dickerson, who interviewed Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two senators.
ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos": Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and a round table with ABC's Donna Brazile,
Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, George Will and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.
Bloomberg's "Political Capital with Al Hunt": Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and
Bloomberg's Hans Nichols, Mike Tackett, Heidi Przybyla and former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber.
CBS' "Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer": Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and a round table with Kevin Merida and Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post.
CNN's "GPS with Fareed Zakaria": Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, at left.
CNN's "State of the Union with John King": Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius, Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.),
Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Rep. Patrick Murphy
(D-Penn.) and CNN's Mary Matalin.
"Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace": Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), John Cornyn (R-Texas)
and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and a round table with Fox News'
contributors Laura Ingraham, NPR's Mara Liasson and Juan Williams and the
Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol.
NBC's "Meet the Press with David Gregory": Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and a round table with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Democratic strategist Bob Shrum and Politico's Roger Simon.
These days, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is not in her New York chambers. She's not weighing cases or interrogating counsel or even writing opinions.
Instead, with hearings to start Monday in the historic, much-anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process, Sotomayor is holed up in a small office in the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building next to the White House.
A group of young aides and lawyers assigned by Team Obama poses mock questions based on research about each committee member's records. But mostly, reports CNN, Sotomayor is sitting quietly by herself, reading her back opinions, boning up on anything that might provoke a senator to raise a fuss.
"She's got to hit the books," said Thomas Goldstein, a D.C. appellate attorney. "They can ask you about any part of the law. And she's got to be ready for that."
In an earlier round of get-acquainted-sessions, Sotomayor met with 70 of the Senate's 100....
Remember all that talk last winter about the historic awfulness of the inherited economy and how urgently the new Obama administration needed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's economic stimulus bill to get through Congress and the presidentflew all the way out to Denver to sign the $787-billion bill because, well, because they didn't have an Air Force One photo shoot for New York that day?
And how it was absolutely, really, essentially important to start spending all that money ASAP so that it would create good, solid, strong, patriotic American jobs right here in America? And keep the jobless rate maybe somewhere around 8-8.5%?
Which seems really pretty good today now that it's already at 9.5% and predicted to exceed 10% for much of the next year, which takes us right up close to -- oh, oh, look out! -- the 2010 midterm elections.
In fact, back in April at one $3.4-billion spending ceremony for the media, Vice President Joe Biden, who's got a lot of private meetings to attend but was still assigned to drive the stimulus spending hard, said: "This is jobs -- jobs!" Creating or saving a gazillion-point-five jobs used to be the main goal.
Not anymore.
More change. That was April. This is July. And the spending sujet du jour has moved on to....
Philandering politicians Mark Sanford and John Ensign have much in common: conservative beliefs, dashed presidential ambitions -- and now screeds they likely wish they had whispered, not written.
Sanford, the South Carolina governor, attracted worldwide ridicule with his not-clandestine-enough visit to Argentina and the purple prose he e-mailed to his mistress, Maria (she of the curvy hips and "magnificent parts").
Today, the Las Vegas Sun posted a handwritten letter purportedly from Sen, Ensign to Cynthia Hampton, his family friend turned staffer turned mistress (whom he allegedly paid $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for him):
"I used you for my own pleasure.... Plain and simple, it was wrong; it was sin," the letter says. "God never intended for us to do this."
The letter is dated February 2008. The affair lasted until August, despite attempts by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to persuade his Nevada colleague to end things, Coburn's spokesman said. He did not address accusations that Coburn and others encouraged Ensign to give Cynthia and her husband, Doug, enough money to pay off their more than $1-million mortgage and leave Las Vegas.
Perhaps that's why Cynthia Hampton's husband wrote his own letter to Fox News, begging for "justice, help and restitution." When Ensign got word of it, he rushed back from to Las Vegas and announced the affair.
Today, Doug Hampton, a former top Ensign aide, apparently tired of the written word. He made all sorts of accusations against Ensign -- on television.
[Updated at 7:45 p.m.: "In response to today's television interview, Sen. Ensign said Doug Hampton was consistently inaccurate in his statements," said Tory Mazzola, Sen. John Ensign's spokesman.]
-- Ashley Powers
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Maybe you remember a large ruckus the other day when Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) expressed puzzlement at least and probably more like distaste over the emotional national reactions to the sudden death of pop icon Michael Jackson at 50.
Now a day after the huge L.A. musical memorial service that drew thousands and glued millions to their TV screens around the world, in case you missed his meaning last time, King has gone a bit further.
In an interview tonight on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, Republican King (in photo, right, above) says: "OK, he's a good singer, he's a good dancer. But why -- why is he getting all this coverage? Why has the nation stopped for Michael Jackson? That's why I said strip aside the psycho-babble. This man was a child molester."
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas)announced to rousing applause at the Staples Center Jackson service Tuesday that she would be introducing a House resolution calling Jackson a "great American," an icon and someone who would be "remembered forever and ever and ever."
Lee has but one co-sponsor on the resolution, whose political fate is up to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and thus uncertain. It's a prickly issue for her and the Democrats as much as they would like to hail the record-breaking musical accomplishments of a world-famous African American.
Debating such an issue in the summer of President Obama's eagerly sought healthcare reform would be a distraction and hand the GOP a publicity bonanza to unite its base and others over what is, in effect, nothing but a ceremonial piece of paper.
Pelosi could well decide it's not worth the effort and the resolution will be buried too. Only without celebrities and ceremony.
Even in Moscow, talking about nuclear weapons, the president was forced to address the Jackson service to break into the news cycle, calling Jackson a member of a long line of black entertainers who impacted American culture. "There are certain figures in our popular culture that just capture peoples' imagination," Obama said, "and in death they become even larger."
On Fox, meanwhile, King said he certainly had no regrets over his weekend statements. "I stand by everything I said, and there's absolutely nothing racist or racial in any of the words I used.”
He added: “I just think that people who are raising this issue are absolutely phony… it's wrong.”
King said what put him "over the edge" was that he'd spent the Fourth of July with firefighters, veterans and police and detected "such a resentment building up" over the nonstop public and media attention about the troubled singer's death.
O'Reilly pressed King about possibly waiting a week or two before saying such things. King said: "I would say an adult male who sleeps with young boys is a child molester.... If nothing else, he's molesting and abusing their psyche."
And he noted: "It was a real reflection on the culture of our country.... It can't be much more down than what Michael Jackson did with young boys, and yet we exulted that over the last 10 days in two weeks. It was wrong."
Then King added something that may strike a note with others: “I was saying what millions of Americans really felt." What do you feel?
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), looking hale and hearty after a recent hospitalization, was on C-SPAN this week describing his groggy arrival at the medical institution when someone noticed his leg jerking and asked if he had restless legs syndrome.
The obstreperous Waxman said he knew that such an ailment is yet another example of America's greedy pharmaceutical companies creating a new disease to market new medicines for Americans to buy and swallow and pump into themselves.
The phone-in program then took the next call from the Independent Line and Waxman was surprised to learn something he didn't know. Watch his reaction.
As The Ticket reported earlier, John F. Kennedy's secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara,died today at 93. He was a key architect of the disastrous U.S. military involvement in Vietnam who later admitted his mistakes.
In this C-SPAN archive video from 1995, McNamara discusses with Brian Lamb the role of the often-attacked media in that Southeast Asian conflict, specifically about whether the critical American press coverage caused the loss. It's worth a listen in light of subsequent events.
ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos: Vice President Joe Biden.
CBS’ Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria: David Miliband, British foreign minister; author Dambisa Moyo; author Jacqueline Novogratz.
CNN’s State of the Union with John King: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Mullen; Queen Noor of Jordan.
Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace: Mullen; Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and John Boehner (R-Ohio).
NBC’s Meet the Press: Pre-empted by coverage of Wimbledon tennis.
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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