Perhaps the most improbable pairing to emerge so far in the vice presidential guessing game -- the bizarre prospect floated in recent days that Barack Obama would tap former Bush administration Cabinet member Ann Veneman as his running mate -- apparently can be put out to a well-deserved pasture.
The Fresno Bee -- dutifully following up on a recent, and utterly hard-to-fathom, report that Veneman (raised in nearby Modesto) was a possibility for the second spot on Obama's ticket -- has thrown cold water on a matchup that never was going to happen anyway.
Michael Doyleblogs for the Bee that a spokesman for UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency Veneman has headed since 2005, informed him that she "has not been contacted by the [Obama] campaign and is solely focused on her current travels."
Veneman was in Africa when Politico.com posted a story Friday evening reporting that, according to two anonymous Democrats, Obama's veep vetters had bandied her name about on Capitol Hill.
The piece insisted that Veneman "has a biography that could be suited to Obama's unifying message. A Republican raised on a California peach farm, she rose to become the nation’s first female agriculture secretary. In 2002 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was treated successfully."
A brief buzz resulted -- mainly the sound of progressives gnashing their teeth.
The Nation, for instance, termed Veneman a "uniquely awful choice" for Obama. Among the most basic problems, the magazine noted, was that the onetime corporate lawyer "was known to organized labor as one the most militant advocates for free trade in a militantly pro-free trade Bush administration."
There also is the small matter of the lack of any discernible asset Veneman would have offered to allay concerns some have about Obama's readiness for the White House.
To return to reality, the hardening consensus among pundits as Obama's choice nears is that it will be one of these three (listed alphabetically): Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, or Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.
New job numbers out today evidence more pain -- some of it to be felt around here -- with companies cutting 62,000 payroll slots in June, the sixth consecutive month the economy has shed jobs. The cuts were slightly more than the 60,000 economists had expected, and the unemployment rate held steady at 5.5 %.
The Labor Department announcement elicited dueling statements from John McCain and Barack Obama, pasted in full after the jump. But in a nutshell, McCain says the federal government must "enact policies to create jobs today. To get our economy back on track, we must enact a jobs-first economic plan that supports job creation, provide immediate tax relief for families, enact a plan to help those facing foreclosure, lower health care costs, invest in innovation, move toward strategic energy independence and open more foreign markets to our goods."
Obama cited the 438,000 jobs lost this year and similarly called for immediate action, but a different prescription: "I'm calling on Congress and the President to enact real, immediate relief with energy rebates for working families this summer, a fund to help families avoid foreclosure, extended benefits for the long-term jobless, and assistance to states that have been hard-hit by the economic downturn."
McCain is in Mexico today, and apparently will be unveiling a new "Jobs First" agenda in Denver on Monday, an ironic confluence the Democrats have been working hard to spotlight,including an email from the Democratic National Committee's Brad Woodhouse to reporters suggesting "maybe for his own sake [McCain] should stop going to places like Michigan and telling folks their jobs aren't coming back while going to Mexico and promoting Jobs First - just a thought."
Well, we'll admit it, we're suckers for polls, and a recent one that our cousins at The Swamp tipped us to is interesting -- showing that Barack Obama is tapping a potentially rich vein in trying to tie John McCain to George Bush.
The Gallup/USA Today poll found that 68% of voters said they were concerned when asked whether they thought McCain would pursue "policies that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued." Of those polled, 49% said they were "very concerned."
As the poll analysis points out: "It is clearly a delicate balancing act for McCain, as Bush remains relatively popular with the Republican base. While only 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing as president, a majority of Republicans (60%) still do. Bush's approval rating among current McCain supporters is slightly lower, at 55%."
Dive deeper into the poll and something else interesting emerges -- people aren't all that keen on change, either. Some 49% said they were concerned when asked whether "Obama would go too far in changing the policies that George W. Bush pursued." Of those polled, 30% said they were "very concerned."
So the advantage for the moment goes to change -- in moderation. Which might help explain Obama's embrace Tuesday of the concept behind the Bush administration's faith-based initiative program.
Maybe you remember his terrified picture here, when he was seized by U.S. federal agents in 2000 to be returned to Cuba as an illegal immigrant during the Clinton administration.
Elian was a Cuban refugee who made the perilous crossing from his homeland to the United States, losing his mother to the ocean in the process.
Attorney General Janet Reno decided in the spring of 2000 that the six-year-old boy must be returned to Cuba and his father.
And with that, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore kissed Florida goodbye in that fall's election, which was decided by -- do you remember how many? -- 537 votes.
Well, Elian -- or his cause -- is back in the news this weekend. As Democratic presidential nominee-to-be Barack Obama spoke to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami, dozens of Elian protesters demonstrated nearby.
Obama foreign policy adviser Greg Craig represented Elian's father in the custody dispute that returned the child to the communist island. Eric Holder, a member of Obama's vice-presidential selection team, was deputy U.S. attorney general in Bill Clinton's administration when government agents seized Elian from his relatives' home in Miami's Little Havana.
Our colleague Mark Silva over at the Swamp has the latest chapter in the moving story that still sends shivers of shame down some American spines.
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
Having Hillary Clinton get behind his presidential candidacy may have been the easy part for Barack Obama, as he now moves to both buttress his campaign's brainpower and unite the notoriously fractious Democratic Party.
The two tasks aren't necessarily complementary, as Obama discovered Tuesday when labor leaders and others expressed surprise and chagrin over his choice of Jason Furman as his chief economic advisor.
For the presumptive presidential nominee, Furman's selection is part of a process of tapping into heavyweights who weren't part of his initial band of loyalists but whose talents he can now call upon. Furman, 37, served a similar advisory role for the party's 2004 White House nominee, Sen. John Kerry, and has worked closely in recent years with Robert Rubin, the guiding force behind President Bill Clinton's economic agenda.
There's the rub, for the union officials and some liberal activists.
As The Times' Tom Hamburger reports, criticism of Furman includes the charge that, as a promoter of the benefits of economic globization, he overlooks the trend's negative effects.
Marco Trbovich, a top aide to the head of the Steelworkers Union, told Hamburger: "We are very much taken aback that Furman has been put at the head of this team. ... He is a very bright fellow but he is an unalloyed cheerleader for the trade policies that have been very destructive to manufacturing jobs in this country."
Just what the presidential candidates have been waiting for: Cuba's Fidel Castro is weighing in on the campaign.
The 81-year-old leader of the Cuban revolution may have given up his position as the country's president, but he writes regularly for the Communist Party newspaper, Granma -- and in a column in Monday's edition ...
A loyal Ticket reader named Christopher points out a humorous little sidelight to the rowdy political charges of recent days in the Democratic race for president.
As the voting nears in Pennsylvania and Indiana, the contest is rapidly coming down to which Ivy League-educated millionaire Democratic senator with seven-figure homes and around-the-clock Secret Service care can talk the most sincerely about their genuine concern for working people and look the most like a regular working Joe before the next Midwestern primaries.
It could be close. Barack Obama has gone bowling, though he was horrible at it. Hillary Clinton has talked about shooting a duck once.
Clinton was in Crown Point, Ind., over the weekend doing one of those staged photo ops that every campaign loves because....
Much as Desi Arnaz often demanded of Lucille Ball on their famed sitcom, Barack Obama has some 'splainin to do.
Relative quiet on the political news front became anything but as word spread Friday of an item on the Huffington Post concerning comments Obama made at a private fundraiser Sunday in San Francisco.
Blogger Mayhill Fowler was there with her tape recorder and, after setting up the payoff to her item with her own observations about Pennsylvania, related this quote from Obama as he sought to give his Bay Area crowd some perspective about a different part of the country:
"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Here's the entire post, which includes audio of Obama's mini-spiel. And that's the part that resonated -- and how.
Hillary Clinton campaign aides sought to stir up interest in it -- and then pounced when reports it started to seep into the mass media, clearly seeing the potential contretemps as ...
Barack Obama's top economic advisor has taken a lower profile in recent weeks following a furor over a conversation he had with Canadian officials in Chicago over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
But there is no question that Austan Goolsbee remains deeply involved with the Democratic presidential candidate, based on an e-mail sent out by Obama's campaign today.
The e-mail was a copy of the Illinois senator's remarks, as prepared for delivery, for a town hall meeting in Gary, Ind., that focused on the economy. Near the end was an accidental cut-and-paste of an earlier internal campaign message when a draft of the speech was being prepared.
In that message, Goolsbee was listed first among a lengthy list of Obama aides and advisors.
As Obama settled in for his campaign appearance at a site just 30 minutes from his house in Chicago, Obama confessed that he was thinking about busting out.
"This is the closest I've been to home in five days," he told his audience at a high school. "I was thinking about making a break for it."
Showing his local acumen, he mentioned the South Shore Line train that would have him home in less than an hour. "But we've got some work to do right here," Obama said, returning his focus to Indiana's May 6 primary -- a contest shaping up as an especially crucial faceoff between him and Hillary Clinton.
-- John McCormick
John McCormick writes for the Swamp of the Chicago Tribune's Washington bureau.
Mark Penn, a top strategist and mouthpiece for Hillary Clinton, makes his real money as a wheeler-dealer for Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, the international PR and crisis-management firm. And apparently while wearing that better-paying hat Penn found himself way off the Clinton message Monday as he talked with the Colombian ambassador about a bilateral free-trade agreement that Clinton opposes.
Remember, the Clinton campaign milked reports of conversations between one of Barack Obama's advisors and Canadian officials in the run-up to the Ohio primary, where trade issues are local issues. The issue then was more pointed -- did the Obama advisor tell the Canadians that the candidate's opposition to NAFTA was all smoke, little flame? -- and it helped Clinton stave off an Obama rally in Ohio.
At this point no one knows what Penn told the ambassador -- the lobbying firm has a contract with Colombia to represent it before Congress on the trade deal, the Wall Street Journal reports. The campaign insists that Penn wasn't at the meeting as an advisor to Clinton, who has said she opposes any more free trade agreements until national trade policy establishes protections for workers and other safeguards (and as a sitting U.S. senator, she presumably will have to take a formal position on the measure).
At a deeper level, Penn's dual roles are politically problematic because they point up one of the recurring complaints about how Washington works -- the revolving door between the regulators and the regulated, and between those who lobby and those who govern.
One has to assume that a Clinton presidency would mean a nicely appointed West Wing office for Penn if he wanted it, so what we have here is less a revolving door than a single room with two desks. Penn is advising a client about a trade agreement it wants; Penn is bending the ear of a presidential contender who doesn't want the trade agreement. Beyond being an invitation to skepticism, that conflict plays into Obama's theme that Clinton is too cozy with the D.C. establishment to effect change.
And more broadly, it points up that "experience" sometimes comes with baggage.
The AFL-CIO is planning to spend $53 million on the 2008 presidential campaign, and it won't be for John McCain. In fact, the labor group launched a website today devoted to the "truth" about McCain, including a briefing book on its characterization of his stances on labor and working-class issues.
A kitty that big should be a formidable presence in a national political campaign. But unions' sway with their members isn't what it once was. And while union backing, almost always for Democratic candidates, gives access to phone banks, precinct walkers and other nuts-and-bolts aspects of campaigning, the AFL-CIO's help in the last couple of presidential cycles hasn't delivered a win.
Four years ago, the AFL-CIO ponied up $44 million to back John Kerry over George Bush, and in 2000 spent $41 million trying to get Al Gore elected. Already in this cycle, Barack Obama had the backing of the Culinary Arts Workers union, Nevada's largest, and still lost there to Hillary Clinton. And the Teamsters endorsement didn't help him much in Ohio, either.
Union folks can make the argument that labor spending on political campaigns is dwarfed by spending from business interests. But still, when you're spending the equivalent of a CEO's annual earnings on a presidential campaign, you really ought to be claiming more success.
So file this under the "couldn't hurt" column, but don't look for it to be make-or-break. And the big issue looming on the horizon is, if Obama wins the nomination, what does he do about the inevitable ad spending on his behalf by the kinds of "special interests" against which he rails so often?
Some people think the ongoing struggle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is about, well, Democratic presidential politics. Silly them!
The campaign is also a titanic battle among unions, as newly filed financial figures revealed today to the expert eyes of The Times' Dan Morain.
The American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees spent $1 million on ads supporting Clinton in Texas and Ohio recently. The money went through American Leadership Project, a newly formed organization...
This is NOT the way Barack Obama's campaign wanted the final hours before Tuesday's big votes to play out, at least in Ohio.
A "he-said, he-said" dispute that had been somewhat under the radar became a dominant news story after the Associated Press obtained a memo in which an official at Canada's consulate in Chicago asserts that an Obama advisor, during a recent meeting, basically told the Canadians that the candidate has been blowing smoke in trashing NAFTA.
The Obama counselor, University of Chicago economics professor Austan Goolsbee, hotly denies the summary of his meeting that was penned by Joseph DeMora, saying of the memo's key passage: "That's this guy's language. He's not quoting me."
Regardless, it's hard to see how this flap gives Obama much chance to reverse what the most recent polling indicates is a discernible shift in Hillary Clinton's direction in Ohio (see here and here).
Here's what DeMora wrote that is causing the furor:
"Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."
Goolsbee insists DeMora put words in his mouth, telling the AP: "This thing about 'it's more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,' I certainly did not use that phrase in any way."
[UPDATE -- The Canadian Embassy in Washington just issued the following statement: "The Canadian Embassy and our Consulates General regularly contact those involved in all of the Presidential campaigns and, periodically, report on these contacts to interested officials. In the recent report produced by the Consulate General in Chicago, there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA. We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect.]
The Clinton campaign, which had been trying to attract more attention ...
Would-be-president Mitt Romney starts every morning with a bowl of granola with oats, honey, sesame seeds and almonds. Every other morning he jogs three miles. "And then at the end of the day," Romney tells Jay Leno on tonight's "Tonight Show" on NBC, "just to really relax, I take off a dark suit like this and put on a light one."
(Laughter)
Fresh off his Michigan GOP primary victory and on the eve of the South Carolina Republican primary and the Nevada caucuses, Romney was making fun of his own stiff image. The other day on the stump Romney asked his wife Ann to muss up his famously-perfect hair. But she wouldn't.
As usual, Leno asks a wide range of topical questions. Romney said his confrontation with an AP reporter Thursday was "a normal thing. These guys have a responsibility to be adversarial, and, you know, we don't treat them real well. The guys that follow us in the presidential race come in a whole group. We put them ...
Perhaps Bill Clinton himself will provide the coda to the flap he sparked this week when, during a speech for his wife in Iowa, he asserted that he opposed the Iraq war "from the beginning."
Perhaps he'll remind us it all depends on what the definition of "from the beginning" is.
As it is, Hillary Clinton's campaign has seen precious attention focused more on something her husband said instead of on her own campaign's message.
The former president made his comment Tuesday, and it quickly caused headaches for Camp Clinton. The initial Associated Press story said he was "showing inconsistency on an issue that has dogged his wife." The New York Times article termed the statement "more absolute than his comments before the invasion in March 2003." The Washington Post wrote that Clinton was "glossing over the more nuanced views of the war he has expressed over time."
In case anyone missed the point, the Post today reported that, according to an ex-aide to Condoleezza Rice, Clinton "was privately briefed by top White House officials about war planning in 2003 and that he told them he supported the invasion."
The New York Post, in the best tradition of tabloids, cut to the chase with this headline on its story today: BILL'S BULL ON IRAQ TRIGGERS RIDICULE.
The best -- and broadest -- perspective came from the AP's Ron Fournier, who used the remark about the Iraq war to reflect upon the "Good Bill" and the "Bad Bill."
Wrote Fournier: "As only he can do, Bill Clinton packed campaign venues across eastern Iowa and awed Democratic voters with a compelling case for his wife's candidacy. He was unscripted, in-depth and generous.
When Bill was the family politician seeking votes, Hillary was a key part of the package. We've gotten an obvious reminder now of how true the reverse is.
"A full two-thirds of respondents to a new Marist/WNBC poll said they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a 9-point increase from fall 2006. Harris' 'Alienation Index' has also risen slightly since last year, as more Americans told pollsters this month that they feel the nation's leaders don't care about them and are out of touch with the country at large.
"Considering such widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo, it's no wonder 58 percent of registered voters responding to a new Gallup/USA Today poll said the outcome of the 2008 presidential race matters more to them than previous elections. For many months the conventional wisdom had placed the blame for the public's angst squarely on President Bush and the Iraq war. But recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly worried about traditional bread-and-butter issues, too."
And the butterhas been melting. So it's a "pox on both their houses" mood out there, though other polls show that more people think the Democrats are better suited to straighten the mess out than the Republicans. Those sentiments won't mean much in the primaries and caucuses, but they will come next November. And of course anything can happen between now and then to change the current mood.
But you have to wonder what might have happened had the national elections been this week instead of next year, and how many babies would have gone out with the bathwater.
There's an interesting mention here about John Edwards picking up another brick to hurl at frontrunner Hillary Clinton. He's already gone after her on her vote to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, and her position on ending the Iraq war.
The new issue is a trade agreement with Peru, which Edwards opposes in keeping with his longstanding opposition to NAFTA -- a linchpin of the Bill Clinton administration and an issue that has been opposed by organized labor.
But the interesting line in the ABC Political Radar blog is this one: "Edwards challenge of Clinton on Peru is the latest effort to make the Democratic frontrunner appear as if she considers herself above the issues."
It's an interesting strategy, but it's unclear whether it will have legs. Clinton has been trying to ignore the competition for the Democratic nomination, and the last thing she wants to do is elevate one of the other campaigns by engaging in direct give-and-take on specific issues. But as a candidate you can only coast so long on name recognition and imprecise language.
The official transcript from MSNBC of Tuesday's debate among the Republican presidential candidates does, indeed, make it official: The men vying to keep the White House in GOP hands appear loath to utter the current occupant's name.
The panel of questioners made direct mention of President Bush (or the "Bush administration") seven times. The forum focused on the economy, which Bush aggressively influenced through a series of tax cuts. And the debate included an extended discussion of the war in Iraq, the defining issue of his presidency.
Yet in their responses, Bush's name did not escape the lips of any of the candidates with even a ghost of a chance of capturing the Republican nomination. And this omission occurred over two hours--longer than the usual 90-minute face-offs.
In a particularly telling sign of the degree to which the president was treated as a nonentity, the first time a candidate invoked his surname, it referred to his father! Sam Brownback, in talking about trade policy, noted that he had worked on that subject during the 1989-93 presidency of George H.W. Bush.
Brownback went on to use the term "Bush administration"--meaning the one in office--twice when answering questions about Iraq. He praised it on military matters; criticized it over efforts to create a cohesive Iraqi government.
Tom Tancredo made a negative reference to "the Bush administration" while conversing about trade.
And Ron Paul broached the president's name sarcastically, saying, "Why don’t we run on George Bush’s foreign policy, of a humble foreign policy and no nation-building." Those were phrases the then-Texas governor frequently used to describe his views during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Paul's comment was the last time the word "Bush" was heard on the stage in Michigan. It causes one to wonder what sort of speaking slot the nominee-to-be will set aside for the actual president at next summer's Republican National Convention.
This is another in a continuing series of examinations of the positions of candidates for president, using their own words from their websites. Previously, we published a statement by Rep. Ron Paul. Today, we include some statements from the website of Rep. Duncan Hunter.
Keeping American Industry and Jobs in the U.S.
“American workers are the most productive and innovative labor force in the world. Unfortunately, they are asked to compete in an unfair environment against other workers who make only a fraction of a living wage and are employed by companies that face few, if any, responsibilities to the environment or the long-term prospects of their employees.
"Our domestic manufacturers are forced to compete against foreign companies that benefit from their country’s currency and regulatory regimes. Ominously, China is cheating on trade and using billions of American trade dollars to build ships, planes and missiles at an alarming rate while, at the same time, taking millions of American jobs. I will reverse this “one-way street” with a new policy of fair trade for the American worker."
Providing for Border Enforcement
"The cornerstone of our responsibilities as elected officials is to defend and protect the American people. This was reinforced with the attacks of September 11th, which immediately made border security a national security issue. Protecting our homeland begins at our nation’s borders and it is imperative that our border enforcement agencies be provided with the necessary resources to ensure that we know both who and what are entering the country.
"I believe in providing Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement corps with sufficient strength to secure our borders and providing for interior enforcement throughout the country because it is imperative in our fight to protect Americans. To not do so can only be characterized as irresponsible.
“When you discover an effective deterrent to crime, you use it. I know fencing helps secure our nation’s borders because criminal activity in every statistical category has been eliminated or decreased since we built the border fence in San Diego County.
"What was once a porous border, susceptible to illegal aliens, drug trafficking and terrorism, is now the standard mode in preventing drug smugglers from bringing narcotics into our neighborhoods and allowing border enforcement personnel to reinforce areas of greater need. These results led me to write the Secure Fence Act, extending the San Diego fence 854 miles across California, Arizona...
This should pay for a lot of phone banks and door-hangers. The AFL-CIO announced Friday that it would spend a record $53 million in the 2008 election cycle -- all of it for grassroots mobilization. And it plans to mobilize an army of 200,000 union volunteers for precinct-walking and other get out the vote efforts. Overall, it expects to spend $200 million on the campaign.
The labor group said it intends to target Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin -- core regions of the country's traditional manufacturing base.
That's a lot of effort. But the problem the labor movement has faced in recent years is a decrease in membership and a failure by its endorsed candidates to win trhe White House in 2000 and 2004. But labor victories and Democratic gains in the 2006 elections could provide a foundation for the 2008 cycle.
We Googled this and found that, depending on the citation, 70%, 80%, 85% or 90% of success in life is simply a matter of showing up (with Woody Allen given as the source for several of the different figures).
Regardless, it's a formula that worked for Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee.
The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, in a nod to the estimated third of its roughly 700,000 members who are Republicans, took the unusual step Thursday of making dual labor endorsements in the presidential race. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton received the union's support. In the GOP race, Huckabee won its blessing for a pretty simple reason: he was the only Republican who actively sought it.
Union officials had said the organization would only consider bestowing its imprimatur upon candidates who vied for it through personal appearances earlier this week at a conference in Orlando. Among the GOP contenders, Huckabee was the sole attendee.
Union President Tom Buffenbarger (hard to imagine a better surname for a labor chieftain) said the former Arkansas governor "was the only Republican candidate with the guts to meet with our members and the only one willing ...
We can only guess how many of you have been desperately waiting for political advice from Fidel Castro, el supremo Cuban leader despite those nagging intestinal problems that have kept him out of sight for a year. And now, finally, we have it.
Direct from his hospital suite the bearded dictator has written an editorial in the Communist Party newspaper Granma that we bet did not receive many changes by editors fearing prison.
Anyway, the 81-year-old Castro decreed that a 2008 U.S. presidential ticket pairing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would be "invincible." Presumably he means in the United States because they don't allow free elections in Cuba.
Of course, this could be a trick, part of a Communist plot. Maybe the wily Castro realizes that such a suggestion by a foreigner like him could actually be the kiss of death if such a ticket came out of the Democrats' Denver convention a year from now. Imagine the headlines: "Dems do as Castro says, name Hillary and Barack." Or "Castro says si to Dem ticket." He could even come to Denver disguised as Michael Moore and give one of his three-hour orations to the assembled delegates.
But maybe, Castro actually favors Ron Paul, the Republican isolationist who theoretically would care less about a tropical island 90 miles away. And by ignoring Paul like everyone else in the Northern Hemisphere except a small band of unemployed web cruisers who believe in voluminous free expression, this is Castro's way of helping to boost the Texas congressman's poll numbers out of the single digit.
The two American candidates Castro favors actually disagree on U.S. policy toward Cuba. As reported here recently, after speaking out on unilaterally bombing U.S. ally Pakistan, Obama wrote an op-ed in the Miami Herald advocating a fresh approach to Cuban policy as it nears the end of the Castro era.
Obama says he would lift Bush administration restrictions on visits to Cuba by relatives and...
Barack Obama, who's admitted in recent interviews that he doesn't have much time to make an impression as a potential president, made another bold foreign policy proposal today. He suggested, in a Miami Herald op-ed piece, that the U.S. must change its policies toward Cuba and began easing restrictions.
The proposal, which, not surprisingly, drew immediate fire from his chief Democratic primary opponent, calls for easing the toughened 2004 Bush administration restrictions on visits to Cuba by American Cubans and remitting money back to families there. The president claimed at the time the funds strengthened the Fidel Castro regime.
Obama says this country needs a fresh approach to Cuba as it nears a post-Castro era that exposes Cubans to American freedoms and prosperity. An Obama administration would lift the sanctions. "Cuban American connections to family in Cuba," Obama writes, "are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island."
"I will use aggressive and principled diplomacy to send an important message," he adds. "If a post-Fidel government begins opening Cuba to democratic change, the United States [the president working with Congress] is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades."
The article's theme is expected to be a major part of Obama's speech in Miami on...
Hidden deep within the transcript of the other night's Democratic debate before some 15,000 union members in Chicago's Soldier Field was yet another little-noticed and embarrassing error by Barack Obama.
His party opponents, especially frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, have been on his case for the last couple of weeks, suggesting he is too naive and inexperienced to become commander in chief after a state legislative job and barely two years in the U.S. Senate. Obama in one debate said he would indeed meet with some of the world's dictators in his first year as president without preconditions as part of his "new page" diplomacy.
Then in a major foreign policy speech designed to enhance his credibility as a potential leader he suggested he might unilaterally bomb the U.S. ally and nuclear power Pakistan if that country's president was insufficently on the program about chasing Al Qaeda leaders. Then Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons, which Clinton suggested presidents should never do.
In the Chicago gathering before an Obama-friendly hometown crowd, the subject turned to trade in general and the North American Free Trade Agreement in particular, which bothers union members fearing job losses. Obama said upon becoming president, "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."
Problem is, as some Harvard graduates might know, our next-door neighbor Canada doesn't have a president. For more than 140 years now it has had a parliamentary system and ...
In Monty Python's "Life of Brian," those spectators arriving late for the Sermon on the Mount find themselves too far away to understand the distant speaker. "What did he say?" one asks. "He said," a neighbor responds, "'The Greeks shall inherit the earth.'"
One wonders what George Washington and Abraham Lincoln really sounded like. Not until around 1900, when this newfangled recording equipment was invented, does society begin to capture the voices of its famous people, mainly politicians--Teddy Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley. As the microphone magnified the audience, however, it also magnified the dangers.
Even today politicians, who are fully accustomed to having microphones shoved into their faces constantly, sometimes forget those things are always listening. Remember George W. Bush sharing an epithet with Dick Cheney about a certain reporter in the crowd? The CNN announcer going to the ladies room while her portable microphone was still on?
Well, yesterday at the NAACP forum in Detroit, microphones captured a cryptic exchange between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. The forum was actually over. Ex-Senator Mike Gravel had just gone on denouncing Bill Clinton's free trade policies. Edwards walked over to shake Clinton's hand. She forgot about her lapel mike. It was still on and transmitted the following...
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Don Frederick has served as an editor helping guide coverage of every presidential election since 1984. He is a third-generation Washingtonian, so watching the political world comes naturally to him.
A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
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.
A graduate of Northwestern University, he was a reporter for newspapers in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas before joining the (now-defunct) Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1983. Hired by The Times in 1989, he has worked in its Washington bureau since 1996 — a perch providing him a close-up view of the impeachment of President Clinton, the government's response to 9/11 and the day-to-day wrangling of the two major parties.
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.
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