President | The New York Observer

The Schumer Option: A Short-Term Winner

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 09:34:00 -0400

We still don’t know for sure what the final Senate health care plan will look like, but the most likely resolution to one of the stickiest issues has been obvious since early May. That’s when Chuck Schumer outlined his own compromise vision for an optional government-run insurance package. His proposal, a “level playing field” public option that would be subject to the same rules that govern private insurance plans, was vintage Schumer, reflecting his...

Change or Bust: In Prime Time, Obama Makes Things Stark

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:11:00 -0400

Near the top of his latest primetime news conference, President Obama acknowledged that “Congress is still working through a few key issues” as it seeks to produce a unified health care plan. That meant that there wasn’t any specific proposal for Obama to point to and rally support for. We still don’t know how whatever plan emerges will fund expanded access and we still don’t know whether it will include a public option—and Obama...

Obama's Speech, as Seen From The Bridges Bar at the Hilton

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:55:00 -0400

Not all the attendees of the NAACP's national conference, held at the Hilton Hotel in midtown this week, got into the third floor ballroom to hear President Barack Obama's highly anticipated speech last night. By the northeast entrance of the Hilton's lobby, across from a sign directing participants of the Korea Global Healthcare Conference to the hotel's second floor, a crowd gathered in front of a flat screen television sponsored by AT&T and promoting NAACP Webcast.com ("Text,...

Obama's Grim Choice on the Public Option

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:22:00 -0400

A moment of choosing is fast approaching for Barack Obama and his party’s congressional leaders: to sacrifice the public option that the Democratic base holds so dear, or to stick with it, damn the consequences. Their decision looms as the difference between (almost) sure-thing passage of a compromise health care plan and an ugly, protracted legislative fight that could end up sinking all hopes of meaningful health care reform and severely wounding Obama. But...

What Is Jeff Sessions' Agenda?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 06:56:00 -0400

How many candidates for Congress—Democratic and Republican—have you heard loudly insist that they don’t believe in party labels, just in doing the right thing? And how many of them, once elected, end up voting with their party pretty much all the time? It’s an absurd dance. Voters like hearing about “independence” and “bipartisanship,” so candidates indulge them, only to take office and immediately morph into the party-line loyalists they just spent a year swearing...

Obama's Dusk, Obama's Morning

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:43:00 -0400

High unemployment is the domestic equivalent of an unpopular war--an overpowering drain on presidential popularity that can’t be countered with policy achievements in other areas, personal charm, or any other conventional political weapon. Barack Obama may soon offer the latest affirmation of this. A few weeks ago came news that the unemployment rate for June had climbed to 9.5 percent—a slight uptick that silenced wishful suggestions that the economy had bottomed out and that...

Palin's Exit Prompts Really Bad Punditry About Palin's Future

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:47:00 -0400

Sarah Palin is a living, breathing Rorschach test. It doesn’t really matter what she says or does: her fans and critics will see whatever they want to see. So when she suddenly quit as Alaska’s governor on Friday, the analyses about what it all meant were decisive, predictable and mostly wrong. The critics, when they weren’t speculating that a massive scandal would soon be unearthed to explain Palin’s hasty exit, proclaimed Palin’s move an...

Obama Stays With Engagement, at a Cost To Be Determined

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:17:00 -0400

The White House made clear on Sunday that Barack Obama will proceed with his push for diplomatic engagement with Iran, no matter the outcome of the current upheaval in the Islamic Republic. Appearing on several Sunday morning talk shows, Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, and David Axelrod, one of the president’s top advisers, stressed the same basic theme: that this month’s election shouldn’t dissuade the U.S. from trying to resolve the...

Last Southern Candidate Standing

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:20:00 -0400

Besides Andre Bauer, the South Carolina lieutenant governor who may soon luck into his state’s top job, the biggest beneficiary of Mark Sanford’s sudden fall from grace could actually be the governor of Mississippi. That would be 61-year-old Haley Barbour, who chaired the Republican National Committee in the mid-1990s and who is plainly interested in seeking the presidency in 2012—which explains why, as news of the Sanford scandal spread yesterday, Barbour was in New Hampshire...

The Last Thing the Iranian Reformers Need

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:55:00 -0400

It’s not a stretch for Americans to look at the scenes of mass protest in Iran and think back to 1989, when popular uprisings toppled one Soviet-backed regime after another in Eastern Europe. That mental association is one that Barack Obama’s critics have seized upon, arguing that the same presidential bully pulpit that hastened the liberation of those nations from Moscow 20 years ago should now be used to spur on the women, men...

As Tehran Roils, Obama Refuses to Pander

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:26:00 -0400

Rudy Giuliani used to like to tell the story about how, at the height of the panic and chaos of 9/11, he supposedly turned to Bernie Kerik, his then-police commissioner, and exclaimed: “Thank God George Bush is our president!” This was back when memories of the disputed 2000 election were still fresh, so the sentiment that Giuliani, who typically mentioned the anecdote to Republican crowds, was really conveying was more like: “Thank God Al Gore...

The New Teflon President

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:00:00 -0400

Flummoxed by Ronald Reagan’s enduring popularity in the face of a string of unsettling foreign and domestic developments, Pat Schroeder, then a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado, took to the House floor in 1983 and said of the first-term president: “He has been perfecting the Teflon-coated presidency: He sees to it that nothing sticks to him.” Her comment was meant to be disparaging, but in coining the term “Teflon president,” Schroeder actually identified a significant phenomenon...

How to Invent Facts About the Iranian Election

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:01:00 -0400

Even when the evidence for something is overwhelmingly compelling, a small but noisy chunk of society will still resist it. The debate over evolution is an example of this. So is the present discussion of the Iranian election results. The clear consensus in the West is that the fix was in—that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s supposed re-election landslide is a sham sloppily cooked up by the Islamic Republic’s conservative, change-resistant clerical elites. This isn’t simply because most...

Time to Yank the A.M.A.'s License

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:30:00 -0400

Campaigning to build the widest possible consensus for reform of the nation’s health care system, Barack Obama told the delegates of the American Medical Association that he wants their support, too. Persuasive and always polite, the president did not mention the embarrassing truth about his hosts—namely, that the A.M.A. has undermined universal care with mindless zeal for more than 70 years. The real question is not what the A.M.A. will support or whether the...

Why the Iranian Election Disaster Is Really Bad for Obama

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:40:00 -0400

The anti-Iran hawks will have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a ranting, Holocaust-denying political villain from central casting, for four more...

Clinton's Paterson Video

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:47:00 -0400

Here's that birthday message from Bill Clinton to David...

Can Iran, and Obama, Break the Cycle of Idiocy?

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:00:00 -0400

It’s often noted that the most hawkish elements in squabbling countries unwittingly enable and support each other. The stand-off between the United States and Iran illustrates this perfectly. Tensions between the countries date back decades, of course, beginning with the U.S.-instigated overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq and his democratically elected government in 1953 and escalating with the Iranian siege of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979. But it is only in the last few...

Obama Redefines the Debate for New York's Israel Boosters

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:59:00 -0400

Barack Obama is changing what it means to be a pro-Israel politician in America. That much is obvious from the unusually thoughtful, nuanced and varied reactions by officials in New York—the world capital of Israel-boosterism—to his criticisms of the Netanyahu government’s settlement policies. “I think Obama feels that this type of shock therapy will have an effect on Netanyahu and also cause some American Jews to rally to his side,” said Representative Pete King, a staunchly...

Who's Afraid of Public Insurance?

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:07:00 -0400

Within the coming weeks, Americans will begin to consider critical issues concerning the future of health care for themselves and their children, including universal coverage, taxation of benefits, computerized records and the controlling of costs. But before the debate commences in Congress and the media, big insurance and pharmaceutical companies are lobbying frantically (and spending millions of dollars) to foreclose the possibility of the most promising aspect of health care reform: a public insurance...

Howard Dean Reflects on Double-Endorsing, Obama, Florida, Facebook

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:36:00 -0400

At an endorsement ceremony for City Council candidate Josh Skaller in Park Slope this morning, former presidential front-runner Howard Dean admitted he got himself into a little bit of trouble in the Democratic primary in the 39th District. After a rousing introduction and brief speeches by Dean and Skaller, the first question was, surprisingly, about Skaller’s opponent in the race, Brad Lander. It seemed that Dean had endorsed one too many candidates. “Well, yes, thank you,...

The End of the Terry McAuliffe Experiment

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:46:00 -0400

Terry McAuliffe, the unflappably cheery Clinton family confidante, became such a favorite of the Washington press corps last year that they took to referring to him good-naturedly by his nickname, “The Macker.” After the election, the former D.N.C. chairman took his media celebrity, if you can call it that, and set out to exchange it for the governorship of Virginia, where he’s lived for the past two decades or so. But Virginians have apparently been resistant...

Gillibrand Consolidates, Maloney Denies That Biden Asked Her to Desist

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 11:52:00 -0400

As part of her continuing effort to become primary-proof, Kirsten Gillibrand announced on the steps of City Hall today the support of two more Democratic members of Congress, Ed Towns and Nydia Velazquez. "I'm extremely grateful," said Gillibrand, as she stood flanked by the two representatives in front of four reporters and one television camera. She called Towns a leader in the House and said that Velazquez introduced her to Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia...

Clinton on 'This Week': Like 2008 Never Happened

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:22:00 -0400

Exactly one year to the day after she formally ended her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton appeared on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday on behalf of the man who beat her. Clinton, in her new role as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, presented the administration’s perspective on an array of international hot potatoes, from North Korea’s resurgent nuclear program to Israel’s reluctance to curtail its West Bank settlement program. Unintentionally, though, her performance served as a reminder...

Domestic Terrorism, by Any Standard

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:45:00 -0400

If right-wing broadcasters like Bill O’Reilly don’t want to be blamed when someone murders a person they have repeatedly demonized—as in the case of George Tiller, the doctor shot dead in his Wichita, Kans., church last Sunday by an anti-abortion zealot—then they ought to moderate their rhetoric. No doubt they will choose their words more carefully for a while, as Mr. O’Reilly did in the immediate aftermath of the Tiller killing—and they will whine...

A Council Candidate Who Knows It's 'Hard to B.S.' Sonia Sotomayor

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:09:00 -0400

Jo Anne Simon, City Council candidate from Brooklyn, has a Sonia Sotomayor story. Years ago, in a case that produced what will be one of Sotomayor's more closely scrutinized rulings as she prepares for her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Simon was the lead counsel for the plaintiff, and, ultimately, the winner. The case centered around Simon's client, Marilyn Bartlett, a severely dyslexic law student. Simon was arguing that Bartlett had a right to additional time on...

The Extraordinary Indignation of Michael Bloomberg

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:36:00 -0400

It’s hard to remember a major politician, other than John F. Kennedy and John McCain (for a few months in 2000, anyway), actually enjoying and thriving off of the question-and-answer sessions with reporters that are a part of the business. In this sense, the fact that Michael Bloomberg takes a generally contemptuous view of the press corps assigned to cover him isn’t really significant. But what is exceptional and noteworthy is Mr. Bloomberg’s regular failure...

Ask Not What Arlen Specter Can Do for Sonia Sotomayor

Sun, 31 May 2009 21:46:00 -0400

In the fall of 1991, the political right was gunning for Arlen Specter. Four years earlier, he’d infuriated them by lending a critical assist to the successful campaign to kill Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination and he’d done little in the intervening time to make peace with them. Now, with Specter facing re-election in 1992, they were threatening him with a primary challenge. Specter seemed likely to withstand the challenge from Stephen Friend, a...

The Sotomayor Attacks: 2012 Republicans Throw Red Meat to a Shrinking Base

Thu, 28 May 2009 07:59:00 -0400

On Tuesday, the nation’s first black president announced that he would like to place the first-ever Hispanic (and only the third-ever woman) on the Supreme Court. By Wednesday, virtually the entire Republican establishment—including the party’s most likely 2012 presidential candidates—had united in denouncing the move. A “Latina woman racist,” is how Newt Gingrich described Sonia Sotomayor. “Troubling,” was Mitt Romney’s summation. And, of course, there was Mike Huckabee’s cringe-worthy attack on “Maria” Sotomayor and her...

The Many Rabbis of Sonia Sotomayor

Tue, 26 May 2009 19:38:00 -0400

During a recruiting trip to Yale in 1979, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau ran into his friend José Alberto Cabranes in the hallway. “You have any good students?” Mr. Morgenthau remembered asking Mr. Cabranes, a prominent Puerto Rican lawyer from New York who was then teaching at Yale and who is now a federal judge on the Second Circuit. “I have one student who has never thought of being an assistant district attorney,” Mr. Morgenthau remembered Mr....

Post-Roe Liberals: Why Sotomayor Is Obama's Ideal Nominee

Tue, 26 May 2009 18:13:00 -0400

Barack Obama’s selection of Sonia Sotomayor for a seat on the Supreme Court confirms both how determined the president is to avoid a national abortion debate and how wise judges and lawyers with high court ambitions are to keep quiet on abortion. In more than ten years as a federal appeals court judge, Sotomayor has never confronted with a case that directly dealt with right to choose enshrined in the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v....

Obama's Pick Is a Winner, Already

Tue, 26 May 2009 14:11:00 -0400

Choosing Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the United States Supreme Court will allow Barack Obama to prove three important things. As a politician, he is not afraid of a fight. As a constitutional lawyer, he is willing and able to defend his conception of that living document. And as president, he is prepared to brush aside the phony consensus of Washington’s gossipy elite. Whatever battle ensues over the nomination of Ms. Sotomayor, a...

Schumer and Gillibrand Take Their Bows for Sotomayor

Tue, 26 May 2009 11:05:00 -0400

President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court appointment amounts to another victory for Chuck Schumer, who has pushed for Sotomayor for weeks. And he is taking his credit. A statement just issued by Schumer's office points out that he, along with Kirsten Gillibrand, recommended Sotomayer back in April. In the statement, Schumer said that it was an especially wise choice because it met "three very important standards... excellence, moderation and diversity." Schumer...

Representative: Is Obama Going to Do Something About Paterson, Too?

Fri, 22 May 2009 14:12:00 -0400

At least one member of the New York congressional delegation thinks Barack Obama may have set himself an untenable precedent when he pressured Steve Israel not to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand in a primary. The representative, a Democrat, said the delegation did not take kindly to the White House's intrusion into local matters anyway. But now that Obama, through the strong-arming of Israel by Rahm Emanuel, has demonstrated a willingness to involve himself in a New York race,...

A Delegation Divided: Serrano and the Gillibrand Holdouts Await Their Due

Fri, 22 May 2009 10:19:00 -0400

According to Jose Serrano, Kirsten Gillibrand is going after the low-hanging fruit first. In the days since Representative Steve Israel decided not to consider a primary against Gillibrand, following calls from President Barack Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer, other members of the New York Congressional delegation have quickly lined up in support of Gillibrand: Nita Lowey, Maurice Hinchey, Brian Higgins, Michael McMahon, Yvette Clarke, John Hall, Michael Arcuri. Soon Nydia Velasquez and Ed Towns...

For Obama, the More Cheney the Better

Thu, 21 May 2009 20:58:00 -0400

Tom Andrews, a former Democratic congressman from Maine and an early and outspoken opponent of the Iraq War, used his Huffington Post blog last week to ask in frustration: “How is it that someone as widely discredited as Dick Cheney is setting the terms of debate on national security? The technical answer is easy: Cheney is a huge name and a provocative figure who made his mark in the shadows during the Bush administration. And...

Hochberg an Obama Guy, Officially

Thu, 21 May 2009 10:17:00 -0400

Fred Hochberg, long a big New York bundler and political match-maker, will officially be appointed the Obama administration's Export-Import Bank chairman today, 11 years after he became the Clinton administration's highest-ranking openly gay official when he was appointed deputy of the Small Business Administration. In the interim years, the oft-quoted Hochberg served as dean of the annoyingly named Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy and then as a commissioner of the Port...

The Early Line: Romney in Front, Palin Fading

Tue, 19 May 2009 20:13:00 -0400

It’s Triple Crown season, and time (or just an excuse, maybe) for an early handicapping of the 2012 Republican presidential...

What Cheney Said, What Cheney Did

Tue, 19 May 2009 13:18:00 -0400

Defending their record in office these past eight years, figures from the last administration seem especially touchy on the subject of torture. Led by the former vice president, Dick Cheney, they have argued that there was no torture, preferring more vague and delicate terms such as “enhanced interrogation” or simply “the program.” They have insisted that any harsh tactics were used only to extract “actionable intelligence” from recalcitrant terrorists in order to save “thousands,...

How Obama Is Taking the Democrats Past Abortion Politics

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:49:00 -0400

There was a day not long ago when a national Democratic leader wouldn’t have gone to the lengths that Barack Obama went to this past weekend to win over—or at least to win respect from—a pro-life audience. The president of the United States never lacks for commencement address invitations, so Mr. Obama could easily have passed on Notre Dame’s offer and chosen to speak at a more secular institution—where the run-up to appearance wouldn’t...

Huntsman Got Obama's Call Because He's Good, Not Because He's a Threat

Sun, 17 May 2009 21:08:00 -0400

There were, inarguably, some very compelling reasons for Barack Obama to choose the Republican governor of Utah to be his ambassador to China. For one, John Huntsman has experience in the region (he was ambassador to Singapore in 1991 and 1992), is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and can make a meaningful contribution to the formulation and execution of Obama’s China policy. Also, he’ll bolster Obama’s effort to give his administration a bipartisan feel—especially in the...

This Time, Schumer Doesn't Side With Wall Street

Fri, 15 May 2009 11:01:00 -0400

Pending more details, Chuck Schumer is supporting the Obama administration's proposals to provide greater oversight of the derivatives, credit-default swaps, and other complicated financial instruments that helped cause the present economic crisis. "We need to regulate derivatives and Obama's outline is strong and sensible and I look forward to seeing the details," Schumer said in a statement sent to The Observer. It might seem to be a no-brainer for a Democratic Senator to support his party...

Obama Risks Turning From J.F.K. Into L.B.J.

Thu, 14 May 2009 22:48:00 -0400

Speaking as the 100th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s birth approached last summer, biographer Robert Caro spoke of how Johnson’s presidency managed to be both triumphant and disastrous at the same time. “You listen to the [people] who were concerned with what Lyndon Johnson did on the domestic side, and you say, ‘There never was a surer touch. There never was more of an understanding of what exactly needed to be done to get this...

The Lamest Controversy in Politics

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:37:00 -0400

There are plenty of people who love Rush Limbaugh and plenty more who despise him, but everyone seems fascinated by him. Isn’t time to wonder why? Last Saturday night, Limbaugh was savagely ridiculed by Wanda Sykes, the featured comedian at the nationally televised White House Correspondents Dinner. With President Obama just a few feet away, Sykes said: “Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails. You know, so you're saying, I hope America fails…To me, that’s...

Beware the Bad-Faith Reformer

Tue, 12 May 2009 15:02:00 -0400

Uplifting as it was to see insurance executives, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospital officials and doctors gather at the White House on May 11, pledging cooperation toward health care reform, nothing they said or did was inconsistent with precisely the opposite objective. According to the famed pollster who is helping Republicans in Congress to block reform, in fact, the first critical step toward stopping real change is pretending to support it. “You simply MUST be vocally and...

The Convenient Tale of the John Edwards Saboteurs

Sun, 10 May 2009 21:34:00 -0400

George Stephanopoulos injected some unexpected intrigue into This Week when he declared that a group of former John Edwards staffers had secretly conspired in late 2007 and early 2008 to make sure that their candidate's presidential campaign would fail. Stephanopoulos, who didn't name any of the staffers, made the claim after bringing up the story of Edwards' affair with campaign videographer, which is back in the news thanks to the release of Elizabeth Edwards' new...

'I Would Be Shocked If Barack Obama Didn't Endorse Bill Thompson'

Fri, 08 May 2009 13:24:00 -0400

The Bill Thompson campaign may be playing down the significance of Barack Obama's apparent disinclination to help out in the mayor's race—they have to, of course—but yesterday's developments will have taken at least some New York Democrats by surprise. When I interviewed Democratic comptroller candidate David Weprin last month for this story about the Thompson campaign, he told me, “I would be shocked if Barack Obama didn't endorse Bill Thompson. I think we will eventually...

The Other Pro-Israel Lobby Senses Its Moment

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:49:00 -0400

If you haven’t heard of J Street, you’re not alone. The self-styled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group was launched a year ago, but it’s mostly toiled in the formidable shadow of AIPAC, the half-century-old lobbying powerhouse that has long been regarded as the voice of the American Jewish community on matters relating to Israel—and that, as the New York Times put it this week, regards J Street as “lint.” But J Street’s moment, if it is to...

Republicans Wonder How to Sell a Toxic Brand

Tue, 05 May 2009 12:21:00 -0400

Hoping to re-brand their declining party, a group of prominent Republicans recently launched a national “listening tour,” presumably as an exercise in market research. They would like to know why voters—and especially younger voters—increasingly reject the G.O.P. They want to “ask the American people what their hopes and dreams are” while engaging in a “wide-open policy debate.” And they believe that all Americans deserve “access to high-quality, affordable health care,” and “a high-quality education...not...

If Only They'd Listened to Jack Kemp

Mon, 04 May 2009 06:27:00 -0400

Jack Kemp's death over the weekend has produced a flood of news stories about his life and political career. From a purely political standpoint, though, one lesson from Kemp's career stands out: it really matters who a presidential candidate picks for a running-mate. Yes, vice presidents are a heartbeat away from the presidency, so of course the choice matters. But just consider how differently history might have played out if Ronald Reagan had simply gone...

Obama Combats an Epidemic of Ignorance

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:15:00 -0400

In the turbulent imagination of the hard-core conservative, American foreign policy should be about telling off the rest of the planet. According to the right-wing mind-set, a manly foreign policy would curtail any effort at seeking influence abroad, cut off assistance to developing countries, forget about improving our global image and, above all, withdraw from the existing international organizations, especially the United Nations, which is nothing more than a gargantuan waste of money and...