Obama Waited Too Late To Fix Unemployment Crisis

Pres. Obama show us the JOBS!

No doubt after delivering his SOTU speech, the Obama administration is probably somewhere celebrating because once again they believe Obama hypnotized everyone with his outstanding Oratory skills.

Last night he mentioned the word "Jobs" several times.

I presume this posturing was a way of letting Angry, Independent Voters know his administration finally "gets it".

However despite the efforts or political gimmicks offered via Tax Credits, Spending more on Clean Energy development, etc., to help America's unemployed citizens bounce back, in fact he may have waited too long.

As the business world often cites: "First Impressions Are Lasting Impressions".

A Wise man also once said "you can't build a house in a storm".

The right time to have enacted an effective Jobs Program was last year, Obama's first year of his Presidency.

Had he enacted a Strong Jobs program last year our Economy would be much more fiscally stable due to Employed people spending money or creating Small Businesses.

Instead he wasted an entire year on a lopsided Health Care bill loaded with goodies for the Insurance Companies and Wall Street.

In addition on the heels of having passed a second Jobs Bill, Pres. Obama wants Congress to ratify that bill and create a sort of Third Jobs Bill Legislation.

Now I'm not a Policy or Political Strategist but doesn't it appear as if he is just throwing out nuggets to Voters to shut them up for a little while?

How does he propose to get these initiatives passed AFTER he threatened to stop all Non-Security Discretionary Congressional Spending?

That money (actually Earmarks/ Pork) has historically been used by Congressional members to BUY VOTES.

(As a former U.S. Senator Barack Obama is familiar with Earmarks because he used them too.)

Does Pres. Obama really think Congress is going to back his efforts if he cuts off their flow of cash normally used to appease constituents?

I don't think so!

Just several months ago while trying to pass his closed door, lopsided, secret deals Health Care bill Barack Obama aligned himself with Congress.

Suddenly he wants to kick them under the bus to save his own political hide?

Such sneaky actions are why most Voters (Democrats, Republicans & Independents) no longer trust or believe in Pres. Obama's "Change" agenda.

Too much rhetoric, empty promises and a habit of throwing people under the bus.

People who should be thrown under the bus like some of his "Chicago Politics" buddies aren't.

Instead he protects his Chicago friends and crucifies people like Greg Craig.

The Stimulus Funds he gave as "Thank You" gifts to many Democrat Governors, did not prove to be effective because most of it was wasted or used to balance state budgets such as in North Carolina.

Not Job Creation just balancing state budgets!

Has the Obama administration addressed this issue?

No and they never will.

We are not being cynical or pessimistic but its obvious he may have waited too late to focus on Jobs.

Thus after listening to his speech I along with millions of other wise Voters still don't believe him.

None of us will until we see results.

Pres. Obama show us the JOBS!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sources: MSNBC

Pres. Obama's "Team Of Rivals" Fit For The Task Or Political Gimmicks?

GOP to Geithner: Step down. Congressional Republicans issued a blistering review of the Obama administration's economic policies Thursday and suggested Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should lose his job. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Why the Greg Craig debacle matters


President Barack Obama is returning from his trek to Asia Thursday to a capital that is a considerably more dangerous place for him than when he departed.

While he was abroad, there was a palpable sense at home of something gone wrong. A critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man. Most significant, these doubters now find themselves with a new reluctance to defend Obama at a phase of his presidency when he needs defenders more urgently than ever.

This is the price Obama has paid with his complicity and most likely his active participation, in the shabbiest episode of his presidency: The firing by leaks of White House counsel Gregory Craig, a well-respected Washington veteran and influential early supporter of Obama.

The people who are most aghast by the handling of the Craig departure can’t be dismissed by the White House as Republican partisans, or still-embittered Hillary Clinton supporters. They are not naïve activists who don’t understand that the exercise of power can be a rough business and that trade-offs and personal disappointments are inevitable. Instead, they are people, either in politics or close observers, who once held an unromantically high opinion of Obama. They were important to his rise, and are likely more important to the success or failure of his presidency than Obama or his distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team appreciate.

The Craig embarrassment gives these people a new reason – not the first or only reason – to conclude that he wasn’t the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought, and, more fundamentally, that his ability to move people and actually lead a fractured and troubled country (the reason many preferred him over Hillary Clinton) is not what had been promised in the campaign.

This may seem like a lot to hang on a Washington personnel move. After all, intramural back-stabbing or making people fall guys when things go wrong (think Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary Les Aspin after the disaster in Somalia) are not new to Washingtonians.

But Craig’s ouster did not occur in a vacuum. It served as a focal point to concerns that have been building for months that Obama wasn’t pressing for all that might be possible within the existing political constraints (all that one could ask of a president); that his presidential voice hadn’t fulfilled the hopes raised by his campaign voice (which had also taken him a while to find); that he hadn’t created a movement, as he had raised expectations that he would; that would be there to back him up and help him fulfill his promises.

That is why it is worth pondering how the Craig story, unfolded in detail – its consequences likely will echo far longer than anything Obama said or did in Asia.

Briefly, here’s what happened, some of it told for the first time: Craig, who had known the Clintons since they were all at Yale Law School together, had served as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, but in 1998 gave up that job to help defend Bill Clinton against impeachment. Yet in 2008, he supported Obama for the nomination – not so much a turning against Hillary Clinton as being impressed early, as were some other prominent Washingtonians, by the then-state senator but would-be U.S. Senate candidate at a fundraiser held by Vernon Jordan, seeing Obama as the first potentially inspiring Democratic figure since Robert Kennedy. In the course of the campaign, Craig wrote a highly publicized memo questioning some of Hillary Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience, such as coming under enemy fire in Tuzla, Bosnia. During the campaign, Craig coached Obama for the debates (playing McCain), and praised him highly. Craig’s imprimatur helped the neophyte Obama in certain influential circles.

He hoped to get a high foreign policy position in an Obama administration, but when Clinton was named secretary of state, this of course became untenable. The Clintons are an unforgiving lot. So, Obama and Craig agreed that Craig would take the job of White House counsel for a year, and then they’d discuss what he’d do next. Thus, Craig was handed a very tricky portfolio.

During the transition, about mid-December, Craig presented to a group of the president’s newly named national security advisers meeting in Washington – including Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, national security adviser General James Jones, and others – three proposed executive orders: One ordered the shutting down of Guantanamo in a year. (The others banned torture and closed down the C.I.A.’s “black sites”; and addressed future detainee policy.) The one-year target for closing Guantanamo resulted from consultations with human rights and detainee rights groups, who argued that Guantanamo could be shut down in three months, and with Pentagon officials, who had no united position but argued that it would take from a year to 18 months.

At the meeting, only the newly named Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, beamed in from Arizona, questioned whether a year was realistic. When Gates, as he later confirmed publicly, said that though it was an “ambitious” deadline, he supported it because setting it was the only way to get things, especially the bureaucracy, moving toward that end, and that it could be extended if it couldn’t be met, that was it.

Obama’s new national security team signed off on the executive order to close Guantanamo in a year. This was passed along to the president as well as his top aides; Craig was never in a meeting with the political side of the White House on the Guantanamo matter – and the president-elect and then president raised no objection before, when, or after he signed off on it.

Unsurprisingly, the deadline became hard to meet, for various legal and political reasons – including the congressional outburst of NIMBYISM (similar to its earlier outbursts on Dubai Ports and even Terri Schiavo – short-term, irrational, and politically motivated fits that erupt from the Congress from time to time). If Craig failed to foresee this (as some later charged), he had a lot of company.

The closing of Guantanamo is undoubtedly far further along than it would have been without the executive order. But along the way, Craig fell out of favor with the president’s political aides and, apparently, the president himself. Whether he was simply being made the fall guy, or the tight circle of Chicagoans in the White House didn’t care for this outsider, or he committed some unknown errors, suddenly, in August, leaks began to surface that his job was in danger. Non-denial denials were issued from the White House. The leaks became a pattern, a systematic, anonymous, tipping off of reporters that Craig would soon be gone.

Craig was accused, anonymously of course, of a welter of charges: of being “too close to the human rights groups” (if so, what was wrong with that?), of not playing well with others, of being a bad manager, of being fixated on Guantanamo to the detriment of other issues. In the summer, Obama offered Craig another job, which Craig declined, and the two agreed that they would discuss the matter further later in the year. But the leaks continued, and Craig decided that his situation was untenable, and he had to leave.

To make sure he did, he was leaked his way out, up to the day before he planned to resign. What caused so many Obama supporters’ stomachs to turn was that Obama could have stopped the leaking at any time; he or White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel could have arranged a dignified departure. (They’re within their rights to get rid of someone if they’re dissatisfied, for good reasons or not – but a preferred route would be to call that person in and ask what day would suit him or her to resign, and then just let that person do it. This happens a lot in administrations; even if people don’t believe the resignation was voluntary, there’s a soupcon of dignity left to that person.) Even some Hillary Clinton supporters, who still hold no brief for Craig, think he was treated shabbily.

And this opinion is not confined to “political junkies.” Thomas Wilner, a distinguished Washington attorney who challenged Bush administration detainee policies, particularly on Guantanamo, and had worked with Craig on these issues, told me, “There's a lot of concern among a lot of lawyers in this town, especially those who were supporting Obama, that somebody this bright, this respected, this good, and with this integrity, was treated in such a way."

Yes, we knew, or should have, during the campaign that the supposed idealist Obama had a bit of the Chicago cut-throat in him, but there was little sign that he could be as brutal and heedless of loyalty as he was in the Craig affair. An unexpected climate of fear emanates from the Obama White House.

The incident underscored worries that several had held about the Obama White House for some time: that it was too tightly controlled and narrowly focused by the Chicago crowd; that it seemed from the outset to need an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment.

The current crowd displays a certain impulsiveness and vindictiveness that do it no good – as in the silly war-let on Fox News that it is now trying to back out of. Even if Craig was making a hash of his job – and there’s no independent evidence of this – it just wasn’t smart to treat someone widely held in such high respect in this manner; once again, the impulsiveness backfired.

The replacing of Craig with Washington attorney Robert Bauer, Obama’s own attorney for years as well as counsel for the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign, further narrowed the White House circle just when it needed broadening, lowered the stature of the office, and choosing the president’s personal attorney for a position that calls for dispassionate judgment is hazardous. (Does anyone remember Alberto Gonzalez?)

The Obama’s themselves hang tight with a small Chicago crowd. Yes, he talks to others, and yes, a president’s time is very limited, but the Obama’s themselves seem as closed-off and unto themselves as does his inner White House circle. (Is this a coincidence? What is all this wariness about?) When the Obama’s go to someone’s house for dinner, almost invariably it’s to that of Valerie Jarrett, the old friend from Chicago who serves as a counselor and whom they see all day. Old Chicago friends fly in for weekends frequently. Old friends, who had helped launch him, helped them personally, have been left behind.

At the same time as the Craig imbroglio happened, many people who had defended Obama against charges that he wasn’t what he’d been cracked up to be were now becoming concerned themselves: though it was a relief to have a president who thought through crucial decisions about sending the country’s young to war, it was taking him awfully long to make up his mind about what to do about Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the decision-making was bafflingly leak-ridden (was this a deliberate airing of ideas or a loss of control over the process?); that the health care debate had in fact careened out of his control and it seemed less and less likely that, having used up almost a year of his presidency on it (his “deadlines” had become irrelevant, and so, in a way, had he), he would end up with a bill, if at all, that did enough net good.

Certain things are not his fault: the unprecedented truculence of the Republican Party, scared silly by right-wing ranters on cable television; the unholy economic and foreign-policy mess that he inherited; the fact that he never had, as so many liberal commentators asserted, the 60 (or 58 or 59) Senate votes that would enable him to get what he wanted from the Congress. It’s not his fault that unemployment rates remain stubbornly high following a traumatic recession.

And it’s always risky to project the long-term from the moment. Perhaps this will prove to have been a passing moment. Perhaps Obama will still salvage a health care bill that is a real step forward (though there will be a humongous fight over its definition); maybe he’ll come up with a smart strategy – or the best of bad options – on Afghanistan and Pakistan; it’s not impossible that he’ll add real progress on climate change and regulatory reform to his list of achievements, and that he’ll start to get the deficit under control.

Maybe there’ll be enough examples of grace that will make people forget this period of pettiness. He’s been lucky before; maybe he’ll get lucky again. Meanwhile, serious people who had a lot of hope about him and who defended him are more worried than ever, and in this if anything over-communicative society the White House can’t write them off as “a bunch of Washington insiders.” So meanwhile, there’s a palpable mood change in Washington that could signify that Barack Obama is in deeper trouble than he was even a week ago.



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, The Daily Beast, Wikipedia, VisitingDC, Google Maps

Obama White House Throwing Loyalists Under The Bus...Clean Gov't, "Restructuring" Or Ruthlessness?

PRES. OBAMA ON ACORN: NOT SOMETHING I'M FOLLOWING CLOSELY

On ABC, George Stephanopoulos pressed President Obama on the recent controversy surrounding the community group ACORN. Here's the full exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?

PRES. OBAMA: You know, if -- frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.

PRES. OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?

PRES. OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It's not something I'm paying a lot of attention to.




The Boys Under the Bus


White House Counsel Greg Craig was just the latest Obama loyalist to be sacrificed for political expediency. Lloyd Grove tallies up the body count so far.


Presidents of the United States—all presidents—tend to adopt a clinically utilitarian view of the people who serve them. They burn through their staffs like rocket fuel, a White House observer once noted. In his readiness to discard underlings who are no longer useful to him, or otherwise have passed their sell-by dates, Barack Obama is no different from his predecessors. But he’s arguably more unsentimental than most about the unpleasant necessity of throwing friends and allies under the bus.

As Jacob Weisberg wrote recently in Slate, “Obama has a healthy disdain for the overrated virtue of political loyalty… If you're useful, you can hang around with him. If you start to look like a liability, enjoy your time with the wolves…The president is catlike also in his lack of evident affection for the people who take care of him.” Certainly he’s no Bill Clinton—whose eyes were apt to well up while his lower lip trembled, occasionally punctuated by a consoling hug, as he did what had to be done.

Defenestrated White House Counsel Gregory Craig—a crucial early supporter of Obama’s long-shot candidacy, who became a lightning rod for critics of White House efforts to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—is only the latest loyalist to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. He surely won’t be the last.

Herewith, The Daily Beast’s official scorecard of the body count so far:


GREGORY CRAIG

The 64-year-old Craig was a Washington wise man, having enjoyed a stellar career in politics, policy, and the law before President Obama tapped him to be his top legal adviser in the White House. A partner at the powerhouse firm of Williams & Connolly, Craig had been a trusted aide and confidante of Sen. Ted Kennedy, a top policymaker in Bill Clinton’s State Department and ultimately Clinton’s impeachment lawyer before he became enthralled by the freshman senator from Illinois. Craig’s early support lent Obama’s presidential ambition a degree of Washington street cred that it might otherwise have lacked. Indeed, Craig’s support was one of the factors that led to Kennedy’s game-changing endorsement. On Friday—after months of toxic leaks to the press from anonymous White House aides questioning Craig’s handling of politically sensitive Guantanamo Bay matters, among others—he was forced to resign in humiliating fashion. The president, on his way to Asia, issued an anodyne statement of thanks and appreciation, but the damage to Craig’s reputation was done.


CASSANDRA BUTTS

A close friend of the president’s from Harvard Law School, Butts was at least afforded a soft landing when she was removed Nov. 6 as deputy White House counsel—a week before Greg Craig’s forced resignation. Butts was named to the wordy post of “senior adviser in the office of the chief executive officer at the Millennium Challenge Corporation”—compared to the West Wing, a governmental backwater—with the vague mission of “combating global poverty.”


JAMES A. JOHNSON

When he was at the height of his power in the mid-1990s, former Democratic political operative and Walter Mondale aide Jim Johnson was nicknamed “Chairman of the Universe.” He simultaneously ran the Brookings Institution, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the home mortgage behemoth Fannie Mae. He was a pillar of the Washington establishment who had gotten rich in business while becoming a generous philanthropist. Johnson was frequently touted as a potential Treasury secretary in a future Democratic administration—probably the Obama administration. It looked like all-systems-go in June 2008 when the freshly victorious candidate promptly tapped his loyal supporter to lead his vice-presidential vetting team—the sensitive, all-important task of assessing prospective running mates. And then, just as quickly—after press reports of low-interest personal loans Johnson had obtained as a friend of embattled Countrywide mortgage chief Angelo Mozilo—Obama kicked him to the curb.


TOM DASCHLE

The former Senate Majority Leader—who lost his 2004 reelection bid in South Dakota—was national co-chairman of the Obama campaign, a key policy adviser, especially on health-care reform, and a savvy surrogate on the Sunday talk shows. When Obama’s nomination of Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services encountered stormy weather over his nonpayment of income taxes—and acceptance of free chauffeured limousine services, embarrassingly enough—nobody blamed the president for pulling the plug. (Daschle paid back many of the taxes, but reports suggested others remain unpaid, and a spokesperson suggested the acceptance of the free limo service was “naïve.) Some old Washington hands were rattled by Obama’s cold-eyed bluntness. “I screwed up,” the president said about the abortive nomination, over and over, in a series of television interviews on the day that Daschle was forced to withdraw.


NANCY KILLEFER

Along with Daschle’s dashed nomination, the president forced the withdrawal of business consultant Nancy Killefer, a McKinsey & Co. executive whom he had picked, with great fanfare, to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget while also filling the brand new role of chief performance officer in the White House. “Today was an embarrassment for us,” Obama told NBC after Killefer acknowledged a $946.69 tax lien from the District of Columbia government. It didn’t matter that she had resolved the problem years earlier; she was toast.


VAN JONES

A Yale-educated lawyer and environmental activist, as well as an ardent Obama campaign supporter, Jones was given the nominally low-profile job of White House special adviser on "green" jobs. But some intemperate statements from his past (such as “Republicans are assholes”) and ill-advised associations from his flirtation with radical politics (such as his apparent sympathy with 9/11 conspiracy theorists) provoked withering attacks on Jones and Obama from Fox News star Glenn Beck and a host of Republican office-holders. The White House let Jones fend for himself; in September he was finally forced out of his job, complaining in his resignation letter of “a vicious smear campaign against me.”


STEVE RATTNER & RICK WAGONER

After Obama tapped Steve Rattner to restructure the foundering automobile industry in February, the New York financier and Democratic fundraiser quickly shook up General Motors and Chrysler, and helped orchestrate the resignation of GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner as that company coped with bankruptcy proceedings. With Rattner’s goals as car czar largely achieved, he reportedly had hoped to secure other Washington assignments. But the president let him leave under a cloud in July when New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo was reported to be pursuing a civil investigation into the public pension fund management business of Rattner’s Quadrangle Group.


CREIGH DEEDS

Although he had no prior relationship with the president—and, indeed, had thought it prudent to assert his independence from the Obama White House—state Senator Creigh Deeds was the 2009 Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia. The current governor, Tim Kaine, was a close friend of the president and his hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And yet, as Deeds’ campaign started to falter, Obama’s top aides in the White House were not reluctant to trash him—to the contrary, they unloaded to The Washington Post, two weeks before the Nov. 4 election, about all the mistakes Deeds had made in the race, and how Obama couldn’t and shouldn’t be blamed for Deeds’ inevitable defeat.


DAVID PATERSON

Even the many detractors of New York’s embattled governor were surprised when the president’s operatives—led by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and political director Patrick Gaspard—actively attempted to push David Paterson to drop out of next year’s election campaign. They were aghast that anonymous “administration officials” boasted about their efforts in a front-page story in The New York Times. “Butt out,” Harlem Rep. Charlie Rangel advised the Obama White House. So far Paterson has steadfastly refused to assume the presidentially approved position, under the bus.


ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI & ROBERT MALLEY

Zbigniew Brzezinski—Jimmy Carter’s former national security adviser and a gray eminence in the foreign-policy establishment—gave a big and early lift to Obama’s candidacy with his August 2007 endorsement. But after pro-Israel activists howled that Zbig’s presence raised troubling questions about Obama’s commitment to the Jewish state, the candidate dropped him like a hot falafel and trotted out his senior Middle East adviser, former ambassador Dennis Ross, to claim: “Brzezinski is not an adviser to the campaign.” Zbig later got his revenge, telling The Daily Beast that Obama and his “lousy staff work” badly botched his announcement of scrapping the Bush administration’s missile-defense program.

In May 2008, candidate Obama sacked foreign-policy adviser Robert Malley, a Middle East expert, after he disclosed that he’d met with the militant Palestinian group Hamas in his non-campaign-related work for the International Crisis Group, a conflict-resolution think thank. A campaign spokesman promptly declared him a non-person: “He has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”


GENERAL DAVID MCKIERNAN

In May, the president had Secretary of Defense Robert Gates abruptly fire David McKiernan, the Army’s top general in Afghanistan. The ostensible reason was that McKiernan was too cautious and conventional a thinker about how to bring stability to the war-torn, corruption-plagued country that Obama had previously announced was crucial to America’s security. Now that McKiernan’s replacement—Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal—has shown himself to be anything but cautious and conventional (even preempting announced White House policy by publicly demanding tens of thousands of additional troops), there are rumblings that McChrystal is likely to be next.


BILL RICHARDSON

New Mexico’s governor provoked the enduring anger of Hillary and Bill Clinton—from whom he had received two coveted jobs, U.N. ambassador and Energy secretary—when he endorsed Obama in March 2008. Obama rewarded Richardson, a former presidential campaign rival, by nominating him to be Commerce secretary, and then threw him under the bus a month later amid reports of a federal grand jury investigation into New Mexico state contractors and their donations to Richardson’s political action committee. More than a year has passed since then, and no indictment has been forthcoming. Richardson, who fiercely maintained that he had done nothing wrong, “has seen his political fortunes crater,” according to Politico.


JEREMIAH WRIGHT & WILLIAM AYERS

“I could no more disown Reverend Wright than I could my own white grandmother,” candidate Obama famously declared in his speech on race in Philadelphia. Yes, he could! After his Chicago pastor of 20 years persisted in making incendiary statements of the “God Damn America” variety, Obama surgically cut him loose and cast him into the outer darkness. “Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Obama said by way of explaining the final breach. “I don’t think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don’t think he showed much concern for what we’re trying to do in this campaign and what we’re trying to do for the American people.”

Obama’s divorce from former Weatherman Bill Ayers, a friend, neighbor, and occasional political supporter from Chicago’s Hyde Park ‘hood, was far less painful but just as decisive.


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Sources: The Daily Beast, Politico, ABC News, Youtube, Google Maps

Bob Bauer To Replace Craig, Republicans Challenge His Credentials

Bob Bauer's credentials challenged


Incoming White House counsel Bob Bauer is widely respected as a skilled and pugnacious lawyer and has the unquestioned trust of President Barack Obama’s inner circle and a deep knowledge of the ways of Washington.

But the announcement Friday that he will take the place of Greg Craig, which had been rumored for weeks, nonetheless prompted questions about whether his experience as a campaign law expert and partisan warrior is appropriate for a job dealing with some of the most sensitive constitutional and national security issues in government.

Republicans moved quickly to cast Bauer, a veteran Democratic campaign attorney with limited government experience, as “hyperpartisan”, with a former White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan calling the pick “troubling.”

Government watchdogs, who for years battled Bauer over their efforts to reduce the role of money in politics, winced at the appointment, fearing it would steer Obama further away from as-yet-unfulfilled promises to bolster a campaign finance regime under attack from the right.

Even some Democrats privately questioned whether Bauer’s relatively specialized background and confrontational style are well-suited to a post that requires both a familiarity with a wide range of sensitive legal issues — from national security to habeas corpus to military law — and finesse in dealing with stakeholders outside the White House.

The White House dismissed all concerns about Bauer, pointing out that he is well-regarded by Republicans in the tight-knit election law community and that he has worked on issues outside of election law.

“He has represented large institutional clients on major issues like employment and contract, IP [intellectual property], tax and privacy issues,” said an administration official who did not want to be identified talking about Bauer’s qualifications for the post, which the White House said would he would assume by the end of the year.

The White House also highlighted Bauer’s work in 1999 as an outside lawyer to then-Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle during the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

In a statement, Obama called Bauer “a trusted counselor for many years to many elected officials” who is “known as a tough and widely respected advocate … Bob is well-positioned to lead the counsel’s office as it addresses a wide variety of responsibilities, including managing the large amount of litigation the administration inherited, identifying judicial nominees for the federal courts and assuring that White House officials continue to be held to the highest legal and ethical standards.”

Bauer’s ability to take advantage of the expertise of other smart lawyers will serve him well in the counsel’s office, said Marc Elias, a Bauer protégé who will take over from his mentor as head of the political law group at their law firm, Perkins Coie, when Bauer leaves.

“The White House counsel’s job is about managing a law firm within the White House as much as anything else,” said Elias. “And Bob has been involved in law firm management for years. He has built the political law group here.”

Past holders of the White House counsel’s job have come from all manner of backgrounds. Craig’s résumé included defending high-profile clients in criminal cases as well as serving as a foreign policy adviser to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. President George W. Bush’s first counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, had been Texas’s secretary of state and a state supreme court justice.

But Bauer’s expertise is almost entirely in political law – including lobbying, campaign finance and ethics – and he is perhaps the leading attorney in that competitive and well-paying field.

A 1976 graduate of the University of Virginia Law School, he built the political law practice at Perkins Coie, a Seattle-based law firm, into a powerhouse, hiring and grooming some of the top lawyers in town.

Today, the firm has a near-stranglehold on some of the biggest Democratic political accounts in town; it represents the party’s two congressional committees — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — as well as the individual campaigns and political action committees of many Senate Democrats.

And Bauer landed the mother of all accounts — Obama’s presidential campaign — even before the campaign officially began, which led to his being appointed this year to the coveted position of lead counsel for the Democratic National Committee, a position that also made him the lawyer for Obama’s political network, Organizing for America.

Plus, he represents Obama and his family in personal matters, such as the federal investigation of disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Bauer will have to sell his partnership in the firm to take the counsel’s job. But his replacement as the lead lawyer for the DNC, the Obama presidential campaign and the Obama family, will be another protégé, Perkins Coie partner Judy Corley, making it likely Bauer would be able to reclaim the accounts if he returned to private practice before Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.

“Everyone has their own background and their own experiences, and Bob clearly comes from an election law background,” said Michael Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission who deliberated over many cases involving Bauer’s clients, before Toner left the commission to start his own election law practice representing mostly Republican candidates and causes.

“But if people are trying to say that Bob Bauer is not qualified to be White House counsel, I couldn’t disagree more. I don’t know a harder-working, brighter lawyer in Washington, D.C., than Bob Bauer. He is a lawyer’s lawyer.”

But Peter Wallison, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s counsel in the mid-1980s during the Iran-Contra scandal, asserted Bauer’s background is not a good fit for the White House counsel.

“I think it’s troubling,” Wallison said. “It is very important that the White House counsel have political instincts. One of the things you want to be able to tell the president is whether an idea is politically feasible to accomplish within current law. What will the informed legal community accept as a legal explanation for what you are doing? You have to have political skills of some kind, but you also have to be a lawyer who is interested and devoted the maintenance of the rule of law.”

Richard Cullen, a former U.S. Attorney and Virginia state Attorney General who was appointed to both positions by Republicans, compared Bauer’s qualifications to those of top GOP election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who was counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 election and in the Florida recount, and also was the top lawyer for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“Can you imagine if Bush picked Ben Ginsburg [for White House counsel]?” he said (Ginsberg, incidentally, told POLITICO the White House is “lucky to have” Bauer as counsel). Though Cullen praised Bauer as “a fine guy and a very good lawyer,” he said “his practice is limited to representing only Democratic special interests. I would feel the same way about the office if a Republican president picked a Republican activist to run it. It’s the White House counsel’s office. It’s not the president's.”

A former high-ranking White House official from a previous Democratic administration who worked closely with the counsel’s office asserted that being counsel “is the wrong job for the kind of lawyer that he is.” The former official, who has known Bauer for 20 years and has worked with him on occasion, said Bauer isn’t good at predicting how decisions will play with the public and the press — a skill highly valued in Obama’s inner circle.

“The best White House counsels are people who come out of politics who understand the importance of dealing with the media. He’s got to be able to articulate the decisions of the White House counsel’s office to the press,” said the former official, who think Craig’s inability to adequately do so caused him problems in the White House. “Bob Bauer is politically tone deaf. It’s just a train wreck waiting to happen. If they were trying to avoid what happened with poor Greg Craig, they went the exact opposite direction.”

Bauer, who declined to answer questions for this story, is known among reporters for aggressively pushing back when he disagrees with their premise but has become increasingly leery about talking to the press as he’s ascended in Obama world.

His tactics did raise eyebrows during the 2008 campaign, when he transcended the traditional lawyer role, becoming a strategist of sorts who played a visible role in some key campaign story lines.

He explained Obama’s broken promise to participate in a public finance system by asserting that the lead lawyer for Republican John McCain was unwilling to negotiate the terms of such an arrangement (an account McCain’s lawyer flatly rejected), and Bauer famously ambushed a press conference call held by Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign to challenge her campaign’s accusations that Obama supporters violated caucus rules.

But unlike Craig, Bauer is a bona fide member of Obama’s inner circle. He has represented Obama on political matters since 2005. And his wife is outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn. The power couple met through Democratic politics, married in 1993 and live with their 13-year-old son Stephen and two cats — Kinsey, an orange tabby, and Sticky, a white part-Siamese — in Chevy Chase.

Bauer’s policy influence within the Obama orbit further worries advocates of stricter campaign finance rules, who had considered Obama a kindred spirit but have become dissatisfied with his inaction on some of their key issues.

“Bob Bauer has a long track record of opposing campaign finance reform, so that is a concern,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen who has urged Obama to fulfill a campaign promise to support an overhaul of the presidential public financing system.

In a 2005 post on his well-read blog, Bauer suggested efforts to fix the system face tough prospects because public “support is needed and not forthcoming.”

And until a few years ago, Bauer had been a vocal critic of certain efforts to restrict political spending. In fact, a case he brought in 2005 on behalf of EMILY’s List recently resulted in a sweeping federal court ruling that experts predict could pave the way for a flood of new 527 spending that could target Obama in his 2012 reelection campaign.

“I admire his character and his aggressiveness,” said Holman. “It’s just that throughout most of my relationship with him, that aggressiveness has been focused on undermining real reforms of money in politics. However, since he’s become Obama’s lawyer, he’s moderated his viewpoints on ethics and campaign finance reform, so we’ll have to see how it plays out in the end.”


Sources: Politico

Eric Holder Defends Greg Craig..."Don't Blame Craig For Gitmo Failures"

Holder: Unfair To Blame Greg Craig For Gitmo Failures


Attorney General Eric Holder said Friday that he was surprised by the resignation of White House Counsel Greg Craig and believes Craig has been unfairly blamed for the administration's difficulties in closing the prison base at Guantanamo Bay.

Briefing reporters at the Department of Justice, Holder called Craig a "great lawyer" who had "contributed in a significant way to the success of this administration." On the issue of shutting down Gitmo -- a project that Craig spearheaded within the administration, but which has stalled in Congress -- the AG insisted that it was wrong to scapegoat one person.

"Greg is a friend of mine," he said, "and those who have tried to place on him, I think, an unfair proportion of the blame as to why things have not proceeded, perhaps as we've wanted, with respect to Guantanamo, that is simply unfair."

Craig's departure from the White House on Friday was long anticipated. Inside the administration, there was a growing frustration over what aides considered a botched political process, which was Craig's responsibility. Those who know Craig personally, meanwhile, say he felt increasingly frustrated with his role within the administration. He had, initially, wanted to be part of the White House's foreign policy apparatus.

The push to close Guantanamo has met various pitfalls since it became a stated administrative objective, with Congress balking at the prospect of bringing detainees to domestic prison facilities. And now, it is widely assumed that the one-year deadline for shutting the detention center will be missed.

"I think it is going to be difficult to close that facility by January the 22nd," Holder told reporters on Friday. "There are a number of things that I think are most problematic."





Greg Craig: "I still think we were right"


Greg Craig said Friday that he was not asked to step down as White House counsel and that his decision was unrelated to the difficulties in closing Guantanamo Bay prison or other policy issues.

While defending the administration’s handling of Guantanamo, including the setting of an “ambitious” deadline, he suggested that he was surprised by the opposition that erupted over closing the facility and relocating the detainees.

In an interview with POLITICO, Craig said, “I was under the impression — based on President Bush’s statements, Sen. [John] McCain’s statements and the statements of many others, Republicans as well as Democrats — that there was a strong bipartisan consensus in support of closing down Guantanamo.

“There obviously has been more opposition in the Congress than those statements would have suggested. At least some of that opposition has been motivated by partisan politics, as Republicans believe that they have an issue on which to attack the president,” he said.

The interview is available in full on POLITICO’s Arena forum.

Craig said he still thought the original January deadline for closing Guantanamo was the right call.

“During his campaign for the presidency, President Obama promised that he would close Guantanamo. He made that promise because he believed then — and still believes today — that Guantanamo has damaged and continues to do damage to our national security,” he said. “We all knew that it would be difficult and challenging. We all knew that the one-year deadline was ambitious. We all believed such a deadline was necessary to force action and to make progress. I still think we were right.”

“I am not resigning because of anything to do with Guantanamo. I promised him a year…. And I have given him that year and more.

“I also promised to help him launch his presidency. Starting with the executive orders that he issued the first week of his term, I — and the legal team that we put together — have done that. We have performed a series of important tasks for the president that brought his administration together so that we could make progress on a number of really tough issues. And I think we have helped make this very difficult year a much better one, both for him and for the country. We are very proud of our record, and I am confident that this amazing legal team will continue to serve the president and the new White House counsel with distinction.”

Obama on Friday named Robert Bauer to replace Craig. Bauer is a longtime Democratic election lawyer who also has served as Obama’s personal lawyer.

In the interview, Craig said he could “think of many ways in hindsight that I could have better served the president” but declined to be more specific. “It is probably something that can be said about any human endeavor. One should always try to learn lessons from experience. All I can say for myself and my team is that we tried to do our best all the time,” he said.

Craig said he had no idea how word got out weeks ago that he would be resigning. “In September, I began discussing with a very small group of people — three in number — whether I would stay on beyond January 2010. That group included the president. I do not believe those with whom I had these discussions were responsible for the leaks.”

Asked what he would do now, Craig said, “I plan to take a break and then return to private practice.”






White House counsel Craig resigns


As expected, the Obama administration announced White House Counsel Greg Craig's resignation this morning.

"I want to tell you how proud I am of all that your legal team has accomplished on your behalf and in support of your agenda since your Inauguration," Craig writes in a resignation letter to Obama the White House released. Craig said that he plans to return to private practice January 3rd.

“Greg Craig is a close friend and trusted advisor who tackled many tough challenges as White House Counsel,” Obama said in a statement. “Because of Greg’s leadership, we have confirmed the first Latina justice on the Supreme Court, set the toughest ethics standards for any administration in history, and ensured that we are keeping the nation secure in a manner that is consistent with our laws and our values. I’m indebted to Greg not only for leading the Counsel’s office but for his many decades of service to this country as well. He has been a huge asset in the White House, and he will be missed. I will continue to call on him for advice in the years ahead.”

Some in the human rights community consider Craig something of an Obama administration fall guy for the legal mess the Obama administration inherited from the Bush administration on terrorism and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration failed to head off Congressional opposition to the prospect of moving terrorism suspects to U.S. soil, when it announced its decision shortly after taking office to try to close Guantanamo Bay in one year.

“The president campaigned on closing Guantanamo and bringing national security strategy back in line with our values, and Greg helped operationalize that from day one, in the executive orders on torture and Guanatanamo," said Human Rights First's Elisa Massimino. "Without his pushing the president’s agenda forward, bureaucratic inertia would have taken hold, just as it did in the last administration, and we would be no closer to the finish line than we were 10 months ago.”


Sources: Politico, Huffington Post