Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), making his second appearance on Capitol Hill since he began treatment for a malignant brain tumor in June, told reporters yesterday that he would advance a bill early next year calling for universal health care.
Some Democrats, including members of President-elect Barack Obama's circle, have begun to view expanded coverage as a longer-term goal.
The brief appearance by Kennedy, who made a surprise return in July to vote on a Medicare bill, represented an opportunity for him to show colleagues that he remains energetic and engaged, and that he intends to reclaim his committee post in January and take charge of the Obama health-care agenda. Some Democrats had speculated that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) would attempt to assume the chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) rolled out his own health-care bill days after Obama was elected, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also expects to be a leading participant in the effort to establish universal health care.
Kennedy has a head start on them all. Despite his illness, he directed his staff months ago to begin work on legislation that would vastly expand health coverage, a career-long goal of his.
But as the economy has worsened, attention has shifted to measures aimed at creating jobs and stabilizing the housing market. Obama is particularly eager to advance his alternative energy agenda.
Kennedy acknowledged the competition. "There's some major issues, obviously, the economy and also environmental issues," Kennedy said on his way to a staff meeting, where he was greeted with cheers.
"But the president-elect has indicated that this is going to be a priority, and I certainly hope it will."
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to defend himself against charges of inexperience by calling for fresh perspective in Washington. "The American people . . . understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result," he would say to big applause.
But as the president-elect's White House team takes shape, it is becoming clear that Obama in fact sees value in having plenty of the "same old folks" around to help him. After selecting as his chief of staff Rep. Rahm Emanuel, a House power broker and Clinton White House veteran, Obama over the weekend added several other top advisers with deep seasoning in Washington and on Capitol Hill in particular.
Although Obama has shown a fondness for surrounding himself with big thinkers and visionary experts, his White House hires suggest that his West Wing, at least, will place a premium on skilled legislative practitioners.
Congressional Democrats are taking the hires of Hill veterans as an encouraging sign that Obama -- the first member of Congress to be elected president since John F. Kennedy -- plans to work closely with them, which they regard as a welcome change from Bush's administration, which even many Hill Republicans said left them out of the loop.
The staff choices "represent a new era in cooperative relations between the White House and Congress," said Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). "It bodes well for an extraordinary period of legislative accomplishment -- for creating an atmosphere in which legislative victories will be maximized."
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the Hill expertise is particularly needed given the shaky economy. "It sends a very clear message . . . that he is ready to work with us from Day One," she said. "We need to get past the 'getting to know you' phase quickly, and this helps get that done."
But some veterans of Republican White Houses are asking how Obama's promise of a clean break with the past squares with his elevation of so many Washington insiders skilled in partisan warfare.
"This is more 'Groundhog Day' than a fresh start," said Peter Wehner, a former senior adviser to Bush who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Wehner said he thinks Obama is trying to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton administration, which stumbled early on, but he warned against "overlearning history." "It's reassuring having people who have been around the block -- it means he'll step on fewer banana peels in the early going," he said. But "this just doesn't have the feel of a political transformation," he added.
Other veterans of GOP administrations said Obama could yet prove an agent of change -- on his own.
"The transformative part of his presidency is the president himself," said Douglas W. Kmiec, a Pepperdine University law professor who served in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and supported Obama. "The most important voice for change is his. And change is accomplished in our system not by erasing all of the lines on paper but by having people who understand government's structure and so can reinforce lines that have been wrongfully distorted or broken in terms of separation of powers."
Obama adviser Anita Dunn made a similar case. "What you're seeing is the same kind of approach he took to his campaign -- some new people, some old people, like Goldilocks," she said. "What you see is someone who is not going to make some of the mistakes administrations have made in the past of not understanding how to get things done in Washington. People who say 'Where's the change?' need only look at the president of the United States . . . the person at the top who sets the tone and the priorities."
The latest hires include Pete Rouse, an understated but highly regarded Hill veteran who will be a senior adviser in the White House after 30 years on the Hill -- 19 working for Thomas A. Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, and four as Obama's chief of staff. Hired as deputy White House chiefs of staff are Mona Sutphen, who worked for a D.C. consulting firm after serving on Clinton's National Security Council, and Jim Messina, who was the Obama campaign's chief of staff after serving in the same capacity for Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is helping lead the way on health-care legislation.
Hired as Obama's top congressional liaison is Phil Schiliro, another highly regarded Hill veteran who in 25 years there served as Daschle's policy director and, most recently, as chief of staff to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Selected as White House counsel is Greg Craig, who served in the State Department under Clinton and acted as his counsel during his impeachment but broke with the Clintons to endorse Obama.
These experienced Washington hands will be joined by Obama's top confidants from Chicago -- David Axelrod, his chief campaign strategist, and Valerie Jarrett, a businesswoman and close family friend who is helping direct the transition alongside former Clinton chief of staff John D. Podesta. She will serve as Obama's senior adviser and public liaison.
Several White House veterans said the mix represented a healthy combination of new blood and D.C. experience -- not unlike what Ronald Reagan brought in 1980, when he combined Washington hands such as James A. Baker III and Kenneth M. Duberstein with confidantes Edwin Meese III and Michael K. Deaver.
Obama, having collected relatively few loyalists during his rapid rise, has shown an eagerness to hire the best available people regardless of personal connections or ideology, the veterans said. The clearest example was his success persuading Rouse, who was looking for work after Daschle's 2004 defeat, to join the office of a freshman senator.
"Obama understands that in order to be an effective president, you need to win battles on Capitol Hill," said Duberstein, who was Reagan's chief of staff. "What he seems to be putting in place is a mixture of people who know how to get things done in Washington along with people who have known him for many years. That fits with what he has campaigned on . . . which is shrewdly bringing people together. It is all about putting together a pragmatic governing coalition and having the people on hand who know how to get things done."
Duberstein disagreed that Washington veterans undercut the change that the country voted for Nov. 4. "What the American people are saying is: 'Enough of the stalemate and gridlock. Get people in there who know what they are doing,' " he said.
Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's first chief of staff, praised Obama for filling so many White House jobs so quickly. But he warned that having so much Hill experience on the team could give it too much of a legislative mind-set.
"A member of Congress holds hearings and healthy debates before he makes a decision. A president doesn't have that luxury," he said. "He is required to make snap decisions. Members of Congress can be much more deliberative, where a president has to be decisive. If you're a senator, you're one-hundredth of one-half of a decision. When you're president, you're 100 percent of a decision. You have to be more nimble."
Leon Panetta, who was Clinton's chief of staff, dismissed this concern. "It doesn't take very long before you develop an executive mind-set. On Capitol Hill you usually have 535 different [bosses], and at the White House you only have one boss -- and you learn that real fast," he said. "I just look at it from the point of view of having people who can hit the ground running. With all the problems the country faces, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to have people who understand how Washington works."
Only a fraction of those people will be close enough to get a good look at the action. But officials are planning extra JumboTrons at the Mall and along the inaugural parade route so that spectators can feel a part of the historic day.
"The Mall actually may be the best seat in the house. . . . It'll kind of be like the world's biggest stage and auditorium on January 20th," said Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), adding that the crowd projections have emerged in briefings conducted by federal and local officials.
All plans are pending approval of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, to be set up by Obama, which determines the size and nature of the inaugural festivities, Fenty said. But District officials have met several times with the Secret Service and other agencies.
The Secret Service is taking the lead in overseeing security and other logistics. Even for a city that has hosted vast throngs for marches, protests, celebrations, funerals and inaugurations, this will be an unprecedented test of planning and resources. The question arises: Can the city handle it? Can millions of people fit downtown?
Or, could there be another Meltdown of '76?
That year, a million spectators were expected on the Mall to celebrate the Bicentennial. Transit officials urged people to take public transportation and promised special service. But there was nothing special about the Fourth of July traffic jam, which stranded cars and buses for hours.
District and federal officials blamed a flawed and smaller mass transit system for the 1976 embarrassment. They expressed confidence that they can handle this January's events. At the same time, they know that Inauguration Day 2009 will be one of a kind.
For example, Fenty said, officials expect people to camp overnight, starting Jan. 19, to get as close as possible to the swearing-in viewing area and parade route.
The next several weeks will be spent figuring out how to change the comprehensive playbook that has been used in the past.
"We have a great blueprint from years past, and we will follow that," the mayor said. "But we will start to make exceptions and deviations because, by everyone's estimation, we will have crowds that will be two, three, maybe even four times as large as the largest inaugural. . . . One of the biggest exceptions would be to open up the Mall."
Officials are talking about opening large sections of the Mall east of the Washington Monument, a space normally used for staging the many components of the inaugural parade, Fenty said. That would make the Mall a viewing area that experts said could accommodate several million people -- significantly more than in the past. Officials have not said where the parade groups will gather instead.
The changes would not affect the 240,000 people who will get free tickets in the space closest to the swearing-in ceremony.
The mayor said visitors will have a difficult choice between getting the best possible views of the swearing-in or the parade.
"The parade route will be completely filled way before the inaugural speech even happens," said Fenty, who was a D.C. Council member in 2005, the most recent inauguration. "That's something people will have to think about, whether they want to see the parade firsthand or see the inaugural swearing-in and speech. You can't do both."
Obama is known for choosing venues where he can address huge crowds. In August in Denver, he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination with a speech before 84,000 at Invesco Field. On election night, about 200,000 jammed Chicago's Grant Park for his victory speech.
"The word we're getting from them, nothing formal yet, is that they want to open this up to as many people as possible," Fenty said. "We will follow their lead."
Peter V. Ueberroth, former chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said that fewer -- not more -- leaders should take charge in a crowd of such size. Ueberroth, who helped guide the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, said security and transportation officials must be closely coordinated, sharing a command headquarters. In this case, the Secret Service will coordinate a unified command center.
It does not appear that the 300 acres of the Mall in the two-mile stretch from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial has ever been filled with people, according to Terry Adams, a National Park Service spokesman.
The 1995 Million Man March, which drew about a million people, give or take a few hundred thousand, filled two-thirds of the one-mile section between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, according to photographs taken at the time. Farouk El-Baz, a Boston University expert who analyzed the crowd size, estimated that the entire two-mile stretch is so open that it could hold 3 million people.
"There should be no concern about the number of people. Particularly since this one will be a celebratory gathering. People will be up. They will be pleasant to each other," El-Baz said.
The biggest inaugural crowd appears to be the 1.2 million people who are said to have attended events at the 1965 inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson, according to police and past news accounts. In those days, the swearing-in was held in the more limited area around the east front of the Capitol, where it had taken place since 1829, according to Beth Hahn of the Senate Historical Office.
It was not until the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan that the swearing-in was moved to the Capitol's west front, where larger audiences could spread onto the Mall.
Faulty mass transit, not space, was the downfall of the July 4, 1976, Bicentennial celebration. Metro ran mostly bus service, which fell into chaos in the traffic jam. Metrorail was in its infancy, with only a 4.6-mile stretch of the Red Line functioning.
Today, with a seasoned and robust subway system, officials are again urging people to take public transit. Once downtown, however, people will face much tighter security than in 1976, as well as world-class traffic problems. Many blocks will be off limits Jan. 20.
"If we can get the doors closed, we will move," Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said. Metro's biggest crowd, recorded July 11, was 854,638 passengers.
The fact that Jan. 20, a federal holiday in the Washington area, falls the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday means that the crowd's arrival might be spread over a four-day weekend. At the same time, the crowd will be packed with out-of-towners and many people attending their first inauguration, creating the potential for confusion.
Those who dare to drive downtown on Inauguration Day will face a monumental parking challenge.
The security zone, which has not been determined, could eat up much of the parking downtown, said Andrew Blair, vice president and secretary of the Washington Parking Association and president of Colonial Parking. The industry is preparing for caravans of buses, he said, adding that the Colonial-run parking lot at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium will have well over 800 buses.
For those who are making their plans ahead of time, there are 95,000 hotel rooms in the metropolitan area, tourism officials say, in addition to the thousands of basements, spare rooms and sublet homes and apartments that will be available for inauguration-goers. The city is accustomed to hosting 15 million visitors annually.
Security, emergency and logistical crews will be bolstered by about 5,000 members of the military and 4,000 additional officers from 93 law enforcement agencies across the country, officials have said.
Presidential inaugurations aren't just logistical challenges. They shape the start of an administration and provide a chance for the District to shine before a worldwide audience. A major mishap could tarnish the image of the city, the mayor and the organizers, and much is riding on success.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime" experience, Fenty said.
Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called "burrowing" by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.
Similar efforts are taking place at other agencies. Two political hires at the Labor Department have already secured career posts there, and one at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is trying to make the switch.
Between March 1 and Nov. 3, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management, the Bush administration allowed 20 political appointees to become career civil servants. Six political appointees to the Senior Executive Service, the government's most prestigious and highly paid employees, have received approval to take career jobs at the same level. Fourteen other political, or "Schedule C," appointees have also been approved to take career jobs. One candidate was turned down by OPM and two were withdrawn by the submitting agency.
The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits.
The practice of placing political appointees into permanent civil service posts before an administration ends is not new. In its last 12 months, the Clinton administration approved 47 such moves, including seven at the senior executive level. Federal employees with civil service status receive job protections that make it very difficult for managers to remove them.
Most of the personnel shifts have been done on a case-by-case basis, but Interior Solicitor David L. Bernhardt moved to place six deputies in senior agency positions with one stroke, including two who have repeatedly attracted controversy. Robert D. Comer, who was Rocky Mountain regional solicitor, was named to the civil service post of associate solicitor for mineral resources. Matthew McKeown, who served as deputy associate solicitor for mineral resources, will take Comer's place in what is also a career post. Both had been converted from political appointees to civil service status.
In a report dated Oct. 13, 2004, Interior's inspector general singled out Comer in criticizing a grazing agreement that the Bureau of Land Management had struck with a Wyoming rancher, saying Comer used "pressure and intimidation" to produce the settlement and pushed it through "with total disregard for the concerns raised by career field personnel." McKeown -- who as Idaho's deputy attorney general had sued to overturn a Clinton administration rule barring road-building in certain national forests -- has been criticized by environmentalists for promoting the cause of private property owners over the public interest on issues such as grazing and logging.
One career Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his position, said McKeown will "have a huge impact on a broad swath of the West" in his new position, advising the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service on "all the programs they implement." Comer, the official added, will help shape mining policy in his new assignment.
"It is an attempt by the outgoing administration to limit as much as possible [the incoming administration's] ability to put its policy imprint on the Department of Interior," the official said.
In a Nov. 13 memo obtained by The Washington Post, Bernhardt wrote that he was reorganizing his division because the associate solicitors' original status as political appointees undermined the division's effectiveness.
"This has resulted in frequent turnover in those positions, often with an attendant loss in productivity and management continuity in these Divisions, despite the best efforts of the newly-appointed Associate Solicitors," he wrote.
But environmental advocates, and some rank-and-file Interior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of hurting their careers, said the reassignments represent the Bush administration's effort to leave a lasting imprint on environmental policy.
"What's clear is they could have done this during the eight years they were in office. Why are they doing it now?" said Robert Irvin, senior vice president for conservation programs at Defenders of Wildlife, an advocacy group. "It's pretty obvious they're trying to leave in place some of their loyal foot soldiers in their efforts to reduce environmental protection."
In an interview yesterday, Bernhardt reiterated that he thinks the move is in the government's long-term interest.
"I believe these management decisions will strengthen the professionalism of the Office of the Solicitor and result in greater service to the Department of the Interior," he said. "However, the next solicitor and the department's management team are free to walk a different path."
One senior Interior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said an incoming interior secretary or solicitor could create new political positions upon taking office and could shift Senior Executive Service officials to comparable jobs within a few months. As a general rule, career SES employees may be reassigned involuntarily within their current commuting area within 15 days, and beyond their commuting area within 60 days, but they retain their lucrative and permanent government posts. When a new agency head is appointed, he or she must wait 120 days before reassigning career SES officials.
Outside groups are trying to monitor these moves but are powerless to reverse them. Alex Bastani, a representative at the Labor Department for the American Federation of Government Employees, said it took months for that agency even to acknowledge that two of its Bush appointees, Carrie Snidar and Brad Mantel, had gotten civil service posts.
"They're trying to burrow into these career jobs, and we're very upset," Bastani said. "Everyone should have an opportunity to apply for these positions. And certainly career people who don't have partisan bent and have 10 or 15 years in their respective fields should have a shot at these positions."
Kerry Weems, acting chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he discourages political staff from moving into career slots. "It typically doesn't work out for either party," he said. Even though Weems is a career staffer, he expects to leave the administration when the Obama team takes over.
Alphonso Jackson, who was HUD secretary under President Bush, warned his political appointees not to try to burrow in when the administration changed. But one of his regional directors objected to that flat-out prohibition, according to union leaders at HUD, and has told his colleagues that he has been promised first crack at a career position.
Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, saw what the country saw when it was official that Barack Obama had been elected President, saw the remarkable joyful pictures from Chicago.
It was the city her father never made it to in 1968, the year he began the campaign that finally ended for Obama on the night of Nov 4.
"My father said this would happen," she said. "You can look up the exact quote, but he said that in 40 years an African-American would be President."
The exact quote is from May 27, 1968, a week before Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles after winning the California primary, the night he closed his speech at the Ambassador Hotel by saying, "Now it's on to Chicago [for the Democratic National Convention] and let's win there."
A few days before our Triborough Bridge is renamed in her father's honor, these are the prophetic words to which Kerry Kennedy referred: "Things are moving so fast in race relations. A Negro could be President in 40 years. There is no question about it. In the next 40 years, a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.
"Prejudice exists and probably will continue to ... but we have tried to make progress and we are making progress. We are not going to accept the status quo."
Robert Kennedy was less willing to accept the status quo on race in America than any political leader of his time, first as Attorney General under his brother John, then under Lyndon Johnson, and finally as the U.S. senator from New York.
The real bridge in his honor is a symbolic one that reaches across four decades, from his run for the presidency in '68 to Obama's in '08. There is no question that without Kennedy's work as U.S. attorney general, there is no 1965 Voting Rights Act and Barack Obama, born in 1961, grows up in a different America.
"There was so much talk of change this year," Kerry Kennedy, a tireless human rights advocate herself, said. "My father believed that the only way for there to be real change in our country was through the right to vote."
She came into this long political season supporting Hillary Clinton. She ended it two weeks ago cheering as she watched Obama take the stage in Grant Park, having spoken as eloquently to the young and to the best of us the way her father once did.
On Wednesday the Triborough will become the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. And, at least for a little while, we will remember how Kennedy gave Obama the model for his campaign, and November of '08 will be the Kennedy spring of '68 again.
It will be the April night in '68 when Kennedy, from a family of great privilege, went into a black neighborhood in Indianapolis against the counsel of his staff and broke the news to a waiting crowd that Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot dead in Memphis.
"For those of you who are black," Kennedy said that night, "and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my own family killed, and he was killed by a white man."
This was the Robert Kennedy who as attorney general brought 57 voting rights suits in the South, 30 in Mississippi alone. This was the Robert Kennedy, who in September 1962 sent U.S. marshals and troops to Oxford, Miss., to enforce a Federal Court order admitting James Meredith as the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.
"There was no group that my father admired more than the heroes of the Civil Rights movement," Kerry Kennedy said. "I don't think he ever thought of himself as one of those heroes. But he was. Maybe others thought it was some kind of impossible dream to talk about a black American as President. Just not my father."
As attorney general, he was asked once about the biggest problem he would face, whether it would be crime or internal security, and Kennedy said, "civil rights."
Kerry Kennedy said, "This isn't just about renaming a bridge. It's about building bridges, both to the past and to the future. This is for the children of this generation, and the one after it, and the one after that. This is for all the children who will ask who this man Robert Kennedy was, and what he did to have this bridge be named after him."
The RFK Bridge will not just reach from middle-class neighborhoods in Queens across the East River to Harlem. It will reach out from Kennedy's ideals, his vision of America, to Obama's, from 1968 to 2008. Robert Kennedy never made it to Chicago. Obama did.
In an interview with CNN's Alina Cho at the Group of 20 financial summit in Washington, Lee said that when he spoke with Obama after the U.S. presidential election, Obama promised to consult with South Korea before taking any major action on North Korea.
In response to a question at a presidential debate, Obama said he would meet without preconditions during the first year of his administration with leaders of several nations whose governments have been at odds with the United States, including North Korea.
Laying out his foreign policy on his campaign Web site prior to the election, Obama said he and his running mate would "use tough diplomacy -- backed by real incentives and real pressures -- to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and to eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program."
"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will not take any options off the table, but they will emphasize first and foremost the power of American diplomacy and make clear the substantial benefits to Iran and North Korea of abandoning their dangerous nuclear programs while simultaneously conveying the enormous costs to them should they fail to do so," according to the Web site.
Lee told CNN he has high expectations for Obama, calling him "the right leader at the right time." He said any damage done in recent years to U.S. global leadership may be because the country relied too heavily on "hard power," and that he believes Obama will be effective in utilizing "soft power."
A former CEO of Hyundai, Lee criticized the idea of a bailout of the U.S. auto industry, saying it would set a bad precedent.
PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain will meet for the first time on Monday since the election.
The meeting comes at an important time for McCain, who must decide what to do with remainder of his career in the Senate.
With his reputation severely harmed as a result of the campaign -- some Republicans furious at him for having lost the White House with a poor campaign and some Democrats furious with the negative tone that his campaign embraced in September and October -- he will have an interest in building a positive legacy.
McCain's best bet would be to form a bipartisan alliance with Obama on as many issues as possible -- perhaps with an economic stimulus bill, immigration reform, exiting Iraq and new regulations on Wall Street.
Doing so would help the president secure bipartisan support while McCain would go down in the record books for helping the nation, through legislation, in a time of grave crisis.
Bipartisan alliances usually happen when two people of opposing parties need each other for their own self-interest. This is the situation right now. Obama could use McCain to make sure his legislation survives the Senate. McCain needs Obama to help restore his legacy in political history.
There are not many models for McCain to turn to for inspiration, but he might think a bit about the Republican Wendell Willkie, defeated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.
Though not a legislator, Willkie became a very important ally to FDR after 1940, fighting against isolationism in the GOP and building support for the president's foreign policy. He traveled around the globe to meet with foreign leaders and wrote a book that promoted the internationalist outlook.
In fact, there is a long tradition of this kind of cooperation in congressional history. We have seen how this can work on foreign policy.
Michigan Sen. Arthur Vandenberg, who coined the phrase "politics stops at the water's edge," worked closely with President Harry Truman in 1947 and 1948 to find support in the Republican Congress for the creation of the modern national security state.
In 1953 and 1954, Senate Minority Leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas worked with President Dwight Eisenhower on a series of foreign policy issues. The White House was under attack from conservative Republicans led by John Bricker, who sought to curtail executive power on foreign affairs.
Bricker proposed an amendment to limit the ability of the president to enter into international agreements without Senate consent. Many southern Democrats supported the amendment fearing that the U.N. Charter opened the opportunity for the president to expand civil rights.
Eisenhower thought the amendment would be extremely dangerous and handcuff the president when dealing with foreign policy. He turned to Lyndon Johnson, who brought along Senate Democrats to stifle the measure. Johnson hoped to make Senate Republicans seem like the obstructionists in Washington and to boost his own reputation as a leader.
Johnson's adviser, George Reedy, explained that the contrast of Republican intra-party warfare and "a dignified but pointed record on all issues" from the Democratic Party would be "potent campaign ammunition." The strategy worked. Johnson was selected as majority leader in 1954.
These alliances have also furthered the social agenda. As president in 1964, Johnson turned to Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen to help him push the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Senate. In the 1960s, Southern Democrats, who chaired the major committees and were masters at using the Senate filibuster to block bills they opposed, were the chief opponents of civil rights.
So when Johnson pushed for the Civil Rights Act in 1964 he needed Republican support to break a filibuster. He found a partner with Dirksen, one of several Republicans who saw how the GOP could benefit from embracing civil rights as Democrats were divided.
"We dare not temporize with the issue which is before us," Dirken said in a speech before the Senate, "it is essentially moral in character. It must be resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come."
Dirksen's role in the passage of civil rights defined his role in the history books.
Bipartisan, inter-branch alliances have also bolstered the reputation of legislators who tackled unpopular fiscal issues such as deficit reduction. The alliances became less common after the 1970s as a result of polarization in Washington that diminished the role of centrists and the opportunity for compromise.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush worked closely with House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski to design a deal that cut spending and increased taxes to reduce the deficit. Republicans were furious with the president for breaking his pledge in 1988 not to raise taxes.
Rostenkowski's career would go down in ignominious fashion as a result of a scandal, but his work on deficit reduction remains a testament to his ability to find bipartisan opportunities in rough, bipartisan waters.
"What's at stake here?" he asked his colleagues about the deal, "Nothing less, in my opinion, than American self-respect."
There are many other examples in American history where legislators enhanced their reputations in the history books by working with presidents, including presidents from other parties. This is McCain's best hope for strengthening his political legacy.
He will likely never be the kind of legislator who becomes a champion of a political ideology -- like Ted Kennedy and liberalism, or Newt Gingrich and conservatism -- nor is he likely to be the kind of forceful party leader like Tom DeLay or Trent Lott.
But what McCain can do, as he has done in the past with campaign finance and ethics reform, is to team up with the opposition and get legislation through Congress. According to Congressional Quarterly, former Bush and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon has predicted that "Senator McCain's interest after this election will be not any political ambition but a genuine desire to make his last chapter in Washington all about bipartisan healing."
Now he has a chance to enhance his mark in the history books, this time with the person who defeated him, and then his legacy would not be the failed political campaign of 2008.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of Julian Zelizer.
President-elect Barack Obama will meet with former GOP presidential candidate John McCain Monday in Chicago, Illinois.
The meeting will take place at the Obama transition headquarters.
"It's well-known that they share an important belief that Americans want and deserve a more effective and efficient government, and will discuss ways to work together to make that a reality," Obama transition spokesman Nick Shapiro said in a statement Sunday.
Obama and McCain will be joined in the meeting by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Meanwhile, the man who steered Obama's Senate office will now move over to the White House with the incoming president.
The Obama transition office announced Sunday that Peter Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in his Senate office, will serve as a senior adviser to the president.
Before joining Obama in December 2004, Rouse was chief of staff for 19 years to former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Before that, he was chief of staff to then-Rep. Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Meanwhile, Republicans praised the prospect of Sen. Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of state. Sources told CNN on Friday that Obama has spoken about that job with Clinton and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, another former rival for the presidential nomination.
Former Nixon and Ford Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Clinton would be an "outstanding" selection, Bloomberg News reported.
GOP Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona told Fox News: "She's got the experience; she's got the temperament for it." And California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told ABC it would be a "great move."
The Obama transition team also announced that Mona Sutphen will serve as a deputy chief of staff.
Sutphen is a member of the transition team staff and has been managing director of Stonebridge International LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Washington.
From 1991 to 2000, she was a U.S. foreign service officer, and among other assignments she served in the White House at the National Security Council from 1998 to 2000, under President Bill Clinton.Jim Messina was also named a deputy chief of staff. Messina is currently the director of personnel for the president-elect's transition team. He served as a national chief of staff for Obama's presidential campaign.
Before that, Messina served as a chief of staff for Sens. Max Baucus (D-Montana) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota) and for Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York).
Obama, in a statement released by the transition team, said, "These individuals are important additions to a team with the experience and ability to help our nation overcome pressing challenges at home and around the world."
Also, a longtime friend of the Obamas was officially named Saturday as a senior adviser to the incoming president.
Obama, in a statement released Saturday morning by his transition staff, announced that Valerie Jarrett will serve as senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison. CNN Contributor Roland Martin reported the offer to Jarrett on Friday evening.
Jarrett is currently co-chair of Obama's transition team and was senior adviser for his presidential campaign. She became the president and CEO of The Habitat Company in 2007 and was also the company's vice president. The Habitat Company develops and manages residential apartments and condominiums.
Before joining The Habitat Company, Jarrett served for eight years in government for the city of Chicago, first as deputy corporation counsel for finance and development, then as deputy chief of staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley, and finally as commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development.
Also Saturday, a Democratic source told CNN that prominent Washington lawyer Greg Craig will be named White House counsel for the Obama administration. The source added that it is unclear when the appointment will be made public.
Craig first gained prominence representing President Clinton in his Senate impeachment trial, but he endorsed Obama over Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and later played a key role in Obama's vice-presidential vetting process.
CNN reported Friday that three officials close to the presidential transition said Craig was under strong consideration to be named as the incoming president's top lawyer.
One of those officials said Craig was "highly regarded" and trusted for his discretion by Obama.
The transition team also made official Saturday the hiring of Ron Klain as chief of staff to the vice president.
Klain was also chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, but he's no stranger to Vice President-elect Joe Biden, having served as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden was the committee chairman.
Klain also served as general counsel of Gore's 2000 Florida recount effort and was portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey in an HBO movie about the event.
This year, Klain helped with debate preparation for both Obama and Biden.
"Ron Klain has been a trusted adviser of mine for over 20 years," a statement from Biden said Saturday.
The transition team also announced Saturday that Phil Schiliro will serve as assistant to the president for legislative affairs. Schiliro is director of congressional relations for the Obama transition team. Before that, he was a senior adviser to Obama's presidential campaign.
WASHINGTON - Sorry, Mr. President. Please surrender your BlackBerry.
Those are seven words President-elect Barack Obama is dreading but expecting to hear, friends and advisers say, when he takes office in 65 days.
For years, like legions of other professionals, Mr. Obama has been all but addicted to his BlackBerry. The device has rarely been far from his side — on most days, it was fastened to his belt — to provide a singular conduit to the outside world as the bubble around him grew tighter and tighter throughout his campaign.
“How about that?” Mr. Obama replied to a friend’s congratulatory e-mail message on the night of his victory.
But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.
For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.
Mr. Obama has not sent a farewell dispatch from the personal e-mail account he uses — he has not changed his address in years — but friends say the frequency of correspondence has diminished. In recent days, though, he has been seen typing his thoughts on transition matters and other items on his BlackBerry, bypassing, at least temporarily, the bureaucracy that is quickly encircling him.
A year ago, when many Democratic contributors and other observers were worried about his prospects against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, they reached out to him directly. Mr. Obama had changed his cellphone number, so e-mail remained the most reliable way of communicating directly with him. “His BlackBerry was constantly crackling with e-mails,” said David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist. “People were generous with their advice — much of it conflicting.”
Mr. Obama is the second president to grapple with the idea of this self-imposed isolation. Three days before his first inauguration, George W. Bush sent a message to 42 friends and relatives that explained his predicament.
“Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,” Mr. Bush wrote from his old address, G94B@aol.com. “This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”
But in the interceding eight years, as BlackBerrys have become ubiquitous — and often less intrusive than a telephone, the volume of e-mail has multiplied and the role of technology has matured. Mr. Obama used e-mail to stay in constant touch with friends from the lonely confines of the road, often sending messages like “Sox!” when the Chicago White Sox won a game. He also relied on e-mail to keep abreast of the rapid whirl of events on a given campaign day.
Mr. Obama’s memorandums and briefing books were seldom printed out and delivered to his house or hotel room, aides said. They were simply sent to his BlackBerry for his review. If a document was too long, he would read and respond from his laptop computer, often putting his editing changes in red type.
His messages to advisers and friends, they say, are generally crisp, properly spelled and free of symbols or emoticons. The time stamps provided a window into how much he was sleeping on a given night, with messages often being sent to staff members at 1 a.m. or as late as 3 a.m. if he was working on an important speech.
He received a scaled-down list of news clippings, with his advisers wanting to keep him from reading blogs and news updates all day long, yet aides said he still seemed to hear about nearly everything in real time. A network of friends — some from college, others from Chicago and various chapters in his life — promised to keep him plugged in.
Not having such a ready line to that network, staff members who spent countless hours with him say, is likely to be a challenge.
“Given how important it is for him to get unfiltered information from as many sources as possible, I can imagine he will miss that freedom,” said Linda Douglass, a senior adviser who traveled with the campaign.
Mr. Obama has, for at least brief moments, been forced offline. As he sat down with a small circle of advisers to prepare for debates with Senator John McCain, one rule was quickly established: No BlackBerrys. Mr. Axelrod ordered everyone to put their devices in the center of a table during work sessions. Mr. Obama, who was known to sneak a peek at his, was no exception.
In the closing stages of the campaign, as exhaustion set in and the workload increased, aides said Mr. Obama spent more time reading than responding to messages. As his team prepares a final judgment on whether he can keep using e-mail, perhaps even in a read-only fashion, several authorities in presidential communication said they believed it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so.
Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.
“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”
She added: “It’s a time burner. It might be easier for him to say, ‘I can’t be on e-mail.’ ”
Should Mr. Obama want to break ground and become the first president to fire off e-mail messages from the West Wing and wherever he travels, he could turn to Al Gore as a model. In the later years of his vice presidency, Democrats said, Mr. Gore used a government e-mail address and a campaign address in his race against Mr. Bush.
The president, though, faces far greater public scrutiny. And even if he does not wear a BlackBerry on his belt or carry a cellphone in his pocket, he almost certainly will not lack from a variety of new communication.
On Saturday, as Mr. Obama broadcast the weekly Democratic radio address, it came with a twist. For the first time, it was also videotaped and will be archived on YouTube.
Say Goodbye to BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe
Clinton, who first visited the state for Martin last fall, will become the first high-profile Democrat to visit the state to campaign for the Senate challenger since Election Day.
The former president’s campaign event in Atlanta Wednesday will have an economic focus, according to Martin’s campaign.
Former Republican presidential nominee John McCain visited Georgia last week to campaign for Chambliss.
Henry Kissinger praised Hillary Clinton as an "outstanding" choice at a summit in India:
At the World Economic Forum's 24th India Economic Summit in New Delhi, India, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said of reports that President-elect Obama is considering Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, as Secretary of State, "I believe it would be an outstanding appointment. If it is true, it shows a number of things, including great courage on the part of the President-Elect. To appoint a very strong personality into a prominent cabinet position requires a great deal of courage." Kissinger said that "Obama was my second choice in the election. But at the same time, I want to stress that this is the moment for non-partisanship in America. There are a number of challenges that must be dealt with...I believe that the United States faces a moment of enormous complexity, but also a moment of extraordinary opportunity."
Kissinger said that "Obama was my second choice in the election. But at the same time, I want to stress that this is the moment for non-partisanship in America. There are a number of challenges that must be dealt with...I believe that the United States faces a moment of enormous complexity, but also a moment of extraordinary opportunity."
According to two senior Democratic officials, Barack Obama offered Hillary Clinton the Secretary of State position when they met in Chicago.
UPDATE: A Democratic official confirms that Clinton and Obama met in Chicago:
A Democratic official confirms to the Huffington Post that Sen. Hillary Clinton met with President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday to discuss her role in the new administration. Clinton's trip to Chicago, described in press reports as "personal business," came following a request from Obama, the official said.
Clinton's trip to Chicago, described in press reports as "personal business," came following a request from Obama, the official said.
There were numerous reports last night that Hillary Clinton may be under consideration for Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
From the Washington Post:
There's increasing chatter in political circles that the Obama camp is not overly happy with the usual suspects for secretary of state these days and that the field might be expanding somewhat beyond Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and maybe former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.And NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports:Two Obama advisers have told NBC News that Hillary Clinton is under consideration to be secretary of state. Would she be interested? Those who know Clinton say possibly. But her office says that any decisions about the transition are up to the president-elect and his team. Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. It is unknown whether she had any meeting or conversation with Obama while there. According to CNN:One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer. A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN "Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful." And sources tell ABC News that discussions about Clinton being asked to accept the post are "very serious."
There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.
And NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports:
Two Obama advisers have told NBC News that Hillary Clinton is under consideration to be secretary of state. Would she be interested? Those who know Clinton say possibly. But her office says that any decisions about the transition are up to the president-elect and his team. Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. It is unknown whether she had any meeting or conversation with Obama while there.
Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. It is unknown whether she had any meeting or conversation with Obama while there.
According to CNN:
One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer. A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN "Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful."
A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN "Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."
On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful."
And sources tell ABC News that discussions about Clinton being asked to accept the post are "very serious."
FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama could not have come on a more opportune day for the Democratic nominee as he campaigned in eastern North Carolina, an area awash with military members and their families.
“With so many brave men and women from Fayetteville serving in our military, this is a city and a state that knows something about great soldiers,” Obama said to a capacity crowd waving small American flags. “I have been honored to have the benefit of his wisdom and counsel from time to time over the last few years, but today, I am beyond honored and deeply humbled to have the support of General Colin Powell.”
The campaign said Obama and Powell spoke for ten minutes on the phone after the former Secretary of State’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Powell, Obama said, reminded voters “we don’t have the luxury of relying on the same political games the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another.”
Obama promised the audience the next 16 days would be full of “more of these robo-calls making outrageous accusations.”
In his video announcing the campaign’s massive September cash haul, campaign manager David Plouffe said supporters needed to keep donating money so they could respond to such calls with their own.
FAYETTEVILLE, North Carolina (CNN) – Barack Obama fired back against charges his tax policy amounts to “socialism,” arguing John McCain simply wants to redistribute wealth to the already wealthy.
“It’s kind of hard to figure how Warren Buffet endorsed me, Colin Powell endorses me, and John McCain thinks I’m practicing socialism,” Obama said. “This is his argument because I want to give a tax cut to the middle class, because I want to give a tax cut to 95 percent of American workers.”
The Democratic nominee also said that while McCain may call giving regular Americans a tax break “socialism,” he calls it an “opportunity.”
“Here’s the truth, North Carolina. This debate – and this election – comes down to what we value. In the America I know, we don’t just value wealth, we value the work and workers who create it,” he said. “He can call me any name he wants but what he’s talking about is not right, it’s not change, that’s why we’re going to beat him in this election on November 4th.”
Before his rally in Fayetteville, Obama dropped by Cape Fear BBQ and Chicken to shake hands with patrons, many of them older white voters. In a sign that perhaps pre-election tempers are getting a little hot, according to the pool report when Obama entered the restaurant a woman screamed “Socialist, socialist, socialist – get out of here!” The woman, 54 year-old Diane Fanning was admonished by other diners and one woman yelled back “at least he’s not a war-monger.”
It is unclear whether Obama heard this exchange as there were many in the restaurant trying to greet him. Later when Obama approached Fanning’s table she refused to shake his hand.
“Some of ‘em are just nicer than I am,” Fanning told the pool reporter when asked why she didn’t shake the senator’s hand but other members of her church group did. “I know how some of ‘em think.” Fanning did however have a brief conversation with Obama about some issues of concern to her.
Lines out the door. Empty boxes where ballots once sat. Election officials peering through thick glasses at possibly-punched holes. These are the familiar sights of an all too close election, and across the country, elections officials and both parties are ramping up their efforts to limit problems on November 4, or to take fast legal action.
Republicans have been most vocal about their pre-election concerns, worried that the surge of new voter registrations filed across the country could lead to a rash of voter fraud. Democrats are quietly preparing to propel their own massive turnout. And independent groups are gearing up to drop thousands of lawyers in key states on Election Day and, if necessary, beyond.
The new focus comes as elections officials in key battleground states are expecting near-record levels of turnout. "With all of this excitement that we have surrounding this historic election, we still are faced with challenges," said Susan Pollard, a spokeswoman for the Virginia State Board of Elections. Pollard said her state, a battleground for the first time in generations, is anticipating that 90% of the nearly five million registered voters there will cast ballots, about twenty points higher than the 71% who turned out in 2004.
In Colorado, another state expecting record turnout, Secretary of State Mike Coffman and county elections officials have been "very aggressive" in promoting permanent absentee ballot sign-ups, said spokesman Richard Coolidge. Coolidge expects nine in ten of the state's 3.15 million registered voters will cast ballots. Elections officials, he said, "are prepared and they're ready to go for this election."
But with such massive turnout expected, "there is certainly a recipe for serious problems," said Jonah Goldman, of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Goldman's group heads a coalition of about 150 groups that is running 866OurVote.org, a voter education and advocate organization that will assist voters in casting ballots.
Goldman cites a funding gap as the source of potentially emerging problems. "There's this incredible excited rush to register, but there doesn't seem to be an ancillary increase in resources elections officials have," Goldman said. "We're still not quite up to snuff when it comes to election administration."
Goldman says voters in traditionally troublesome states like Florida and Ohio could be in store for more difficulties, but that it's new battlegrounds, including Virginia and Colorado, where real problems may surface. "They're frankly not used to the turnout and types of pressure that comes with being a battleground," he said.
The Republican National Committee and John McCain's campaign are worried about the prospect of voter fraud in those new battlegrounds. While hundreds of thousands of new registrants are on the rolls -- 300,000 in Virginia alone, according to Pollard -- at least some shouldn't be there. Making voter lists accurate "is the purview of the state elections officials and elections administrators," said RNC communications director Danny Diaz. "It is their job to clean those and we commend their efforts."
Republicans have been most focused lately on ACORN, an independent left-leaning community group that registers thousands of voters in predominantly minority areas around the country. Recently, the group has come under scrutiny for fraudulent voter registration forms filled out in about a dozen states.
"We've been very concerned about ACORN now for multiple cycles because we've been face to face with their activities," Diaz told Real Clear Politics. Despite court cases in a handful of states over their methods, he said, "their behavior has not changed. They continue to submit thousands of fraudulent registration cards."
Recently, an ACORN employee submitted the names of the Dallas Cowboys lineup as voters who registered in Nevada. "We are trying to raise this as an issue to make sure that state elections officials are paying as close attention to these registration cards as possible," Diaz said.
The Democratic National Committee, along with Barack Obama's campaign, has been most concerned with getting their newly registered voters to the polls while avoiding what they characterize as Republican attempts to kick legitimate voters off the rolls of the eligible.
"I have to hand it to the Obama campaign about how they've approached this campaign. They really have learned from the last presidential election," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant working with the DNC on potential legal troubles that will arise. "They haven't separated voter protection. They've included it from the beginning" in registration efforts.
Democrats, said Backus, are running a "preventative education strategy" in which the party makes voters aware of their rights at the polls. "We've tried to alleviate as much as possible the problems voters will face when they get to the polls," she said. "We've been trying to have an ongoing dialogue with elections officials so they're not surprised with what's going on."
Come Election Day, though, even the most prepared administrators could be stunned by the turnout, and caught flat-footed by unanticipated problems. In that case, lawyers by the thousands will descend upon trouble spots. Goldman said the 866OurVote coalition plans to put 10,000 lawyers, law students and volunteers on the ground in 45 states.
Diaz and Backus wouldn't be specific about the number of lawyers the parties have on call, but neither backed away from a pledge to be ready. "We will be ready and have our options available on Election Day," Diaz said.
"There will be millions of volunteers out on Election Day making sure people can get to the polls and cast their votes," said Backus, who said her party would be ready with an "effective but ferocious legal strategy."
With a massive turnout forecast and both parties prepared to send lawyers to all corners of the country, Election Day trouble should be minimized. But eight years after the nation was introduced to hanging chads, elections keep going awry in states from Florida to Washington. With both sides hoping for the best but preparing for the worst, "a lot of people are going to be holding their breath," Goldman said.
WASHINGTON -- We have completed the "Survivor" phase of the presidential campaign, in which pundits and pollsters waited for one of the candidates to make a gaffe in the debates so they could vote him off the island. Now, with just over two weeks left, maybe we can focus on the issue of leadership for a country in deep, deep trouble.
Despite Barack Obama's big lead in the polls, he hasn't yet made a decisive case for how he would govern in this time of crisis. His demeanor is cool and calm, his intellect razor-sharp, and if smart guys were automatically good leaders, it would be game, set and match for Obama.
But leadership is something more mysterious, and it comes in odd packages -- the brooding, depressive Abraham Lincoln; the patrician Franklin Roosevelt; the genial ex-actor Ronald Reagan; the priapic good ol' old boy Bill Clinton. What is inside the Obama package? We still need to know more.
Over the next two weeks, Obama should help the country visualize what his administration would look like. He should show how he would step up to the economic crisis, an unfolding disaster that we compare so often to the Great Depression that the analogy is losing its horrific impact. What sorts of people would Obama appoint to his Cabinet? How would he deal with two wars, as commander in chief rather than as political campaigner?
The country is looking for two conflicting qualities in the next president -- change and stability. Obama certainly embodies the former. He launched his campaign by styling himself as the change agent who could reach across racial and party divisions. But what kind of change? Oddly, for the great rhetorician, the vision thing has been a bit fuzzy in recent weeks. Obama should reveal what's in his head and heart by expressing more of the big ideas that would animate an Obama presidency.
The stability theme is a harder one for Obama, but it's likely to be crucial in bringing home the victory the pollsters are predicting. The country is frightened, more now than it was a few months ago. People want reassurance that Obama, for all his talk about change, isn't going to overturn the apple cart. A dream television spot in the final week would be a fireside chat between Obama and his sometime economic adviser, Warren Buffett. That would close the deal, I suspect.
Balancing change and stability in foreign policy is Obama's biggest challenge -- and John McCain's greatest opportunity. An "October Surprise" that dramatized the need for experienced leadership would obviously help McCain. But even here, Obama can use the next two weeks to send the message that there will be "a steady hand at the tiller," to use one of McCain's signature lines.
The best way for Obama to signal continuity would be to do publicly what I'm told he has already begun privately -- which is to express confidence in the two key leaders at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus.
Members of Obama's inner circle have discussed the possibility of asking Gates to stay on for a transitional year or so; Obama's key defense adviser, former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, has even floated the idea directly. This transition would make sense for the country, and Gates would probably say yes. As for Petraeus, Obama is said to have signaled that he would listen carefully to military advice about Iraq and Afghanistan rather than make radical changes.
Obama could embrace both continuity and change abroad by endorsing some of Petraeus' new ideas about the way forward in Afghanistan. Far from the "surge to victory" image conveyed by McCain's rhetoric, Petraeus is looking for ways to negotiate with and co-opt the insurgents. He wants to explore truces and alliances with the tribal warlords who make up the insurgent "syndicate" -- so that they are taken off the battlefield without a new war. That's what Petraeus did in Iraq, and it's a strategy Obama could support for Afghanistan.
The temptation for Obama will be to sit on his lead, and avoid taking the risk of defining his leadership in sharper terms. For a man of lesser ambition, that play-it-safe strategy might make sense. But Obama is something different. At his best, he seems to think beyond the political calculus of how to get elected to the deeper problem of how to lead and govern. Over these next two weeks, Obama should step on the accelerator, not the brake.
The campaign released the figure on Sunday, one day before it must file a detailed report of its monthly finances with the Federal Election Commission.
Obama's money is fueling a vast campaign operation in an expanding field of competitive states. It also has underwritten a wave of both national and targeted video advertising unseen before in a presidential contest.
Campaign manager David Plouffe, in an e-mail to supporters Sunday morning, said the campaign had added 632,000 new donors in September, for a total of 3.1 million contributors to the campaign. He said the average donation was $86.
The Democratic National Committee, moments later, announced that it raised $49.9 million and had $27.5 million in the bank at the start of October. The party has been raising money through joint fundraising events with Obama and can use the money to assist his candidacy.
Obama's numbers are possible because he opted out of the public financing system for the fall campaign. McCain, the Republican nominee, chose to participate in the system, which limits him to $84 million for the September-October stretch before the election.
Obama's monthly figure pushed his total fundraising to $605 million. No presidential candidate has ever run such an expensive campaign. His campaign raised $65 million in August, his previous best.
"The overall numbers obviously are impressive," Plouffe said in a campaign video. "But it's what's beneath the numbers in terms of average Americans who have had enough, who want a change and who are really fueling this campaign."
Obama had initially promised to accept public financing if McCain did, but changed his mind after setting primary fundraising records. His extraordinary fundraising is bound to set a new standard in politics that could doom the taxpayer-paid system. Many Republicans have begun to second-guess McCain's decision to participate in the program.
With his money, and a favorable political wind at his back, Obama has secured his foothold in states that have voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the past. But he has also been able to expand the contest to reliably Republican states, forcing McCain and the Republican Party to spend their money defensively.
Plouffe pointed out that the campaign is now spending resources in West Virginia. Obama running mate Joe Biden was scheduled to campaign in Charleston, W.Va., on Friday and the campaign has secured television advertising in the state for the next two weeks, according to ad data obtained by The Associated Press. Plouffe hinted at further expansion, noting that public opinion polls show the race tightening in Georgia and North Dakota.
As much as Obama raised, he needed a big fundraising month to justify his decision to bypass the public finance system. Financially, he has been competing not only against McCain, but against the GOP, which raised $66 million in September.
The combined Obama and DNC totals for September now give the Democrats a distinct financial advantage going into Election Day, just 16 days away.
"He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"Obama displayed a steadiness. Showed intellectual vigor. He has a definitive way of doing business that will do us well," Powell said.
Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.
Powell said he questioned Sen. John McCain's judgment in picking Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate because he doesn't think she is ready to be president.
He also said he was disappointed with some of McCain's campaign tactics, such as bringing up Obama's ties to former 1960s radical Bill Ayers.
Powell served as secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005.
The notion of a Powell endorsement has been rumored for several months.
On August 13, Powell's office denied a report on Fox by commentator Bill Kristol that Powell had decided to publicly back Obama at the Democratic National Convention.
Several sources said at the time that Powell had not made a decision about a possible endorsement.
"As always, he is holding his cards close and waiting for more information," one adviser told CNN's John King in August.
Powell himself brushed off queries on any potential presidential nod but told ABC News on August 13 that he would not be going to Denver, Colorado, for the convention.
"I do not have time to waste on Bill Kristol's musings," he said. "I am not going to the convention. I have made this clear."
In February, Powell told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that he was weighing an endorsement of a Democratic or independent candidate.
"I am keeping my options open at the moment," Powell said.
"I have voted for members of both parties in the course of my adult life. And as I said earlier, I will vote for the candidate I think can do the best job for America, whether that candidate is a Republican, a Democrat or an independent," he added.
Powell has offered praise for Obama, calling him an "exciting person on the political stage."
"He has energized a lot of people in America," said Powell, who briefly weighed his own run for the White House in the mid-1990s. "He has energized a lot of people around the world. And so I think he is worth listening to and seeing what he stands for."
Powell's adviser has said that "he likes and admires John McCain, and that would be a factor in anything he does if he decides to get more involved."
Another source close to Powell said he has known the Republican nominee for more than three decades "and likes him and is looking for a reason to vote for him. He hasn't found it yet."
The former general, who has largely steered clear of politics since leaving the Bush administration, noted that the next president will need to work to restore America's standing in the world.
Powell gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in support of George W. Bush in 2000.
"I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years," he said. "A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world, that starts to restore confidence in America, that starts to restore favorable ratings to America. Frankly, we've lost a lot in recent years."
Powell's adviser also said at the time that the vice presidential picks for both candidates would be a major factor in his decision, both for the quality of each man's running mate and for what sort of "signal that choice sends about the character and judgment of the candidate."
He also said that a Powell decision to back Obama would not be a surprise.
THE BRADLEY EFFECT is fading into the Hillary Effect.
The former is the phenomenon that the polls overestimate how much white voters will support a black candidate. The latter was in full force Thursday at Barack Obama's first rally of the homestretch of the presidential campaign. Huge numbers of women from New Hampshire and Massachusetts who breathed fire into Hillary Clinton's campaign after Clinton was stunned in Iowa by Obama cheered jubilantly with the original Obama believers.
Until recently, polls indicated that a quarter of Clinton voters were so steamed over her elimination that they threatened to vote for Republican John McCain. A month ago, McCain had a slight lead in two polls in New Hampshire. Obama now leads by 10 percentage points in Real Clear Politics averaging of the last state polls. From listening to former Clinton voters, you know why.
"It took two to three weeks for it to all settle down," said Sue Martin, 68, social studies textbook editor from Atkinson, N.H. She was a Clinton volunteer in the Salem office. "Back then, I thought he was way too young. But he's grown a lot."
"Up until the last month, I was going to write in Hillary," said Janice Keene, a 58-year-old retired elementary school teacher from Londonderry. "I was quite disappointed. But our country needs change, especially the middle class."
"I still feel Hillary was robbed," said Geraldine Sanders, 68, of Candia, who assists Alzheimer's patients at a residential treatment center. "You might say that, politically, I grew up with Hillary. She is a very strong woman. But my mother was a great Democrat and I can't forget that."
Whatever hope McCain had of peeling off white women voters is evaporating. According to Real Clear Politics averages, Obama is up 14 points in Pennsylvania and 8 points in New Mexico, states Clinton won. Obama is up 10 points in Michigan, where Clinton ran unopposed. Obama has small leads in Ohio, Florida, and Nevada, where Clinton won or ran virtually unopposed. President Bush won Ohio, Florida, Nevada, and New Mexico for the Republicans in 2004.
New Hampshire, while having only four electoral votes, is a final state McCain hopes to keep in play on Election Day. His running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, campaigned here this week. McCain clearly hoped that having a woman on the ticket would sway Clinton voters. But Clinton voters here said Palin is beyond the pale. In many cases her very selection accelerated their support of Obama.
Carol Kunz, a 42-year-old attorney from Manchester, said, "To compare the two women is insulting to women everywhere."
Christine Hines, a 43-year-old homemaker from North Andover, said, "Palin's right-wing politics curl my hair. How could any Hillary voter align herself with Palin?"
Carol Crowell of Haverhill, a 46-year-old executive editor in educational publishing, said, "My husband voted for Hillary too. But the idea that Hillary supporters would support someone the political polar opposite from Hillary on healthcare, education, and ending the war just because they're women is crazy."
The Hillary Effect is so much in play that Karen Fronterotta, a 50-year-old telecom sales representative from Kingston, N.H., is listed on the Obama campaign website as hosting a "Women for Truth and Change" party the Sunday before the election. She wants to get 30 women to pledge to get at least five of their friends to the polls for Obama. Sue Martin has switched from working for Clinton's Salem office to working out of Obama's Salem office.
"For me, it's about changing the Supreme Court," Martin said.
Lise Ragan, 56, joked about herself as "Jill the Publisher," a play on McCain's use of Joe the Plumber in the last debate. Ragan is an educational textbook publisher in Haverhill, Mass. She said the Palin ploy and the plumber play landed with a thud to her political ears. "You're talking to the Hillary demographic here," Ragan said. "I know that there might be tax repercussions in running a small business. But for me and most Hillary voters, the greater issue is the future of the planet."
Sen. Barack Obama holds leads in four key counties that will go a long way toward determining the eventual winner in four important swing states — Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — according to a new Politico/Insider Advantage survey. Obama is poised to expand on recent Democratic gains in three populous suburban counties — Pennsylvania’s Bucks County, Missouri’s St. Louis County and Virginia’s Prince William County. In a fourth, Ohio’s Franklin County, home to Columbus and its suburbs, the survey also found Obama with the lead. In Bucks County, a politically competitive but historically Republican suburb that shares a border with Philadelphia, Obama is running ahead of McCain, 47-41 percent. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry carried the county by a slim 51percent to 48 percent. Obama bests McCain 50 percent to 42 percent in Prince William County, a Washington, D.C., suburb that voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. Between 1976 and 2004, Prince William County supported Republican presidential candidates by an average margin of 18 points. Obama also has opened up a wide 53 percent to 37 percent advantage over McCain in suburban St. Louis County, which does not include Missouri’s second-largest city, St. Louis. In 2004, Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic nominee, carried St. Louis County, the most populous county in the state, 54 percent to 45 percent.
In Ohio’s Franklin County, the state’s second-most populous county after Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, Obama leads by a narrower 45 percent to 40 percent margin. Kerry carried Franklin County 54 percent to 45 percent in 2004.
InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery explained Obama’s success in these areas is a result of his strength among independents and voters between the ages of 30 and 44. “That is the most angry group of voters that we have this year, with regard to the Republicans,” Towery said. “I see that in almost every poll I look at.” In Prince William County, Obama leads in this age group, 58 percent to 33 percent, and takes independent voters by an even wider, 55-percent-to-25-percent margin. McCain is scheduled to appear in Prince William Saturday, a nod to his vulnerability there and also to the electoral importance of that traditionally Republican area. Obama’s advantages in Prince William County hold up in competitive locales across the country, with independents consistently picking him over McCain. “The big swing, again, is that Obama’s picking up the lion’s share of the independents,” Towery added. Independents in Pennsylvania’s Bucks County support Obama 46 percent to 32 percent, and 30-to-44-year-olds pick him by a 10-point margin, 49 percent to 37 percent. In central Ohio’s Franklin County, he takes 30-to-44-year-olds by a smaller, but still decisive 49 percent to 34 percent gap, and wins independents, 43 percent to 19 percent. Missouri’s St. Louis County, where Obama is safely ahead of McCain, features Obama’s narrowest lead among 30-to-44-year-olds: he’s ahead there by 49 percent to 40 percent. Independents are breaking for Obama by a more convincing, 47-percent-to-31-percent margin. During the Democratic primary, Obama won just a handful of counties in Missouri, but by running up big margins in the city and county of St. Louis, he was able to pull out a narrow statewide victory over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Kerry’s 9-point margin in St. Louis County and his landslide 80 percent win in the city of St. Louis were not enough to overcome George W. Bush’s lead elsewhere in the state. But if Obama can maintain his commanding advantage there, it could help tip the state into the Democratic electoral column. Currently, Towery said, McCain is headed for a major defeat in the area. “In this county, he’s not even doing well with the 65-and-over crowd,” he said. “This is a wipeout.” Unlike in St. Louis County, Obama did not perform well in Bucks County in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary. Though the Philadelphia suburb was seen as favorable terrain for the Illinois senator, Clinton handily defeated him there, 63 percent to 37 percent. Obama’s lead in Bucks County is within the poll’s margin of error and he is not performing as well among women as he is in the other counties surveyed. In Bucks, he has just a 4-point edge with female voters, compared with a 16-point spread in the Columbus, Ohio, area. According to Towery, this can partly be attributed to McCain’s strong performance among middle-aged women. “You’ve got an unusually high number for McCain in that 45-to-64 age group, and that’s got a lot of women in it,” Towery explained. Among voters in that age interval, McCain leads Obama 53 percent to 37 percent. That Obama is ahead of McCain in Bucks County, anyway, suggests that he has been more successful than his opponent in reaching out to the suburban swing voters who dominate areas such as these. A September poll commissioned by Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies showed McCain leading Obama among suburban voters, nationwide, by a 48 percent to 42 percent margin. The poll was conducted Sept. 15-21. But whatever the national trend among suburbanites, Obama has edged ahead in key areas that are likely to influence the outcome of the election. Recent public polling has shown Obama winning all four states in which these county-level polls were conducted. The RealClearPolitics polling average has Obama ahead by 14 points in Pennsylvania, Virginia by 8.1 percent, 3.2 percent in Ohio and 1.8 percent in Missouri. This is the second round of Politico/Insider Advantage polling in critical counties. The first round results, published Tuesday, showed Obama tied or leading McCain in Jefferson County, Colo.; Washoe County, Nev.; Wake County, N.C.; and Hillsborough County, Fla. The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in St. Louis County and Franklin County were conducted Oct. 13. The St. Louis County survey included 542 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. The Franklin survey included 376 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent. The Politico/InsiderAdvantage telephone surveys in Bucks County and Prince William County were conducted Oct. 14. The Bucks survey included 320 likely voters and the Prince William survey included 308 likely voters, both with a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percent.
