Barack Obama in the News

Assad: Peace 'unavoidable,' but not until after US elections

Middle East peace is unavoidable but most likely will not be achieved until a new US administration is elected, Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Sunday.

In an interview with France-2 television, Assad said "we have no other choice than peace," but added that he doubts it will be realizable in coming months.

The administration of US President George W. Bush, according to the Syrian leader, "has no vision for peace" and lacks the will to push forward the process.

Assad said he had "much more hope" that peace in the region would be achievable after the United States elects a new president in November.

Earlier on Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed hope that Israel and Syria would soon launch direct peace talks.

"We have begun a process with Syria," the prime minister said before a high-profile Paris summit. "It is indirect, but I hope they will soon become direct contacts that will allow progress on this track."

Shortly after making his comments, Olmert met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who later met with Assad, Olmert spokesman Mark Regev said. Olmert told Erdogan that "he is absolutely serious about moving forward with the Syrians."

Assad was not immediately available Sunday for comment on Olmert's remarks. A day earlier, he said the talks could move toward direct contacts but suggested that wouldn't happen until a new US president was in place.

Israel, Regev said, thinks "it's a mistake to wait."

"If there is a willingness to negotiate now, now is the time," he said.

IRS Clears Obama's Church - WaPost via C&L

Today the United Church of Christ, the national church to which presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama belongs, announced that the Internal Revenue Service has found "that the activity about which we had concern did not constitute …a violation of the requirements of the requirements of section 501(c)(3)."

The "concern" that apparently launched the investigation stemmed from a speech Senator Obama gave to the UCC General Synod, the all-church gathering held every two years, during the church's fiftieth anniversary celebration.

In other words, the UCC received a complete and clean review.

General Minister and President Rev. John Thomas said, "While I was never really concerned that any violations would be noted, I am gratified both with the speed of the review and the endorsement of the way in which we carried out Senator Obama's visit."

Despite the fact that the church had invited Obama to speak before he became a candidate for President, and despite the fact that UCC Nationwide Special Counsel Donald C. Clark, Esq., had carefully prepared the church leadership with the legal guidelines they needed to follow, the IRS launched an investigation. "We were confident that once the IRS was aware of all of the facts surrounding the Senator's appearance, it would conclude that the UCC was in compliance with the governing Revenue Ruling," Clark said.

"IRS regulations require that a senior official form a reasonable belief that a religious organization no longer qualifies for exemption from taxation before initiating such a church tax inquiry. In order for such a determination to be reasonable, Congress should require that the service communicate with the church before an inquiry, with its attendant costs and chilling effect on constitutionally protected associational rights, is launched. However, that currently is neither a Congressional mandate nor IRS practice, and was not done in this case," Clark added.

In addition, the IRS waited more than six months, until Senator Obama was emerging as a possible front-runner, to investigate.

That weird Wednesday debate - TVBarn

There are two ways to look at Wednesday night's debate on ABC. One is to say that George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson were atrocious, that they shamed themselves and their network by devoting all that time to red herrings, making McCarthy-esque insinuations about Barack Obama's friendship with former Weathermen radical Bill Ayers, and bringing up that flag pin non-issue.

On the other hand, it's possible that the ABC newsmen simply were asking some of the actual questions that Pennsylvania voters have been asking in the runup to next Tuesday's primary. A little Google, or a few minutes listening to C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" or "60 Minutes," reveals that there are, apparently, a lot of people expressing what seem to be genuine concerns about Obama and the flag pin, Obama and the Muslims, and other matters that Obama's core dismisses as nonsense (or as the New York Times inferred, veiled racism).

Is it the job of ABC to elevate the discourse or reflect the discourse? Careful how you answer; it's a slippery slope to Fox News.

I'm not sure it matters either way. In the end, ABC's line of questioning and the relentless message-hammering of the all-but-vanquished Hillary Clinton confirmed that Obama is the putative, all-but-coronated Democratic nominee. It was he, not she, who was kept on the defensive all night long, giving the debate the air of something like a cross between a police interrogation and a corporate job interview.

You can't lay responsibility for that only on the journos. The role of the press is to be adversarial, and ABC certainly was aware that this was a debate of unequals, electorally speaking. I think Gibson and Stephanopoulos decided this was as good a time as any to start treating Obama as the nominee, but since that wasn't (couldn't be) communicated overtly, it had to be inferred from their questioning. Oddly enough, they were aided in this mission by Obama, who once again pulled his punches (admittedly, I'd do the same if I were in his spot); and by Clinton, whose message discipline was less about why she should be president and more about why she is, as she put it, still in this race.

A Resume Can't Buy You Love - Frank Rich

We can only imagine what is going on inside John McCain's head when he contemplates Mike Huckabee. It can't be pretty. No presidential candidate in either party has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator, and yet in a wartime election he is being outpaced by a guy who has zero experience and is proud of it.

"I may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy," Mr. Huckabee joked to Don Imus, "but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night." So much for the gravitas points earned during a five-and-a-half year stay at the Hanoi Hilton.

But if Mr. McCain has so far resisted slapping down the upstart in his party, Bill Clinton has shown no such self-restraint about Barack Obama. Early this month the former president criticized the press for not sufficiently covering the candidates' "record in public life" and thereby making "people think experience is irrelevant." His pique boiled over on Charlie Rose's show on Dec. 14, when he made his now-famous claim that the 2008 election will be a referendum on whether "no experience matters." He insinuated that Mr. Obama was tantamount to "a gifted television commentator" and likened a potential Obama presidency to a roll of the dice.

Attention Bill Clinton: If that's what this election is about, it's already over. No matter how much Hillary Clinton, Mr. McCain or Rudy Giuliani brag about being tested and vetted, it's not experience that will be decisive in determining the next president.

For many, Mr. McCain's long record of experience may be a liability even greater than his party-bucking moderation on immigration and his bear hug of President Bush on Iraq. What his résumé mainly does is remind a youth-obsessed culture of his age. When Gallup asked voters in August to rate traits as desirable or not in the next president, the "undesirable" percentages for being a member of a racial or ethnic minority group (13), a woman (14), a Mormon (22) or having "strained relationships" with one's children (45) all paled next to being age 70 or older (52). It's not morning in America for Reaganesque elders in the political arena anymore.

For Mrs. Clinton, the failure of "experience" as a selling point was becoming apparent even as her husband continued to push it on Charlie Rose. Last week's ABC News-Washington Post poll in Iowa found that she clobbers Mr. Obama on the question of who has the most experience — 49 percent to 8 percent. But to little end. That same survey had Mr. Obama ahead by 4 points over all because, as this year's pervasive polling matchup has it, the electorate values change over experience.

The rabid hunger for change, it turns out, has made the very idea of experience as toxic as every other attribute of the Bush White House. The once-heralded notion of a C.E.O. presidency, overstocked with "tested" Washington and Fortune 500 executives like Cheney and Rumsfeld, is now in the toilet with Larry Craig. You couldn't push the pendulum further in the other direction than by supporting a candidate like Mr. Huckabee, who is blatantly unprepared to be president and whose most impressive battle has been with his weight. In a Rasmussen poll in Florida, Mr. Huckabee even did well among foreign-policy-minded Republicans whose most important issue is Iraq.

Jack Ohman on Hillary's "new" health care plan

Troop buildup fails to reconcile Iraq

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military buildup that was supposed to calm Baghdad and other trouble spots has failed to usher in national reconciliation, as the capital's neighborhoods rupture even further along sectarian lines, violence shifts elsewhere and Iraq's government remains mired in political infighting.

In the coming days, U.S. military and government leaders will offer Congress their assessment of the 6-month-old plan's results. But a review of statistics on death and displacement, political developments and the impressions of Iraqis who are living under the heightened military presence reaches a dispiriting conclusion.

Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved.

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration and Iraq's Ministry for Displacement and Migration.

Campaign Memo: "Barack Obama Was Right"

August 3, 2007
To: Interested Parties
From: Samantha Power -- Founding Executive Director, Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Re: Conventional Washington versus the Change We Need

It was Washington's conventional wisdom that led us into the worst strategic blunder in the history of US foreign policy. The rush to invade Iraq was a position advocated by not only the Bush Administration, but also by editorial pages, the foreign policy establishment of both parties, and majorities in both houses of Congress. Those who opposed the war were often labeled weak, inexperienced, and even naïve.

Barack Obama defied conventional wisdom and opposed invading Iraq. He did so at a time when some told him that doing so would doom his political future. He took that risk because he thought it essential that the United States "finish the fight with bin Laden and al Qaeda." He warned that a "dumb war, a rash war" in Iraq would result in an "occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences."

Obama has it right: Why not talk to adversaries?

During the Cold War, President Dwight D. Eisenhower often said that he would go anywhere, any time, any place in pursuit of peace.

Ike promoted co-existence with the former Soviet Union and invited Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to visit the United States.

Conservative Republicans were unhappy when President Richard M. Nixon made his surprise journey to hard-line communist China in 1972. But the move was mostly applauded as a diplomatic breakthrough, leading to better relations between the two nations.

The American people rejoiced at those peacemaking gestures and didn't think that Eisenhower — a World War II hero — was naive to talk to the Soviets with the goal of easing tensions between the two super powers, particularly since each had doomsday nuclear arsenals.

Three Top Democrats Share Lead In Iowa Poll

Less than six months before Iowa voters open the 2008 presidential nomination battles, the Democratic contest in the Hawkeye State is a deadlock, with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards in a virtual tie for first place, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

While Clinton has a clear and consistent lead over Obama in national polls, with Edwards generally running a distant third, the contours of the campaign in Iowa appear far different. Edwards's strong base of support, built on the foundations of his second-place finish in the state's precinct caucuses in 2004, has turned Iowa into the most competitive early state for the Democratic field.

As is the case nationally, Clinton gains from being seen as the strongest leader and the most electable contender. But in a state where retail politics can be crucial, she lags far behind her main rivals in voters' rankings of the most likable candidate.

The survey of likely caucus participants captures attitudes among a small fraction of Iowa's population; historically, relatively few eligible voters turn out for caucuses. But these activists could have significant influence in shaping the Democratic race as it moves from the cornfields of the Midwest to the hills of New Hampshire and beyond to the mega-primary on Feb. 5.

Americans elsewhere may not be paying attention to the presidential race on a day-to-day basis, but nine in 10 likely Democratic caucus attendees said they are closely following the movements and statements of the candidates. Seven in 10 said they have been contacted by at least one of the presidential campaigns this year, and four in 10 said they have attended at least one campaign event.

In the poll, 27 percent said they would vote for Obama, 26 percent for Clinton and 26 percent for Edwards. The only other Democrat to register in double digits was Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, at 11 percent. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) trailed at 2 percent, and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) at 1 percent.

Obama, Clinton Draw Wall Street Donors Amid Bush Disenchantment

Wall Street donors are demonstrating their disenchantment with President George W. Bush and his policies on Iraq and the economy by giving more to Democratic presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton than to Republican candidates.

Obama, an Illinois senator, is leading among employees of the top 10 investment banks, raising at least $739,579 in the second quarter, Federal Election Commission filings show. Clinton, a New York senator whose constituency includes Wall Street, followed with $424,545. By comparison, the top Republican recipients, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, each received a little more than $ 330,000.

Overall, employees of the banks gave more than $1.4 million to Democrats and slightly more than $900,000 to Republicans. These Democratic donors are focusing on issues such as the budget and the growing negative perception of the U.S. overseas. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh, an Obama supporter, said he sees an opportunity for a "fresh look at things," while Robert Wolf, chairman of UBS Americas, said he is concerned about the Iraq war and partisan divides.

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