Analysis: Obama works to regain political standing

SAN FRANCISCO — SAN FRANCISCO President Barack Obama is urging donors to buck up and making a thread-the-needle appeal for bipartisanship with Republicans even as he calls for replacing the House GOP majority and holding his Democratic edge in the Senate.

Obama is seeking to gain back his political standing in the aftermath of his administration's botched launch of health care enrollment by defining himself as a pragmatic victim of tea party conservatives while casting his policies on the economy and immigration as popular remedies that could win bipartisan support.

"Right now in this country there is at least one faction of one party that has decided they are more interested in stopping progress than advancing it, and aren't interested in compromise or engaging in solving problems and more interested in scoring points for the next election," he told Democratic donors in San Francisco on Monday.

For Obama, the call for compromise is a veiled olive branch that also disguises a threat.

"What we're looking for is not the defeat of another party, what we're looking for is the advancement of ideas that are going to vindicate those values that are tried and true," he said at a fundraiser Sunday with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi seated among about 60 high-dollar donors. "But to do that we're going to need Nancy Pelosi as speaker, because there's just a lot of work to be done right now."

Less than 24 hours later, pressing for an overhaul of immigration laws, Obama extended a hand to House Republican Speaker John Boehner.

"Speaker Boehner is hopeful we can make progress" on immigration, Obama said Monday in San Francisco. "I believe the speaker is sincere, I believe he genuinely wants to get it done."

The diverging messages reflect Obama's dual desire to win a legislative victory even as he performs his duties as leader of the Democratic Party.

"I'm not a particularly ideological person," he said, adding he still is passionate about giving people a fair shake. "But I'm pretty pragmatic about how we get there."

Raising money in Washington and California, states he won handily in his two elections, Obama faced protests and hecklers from his liberal flank. During his immigration remarks in San Francisco, he was interrupted by a protester standing immediately behind him. The young man condemned the Obama administration's record number of deportation of immigrants who are in the country illegally.

"Stop deportation, stop deportation!" the young man yelled. Obama turned and listened then said that he was required to follow the law.

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Analysis: Obama works to regain political standing

SAN FRANCISCO — SAN FRANCISCO President Barack Obama is urging donors to buck up and making a thread-the-needle appeal for bipartisanship with Republicans even as he calls for replacing the House GOP majority and holding his Democratic edge in the Senate.

Obama is seeking to gain back his political standing in the aftermath of his administration's botched launch of health care enrollment by defining himself as a pragmatic victim of tea party conservatives while casting his policies on the economy and immigration as popular remedies that could win bipartisan support.

"Right now in this country there is at least one faction of one party that has decided they are more interested in stopping progress than advancing it, and aren't interested in compromise or engaging in solving problems and more interested in scoring points for the next election," he told Democratic donors in San Francisco on Monday.

For Obama, the call for compromise is a veiled olive branch that also disguises a threat.

"What we're looking for is not the defeat of another party, what we're looking for is the advancement of ideas that are going to vindicate those values that are tried and true," he said at a fundraiser Sunday with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi seated among about 60 high-dollar donors. "But to do that we're going to need Nancy Pelosi as speaker, because there's just a lot of work to be done right now."

Less than 24 hours later, pressing for an overhaul of immigration laws, Obama extended a hand to House Republican Speaker John Boehner.

"Speaker Boehner is hopeful we can make progress" on immigration, Obama said Monday in San Francisco. "I believe the speaker is sincere, I believe he genuinely wants to get it done."

The diverging messages reflect Obama's dual desire to win a legislative victory even as he performs his duties as leader of the Democratic Party.

"I'm not a particularly ideological person," he said, adding he still is passionate about giving people a fair shake. "But I'm pretty pragmatic about how we get there."

Raising money in Washington and California, states he won handily in his two elections, Obama faced protests and hecklers from his liberal flank. During his immigration remarks in San Francisco, he was interrupted by a protester standing immediately behind him. The young man condemned the Obama administration's record number of deportation of immigrants who are in the country illegally.

"Stop deportation, stop deportation!" the young man yelled. Obama turned and listened then said that he was required to follow the law.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Constitution Day lauds political lessons of past

Most Americans appear fed up with gridlock, partisan divide and ideological intransigence in our nation's capital. President Barack Obama's approval ratings have fallen, and voters rate Congress even lower. Standing for political principle seems to have given way to posturing; political compromise is apparently a lost art.

Tuesday is Constitution Day. On a day intended to celebrate the founding document in our nation's unique experiment in republican government, we should step back and ask ourselves if the problems in Washington, D.C., are exclusively the fault of the politicians we elect.

National organizations such as the Jack Miller Center have suggested that we revisit the original debates at the time of the Constitution's drafting. In doing so, we may rediscover that high principle and political compromise can go hand-in-hand, and that the Constitution itself is an act of principled political compromise.

We should remind ourselves that our national heroes such as Abraham Lincoln understood that principle and practical politics were not contradictory. As president during the Civil War with its horrific casualties, Lincoln faced political opposition within his own party and growing Democratic Party opposition in the North. His sole aim as commander-in-chief was to win the war, but he was an anti-slave Republican who increasingly understood that the war itself was about abolishing slavery. Here he stood on high principle.

In late 1862, as the war continued to go poorly for Union forces, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves of rebels. This limited measure served military purposes and expressed Lincoln's deep belief that the war was about freeing the slaves.

Press notices about the forthcoming proclamation aroused Democratic opponents and cheered the radical wing of Lincoln's own party. The proclamation cost Lincoln votes in the midterm elections of 1862, when Democrats won 35 congressional seats, including Lincoln's home district in Illinois.

Elected to a second term in 1864 (much to his surprise), Lincoln feared that a hostile judiciary might overturn his Emancipation Proclamation; he sought passage of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing African-Americans permanent freedom. As the war concluded, Lincoln brought before Congress the 13th Amendment to formally abolish slavery throughout the United States. Radical Republicans wanted a more expansive amendment, but were defeated in committee. Working with friendly congressmen, Lincoln instructed that all stops be pulled out to ensure passage of the amendment. All stops meant patronage, political pressure, deals and direct appeals by Lincoln to reticent House members. Lincoln achieved his ultimate goal: the end of slavery and the realization that the Union would not endure half-slave and half-free.

Are today's youths learning such lessons about Lincoln and about constitutional democracy? A frequent complaint is that our schools and universities are no longer teaching civics. Instead, they have become hotbeds of political indoctrination, often around identity politics.

As a professor of history at Arizona State University, I have a different perspective.

My colleagues in history work hard in the classroom to ensure that students learn the most important lesson of the past: That while people and societies are not perfect, social, political and cultural changes do occur through human struggle and a desire to make their world better.

This commitment to education is most evident in an undergraduate program in Political Thought and Leadership recently established at ASU.

The program's purpose is to train a new generation of state and national leaders in the principles of constitutional government.

In celebrating Constitution Day, we -- the American voters and citizens of our great state of Arizona -- acknowledge the continuing presence of the past.

Donald T. Critchlow is a history professor at Arizona State University.

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Obama Faces Political Risks in Emphasizing Effects of Spending Cuts

But as president, Mr. Obama is charged with minimizing the damage from the spending reductions and must steer clear of talking down the economy. A sustained campaign against the cuts by the president could become what one former aide called “a self-fulfilling kind of mess.”

As a result, Mr. Obama is carefully navigating between maximizing heat on Republicans to undo the cuts while mobilizing efforts to make sure that the steep spending cuts do not hurt Americans. His advisers acknowledge the potential political perils ahead as the president struggles to find the right kind of balance.

At his first cabinet meeting of his second term on Monday, Mr. Obama called the cuts an “area of deep concern” that would slow the country’s growth, but promised to “manage through it” while pursuing a robust agenda. It was an echo of his formulations from the White House podium on Friday, when he began to dial back the dire warnings about long lines at airports and furloughs of F.B.I. agents, to name a couple, that he had made over the past several weeks.

“I’ve instructed not just my White House but every agency to make sure that regardless of some of the challenges that they may face because of sequestration, we’re not going to stop working on behalf of the American people,” Mr. Obama said, using the formal name for the spending cuts.

The president’s approach is unlikely to satisfy Mr. Obama’s most partisan backers, who view blaming Republicans for the deep spending cuts — especially in the military — as a tantalizing opportunity for political gain. And stepping back from a battle over the cuts could allow the significantly lower spending to become the “new normal” for the federal budget.

But a high-profile focus on the cuts in the months ahead is risky, too.

If severe economic pain ultimately fails to materialize, Mr. Obama could be blamed for hyping the situation, much like his cabinet secretaries were in recent weeks. (Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, for example, was criticized for declaring the nation would be “less safe” because of furloughs of border patrol agents.)

Seeking short-term political gain with the spending cuts could also make more difficult the president’s hopes for a longer-term budget deal with Republicans on taxes and entitlement spending.

Mr. Obama’s team is keenly aware that the more he focuses on the cuts, the more he threatens to divert attention from his second-term priorities on guns, immigration and preschool.

“You can’t simply put them on hold and simply deal with this,” David Axelrod, a former top adviser to Mr. Obama, said in an interview. The danger of sounding the alarm on the sequester, he said, is that “you can so magnify the impact of it so that it becomes an even bigger self-fulfilling kind of mess.”

Mr. Obama was careful during his first term to seize on any bit of good economic news so that no one could accuse him of hurting the economy by his statements. That desire to be upbeat — as in 2010, when administration officials declared a “recovery summer” just before the economy dipped again — sometimes got him into trouble.

The question now for the president is how much to keep up the drumbeat of concern about the spending cuts in the weeks ahead.

In talking points distributed by the White House to Democratic pundits on Friday, advisers suggested focusing on how Republican refusal to accept tax increases will “threaten our national security and hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs and our entire economy while too many Americans are still looking for work.”

But the document also urges them to make the point that it is time to turn to other issues. Former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader during the Clinton years and the first term of George W. Bush, said he expects the president will not spend much time talking about the cuts.

“What he has to do is say, ‘I warned you about this, it’s going to happen, it’s gradual, but at the same time, we’ve got a country to run,’ ” Mr. Daschle said. “You’re not going to hear him with much more hyperbolic rhetoric.”

Senior White House aides said as much on Friday before Mr. Obama formally signed the order putting the cuts into effect. They told reporters that sequestration cuts would not be the only thing the president talks about — or even the majority of what he talks about — in the weeks ahead.

But they said he will try to score a political point when opportunities arise.

Aides continue to bet that they will. Even without Mr. Obama’s intervention, White House officials said they expect the effect of the cuts will slowly become more visible.

Government workers will begin forced furloughs in April, air control towers in small towns will eventually close and a lack of overtime for airport security officers will make lines longer over time.

“This is a slow-roll disaster instead of a meteor hitting,” said Matt Bennett, a Clinton-era adviser and the vice president for communications at Third Way, a liberal research group. “It’s coming on slowly. You are going to see it popping up.”

But it’s also possible that the severe angst is limited to relatively small communities of interest: federal workers, defense contractors, service providers who depend on government grants. If that happens, Mr. Obama would have little leverage to use against Republicans.

“It’s imperative not to lose sight of the rest of the agenda,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “They are smart enough to realize it’s a delicate balancing act.”

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Kyl was a natural legislator, uncorroded by political game

(PNI) From the political notebook:

It is revealing and emblematic that Jon Kyl didn't devote his farewell address in the U.S. Senate last week to reminiscing about his 26 years in Congress. Instead, he provided a thoughtful exposition of the political principles and causes that he has sought to defend and advance during his time there.

Kyl is what Margaret Thatcher called a "conviction politician." Holding office was a means to an end, not the end itself.

Kyl was not a natural politician. But he is a very disciplined person, and he doggedly set out to do the things that are necessary to win elections better and more comprehensively than anyone else. His campaigns left as little as possible to chance. And he leaves office as one of the most successful politicians in Arizona's history.

Kyl was a natural legislator. While not a natural politician, he understood the political beast and the give-and-take of legislating. And he usually had two advantages: a greater mastery of the topic and a better sense of where he wanted to end up. Kyl went to Washington to matter. He did.

A long career in politics is usually corrosive. The game becomes more important than the outcome. Such an evolution is almost an iron rule, which is one of the reasons I support term limits.

Kyl is a close friend. I never detected the corrosion in him. The game never became more important than the outcome.

Kyl rose to the highest level in the game and leaves office as the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate. Yet he seemed to retain a healthy detachment from the political power game in which he was a principal player. He was able to participate in the game to advance the causes he believed in without being completely absorbed into the game.

In fact, during Kyl's entire 26 year career in Congress, the only thing I saw that I thought truly changed him was becoming a grandfather.

That says a lot.

Arizona Congressman Raúl Grijalva is also a conviction politician, although decisively from the left. He reminds me a bit of Jeff Flake, current congressman and senator-elect, in this sense: Grijalva is a far more important national political figure than is commonly understood in Arizona.

Grijalva is co-chairman of the Progressive Caucus in the House, which is sort of the uncompromising liberal wing of the Democratic Party. It takes positions well to the left of the House Democratic leadership, particularly on fiscal issues. I think its positions are almost universally wrong-headed for the country. But I do give it credit for this: For the most part, the Progressive Caucus doesn't duck the tough questions or issues. In that respect, it offers far more honest leadership than President Obama or the official Democratic congressional leaders.

Recently, more than 200 environmental and other liberal organizations recommended Grijalva to be secretary of the Interior. This was remarkable because it isn't clear that the current secretary, Ken Salazar, is leaving.

Now, I think it would be a disaster for Grijalva to be secretary of the Interior. It would be the left's equivalent of Ronald Reagan appointing James Watt to the position in the 1980s.

The Interior secretary has to balance a lot of competing interests. Republicans strike the balance at a different point than Democrats, so elections matter regarding the regulation of public lands. But without a balance, the competition becomes destructive political warfare.

Grijalva ain't about balance. But it is testimony to his national importance that somany groups lined up behind him to try to shove himto the front of the line in case the position does come open.

Grijalva deserves more attention here in Arizona.

All the wrong lessons are being drawn from the failure of House Speaker John Boehner to get the votes necessary to pass his bill extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone except those making over $1million a year. The real lesson is that a big deal isn't possible. Only a very small one is.

Obama and congressional Democrats are being unrealistic about what House Republicans will accept in revenue increases. House Republicans are being unrealistic about what Democrats will accept in budget cuts and entitlement reform.

Unless Boehner is willing to commit political suicide by bringing to the floor a big deal he negotiates with the president that is opposed by a majority of his caucus, kicking the can down the road again is the only thing that's politically achievable.

Reach Robb at robert.robb@

arizonarepublic.com.

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Political Impasse Forces Japan to Delay Spending

The cabinet approved a delay, through November, of 5 trillion yen ($63 billion) in public spending, most of that in tax grants for local governments and aid for universities. It was the first time since World War II that the government had delayed scheduled spending in the middle of a fiscal year, government officials said. Spending on health care, social welfare, the police and firefighters and other vital services were not affected.

The ruling Democratic Party had tried to head off a delay by trying to secure support for a bond issuance bill that would finance about 40 percent of its 92 trillion yen ($117 billion) budget for this fiscal year. But a spat with the main opposition Liberal Democratic Party over the timing of the next general election — one in which the Democrats were expected to fare poorly — prevented that bill from passing before the end of Parliament’s current session on Saturday.

The government was expected to seek a fresh compromise at a special parliamentary session, probably in October.

Addressing the nation Friday, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda lashed out at the opposition for holding public services hostage.

“We are being forced to delay spending to the last minute while trying to protect public livelihoods,” Mr. Noda said. “I hope the opposition shares this sense of crisis.”

Japan has been forced to rely more on government bonds to finance its spending as a weak economy depresses tax revenue and social welfare expenditures surge to support a rapidly aging population. Servicing its public debt — which is more than twice the size of its economy — has also pressured Japan’s finances, though the finance ministry says it can meet its debt obligations without the bond issuance bill.

But Japan’s central bank has already been forced to act, pumping about 2 trillion yen ($25 billion) into the market to meet an expected jump in demand as local governments face delays in getting their tax grants.

The delay also cast a shadow over Japan’s economic recovery from its earthquake and tsunami disaster. Some economists warned that the economy could shrink in the third quarter as the slowing global economy took a toll on exports and as subsidies on fuel-efficient vehicles ended.

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Column: Democrats discover pot's political power

Two of the most well-known and politically savvy Democrats in the country —New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel— recently came out in favor of decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. Gov. Cuomo stated his support for a bill that would end the widespread practice of arresting New Yorkers for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view, and Mayor Emmanuel is supporting a local ordinance to make possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketable rather than arrestable offense. In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly quickly got in line with the governor.

By Tim Roske, AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., earlier this month. Cuomo is proposing the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view.

By Tim Roske, AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Albany, N.Y., earlier this month. Cuomo is proposing the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of marijuana in public view.

Columns

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Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

In both New York and Chicago, while whites, blacks and Latinos possess and use marijuana at roughly equal rates, the people arrested for possession of pot are overwhelmingly black and Latino. The proposed changes would make an enormous difference in communities of color and in the lives of thousands of others. They would no longer face life-altering, dream-killing criminal charges for conduct that more than 40% of Americans have engaged in at one point in their lives.

But the larger significance of Cuomo's and Emmanuel's stance lies in what it says about the direction of the Democratic Party, national politics and mainstream acceptance of marijuana reform.

Andrew Cuomo is widely regarded as one of the most politically astute Democratic politicians of his generation. He very likely has his eye on a presidential run in 2016. Everything he does can be (and is, by those who pay close attention to these things) viewed in that light. When Cuomo staked out a position last year in favor of same-sex marriage, and went to the mat to make it happen in New York, it was seen as clear evidence that the national political tide had shifted on that key issue, at least for Democrats. No Democrat will ever again be able to secure the party's nomination for president while opposing marriage equality.

Rahm Emmanuel is also known as a savvy politician, who as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 led the Democrats to a 31-seat pickup that gave them back control of the House. He is nothing if not mindful of how the political winds are blowing. In fact, as President Obama's chief of staff, he was criticized by many on the left as being too conservative and cautious in his approach on a range of issues facing the administration.

So Cuomo's and Emmanuel's positions on marijuana decriminalization have a weather vane-like quality: they demonstrate that the national tide has turned on marijuana reform. If they have decided there is no political downside to decriminalizing marijuana, the debate has shifted significantly, and likely permanently.

To see the press that followed Cuomo's announcement, you'd think that the issue had never been controversial in New York (trust me, it was). The New York Daily News, not known as liberal on criminal justice issues, immediately editorialized in support of the reform and urged Senate Republicans to "get with the program."

Around the country, similar change is afoot. In a recent, hotly contested Democratic primary for Oregon attorney general, the state's medical marijuana law was a defining campaign issue. The candidate who supported the program and argued that marijuana enforcement should be a low law enforcement priority in general won big over a more traditional law-and-order candidate endorsed by prosecutors and sheriffs. In Texas last month, a first-time congressional candidate who endorsed marijuana legalization defeated an eight-term incumbent in El Paso's 16th congressional district.

Republicans remain more conservative on marijuana reform — at least in public (privately, many will say they think marijuana should be completely legal). But Americans in general have shifted on this issue: For the first time, support for marijuana legalization topped 50% nationwide last year, according to Gallup, and a recent Mason-Dixon poll found that 67% of Republicans believe that the federal government should get out of the way and let states enforce their own medical marijuana laws, rather than prosecute people complying with state law. And in another telling example of "weed-is-the-new-gay," young people, likely including Republicans as well as Democrats, overwhelmingly support complete marijuana legalization. As marijuana reform becomes a mainstream position, Republican candidates and elected officials will find it is less and less of a political third rail. Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Emmanuel are showing them the future.

Jill Harris is managing director of strategic initiatives for Drug Policy Action, the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance.

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The Great Divide Between the Political Parties

David Brooks argues, in answer to Democrats who frequently ask him why Republicans have become so extreme, that Republicans are not extreme but rather “have a viewpoint” (“What Republicans Think,” column, June 15). He then cogently describes the differences between Democrats and Republicans in how they see the problems we face.

What he says, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with what makes Democrats ask him why Republicans have become so extreme. That is caused by Republicans in the House voting to gut the Clean Air Act and the Clean Drinking Water Act, by Republicans attacking women’s right to birth control, by Republicans refusing to pass the normally overwhelmingly bipartisan transportation bill and by the Republicans’ single-minded focus on pushing more and more money to the most wealthy (this is just a partial list).

It has been noted by many Republicans that Ronald Reagan would be too liberal for the Republican Party today.

There are legitimate differences between Republicans and Democrats about the role of government and how best to move America forward, but those differences have always existed and Democrats have not viewed Republicans as a group as extreme.

What we’re dealing with now is altogether different; pretending it’s just a different viewpoint is disingenuous at best and simply wrong.

RUSSELL SCHWARTZ
Los Angeles, June 15, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks keeps coming up with elaborate ways to disguise the takeover of the Republican Party by the megawealthy. If the economic order of the second half of the 20th century is not coming back, it is because of Republican tax cuts to shift more wealth to the wealthy and squeeze the middle class.

As for comparisons with Europe’s “cosseted economies,” why cherry-pick basket cases? Some European countries with welfare states relatively much bigger than ours have been doing quite well compared with the rest of the developed world. Look at Scandinavia and Austria.

So, no, keeping and “rebalancing” a social and economic model based on public investment and progressive tax rates won’t turn us into Greece or Spain. Though perhaps, looking north in Europe, the lesson is that we should be investing more in our public sector and social supports, not less.

PAUL EPSTEIN
New York, June 15, 2012

To the Editor:

David Brooks argues that the source of G.O.P. extremism is a conviction that “the government model is obsolete.” The Republicans I know didn’t seem particularly bothered by the model during the 1990s, when a Democratic president occupied the White House, the economy was booming and productivity soared.

The context for the current wave of extremism, of course, is the severe recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2008-2009. But the “welfare-state model” wasn’t responsible for the steep downturn. Instead, it was a brand of capitalism that seemed to have run amok — one that allowed investment banks to make risky bets they ultimately lost and that caused nearly everyone to suffer the consequences.

In the eyes of many Democrats, Mitt Romney hardly represents “comprehensive systemic change.” He embodies a return to a style of governance that preaches greater efficiency, responsibility and fairness but practices the opposite. That’s what the 2012 election is all about.

NIELS AABOE
New York, June 15, 2012

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Romney Adviser Takes U.S. Political Debate Overseas

A senior economic adviser to Mitt Romney criticized President Obama and his policy toward crisis-torn Europe, and Germany in particular, in an op-ed article in a leading German newspaper on Saturday, raising the question of the propriety of taking America’s political fights into international affairs.

The article — written by R. Glenn Hubbard, the dean of the Columbia Business School and a former adviser in the Bush administration, and published in the business journal Handelsblatt — drew a rebuke from the Obama campaign.

“In a foreign news outlet, Governor Romney’s top economic adviser both discouraged essential steps that need to be taken to promote economic recovery and attempted to undermine America’s foreign policy abroad,” said Ben LaBolt, press secretary for the president’s re-election campaign.

Every presidential election seems to test the frequently quoted cold war-era axiom of former Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a Republican who cooperated with President Harry S. Truman, that “politics stops at the water’s edge” — though even then the rule was often observed in the breach. Separately, the Hubbard critique illustrates how the austerity-versus-stimulus debate concerning Europe is also a proxy for the ideological fight over fiscal policy that Democrats and Republicans are waging in this country.

“Unfortunately, the advice of the U.S. government regarding solutions to the crisis is misleading. For Europe and especially for Germany,” Mr. Hubbard wrote, according to a translation of his article from the Handelsblatt Web site.

He opposed what he described as the Obama administration’s efforts “to persuade Germany to stand up financially weak governments and banks in the euro zone so that the Greek crisis would not spread to other states.”

“These recommendations are not only unwise,” he added, “they also reveal ignorance of the causes of the crisis and of a growth trend in the future.”

Mr. Hubbard proposed a classic conservative pro-austerity, anti-Keynesian approach, arguing that cutting government spending will restore public confidence, encourage growth and avert future tax increases.

“Long-term confidence in solid government financing shores up growth and enables the same scope for short-term transitional assistance,” he said. “Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican opponent, understands this very well and advises a gradual fiscal consolidation for the U.S.: structural reform to stimulate growth.”

Mr. Obama and his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, are in the camp with economists who argue that the German-led push for austerity in Europe — at a time when businesses and consumers are too weak to spend — has produced a spiral of job losses, belt-tightening and, lately, a backlash against several governments.

But, Mr. Hubbard wrote, “President Obama’s advice to the Germans and Europe has therefore the same flaws as his own economic policy — that it pays for itself over the long term if we focus on short-term business promotion.”

When Mr. Obama ran for president in 2008, he received some criticism for a foreign trip that included a speech in Berlin before 200,000 Germans. At the time, Chancellor Angela Merkel objected to plans to use the city’s historic Brandenburg Gate as a backdrop for what a Merkel spokesman called “electioneering abroad,” leading Mr. Obama to speak at another site. But Mr. Obama did not explicitly criticize Bush administration policies, despite their prominence in the American debate that year. He mainly extolled the partnership between the United States and Germany — and Europe, more broadly — in promoting freedom and prosperity around the globe.

A Democrat with experience in foreign policy and presidential campaigns, who asked not to be identified as weighing into the debate, suggested that the Vandenberg rule had lost resonance in a polarized age. “The ‘water’s edge’ is changing, and not just because of climate change,” he said. “It’s too bad, but there it is.”

The Romney campaign declined to comment.

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Political thorns emerge for Democrats in N. Carolina

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — CHARLOTTE, N.C. Once a bright spot for President Barack Obama, North Carolina is now more like a political migraine less than four months before Democrats open the party's national convention in Charlotte.

The causes are plenty.

Labor unions, a core Democratic constituency, are up in arms. Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue isn't running for re-election; Democrats say she was likely to lose. The state Democratic Party is in disarray over an explosive sexual-harassment scandal. Voters recently approved amending the state Constitution to ban gay marriage, a position that runs counter to Obama's. And unemployment in the state remains persistently high.

"Nobody can sugarcoat the fact that we got problems here," said Gary Pearce, a former Democratic consultant who was an adviser to former Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt. Pearce was referring specifically to state-party woes but could have been talking about any of the troubles here for Democrats.

But, he added, "I think the greatest strength that the party has is President Obama. And he's the thing that people will rally around."

It wasn't supposed to be like this -- at least that was the hope -- when Democrats chose Charlotte to host the national convention, where Obama will formally accept his party's presidential nomination for a second time Sept. 4-6.

When Democrats announced the choice in February 2011, they said selecting the Southern city signaled Obama's intent to fight hard for the conservative-leaning state like he did in 2008. They also highlighted the economic transformation in the state and in Charlotte -- from tobacco, textiles and furniture making to research, energy and banking. Party leaders noted the state's strong political leadership and expressed hope that a Perdue re-election bid would get a boost from the attention that would be lavished on the convention.

Now traditional Democratic Party groups are threatening huge protests, in part because they're deeply uncomfortable that the convention is being held in one of the least union-friendly states. And thousands of Democrats across the country are calling for the convention to be relocated because of the gay-marriage vote.

Democrats say that won't happen.

"Charlotte is going to host a great convention," insisted Mayor Anthony Foxx, who pushed to bring the event to North Carolina's largest city.

Joanne Peters, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, said, "The convention is staying in Charlotte."

Republicans point out the obvious.

"North Carolina is a mess for the Democratic Party and for President Obama," said Matt Connelly, Republican National Committee spokesman.

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Column: Edwards the victim of political Puritanism

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Back in 1925, a trial in Dayton, Tenn., a far-more sanctimonious part of the Bible Belt than this place, transfixed the nation.

By Gerry Broome, AP

Edwards: Former Democratic presidential candidate.

By Gerry Broome, AP

Edwards: Former Democratic presidential candidate.

DeWayne Wickham USATODAY columnist

In that farce of a legal proceeding, John Scopes, a high school instructor, was convicted of teaching his students the theory of human evolution. The so-called Monkey Trial was more a tug of war between backers of a scientific explanation of the beginning of life and fervent believers in the literal word of Genesis, than it was a search for justice.

John Edwards, the former U.S. senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate, is now on trial here ostensibly for violating federal campaign-finance rules. And as with Scopes, the charges against Edwards have the rank smell of political Puritanism.

A widely kept secret

The essence of this case is undeniable, even if the charges against Edwards suggest otherwise. The onetime golden boy of North Carolina politics cheated on his wife and tried mightily to keep that moral failing from being publicly exposed. Edwards' dalliance with Rielle Hunter was, for a time, a syndicated secret. His wife knew about it. And so did Andrew Young, the former chief political aide to Edwards, and his wife. Young is now the star witness against Edwards.

An admitted liar and lawbreaker, Young has been granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony. That's more than a bit ironic because it was Young and his wife, Cheri, who received and doled out nearly $1 million from two wealthy donors to help Edwards conceal his extramarital affair. Some of those funds — all of which went into a bank account controlled by Young's wife, not Edwards' presidential campaign — were used to help build a house for Young's family. The money that Rachel Mellon, a wealthy philanthropist, and Texas attorney Fred Baron gave Young's wife far exceeded the $2,300 any single donor can give in federal campaigns.

Campaign law violation?

Using that money to keep his adultery secret during the 2008 presidential campaign meant that the funds served a political purpose, prosecutors argue, and thus constituted a violation of federal campaign-finance laws.

Still, only Edwards has been charged with a crime.

Attorneys for Edwards contend that the money was used to keep his wife from learning that he had not ended his relationship with Hunter as promised and that the relationship had produced a love child.

Usually, the government leaves something this sordid to a husband and wife to resolve. It's not a matter for a federal judge and jury to sort out. But Edwards faces charges that could send him to prison for 30 years.

The decision to prosecute Edwards makes the Justice Department lawyers look more like morality police than defenders of the American political system. The stretch they are making to link the money from Mellon and Baron to Edwards' presidential campaign seems to be a thinly veiled effort to criminalize the adultery of a high public figure — for no good reason other than moral outrage.

It's easy not to like Edwards. Only 3% of respondents in a recent CBS News/New York Times poll said they have a favorable view of him. Thirty percent said the first thing that comes to mind when they think of him is that he cheated on his wife, who died in 2010 after a long, public battle with cancer.

But my gut tells me that the case against Edwards springs from the worst intentions of Puritanism, rather than the best values of the American legal system.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.

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‘Presidential’ vs. ‘Political’ Trips: A Blurry Line for Obama

And that was the nonpolitical stop on Mr. Obama’s swing-state itinerary for that day early this month. The president sandwiched the 34-minute speech, billed as an official address on his so-called Buffett Rule for a minimum tax rate for the wealthiest Americans, amid three overtly partisan fund-raisers that accounted for the bulk of his time along the south Florida coast.

Mixing policy and politics, Mr. Obama is picking up the pace of his travel with that ultimate incumbent’s perk — unlimited use of Air Force One. The trips are mostly to about a dozen swing states that will decide the election and to two reliably Democratic states, New York and California, for campaign money.

And Mr. Obama is not the only frequent flier with a re-election agenda. Both Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the first lady, Michelle Obama, are increasingly stumping around the country as the campaign seeks to repeat its fund-raising success of 2008 and counter a building wave of G.O.P. cash.

The trips yield a payoff not only in donations — collected at small-crowd, big-dollar events in the sumptuous homes of donors and at small-dollar, big-crowd rallies — but also in local headlines trumpeting Mr. Obama’s message of the day. Taken together, they raise the quadrennial question of how much of a president’s travel should be paid for by taxpayers and how much by his party.

“It’s very opaque,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group. “You’re kind of left in the position of, ‘Trust us; we’re doing it right.’ ”

Since Mr. Obama filed for re-election a year ago, he has taken 60 domestic trips, of which 26 included fund-raisers, according to Mark Knoller, a White House correspondent for CBS News who for years has compiled such data.

Mr. Knoller’s count shows that since Mr. Obama took office, his most frequent destinations besides Maryland, Virginia and Illinois, his home state, have been fund-raising centers and swing states: New York (23 visits), Ohio (20), Florida (16), Pennsylvania (15), Michigan (11), California and North Carolina (10 each), Massachusetts (9), Wisconsin (8), Iowa and Nevada (7 each), and Colorado (6).

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama made an official visit to an Ohio community college and a political trip to Michigan for two fund-raisers. This week, he is scheduled to visit North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado for official addresses on student loans at three campuses, prime territory for his drive to motivate young voters.

Officials at the White House, the Chicago campaign headquarters and the Democratic National Committee declined to say how they decide which events are political and how much to reimburse the government. That secrecy has a tradition dating at least to the late 1970s.

Katie Hogan, a campaign spokeswoman, said, “The campaign will follow all rules and pay for the portion of travel that relates to political events, as has been true for previous incumbent presidential candidates.”

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said, “As in other administrations, we follow all rules and regulations to ensure that the D.N.C. or other relevant political committee pays what is required for the president to travel to political events.”

While it is not possible to know for sure, the Democratic Party is probably paying more than other presidents have for Air Force One because of a regulatory change in 2010. Instead of repaying the government based on the cost of first-class commercial airfare, as presidents had since Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald R. Ford, reimbursements must now reflect the cost of chartering a 737 aircraft. (Air Force One, the name for whichever plane in the fleet carries the president, is usually a 747.)

Past presidents have been accused of adding official events to political trips to reduce their campaign’s spending, but Mr. Schultz said that was no longer an issue. “The fact that there is an official event on the schedule doesn’t reduce the travel costs paid by the campaign to the federal government,” he said.

The Democratic Party’s latest monthly report of travel reimbursements, filed last week to the Federal Election Commission, had precise entries like $3.82 for “White House Airlift In-flight services” — a sandwich from the Air Force One galley perhaps? — and 23 payments totaling nearly $100,000 for airfare, including $95,759.10 to White House Airlift Operations and $3,833.19 to the Treasury Department. Aides would not describe what trip, traveler or expense were reflected by each entry.

Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

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Is Democratic Socialism the Next Step in Our Political Evolution? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | The last few months have seen some of the most prominent symbols of authoritarian communism falling. Protests have fired up in Russia against the almost dictatorial rule of Vladimir Putin (a former KGB officer and Communist Party of the Soviet Union elite). Allegations of election fraud and ballot-stuffing abound, and the people of Russia are now clamoring for real democracy.

Kim Jong-il has passed away and signals a change in regime of what USA Today calls "the world's last hardline communist state." While nobody is expecting a fair and free election in North Korea, the regime is changing. And the Glorious Successor Kim Jong-Un is reportedly "a whiz at computing and technology," which may open the door for freedom of information and communication in that country.

Finally, Cuba has slowly and quietly been instituting a number of free-market reforms, including privatizing real estate and allowing loans for private entrepreneurs. The anti-U.S. rhetoric of Fidel Castro has faded as he has, and Cuba is moving slowly toward a capitalist system. It is true that capitalism and democracy won the fight for world dominance decades ago in the intellectual and political trenches of the Cold War. But the fading historical bastions of communism must force us to consider this: What is the next step of human political evolution?

What is the next step?

This is what we must ask ourselves. Amid the chronic corruption and inequality that the current systems have promoted, and the subsequent economic collapses and global protests that they have inspired, there are any number of choices. Disciples of Ayn Rand would argue for a more capitalistic society (and would insist that the economic failures of the past century are due to the mixing of capitalism and socialism). However, there is another option.

Unfortunately, the words "socialism" and "communism" carry such a stigma these days that they are synonyms for unpatriotic and akin to treason (look no farther than the House Un-American Activities Committee which prosecuted members of the Communist Party at the height of the Cold War). But it cannot be ignored that all of the major communist societies in the past have also been authoritarian regimes. Communism equals authoritarian and capitalism equals democratic. This has been the norm, and thus the triumph of democracy has meant the triumph of capitalism. What has never been tried in any real way is a democratic socialist society, though it has existed in theory in the writings of various political philosophers like Erich Fromm and John Stuart Mill in his later writings.

What the collapse of the symbols of the last authoritarian communist regimes in the world should force us to consider is, are democracy and socialism incompatible? And if not, would a democratic socialist state thrive on the global stage?

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Will Mitt Romney’s Lack of Political Experience Hinder Him? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | In the 2008 election, Republicans criticized Barack Obama for his lack of political experience. Democrats turned the tables on Republicans on the experience argument when the GOP nominated Sarah Palin for vice president.

Now Republicans are trying to decide upon their nominee for president. One of their leading candidates is Mitt Romney, who is among the many who labeled Obama as "inexperienced" in his 2010 book. Romney may have been in business for awhile (like George W. Bush), but his political resume is relatively thin.

He served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. Other candidates like Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum have many more years in office. Romney keeps touting his business credentials, but that's not the same as political experience. If Romney manages to win the nomination and get by President Obama, will that lack of political experience come back to haunt him?

To test this, I look at a recent CSPAN survey of who the best presidents were, according to a panel of historians. The best presidents include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. This survey also rated the worst presidents, which count James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, and William Henry Harrison on that list.

Political experience is measured in years in Congress, as governor and as vice president. Using this data, the following 10 presidents (best and worst) receive the following ranking: Buchanan (20 years), A. Johnson (18 years), Truman (10 years), Pierce (nine years), F. Roosevelt (four years), Harding (six years), T. Roosevelt (three years), Washington and Lincoln (two years each) and Harrison (0 years).

As you can see, those presidents with the worst rankings for competence tended to have more political experience. Presidents who tended to score well on such rankings of effectiveness have very little political experience.

You would think this would benefit Romney. He really doesn't have to have a lot of political experience to be a good president. Yet harping on the experience issue when critiquing his opponent isn't likely to help the one-term Massachusetts governor.

It not only calls attention to his own lack of political experience, but also reminds voters of Obama's record. The president has served seven years in the Illinois legislature, three years in the U.S. Senate and four years as chief executive, dwarfing Romney's political experience. But even though Obama destroys Romney when it comes to political experience, remember that one could say the same thing about James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln.

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Former AP political reporter Joseph Mohbat dies (AP)

NEW YORK – Joseph Mohbat, a former Associated Press political reporter who served as press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, has died, his wife said Monday. He was 73.

Mohbat died Aug. 10 of cancer in Brooklyn, where he lived, said his wife, Nancy Schuh, said.

"The AP was his home — he just came alive in that world, just ate it up. It was a sort of magical experience for him," Schuh said.

Mohbat was born in New York in 1937 and grew up in Rhode Island. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1958, he worked for an Illinois newspaper and joined the AP's Chicago bureau in 1960. He transferred to Washington in 1962 to cover national politics.

He was assigned to cover Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. He spent more time with the candidate than any other member of the press corps, according to "The Last Campaign," Thurston Clarke's 2008 book chronicling Kennedy's run.

"Joe Mohbat sometimes found himself gripping Kennedy around the waist to prevent him from being yanked from the convertible" by passionate supporters, Clarke wrote of the close relationship between Mohbat and Kennedy. "Mohbat knew he was crossing a line, but could not bear the thought of Kennedy being hurt."

Mohbat was not traveling with the campaign when Kennedy was assassinated in California after winning the state's presidential primary election.

Mohbat won the Worth Bingham Prize for Distinguished Reporting in 1968. Covering the death of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on March 28, 1969, Mohbat wrote what's among the shortest lead sentences on an AP story: "Ike is dead."

"Joseph covered some of the key political stories of the 1960s with clarity and authority and a style all his own," said Kathleen Carroll, AP senior vice president and executive editor.

In 1970, Mohbat left the AP to become press secretary at the DNC. He was one of the first staff members to learn of the break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The case eventually brought down President Richard Nixon when it was revealed his re-election campaign was behind it.

Mohbat left the DNC after the George McGovern's landslide loss to Nixon in 1972. He wrote for newsletters covering the energy and home building industries before joining the Washington office of the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson.

He attended evening classes at Georgetown University Law School, where he received his law degree in 1978.

Mohbat served as a lawyer in private practice in New York before joining the New York City Law Department in the 1990s, where he worked until shortly before his death.

Survivors include Schuh and a son, Thomas, from a previous marriage.

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