Bill and Newt's Bond over Infidelity?

According to the Huffington Post, an interview with Dick Armey (hardly an unimpeachable source), Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich shared details of their respective extra-marital affairs over cigars and wine at the White House. The details are here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/28/bill-clinton-newt-gingrich-affairs_n_775335.html

There was allegedly a deal in the works to negotiate a deal over the impasse that led to the government shutdowns, one that involved Clinton conceding on the rate of growth in Medicare spending, but it was ditched when news of the Lewinsky "affair" went public.

Dick Armey is hardly a reliable source, but you never know . . . Of all the "what ifS" presidential history poses, among the more tempting ones is "what if" there was no Monica to deliver Bill his pizza in the Oval Office due to the government shutdown? The impeachment poisoned the partisan well and ruined the final three years of Clinton's eight as a platform for pushing "third way" ideas that, today, are truly needed.

Op-Ed Options for PS308

For any Prez Watchers looking for issues to frame an op-ed on Obama around, what ideas can we come up with? (Without doing the work of seminar members for them?)

Jon Stewart's reference to Obama last night as "dude" when Obama said he told Summers "he'd done a heckuva job" -- language that W used when he told FEMA Director and friend Mike Brown that his work on Katrina was top-flight -- was this crossing over the line in respect that the office deserves?

Do Democrats deserve to get whacked in this election? IF so, why? And what role does Obama play in this?

Did Obama mess up by putting Health Care Reform ahead of tending to jobs on his domestic policy agenda?

Did Obama mess up by appointing ____________ to positions of key policy influence in his administration?

Did Obama mess up by failing to appoint an iconic year person to his cabinet or to a temporary post? To shore up his success on the backs of first-time voters to say, in effect, he had their back?

Laugh at dumb right-wingers? Who has the last laugh?

Tonight's Countdown with Keith Olbermann had an interview with Thomas Frank, author of Wrecking Crew, and What's the Matter with Kansas? Franks made the observation that when "libs" laugh at the stupid things that Christine O'Donnell says -- or, for that matter, the stupid ways that W said things -- it simply reinforces the view perpetrated by Tea Party types that smart aleck "know-it-alls" who are out of touch with real people -- those who couldn't spell or do well in school and barely passed -- who are finally getting their revenge for being made fun of from their days as dumbos in the unreal world of school. The clip is not available on the website yet; I'll check tomorrow to see if it's up. But I have to say that I think he may well have a point. Not that all right-wingers are dumb; but that liberals who take a sense of satisfaction out of noting just how moronic the more noteworthy this year's right-wing candidates are just might be missing a point. Grown-ups, or at least adults age-wise, were once school kids; those who struggled were often, in my hometown anyway, made fun of. Not that the smart kids all turned out as liberals, but few liberals appear to take delight in rubbing anti-intellectualism on steroids in the face of those who prize thoughtful, articulate discourse. But for every critic of W, who felt a sense of embarrasment that such a duffus could be elected leader of the Free World, there was a pair of folks who took perverse delight in the success of an average Joe who proudly declared he didn't read books and butchered the English language, precisely because it was rubbing in the face of the smarty pants kids who laughed at them in school. I know this is a far-out intepretation of a weird strain in our politics brought to light by the Sarah Palins and the Sharon Anngles of this moment in time. But weird times call for weird understandings, and I think Thomas Frank may be on to something here.

Thirteen days and counting...

Well, it doesn't look good for the Democratic Party with thirteen days remaining in the 2010 election campaign. I have been an observer of dozens of these in my lifetime, and I have never seen one that is this pathetic. The New York Times, which now houses Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight.org, has the GOP picking up 59 seats in the House. Today's paper claims that spending for GOP candidates is running 7 to 1 against the Dems. The race for Senate in NV is considered a toss-up, though the news today is that Sharon Anngle will no longer speak to the press and she told a group of latino students Monday that they looked like Asians to her! Sarah Palin twitted last night that Pennsylvannians should be sure to vote for Raese even though Raese is a Senate candidate in West Virginia. Christine O'Donnell cannot identify a single Supreme Court case she objects to, even though she lambasts "judicial activists" for making law from the bench. As if this is not depressing enough, the Democrats are running away from Obama and Pelosi as if they are leppers. Neither party is running on a coherent strategy for dealing with the economy. Even Carly Fiorina, who trails Barbara Boxer by 4 points in CA, cannot name a single program she'd cut to erase the deficit while preserving the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Kids in my first-year classes can tell you about Bret Favre's alledged self-photo sent via text message, but they can't tell you who Michelle Bachmann or Carl Paladino or Meg Whitman is. This is supposed to be the time we call upon our inner Aristotles and celebrate democracy by debating our collective future, but as best as I can tell, the vast majority of Americans are walking a very thin line with sanity on one side and deep, dark psychopathology on the other. The Tea Party is the big story, but honestly, what's the story? You have an unknown number of upset people, very white and of decent means, screaming like plucked chickens at a government and president who inherited a huge mess from the party which stands to gain the most from this blind animosity. What's more, those who stand to gain the most from this state of affairs are the super-rich, those whose minions brought us the meltdown in our economy in the first place. If anyone can make the slightest sense of this state of affairs short of a clinical political-psychological portrait, I'm all ears (as Ross Perot used to say).

A Third Party Coming?

Folks, check out Tom Friedman's essay in the Sunday Times today. I have a hundred kopeckies saying he's right about a signficant -- truly significant -- third party movement with money and smarts behind it for 2012. He's unfortunately right about how inept Congressional Democrats are and how irresponsible the remnants of the Republican party have been, are, and will be. We're not talking about a faux populist Tea Party movement here; we're talking about a party that is ready to address the problems neither party is really interested in addressing let alone trying to solve.

The other piece of food for thought is Frank Rich's piece on the "useful idiocy" of Christine O'Donnell. It's a very different yet well-reasoned take on the ultimate utility for the GOP of the candidate who makes Sarah Palin look like Churchill.

The "Obama Moment"?

Well, we've looked at a couple cyclical models of presidential leadership, Skowronek's and Hargrove & Nelson's. They're not identical, but both give the impression that Obama's inheritance problem-wise (an economy off the cliff, two wars, a fiscal mess, the BP mess, a Supreme Court's muscular exericise of "judicial activism" in _Citizen's United_, etc, etc.) is countered by a fortuitous piece of timing: following W's failed policies as either a non-fit ala Hargrove-Nelson or a failed late-regime affliliate ala Skowronek, he could well have taken the rhetorical battering ram to the philosophical foundation of the "Reagan regime" (i.e., government sucks!).

But for whatever reason, he chose not to do so. Instead, he sought to play nice by extending the hand of bipartisan cooperation to a Republican party who has consistently rejected it. Not simply refusing to play, but playing like playground bullies bent on destroying and delegitimizing the President. DeMint's hold on all policy initiatives, noted by Megan in her comment, is unprecedented in the degree to which it has cast the president as an alient, illegitimate "pretender to the throne" of the Presidency.

The question I have is this: what is the President's understanding of "politics"? Is it so naive that he'll continue to get beat up by bone heads insisting he's "not one of us?" I'm not saying he should produce a birth certificate, but you can bet that the House will hold hearings in 2011 on his citizenship. The President owns the Bully Pulpit, but he seems to be too timid to voice a visceral view that insists we are better than this, that history will judge our reluctance to address the problems before us as utterly irresponsible, with particular disdain for the leadership of the Republican party who has remained strangely silent about the craziness from the likes of O'Donnell, Angell, DeMint, Beck, and Palin. Expressing modulated aggression is not a sign of weakness; failure to do so when you've been treated with unprecedented disrespect is.

Thoughts?

Welcome American Presidency folks!

Here's a starter question: This is raised my Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who claims Obama is the "most mysterious American president in history." Here are his comments. Is he right? If not, what's the point?

Barbour: We Know Little About Obama
Wednesday, 08 Sep 2010 09:48 PM Article Font Size

Why do so many Americans question President Barack Obama's religious status and even his citizenship?

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says the answer is simple: Americans know less about President Obama than any other president in U.S. history.

"I don't know why people think what they think," Barbour, the head of the Republican Governor's Association, told USA Today. "This is a president we know less about than any other president. But I have no idea."

"I accept totally at face value that he's a Christian," Barbour said of a declaration Obama has made repeatedly. "That's good enough for me."

Barbour discounted allegations of a “conspiracy” behind the questioning of Obama’s birthplace or beliefs. USA Today’s Susan Page interviewed Barbour after recent interviews in which Obama has complained about organized efforts to smear him.

A Pew survey released this summer found that nearly one in five Americans believe Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent of Americans who held that view in 2009.

Obama was born to a Muslim father and studied during childhood at a Muslim school in Indonesia, but says in his 20s he converted to Christianity after meeting the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a controversial Chicago pastor.

Barbour dismissed any claims that conservatives are seeking to undermine the president.

"Do I think there's a vast right-wing conspiracy?" Barbour said. "No, ma'am."

Obama recently chimed in on the controversy swirling around his religious status and birth place.

"There is a mechanism, a network of misinformation, that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly," Obama told NBC News in August.

"I'm not going to be worrying too much about whatever rumors are floating out there," Obama told NBC's Brian Williams. "If I spend all my time chasing after that then I wouldn't get much done. ... I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead."

But critics note that Obama has been less than forthcoming in releasing documents relating to his private life, typical of most presidents.

Obama has never released his long form birth certificate, which would include the exact place of birth, the name of the doctor who conducted the birth procedure and other birth details, fueling theories he may have been born outside the country. Hawaii state officials have stated they reviewed the full document and said Obama was born in Hawaii. Also, a local newspaper legal notice taken out by Obama's family days after his birth confirms this.

During the 2008 campaign Obama declined to release his school records for the three universities he attended. His Columbia University thesis has disappeared from the college's archives. Many records from his days as a state legislator in Illinois have also disappeared.

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