More than 40% of President Obama's top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama's campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found.
Overall, about 600 individuals and couples raised money from their friends, family members and business associates to help fund Obama's presidential campaign. USA TODAY's analysis found that 54 have been named to government positions, ranging from Cabinet and White House posts to advisory roles, such as serving on the economic recovery board charged with helping guide the country out of recession.
Nearly a year after he was elected on a pledge to change business-as-usual in Washington, Obama also has taken a cue from his predecessors and appointed fundraisers to coveted ambassadorships, drawing protests from groups representing career diplomats. A separate analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats' union, found that more than half of the ambassadors named by Obama so far are political appointees, said Susan Johnson, president of the association. An appointment is considered political if it does not go to a career diplomat in the State Department.
That's a rate higher than any president in more than four decades, the group's data show, although that could change as the White House fills more openings. Traditionally about 30% of top diplomatic jobs go to political appointees, and roughly 70% to veteran State Department employees. Ambassadors earn $153,200 to $162,900 annually.
"It is time to end the spoils system and the de facto sale of ambassadorships," Johnson said. "The United States is best served by having experienced, knowledgeable and trained career officers fill all positions in our diplomatic service."
The administration is "well aware of the historical target of career vs. non-career ambassadors, and we will be right on that target," said White House spokesman Thomas Vietor. He said the first round of diplomatic jobs traditionally go to political appointees because those are the first available when a president takes office.
Vietor said Obama also made it clear early on that he would "nominate extremely qualified individuals who didn't necessarily come up through the ranks of the State Department but want to serve their country."
Among the top Obama fundraisers with jobs: former technology executive Julius Genachowski as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Nicole Avant, a music industry executive who is the top envoy in the Bahamas. Neither granted interview requests.
Those not in the administration benefited in other ways, including attending invitation-only White House bashes, such as a St. Patrick's Day gala.
Fundraiser David Gail, a Dallas lawyer that the campaign identified as raising between $100,000 and $200,000, joined dignitaries in July for an East Room country music concert featuring Alison Krauss and Charley Pride. He said he greeted Obama after the event but doesn't have special access to the president, who was elected on a pledge to change business-as-usual in Washington.
"I've seen people who have been included on conference calls or events who were very involved at the grass-roots level," Gail said.
"Contributing doesn't guarantee a visit to the White House," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday, "nor does it preclude it."
Others not on the campaign's list of official bundlers also have reaped rewards.
Sacramento developer Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, a fundraiser in Hillary Rodham Clinton's unsuccessful presidential campaign, was nominated this month by Obama to serve as ambassador to Hungary. Clinton is now secretary of state.
Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis did not respond to interview requests, and her office referred calls to the White House.
It's too early to tell how big a role Obama's fundraisers will play. On the ambassador front alone, nearly 100 top positions remain unfilled, according to the American Foreign Service Association's tally.
Ronald Neumann, president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, wants Obama to limit political appointees to about 10% of diplomatic jobs. "The direction is not good," he said of Obama's appointments to date, "but you cannot definitively say what the picture will be for the whole administration."
FROM FUNDRAISER TO STAFFER
President Obama has named 54 fundraisers to government positions. Here's a look at who they are and how much they raised. The campaign reported fundraising in broad ranges only.
RAISED MORE THAN $500,0000
Nicole Avant Ambassador to the Bahamas
Matthew Barzun Ambassador to Sweden
Don Beyer Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein
Jeff Bleich Ambassador to Australia**
Richard Danzig Member, Defense Policy Board
William Eacho Ambassador to Austria
Julius Genachowski Chairman of Federal Communications Commission
Donald Gips Ambassador to South Africa
Howard Gutman Ambassador to Belgium
Scott Harris General Counsel, Department of Energy
William Kennard Ambassador to the European Union**
Bruce Oreck Ambassador to Finland
Spencer Overton Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Thomas Perrelli Associate Attorney General
Abigail Pollack Member, Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino
Charles Rivkin Ambassador to France and Monaco
John Roos Ambassador of Japan
Francisco Sanchez Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade
Alan Solomont Ambassador to Spain and Andorra**
Cynthia Stroum Ambassador to Luxembourg**
RAISED BETWEEN $200,000 and $500,000
A. Marisa Chun Deputy associate attorney general
Gregory Craig White House counsel
Norman Eisen Special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform
Michael Froman Deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs
Mark Gallogly Member, Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Max Holtzman Senior adviser to the Agriculture secretary
James Hudson Director, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Jeh Johnson General counsel, Department of Defense
Samuel Kaplan Ambassador to Morocco
Nicole Lamb-Hale Deputy general counsel, Commerce Department
Andres Lopez Member, Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of the American Latino
Cindy Moelis Director, Commission on White House Fellows
William Orrick Counselor to the assistant attorney general
John Phillips Chairman, Commission on White House Fellows
Penny Pritzker*** Member, Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Bob Rivkin General counsel, Transportation Department
Desiree Rogers White House social secretary
Louis Susman Ambassador to the United Kingdom
Robert Sussman Senior policy counsel, Environmental Protection Agency
Christina Tchen Director, White House Office of Public Engagement
Barry White Ambassador to Norway
RAISED BETWEEN $100,000 and $200,000
Preeta Bansal General counsel, Office of Management and Budget
Laurie Fulton Ambassador to Denmark
Fred Hochberg President, Export-Import Bank of the United States
Valerie Jarrett Senior adviser to the president
Kevin Jennings Assistant deputy secretary of Education
Steven Rattner Treasury Department adviser
Miriam Sapiro Deputy U.S. trade representative**
Vinai Thummalapally Ambassador to Belize
RAISED BETWEEN $50,000 and $100,000
Eric Holder Attorney general
David Jacobson Ambassador to Canada
Ronald Kirk U.S. trade representative
Rocco Landesman Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts
Susan Rice Ambassador to the United Nations
** Nominated, not yet confirmed by Senate; *** National finance chairwoman
Sources: Obama campaign, Public Citizen; White House; USA TODAY research
Contributing: Andrew Seaman
A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser.
Snubbing the Dalai Lama.
Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers.
Freezing out a TV network.
Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too.
President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more.
What’s remarkable is what hasn’t happened. These episodes haven’t become metaphors for Obama’s personal and political character — or consuming controversies that sidetracked the rest of his agenda.
It’s a sign that the media’s echo chamber can be a funny thing, prone to the vagaries of news judgment, and an illustration that, in politics, context is everything.
Conservatives look on with a mix of indignation and amazement and ask: Imagine the fuss if George W. Bush had done these things?
And quickly add, with a hint of jealousy: How does Obama get away with it?
“We have a joke about it. We’re going to start a website: IfBushHadDoneThat.com,” former Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said. “The watchdogs are curled up around his feet, sleeping soundly. ... There are countless examples: some silly, some serious.”
Indeed, Bush got grief for secret meetings with the oil industry, politicizing the White House and spending too much time on his beloved bike. But it’s not just Republicans who notice. Media observers note that the president often gets kid-glove treatment from the press, fellow Democrats and, particularly, interest groups on the left — Bush’s loudest critics, Obama’s biggest backers.
But others say there’s a larger phenomenon at work — in the story line the media wrote about Obama’s presidency. For Bush, the theme was that of a Big Business Republican who rode the family name to the White House, so stories about secret energy meetings and a certain laziness, intellectual and otherwise, fit neatly into the theme, to be replayed over and over again.
Obama’s story line was more positive from the start: historic newcomer coming to shake up Washington. So the negatives that sprung up around Obama — like a sense that he was more flash than substance — track what negative coverage he’s received, captured in a recent “Saturday Night Live” skit that made fun of his lack of accomplishments in office.
“There may well be almost an unconscious effort on the part of the media to give Obama a bit more slack because he is more likable, because he is the first African-American president. That plays into it,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California.
Democrats find the complaints of Obama “getting a pass” hard to stomach in light of the way the press treated Bush — particularly on the single biggest mistake of his presidency, relying on the faulty intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. Now, Obama’s aides say, the positive coverage simply reflects the fact that their efforts are succeeding.
“As our administration makes progress on the agenda that Washington has ignored for too long, we expect we’ll get some news coverage of that progress that we like and some tough coverage that we don’t,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “It’s not unlike the New Orleans Saints, who are getting lots of good coverage of their perfect record so far — certainly better coverage than the [2-5] Redskins — but it doesn’t mean the Saints have liked every story that’s been written about them since training camp. It goes with the territory.”
There are signs the friendly tone toward Obama is ebbing. Case in point: a front-page story in The New York Times noting that Obama’s all-male basketball games drew fire from the head of the National Organization for Women, who called the games “troubling.”
But here are other stories in which Obama seems to have gotten a pass:
New Orleans
As a candidate, Obama railed against the Bush administration for abandoning and then neglecting the people of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. He made five campaign trips to the city.
But as president, Obama waited almost nine months before visiting the Big Easy, spent less than four hours on the ground there and then jetted to San Francisco for a $3 million Democratic fundraiser.
“Don’t judge anybody on the amount of time that they’ve spent there. Judge only what this administration promised that they would do, what they’ve done every day and what they’re continuing to work on,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said, pointing to positive reviews of the federal government’s efforts under Obama.
For their part, Democrats can’t see how Bush officials can muster much umbrage over anything related to New Orleans, given how the Republican administration handled the initial response to Katrina.
Managing The Press
When the Obama administration moved in recent weeks to isolate and disparage Fox News as a wing of the Republican Party, there were few immediate howls of outrage — even from Fox’s fellow journalists in the media.
Press defenders and First Amendment advocates who jumped on the Bush administration for using military analysts to shape war coverage reacted with a yawn to the White House’s announcement that it had deemed Fox to be not a “legitimate news organization.”
“Had I said about MSNBC what the Obama White House said about Fox, the media uproar would still be going on,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as Bush’s press secretary until 2003. “I instinctively would have known ... the media would have leapt to their feet to defend them. I’m shocked it’s not happening now.”
One press veteran agreed. “If George Bush had taken on MSNBC, what would have happened?” said Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large of the San Francisco Chronicle. “That’s one place you can point to a real difference in how I’d imagine Bush would be treated.”
Politicizing the White House
Throughout the Bush administration, liberal critics warned that the hand of Bush political adviser Karl Rove was spreading politics into all corners of government. Reporters were on alert for any sign that politics was infecting the work of federal agencies. One top appointee got in hot water for allegedly asking agency officials to work to “help our candidates” across the country.
So some Bush aides went nearly apoplectic earlier this month when they spotted Gibbs and Obama’s political guru, David Axelrod, in photos of a Situation Room meeting on Afghanistan policy.
“Oh, the howling and screaming that would have happened if Karl Rove was sitting in on even a deputies-level meeting where strategy was being hammered out. People would have just gone ballistic,” said Peter Feaver, a former White House aide for both Bush and Bill Clinton.
Also, in about nine months, Obama has already attended more than two dozen fundraising events, while Bush did only six in his first year in office, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller.
Gibbs said Obama had to do more to raise a similar amount of money, since the kinds of soft-money fundraisers Bush did early on were banned. “This president ... doesn’t accept money from PACs or lobbyists and doesn’t allow lobbyists to give at fundraisers that he’s at, as well,” Gibbs added.
Dealing With Business, In Secret
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney endured years of criticism and lawsuits that stretched all the way to the Supreme Court over secret meetings Cheney’s Energy Task Force held with oil and gas companies. When the policy emerged, critics said Cheney was carrying water for the industry.
Obama pledged to hash out health care reform live on C-SPAN and excoriated Bush for kowtowing to the drug industry. But aides signed off on the drug industry’s agreement to find $80 billion in savings to support reform. However, Obama aides didn’t disclose that the agreement involved the White House promising that current health legislation wouldn’t include further cuts or give the government the right to negotiate over drug prices.
Toning Down Human Rights
During the campaign, Obama talked tough on China. While candidate Obama pushed Bush to take a hard line, President Obama hasn’t. Hoping to win China’s help on Iran and North Korea, Obama skipped a meeting with the Dalai Lama and said little when China undertook a violent crackdown in its largely Muslim Xinjiang region. The White House has pledged to meet with the Dalai Lama later.
And while candidate Obama warned Bush against a “reckless and cynical initiative [that] would reward a regime in Khartoum that has a record of failing to live up to its commitments,” President Obama’s envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, seemed to lay out a similar incentive-driven approach.
“We’ve got to think about giving out cookies,” said Gration. “Kids, countries — they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.” The White House backed away from Gration’s characterization of the strategy but did recently lay out a strategy of engaging with the Sudanese regime.
Traveling And Recreating
In his campaign and as president, Bush was mocked for a lack of interest in all things foreign — seven minutes touring the Kremlin, 25 minutes at the Great Wall of China, before declaring, “Let’s go home.”
During a trip to Europe in June, Obama chastised German and French reporters for suggesting that he was snubbing those countries by making only brief stops in each. “There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip,” he told reporters in Germany.
But after taking his wife out for an attention-grabbing date night, Obama promptly jetted back to Washington. Within about 90 minutes of arriving at the White House, the tightly scheduled president was on the move again — headed to Andrews Air Force Base to play nine holes of golf.
A California high school student who police said was gang raped in a two-and-a-half-hour assault outside a homecoming dance remained hospitalized in stable condition Monday, two days after she was flown from the attack scene in critical condition.
As of late Monday, two suspects had been arrested in the case and a third was being questioned.
"There is one individual in custody who has made some spontaneous statements that have led me to believe that he is culpable for what happened," Richmond police Lt. Johan Simon said.
Nineteen-year-old Manuel Ortega, described as a former student at the school, was arrested soon after he fled the scene and will face charges of rape, robbery and kidnapping, police said.
A 15-year-old was later arrested and charged with one count of felony sexual assault. A third teenager was being interviewed, according to Lt. Mark Gagan of the police department in Richmond, California.
"Based on witness statements and suspect statements, and also physical evidence, we know that she was raped by at least four suspects committing multiple sex acts," Gagan said.
Investigators said as many as 15 people, all males, stood around watching the assault, but did not call police or help the victim, a 15-year-old student at Richmond High School in suburban San Francisco.
"As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Gagan said.
Authorities had interviewed the victim, and the search for other attackers and bystanders who watched and did not report the rape was in "full-court press," according to Gagan.
"We have checked Facebook and YouTube to try to find any revealing evidence," he said. "We're looking in particular to see if anyone posted any video of the incident."
Several other individuals were detained at the scene but not arrested, Simon said.
The attack occurred on school grounds as the annual homecoming dance was under way inside the school Saturday night, authorities said.
The victim was found unconscious and "brutally assaulted" under a bench shortly before midnight Saturday, after police received a call from someone in the area who had overheard people at the assault scene "reminiscing about the incident," Gagan said.
"She ended up with those guys under her own will because she knew one of the boys who had gone to the high school before," Gagan said. "Right now, we're looking at toxicology reports to determine her blood-alcohol content and to determine if she was drugged."
According to authorities, the victim was flown to an area hospital in critical condition. She was in stable condition Monday, police said.
"This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it," Gagan said. "It was like a horror movie after looking at the evidence. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her." (CNN's Sara Pratley contributed to this report.)
Checking the "female" box when buying health insurance is likely to cost extra — perhaps up to 50 percent more than a man would pay for the same coverage.
Gender-rating — or what some term as flat-out sexual discrimination — is linked to the simple fact that women, particularly those under age 50 or so, go to the doctor more often than men.
But outrage over how women are treated in the individual health insurance market is mounting as stories emerge of companies refusing to cover maternity benefits and denying coverage because of past domestic violence or cesarean sections, including a Colorado woman who was told she would have to get sterilized to qualify for insurance.
Federal proposals, as well as pending state legislation, would ban gender-rating and require maternity coverage, even as the insurance industry warns that lowering premiums for younger women could mean higher premiums for most everyone else.
Colorado women age 40 and under shopping for health insurance in the individual market, not through an employer, pay from 10 percent to 59 percent more than men, according to analysis by the National Women's Law Center.
They pay more even when maternity coverage is not included. And in many cases, a female nonsmoker pays more for health coverage than a man who smokes.
"Women should not be penalized because their plumbing works differently and needs ongoing maintenance," Colorado Insurance Commissioner Marcy Morrison told a state health care task force.
As a state lawmaker, Morrison fought insurance companies to stop "drive-through deliveries" so women could stay in the hospital longer after childbirth. She said gender-rating is discrimination tied to decades-old salary disparity, particularly in female-dominated professions such as nursing and teaching. And she is skeptical of insurance company claims that "the sky is going to fall" and premiums would rise if gender-rating were outlawed.
America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's national association, proposed ending gender-rating and the practice of rejecting customers based on pre-existing conditions. In exchange, insurance companies want powerful legislation that would compel everyone to buy insurance.
Discrimination against women in the insurance market goes far beyond premium rates, reform advocates said.
Sterilization Suggested
Take, for example, Centennial resident Peggy Robertson, who was denied insurance by Golden Rule Insurance Co. because she delivered her second child by cesarean section in 2006. Maternity benefits weren't even part of the package.
Robertson, whose husband is a self-employed chiropractor, contacted the International Cesarean Awareness Network and filed a complaint with the state Division of Insurance, arguing the denial was unfair and that the company had asked her offensive questions during the application process.
Later, she received a letter from Golden Rule telling her the company would consider covering her if "some form of sterilization has occurred since the caesarean-section delivery."
"It was just really horrific and terribly insulting," said Robertson, a stay-at-home mom of two boys. "You felt like you were a herd of cattle or something."
Robertson's recent testimony before the U.S. Senate health committee in part prompted Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., to write a letter to Senate leaders adding his voice to the call for reform to ban gender-rating and other "harmful insurance industry practices."
Since denying Robertson, Golden Rule, an Indianapolis-based division of United Healthcare, now covers women who have had cesarean sections but only with increased premiums to cover the risk of a future cesarean birth or with exclusionary riders — clauses that deny coverage for cesareans for a certain number of years or forever.
"This helps us extend coverage to more people while keeping premiums lower for all of our customers," said Ellen Laden, public relations director for Golden Rule. "The real issue is how to deal broadly with providing access to health care for everyone while still keeping health insurance from being cost-prohibitive."
Bennet and others, including the National Women's Law Center, are calling for an end to coverage denials based on pre-existing conditions such as pregnancy and surviving domestic violence or sexual assault — a problem revealed in a recent report from the law center.
Lack Of Maternity Benefits
Another common frustration among women who buy insurance individually — and there are 125,000 such women in Colorado — is that maternity benefits are almost nonexistent.
Suzanne Pariser, a Denver lawyer and mother of 2-year-old Willa, is putting off expanding her family because she cannot find an affordable insurance plan that includes maternity coverage.
"That's the main reason we're not having a baby right now," she said. "We definitely want to have another child."
Pariser is annoyed that insurance company executives, in essence, are determining her family planning.
"My anger is mostly that insurance companies view having a baby as a medical complication that costs them money," she said. "They view it as a disease."
The only plan she could find that offered maternity coverage was more expensive in the long run than paying out of pocket to have a baby, Pariser figured.
Costs vary by hospital or birthing center, but the average bill for a vaginal birth with no complications is about $7,500 and for a cesarean section, $13,200.
The insurance industry in Colorado has not taken an official position on statehouse bills that would ban gender-rating in the individual market and require maternity coverage. Their stance likely depends on national reform — and in particular, whether federal law will force everyone, even the healthiest people, to buy insurance.
But industry officials point out that higher premiums for women are based on analysis from actuaries, which show women are much more likely to visit the doctor. The rate at which women visit primary care physicians is more than 50 percent higher than for men, according to the New America Foundation.
By about age 50 or 55, men typically begin using health services more than women, and premiums for older men are typically more expensive than those for older women, said Ben Price, executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans.
"The insurance industry is engaged in its own internal discussion on this issue, and health plans here in Colorado are of course taking a fresh look at gender-rating and many other issues that have been raised as a part of the debate both in Washington and here in Colorado," he said.
Officials with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Colorado have "strong reservations" about eliminating gender-rating and requiring maternity coverage. The practice is rampant in the auto insurance industry, they argue.
"The most expensive purchase in auto (insurance) is the young, invincible male; they are the risk-takers," said Rebecca Weiss, director of government affairs. "For some reason, auto insurance doesn't seem as inflammatory to people as health insurance.
"Shouldn't health insurance premiums be based on some degree on how many medical services you receive so that everyone is paying according to what they are using?"
It Would Raise Prices"
Insurance companies probably would have to raise prices on other groups to make up the difference if they were forced to lower prices for younger women, said Tom Gosselin, director of small-group underwriting at Anthem.
"It definitely would raise the prices, is the simple thing," he said. "You are now charging the 22-year-old guy who has no concept in the world about having a baby for maternity. He's more likely to choose not to have health insurance at all."
Eleven states ban gender-rating in the individual insurance market.
A review by the National Conference of State Legislatures found that those states had not determined whether their bans caused health insurance rates to rise.
In Montana, which outlawed gender-rating in 1983, some lawmakers want to repeal the ban, arguing fewer insurers are willing to operate in the state because of it.
Colorado is among several states that have banned gender-rating in the small-group insurance market, which in this state applies to businesses with 50 or fewer employees. For businesses with more than 50 employees, insurance companies can consider age and sex when setting rates — but the risk is spread throughout the company so everyone's premiums are equal.
Reform advocates argue the policy adversely affects businesses where the workforce is predominantly female, such as child-care centers or home health agencies.
Care Requires Doctor Visits
A Denver Post review of online health insurance quotes found that a woman living in the same Denver ZIP code with the same date of birth would pay $20 to $35 per month — or up to $420 more per year — than a man for the same coverage. The rates reviewed were for basic, high-deductible plans, ranging from $71 to $158 per month.
NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado is among those fighting for change in the law, arguing that women are typically the responsible sex when it comes to birth control and that those prescriptions often require an annual doctor visit.
"Under the current health care system, women are penalized for taking responsibility for their own health," said Toni Panetta, NARAL's political director.
State Rep. Beth McCann, a Denver Democrat sponsoring the bill banning gender-rating, said insurance companies failed to produce "sufficient factual basis to charge different premiums for women and men."
"It seems as though it's somewhat arbitrary," she said. "It's a matter of equality and fairness."
If the state legislation passes during the next legislative session, it probably would take effect about two years ahead of national reform.
Mary Saracino, a self-employed writer in Lafayette who has had to purchase insurance on the individual market, said she is shocked "and, dare I say, angry" that monthly premiums for women are higher.
"It seems highly discriminatory," said Saracino, 55. "Would consumers put up with that if, say, men had to pay more for tires than women because some statistic says that male drivers are harder on their cars than female drivers?"
Some Protection
These 11 states ban gender- rating by insurers in the individual insurance market:
California, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, and Washington. (Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com)
(Captain Derek Jeter, Mark Texiera, and Alex Rodriguez celebrate win. Photo by Nick Latham, Getty Images)
(Getty Image.)
(Mariano Rivera hugs catcher, Jorge Posada. Getty Image.)
(October 20, 2009 - Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America)"Barack Obama Sees Worst Poll Rating Drop In 50 Years"
Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.
His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating.
The bad polling news came as Mr Obama returned to the campaign trail to prevent his Democratic party losing two governorships next month in states in which he defeated Senator John McCain in last November's election.
Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: "The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.
"Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent."
Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey is in severe danger of defeat while Democrats are fast losing hope that Creigh Deeds can beat his Republican opponent in Virginia. Twin Democratic losses would be a major blow to Mr Obama's prestige.
Campaigning for Mr Corzine in Hackensack on Wednesday night, Mr Obama delivered a plea that almost seemed as much for himself as the local candidate: "I'm here today to urge you to cast aside the cynics and the sceptics, and prove to all Americans that leaders who do what's right and who do what's hard will be rewarded and not rejected."
Mr Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs executive and multi-millionaire, is currently running even in New Jersey, which is normally comfortably Democratic, while Mr Deeds is trailing badly in Virginia, a swing state that was key to Mr Obama's 2008 victory.
Mr Obama is also facing widespread criticism for his drawn-out decision-making process over what to do next in Afghanistan.
Republicans sense Mr Obama is in a vulnerable position and this week saw the return to the public stage of his perhaps most vehement opponent – Vice-President Dick Cheney.
In a blistering speech on Wednesday night, he accused Mr Obama of failing to give Americans troops on the ground a clear mission or defined goals and of being seemingly "afraid to make a decision" about Afghanistan "The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in danger," Cheney said at the Center for Security Policy in Washington.
"Make no mistake, signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries."
He hit out at Obama aides who suggested that the Bush administration had failed to weigh up conditions in Afghanistan properly before committing troops.
"Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity."
I went to look at AmericaBlog last night (I love to see what the Obots are up to) and thought you would LOVE to see what they think of Obama now. I've never seen so much whining, crying, gnashing of teeth since I told my kids they had to pay for their own car insurance.
...Aravosis has been covering the health care bill negotiations and I swear, the comments about Obama had me rolling on the floor laughing.
Here are a few of my favorite from that post. You could read the rest if you want, but they are all about the same.
Here goes..get your tissues out because you're gonna laugh until you cry:
Mike_in_the_Tundra said:
I really don't remember voting for Olympia Snow during the presidential campaign.
Montiel said:
Obama campaigned on a strong public option.
When push came to shove he ran the other way.
What does it matter now what he says - we already know who he is.
(Mary Ellen's note: Then the following guy is trying to put the kool-aid stains on somebody else's upper lip and throws in a little Christian bashing to finish it off.)
JohnnyG [Moderator] 10 hours ago 2 people liked this.
Even if this is proven true, the kool-aid drinkers will still ignore it. All they care about is his "historical presidency." They'll be more than happy to let his dirty dealings be swept under the rug. Much like how Christians view God, anything good is credited to Jesus (Barack) and anything bad is credited to the devil (Rahm, anyone else handy.)
PresPlatitudes said:
why isn't obama pushing for the PO, instead of parading around on letterman like a vain opportunist?
(Below is my favorite comment!)
Judas Peckerwood
If Obama's ultra-secret overarching goal for his presidency is to make the PUMAs look sane in retrospect, then all I can say is "Well played sir, well played indeed."
(ROTFLMAO! They hate it that the PUMA's were right!)
Fireblazes(CheetohsandCatfood) said:
Obviously, he was lying about wanting the public option. No money in that, after all it takes a billion to become president.
godwillsortyouout said:
For what it's worth, in the 2008 Presidential campaign, McCain raised $8 million from people who worked for healthcare companies, including lots of executives.
Obama raised ** $19 million **. You do the math.
(They just figured that out? And HOW many times did we try to tell them that before and how did they reply? "Racist!" )
vkobaya said:
if President Obama isn't trying to scuttle his own campaign promise
No, no, of course, he isn't trying to scuttle his own campaign promise. No, like any card carrying Republican, he is trying to scuttle America, drag it down the tubes, destroy our nation, which he hates and despises.
I'm sick of the man. Revolted, bitter, and angry that I and so many others were played for suckers into voting for him. Would we have been worse off under McCain and Sarah Palin? Beginning to wonder. Probably would have been no different.
(More laughing...I thought "we" were the "bitter and angry" ones? Look who's bitter now!)...
At a certain point, a president must own a presidency. For George W. Bush that point came eight months in, when 9/11 happened. From that point on, the presidency—all his decisions, all the credit and blame for them—was his. The American people didn't hold him responsible for what led up to 9/11, but they held him responsible for everything after it. This is part of the reason the image of him standing on the rubble of the twin towers, bullhorn in hand, on Sept.14, 2001, became an iconic one. It said: I'm owning it.
Mr. Bush surely knew from the moment he put the bullhorn down that he would be judged on everything that followed. And he has been. Early on, the American people rallied to his support, but Americans are practical people. They will support a leader when there is trouble, but there's an unspoken demand, or rather bargain: We're behind you, now fix this, it's yours.
President Obama, in office a month longer than Bush was when 9/11 hit, now owns his presidency. Does he know it? He too stands on rubble, figuratively speaking—a collapsed economy, high and growing unemployment, two wars. Everyone knows what he's standing on. You can almost see the smoke rising around him. He's got a bullhorn in his hand every day.
It's his now. He gets the credit and the blame. How do we know this? The American people are telling him. You can see it in the polls. That's what his falling poll numbers are about. "It's been almost a year, you own this. Fix it."
The president doesn't seem to like this moment. Who would? He and his men and women have returned to referring to what they "inherited." And what they inherited was, truly, terrible: again, a severe economic crisis and two wars. But their recent return to this theme is unbecoming. Worse, it is politically unpersuasive. It sounds defensive, like a dodge.
The president said last week, at a San Francisco fund-raiser, that he's busy with a "mop," "cleaning up somebody else's mess," and he doesn't enjoy "somebody sitting back and saying, 'You're not holding the mop the right way.'" Later, in New Orleans, he groused that reporters are always asking "Why haven't you solved world hunger yet?" His surrogates and aides, in appearances and talk shows, have taken to remembering, sometimes at great length, the dire straits we were in when the presidency began.
This is not a sign of confidence. Nor were the president's comments to a New York fund-raiser this week. Democrats, he said to the Democratic audience, are "an opinionated bunch." They always have a lot of thoughts and views. Republicans, on the other hand—"the other side"—aren't really big on independent thinking. "They just kinda sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, ya'll thinkin' for yourselves." It is never a good sign when the president gets folksy, dropping his g's, because he is by nature not a folksy g-dropper but a coolly calibrating intellectual who is always trying to guess, as most politicians do, what normal people think. When Mr. Obama gets folksy he isn't narrowing his distance from his audience but underlining it. He shouldn't do this.
But the statement that Republicans just do what they're told was like his famous explanation of unhappy voters are people who "cling to guns or religion." (What comes over him at fund-raisers?) Both statements speaks of a political misjudgment of his opponents and his situation.They show a misdiagnosis of the opposition that is politically tin-eared. Politicians looking to win don't patronize those they're trying to win over.
But the point on the We Inherited a Terrible Situation and It's Not Our Fault argument is, again, that it is worse than unbecoming. It is unpersuasive.
How do we know this? Through the polls. In all of the major surveys, the president's popularity has gone down the past few months. A Gallup Daily Tracking Poll out this week reported Mr. Obama's job approval dropped nine points during the third quarter of this year, that is between July 1 and Sept. 30, when it fell from 62% to 53%. It was the biggest such drop Gallup has ever measured for an elected president during the same period of his term. A Fox News poll out Thursday showed support for the president's policies falling below 50% for the first time. Ominously for him, independents are peeling off. In 2006 and 2008 independents looked like Democrats. They were angry and frustrated by the wars, they sought to rebuke the Bush White House. Now those independents look like Republicans. They worry about joblessness, debts and deficits.
The White House sees the falling support. Thus the reminder: We faced an insuperable challenge, we're mopping up somebody else's mess.
The Democratic Party too sees the falling support, and is misunderstanding it. The great question they debated last week was whether the president is tough enough: Does he come across as too weak? It is true, as the cliché has it, that it's helpful for a president to be both revered and feared. But this president is not weak, that's not his problem. He willed himself into the presidency with an adroit reading of the lay of the land, brought together and dominated all the constituent pieces of victory, showed and shows impressive self-discipline, seems in general to stick to a course once he's chosen it, though arguably especially when he's wrong. His decision to let Congress write a health-care bill may yield at least the appearance of victory. And if Mr. Obama isn't twisting arms like LBJ, and then giving just an extra little jerk to snap the rotator cuff just for fun, the case can be made that day by day he's moving the Democrats of Congress in the historic direction he desires. All his adult life he's played the long game, which takes patience and skill.
The problem isn't his personality, it's his policies. His problem isn't what George W. Bush left but what he himself has done. It is a problem of political judgment, of putting forward bills that were deeply flawed or off-point. Bailouts, the stimulus package, cap-and-trade; turning to health care at the exact moment in history when his countrymen were turning their concerns to the economy, joblessness, debt and deficits—all of these reflect a misreading of the political terrain. They are matters of political judgment, not personality. (Republicans would best heed this as they gear up for 2010: Don't hit him, hit his policies. That's where the break with the people is occurring.)
The result of all this is flagging public support, a drop in the polls, and independents peeling off.
In this atmosphere, with these dynamics, Mr. Obama's excuse-begging and defensiveness won't work.
Everyone knows he was handed horror. They want him to fix it.
At some point, you own your presidency. At some point it's your rubble. At some point the American people tell you it's yours. The polls now, with the presidential approval numbers going down and the disapproval numbers going up: That's the American people telling him.
"Today's Qs For O's WH - 10/20/09"
From this morning’s gaggle in White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ office:
Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –
(Crosstalk) Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.
Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –
Gibbs: ABC -
Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?
Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.
Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?
Gibbs: That’s our opinion. -jpt
"I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents."
"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."
"To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man (sic) will proceed in improvement."
(PRNewsFoto/J Records)
