DEBATES CAN SHIFT A RACE'S OUTCOME, BUT IT'S NOT EASY
JOHN HARWOOD
NEW YORK TIMES

History shows that candidates have different ways to score through presidential debates: the forceful put-down, the surprising show of skill, the opponent’s fumble, superior post-debate tactics. But it also shows that to fundamentally alter the direction of a campaign, a candidate usually has to accomplish all of those things. That underscores the challenge that Mitt Romney faces against President Obama as they approach the first presidential debate of 2012, the 27th of the television era featuring the major party nominees.

TREMBLING BEFORE MITT
FRANK BRUNI
NEW YORK TIMES

…For the last week, we’ve been told that the thought of sharing a stage with that fearsome oratorical beast otherwise known as Mitt Romney has [Obama] trembling in his leather oxfords. If he hops away with even three of his four limbs, it’ll be a miracle. … The Obama camp’s assertions of Romney’s advantage rest on two inarguable realities. One, Romney has indeed been better on the debate stage than on the stump, in many interviews or at the London Olympics. … Two, Romney has had more practice than Obama…But the Obama camp conveniently overlooks whom Romney got all that practice against, an all-star lineup that included Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and of course Rick Perry.

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OBAMA AGAINST THE ODDS
GEORGE WILL
WASHINGTON POST

Unfortunately for Mitt Romney, presidential politics is, like football, a game with a clock, one with just five weeks of ticks remaining. In football, a team behind by lots of points late in the game must take gambles. Romney is behind — in the important swing states, with the national electorate regarding who would best handle the economy and health care, and in national measures of favorable voter perceptions. So on Wednesday night it might be risky for Romney not to take risks. But what can he do? He might add to his menu of policies by embracing, say, the idea of breaking up the largest banks, a sound policy that would subvert the caricature of him as rapacious capitalism embodied. But debates are not good venues for explaining , well, anything, actually, but especially not new initiatives. And October is a time for summations to the jury, not new submissions of evidence.

ROMNEY ON DEFENSE
MICHAEL GERSON
WASHINGTON POST

...Entering the first presidential debate, it is Mitt Romney who is on the defensive. ... First, he must find a way to convince an economically struggling middle-age female voter in Akron, Ohio, that he is concerned in practical ways about her future. Second, and relatedly, he must outline a philosophy of government that isn’t libertarian and frightening. Attacks on redistribution and a theoretical defense of economic freedom will not suffice. The problem is: Both these goals are defensive and should have been accomplished months ago. Romney can still make his case — finally unfiltered by the media — but he has complicated his own task.

BENGHAZI WAS OBAMA'S 3 A.M. CALL
BRET STEPHENS
WALL STREET JOURNAL

The U.S. ignores warnings of a parlous security situation in Benghazi. Nothing happens because nobody is really paying attention, especially in an election year, and because Libya is supposed to be a foreign-policy success. When something does happen, the administration's concerns for the safety of Americans are subordinated to considerations of Libyan "sovereignty" and the need for "permission." After the attack the administration blames a video, perhaps because it would be politically inconvenient to note that al Qaeda is far from defeated, and that we are no more popular under Mr. Obama than we were under George W. Bush. Denouncing the video also appeals to the administration's reflexive habits of blaming America first. Once that story falls apart, it's time to blame the intel munchkins and move on. It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.

A NEW COURSE FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
MITT ROMNEY
WALL STREET JOURNAL

By failing to maintain the elements of our influence and by stepping away from our allies, President Obama has heightened the prospect of conflict and instability. He does not understand that an American policy that lacks resolve can provoke aggression and encourage disorder. The Middle East is a case in point. The Arab Spring presented an opportunity to help move millions of people from oppression to freedom. But it also presented grave risks. We needed a strategy for success, but the president offered none. And now he seeks to downplay the significance of the calamities of the past few weeks. ... In this period of uncertainty, we need to apply a coherent strategy of supporting our partners in the Middle East—that is, both governments and individuals who share our values. But this Middle East policy will be undermined unless we restore the three sinews of our influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values. That will require a very different set of policies from those President Obama is pursuing.

WAITING FOR AN ARAB SPRING OF IDEAS
TARIQ RAMADAN
NEW YORK TIMES

Many Americans were nonetheless shocked by the chaos and bloodshed across Muslim countries, believing that they had come generously to the aid of the Arab peoples during the uprisings. But Arabs, and Muslims in general, have a longer memory and a broader view. Their mistrust is fueled by America’s decades-long support for dictators who accommodated its economic and security interests; by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; by the humiliating treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay; and by America’s seemingly permanent and unconditional support for Israel. The United States and its European allies would be well advised to examine why Muslims are seething. Withdrawing from Afghanistan, respecting United Nations resolutions and treaty obligations with regard to Palestine, calling back the killer drones and winding up the “war on terror” would be excellent places to start.

DEFINING THE DEBATE GAME
EJ DIONNE JR
WASHINGTON POST

...The debate is a strategic conundrum for Romney. On the one hand, he has to use it to change his image, particularly among women and the blue-collar white voters he needs to counter Obama’s overwhelming margins among African-Americans and Latinos. This sort of repair work takes debate time and energy away from Romney’s primary task, which is to put Obama on his heels about his record. Romney will have to pull off this two-step at a moment when his campaign has been forced into a course correction. ...With Romney not certain he can count on the economy as the issue to power him through the campaign’s final weeks, he is scrambling to find other themes. This very process undermines the focus of his efforts and gives his argument a scattershot feel.

A CHARADE OF TRUTH-TELLING
ROBERT SAMUELSON
WASHINGTON POST

What defines this campaign, in part, is a yawning gap between the political rhetoric and the country’s budget problems. And it’s not just Obama. Mitt Romney is also playing. The consequences are that the victor will either sidestep those problems or, by attacking them forcefully, shock an unprepared public. Perhaps the first presidential debate, on Wednesday, will unmask and discredit the consensus against candor, though this seems doubtful. It is said of war that truth is the first casualty; that also applies to this campaign.

We here at Morning Joe want to send a special congratulations to producer Liz Grodd and her husband Aaron Friedman.

Liz and Aaron were married this weekend at the Beach Point Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y.

We couldn't be happier for them both!

GO LARGE, MITT
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
WASHINGTON POST

For six months, [Romney's] been matching Obama small ball for small ball. A hit-and-run critique here, a slogan-of-the-week there. His only momentum came when he chose Paul Ryan and seemed ready to engage on the big stuff: Medicare, entitlements, tax reform, national solvency, a restructured welfare state. Yet he has since retreated to the small and safe. When you’re behind, however, safe is fatal. Even his counterpunching has gone miniature. Make the case. Go large. About a foreign policy in ruins. About an archaic, 20th-century welfare state model that guarantees 21st-century insolvency. And about an alternate vision of an unapologetically assertive America abroad unafraid of fundamental structural change at home. It might just work. And it’s not too late.

2012 DEBATES: THIS IS IT, MITT
PEGGY NOONAN
WALL STREET JOURNAL

There are some institutional and personal elements surrounding the Wednesday debate that may well work in Mr. Romney's favor. From a canny journalist with a counterintuitive head: "The media will be rooting for Romney." Two reasons. First, they don't want the story to end. They're in show biz: A boring end means lower ratings. ...Second, the mainstream media is suddenly realizing that more than half the country (and some of their colleagues) think they are at least operationally in the tank for the president, or the Democrats in general. It is hurting the media's standing. ... Mr. Romney walks in as the underdog, behind in the polls. He's not the president, the other guy is. He's not world-famous, the other guy is. The president is known for smooth presentation and verbal fluidity, Mr. Romney more recently for awkwardisms and gaffes. It's good to be the underdog. "Politics is exceeding expectations."

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With less than six weeks to the election, President Obama is benefiting from a curious paradox. Although the economy remains weak by most indicators, consumer optimism has registered a distinct, though modest, gain. ... Either way, it’s good news for the president. The rise in consumer optimism has coincided with gains in his approval rating and a widening of his lead over Mitt Romney in most opinion polls. Of course, there’s no assurance that either will last. If September’s unemployment figures, scheduled for release Oct. 5, are poor, economic sentiment — and the president’s prospects — could reverse. But for now, a better mood is clearly helping Obama.

TALKING AT CROSS PURPOSES
EDITORIAL
NEW YORK TIMES

In dueling speeches, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel focused on drawing a red line for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities while the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, cataloged his community’s many grievances against Israel and tried to revive the fading dream of a two-state solution. ... Neither man acknowledged the other side’s priority nor articulated a common path forward. Mostly, the speeches showed how far peace efforts have gone off track.  After failing to get a process for talks going early in his term, Mr. Obama seems to have given up. Mitt Romney has suggested that he would do even less if he’s elected. ...He seems poised to encourage Mr. Netanyahu’s intemperate posture toward Iran, no matter the consequences.

On August 25, President Eisenhower was deep in a bombproof shelter in the North Carolina mountains when he got the news that Red China was bombarding the island of Quemoy. The Formosa Straits crisis of 1954-1955 had come back, like a bad dream. Ike was at the time participating in the federal government’s Operation Alert, an annual drill to evacuate policy makers from Washington in a simulated nuclear attack. The news from the Far East added a touch of reality to the exercise. Once again, Eisenhower had to decide how close to bring the United States, along with the rest of the world, to the nuclear brink.
     
No national leader talked, or possibly thought, more belligerently about nuclear war than Red China’s Chairman Mao. Under the misimpression that Sputnik signaled the superiority of the Communist bloc over the West, on November 18, 1957, he told Chinese students in Moscow that “the international situation has now reached a new turning point…The East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind.” [i]  The Soviets were too ashamed of their inferiority to set him straight. That same November, Mao blustered to Khrushchev that a nuclear war would be a victory for Marxism. “If worse came to worse and half of mankind died, the other half would remain, while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the world would become socialist.” The Kremlin leader was dumbfounded. “I looked at him closely,” Khrushchev later recalled. “I couldn’t tell from his face whether he was joking or not.”  [ii] 

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When the United States Marines landed in Lebanon in July, 1958, Mao was disappointed with the Soviet response. He scoffed at Khrushchev’s qualms about setting off a nuclear war. To show his Kremlin comrades how to deal with the imperialists, Mao ordered Red Chinese forces to resume shelling the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in August and vowed that Red China would take the off-shore islands—and then invade Formosa. [iii] 
    
Sworn to defend the islands and protect the Nationalist Chinese on Formosa, the Eisenhower Administration uneasily pondered its options. The Joint Chiefs of Staff informed President Eisenhower, as they had in 1955, that it would be necessary to destroy Chinese airfields on the mainland with nuclear weapons. Eisenhower was more publicly circumspect than he had been in the winter of 1955. There was no more loose talk equating atom bombs with bullets. Now that the Soviets were developing ICBMs, he had to be more careful in his public utterances. Eisenhower knew that neither the American people nor America’s allies could stand the risk of starting a global war over some small islands off the Chinese coast. [iv]
    
As he so often did, Eisenhower chose studied ambiguity. The president told the military to prepare to fight with conventional weapons, but also to be ready to use atom bombs in a worst-case scenario. At a press conference on August 27, Ike made clear that he alone would decide if and when to use those weapons. On Formosa, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek fumed that Ike seemed to be hedging. In early September, Foster Dulles went to Ike’s summer White House in Newport to press the president on whether he would be willing to use tactical nuclear weapons on Chinese airfields. Ike stalled and wandered off into a marginally relevant reminiscence about D-Day. When it came to nuclear bluffing, Eisenhower followed his own lonely counsel. Tell no one. [v]
      
Fortunately, Ike’s bluff worked. Mao was perhaps not as cavalier about nuclear war as he pretended to be. On September 5, the Communist party chairman told the Supreme State Conference in Beijing, “I simply did not calculate the world would become so disturbed and turbulent.” [vi]  With both sides looking for a way to pull back from the brink, the crisis quickly wound down. By the end of September, secret diplomacy was working towards a deal. The Americans were quietly persuading Chiang to reduce his large army (100,000 men) on the off-shore islands. In a near parody of saving face, the Red Chinese announced they would fire on the nationalist convoys only on odd days of the month—allowing the convoys to sail on the even-numbered days. In his memoirs, Eisenhower, who had seen almost everything, wrote, “I wondered if we were in a Gilbert and Sullivan war.”  [vii] 
    
Yet amidst this absurdity was a victory of sorts: Eisenhower and Dulles had been hoping to drive a wedge between Russia and China, and the second Quemoy-Matsu Crisis aided this cause. Khrushchev had promised to provide Mao with a prototype atom bomb. After listening to Mao’s tirades and watching him goad Uncle Sam, he began to think better of the idea. In 1959, Moscow told Beijing that no bomb would be forthcoming. [viii]

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IT'S ALWAYS THE ECONOMY, STUPID
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
WALL STREET JOURNAL

What Mr. Obama won't say is that the financial crisis resulted from the implosion of a housing market transformed into a toxic landfill by Congress, regulators, Fannie, Freddie and mortgage packagers. The Bush presidency was a bystander. Also left unsaid by Mr. Obama but free for the telling by Mr. Romney is that as the U.S. unemployment rate hit 9.5% in June 2009 and a shocked public was looking for a response, the new president introduced the Affordable Care Act. ...For the next nine months, as unemployment ran between 9.5% and 10%, Congress at Mr. Obama's insistence worked on his health-care legislation. When Mr. Obama signed the bill into law in March 2010, the unemployment rate was 9.8%. If an opponent wanted to describe this in partisan terms, he might say that the president legislated an entitlement dream while the economy burned.

KNOWNS, UNKNOWNS AND UNKNOWABLES
BY CHARLES M. BLOW
NEW YORK TIMES

Mitt Romney is running out of time. His path to victory is growing narrow and dark. There are only 40 days until Election Day. Early voting has begun or is about to begin in several states and new polls show Romney at or near double-digit deficits in the all-important swing states of Ohio and Florida. The Romney campaign is buckling under the weight of some big mistakes: A strategy that assumed that an empty suit could make empty promises and that an electorate full of voters consumed by anger at the president wouldn’t notice. A candidate who keeps his foot so deep in his mouth that his toes can tickle his cerebellum. A nominating convention that fell flat. Romney picking a vice presidential candidate from the far right as he callously sought to siphon far-right enthusiasm without embracing far-right dogma. The fat lady is waiting in the wings and she’s gargling with honey and lemon juice.

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As President Obama has surged in the polls, Republicans have been quick to identify the problem: Mitt Romney. ...The problem is not Romney but the new Republican Party. Given the direction in which it has moved and the pressures from its most extreme — yet most powerful — elements, any nominee would face the same challenge: Can you be a serious candidate for the general election while not outraging the Republican base? ... The Republican Party has imposed a new kind of political correctness on its leaders. They cannot speak certain words (taxes) or speculate about certain ideas (immigration amnesty) because these are forbidden. Romney has tried to run a campaign while not running afoul of his party’s strictures. As a result, he has twisted himself into a pretzel, speaking vacuously, avoiding specifics and refusing to provide any serious plans for the most important issues of the day.

END OF THE REFERENDUM
BY RICH LOWRY
POLITICO

...No miraculous intervention from the outside is going to save Romney. It all comes down to him. Romney is not a natural ideologue, nor — obviously — a natural backslapper. But he is a data-obsessed salesman. He should be pitching his program with all the zeal and airtight attention to detail of a presentation for a Bain Capital business deal. ... At this point, almost every day, every hour that Romney isn’t spelling out the programmatic differences between him and the president — and how they will affect people — is lost time. ... What Mitt Romney has to do is relatively easy. He has to make an unrelenting case for his program, and pitched particularly to the practical concerns of middle-class voters. He has to give the public compelling reasons to pick him in an election that will be a choice, not a referendum.

ELIZABETH WARREN, THE PEOPLE'S CHAMPION
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
WASHINGTON POST

Throughout the campaign, Warren has delivered an unabashed populist message. She first made the common sense case that no one succeeds alone; that successful businesspeople depend on what we’ve built together — an educated workforce, roads and transport to deliver their products, a rule of law vital to working markets. This isn’t a radical notion, but when adopted and badly phrased by President Obama, it sparked the frenzied Republican “we built it” campaign. ... Warren will focus on the core issues, and ask Massachusetts’ voters to decide who is on their side. And if she wins...she’ll not only lead a new generation of progressive reformers into the Senate, but also begin to teach Democrats how to fight for working people once more.

PRESIDENT OBAMA AT THE U.N.
EDITORIAL
NEW YORK TIMES

Six weeks before the election, the speech to an audience of world leaders in the United Nations General Assembly hall was as much a domestic political appeal as anything else. President Obama used the commanding venue of the General Assembly to offer a reasonable defense against Mitt Romney’s incoherent critique of his response to the revolutions in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen and to Iran’s nuclear program.  There were two fairly big omissions in Mr. Obama’s visit to the General Assembly. He spoke only briefly on areas that need more debate in this campaign — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Syrian civil war, Afghanistan and Iraq. And while it’s reasonable for Mr. Obama to be in campaign mode, just like Mr. Romney, he is the president. He could have used some of his time in New York to meet privately with world leaders, as presidents usually do. It’s not like he doesn’t have a lot to talk to them about.

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In a world of dogs, diplomatically speaking, Obama is a cat. Just as he suffered from his standoffish approach with Congress, donors and his base, our feline president can be oblivious to the neediness of other less Zen leaders. As Helene Cooper and Robert Worth wrote in The Times on Tuesday, some Arab officials are critical of Obama’s impersonal, distant style. ... At least the president has a foreign policy. Romney and Paul Ryan haven’t spent time thinking and speaking a lot about foreign policy. They have simply taken the path of least resistance and parroted the views of their neocon advisers. They talk all tough at Iran and Syria and label the president a weak apologist and buildup bogymen and rant about how America must dictate events in the Middle East. That’s not a doctrine; it’s a treacherous neocon echo.

OBAMA'S FREE SPEECH DEFENSE
EDITORIAL
WASHINGTON POST

...It was heartening Tuesday to hear Mr. Obama, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, deliver a vigorous defense of freedom of speech, including the right of individuals to “blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs.” ... It is important for the president and his administration to try to make clear to the majority of Muslims — who do not participate in demonstrations but follow the controversy — that the United States does not sponsor or endorse religious slander. That fact, while obvious to Americans, is not widely understood in the Middle East. But it is just as important to send the message that American free speech will not be curbed to suit religious sensibilities and that violence will not be tolerated.

MITT'S MEDIA BLAME GAME
JASON L. RILEY
WALL STREET JOURNAL

Since pulling even in the polls after the Paul Ryan pick and the GOP convention last month, the Romney campaign has stumbled repeatedly. ...Yet Mr. Romney, who is losing by five or more points in Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Virginia, sees blue skies ahead. Asked how he intended to turn his campaign around, Mr. Romney told "60 Minutes," "Well, it doesn't need a turnaround." And Romney surrogates were out over the weekend blaming the liberal media for the campaign's troubles. ...The press didn't treat Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush any less unfairly, and both men managed not only to win the presidency but get re-elected. Mr. Romney would do better to focus more on reducing his unforced errors and less on the Fourth Estate's political bias. If whining about the liberal media was a winning strategy for Republicans, Newt Gingrich would be the nominee.

MITT'S MORTIFICATION
FRANK BRUNI
NEW YORK TIMES

we need to ask whether we now have an electoral process so vacuous, vicious and just plain silly that most people in their right minds wouldn’t go anywhere near it. It chews up candidates and their families, spits them out and cackles with hyperpartisan glee all the while. Yes, those candidates volunteer for it, but still. The process doesn’t necessarily serve some wondrous purpose of culling the herd and toughening the survivors, as the people invested in it — including those of us in the news media — often like to argue. Romney’s bleeding has plenty to do with his intrinsic shortcomings and his shortsightedness...But I wonder if we’re not seeing the worst possible version of him, and if it isn’t the ugly flower of the process itself. I wonder, too, what the politicians mulling 2016 make of it, and whether, God help us, we’ll be looking at an even worse crop of candidates then.

WHY MITT ROMNEY IS SLIPPING
EDITORIAL
NEW YORK TIMES

To some extent, Mr. Romney’s diminishing stature is because of two recent statements that revealed his deficiencies to a newly interested audience. He falsely suggested that the Obama administration was sympathetic to the violent Muslim protests in Libya and Egypt, illustrating his ignorant and opportunistic critique of foreign policy. And he was caught on video belittling nearly half the country for an overreliance on government handouts. These moments, though, were not fumbles or gaffes. They were entirely consistent with the dismissive attitude Mr. Romney has routinely shown toward non-Americans or the non-rich. Now even long-undecided voters are starting to catch on and dismiss him. ...Mr. Romney is free to pursue this shallow, cavalier campaign for six more weeks, but he shouldn’t be surprised if voters increasingly choose not to pay attention.

The candidates tell you that this campaign is about big issues. If you believe that, you’re being snookied. Romney doesn’t dabble in messy things such as what precisely he would do in Afghanistan or with the tax code. But he has made time to do interviews with Leno, David Letterman and People magazine in addition to Kelly and Michael. Obama hasn’t held a formal news conference in the White House in more than six months, but he has found places on his calendar for Leno, Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, People, “Entertainment Tonight” and, of course, “The View.” In this “Jersey Shore” culture, it’s perhaps inevitable that candidates would try to reach voters by chatting about the banal and the prurient. But this doesn’t make it any less depressing.

THE BUBBLE CANDIDATE
JENNIFER GRANHOLM
POLITICO

...Presidents are isolated too. But the difference is this: all of Mitt Romney’s life has been in the bubble. He was born into privilege and he never left it (even his Mormon mission experience took him not to Ethiopia, Belize or Mumbai but to France). By contrast, President Obama was born to a single mother on food stamps. He knows what it’s like to be poor and to know struggling people. The president’s privilege is recent; Mitt Romney’s is life-long. The thick privilege bubble wrap around Romney means that he must work that much harder to come into contact with the real world. He bears the “special burden” of wealth, and laudably generous donations to church don’t create that contact. Romney’s 47 percent comment was not intentionally malevolent; rather, his remarks simply reflect honest and profound ignorance of the daily lives of most people.

THURSTON HOWELL ROMNEY
DAVID BROOKS
NEW YORK TIMES

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor. Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. ...The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

MITT ROMNEY LOST THE ELECTION
JOSH BARRO
BLOOMBERG VIEW

You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser...has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president. ...Romney already has trouble relating to the public and convincing people he cares about them. Now, he's been caught on video saying that nearly half the country consists of hopeless losers. Romney has been vigorously denying President Obama's claims that his tax plan would raise taxes on the middle class. Now, he's been caught on video suggesting that low- and middle-income Americans are undertaxed. ...The really disastrous thing is the clip about "victims," and the combination of contempt and pity that Romney shows for anyone who isn't going to vote for him. Romney is the most opaque presidential nominee since Nixon, and people have been reduced to guessing what his true feelings are. This video provides an answer: He feels that you're a loser. It's not an answer that wins elections.

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The largest failure of Obama’s approach to the Middle East is its apparent geopolitical randomness. Support for Iran’s Green Revolution was late and grudging — as though courageous reformers were intruding on Obama’s engagement of the regime. The president dramatically escalated the Afghan war before conveying an impression of heading for the exits. After wringing its hands, the administration took needed action in Libya. After wringing its hands, it has remained on the sidelines in Syria. The main consistency has been the wringing part.  In the absence of an organizing principle, flexibility becomes ambiguity. Other nations know exactly what Iran is after, what Russia is after, what Israel is after. They are left to guess at American intentions. The risk is that they will cease to care.

THE MYTH OF BARACK THE LIBERATOR
MARC A. THIESSEN
WASHINGTON POST

Across the [Middle East], people see the United States in retreat. They see Obama pulling all U.S. forces out of Iraq and preparing to do the same in Afghanistan. They see an American ambassador killed in Libya, the flag of al-Qaeda raised over our embassy in Egypt, and our diplomats fleeing from Khartoum and Tunis. Instead of looking to the United States and asking, “Where are you, Obama?”, the crowds in Cairo today are chanting, “Obama, we are all Osama.” The failure of Obama’s policies in the Middle East is not the fall of dictators in Cairo and Tripoli; it is the failure of leadership in Washington. On taking office, Obama promised to usher in a new era of popularity in the region. Well, ask yourself this: Are we more popular now than we were four years ago?

PROLOGUE

The lavish dinner at the Capital Hilton Hotel in downtown Washington on the evening of Saturday, March 11, 2006, was about the last place you would expect to find him. But there was Barack Obama, age 44, the junior senator from Illinois for only the last 14 months, in formal white-tie with tails and very much at ease in the crowd of 600. His trademark smile, broad and infectious, dominated his face as I met him for the first time.

We were at the annual Gridiron Club dinner—a rite of passage for national political figures such as Obama. The crowd included President George W. Bush and most of the major politicians in Washington. It was one of Senator Obama’s maiden voyages into the unsavory belly of the Washington beast. Bush was to speak for the Republicans, and Obama had been selected to speak for the Democrats.

Founded in 1885, the Gridiron—named because its motto was to “singe but not burn”—had the reputation of being an old-school event of in-jokes, skits and music that seemed more fitted to a bygone era.

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“You’re from Wheaton, Illinois,” Obama said to me, referring, unprompted, to the small town where I was raised in the late 1940s and ’50s. Wheaton, 25 miles west of Chicago, is home to Wheaton College, best known for its alumnus evangelist Billy Graham, whose influence permeated the town.

“I’ll bet you didn’t carry Wheaton,” I said confidently, referring to his Senate race 16 months earlier. A bastion of Midwestern conservatism and country-club Republicans, Wheaton was the most Republican town in the country in the 1950s, or at least regarded itself that way.

“I carried DuPage County by 60 percent!” Obama responded, beaming that incandescent smile. Wheaton is the county seat of DuPage.

I said that seemed utterly impossible. That couldn’t be the Wheaton or DuPage I had known.

Obama continued to smile me down. The certainty on his face was deep, giving me pause. Suddenly, I remembered that Obama’s opponent for the Senate seat had been Alan Keyes, the conservative black Republican gadfly. Keyes had substituted at the last minute for the first Republican nominee, who withdrew from the race when divorce and child custody records revealed that he had taken his wife to sex clubs in New York, New Orleans and Paris.

“Well, everyone who runs for office should have Alan Keyes as their opponent,” I said, trying to hold my ground.

Obama smiled some more—almost mirthful, yet unrevealing. The conversation turned to Illinois politics, and Obama ticked off the areas where he had strong support—Chicago, the labor unions—and weak support, downstate and the farm areas. He defined the categories skillfully, expanding on the state’s interest groups and voting blocs. He made it clear he knew where he had work to do.

He sounded like a graceful old-fashioned pol. Though he had carried DuPage by 60 percent, he had won 70 percent of the statewide vote.

His wife, Michelle, stood by his side in a stunning gown. But the focus and the questions from people crowded around were all directed at the dazzling new star.

• • •

When he appeared at the podium several hours later, Obama stood perfectly erect, projecting radiant confidence.

“This is a true story,” he said.¹ “A friend sent me a clip about a new study by a psychologist at the University of Scotland who says sex before a public speaking engagement actually enhances your oratorical power. I showed this clip to Michelle, before we arrived here tonight. She looked it over, handed it back and said, ‘Do the best you can!’ ”

The laughter ignited instantly.

“This appearance is really the capstone of an incredible 18 months,” he said, citing the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, cover of Newsweek, a best-selling autobiography, Dreams from My Father, a Grammy award for reading the audiobook. “Really what else is there to do? Well, I guess . . . I could pass a law or something.”

The self-deprecation played well.

Referring to Senator John McCain’s positive treatment by the press up to that point, Obama said, “Some of my colleagues call John a prima donna. Me? I call him a role model. Think of it as affirmative action. Why should the white guys be the only ones who are overhyped?”

The self-awareness played smooth.

Noting the speculation that the 2008 presidential campaign could come down to McCain, a maverick Republican, versus Senator Hillary Clinton, he said, “People don’t realize how much John and Hillary have in common. They’re both very smart. Both very hardworking. And they’re both hated by the Republicans!”

This played bipartisan.

Obama turned toward President Bush, who was on the stage nearby. “The president was so excited about Tom Friedman’s book The World Is Flat. As soon as he saw the title, he said, ‘You see, I was right!’ ”

The joke played confident.

“I want to thank you for all the generous advance coverage you’ve given me in anticipation of a successful career. When I actually do something, we’ll let you know.”

The audience clapped and hooted in delight.

After dinner the buzz was like a chain reaction. Not only could this young Obama tell a joke on himself, with the required self-effacement, but he had remarkable communications skills. An editor at The Washington Post once said that journalists only write two stories: Oh, the horror of it all, and Oh, the wonder of it all. Obama was the wonder of it all that night and he basked in the attention he had captured. Rarely have I seen anyone manage the moment so well. He had frankly and forthrightly trumpeted his lack of accomplishment, and the roomful of egos ate it up. But if he had done nothing much so far, why was he there? Why the buzz? The approbation? What exactly was being measured?

It was the dramatic impact he was having on his audience. The triumph was the effect.

Twenty-five years earlier in 1981, I had attended a Gridiron dinner where the speaker for the Democrats was Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the bookish intellectual who had served in prominent posts in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Moynihan, then 53, made some good jokes, but his theme was serious: what it means to be a Democrat. The soul of the party was to fight for equality and the little guy, he said. The party cared for the underdogs in America, the voiceless, powerless and those who got stepped on. It was a defining speech, and the buzz afterward was that Moynihan was going to be president. He wasn’t, of course. That was then, this was now.

Obama had not once mentioned the party or high purpose. His speech, instead, was about Obama, his inexperience, and, in the full paradox of the moment, what he had not done.

Two and a half years later, he was president-elect of the United States.

Excerpt from THE PRICE OF POLITICS by Bob Woodward
Copyright © 2012 by Bob Woodward. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc, NY.

Purchase the book at Amazon

THE FOREIGN RELATIONS FUMBLER
NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
NEW YORK TIMES

The essential problem is that every time Romney touches foreign policy, he breaks things. He went on a friendly trip to Britain — the easiest possible test for a candidate, akin to rolling off a log — and endeared himself by questioning London’s readiness to host the Olympic Games. In the resulting firestorm, one newspaper, The Sun, denounced “Mitt the Twit.”  ... Most dangerous of all is Romney’s policy on Iran, which can’t be dismissed as an offhand misstatement. As my colleagues David E. Sanger and Ashley Parker note, Romney muddles his own position on his nuclear red line for Iran. Plenty of candidates don’t write their own foreign policy position papers, but Romney is unusual in that he seems not to have even read his. According to clarifications from Romney’s campaign, he apparently would order a military strike before Iran even acquired a bomb, simply when it was getting close. For anyone who has actually seen a battlefield, that’s a blithe, too-light embrace of a path to yet another war. It’s emblematic of a candidate who, on foreign policy, appears an empty shell.

OBAMA'S JOBS NUMBER STILL BEATS PREDECESSOR'S
FLOYD NORRIS
NEW YORK TIMES

The job numbers in recent months have been disappointing, encouraging Republicans who hope that the slow pace of recovery will cause voters to reject President Obama. But buried in the numbers was one accomplishment that serves only to emphasize how poorly the American economy has performed since 2000. The pace of creation of jobs in the private sector during the current administration is now greater than the pace in either of President George W. Bush's terms in office.

Introverted leaders often possess an innate caution that may be more valuable than we realize. President Clinton’s extroversion served him well but may have contributed to conduct that almost derailed his presidency. It’s impossible to imagine the cautious and temperate Mr. Obama mired in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Would it be better if Mr. Obama palled around with more senators, attended more cocktail parties, cut a schmoozier figure? Sure. P.R. is part of a politician’s job. And as the personality psychologist Brian Little says, we all need to act out of character occasionally, for the sake of work or people we love.

A BULLY OVERPLAYS HIS HAND
PETER BEINART
NEWSWEEK

...Perhaps the most fundamental reason Netanyahu’s attacks have backfired is the simplest: this is about war. It’s one thing to pressure an American president into backing down on the peace process. It’s another to pressure him into attacking another country. It’s offensive and absurd to expect a president to commit himself to war by a date certain before having taken his case to the American people. Americans do not want Iran to go nuclear, but this is a country weary of war. And, increasingly, it is a country weary of Netanyahu as well.

OUR MIDDLE EAST STATUS QUO
AARON DAVID MILLER
WASHINGTON POST

...No matter who wins in November, the basic parameters of the U.S. approach to the Middle East are unlikely to change. We may get pulled into situations with unpredictable consequences (including a conflict with Iran), but the days of sweeping and grand U.S.-led designs for war and peace are pretty much over. ... If you’re looking for dramatic, creative moves from a second Obama term or a Romney administration — big peace plans, grand bargains and the like — forget about it. ...Come 2013, Obama or Romney is going to be knee-deep in trying to keep the nation from plunging headlong over the looming fiscal cliff and trying to save what’s left of the American middle class. Neither wants to be the hero of Damascus; they’ll be trying to be the hero of Detroit, Kansas City, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

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