Day: January 27, 2009

Cook: One President, Two Nations

Buck Banks

The National Review’s Charlie Cook had a very interesting column today that gives a pretty good overview of where we are as a nation in relation to our new president. It’s worth a read:

John Edwards was right when he spoke about there being “two Americas.” The way Edwards framed it, there was an America of “haves” and an America of “have-nots.” My version is a bit different. There is an America that watched with hope and excitement as Barack Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th president of the United States. And there is an America that watched with dread and skepticism.

It’s not exactly that they want Obama to fail but more that they feel they have little reason to believe that he will succeed in a way that helps them personally.

In the first and much larger group, there are many people who have a deep appreciation for the historic nature of Obama’s presidency and a sense that he is the right person for the job and will do well. A subset of this group is so worried about the nation’s economic problems that they hope Obama succeeds even though they didn’t vote for him.

The second group is profoundly pessimistic. Because of his race and education, Obama is very different from any of their friends, neighbors, or co-workers. The people in this group are deeply suspicious of his motives. Some are afraid that he will dismantle our nation’s military and leave America vulnerable. Others fear he will tax away everything they worked hard to accumulate. It’s not exactly that they want Obama to fail but more that they feel they have little reason to believe that he will succeed in a way that helps them personally. Voters in this group rarely support a Democrat for president, but their pessimism about this particular Democratic president is especially acute. I doubt that Obama will ever be able to win these people over. The bigger question is whether they will ever accept him as president.

Recent poll results are fascinating and confirm that the first group is substantially larger than the second. Gallup found that 83 percent of Americans approved of the way that Obama handled his transition, compared with 12 percent who disapproved. This favorable rating is significantly higher than those of Presidents-elect Clinton or George W. Bush. In two Gallup Polls taken after Election Day, Obama’s approval numbers were 78 percent and 75 percent. Clinton’s final pre-inaugural Gallup approval rating was 68 percent; Bush’s was 61 percent.

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Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

We’ve been impressed by the mastery of public policy, newshound-like familiarity with the events of the day, and remarkable facility with banter displayed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich … In all probability the governor will soon be unemployed … and frankly, he could use a good medical plan to defray the expenses of psychiatric care.

— WGN Radio program director Kevin Metheny, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, on the station’s offer to the likely-to-be-impeached Illinois governor to host its afternoon time slot.

Turley: Failure to Prosecute Bush on Torture Would Make Obama an ‘Accessory’ to War Crimes

Jon Ponder

Before they left office, both George Bush and Dick Cheney defended their administration’s practice of torturing of suspects in terror cases. Bush characteristically attempted to deflect responsibility for what his operatives euphemistically called “interrogation techniques” on the grounds that a lawyer in his employ said the practices were legal.

“[Failure to prosecute Bush officicals] wouldn’t make Obama an apologist, it would make him an accessory. He would be preventing the investigation of war crimes.”
– Turley

“I firmly reject the word ‘torture,’” Bush told Fox News. “Everything this administration does had a legal basis to it; otherwise, we would not have done it.”

Cheney freely admitted his role in approving torture. “I was aware of the program, certainly,” he said, “and involved in helping get the process cleared.”

Semantics aside, earlier this month, Susan Crawford, a Bush Pentagon appointee who served as the “convening authority” — apparently a role that has aspects of both judge and prosecutor — for the Guantanamo military commissions told a reporter that Mohammed al-Qahtani, the “20th hijacker, had, without a doubt, been tortured.

These admissions present Pres. Obama with a problem. Torture is not only illegal in the United States, it is also banned by international treaties that the United States has signed. Under these treaties, prosecuting torture is not an option. It is required.

On MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, told Keith Olbermann that these treaties compel the president to investigate all allegations of torture, and that failure to do so would be obstructing justice, which would make him complicit in the crimes.

A rough transcript, follows…

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Grand Jury Says Hell Yes, We’ll Investigate Florida House Speaker

Trish

Florida Rep. Ray Sansom, center, has ‘splainin’ to do

I haven’t wanted to bore you non-Floridians out there with the details of our House speaker’s misuse of power and conflicts of interest, but his case just got way less boring. Unless you consider being investigated by a grand jury and your fellow legislators dull.

A grand jury decided Monday to look into allegations that House Speaker Ray Sansom abused his position by taking a six-figure job at his hometown college.

“From this point on, we’ll be calling witnesses,” State Attorney Willie Meggs said at the Leon County Courthouse.

Troxler: Sansom predicts he will be found “clean, innocent.” And, what the heck, maybe he will be. This is Florida.

The trouble for State Rep. Sansom (R-Destin) began on what should have been a Very Good Day. After all, how often do you get sworn in as speaker of the House and find out you’ve been selected for a $110,000 a year job? Not only that, but the job is a newly created position pretty much tailor-made for you, at the community college you once attended, and to which you just steered $25 million in state funds, even though only $1 million was in the original appropriation. But wait, it gets better.

Although college officials dispute it, public records show that the airport facility Northwest Florida State College plans to build with tax money secured by House Speaker Ray Sansom is the same hangar Sansom’s friend wanted for his jet business…

Indeed, the hangar that [Developer Jay] Odom had proposed using $6-million in state money to build is virtually the same as what Northwest Florida State plans to build with $6-million Sansom obtained during the 2007 legislative session.

There’s one other little problem (that we know of so far).

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