The Political Chase

Obama’s plan for Iraq

Barack Obama gave a major speech on Iraq today — “The World Beyond Iraq”. I have not read the speech yet, but this is what he provides as the salient points of the plan (via email).

• End the war in Iraq, removing our troops at a pace of 1 to 2 combat brigades per month;
• Finally finish the fight against the Taliban, root out al Qaeda and invest in the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, while making aid to the Pakistani government conditional;
• Act aggressively to stop nuclear proliferation and to secure all loose nuclear materials around the world;
• Double our foreign assistance to cut extreme poverty in half;
• Invest in a clean energy future to wean the U.S. off of foreign oil and to lead the world against the threat of global climate change;
• Rebuild our military capability by increasing the number of soldiers, marines, and special forces troops, and insist on adequate training and time off between deployments;
• Renew American diplomacy by talking to our adversaries as well as our friends; increasing the size of the Foreign Service and the Peace Corps; and creating an America’s Voice Corps.

A fact sheet is available here, and a full transcript and video is available here.

Clinton takes lead in Gallup daily poll

Hillary Clinton has a 49% to 42% lead over Barack Obama in Gallup’s daily poll (national). Clinton’s lead is outside the margin of error, and the first time she has the lead statistically in more than a month. This clearly demonstrates the impact the Jeremiah Wright dust-up had on Obama. But what this poll does not reflect is data after his speech. We should be able to see what effect it may have had in the next few days.

Report: Schedule shows Clinton supporting NAFTA

(updated below)

How will the voters take this little NAFTA nugget, especially in Ohio after Clinton’s "shame on you" tirade? AP reports: "She was also involved in helping her husband win congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a deal she now criticizes and says she would try to change."

Here is the entry from Clinton’s schedule on November 10, 1993 (page 244 in pdf).

NAFTA BRIEFING DROP-BY
Room 450, OEOB
CLOSED PRESS
PARTICIPANTS: Approx. 120 expected to attend (See briefing book for further info)
FORMAT:
- Alexis Herman intros HRC for brief remarks

(H/T - Mark Murray at First Read)

Update: Jake Tapper has more info on the meeting.

Two attendees of that closed-door briefing, neither of whom are affiliated with any campaign, describe that event for ABC News. It was a room full of women involved in international trade. David Gergen served as a sort of master of ceremonies as various women members of the Cabinet talked up NAFTA, which had yet to pass Congress.

"It wasn’t a drop-by it was organized around her participation," said one attendee. "Her remarks were totally pro-NAFTA and what a good thing it would be for the economy. There was no equivocation for her support for NAFTA at the time. Folks were pleased that she came by. If this is a still a question about what Hillary’s position when she was First Lady, she was totally supportive of NAFTA.

That first attendee recalls that the First Lady’s office in the East Wing put together "the invitation list, who was invited authorizations and all that stuff."

Hillary’s schedule - where’s the beef?

Bill Clinton’s library released 11,046 pages of Hillary Clinton’s schedule during her White House years. The Clinton campaign claims it bolsters her experience claims.

"These documents are outlines of the first lady’s activities and illustrate the array of substantive issues she worked on — including health care, child care, adoption, education, veterans, microenterprise and international development, women’s rights and democracy," spokesman Jay Carson said.

That’s to be expected. Campaign rhetoric, but no evidence of fact yet. It would have been helpful if the campaign had made at least a few specific references to substantiate their claims, rather than extremely broad, generic topics or subjects. Maybe they have released something more specific and I just have not read it.

The Washington Post’s characterization has zero probative value. I’m not sure why they even bothered to include it. However the Caucus reports the schedules “carry all the emotional punch of a factory worker’s time card, showing where she was for much of her eight years in the White House but telling nothing about what she was saying, thinking or doing.”

Assuming the Caucus’s description is reasonably accurate, it is not clear to me how the release bolsters any of Clinton’s experience claims. How could calendar entries possibly be substantive without minutes, summaries, or agendas?

The records at the Clinton library can be found here.

For the record, the schedule spans  2915 days, which averages out to 3.79 events per day.

Cheney’s disregard for his oath of office

Historians would be hard-pressed to find a better example to characterize Dick Cheney’s contempt and wanton disregard for the Constitution than his comments in a recent interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz.

Raddatz asked Cheney about the deep unpopularity of the Iraq:

Raddatz: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

Cheney: So?

Raddatz: So? You don’t care what the American people think?

Cheney: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. There has, in fact, been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That’s a huge accomplishment.

Dick Cheney swore an oath to the Constitution. I recognize I am not a constitutional scholar, but I have little doubt about the inseparability of the people from the Constitution. The first seven words of the Preamble are quite clear: “We the people of the United States…”

Raddatz did not ask Dick Cheney about the accuracy of opinion polls nor did Cheney provide any evidence the polls are grossly and repeatedly inaccurate. She specifically stated “the American people.” Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest the long-standing results of numerous scientific opinion polls are anything but a reasonably accurate and commonly accepted measure of the people’s sentiment.

It would be easy to assume Cheney and his lieutenant, David Addington, made some twisted incredulous determination, as they did with in Cheney’s unitary executive assertion, that Cheney’s oath is not binding since the Constitution does not specifically provide for a vice presidential oath. And of course the fact that vice presidents have sworn an oath to the Constitution since 1789, makes no bearing or provide an inherent or implied legal basis that would apply to Darth Vader.

Unfortunately, once again, Cheney’s affront to the Constitution and democracy will go largely unnoticed and unchallenged.

ABC has a video of the interview.