Warren I. Cohen on Obama’s Foreign Policy Challenges

Warren I. Cohen | Truthdig | July 17, 2009

The Chinese and the Israelis loved George W. Bush, but most Americans and most friends of the United States would judge his foreign policies to have been disastrous. Those of us who came of age during the Cold War cannot remember a time when the prestige of the country was lower or when it had less influence with allies and adversaries. And now, in the midst of a financial crisis approaching the depths of the Great Depression, the new Obama administration’s attention cannot be diverted for long from the economy. But the world has great expectations of Barack Obama. Somehow he will bring peace to Israelis, Palestinians and Afghans, bring American troops home from Iraq without allowing that benighted country to slip back into chaos, persuade the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program and the North Koreans to surrender their nukes, keep Pakistan’s nuclear material securely in friendly hands, and prevent al-Qaida or its knockoffs from attacking an American city with a weapon of mass destruction. All this he will do without walking on water.

David Sanger is a distinguished, highly knowledgeable foreign affairs reporter for The New York Times. Publication of his book, “The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power,” was timed to have it on the desks of the new administration’s national security mavens their first day on the job. He tells a familiar story of our nation’s tribulations over the last eight years and provides an accurate description of where we stand today, but he is not an analyst of the caliber of Fareed Zakaria or Robert Kagan, Eric Alterman or James Mann.

Nobel Economists Slam Obama’s Economic Policy

George Washington’s Blog | Saturday, March 21, 2009

Nobel economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz slammed Obama’s economic policy this week.

Krugman said:

At every stage, Geithner et al have made it clear that they still have faith in the people who created the financial crisis — that they believe that all we have is a liquidity crisis that can be undone with a bit of financial engineering, that “governments do a bad job of running banks” (as opposed, presumably, to the wonderful job the private bankers have done), that financial bailouts and guarantees should come with no strings attached.

This was bad analysis, bad policy, and terrible politics. This administration, elected on the promise of change, has already managed, in an astonishingly short time, to create the impression that it’s owned by the wheeler-dealers.

Stiglitz said the Obama administration has failed to address the structural and regulatory flaws at the heart of the financial crisis that stand in the way of economic recovery and that Obama has confused saving the bankers and saving the banks. He also said:

We got cheated, to put it bluntly. What we don’t know is that—whether we will continue to get cheated. And that’s really at the core of much of what we’re talking about. Are we going to continue to get cheated?…
Do American taxpayers want to be bailing out institutions abroad? That’s a question we ought to be debating….

The fact that there was so much campaign contributions from the financial sector at least raises the concern [that the Obama administration is throwing money at the bankers because of their campaign contributions].

 And Nobel economist Myron Scholes has slammed the business-as-usual approach of the Obama administration to credit default swaps:

The “solution is really to blow up or burn the OTC market, the CDSs and swaps and structured products, and let us start over,” he said, referring to credit-default swaps and other complex securities that are traded off exchanges. “One way to do that, through the auspices of regulators or the banking commissioners, is to try to close all contracts at mid-market prices.”

Obama’s Challenge: Does He Match Up to Truly Great Leaders?

Robert Kuttner’s new book explores the possibilities of an Obama presidency and compares him to great leaders who came before.

By Maya Schenwar, TruthOut.org. Posted October 1, 2008.

I began reading Robert Kuttner’s latest book, Obama’s Challenge, three weeks ago. Then, amid the last two weeks’ pandemonium — the plummeting stock market, the huge banks tumbling toward death — I put it aside. I finished it over the weekend. My timing was soberingly ironic.

As I turned the final pages of Obama’s Challenge, Congressional leadership was cinching a deal on a $700 billion bailout plan for the country’s wealthiest financial institutions — a plan that wallowed universes away from the innovative proposals put forward in Kuttner’s book. Where Kuttner challenges Obama to utilize deficit spending to finance job-training programs, living wages, public works initiatives and — eventually — universal health care, the bailout plan would bypass low-income Americans. While Kuttner asks Obama to dip into debt to get Americans back on their feet from the bottom up, the bill cobbled together by Paulson and Congress would dip even deeper into the deficit in order to, for the most part, prop up the very top.

Obama’s Challenge warns against doom-mongering fiscal conservatives who’d block far-reaching programs, prioritizing “virtuous” frugality over regular Americans’ basic needs. In the face of Paulson’s $700 billion request, those fiscal conservatives did rear their shaking heads — though this time in opposition to a plan that would neglect regular Americans in favor of Wall Street.

The bill failed in the House initially, but not primarily due to progressive Democrats backing a Kuttner-like alternative. It failed because of hard-line conservatives, the folks who would no doubt raise a ruckus if a President Obama started getting all New-Deal-y after inauguration.

The creation of, and response to, the bailout plan showcase some of the barriers an economic change-seeker would face in today’s political climate. However, those barriers are no match for the “transformative presidency” Kuttner has in mind for Obama.

The book begins by asking readers to take two leaps of faith. One: Obama will be the next president. Two: Obama, despite his driftings toward the center-right in recent months, has the imagination, the heart and the know-how to steer the nation in a wholly new political direction.

These leaps may seem unduly risky. During my first hour of reading, I couldn’t turn off the whiny little voice in my head, squeaking, “Don’t get your hopes up! Don’t get your hopes up!” Kuttner himself calls his assumption of an Obama victory a “slightly cheeky exercise.” But he also shows that it’s a highly useful one. Only by mentally catapulting Obama into the White House can we fully address the question of what he should do when he gets there.

Obama has some important news!

Friend –

I have some important news that I want to make official.

I’ve chosen Joe Biden to be my running mate.

Joe and I will appear for the first time as running mates this
afternoon in Springfield, Illinois — the same place this campaign
began more than 19 months ago.

I’m excited about hitting the campaign trail with Joe, but the two of
us can’t do this alone. We need your help to keep building this
movement for change.

Please let Joe know that you’re glad he’s part of our team. Share
your personal welcome note and we’ll make sure he gets it:

http://my.barackobama.com/welcomejoe

Thanks for your support,

Barack

P.S. — Make sure to turn on your TV at 2:00 p.m. Central Time to join
us or watch online at http://www.BarackObama.com.

Caroline: Pull a Cheney!”

An Open Letter to Caroline Kennedy (head of the Obama VP search team) from Michael Moore

Caroline and JFK

Dear Caroline,

We’ve never met, so I hope you don’t find this letter too presumptuous or inappropriate. As its contents involve the public’s business, I am sending this to you via the public on the Internet. I knew your brother John. He was a great guy, and I know he would’ve had a ball during this thrilling and historic election year. We all miss him dearly.

Barack Obama selected you to head up his search for a vice presidential candidate. It appears we may be just days (hours?) away from learning who that choice will be.

The media is reporting that Senator Obama has narrowed his alternatives to three men: Joe Biden, Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine. They’re all decent fellows, but they are far from the core of what the Obama campaign has been about: Change. Real change. Out with the old. And don’t invade countries that pose no threat to us.

Senators Biden and Bayh voted for that invasion and that war, the war Barack ran against, the war Barack reminded us was the big difference between him and Senator Clinton because she voted for the war and he spoke out against it while running for Senate (a brave and bold thing to do back in 2002).

For Obama to place either of these senators on the ticket would be a huge blow to the millions that chose him in the primaries over Hillary. He will undercut one of the strongest advantages he has over the Hundred-Year War senator, Mr. McCain. By anointing a VP who did what McCain did in throwing us into this war, Mr. Obama will lose the moral high ground in the debates.

As for Governor Kaine of Virginia, his big problem is, well, Obama’s big problem — who is he? The toughest thing Barack has had to overcome — and it will continue to be his biggest obstacle — is that too many of the voters simply don’t know him well enough to vote for him. The fact that Obama is new to the scene is both one of his most attractive qualities AND his biggest drawback. Too many Americans, who on the surface seem to like Barack Obama, just don’t feel comfortable voting for someone who hasn’t been on the national scene very long. It’s a comfort level thing, and it may be just what keeps Obama from winning in November (“I’d rather vote for the devil I know than the devil I don’t know”).

What Obama needs is a vice presidential candidate who is NOT a professional politician, but someone who is well-known and beloved by people across the political spectrum; someone who, like Obama, spoke out against the war; someone who has a good and generous heart, who will be cheered by the rest of the world; someone whom we’ve known and loved and admired all our lives and who has dedicated her life to public service and to the greater good for all.

That person, Caroline, is you.

Would Obama prosecute the Bush administration for torture?

Mark Benjamin | salon.com

Aug. 4, 2008 | WASHINGTON — On the campaign trail in April, Barack Obama was asked whether, if elected, he would prosecute Bush administration officials for establishing torture as American policy. The candidate demurred. “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” he said. But he quickly added, “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems to solve.”

People who have given advice to the Obama campaign say they see little political advantage in the candidate discussing during a general election campaign how his administration might investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for torture. Other than the response above, prompted by a question from Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, he has said little about his plans. But behind the scenes, a slate of foreign policy and human rights experts with various degrees of connections to the Obama campaign, some of them likely to occupy positions of authority in an Obama administration, have begun to discuss that very issue, and in great detail. What they’re likely to recommend to Obama, should he become president, won’t fulfill the dreams of those who’ve hoped for immediate criminal accountability for Bush administration officials.

Members and advisors of the administration-in-waiting have formed largely informal working groups to take up a whole host of issues related to the Bush administration’s legacy, like what to do about the Guantánamo detainees. While they have not been asked to develop a formal recommendation for Obama on the question of criminal accountability for torture, those who are weighing the issue, a group that includes some of the 300 people the New York Times recently described as Obama’s “mini State Department,” are moving toward consensus on some key points. Specifically, don’t hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama’s first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date — meaning Obama’s second term, if such is forthcoming.

Left or right, Obama books are hot

Associated Press | Tuesday August 12, 2008

Whether they like him or oppose him, readers want to hear more about Barack Obama.

“The Obama Nation,” an anti-Obama book written by Jerome V. Corsi, will debut at No. 1 come Sunday on The New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. Corsi was co-author of “Unfit for Command,” an influential 2004 best-seller that condemned the Vietnam War record of then Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Obama, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee in 2008, is himself the author of the million-selling “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”

Interest in him is so strong that even an upcoming policy book, usually the toughest of sells, is catching on. A compilation of speeches and policy statements by Obama and his campaign staff, “Change We Can Believe In,” had reached the top 75 on Amazon.com by Monday evening, less than a day after The Associated Press reported the book would come out in September.

“Change We Can Believe In” has an announced first printing of 300,000.