February 17, 2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
and JULIA PRESTON
WASHINGTON — A plan by President Obama for an overhaul of the
immigration system would put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship that
could begin after about eight years and would require them to go to the back of
the line behind legal applicants, according to a draft of the legislation that
the White House has circulated in the administration.
The draft plan says none of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the
country would be granted permanent resident status and given a document known as
a green card until the earlier of two dates: either eight years after the bill
is enacted or 30 days after visas have been given to everyone who applied
legally.
The plan includes a shortened path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants
who came to the United States as children, said an administration official who
agreed to discuss the details only on the condition of anonymity. In many cases,
those young people could apply for green cards as soon as two years after the
law was passed.
The disclosure of the document’s existence, by USA Today on Saturday, set off a
series of political recriminations and questions on Sunday about Mr. Obama’s
promise to allow bipartisan Congressional talks to take precedence. The furor
also offered new evidence that Republicans could use the president’s direct
involvement as a reason to reject a potential compromise.
The White House on Wednesday sent copies of the draft to officials in government
agencies that deal with immigration and border security, the administration
official said. In the face of the sharp Republican criticism, the administration
insisted this weekend that no decision had been made and that nothing had
changed. White House aides reached out to lawmakers in both parties on Saturday
night to reassure them, officials said.
Denis McDonough, the president’s top White House aide, said on Sunday that Mr.
Obama remained committed to staying on the sidelines while a group of Republican
and Democratic senators tries to reach an immigration agreement by the spring.
In his first appearances on Sunday talk shows as chief of staff, Mr. McDonough
said the administration was preparing draft legislation only as a backup.
“We’ve not proposed anything to Capitol Hill yet,” he said on the ABC program
“This Week.” “We’re going to be ready. We have developed each of these proposals
so we have them in a position so that we can succeed.”
His comments came after Republicans quickly condemned the reports of a new
administration plan, calling it “dead on arrival” and “very counterproductive.”
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, issued a statement late Saturday
calling the president’s reported legislation “half-baked and seriously flawed.”
He said its approval “would actually make our immigration problems worse.” Mr.
Rubio has been among the leading Republicans pushing for a comprehensive
overhaul of the immigration process.
On Sunday, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, another Republican calling
for immigration changes, said on “This Week” that the president’s efforts to
develop his own legislation would undermine efforts on Capitol Hill and were
taking “things in the wrong direction.”
Aides to Mr. Obama have been working on immigration legislation for years in
anticipation of a renewed push. Mr. McDonough did not confirm which specific
proposals would be in the president’s bill if he presented one to Congress, but
said that if lawmakers could not reach an agreement, everyone would find out.
Mr. Rubio “says it’s dead on arrival if proposed,” Mr. McDonough said. “Well,
let’s make sure that it doesn’t have to be proposed. Let’s make sure that that
group up there, the gang of eight, makes some good progress on these efforts, as
much as they say they want to, and that’s exactly what we intend to do, to work
with them.”
The back-and-forth was a blunt reminder that Mr. Obama remains a polarizing
figure as the two parties seek common ground on an emotional issue that has
defied resolution for more than two decades.
According to the White House draft, which elaborates on principles that Mr.
Obama unveiled several weeks ago, illegal immigrants would have to wait at least
eight years before they could apply for green cards, the first step on the path
to citizenship, unless the backlogs were cleared earlier. After receiving a
green card, immigrants are generally eligible to become naturalized citizens
after five years.
The plan contemplates measures that could speed up the long lines in the legal
system, opening the door to a faster path. But administration officials have
said it is highly unlikely that the lines would be eliminated before eight
years. About six million people who have followed the rules and have been
approved are waiting for green cards to be issued. Most Mexicans, for example,
must wait at least 16 years to receive their green cards after they are
approved.
Mr. Obama proposes to reduce the backlog by temporarily adding to the number of
visas available and by reconfiguring some visa categories to remove them from
numerical caps. Once those lines were eliminated, illegal immigrants who would
be given provisional legal status under Mr. Obama’s draft plan could apply for
green cards.
The length of the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants has become a highly
delicate issue in the fast-moving debate over the overhaul. Republicans who are
part of the bipartisan group of senators drafting legislation have said they are
looking for a longer path for illegal immigrants, to make it clear they are not
jumping the line or being rewarded for violating the law to come to the United
States.
Those Republicans, led by Mr. Rubio, are also insisting that the path to
citizenship must hinge on advances in border security. There is no mention of
any border enforcement trigger in the versions of the plan that the White House
circulated on Wednesday. But increased border enforcement is part of the
principles for comprehensive immigration legislation that Mr. Obama has outlined
in speeches in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups for Latinos and other immigrants are increasing their
pressure on Mr. Obama to shorten the path and reduce its hurdles. This month, a
broad coalition of immigrant groups called for the wait to be “years, not
decades,” and one group said immigrants should be able to become naturalized
citizens after no more than seven years. Last week, a Latino group delivered an
online petition with more than 265,000 supporters calling for an efficient
pathway.
The draft does not yet include any proposed legislation for a guest worker
program to handle future flows of immigrants for agriculture and other low-wage
industries, the administration official said. That intensely contentious issue
is the subject of parallel closed-door negotiations between labor leaders and
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Under the White House’s draft plan, immigrants would have to pay any back taxes,
learn English and pay fees and a penalty of probably a few hundred dollars.
Immigrants with serious criminal records would not be eligible.
February 6, 2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON — The White House on Wednesday directed the Justice
Department to release to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees
classified documents discussing the legal justification for killing, by drone
strikes and other means, American citizens abroad who are considered terrorists.
The White House announcement appears to refer to a long, detailed 2010 memo from
the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel justifying the killing of Anwar
al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who had joined Al Qaeda in Yemen. He was
killed in a C.I.A. drone strike in September 2011. Members of Congress have long
demanded access to the legal memorandum.
The decision to release the legal memo to the Intelligence Committees came under
pressure, two days after a bipartisan group of 11 senators joined a growing
chorus asking for more information about the legal justification for targeted
killings, especially of Americans.
The announcement also came on the eve of the confirmation hearing scheduled for
Thursday afternoon for John O. Brennan, President Obama’s choice to be director
of the C.I.A., who has been the chief architect of the drone program as Mr.
Obama’s counterterrorism adviser.
Critics accused Mr. Obama of hypocrisy for keeping the legal opinions on
targeted killing secret, noting that in 2009 he had ordered the public release
of the classified memos governing C.I.A. interrogations under President George
W. Bush. Administration officials replied that the so-called enhanced
interrogations had been stopped, while drone strikes continue.
Until Wednesday, the administration had refused to even officially acknowledge
the existence of the documents, which have been reported about in the press.
This week, NBC News obtained an unclassified, shorter “white paper” that
detailed some of the legal analysis about killing a citizen and was apparently
derived from the classified Awlaki memorandum. The paper said the United States
could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda
involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible.
Administration officials said Mr. Obama had decided to take the action, which
they described as extraordinary, out of a desire to involve Congress in the
development of the legal framework for targeting specific people to be killed in
the war against Al Qaeda. Aides noted that Mr. Obama had made a pledge to do
that during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last year.
“Today, as part of the president’s ongoing commitment to consult with Congress
on national security matters, the president directed the Department of Justice
to provide the Congressional Intelligence Committees access to classified Office
of Legal Counsel advice related to the subject of the Department of Justice
white paper,” said an administration official who requested anonymity to discuss
the handling of classified material.
The official said members of the Intelligence Committees would now get “access”
to the documents.
Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties
Union, called the president’s move “a small step in the right direction.” But he
noted that the legal memo or memos were not being shared with the Armed Services
Committees, which have jurisdiction over Pentagon strikes, or the Judiciary
Committees, which oversee the Justice Department. It was not clear whether the
release involved more than one memo.
The public should be permitted to see at least a redacted version of the
relevant material, Mr. Anders said. “Everyone has a right to know when the
government believes it can kill Americans and others,” he said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to closely question Mr. Brennan
about his role in the drone program during his hearing. Senator Ron Wyden, an
Oregon Democrat who sits on the committee, said in a phone interview that he had
been working in his office on questions for Mr. Brennan about 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday when Mr. Obama called him and said that “effective immediately he was
going to make the legal opinions available and he also hoped that there could be
a broader conversation.”
Mr. Wyden has repeatedly called on the administration to release its legal
memorandums laying out what the executive branch believes it has the power to do
in national security matters, including the targeted killing of a citizen.
Earlier on Wednesday, at a Democratic retreat in Annapolis, Md., he had hinted
at a potential filibuster of Mr. Brennan’s nomination by vowing to “pull out all
the stops to get the actual legal analysis, because without it, in effect, the
administration is, in effect, practicing secret law.”
Mr. Wyden said that committee members would have immediate access to the
material, and that there would be a process for other senators to read it
eventually. It was not clear whether lawmakers’ legal aides would also be
allowed to read it.
He said the administration’s decision to allow lawmakers “to finally see the
legal opinions” was an “encouraging first step, and what I want to see is a
bipartisan effort to build on it, particularly right now, when the lines are
blurring between intelligence agencies and the military.”
The Congressional Intelligence Committees were created in the late 1970s to
exercise oversight after a series of scandals at the spy agencies. The law
requires that the committees be kept informed of intelligence activities. But
most administrations withhold at least some legal opinions, treating them as
confidential legal advice to the president and agency officials.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the Senate
Intelligence Committee, said she was pleased by the president’s action. “It is
critical for the committee’s oversight function to fully understand the legal
basis for all intelligence and counterterrorism operations,” she said.
The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed lawsuits to
force the release of the classified legal opinions on targeted killing,
including the one now going to the Intelligence Committees. A judge rejected the
claims, and the decision is on appeal.
The use of unmanned drones in the war against terrorism — a technology that has
greatly facilitated the ability of the government to kill specific people from
any “hot” battlefield — has significantly escalated under Mr. Obama, who has
used them to target Qaeda leadership. Mr. Obama has hailed his administration’s
success in killing many in the terrorist organization’s senior ranks and
undermining its ability to attack America.
But there have been persistent questions about how targets are chosen,
especially when it comes to American citizens who the government says have taken
up arms against their country as part of Al Qaeda or other terrorist
organizations.
Mr. Obama and administration officials have said they are pursuing a “legal
framework” for those decisions, and some top officials have given speeches
describing that legal framework. The unclassified white paper had been provided
to members of Congress but had not been released publicly.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, was asked on Wednesday morning
whether the president owed the public a “clearer explanation” about the
standards that the government must meet before it uses the drones to kill
Americans overseas. He called that an “excellent question” and said Mr. Obama
took it seriously.
“He’s talking about this in a very deliberative and thoughtful way about how we
move forward as a nation on these issues, because, obviously, these are
questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the
people who are in the seats that they’re in now have left the scene,” Mr. Carney
said.
Asked about the timing of those deliberations, he said he did not have any
information to provide. “But I just wanted to convey to you the seriousness with
which the president approaches these issues, and he respects the questions being
asked,” Mr. Carney said.
On one level, there were not too many surprises in the newly
disclosed “white paper” offering a legal reasoning behind the claim that
President Obama has the power to order the killing of American citizens who are
believed to be part of Al Qaeda. We knew Mr. Obama and his lawyers believed he
has that power under the Constitution and federal law. We also knew that he
utterly rejects the idea that Congress or the courts have any right to review
such a decision in advance, or even after the fact.
Still, it was disturbing to see the twisted logic of the administration’s
lawyers laid out in black and white. It had the air of a legal justification
written after the fact for a policy decision that had already been made, and it
brought back unwelcome memories of memos written for President George W. Bush to
justify illegal wiretapping, indefinite detention, kidnapping, abuse and
torture.
The document, obtained and made public by NBC News, was written by the Justice
Department and coyly describes another, classified document (which has been
described in The Times) that actually provided the legal justification for
ordering the killing of American citizens.
That document still has not been provided to Congress, despite repeated demands
from lawmakers. The white paper was sent to Capitol Hill seven months after the
military carried out President Obama’s orders to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an
American who moved to Yemen and became an advocate of jihad against the United
States.
In private, administration officials say Mr. Awlaki was a commander of an Al
Qaeda affiliate and actively involved in planning attacks on the United States.
Publicly, it has refused even to acknowledge that Mr. Obama ordered Mr. Awlaki
killed or back up its claim that he was an active terrorist. The White House has
vigorously fought holding any court hearing over the killing of Mr. Awlaki or
his 16-year-old son, who was killed in a subsequent attack.
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to have the operational memo on
those killings released, arguing that an American citizen has constitutional
rights that a judge must make sure are being respected. We agree.
According to the white paper, the Constitution and the Congressional
authorization for the use of force after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, gave Mr.
Obama the right to kill any American citizen that an “informed, high-level
official” decides is a “senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or an associated
force” and presents an “imminent threat of violent attack.”
It never tries to define what an “informed, high-level official” might be, and
the authors of the memo seem to have redefined the word “imminent” in a way that
diverges sharply from its customary meaning. It talks about “due process” and
the need to balance a person’s life “against the United States’ interest in
forestalling the threat of violence and death to other Americans.”
But it takes the position that the only “oversight” needed for such a decision
resides within the executive branch, and there is no need to explain the
judgment to Congress, the courts or the public — or, indeed, to even acknowledge
that the killing took place.
The paper argues that judges and Congress don’t have the right to rule on or
interfere with decisions made in the heat of combat. Some officials also draw a
parallel to police officers who use violence to protect the innocent. Even in
wartime, there are many ways to review commanders’ and soldiers’ decisions, and
while courts-martial are internal to the military, their verdicts are subject to
appeal to a civilian judge. When a police officer so much as discharges his
weapon, it triggers a great deal of review, based on rules that are known to
everyone.
The white paper “is a confusing blend of self-defense and law of war concepts
and doesn’t clearly explain whether there is a different standard for killing a
senior Al Qaeda leader depending on whether he is a citizen,” said Kate Martin,
director of the Center for National Security Studies. “Its due process analysis
is especially weak.”
The memo could and should have been released months ago. The administration
could and should have provided a select number of lawmakers with the specifics
on the killing of Mr. Awlaki and his son. The president could and should have
acknowledged that decision and explained it.
Going forward, he should submit decisions like this one to review by Congress
and the courts. If necessary, Congress could create a special court to handle
this sort of sensitive discussion, like the one it created to review
wiretapping. This dispute goes to the fundamental nature of our democracy, to
the relationship among the branches of government and to their responsibility to
the public.
February 2, 2013
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — When President Obama mentioned last week that he
had picked up a new hobby — skeet shooting at Camp David — it was a surprising
disclosure by a president whose main identification with guns these days is his
effort to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
To some, Mr. Obama’s newfound enthusiasm for shooting clay pigeons — he said in
an interview that he did it “all the time” at the presidential retreat — also
seemed a bit suspicious.
So on Saturday, the White House tried to silence the skeptics by releasing a
photograph of Mr. Obama shooting on the range at Camp David in August. The
president, wearing protective glasses and ear-muffs, is squinting down the
barrel of a shotgun moments after pulling the trigger. Smoke is shooting from
the front of the gun.
The White House said the photo was taken on Aug. 4, Mr. Obama’s 51st birthday.
But it offered no further details on whether his target practice was a regular
hobby or a one-time event.
The notion of the president taking aim at targets flung into the air captivated
some in the political and social media worlds at a time when he is pushing
Congress to enact sweeping restrictions on high-capacity rifles and magazines.
Conservatives scoffed, comics mocked, a congresswoman challenged him to a
skeet-shooting contest, a fake picture of an armed Mr. Obama circulated on the
Internet, and the White House tried to make the whole matter go away.
“It was a surprise to a lot of people in the industry when we saw that and heard
that,” said Michael Hampton Jr., the executive director of the National Skeet
Shooting Association, whose 35,000 members do not include the president.
Mr. Obama is hardly the first politician to draw scorn for boasting of
experience with guns. In 2007, during his first presidential campaign, former
Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was ridiculed when he said, “I’ve always been
a rodent and rabbit hunter — small varmints, if you will.” In 2004, John Kerry,
then a presidential candidate and now secretary of state, was lampooned for
showing up in camouflage to go hunting less than two weeks before the election.
The latest commotion has its origins in the interview Mr. Obama gave to The New
Republic, now owned by Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder and former Obama
campaign aide. In the interview, Franklin Foer, the magazine’s editor, referred
to the fight over gun control and asked if the president had ever fired a gun.
“Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time,” Mr. Obama
said.
“The whole family?” Mr. Foer asked.
“Not the girls,” he said, “but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have
a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country
for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big
mistake.”
Mr. Obama went on to say that the reality of guns in urban areas differs from
that in rural areas. “So it’s trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going
to be part of the biggest task over the next several months,” he said. “And that
means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they
do sometimes.”
The skeet-shooting comment caught many off guard because it is not something the
president has talked about. While other presidents have used the skeet-shooting
range at Camp David, database searches of Mr. Obama’s speeches and interviews
turned up no mention of participating.
“I would refer you simply to his comments,” Jay Carney, the White House press
secretary, told reporters who asked after the interview was published how often
the president shoots. “I don’t know how often. He does go to Camp David with
some regularity, but I’m not sure how often he’s done that.”
Asked why no one had seen a picture or heard about it before, Mr. Carney said,
“Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and
friends and relax, not to produce photographs.”
That did not satisfy the skeptics. The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column
cast doubt on the claim, while Fox News quoted an unnamed person saying Mr.
Obama had participated once during a Marine competition at Camp David but not
“all the time.” Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, went
on CNN to question the assertion.
“I tell you what I do think,” Ms. Blackburn said. “I think he should invite me
to Camp David, and I’ll go skeet shooting with him and I bet I’ll beat him.”
Gun rights supporters said the president was evidently trying to reach out to
gun owners to assuage their concerns about his legislative proposals.
“He clearly doesn’t get it,” said Chris Cox, the chief lobbyist for the National
Rifle Association. “But in his effort to pursue a political agenda, he
apparently is willing to convince gun owners that he’s one of us, that he’s a
Second Amendment supporter.”
Mr. Cox said no one was fooled. “Skeet shooting, whether you’ve done it or not,
doesn’t make you a defender of the Second Amendment,” he said.
While White House officials privately dismissed skeptics by comparing them to
“birthers” who doubted that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii, even some liberals
found the skeet-shooting comment hard to believe.
Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” made fun of Mr. Obama’s statement as well as
those who doubted it. He essentially agreed with Mr. Cox that it was pointless
for the president to try to reach out to gun rights supporters who do not
believe him.
“The point is, Mr. President, what are you doing? Why try?” Mr. Stewart asked.
“As far as most of your opponents go, no measure of detente, true or
disingenuous, will ingratiate you to your opponents. It’s a fool’s errand.”
Indeed, the release of a single photo did not prove that the president went
skeet shooting “all the time,” and in an age of skepticism, Mr. Obama’s team
recognized it might not put the matter to rest. “Attn skeet birthers,” David
Plouffe, the former White House senior adviser, wrote on Twitter as he posted a
link to the photo. “Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”
This article has been revised
to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: February 2, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated
the type of weapon that President
Obama
fired in a photo released Saturday by the White House.
The
following is the complete transcript of President Obama’s remarks on immigration
on Tuesday in Las Vegas. (Transcript courtesy of Federal News Service.)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you. (Cheers, applause.) Thank you. Thank you so
much. Thank you. (Cheers, applause.) Thank you.
Well, it is good to be back in Las Vegas. (Cheers, applause.) And it is good to
be among so many good friends. Let -- let me start off by thanking everybody at
Del Sol High School for hosting us. (Cheers, applause.) Go, Dragons! Let me
especially thank your outstanding principal, Lisa Primas. (Cheers, applause.)
There are all kinds of notable guests here, but I just want to mention a few.
First of all, our outstanding secretary of Department of Homeland Security,
Janet Napolitano is here. (Cheers, applause.) Our wonderful secretary of the
interior, Ken Salazar. (Cheers, applause.) Former Secretary of Labor Hilda
Solis. (Cheers, applause.) Two of the outstanding members of the congressional
delegation from Nevada, Steve Horsford and Dina Titus. (Cheers, applause.) Your
own mayor, Carolyn Goodman. (Cheers, applause.)
But we also have some mayors that flew in because they know how important the
issue we’re going to talk about today is, Marie Lopez Rogers from Avondale,
Arizona -- (cheers, applause) -- Kasim Reed from Atlanta, Georgia -- (cheers,
applause) -- Greg Stanton from Phoenix, Arizona (cheers, applause) -- and Ashley
Swearengin from Fresno, California.
(Cheers, applause.)
And all of you are here -- (cheers) -- as well as some of the top labor leaders
in the country, and we are just so grateful. Some outstanding business leaders
are here as well. And of course we got wonderful students here. (Sustained
cheers, applause.) So I could not be prouder of our students.
Now, those of you who have a seat, feel free to take a seat. I don’t mind.
(Laughter.)
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, (Obama ?)!
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I love you back! (Cheers.)
Now, last week -- last week I had the honor of being sworn in for a second term
as president of the United States. (Cheers, applause.) And during my inaugural
address, I talked about how making progress on the defining challenges of our
time doesn’t require us to settle every debate or ignore every difference that
we may have. But it does require us to find common ground and move forward in
common purpose. It requires us to act.
And I know that some issues will be harder to lift than others. Some debates
will be more contentious. That’s to be expected.
But the reason I came here today is because of a challenge where the differences
are dwindling, where a broad consensus is emerging and where a call for action
can now be heard coming from all across America.
I’m here today because the time has come for common-sense, comprehensive
immigration reform -- (cheers, applause) -- (inaudible). Now’s the time. Now’s
the time. (Cheers, applause.) Now’s the time. (Chanting.) Now’s the time.
I’m here because -- I’m here because most Americans agree that it’s time to fix
a system that’s been broken for way too long.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Right!
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m here because business leaders, faith leaders, labor
leaders, law enforcement and leaders from both parties are coming together to
say now is the time to find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful
immigrants who still see America as the land of opportunity. Now’s the time to
do this so we can strengthen our economy and strengthen our country’s future.
Think about it. We define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. That’s who we
are, in our bones. The promise we see in those who come here from every corner
of the globe, that’s always been one of our greatest strengths. It keeps our
workforce young, it keeps our country on the cutting edge, and it’s helped build
the greatest economic engine the world has ever known.
After all, immigrants helped start businesses like Google and Yahoo. They
created entire new industries that in turn created new jobs and new prosperity
for our citizens.
In recent years 1 in 4 high-tech startups in America were founded by immigrants.
One in 4 new small-business owners were immigrants, including right here in
Nevada, folks who came here seeking opportunity and now want to share that
opportunity with other Americans.
But we all know that today we have an immigration system that’s out of date and
badly broken; a system that’s holding us back instead of helping us grow our
economy and strengthen our middle class.
Right now we have 11 million undocumented immigrants in America, 11 million men
and women from all over the world who live their lives in the shadows. Yes, they
broke the rules. They crossed the border illegally. Maybe they overstayed their
visas. Those are the facts. Nobody disputes them.
But these 11 million men and women are now here. Many of them have been here for
years. And the overwhelming majority of these individuals aren’t looking for any
trouble. They’re contributing members of the community. They’re looking out for
their families. They’re looking out for their neighbors. They’re woven into the
fabric of our lives.
Every day, like the rest of us, they go out and try to earn a living. Often they
do that in the shadow economy, a place where employers may offer them less than
the minimum wage or make them work overtime without extra pay. And when that
happens, it’s not just bad for them, it’s bad for the entire economy, because
all the businesses that are trying to do the right thing, that are hiring people
legally, paying a decent wage, following the rules -- they’re the ones who
suffer.
They’ve got to compete against companies that are breaking the rules. And the
wages and working conditions of American workers are threatened too.
So if we’re truly committed to strengthening our middle class and providing more
ladders of opportunity to those who are willing to work hard to make it in the
middle class, we’ve got to fix the system. We have to make sure that every
business and every worker in America is playing by the same set of rules. We
have to bring this shadow economy into the light so that everybody is held
accountable, businesses for who they hire and immigrants for getting on the
right side of the law. That’s common sense, and that’s why we need comprehensive
immigration reform.
And -- (cheers, applause) -- now, there’s another economic reason why we need
reform. It’s not just about the folks who come here illegally and have the
effect they have on our economy; it’s also about the folks who try to come here
legally but have a hard time doing so and the effect that has on our economy.
Right now there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in
classrooms at our top universities. They’re earning degrees in the fields of the
future, like engineering and computer science. But once they finish school, once
they earn that diploma, there’s a good chance they’ll have to leave our country.
Now, think about that. Intel was started with the help of an immigrant who
studied here and then stayed here. Instagram was started with the help of an
immigrant who studied here and then stayed here. Right now in one of those
classrooms, there’s a student wrestling with how to turn their big idea, their
Intel or Instagram, into a big business.
We’re giving them all the skills they need to figure that out, but then we’re
going to turn around and tell them to start that business and create those jobs
in China or India or Mexico or someplace else. That’s not how you grow new
industries in America. That’s how you give new industries to our competitors.
That’s why we need comprehensive immigration reform.
Now -- (cheers, applause) -- now, during my first term, we took steps to try and
patch up some of the worst cracks in the system. First, we strengthened security
at the borders so that we could finally stem the tide of illegal immigrants. We
put more boots on the ground on the southern border than at any time in our
history. And today, illegal crossings are down nearly 80 percent from their peak
in 2000. (Applause.)
Second, we focused our enforcement efforts on criminals who are here illegally
and who endanger our communities. And today, deportations of criminals --
(applause) -- is at its highest level ever.
And third, we took up the cause of the dreamers, the young people who were
brought to this country as children -- (cheers, applause) -- young people who
have grown up here, built their lives here, have futures here. We said that if
you’re able to meet some basic criteria, like pursuing an education, then we’ll
consider offering you the chance to come out of the shadows so that you can live
here and work here legally, so that you can finally have the dignity of knowing
you belong.
But because this change isn’t permanent, we need Congress to act, and not just
on the DREAM Act.
We need Congress to act on a comprehensive approach that finally deals with the
11 million undocumented immigrants who are in the country right now. That’s what
we need. (Cheers, applause.)
Now, the good news is that for the first time in many years Republicans and
Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together. (Cheers, applause.)
Members of both parties in both chambers are actively working on a solution.
Yesterday a bipartisan group of senators announced their principles for
comprehensive immigration reform, which are very much in line with the
principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. So at this
moment it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s
very encouraging.
But this time action must follow. We can’t allow -- (applause) -- immigration
reform to get bogged down in an endless debate. We’ve been debating this a very
long time. So it’s not as if we don’t know technically what needs to get done.
As a consequence, to help move this process along, today I’m laying out my ideas
for immigration reform. And my hope is that this provides some key markers to
members of Congress as they craft a bill, because the ideas that I’m proposing
have traditionally been supported by both Democrats like Ted Kennedy and
Republicans like President George W. Bush. You don’t get that matchup very
often. (Laughter.) So -- so we know where the consensus should be.
Now of course, there will be rigorous debate about many of the details. And
every stakeholder should engage in real give and take in the process. But it’s
important for us to recognize that the foundation for bipartisan action is
already in place. And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion,
I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right
away.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yes! (Cheers, applause.)
PRESIDENT OBAMA: So -- so the principles are pretty straightforward. There are a
lot of details behind it. We’re going to hand out a bunch of paper so everybody
will know exactly what we’re talking about. But the principles are pretty
straightforward.
First, I believe we need to stay focused on enforcement. That means continuing
to strengthen security at our borders.
It means cracking down more forcefully on businesses that knowingly hire
undocumented workers. To be fair, most businesses want to do the right thing,
but a lot of them have a hard time figuring out who’s here legally, who’s not.
So we need to implement a national system that allows businesses to quickly and
accurately verify someone’s employment status. And if they still knowingly hire
undocumented workers, then we need to ramp up the penalties.
Second, we have to deal with the 11 million individuals who are here illegally.
Now, we all agree that these men and women should have to earn their way to
citizenship. But for comprehensive immigration reform to work, it must be clear
from the outset that there is a pathway to citizenship. (Cheers, applause.)
We’ve got to -- we’ve got to lay out a path, a process that includes passing a
background check, paying taxes, paying a penalty, learning English, and then
going to the back of the line behind all the folks who are trying to come here
legally, that’s only fair. (Cheers, applause.) All right? So that means it won’t
be a quick process, but it will be a fair process and it will lift these
individuals out of the shadows and give them a chance to earn their way to green
card and, eventually, to citizenship. (Cheers, applause.)
And the third principle is we’ve got to bring our legal immigration system into
the 21st century because it no longer reflects the realities of our time.
(Cheers, applause.) For example, if you are a citizen, you shouldn’t have to
wait years before your family is able to join you in America. (Cheers,
applause.) You shouldn’t have to wait years.
If you’re a foreign student who wants to pursue a career in science or
technology or a foreign entrepreneur who wants to start a business with the
backing of American investors, we should help you do that here because if you
succeed you’ll create American businesses and American jobs, You’ll help us grow
our economy, you’ll help us strengthen our middle class.
So that’s what comprehensive immigration reform looks like -- smarter
enforcement, a pathway to earn citizenship, improvements in the legal
immigration system so that we continue to be a magnet for the best and the
brightest all around the world.
It’s pretty straightforward.
The question now is simple. Do we have the resolve as a people, as a country, as
a government to finally put this issue behind us? I believe that we do.
(Applause.) I believe that we do. I believe we are finally at a moment where
comprehensive immigration reform is within our grasp. But I promise you this.
The closer we get, the more emotional this debate is going to become.
Immigration’s always been an issue that inflames passions. That’s not
surprising. You know, there are few things that are more important to us as a
society than who gets to come here and call our country home, who gets the
privilege of becoming a citizen of the Untied States of America. That’s a big
deal. When we talk about that in the abstract, it’s easy sometimes for the
discussion to take on a feeling of us versus them. And when that happens, a lot
of folks forget that most of us used to be them. (Cheers, applause.) We forget
that.
And it’s really important for us to remember our history. You know, unless
you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace
else. (Cheers, applause.) Somebody brought you.
You know, Ken Salazar -- he’s of, you know, Mexican-American descent, but he --
he points out that his family’s been living where -- where he lives for 400
years.
(Cheers.) So he didn’t -- he didn’t immigrate anywhere. (Laughter.)
The Irish, who left behind a land of famine; the Germans, who fled persecution;
the Scandinavians, who arrived eager to pioneer out west; the Polish; the
Russians; the Italians; the Chinese; the Japanese; the West Indians; the huddled
masses who came through Ellis Island on one coast and Angel Island on the other
-- (cheers, applause) -- you know, all those folks, before they were us, they
were them. (Laughter.)
And when each new wave of immigrants arrived, they faced resistance from those
who were already here. They faced hardship. They faced racism. They faced
ridicule. But over time, as they went about their daily lives, as they earned a
living, as they raised a family, as they built a community, as their kids went
to school here, they did their part to build the nation. They were the Einsteins
and the Carnegies, but they were also the millions of women and men whose names
history may not remember but whose actions helped make us who we are, who built
this country hand by hand, brick by brick. (Cheers, applause.)
They all came here knowing that what makes somebody an American is not just
blood or birth but allegiance to our founding principles and the faith in the
idea that anyone from anywhere can write the next great chapter of our story.
And that’s still true today. Just ask Alan Aleman. Alan’s here this afternoon.
Where’s Alan? He -- he -- he’s around here. There he is right here. (Cheers,
applause.) Now, Alan was born in Mexico. (Cheers, applause.) He was brought to
this country by his parents when he was a child. Growing up, Alan went to an
American school, pledged allegiance to the American flag, felt American in every
way. And he was, except for one -- on paper. In high school, Alan watched his
friends come of age, driving around town with their new licenses, earning some
extra cash from their summer jobs at the mall. He knew he couldn’t do those
things. But it didn’t matter that much; what mattered to Alan was earning an
education so that he could live up to his God-given potential.
Last year, when Alan heard the news that we were going to offer a chance for
folks like him to emerge from the shadows, even if it’s just for two years at a
time, he was one of the first to sign up. And a few months ago he was one -- one
of the first people in Nevada to get approved. (Cheers, applause.) In that
moment Alan said, I felt the fear vanish. I felt accepted.
So today Alan’s in his second year at the College of Southern Nevada. (Cheers,
applause.) Alan’s studying to become a doctor. (Cheers, applause.) He hopes to
join the Air Force. (Cheers, applause.) He’s working hard every single day to
build a better life for himself and his family. And all he wants is the
opportunity to do his part to build a better America. (Applause.)
So -- so in the coming weeks, as the idea of reform becomes more real and the
debate becomes more heated and there are folks who are trying to pull this thing
apart, remember Alan and all those who share the same hopes and the same dreams.
Remember that this is not just a debate about policy. It’s about people. It’s
about men and women and young people who want nothing more than the chance to
earn their way into the American story.
And throughout our history, that’s only made our nation stronger. And it’s how
we will make sure that this century is the same as the last, an American
century, welcoming of everybody who aspires to do something more, who’s willing
to work hard to do it, and is willing to pledge that allegiance to our flag.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Cheers,
applause.)
In one of
the 23 executive orders on gun control signed this month, President Obama
instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal
science agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun
violence. He called on Congress to aid that effort by providing $10 million for
the C.D.C. in the next budget round and $20 million to expand the federal
reporting system on violent deaths to all 50 states, from the current 18.
That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the
gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun
violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to
reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health
issue.
But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of
firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven
policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown,
allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart
change.
The research freeze began at a time when the C.D.C. was making strides in
studying gun violence as a public health problem. Before that, the issue had
been regarded mainly as a law enforcement challenge or as a problem of disparate
acts by deranged offenders, an approach that remains in sync with the N.R.A.
worldview.
Public health research emphasizes prevention of death, disability and injury. It
focuses not only on the gun user, but on the gun, in much the same way that
public health efforts to reduce motor vehicle deaths have long focused on both
drivers and cars.
The goal is to understand a health threat and identify lifesaving interventions.
At their most basic, gun policy recommendations would extend beyond buying and
owning a gun (say, background checks and safe storage devices) to manufacturing
(childproofing and other federal safety standards) and distribution (stronger
antitrafficking laws), as well as educating and enlisting parents, physicians,
teachers and other community leaders to talk about the risks and
responsibilities of gun ownership.
But by the early 1990s, C.D.C. gun research had advanced to the point that it
contradicted N.R.A. ideology. Some studies found, for example, that people
living in a home with a gun were not safer; they faced a significantly elevated
risk of homicide and suicide.
The N.R.A. denounced the research as “political opinion masquerading as medical
science,” and in 1996, Congress took $2.6 million intended for gun research and
redirected it to traumatic brain injury. It prohibited the use of C.D.C. money
“to advocate or promote gun control.” Since then, similar prohibitions have been
imposed on other agencies, including the National Institutes of Health.
Technically, the prohibition is not a ban on all research, but the law has cast
a pall that even prominent foundations and academic centers cannot entirely
overcome. That is in part because comprehensive public health efforts require
systematic data gathering and analysis, the scale and scope of which is a
government undertaking. To understand and prevent motor vehicle deaths, for
instance, the government tracks more than 100 variables per fatal crash,
including the make, model and year of the vehicles, the speed and speed limit,
the location of passengers, seat belt use and air bag deployment.
Guns deaths do not get such scrutiny. That does not mean we do not know enough
to act. The evidence linking gun prevalence and violent death is strong and
compelling; international comparisons are also instructive.
But we need more data to formulate, analyze and evaluate policy to focus on what
works and to refine or reject what does not. How many guns are stolen? How do
guns first get diverted into illegal hands? How many murderers would have passed
today’s background checks? What percentage of criminal gun traces are accounted
for by, say, the top 5 percent of gun dealers? How many households possess
firearms: is it one-third as some surveys suggest, or one-half?
The gun lobby is likely to claim that any federally financed gun research, per
se, is banned by law, a charge that would force debate of whether evidence-based
policy recommendations are tantamount to lobbying. Or the C.D.C. may choose to
focus on data collection and leave the policy recommendations to outside
researchers. That would be a sorry situation for government scientists, but an
improvement over the status quo.
It is obvious that gun violence is a public health threat. A letter this month
to Vice President Joseph Biden Jr.’s gun violence commission from more than 100
researchers in public health and related fields pointed out that mortality rates
from almost every major cause of death have declined drastically over the past
half century. Motor vehicle deaths per mile driven in America have fallen by
more than 80 percent. But the homicide rate in the United States, driven by
guns, is almost exactly the same as it was in 1950.
In New Term, First Year Is Crucial for Obama Agenda
January 22, 2013
The New York Times
By JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON — The Constitution may promise President Obama
another four years in the White House, but political reality calls for a far
shorter time frame: he has perhaps as little as a year to accomplish his
big-ticket goals for a second term.
As the president begins promoting his agenda of tackling gun control,
immigration and climate change, even while bracing for yet another
deadline-driven fiscal debate with Republicans, his advisers are scrambling to
prioritize his ambitions to avoid squandering precious time.
Tensions are already emerging between the White House and some Democrats about
how much emphasis the president and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. should
give their gun control measures and whether a drawn-out debate over the Second
Amendment could imperil the rest of the party’s initiatives, particularly on
immigration.
The mass shooting last month in Newtown, Conn., elevated gun control on the
administration’s agenda, suddenly competing with plans to push for sweeping
changes in the nation’s immigration laws. Faced with a choice after his
re-election in 2004, President George W. Bush chose to pursue a Social Security
overhaul before an immigration bill and, amid partisan rancor over the Social
Security fight, ended up getting neither.
For all of the revelry surrounding the president’s second inauguration this
week, Mr. Obama, his aides and Congressional allies know that their window of
opportunity narrows with each passing month.
“You hope and plan for a year, with the understanding that it could be several
months less or several months more,” said Robert Gibbs, the former White House
press secretary and longtime adviser to Mr. Obama. “It does require having a
step-by-step plan for the year because you have a finite amount of time.”
The tenor of the president’s Inaugural Address on Monday, where he delivered a
forceful argument for pursuing an ambitious liberal agenda, signaled that Mr.
Obama might try to approach Republicans with a sterner hand than he did in his
first term. Already, he has signed executive orders on gun control and, at least
for the moment, forced a Republican retreat on raising the debt ceiling.
Yet some of Mr. Obama’s most ambitious goals still require action from Congress,
and Republicans still control the House. Even the Republicans’ decision to agree
to an effective three-month extension on the debt ceiling creates complications,
by keeping the budget fight high on the agenda.
Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, expressed the uphill climb with fiscal
matters looming over the Capitol Hill, declaring: “We have to do a budget. We
aren’t going to do anything of consequence here until the budget is done.”
The State of the Union address that Mr. Obama will deliver to Congress on Feb.
12 will offer the most definitive road map yet for how the White House will set
priorities in his second term as well as how it intends to avoid becoming mired
in a heated debate over one contentious topic to the detriment of the full
agenda.
“There’s no doubt you want to get off to a strong start, and we’ve got a pretty
big dance card,” said David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama who is
leaving the White House this week. He ticked through a list of agenda items that
included guns, immigration and fiscal issues, but he disputed the suggestion
that one item would overtake the others.
“We clearly have this moment where we can get immigration done,” Mr. Plouffe
added. “If we don’t get it done, then shame on us. We’ve got to seize this
opportunity.”
The president has been studying the experiences of previous second-term
administrations, aides said, including how Mr. Bush decided to put his plans to
overhaul Social Security ahead of immigration in 2005. The failed fight over
creating privatized Social Security accounts fractured Republicans, energized
Democrats and complicated the rest of Mr. Bush’s term.
Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff to Mr. Bush for six years,
said the failure to pass immigration legislation stands as a lesson to
second-term presidents, including Mr. Obama, that “you can’t get everything that
you want — that’s an unfortunate reality.”
The first year of a second term is about accomplishment and legacy, Mr. Card
said, and should be planned carefully before the attention starts shifting away
from the president.
“It is the agenda year,” Mr. Card said in an interview. “He will command
attention, respect — and probably vitriol — for probably the next three years.
After that, he’ll have to adjust to the klieg lights starting to shine on
somebody else.”
Mr. Obama, like all presidents in their second term, will surely have to fight
to stay relevant at some point, even if his advisers believe that moment is
still well in the future.
The phrase “lame duck” ultimately creeps into every White House, former
administration officials say, regardless of a president’s stature. A gradual
slide is likely to begin after the 2014 midterm elections, the outcome of which
will help shape the last two years of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
“There will be a new leader of the brand,” said Sara Taylor Fagen, the political
director in the Bush administration’s second term. “And you are not going to
enact major reform the year before a presidential race.”
To extend the power of the Oval Office, the president has also already signaled
that he intends to try to leverage his authority more fully through executive
actions that do not require Congressional approval.
He has instructed his legislative aides and the legal team in the White House
Counsel’s Office to review all avenues, as he did with gun control measures last
week, to pursue priorities that would otherwise be met with resistance from
Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“You can’t just sit there and kind of fantasize about what would be great to
do,” Mr. Plouffe said. “In a lot of these areas, there are limits.
“But I think it’s fair to say that we are going to continue to audit every idea
and every possibility where we can do things on our own where Congress won’t
act.”
January 22, 2013
The New York Times
By JONATHAN WEISMAN
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s aggressive Inaugural Address on
Monday presented Congressional Republicans with a stark choice over the next two
years: accommodate the president’s agenda on immigration, guns, energy and
social programs and hope to take the liberal edge off issues dictated by the
White House, or dig in as the last bulwark against a re-elected Democratic
president and accept the political risks of that hard-line stance.
As Mr. Obama’s second term begins, Republican leaders appear ready to accede at
least in the short term on matters like increasing the debt limit.
Their decision shows that even among some staunch conservatives, Mr. Obama’s
inauguration could be ushering in a more pragmatic tone — if not necessarily a
shift in beliefs. From the stimulus to the health care law to showdowns over
taxes and spending, Republicans have often found that their uncompromising
stands simply left them on the sidelines, unable to have an impact on
legislation and unable to alter it much once it passed.
Even in the budget impasses that forced spending cuts sought by conservatives,
the Republicans’ ultimate goals — changes to entitlement programs and the tax
code — have been out of reach.
Now, some in the party say, it is time to take a different tack.
“We’re too outnumbered to govern, to set policy,” said Representative John
Fleming, a Louisiana Republican who has taken confrontational postures in the
past. “But we can shape policy as the loyal opposition.”
The new approach has already produced results. In proposing to hold off a debt
limit showdown for three months in return for the Senate producing a budget,
House Republicans essentially maneuvered Senate Democrats into agreeing to draw
up a spending plan, something they have avoided for three years.
Republican concessions, however, may only set up larger confrontations in the
coming months over spending, taxes and immigration.
For instance, the three-month delay on the government’s statutory borrowing
limit set for a vote on Wednesday is likely to produce a fight this spring over
changes to Medicare, even for those nearing retirement. An acceptance in
principle on the need to institute changes in immigration laws could bog down
later this year over what to do with nearly 12 million illegal immigrants.
And the House Republican demand that the Senate produce a budget by mid-April
could set in motion a Senate effort to overhaul the tax code to raise more
revenue, contrary to Republican vows to stand against any more tax increases.
The president’s inaugural speech set Republicans on edge. Representative Paul D.
Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee last year, said Mr.
Obama had used “straw man arguments” in taking an implicit swipe at Mr. Ryan
when he said that programs like Medicare and Social Security “do not make us a
nation of takers; they free us to take risks that make this country great.”
Mr. Ryan said that his own past references to “takers” did not refer to programs
that people had paid into over their lives, and that the president was
distorting the Republican stance.
“When the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he’s trying to say
is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their
working lives,” he said on the Laura Ingraham talk-radio program.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, called the
address “basically a liberal agenda directed at an America that we still believe
is center-right.”
Nonetheless, the accommodations to the president may begin Wednesday when House
Republican leaders ask their members to suspend the debt limit for three months
as both chambers move forward on broader budget plans. The White House press
secretary, Jay Carney, said Tuesday that the president “would not stand in the
way of the bill becoming law.”
The tests will keep coming. A bipartisan group of senators is expected to
release immigration proposals within the next two weeks. Already, there are
signs of resistance. Representative Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, expected to be a
point person for Republicans in the coming battle, said he could not support a
pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a top demand of the president’s.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, vowed Tuesday to put on the
floor any gun control measures passed by the Judiciary Committee, inching closer
to another showdown with the House.
To smooth these initial accommodations, House Republican leaders are having to
make commitments to the rank and file that may present problems in the future.
To win the votes for a 90-day suspension of the debt limit, some of the House’s
most ardent conservatives said Tuesday, their leaders had to promise them two
concessions.
The first was that either $110 billion in automatic, across-the-board spending
cuts would go into force as scheduled in March, or equivalent cuts would have to
be found. The second was that the House would produce a budget this spring that
balances in 10 years — a heavy lift, considering that the past two budgets
passed by the House did not get to balance for nearly 30 years.
To do that, House Republicans said, substantial changes to Medicare — which
previously would have affected only those 10 years or more from the eligibility
age of 65 — would instead have to hit people 7 years from eligibility, producing
more savings.
“In 90 days, this is going to be the ultimate test for those we entrust with
leadership positions,” said Representative Dave Schweikert, Republican of
Arizona. “And I believe there will be hell to pay if we squander this.”
For now, some Republicans concede that the party is standing on shaky ground as
it girds for confrontation.
“The public is not behind us, and that’s a real problem for our party,” said
Representative Justin Amash of Michigan, a Republican who has clashed with his
party’s leadership.
Newt Gingrich, the last Republican speaker to face a re-elected Democratic
president, said that Republicans could not be seen as simply saying no to the
president.
“You can take specific things he said that you agree with, emphasize those, and
take the things you don’t agree with and propose alternatives,” he said.
Ashley Parker and Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting.
When Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. congratulated President Obama after he
completed his oath of office on Monday, Americans heard the cordial, affirming
voice that regularly fills the courtroom of the Supreme Court. But the chief
justice’s graciousness did not mean he was endorsing the president or his views.
As the president’s Inaugural Address made plain and as important rulings of the
Roberts court show, the Obama and Roberts visions of America are very different.
No disagreement is more fundamental than that about the connection between
justice and prosperity.
To Mr. Obama, prosperity enables justice and vice versa. Persuasively, he said
in his address, “Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when
there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.” He also said, “We are true
to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she
has the same chance to succeed as anybody else.” And commitments to justice,
like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, he said, “do not make us a nation
of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
The Roberts court, on the other hand, with the chief justice in the majority,
has regularly ruled as if justice and prosperity are unrelated or even
antithetical — by protecting large corporations from class-action lawsuits; by
making it much harder for private lawsuits to succeed against mutual fund
malefactors, even when they have admitted to lying and cheating; or by allowing
corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on political
campaigns and advance their narrow interests by exerting influence unjustly over
government.
When the chief justice cast his critical vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act
last June, he made clear that he did not favor the law, which is the most
important commitment to justice and prosperity so far of the Obama
administration. He wrote tartly, “It is not our job to protect the people from
the consequences of their political choices.”
The connection between justice and prosperity is clear and strong. “Economic
growth,” the scholar Benjamin Friedman documented, “more often than not fosters
greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to
fairness and dedication to democracy.” And justice of all kinds, especially
social justice, is an essential means of achieving prosperity, as economic
progress in the South demonstrated after the civil rights laws brought racial
progress.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the coming months about the continuing
need for a critical section of the Voting Rights Act that prevents racial
discrimination and about the basic rights of gay Americans. Those cases are
unquestionably about justice and fundamental issues of fairness. But their
outcomes will inevitably affect prosperity as well, because they deal with
issues of participation in American society and, as a result, in the American
economy.
The cameras lingered on President Obama after the inaugural ceremony just before
he entered the Capitol, as he turned back toward the Mall and took in the crowd
of a million or so of the American people whose general welfare he again swore
to promote. When Chief Justice Roberts administered the oath, he had a similar
chance to be reminded of the multitudes to whom the Supreme Court pledges “Equal
Justice Under Law” — and to be reminded of the strong link between justice and
prosperity.
President Obama’s first Inaugural Address offered a clear and
bracing vision for a way out of the depth of an economic crisis and two foreign
wars. His second, on Monday, revealed less of his specific plans for the next
four years but more of his political philosophy.
He argued eloquently for a progressive view of government, founded on history
and his own deep conviction that American prosperity and the preservation of
freedom depend on collective action. In the coming days, there will be no let up
of political combat over the debt ceiling, gun control, national security and
tax policies that can either reduce income inequality or allow such inequality
to stifle economic growth and opportunity for all but the very wealthiest in
this society.
But, on Monday, the president stepped back from those immediate battles to
explain what it means in the broadest sense to be “we the people,” Mr. Obama’s
most eloquent description of our common heritage.
“We have always understood that when times change, so must we,” he said, “that
fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges;
that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
In every sphere of life — improving education, building roads, caring for the
poor and elderly, training workers, recovering from natural disasters, providing
for our defense — progress requires that Americans do these things together, Mr.
Obama said.
That applies, he said, to “the commitments we make to each other — through
Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our
initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they
free us to take the risks that make this country great.”
President Obama rejected any argument that the American people can be divided
into groups whose interests are opposed to each other. The choice is not
“between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the
generation that will build its future,” he said. “For we remember the lessons of
our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with
a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country freedom
is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few.”
He spoke only obliquely of the persistent gridlock in Congress, where he will
face right-wing Republicans whose bleak agenda would weaken civil rights, shred
the social safety net and block important programs that could help put millions
of jobless Americans back to work. “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle,
or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.
We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect,” he said.
Instead, he took the fight to the people, laying out his principles and
priorities: addressing the threat of climate change, embracing sustainable
energy sources, ensuring equality of gays and lesbians, expanding immigration
and equal pay for women. Disappointingly, the need for stricter gun controls was
noted solely in a reference to the safety of children in places like Newtown,
Conn.
On foreign policy, President Obama expressed with fervor a view of the role of
the United States in a world that is threatened by terrorism on many continents.
“We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations
peacefully — not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because
engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear,” he said. “America will
remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will
renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for
no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation.”
Mr. Obama is smart enough to know that what he wants to achieve in his second
term must be done in the next two years — perhaps even in the first 18 months.
Throughout his first term, he clung to a hope of bipartisanship even when it
became obvious that his Republican adversaries had no interest in compromise of
any sort.
Time is not on his side. It is pointless to wait for signs of conciliation from
the extreme right, whose central ideology is to render government ineffective.
He has gotten off to a good start by putting forward a comprehensive plan to
tighten gun laws, despite outrageous propaganda against sensible controls from
the gun lobby.
Mr. Obama acknowledged that there is much left to be done to shore up the
economic recovery and invest in education and opportunities for the next
generation. And, above all, he stressed the importance of the middle class to
America’s economic survival. “Our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do
very well and a growing many barely make it,” he said.
It’s natural for a second-term president to be thinking about his place in
history. There is no doubt that Mr. Obama has the ambition and intellect to
place himself in the first rank of presidents. With this speech, he has made a
forceful argument for a progressive agenda that meets the nation’s needs. We
hope he has the political will and tactical instincts to carry it out.
January 21, 2013
The New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI
Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall. The alliteration of that
litany made it seem obvious and inevitable, a bit of poetry just there for the
taking. Just waiting to happen.
But it has waited a long time. And President Obama’s use of it in his speech on
Monday — his grouping of those three places and moments in one grand and musical
sentence — was bold and beautiful and something to hear. It spoke volumes about
the progress that gay Americans have made over the four years between his first
inauguration and this one, his second. It also spoke volumes about the progress
that continues to elude us.
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us
are created equal — is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our
forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall,” the president said,
taking a rapt country on a riveting trip to key theaters in the struggle for
liberty and justice for all.
Seneca Falls is a New York town where, in 1848, the women’s suffrage movement
gathered momentum. Selma is an Alabama city where, in 1965, marchers amassed,
blood was shed and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood his ground against
the unconscionable oppression of black Americans.
And Stonewall? This was the surprise inclusion, separating Obama’s oratory and
presidency from his predecessors’ diction and deeds. It alludes to a gay bar in
Manhattan that, in 1969, was raided by police, who subjected patrons to a
bullying they knew too well. After the raid came riots, and after the riots came
a more determined quest by L.G.B.T. Americans for the dignity they had long been
denied.
The causes of gay Americans and black Americans haven’t always existed in
perfect harmony, and that context is critical for appreciating Obama’s reference
to Stonewall alongside Selma. Blacks have sometimes questioned gays’ use of
“civil rights” to describe their own movement, and have noted that the
historical experiences of the two groups aren’t at all identical. Obama moved
beyond that, focusing on the shared aspirations of all minorities. It was a
big-hearted, deliberate, compelling decision.
He went on, seconds later, to explicitly mention “gay” Americans, saying a word
never before uttered in inaugural remarks. What shocked me most about that was
how un-shocking it was.
Four years ago we lived in a country in which citizens of various states had
consistently voted against the legalization of same-sex marriage.
But on Nov. 6, the citizens of all three states that had the opportunity to
legalize gay marriage at the ballot box did so, with clear majorities in
Maryland, Maine and Washington endorsing it.
Four years ago the inaugural invocation was given by a pastor with a record of
antigay positions and remarks. This year, a similar assignment was withdrawn
from a pastor with a comparable record, once it came to light. What’s more, an
openly gay man was chosen to be the inaugural poet, and in news coverage of his
biography, his parents’ exile from Cuba drew more attention than his sexual
orientation. That’s how far we’ve come.
And the distance traveled impresses me more than the distance left. I want to be
clear on that. I’m proud of our country and president, despite their
shortcomings on this front and others. It takes time for minds to open fully and
laws to follow suit, and the making of change, in contrast to the making of
statements, depends on patience as well as passion.
But the “gay” passage of Obama’s speech underscored the lingering gap between
the American ideal and the American reality. “Our journey is not complete,” he
said, “until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the
law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one
another must be equal as well.”
He means the right to marry. As long as we gay and lesbian Americans don’t have
that, we’re being told that our relationships aren’t as honorable as those of
straight couples. And if that’s the case, then we’re not as honorable, either.
Is there really any other reading of the situation?
Despite our strides, gay and lesbian couples even now can marry only in nine
states and the District of Columbia. The federal government doesn’t recognize
those weddings, meaning that in terms of taxes, military benefits and matters of
immigration, it treats gays and lesbians differently than it treats other
Americans. It relegates us to an inferior class.
The Supreme Court could soon change, or validate, that. There are relevant cases
before it. For his part Obama could show less deference to states’ rights, be
more insistent about what’s just and necessary coast-to-coast, and push for
federal protections against employment discrimination when it comes to L.G.B.T.
Americans. His actions over the next four years could fall wholly in line with
Monday’s trailblazing words. My hope is real, and grateful, and patient.
January 21, 2013
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — Barack Hussein Obama ceremonially opened his
second term on Monday with an assertive Inaugural Address that offered a robust
articulation of modern liberalism in America, arguing that “preserving our
individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.”
On a day that echoed with refrains from the civil rights era and tributes to the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Obama dispensed with the post-partisan
appeals of four years ago to lay out a forceful vision of advancing gay rights,
showing more tolerance toward illegal immigrants, preserving the social welfare
safety net and acting to stop climate change.
At times he used his speech, delivered from the West Front of the Capitol, to
reprise arguments from the fall campaign, rebutting the notion expressed by
conservative opponents that America risks becoming “a nation of takers” and
extolling the value of proactive government in society. Instead of declaring the
end of “petty grievances,” as he did taking the oath as the 44th president in
2009, he challenged Republicans to step back from their staunch opposition to
his agenda.
“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates about the role of
government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time,” he said in
the 18-minute address. “For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford
delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for
politics or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act.”
Mr. Obama used Abraham Lincoln’s Bible, as he did four years ago, but this time
added Dr. King’s Bible as well to mark the holiday honoring the civil rights
leader. He became the first president ever to mention the word “gay” in an
Inaugural Address as he equated the drive for same-sex marriage to the quests
for racial and gender equality.
The festivities at the Capitol came a day after Mr. Obama officially took the
oath in a quiet ceremony with his family at the White House on the date set by
the Constitution. With Inauguration Day falling on a Sunday, the swearing-in was
then repeated for an energized mass audience a day later, accompanied by the
pomp and parade that typically surround the quadrennial tradition.
Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on a brisk but bright day, a huge crowd
by any measure, though far less than the record turnout four years ago. If the
day felt restrained compared with the historic mood the last time, it reflected
a more restrained moment in the life of the country. The hopes and expectations
that loomed so large with Mr. Obama’s taking the office in 2009, even amid
economic crisis, have long since faded into a starker sense of the limits of his
presidency.
Now 51 and noticeably grayer, Mr. Obama appeared alternately upbeat and
reflective. When he re-entered the Capitol at the conclusion of the ceremony, he
stopped his entourage to turn back toward the cheering crowds on the National
Mall.
“I want to take a look, one more time,” he said. “I’m not going to see this
again.”
If the president was wistful, his message was firm. He largely eschewed foreign
policy except to recommend engagement over war, and instead focused on
addressing poverty and injustice at home. He did little to adopt the language of
the opposition, as he has done at moments in the past, and instead directly
confronted conservative philosophy.
“The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare and Medicaid and
Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us,”
he said. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks
that make this country great.”
The phrase, “nation of takers,” was a direct rebuke to Republicans like
Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, last year’s vice-presidential nominee,
and several opposition lawmakers took umbrage at the president’s tone.
“I would have liked to see a little more on outreach and working together,” said
Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican who lost to Mr. Obama four years
ago. “There was not, as I’ve seen in other inaugural speeches, ‘I want to work
with my colleagues.’ ”
Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, a member of the Republican leadership,
said that from the opening prayer to the closing benediction, “It was apparent
our country’s in chaos and what our great president has brought us is upheaval.”
He added, “We’re now managing America’s demise, not America’s great future.”
Mr. Obama struck a more conciliatory note during an unscripted toast during
lunch with Congressional leaders in Statuary Hall after the ceremony.
“Regardless of our political persuasions and perspectives, I know that all of us
serve because we believe that we can make America for future generations,” he
said.
For the nation’s 57th presidential inauguration, a broad section of downtown
Washington was off limits to vehicles and a major bridge across the Potomac
River was closed to regular traffic as military Humvees were stationed at
strategic locations around the city.
Joining the president through the long day were the first lady, Michelle Obama,
and their daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11. The young girls were playful.
Malia at one point sneaked up behind her father and cried out, “Boo!” Sasha used
a smartphone to take a picture of her parents kissing in the reviewing stand,
then made them do it again. Both girls bounced with the martial music at the
Capitol.
Mr. Obama’s day began with a service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, across
Lafayette Square from the White House, where the Rev. Andy Stanley told him to
“leverage that power for the benefit of other people in the room.” At the
Capitol, Myrlie Evers-Williams, the civil rights leader, delivered the
invocation and the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir performed the “Battle Hymn of the
Republic.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was sworn in at 11:46 a.m. by Justice Sonia
Sotomayor. The singer James Taylor then performed “America the Beautiful.”
At 11:50 a.m., Mr. Obama was sworn in again by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
After the two mangled the 35-word oath four years ago, necessitating a
just-in-case do-over the next day, the president and chief justice this time
carefully recited the words in tandem without error, although Mr. Obama did
swallow the word “states.”
Mr. Obama was more specific in discussing policy than presidents typically are
in an Inaugural Address. Particularly noticeable was his recommitment to
fighting climate change. “We will respond to the threat of climate change,
knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future
generations,” he said.
He referred only implicitly to terrorism, the issue that has so consumed the
nation for the past decade, but offered a more inward-looking approach to
foreign policy, saying that “enduring security and lasting peace do not require
perpetual war.” He also talked of overhauling immigration rules so “bright young
students and engineers are enlisted in our work force, rather than expelled from
our country.”
For a president who opposed same-sex marriage as recently as nine months ago,
the speech was a clear call for gay rights, as he noted the journey “through
Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall,” symbolically linking seminal moments in
the struggles for equal rights for women, blacks and gay men and lesbians.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like
anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the
love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” he said.
The expanse between the Capitol and the Washington Monument was filled with
supporters, many of them African-Americans attending only the second
inauguration of a black president. As large TV screens flickered in and out and
the audio often warbled, the ceremony was difficult to follow for many braving
the Washington chill.
The speech was followed by song, poem and benediction from Kelly Clarkson,
Richard Blanco, the Rev. Luis Leon and Beyoncé. The president and first lady got
out of their motorcade twice to walk stretches along Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr.
Biden and Jill Biden did as well, and the vice president greeted bystanders with
fist-pumping gusto.
The two families then settled into the specially built bulletproof reviewing
stand to watch the parade. Mr. Obama, who often uses Nicorette to tame an old
smoking habit, was spotted chewing as the bands marched past.
In the evening, the Obamas attended two official inaugural balls, down from 10
four years ago. The president, in tuxedo with white tie, danced at each of them
with the first lady, in a custom Jason Wu ruby chiffon and velvet gown, to Al
Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” performed by Jennifer Hudson. The Obamas were
back at the White House by 10:15 p.m.
Reporting was contributed by Jeremy W. Peters, Michael D. Shear,
Jennifer Steinhauer
Among Blacks, Pride Is Mixed With Expectations for
Obama
January 20, 2013
The New York Times
By SUSAN SAULNY
The Rev. Greggory L. Brown, a 59-year-old pastor of a small
Lutheran church, committed himself to ministry and a life pursuing social
justice on April 4, 1968 — the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain
by an assassin’s bullet.
And four years ago, like so many African-Americans around the country, he saw
Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency as nothing short of a shocking validation
of Dr. King’s vision of a more perfect union, where the content of character
trumps the color of skin. “I was so excited when he was giving that first
inauguration speech,” said Mr. Brown, of Oakland, Calif. “I could feel it in my
bones.”
On Monday, when President Obama places his hand on Dr. King’s personal Bible to
take a second, ceremonial oath of office, he will be symbolically linking
himself to the civil rights hero. But Mr. Brown, along with other
African-Americans interviewed recently, said their excitement would be laced
with a new expectation, that Mr. Obama move to the forefront of his agenda the
issues that Dr. King championed: civil rights and racial and economic equality.
In interviews with experts and black leaders, some, like Mr. Brown, say they
have been disappointed by the slow pace of change for African-Americans, whose
children, for instance, are still more likely to live in poverty than those of
any other race.
“The hope for Obama’s presidency was that there would be more help for places
like Oakland and other urban areas that need support, safety and jobs,” Mr.
Brown said. “He made people feel like anything is possible.”
African-Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of the president, as
evidenced by their enthusiastic turnout on Election Day and for the inauguration
festivities and Monday’s holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday. Thousands of
black Americans have descended on Washington from across the nation for the many
parties and observances and visits to the King memorial.
They have developed a protective stance toward Mr. Obama, acknowledging the
limits of his power and the voraciousness of his critics. Many cite the power of
representation, the visual message of a prosperous, cohesive black family being
beamed around the country and the world, and the untold aspirations that vision
inspires.
But African-Americans roundly reject the notion that Mr. Obama’s election has
eased racial tensions or delivered the nation to a new post-racial reality.
“I think the great mass of black people have shown tremendous patience,
discipline and understanding, recognizing the dilemma that he faces,” said
Randall L. Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “The
Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.”
Still, Professor Kennedy said Mr. Obama had been “somewhat diffident” about
issues that would be of special significance to African-Americans, like the
disproportionate number of blacks in prison or urban poverty. Blacks understand,
he added, that that perceived hesitation “was probably a virtual requirement”
for him to be elected in the first place.
“Everyone agrees that you wish more was done the first term,” said Debra Lee,
the chief executive of Black Entertainment Television. “But you look at politics
and realize that the president can’t wave a wand and get things done by
himself.”
“That’s one of the things we learned in the first term,” she added. “This is
important and symbolic, but it’s not the end-all.”
As much as many people may have hoped that the impact of race would decline over
time, one of the larger surveys on the issue, a poll by The Associated Press
released in October, showed that racial attitudes had not improved in the four
years since Mr. Obama took office.
It also suggested that prejudice had slightly increased. In a survey by the Pew
Research Center conducted in April, a majority of Americans, some 61 percent,
disagreed with the statement “Discrimination against blacks is rare today.”
Charlene Flynn, a dental assistant in Denver, said she had not noticed any
meaningful change in race relations in her own life, but felt that there was a
common understanding within the black community that Mr. Obama faced racism on
the job. She said she strongly believed that Congress had been defiant toward
the president, largely because he is black.
“I really think a lot of it has to do with his race, to tell the truth,” said
Ms. Flynn, 51.
Mr. Brown, the pastor in Oakland, agreed. Each week, he prays aloud for the
president. “I believe in my heart he wants to make a difference,” he said. “But
every time he tries, people put up a big rock wall.”
Others are not so understanding, finding Mr. Obama too cautious on the subject
of race.
The activist and academic Cornel West says he is outraged that Mr. Obama would
use Dr. King’s personal Bible at the inauguration without endorsing Dr. King’s
“black freedom struggle.”
“Martin went to jail talking about carpet bombing in Vietnam and trying to
organize poor people, fighting for civil liberties,” Mr. West said. The
president, he said, “has a compromising kind of temperament.”
But others in the civil rights movement say the president has a broader role.
“I told this president early on that I’ll be the head of the N.A.A.C.P., he can
be head of the country,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, the president of the civil
rights organization.
He and others credit Mr. Obama’s cool temperament.
“Obama very effectively used positive messages to bring the racial and ethnic
groups together, not divide them,” said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard
sociologist and the author of “More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the
Inner City.”
“In terms of race and ethnic relations,” Dr. Wilson said, “he is the right
president during these hard economic times because social tensions are indeed
high.”
He said that one need only look back to the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed
black teenager who was shot last year by a Hispanic neighborhood watch volunteer
in Sanford, Fla., to see the potential volatility of any presidential statement
about race, even one where the president asked for “soul-searching.”
When Mr. Obama tenderly lamented, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” he
was attacked by critics like the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for using
the teenager’s death as a “political opportunity.”
Blaine Sergew, 43, an immigrant from Ethiopia who lives in Atlanta, said she
felt disappointed that “the little things” the president said got blown out of
proportion. “It was a very true statement, but the immaturity of the
conversation about race in this country wouldn’t allow that to stand as a
simple, true statement,” she said.
As valuable as any presidential statement, Ms. Sergew added, was the effect of
Mr. Obama’s election in 2008. Cradling her toddler son on Election Day then, “I
so distinctly remember holding him and just weeping at the possibility that my
son could grow up to just assume this is normal,” she said. “Seeing images of an
African-American family that is so dedicated to its members and so full of love
and respect is significant for many black families. It’s like Black Camelot.”
Still, aspirations are one thing. In Mr. Obama’s second term, more
African-Americans will be looking for action.
“I think there is overwhelming joy and pride that Barack Obama has been
re-elected, but every community wishes for more,” said Roslyn M. Brock, the
chairwoman of the board of the N.A.A.C.P. “I am hopeful and prayerful that in
his second term, he will get to the social issues that continue to plague us,
and leave his legacy, his mark, on them.”
Reporting was contributed by Malia Wollan from Oakland, Calif.;
Dan Frosch from Denver; Kim Severson and Robbie Brown from
Atlanta;
Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; and Karen Ann Culotta from Chicago.
January 20, 2013
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — Not quite nine months into his presidency, Barack
Obama woke to the news that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize — not for anything
yet accomplished, but for the promise that he would end the Iraq war, win the
“war of necessity” in Afghanistan, move toward the elimination of nuclear
weapons, tackle climate change and engage America’s adversaries.
Yet beyond Iraq, his first-term accomplishments from that list are sparse. In a
fractured world, President Obama struggled to define a grand strategy for
America’s role, apart from preserving its pre-eminence while relying
increasingly on a changing cast of partners.
As Mr. Obama begins his second term, aides and confidants say he is acutely
aware that his ambitious agenda to restore America’s influence and image in the
world stalled almost as soon as the prize was awarded. But the president has
indicated that he plans to return to his original agenda, though he has hinted
it may be in a different, less overtly ambitious way.
Bitter experience — from getting the most modest arms control agreement through
the Senate his first year, trying and failing to engage leaders in Iran and
North Korea, discovering his lack of leverage over Egypt, Pakistan and Israel,
and finding Afghanistan to be a costly waste of American lives and resources —
is driving him to a strategy reminiscent of one of his Republican predecessors,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
It is a strategy in which Mr. Obama will try to redirect world events subtly,
rather than turning to big treaties, big military interventions and big aid
packages.
“The appeal of the Eisenhower approach is that it had a big element of turning
inward, of looking to rebuilding strength at home, of conserving American
power,” said one of Mr. Obama’s senior national security advisers, who would not
agree to be quoted by name. “But there’s also the reality that some of the
initiatives that seemed so hopeful four years ago — whether it’s driving down
the number of nuclear weapons or helping Afghanistan remake itself — look so
much harder now.”
Whether this approach can work is very much an open question. His early forays
into covert action and lightning-quick strikes — like the fast war in Libya or
the cyberwar against Iran — have set back adversaries, but the satisfactions of
striking with a “light footprint” have usually been temporary at best.
His promises of transformative change are now viewed around the world with more
suspicion. There was the student in Cairo who cornered a reporter a year ago and
demanded to know why the prison at Guantánamo Bay was still open, and the
European foreign minister who, at a diplomatic dinner in Washington, asked
whether “the pivot to Asia is another phrase for ignoring the rest of the
world.”
Mr. Obama’s questions during Situation Room sessions, some of his current and
former aides say, seem to reflect a concern that his first term was spent
putting out fires, rather than building lasting institutions.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry S. Truman solidified
America’s post-World War II role by helping create the United Nations, the
international financial institutions and the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe;
President John F. Kennedy emerged from the Cuban Missile Crisis with treaties
limiting the spread of nuclear weapons; the first President George Bush lured
new allies from the ruins of the Soviet Union.
By comparison, Mr. Obama’s biggest accomplishments have been largely defensive:
a full withdrawal from Iraq and devastating strikes against the core leadership
of Al Qaeda. (When President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan visited the White House
last week, he was presented a scorecard: of the “20 most wanted” Qaeda leaders
when Mr. Obama was first inaugurated, 13 were dead, along with many of their
successors.)
The president’s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, has argued in
speeches since Mr. Obama’s re-election that in the first term the president
built a broader alliance against Iran than any of his predecessors; that is
true, but so far it has not moved the Iranians to limit their nuclear drive.
The United States has variously offered to increase aid to Egypt or restrict it
if the country heads off on an illiberal path. So far neither approach has given
Mr. Obama leverage in influencing the new government led by the Muslim
Brotherhood. A promising start in building an economic and political partnership
with China has devolved into an argument over whether the United States is
seeking to contain China’s ambitions.
“He wants to be something more than a pure manager for the next four years,”
said Jeffrey A. Bader, a longtime diplomat who was one of the White House
architects of the “rebalancing” toward Asia. He added that Mr. Obama
“understands that being a transformative president on a global stage is about
more than good intentions and good plans. It’s about finding places where you
are not dependent on adversaries who refuse to budge, or who benefit from
demonstrating their hostility to the U.S.”
If there is a big strategic bet in Mr. Obama’s second term, it may be that Asia
is that place. The huge, unexpected burst in oil and gas production in the
United States has bolstered Mr. Obama’s conviction that the United States has an
opportunity to extract itself from an overdependence on events in the Middle
East. In Asia, he has found a region more welcoming to American influence,
largely because a greater American presence — meaning more naval ships and more
investment — can quietly counterbalance China’s rising power.
Mr. Obama’s focus on Asia has reinforced his interest in the Eisenhower era.
After the Korean War, Americans simply wanted to bring the troops home and focus
on growth. Eisenhower had publicly committed to both balancing the budget and
containing growing threats around the world, while in secret he began a broad
rethinking of American national security called Project Solarium.
Just as Mr. Obama has privately worried about being manipulated by generals who
were trying to lengthen the American involvement in Afghanistan, Eisenhower left
office warning of the “military-industrial complex” that he feared would
dominate American decision making.
At the same time, those who work with Mr. Obama, and parse his questions in
Situation Room debates over the ability of the United States to influence events
in places like Syria or Mali or North Korea, say they sense in him a greater
awareness than he had four years ago of the limits of American influence.
He asks more detailed questions about how sending 100 troops, or 10,000, might
influence long-term outcomes. Paraphrasing the president, one aide said he is
more likely to ask, “So if we put troops into Syria to stabilize the chemical
weapons, what can they accomplish in a year that they couldn’t accomplish in a
week?”
That is a product of Mr. Obama’s bitter experience in 2009, when he yielded to
advice from the military to send a surge of tens of thousands of troops into
Afghanistan. He regretted it almost instantly. The move to an “Afghan good
enough” strategy followed, with minimal goals and a quicker withdrawal of
troops. Ever since, he has been hesitant to use traditional power in traditional
ways.
“He has got to find the happy medium between not committing us to a decade-long
ground war and choosing not to do anything,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was
the head of the State Department’s policy planning operation for Mr. Obama’s
first two years in office and has urged him to intervene more strongly in
humanitarian disasters.
Mr. Obama’s caution has incurred a cost. To much of the world, his presidency
thus far looks unlike what they expected. He promised “direct engagement” with
longtime adversaries, including Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Venezuela.
He is one for five: only the generals running Myanmar responded to his letters,
economic incentives and offers of a new relationship.
In what Mr. Obama once called the “war of necessity,” in Afghanistan, the
complaint heard more often is that Mr. Obama has abandoned any pretense of
accomplishment in favor of accelerating the withdrawal.
“The situation is obviously not very confidence-inspiring,” Hina Rabbani Khar,
Pakistan’s foreign minister, said in an interview last week. “A responsible
transition means that you have achieved your objectives and then you leave. It’s
not ‘We leave in January.’ It’s ‘We leave when the objectives are achieved.’ ”
And what of the grand initiatives?
A proposal for a very large reduction in deployed nuclear weapons has been in
the hands of the White House for months, but the president has not acted on it.
Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised a new push to win
passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was defeated during the
Clinton administration. They have never submitted it to the Senate.
“We were assured by President Obama when he was elected that the U.S. would
ratify this C.T.B.T.,” Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations,
said on Friday. “But somehow, it has not happened.”
Given the composition of the Senate, it is not likely to happen in a second
term, either. So Mr. Obama, his aides say, will have to find another way; like
Eisenhower, he will have to redirect American policy quietly, from the Oval
Office.
Pursuing Ambitious Global Goals, but With a
More Modest Strategy,
January 20, 2013
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER and JEFF ZELENY
WASHINGTON — When President Obama offered a tongue-in-cheek
lament last week that he was “getting kind of lonely in this big house,” he was
referring to his two daughters, who he said were less eager to hang out with
their dad as they grew older.
But Mr. Obama might just as well have been talking about the fraternity of
middle-aged political advisers who have been at his side since before the 2008
campaign and who are finally moving on. Exhausted and eager for new careers,
they nevertheless plan to create an ad hoc support group for the boss they are
leaving behind.
“It’s something we’ve thought about a lot,” said David Axelrod, one of Mr.
Obama’s most trusted political aides, who returned to the Obama fold to advise
on the re-election campaign and is now off to start an institute for politics at
the University of Chicago. “Presidents need to have people with longstanding
relationships around them,” he said, “because the instinct most people have with
the president is to be deferential to a fault.”
For the first time since Mr. Obama became president, none of his Big Three
political counselors — Mr. Axelrod, David Plouffe and Robert Gibbs — will be
working in the White House. Now they are in the top rank of Obama alumni, a
status that confers benefits of its own.
Mr. Obama still has trusted aides around him, including Valerie Jarrett, a
family friend from Chicago; Denis R. McDonough, a veteran of 2008, who is moving
up to chief of staff; and Alyssa Mastromonaco and Pete Rouse, two of his
longest-serving staff members. “We’re strategically spaced out,” said Benjamin
J. Rhodes, who wrote foreign-policy speeches in 2008 and is a deputy national
security adviser.
But reaching some of his oldest and closest confidants will now require a phone
call, rather than simply a knock on their West Wing office doors. And that is
where Anita Decker Breckenridge comes in.
Ms. Decker Breckenridge, 34, sits a few steps outside the Oval Office and is a
master of the Obama Rolodex. She ran his downstate Illinois office when he was
in the United States Senate. Her only moment in the limelight came when the
White House confirmed that she, like Warren Buffett’s secretary, paid a higher
tax rate in 2011 than her boss.
That year, Mr. Obama asked Ms. Decker Breckenridge to be his personal aide, a
position that doubles as his gatekeeper. She met Mr. Obama nearly a decade ago
and knows instinctively whom he does, and does not, want to hear from.
“Loyalty and trust mean everything,” she said in a weekend interview. “He is
someone who has always valued long and old friendships.”
And she can find any of his old friends on short notice, particularly in the
late-night hours when he likes to talk on the phone.
“We know the deal when he needs us and when he asks us to get involved,” said
Mr. Gibbs, his first White House press secretary. “And that is, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”
For all the chatter about whether the president socializes enough in Washington,
friends know that he has always been something of a loner. And yet he does not
always like to be alone.
During long rides on Air Force One, including his solitary flights to and from
Hawaii over the holidays, he was busy rounding up players for one of his
favorite pastimes: a game of spades.
His most frequent partners are Marvin Nicholson, the trip director; Pete Souza,
the chief White House photographer; and Jay Carney, the press secretary. All
three are remaining in their positions, eliminating the need for Mr. Obama to
find new tablemates.
Though much of the president’s political inner circle has dispersed, they are
bound together by the latest iteration of the Obama campaign organization:
Organizing for Action.
Jim Messina, who managed the president’s re-election bid, will be the chairman
of the group, which includes Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Plouffe, who managed the 2008
campaign.
Not clear yet is whether Mr. Messina will hold weekly dinners at which the
alumni can dispense advice to those inside the White House. Mr. Axelrod had
dinners, featuring pizza and Thai food, when he was senior political adviser
from 2009 to 2011.
Mr. Plouffe, who has been in the White House since 2011, is leaving this week to
return to the private sector, where he has been a consultant and a public
speaker. Even with the bruising battles over fiscal policy, gun control and
immigration ahead, he said, he did not entertain the idea of sticking around.
“Getting fresh voices is good,” Mr. Plouffe said.
Reducing a president’s reliance on insiders can have unpredictable consequences
for a second term, both good and bad, according to the presidential historian
Michael Beschloss.
Dwight D. Eisenhower flourished after Sherman Adams, his overly protective chief
of staff, left in 1958. But Ronald Reagan stumbled after James A. Baker III, his
trusted chief of staff, was replaced by Donald Regan, a Wall Street banker whom
he barely knew.
To the extent that Mr. Obama’s advisers worry about such things, their concern
is having people who are willing to tell the president when they think he is
wrong. Even those who have known him a long time, his aides acknowledge,
sometimes hesitate to do that.
“Will it be a great strategic and political loss without Axe and Plouffe? I hope
not,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director, who is also a veteran of
2008 and plans to stay on. “But will the nature and character of this place
change? That’s probably true.”
January 20, 2013
The New York Times
By JACKIE CALMES
WASHINGTON — With only his family beside him, Barack Hussein
Obama was sworn into office for a second term on Sunday in advance of Monday’s
public pomp, facing a bitterly divided government at home and persistent threats
abroad that inhibit his effort to redefine America’s use of power.
It was a brief and intimate moment in the White House, held because of a quirk
of the calendar that placed the constitutionally mandated start of the new term
on a Sunday.
But the low-key event seemed to capture tempered expectations after four years
of economic troubles and near-constant partisan confrontation. And it presaged a
formal inauguration on Monday that will be less of a spectacle than the first
one, when the nation’s first black president embodied hope and change for many
Americans at a time of financial struggle and war.
For Monday’s festivities, with the traditional parade, balls and not least the
re-enacted swearing-in outside the Capitol, there will be fewer parties and
fewer people swarming the National Mall; organizers expect less than half the
1.8 million people who flocked to the city last time.
Once the parties end, Mr. Obama’s second-term challenges are formidable, not
least given his ambitious priorities of addressing the national debt, illegal
immigration and gun violence.
The economy, while recovering steadily, remains fragile. The unemployment rate
is as high as it was in January 2009, though it is down from the 10 percent peak
reached late that year, and there is no consensus with Republicans about
additional stimulus measures — or virtually anything else.
And as the terrorist attack in Algeria last week illustrated, Mr. Obama
continues to confront threats around the globe, both from state actors like Iran
and North Korea and from Qaeda-inspired extremists seeking to exploit power
vacuums in the Mideast and across Africa and Asia.
At home, the emphasis is on reducing the deficits that piled up because of the
economic downturn and the soaring costs of caring for an aging population. Yet
Mr. Obama and Republicans in Congress, divided by opposing views on the role of
government, are no closer to a budget agreement that would overhaul taxes and
costly, fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare. The next showdown in
what has seemed a never-ending loop of fiscal brinkmanship and half-measures is
likely to come as soon as next month over spending cuts.
The persistent partisan battles underscore Mr. Obama’s inability to make good on
an original promise — that he would open a bipartisan era of problem solving.
While Mr. Obama’s words have become less soaring and more confrontational toward
Republicans after four years in which they sought to foil him, David Plouffe, a
senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said on the CNN program “State of the Union” on
Sunday that the president had written a “hopeful” inaugural address for Monday’s
ceremony.
But Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said on the same program, “The
president seems so fixated on demonizing Republicans that he is blinded to the
opportunities as well as the obligations that he has to deal with the big
problems of this country on debt and the entitlements.”
Mr. Obama draws approval from just over half of Americans — down 11 percentage
points from his popularity in a New York Times/CBS News survey just after his
first inauguration — with Republicans united in opposition and independents
split. If history is a guide, he has a limited time to act before his
post-election leverage fades.
The official swearing-in of Mr. Obama, 51, was just the seventh time in history
that a president was sworn in privately before the public ceremony, and the
first since President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. Each instance since
1821 occurred because the constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration
fell on a Sunday.
The simplicity of Mr. Obama’s minute-long taking of the oath of office suggested
a marriage before a justice of the peace, with a big ceremony and party planned
for later.
Only Michelle Obama, holding her family Bible for the ceremony, and the Obamas’s
daughters, Malia and Sasha, stood beside Mr. Obama in the grand Blue Room as he
recited the 35-word oath in the Constitution that was administered, as it was
four years ago, by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. About a dozen relatives of
the Obamas and Jane Roberts, the justice’s wife, watched out of camera range.
By contrast, the swearing-in hours earlier of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
at the vice-presidential mansion, while simple, was large enough to suggest that
Mr. Biden is indeed looking beyond the next four years to the 2016 election.
Among the 120 guests who watched Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor swear in Mr. Biden
were Democratic dignitaries from the early presidential-nominating states,
including Gov. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. On Saturday evening, Mr. Biden
attended a party of Democrats from Iowa, the first presidential caucus state.
The private ceremonies were held because, under the Constitution, the two men’s
first terms ended at noon on Sunday. In between their events, Mr. Obama and Mr.
Biden went together to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb
of the Unknowns. And they prayed, separately: the Obamas attended services at
the 175-year-old Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the
enthusiastic congregation engaged in a call-and-response with the pastor evoking
the president’s “Forward” campaign slogan; the Bidens and their guests
celebrated a Mass in the vice-presidential mansion.
In the evening, Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and their wives attended a gala for donors
to both the 2012 campaign and the inaugural expenses, where performers included
Stevie Wonder.
For Mr. Obama, the solemnity of his swearing-in was broken by his younger
daughter, Sasha, who seemed to recall the problem four years earlier, when a
garbling of the oath by both her father and Chief Justice Roberts at the Capitol
forced them to repeat the oath at the White House the next day.
With warmth that belied their political differences, especially over campaign
spending law, Justice Roberts congratulated Mr. Obama, and the president thanked
him twice as they shook hands. Mr. Obama then embraced his wife and daughters in
turn. “Good job, Daddy,” Sasha said. “I did it!” he replied, only to have her
quip, “You didn’t mess up” — leaving the president chuckling and rolling his
eyes as he pivoted to thank the small group of witnesses and exit the room.
Elsewhere on a sunny winter Sunday, the streets of Washington were snarled with
traffic, and hotels and homes were filling with the tens of thousands of
visitors who, along with area residents, began partying through the weekend in
bars and at receptions hosted by corporations and political groups.
Democratic women especially were feted. At a party sponsored by Emily’s List,
which helps elect Democratic women who favor abortion rights, the talk was of
2016 — and whether Hillary Rodham Clinton, the departing secretary of state,
might run for president.
Flags, bunting and red, white and blue lights festooned streets, buildings and
grounds, but as usual for such events, also ubiquitous were cement and metal
security barriers, along with police and troops on downtown blocks.
Much is changed since January 2009, and much of it not in the way Mr. Obama
planned. His challenges ahead are perhaps not so great as then — 779,000 people
lost their jobs that January, a one-month record, the financial and auto
industries were teetering and millions of Americans were losing homes and
savings — but they are nonetheless daunting.
While Democrats controlled Congress for his first two years, when Mr. Obama
passed his signature laws for economic stimulus, expanded health insurance and
financial industry regulation, Republicans captured the House majority in a
conservative backlash at his midterm and are expected to keep it for his second
term, given their success in drawing districts to keep them safe for
Republicans. That means Mr. Obama’s other priorities for a second term — chiefly
addressing illegal immigration and gun violence — likewise will hardly come
easy, if at all.
January 19,
2013
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON
— As he tucked into a salad and a beef pastry, President Obama looked around the
family dining room in the White House and stared into his future. By some
forecasts, it may not be a pretty sight.
Gathered with him that evening were several of the nation’s leading historians,
who reminded him of the sorry litany of second terms — the cascade of scandal,
war, recession, political defeat and other calamities that afflicted past
presidents after the heady crescendo of re-election.
For Mr. Obama, who will be sworn in for another four years in a quiet ceremony
on Sunday and then again in more public fashion on Monday, the lessons were
familiar if daunting. Embarking on the next half of his presidency, he and his
advisers are developing a second-term strategy intended to avoid the pitfalls of
his predecessors with a robust agenda focused on the economy, gun control,
immigration and energy.
“We’ve talked a lot about this,” said David Plouffe, the president’s senior
adviser who is leaving the White House at the end of the week. “We have spent a
lot of time trying to figure out both what to pursue but also these issues of
making sure you’re bringing the same sort of energy and same sort of focus as
the first term.”
After studying the past, the president’s team concluded that it was important to
make the most of the first year of his second term and stick rigorously to
issues he articulated on the campaign trail. “If you stay in that zone,” Mr.
Plouffe said, “I think you avoid a lot of those potential dangers.”
But of course, this is not the first re-elected president to think that. Others
arrived at this point with similar confidence, only to be hobbled by
developments. Some past second-term troubles stemmed from hubris, exhaustion or
miscalculation; others arrived out of the blue.
Franklin D. Roosevelt found the economy relapsing and lost a fight to pack the
Supreme Court. Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign by the Watergate scandal.
Ronald Reagan was caught up in the Iran-contra affair. Bill Clinton was
impeached, though not convicted, for lying under oath about his affair with
Monica Lewinsky. George W. Bush was damaged by the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina
and a financial crash.
At the same time, as the historians made clear to Mr. Obama at their dinner this
month, there were still second-term opportunities. Reagan overhauled the tax
code and signed a new arms control treaty with the Soviet Union. Mr. Clinton
balanced the budget and successfully led the Kosovo war. Mr. Bush turned the
Iraq war around with a surge of troops and a strategy change and forestalled a
new depression in his final weeks in office.
“In general, the historical record is not one of great hope,” said Robert
Dallek, one of the historians at the dinner. “He’s fully aware of the
circumstances he confronts, but he’s also upbeat about the fact that he won, and
won convincingly. It wasn’t a landslide, but it certainly was a convincing
victory.”
Indeed, during the course of a free-ranging two-and-a-half-hour conversation,
the historians were struck by how much Mr. Obama had thought about his second
term in the context of his predecessors. He was focused particularly on Dwight
D. Eisenhower, another president who ended a war and tried to curb military
spending. “His knowledge of what other presidents did in their second terms,
what happened in their second terms, it’s very impressive,” said Robert A. Caro,
the Lyndon B. Johnson biographer.
Mr. Obama has made clear in public settings as well how attuned he is to the
opportunities and challenges confronting him, including history’s warning signs.
“I’m more than familiar with all the literature about presidential overreach in
second terms,” he said shortly after his re-election. “We are very cautious
about that. On the other hand, I didn’t get re-elected just to bask in
re-election. I got elected to do work on behalf of American families and small
businesses all across the country.”
Mr. Obama has the unusual distinction of being the third president in a row to
win two terms; the last time that happened was when James Monroe followed Thomas
Jefferson and James Madison. Monroe, however, was re-elected effectively without
opposition and presided over what was called the Era of Good Feelings. Mr.
Obama, it seems safe to say, is presiding over the opposite.
With the House in Republican hands, Mr. Obama has an uphill struggle simply to
deal with various spending deadlines, much less advance a proactive agenda.
Within the White House, advisers debate just how much time he has to push
through big legislative initiatives before he invariably loses political
capital. They noted that Mr. Clinton had a year before scandal erupted, while
Mr. Bush had just seven months before Hurricane Katrina sapped his public
standing.
“You hope for a year and a half. You understand it could be half that,” said
Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary who worked on the
re-election campaign. “You’ve got to have a really, really good plan for 12
months in hopes it lasts for 16 or 18. But you have to be mindful that every day
the window gets a little narrower and you’ve got to seize the moment.”
Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to the president, said Mr. Obama would tap
public opinion to maintain clout. “One way of keeping Congress accountable is
this constant engagement with the American people, and I know that’s something
he’s committed to doing even more so in a second term,” she said.
Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian who was at the dinner with Mr.
Obama, said that the notion of a second-term curse was overstated, but that the
president would have to be assertive to remain relevant. “You have to be willing
to be a strong executive-power president in your second term; otherwise, you
become a lame duck,” he said.
Mr. Obama’s first term was in its own way cursed as much as anyone else’s second
term, or at least replete with the sorts of crises that would challenge any
presidency: the Great Recession, the collapsing auto industry, the biggest
offshore oil spill in American history and two wars. Much of the worst, his
advisers hope, may now be behind him.
“The advantage now is he’s not facing almost unprecedented economic trouble,
which really colored his first year,” said Phil Schiliro, his former legislative
director. “This is really the first time in his presidency when he’s not facing
a crisis like that. The wars are winding down, the economy’s getting better.
That gives him more breathing room.”
Some presidential second-term troubles were really manifestations of first-term
actions, including the Watergate burglary under Nixon, the secret arms sales to
Iran under Reagan, the liaisons by Mr. Clinton and the invasion of Iraq by Mr.
Bush. While there have been flaps during Mr. Obama’s first term over investments
in a failed clean energy company, a bungled anti-gun operation and the attack in
Benghazi, Libya, nothing of historic magnitude is evident at the moment. But Mr.
Obama’s staff worries that the biggest risks would be not effectively carrying
out the health care program coming into full force in the second term or the
economy’s not bouncing back more strongly by the time he leaves office.
Still, as he prepared to take the oath again, Mr. Obama struck the historians as
relaxed and engaged, especially compared with their last dinner with him before
the election, when they sensed the tension that gripped him. For now, the path
for the next four years is open and he has a chance to shape it.
“You don’t have anything to run for anymore,” Mr. Caro said. “You’re running for
a place in history.”
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By VICKI DIVOLL
WASHINGTON
PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he
believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly
target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist
activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.
Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for
military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting
lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is
fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a
careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.
He must think we should be relieved.
The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in
the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in
New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York
and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two
weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born
in Colorado.
Most of us think these people were probably terrorists anyway. So the
president’s reassurances have been enough to keep criticism at an acceptable
level for the White House. Democrats in Congress and in the press have only
gingerly questioned the claims by a Democratic president that he is right about
the law and careful when he orders drone attacks on our citizens. And
Republicans, who favor aggressive national security powers for the executive
branch, look forward to the day when one of their own can wield them again.
But a few of our representatives have spoken up — sort of. Several months ago,
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, began limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that
justify the targeted killing program. At a committee hearing, Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr., reminded of the request, demurred and shared a rueful
chuckle with the senator. Mr. Leahy did not want to be rude, it seems — though
some of us remember him being harder on former President George W. Bush’s
attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, in 2005.
So, even though Congress has the absolute power under the Constitution to
receive these documents, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not fought this
president to get them. If the senators did, and the president held fast to his
refusal, they could go to court and demand them, and I believe they would win.
Perhaps even better, they could skip getting the legal memos and go right to the
meat of the matter — using oversight and perhaps legislating to control the
president’s killing powers. That isn’t happening either.
Thank goodness we have another branch of government to step into the fray. It is
the job of the federal courts to interpret the Constitution and laws, and thus
to define the boundaries of the powers of the branches of government, including
their own.
In reining in the branches, the courts have been toughest on themselves,
however. A long line of Supreme Court cases require that judges wait for cases
to come to them. They can take cases only from plaintiffs who have a personal
stake in the outcome; they cannot decide political questions; they cannot rule
on an issue not squarely before them.
Because of these and other limitations, no case has made it far enough in
federal court for a judge to rule on the merits of the basic constitutional
questions at stake here. A pending case filed in July by the families of the
three dead Americans does raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges to the
president’s killings of their relatives. We will see if the judge agrees to
consider the constitutional questions or dismisses the case, citing limitations
on his own power.
In another case, decided two weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan, Colleen
McMahon, ruled, grudgingly, that the American Civil Liberties Union and two New
York Times reporters could not get access, under the Freedom of Information Act,
to classified legal memorandums that were relied on to justify the targeted
killing program. In her opinion, she expressed serious reservations about the
president’s interpretation of the constitutional questions. But the merits of
the program were not before her, just access to the Justice Department memos, so
her opinion was, in effect, nothing but an interesting read.
So at the moment, the legislature and the courts are flummoxed by, or don’t care
about, how or whether to take on this aggressive program. But Mr. Obama, a
former constitutional law professor, should know, of all people, what needs to
be done. He was highly critical when Mr. Bush applied new constitutional
theories to justify warrantless wiretapping and “enhanced interrogation.” In his
2008 campaign, Mr. Obama demanded transparency, and after taking office, he
released legal memos that the Bush administration had kept secret. Once the
self-serving constitutional analysis that the Bush team had used was revealed,
legal scholars from across the spectrum studied and denounced it.
While Mr. Obama has criticized his predecessor, he has also worried about his
successors. Last fall, when the election’s outcome was still in doubt, Mr. Obama
talked about drone strikes in general and said Congress and the courts should in
some manner “rein in” presidents by putting a “legal architecture in place.” His
comments seemed to reflect concern that future presidents should perhaps not
wield alone such awesome and unchecked power over life and death — of anyone,
not just Americans. Oddly, under current law, Congress and the courts are
involved when presidents eavesdrop on Americans, detain them or harshly
interrogate them — but not when they kill them.
It is not just the most recent president, this one and the next whom we need to
worry about when it comes to improper exercise of power. It is every president.
Mr. Obama should declassify and release, to Congress, the press and the public,
documents that set forth the detailed constitutional and statutory analysis he
relies on for targeting and killing American citizens.
Perhaps Mr. Obama still believes that, in a democracy, the people have a right
to know the legal theories upon which the president executes his great powers.
Certainly, we can hope so. After all, his interpretation might be wrong.
Vicki Divoll
is a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
and former
deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
WASHINGTON
— President Obama indicated on Wednesday that along with asking Congress to pass
measures like an assault weapons ban, he would be increasing pressure on
lawmakers to do something they have refused to do for the past six years:
confirm a permanent director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives.
At a news conference, the president unveiled a series of executive actions and
legislative proposals to help reduce gun violence, and he said he would nominate
the agency’s acting director, B. Todd Jones, to be its permanent leader.
“Congress needs to help, rather than hinder, law enforcement as it does its
job,” Mr. Obama said on Wednesday.
Mr. Jones, 55, a former Marine who is also the United States attorney in
Minnesota, has led the beleaguered agency since August 2011, when he was
appointed by the administration to take over in the aftermath of the scandal
surrounding the bungled gun trafficking investigation known as Operation Fast
and Furious, in which agents lost track of firearms they were allowing to pass
into Mexico.
Until 2006, the president had the power to install a director of the firearms
bureau without Congressional approval. But under pressure from gun lobbyists,
Congress changed the law that year to require Senate confirmation. Since then,
the Senate has failed to confirm any nominee by either President George W. Bush
or Mr. Obama as senators who support gun rights have used their powers to delay
nomination votes; Mr. Jones is the bureau’s fifth acting director since 2006.
One of the more vocal critics of the Justice Department and the firearms agency,
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said Wednesday that he agreed
with the president that it was time for the Senate to confirm a permanent
director of the agency, but he raised questions about Mr. Jones’s credibility.
“The new nominee, B. Todd Jones, is a familiar face to the committee, but his
ties to the Fast and Furious scandal raise serious questions,” Mr. Grassley
said.
“In any case, he’ll receive a thorough and fair vetting by the Judiciary
Committee,” said Mr. Grassley, the committee’s senior Republican.
For years, the A.T.F. has been battered by scandals and has had its authority
undercut by gun lobbyists, who have pushed to limit its power and cut its
funding. The bureau most recently came under scrutiny in 2011 for its handling
of Fast and Furious after; two of the firearms used in the investigation were
found at the scene of a shootout in which a United States Border Patrol agent
was killed in Arizona.
Mr. Jones said in a meeting with reporters in September that during his tenure
the agency had refocused its efforts on fighting violent crime and was
“recalibrating” how it did business by revamping its policies and procedures.
“We are well on our way to tightening up our unity of effort and our
communications,” Mr. Jones said, adding that senior officials in Washington now
had more oversight over the agency’s field offices.
Mr. Jones said that some procedures had not been updated in 15 to 20 years.
“We are back to the basics, and that is what I have been working very hard at,
the fundamentals,” he said, “and the fundamentals for us is protecting the
American public from violent crime.”
Mr. Jones has told the agency’s offices to work closely with police departments
in large cities to combat sudden increases in crime and “to focus on cases that
will have the greatest impact,” a senior agency official said in a recent
interview.
This year, A.T.F. agents have been part of so-called surges of law enforcement
officers in the country’s most violent cities, including Oakland, Calif., and
Philadelphia, working to make arrests and seize guns.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— The National Rifle Association provoked a furious response from the White
House on Wednesday by releasing a video accusing President Obama of being an
“elitist” and a “hypocrite” because he opposes posting armed guards at schools,
while his daughters have Secret Service protection.
The video also prompted commentary on social media about whether the gun rights
organization might have been too strident, even for its own members.
The White House lashed out at the N.R.A. even as Mr. Obama stood with young
children to unveil broad proposals to create tougher gun laws and use the power
of the presidency to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in
a political fight,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “But to go
so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an
attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”
The N.R.A. video refers to Mr. Obama’s strong reservations about the group’s
idea to prevent school massacres by posting armed guards at all of the nation’s
schools.
“I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools,” Mr. Obama
said during a recent interview on the NBC News program “Meet the Press.” “And I
think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow
is going to solve our problem.”
The video, posted at a Web site called N.R.A. Stand and Fight, starts by asking,
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” The video does not show
Mr. Obama’s daughters, Malia, 14, and Sasha, 11, but it suggests that Mr. Obama
holds their safety to a different standard than he is willing to offer for other
children.
The N.R.A. does not appear to have spent much money paying for the video to run
as an advertisement on television. But it still generated ire among Democrats
and gun control advocates who said it improperly dragged the president’s
daughters into the national debate over guns.
Kim Anderson, a top official with the National Education Association, a
teachers’ union, said the video “demonstrates a level of insensitivity and
disrespect that N.E.A. members wouldn’t tolerate in any classroom in America.”
The video prompted quick declarations of outrage among liberal talk show hosts
and on Twitter, with many people saying that the N.R.A. had gone too far by
referring to the president’s children.
But the video also generated expressions of support, with some conservatives
criticizing the president for standing with children at his event. On Twitter,
N.R.A. backers used the hashtag #standandfight to express support.
“Patriots, we must back the #NRA in their efforts to preserve our liberties,”
one person wrote on Twitter.
The N.R.A. has been the subject of intense criticism in some quarters since the
shooting in Newtown, Conn., last month. Shortly after the massacre, Wayne
LaPierre, the chief executive and vice president of the N.R.A., held a news
conference in which he called for more security in schools and an end to the
“gun-free zones” that are common around school buildings.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Mr.
LaPierre said at the time.
But the organization has said that its rejection of any new restrictions on guns
has led to a surge in new members, suggesting that its influence on Capitol Hill
is not about to wane.
In a second video posted to its Stand and Fight Web site on Wednesday afternoon,
the organization replays parts of Mr. LaPierre’s news conference and suggests
that the “elite” news media and the president are out of touch with everyday
Americans.
“America agrees with Wayne and the N.R.A.,” the four-and-a-half-minute video
says.
January 16,
2013
The New York Times
By PETER BAKER and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
WASHINGTON
— Four days before taking the oath of office, President Obama on Wednesday
staked the beginning of his second term on an uphill quest to pass the broadest
gun control legislation in a generation.
In the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre, Mr. Obama vowed to rally
public opinion to press a reluctant Congress to ban military-style assault
weapons and high-capacity magazines, expand background checks, and toughen
gun-trafficking laws. Recognizing that the legislative fight could be long and
difficult, the president also took immediate steps by issuing a series of
executive actions intended to reduce gun violence.
Surrounded by children who wrote him letters seeking curbs on guns, Mr. Obama
committed himself to a high-profile and politically volatile campaign behind
proposals assembled by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that will test the
administration’s strength heading into the next four years. The first big push
of Mr. Obama’s second term, then, will come on an issue that was not even on his
to-do list on Election Day when voters renewed his lease on the presidency.
“I will put everything I’ve got into this,” Mr. Obama said, “and so will Joe.”
The emotionally charged ceremony, attended by family members of those killed at
Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., reflected a decision by the
White House to seize on public outrage to challenge the political power of the
National Rifle Association and other forces that have successfully fought new
gun laws for decades.
The White House is planning a multifaceted effort to sell its plans, including
speeches around the country by the president and vice president and concerted
lobbying by interest groups to influence several dozen lawmakers from both
parties seen as critical to passage. The White House created a Web page with
video testimonials from victims of gun violence and a sign-up for supporters to
help advocate the president’s plan.
“I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it,”
Mr. Obama said. “And, by the way, that doesn’t just mean from certain parts of
the country. We’re going to need voices in those areas, in those Congressional
districts where the tradition of gun ownership is strong, to speak up and to say
this is important. It can’t just be the usual suspects.”
The N.R.A. made clear that it was ready for a fight. Even before the president’s
speech, it broadcast a provocative video calling Mr. Obama an “elitist
hypocrite” for opposing more armed guards in schools while his daughters had
Secret Service protection. After the speech the group said it would work to
secure schools, fix the mental health system and prosecute criminals but
criticized the president’s other proposals. “Attacking firearms and ignoring
children is not a solution to the crisis we face as a nation,” the N.R.A. said
in a statement. “Only honest, law-abiding gun owners will be affected, and our
children will remain vulnerable to the inevitability of more tragedy.”
Mr. Obama’s plan included 4 major legislative proposals and 23 executive actions
that he initiated on his own authority to bolster enforcement of existing laws,
improve the nation’s database used for background checks and otherwise make it
harder for criminals and people with mental illness to get guns.
Mr. Obama asked Congress to reinstate and strengthen a ban on the sale and
production of assault weapons that passed in 1994 and expired in 2004. He also
called for a ban on the sale and production of magazines with more than 10
rounds, like those used in Newtown and other mass shootings. Mr. Obama’s plan
would require criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing the
longstanding loophole that allows buyers to avoid screening by purchasing
weapons from unlicensed sellers at gun shows or in private sales. Nearly 40
percent of all gun sales are exempt from the system.
He also proposed legislation banning the possession or transfer of
armor-piercing bullets and cracking down on “straw purchasers,” those who pass
background checks and then forward guns to criminals or others forbidden from
purchasing them.
For Mr. Obama, the plan represented a political pivot. While he has always
expressed support for an assault weapons ban, he has made no real effort to pass
it on the assumption that the votes were not there. But he and the White House
are banking on the idea that the Newtown shooting has changed the dynamics. “I
have never seen the nation’s conscience so shaken by what happened at Sandy
Hook,” Mr. Biden said Wednesday. “The world has changed and is demanding
action.”
The future of the plan may depend on how much political energy Mr. Obama puts
behind it, not just to pressure Republicans but to win over Democrats who
support gun rights. Even the White House considers passage of a new assault
weapons ban exceedingly difficult, but there did seem to be some consensus
building for expanding background checks.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat and a longtime gun control
supporter, made no mention of the assault weapons ban in a statement but pointed
to the background checks. “If you look at the combination of likelihood of
passage and effectiveness of curbing gun crime,” he said, “universal background
checks is at the sweet spot.”
On the other side, Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia,
who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, dismissed an assault weapons
ban as ineffective. “But in terms of background checks, in terms of keeping
weapons out of the hands of criminals and people who have serious mental health
difficulties, we want to do that, and we would take a close look at that,” he
told C-Span.
Gun control groups said they would campaign hard for the president’s proposals.
Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said his group would focus
on as many as 25 Congressional districts, including those of Democrats and
Republicans. “We will be doing what we can do to make sure that sitting on their
hands is the least safe place to be,” he said.
Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, a gun rights supporter, said he
re-evaluated his position after Newtown. “I was shaken by it, and that caused me
to think in a much more probing way about the policy,” he said in an interview.
“If it has anywhere near the impact on others that it did on me, then I think
the ground shifted a lot.”
But Mr. Obama’s plans still generated strong opposition. “Nothing the president
is proposing would have stopped the massacre at Sandy Hook,” said Senator Marco
Rubio, Republican of Florida. “President Obama is targeting the Second Amendment
rights of law-abiding citizens instead of seriously addressing the real
underlying causes of such violence.”
Other Republicans echoed those sentiments. “The Second Amendment is
nonnegotiable,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas.
Representative Dan Benishek of Michigan said in a Twitter message: “Let me be
clear, I will fight any efforts to take our guns. Not on my watch.”
Also Wednesday, Mr. Obama nominated B. Todd Jones, the acting director of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to lead an agency that has
not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2006.
The 23 executive actions Mr. Obama signed on Wednesday were largely modest
initiatives to toughen enforcement of existing laws and to encourage federal
agencies and state governments to share more information. Mr. Obama lifted a ban
on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting research on
gun violence and directed that a letter be sent to health care providers saying
doctors may ask patients about guns in their homes.
Several Republicans accused Mr. Obama of flouting Congress. “Using executive
action to attempt to poke holes in the Second Amendment is a power grab,” said
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
Reporting was
contributed by Charlie Savage,
Jennifer
Steinhauer and Jonathan Weisman.
This article
has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 16, 2013
An earlier version of this article suggested that several recent mass shootings
involved
30-round magazines. While they all involved high-capacity clips,
January 15,
2013
The New York Times
By BENEDICT CAREY
and ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
No one but
a deeply disturbed individual marches into an elementary school or a movie
theater and guns down random, innocent people.
That hard fact drives the public longing for a mental health system that
produces clear warning signals and can somehow stop the violence. And it is now
fueling a surge in legislative activity, in Washington and New York.
But these proposed changes and others like them may backfire and only reveal how
broken the system is, experts said.
“Anytime you have one of these tragic cases like Newtown, it’s going to expose
deficiencies in the mental health system, and provide some opportunity for
reform,” said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor of public policy at the University
of Virginia’s law school who led a state commission that overhauled policies
after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings that left 33 people dead. “But you have
to be very careful not to overreact.”
New York State legislators on Tuesday passed a gun bill that would require
therapists to report to the authorities any client thought to be “likely to
engage in” violent behavior; under the law, the police would confiscate any
weapons the person had.
And in Washington, lawmakers said that President Obama was considering a range
of actions as part of a plan to reduce gun violence, including more sharing of
records between mental health and law enforcement agencies.
The White House plan to make use of mental health data was still taking shape
late Tuesday. But several ideas being discussed — including the reporting
provision in the New York gun law — are deeply contentious and transcend
political differences.
Some advocates favored the reporting provision as having the potential to
prevent a massacre. Among them was D. J. Jaffe, founder of the Mental Illness
Policy Org., which pushes for more aggressive treatment policies. Some mass
killers “were seen by mental health professionals who did not have to report
their illness or that they were becoming dangerous and they went on to kill,” he
said.
Yet many patient advocates and therapists strongly disagreed, saying it would
intrude into the doctor-patient relationship in a way that could dissuade
troubled people from speaking their minds, and complicate the many judgment
calls therapists already have to make.
The New York statute requires doctors and other mental health professionals to
report any person who “is likely to engage in conduct that would result in
serious harm to self or others.”
Under current ethical guidelines, only involuntary hospitalizations (and direct
threats made by patients) are reported to the authorities. These reports then
appear on a federal background-check database. The new laws would go further.
“The way I read the new law, it means I have to report voluntary as well as
involuntary hospitalizations, as well as many people being treated for suicidal
thinking, for instance, as outpatients,” said Dr. Paul S. Appelbaum, director of
the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at Columbia University’s medical
school. “That is a much larger group of people than before, and most of whom
will never be a serious threat to anyone.”
One fundamental problem with looking for “warning signs” is that it is more art
than science. People with serious mental disorders, while more likely to commit
aggressive acts than the average person, account for only about 4 percent of
violent crimes over all.
The rate is higher when it comes to rampage or serial killings, closer to 20
percent, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist who
has a database of about 200 mass and serial killers. He has concluded from the
records that about 40 were likely to have had paranoid schizophrenia or severe
depression or were psychopathic, meaning they were impulsive and remorseless.
“But most mass murders are done by working-class men who’ve been jilted, fired,
or otherwise humiliated — and who then undergo a crisis of rage and get out one
of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing,” Dr. Stone said.
The sort of young, troubled males who seem to psychiatrists most likely to
commit school shootings — identified because they have made credible threats —
often do not qualify for any diagnosis, experts said. They might have elements
of paranoia, of deep resentment, or of narcissism, a grandiose self-regard, that
are noticeable but do not add up to any specific “disorder” according to strict
criteria.
“The really scary ones, you have a gut feeling right away when you talk to
them,” said Dr. Deborah Weisbrot, director of the outpatient clinic of child and
adolescent psychiatry at Stony Brook University, who has interviewed about 200
young people, mostly teenage boys, who have made threats. “What they have in
common is a kind of magical thinking, odd beliefs like they can read other
people’s minds, or see the future, or that things happening in their dreams come
true.”
Even if such instincts could be relied on, the mental health system is so
fragmented in the country that it is hard to know whether the information would
get to the right person in time. According to Dr. Bonnie, the Virginia law
professor, the Virginia Tech gunman was ordered to outpatient treatment by a
judge more than a year before his rampage but was never hospitalized, which
would have shown up on a background check.
The state database now includes such cases, after the reforms. “But we’re a
state that has a centralized database like that; in many states there’s no one
place to get it all; it’s all kept locally, community by community,” Dr. Bonnie
said.
The federal background check database, which is supposed to have updated
information from states, has only a patchwork, because of the wide variety of
state laws on reporting, experts said. Even if it were entirely up to date, it
would not catch the many millions who never see a mental health professional
despite deep distress.
Some experts, like Dr. Appelbaum, say the Connecticut school shooting offers the
kind of opportunity that only comes once every generation or two: to rethink the
entire mental health system. It might include appointing a presidential
commission; re-envisioning community mental health care; focusing more on
vigilance for problems in young people, and reducing stigma.
“It seems to me an opportunity to step back and rethink what the entire system
should look like,” Dr. Appelbaum said.
January 15,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL COOPER, MICHAEL LUO
and MICHAEL D. SHEAR
A new
federal assault weapons ban and background checks of all gun buyers, which
President Obama is expected to propose on Wednesday, might have done little to
prevent the massacre in Newtown, Conn., last month. The semiautomatic rifle that
Adam Lanza used to shoot 20 schoolchildren and 6 adults complied with
Connecticut’s assault weapons ban, the police said, and he did not buy the gun
himself.
But another proposal that Mr. Obama is expected to make could well have slowed
Mr. Lanza’s rampage: banning high-capacity magazines, like the 30-round
magazines that the police said Mr. Lanza used, which have been factors in
several other recent mass shootings.
Those shootings, whose victims have included a member of Congress in Arizona,
moviegoers in Colorado and first graders in Connecticut, have horrified the
country and inspired Washington to embark on the most extensive re-examination
of the nation’s gun laws in a generation. But some of the proposals that Mr.
Obama is expected to make at the White House on Wednesday, which are likely to
include a call for expanded background checks, a ban on assault weapons and
limits on high-capacity clips, will be intended not only to prevent high-profile
mass shootings, but also to curb the more commonplace gun violence that claims
many thousands more lives every year.
“The president has made clear that he intends to take a comprehensive approach,”
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. Mr. Carney said the
proposals were aimed, broadly, at what he called “the scourge of gun violence in
this country.”
While semiautomatic rifles were used in several recent mass shootings, including
those in Newtown and in Aurora, Colo., where 12 people were killed at a movie
theater in July, a vast majority of gun murders in the United States are
committed with handguns.
In 2011, 6,220 people were killed by handguns, and 323 by rifles, according to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So while the administration is expected to
try to restrict some types of assault weapons, it is also focusing on ways to
keep more commonly used firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals and
people with mental illness.
Of course, the administration must keep political realities in mind as it drafts
its proposals: getting any new gun regulations through Congress, particularly
through the Republican-controlled House, is seen as difficult. So the White
House must not only weigh the effectiveness of its proposals, but also their
political feasibility.
The top priority of many gun control groups is to expand the background checks
so that they apply to all buyers. All federally licensed firearms dealers are
required to run background checks through the computerized databases that
comprise the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But the
requirement does not cover guns that are sold at gun shows and in other private
sales, which account for about 40 percent of gun purchases in the country.
Better background checks would have had little effect on several recent mass
shootings — both Mr. Lanza, in Connecticut, and Jacob T. Roberts, who opened
fire on a mall full of Christmas shoppers a few days earlier in Clackamas, Ore.,
were using weapons that they did not buy. But gun control groups say that
expanded background checks would help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous
criminals and people with mental illness, and would go a long way toward
increasing public safety and could help prevent mass shootings.
Gun control groups have encouraged the administration to look beyond mass
shootings. When the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun
control group, issued its recommendations to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.,
who has been developing the administration’s proposals, it urged him to develop
ideas that could help curb everyday gun violence as well.
“Every death is a tragedy, whether in a mass shooting that horrifies our entire
nation, or one of the 32 gun murders or 90 gun deaths in our communities and
homes every day,” it wrote.
With many of the proposals in Washington expected to be somewhat limited in
scope, some public health researchers and gun control advocates said it was
difficult to know what impact the recommendations might have.
“To have a huge, huge effect, we’re going to need a sea change in not just the
laws but social norms,” David Hemenway, the director of the Harvard Injury
Control Research Center.
American civilians have 250 million to 300 million firearms, said Dr. Garen J.
Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the
University of California, Davis. “Those firearms are not going to go away
anytime soon,” he said.
More serious steps — like those taken by Australia, which reacted to a 1996 mass
shooting by banning the sale, importation and possession of semiautomatic rifles
and by removing 700,000 guns from circulation — are seen as politically
untenable. In the 18 years before the new gun laws, there were 13 mass shootings
in Australia, and in the decade afterward, there were none, according to a 2006
article in Injury Prevention, a journal.
But expanding background checks in the United States would help disrupt criminal
gun markets, a crucial driver of urban gun violence, Dr. Wintemute said. While
there has been a debate over how effective background checks have been, Dr.
Wintemute pointed to studies of prisoners incarcerated for crimes involving
firearms that have found that at least 80 percent of them obtained their guns
through private transfers.
“If we eliminate those, I think it’s completely reasonable to expect a
substantial drop in crimes related to firearms,” he said.
When a two-day meeting on reducing gun violence wrapped up at Johns Hopkins
University on Tuesday afternoon, researchers made some suggestions that have
been the subject of relatively little public discussion in Washington.
They called, for example, for expanding the categories of people who are
prohibited from buying firearms to include those who have committed violent
misdemeanors. And they called for banning not just the sale of high-capacity
magazines, but their possession as well.
Other measures being discussed in Washington include strengthening federal laws
to combat gun trafficking. Gun control advocates argued that other steps were
needed as well, like limiting the number of guns that can be bought by an
individual every month.
“If you want to dam the river, you have to address all the channels,” said Josh
Horwitz, the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “You’re
not going to stop it until you dam the whole river.”
Some people who met with Mr. Biden as he developed his recommendations said that
they hoped the final proposals would address gun violence in its many forms.
“I think there was a recognition that we’re not going to stop every mass
shooting or gun homicide,” said Hildy Saizow, the president of Arizonans for Gun
Safety, who met with Mr. Biden last week.
“But we can go a long way to take action that would result in fewer gun deaths,
fewer gun injuries. This is not just a narrow perspective that the task force is
addressing, not just mass shootings or school shootings.”
Michael Cooper
and Michael Luo reported from New York,
and Michael D.
Shear from Washington.
Ray Rivera
contributed reporting from New York,
Dan Frosch
from Denver and Kirk Johnson from Seattle.
January 14,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
and JENNIFER STEINHAUER
WASHINGTON
— President Obama this week will embrace a comprehensive plan to reduce gun
violence that will call for major legislation to expand background checks for
gun purchases and lay out 19 separate actions the president could take by
invoking the power of his office, lawmakers who were briefed on the plan said
Monday.
Lawmakers and other officials said that the president could use a public event
as soon as Wednesday to signal his intention to engage in the biggest
Congressional fight over guns in nearly two decades, focusing on the heightened
background checks and including efforts to ban assault weapons and their
high-capacity clips. But given the difficulty of pushing new rules through a
bitterly divided Congress, Mr. Obama will also promise to act on his own to
reduce gun violence wherever possible.
Actions the president could take on his own are likely to include imposing new
limits on guns imported from overseas, compelling federal agencies to improve
sharing of mental health records and directing the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention to conduct research on gun violence, according to those briefed
on the effort.
White House aides believe Mr. Obama can also ratchet up enforcement of existing
laws, including tougher prosecution of people who lie on their background
checks.
At a news conference on Monday, exactly one month after the school massacre in
Newtown, Conn., Mr. Obama said a task force led by Vice President Joseph R.
Biden Jr. had “presented me now with a list of sensible, common-sense steps that
can be taken to make sure that the kinds of violence we saw at Newtown doesn’t
happen again. He added: “My starting point is not to worry about the politics.
My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works.”
The administration’s strategy reflects the uncertainty of gun politics in
America and the desire by White House officials to address the Connecticut
shooting while also confronting the broader deficiencies in the country’s
criminal justice and mental health systems.
By proposing to use the independent power of his office, Mr. Obama is inviting
political attacks by gun owners who have already expressed fear that he will
abuse that authority to restrict their rights. Representative Steve Stockman,
Republican of Texas, threatened Monday to file articles of impeachment if the
president seeks to regulate guns with executive orders. “I will seek to thwart
this action by any means necessary,” Mr. Stockman said in a statement.
White House officials and Democratic lawmakers said that there are clear limits
to what the president can and cannot do, and that Mr. Obama has no plans to push
beyond what he would need Congressional authority to accomplish.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama’s legislative effort will face intense opposition
from gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, and the
lawmakers they support with millions of dollars at election time and who see gun
rights as a defining issue in their districts. But Mr. Obama’s allies see a rare
opening for tighter gun rules after Congress has shied away from the politically
charged issue for years.
“He’s putting together a pretty comprehensive list of what could be done to make
a difference in this area,” said Representative Mike Thompson of California, who
is heading a Democratic task force in the House. “There’s some huge, huge holes
in the process that are set up to keep communities safe. We need to close those
holes.”
Representative Jackie Speier, Democrat of California, said Vice President Biden
had informed lawmakers during a two-hour briefing on Monday that there are “19
independent steps that the president can take by executive order.” Ms. Speier
said the executive action is part of the “most comprehensive gun safety effort
in a generation.”
Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, joined
the debate on Monday and said that the president should “clear the table” by
doing whatever he can administratively so small issues do not get in the way of
the bigger legislative fights over access to guns.
“Don’t allow a side issue to derail these things,” Mr. Emanuel said during a
discussion about gun policy. While many gun control advocates are eager to
harness what they believe is a ripe moment in American life for new and robust
restrictions on the kinds of guns that were used in Newtown, there is an
emerging consensus on Capitol Hill and among gun education groups that improving
the system of background check legislation that currently exempts private gun
sales and gun shows is the most viable legislative route to pursue.
“The assault-weapons ban is a low priority relative to the other measures the
Biden task force is considering,” Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Third Way, a
left-leaning research group, said after hearing from Mr. Biden last week.
“Political capital in the gun debate only goes so far. We think it should be
spent on things that would have the greatest impact on gun violence, like
universal background checks and cracking down on gun trafficking.”
Any efforts to get gun legislation through Congress will require an enormous and
ceaseless pressure campaign by the administration. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden are
likely to keep up the pressure on lawmakers with public events in the weeks and
months ahead, according to those familiar with the White House strategy.
Scores of senators, including many Democrats, will be wary of voting on any
effort to curb access to guns or ammunition. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
Democratic leader, is a longtime supporter of gun rights. Still, gun legislation
is likely to begin in the Senate because the House is controlled by Republicans,
many of whom oppose new restrictions on guns.
With fiscal issues continuing to dominate the political calendar for the next
several weeks, White House officials and lawmakers say the gun safety effort is
likely to be debated in separate pieces of legislation that could be introduced
over time. In coming weeks, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York,
will reintroduce a measure that would require every gun buyer, with limited
exceptions, to undergo a background check and would force states to feed all
relevant data into the background check system so those with criminal
convictions and the mentally ill could be flagged.
January 10,
2013
The New York Times
By RAYMOND A. SMITH
EVERY four
years the cabinet briefly becomes the focus of national attention in December
and January — only to fade from view again after Inauguration Day. True,
individual cabinet secretaries will be in the news from time to time, but the
cabinet as an institution will be all but forgotten. Yet the United States could
benefit greatly by strengthening its scope and role.
Although the cabinet is not established in the Constitution, presidents since
George Washington have convened a collective body of the heads of the executive
departments. Washington used these meetings to tap into the wisdom of Secretary
of State Thomas Jefferson and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Abraham
Lincoln assembled a strong “team of rivals” in his cabinet to gird the nation at
its time of greatest peril. Franklin D. Roosevelt convened his cabinet the day
after the Pearl Harbor attacks, while John F. Kennedy relied on a subset of his
cabinet during the Cuban missile crisis.
Over the past half-century, however, the expansion of the White House staff has
centralized deliberation and decision making increasingly within the confines of
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. This reliance on professional staffers, political
advisers and media spinmeisters within a constrictive White House “security
bubble” deprives presidents not only of the deep substantive policy expertise of
top civil servants but also of the political judgment of cabinet members who are
often successful politicians.
A strengthened cabinet could promote frank and creative deliberation, help
coordinate policy across government and make sure all members are delivering the
same political message. All of this could go far in staving off the inertia and
drift so common in presidential second terms.
Cabinet secretaries given a more prominent role would also enjoy a higher
profile, enhancing their effectiveness in Washington and beyond, and enabling
them to serve as more effective proxies for the president. Here are four ideas
to maximize the reach and impact of the next cabinet:
• Employ the cabinet as a deliberative body: Cabinet meetings have become little
more than occasional photo ops. Under Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, for
example, cabinet meetings were held monthly; the Obama team has met less than
one-third as often. By contrast, the British, German and many other
parliamentary cabinets meet weekly to assure that the entire team shares a
common and coordinated vision. More regular and meaningful cabinet meetings
could strengthen links across departments and with the White House staff,
bolstering cooperation and reducing overlap and miscommunication.
• Strengthen links between cabinet members and Congress: The Congressional
committee structure is already designed to roughly parallel the cabinet
departments, with each linked to one or more committees in each house. Without
violating separation of powers, cabinet secretaries could be given nonvoting ex
officio status as members of committees. This would empower them and their
designees to work more closely with lawmakers in devising legislation and
participating in hearings and other legislative work. They also would be
eligible to address committees or even Congress as a whole.
• Deploy cabinet members as presidential proxies: Countless ceremonial duties
and foreign trips tax the time and energy of presidents. While cabinet members
do fill in for the president at times, they could do much more by meeting with
foreign dignitaries, presiding at ceremonial events and presenting honors and
awards. This would elevate their stature and make them more effective policy
messengers.
• Cultivate the next generation of leadership: Almost uniquely among established
democracies, a cabinet post in the United States can be more of a political
grave than a cradle for leaders. No cabinet official has gone on to become
president in nearly 85 years, and few have run. Yet the experience gained
running an executive department and learning the ways of Washington offers great
expertise for future presidential candidates. It may be Hillary Rodham Clinton
who breaks this trend in 2016, drawing in no small part on her experience as
secretary of state.
There is a risk, of course, that a stronger cabinet could undermine the
president. But cabinet secretaries would continue to serve “at the pleasure of
the president.” And while presidents could benefit from the collective wisdom of
their cabinet, they would not be bound by it. When members of Lincoln’s cabinet
once unanimously outvoted him, Lincoln closed the meeting by saying, “Seven nays
and one aye, the ayes have it.”
An enhanced cabinet would not have its own independent mandate, but it could
share more fully in the president’s, and thus advance that mandate more
effectively.
Raymond A.
Smith, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute,
is the author
of “Importing Democracy: Ideas From Around the World to Reform
January 10,
2013
The New York Times
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON
— While President Obama pledged to crack down on access to what he called
“weapons of war” in the aftermath of last month’s schoolhouse massacre, the
White House has calculated that a ban on military-style assault weapons will be
exceedingly difficult to pass through Congress and is focusing on other measures
it deems more politically achievable.
As a task force led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. readies
recommendations on reducing gun violence for delivery to the president next
week, White House officials say a new ban will be an element of whatever final
package is proposed. But given the entrenched opposition from gun rights groups
and their advocates on Capitol Hill, the White House is trying to avoid making
its passage the sole definition of success and is emphasizing other new gun
rules that could conceivably win bipartisan support and reduce gun deaths.
During a day of White House meetings on the issue on Thursday, including one
with the National Rifle Association, Mr. Biden focused publicly on universal
background checks for gun purchases and the need for more federal research on
gun violence. In 15 minutes of public remarks, Mr. Biden made no mention of
curbing the production and sale of assault weapons, even though he was a prime
author of such a law that passed in 1994 and expired 10 years later. Both he and
the president say they strongly support an assault weapons ban.
But Mr. Biden noted that his former colleagues in the Senate have long been
“pretty universally opposed to any restrictions on gun ownership or what type of
weapons can be purchased.” He said they now seem more open to limits on the
purchase of high-capacity magazines.
A spokesman for Mr. Obama said later in the afternoon that the vice president’s
remarks merely reflect a desire for a broad approach to gun violence.
“President Obama has been clear that Congress should reinstate the assault
weapons ban and that avoiding this issue just because it’s been politically
difficult in the past is not an option,” said Matt Lehrich, the spokesman. “He’s
also stressed that no single piece of legislation alone can solve this problem,
which is why he has asked Vice President Biden to explore a wide array of
proposals on topics ranging from gun laws to mental health to school safety.”
The calculation on the assault weapons ban underscores the complicated politics
of guns on Capitol Hill despite public outrage after a gunman killed 26 people,
including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in
December. While the shootings prompted some pro-gun lawmakers to endorse limits
on assault weapons, Republicans who control the House Judiciary Committee still
oppose such limits.
A statement by the N.R.A. after Thursday’s meeting underscored the political
challenges. The group accused the White House of having an “agenda to attack the
Second Amendment,” and said it would go to the halls of Congress in its efforts
to stop gun restrictions.
“We will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of
Congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation
about what works — and what does not,” the statement said.
The calibrated public focus by Mr. Biden also reflects a tension within the
administration and Democratic circles, with some gun control advocates pressing
for a robust effort on the assault weapon ban and others leery of being caught
in a losing cause at the expense of other measures with more chances of success.
While Mr. Biden has included Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Janet
Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, and other cabinet officials in his
working group, officials said the process is being driven by the White House.
In addition to limits on high-capacity magazines and expanded background checks,
Mr. Biden’s group is looking at ways of keeping guns out of the hands of the
mentally ill and cracking down on sales that are already illegal. One
possibility is tougher laws against straw purchasing with longer prison terms
for those who buy guns for others. Some officials would like to expand mandatory
minimum sentences for gun law violations, but the White House in general does
not like such sentences. Mr. Biden’s group is also considering seeking
additional money to enforce existing laws.
Mr. Biden’s comment this week about taking executive action was seized on by
some opponents as evidence that the president wanted to unilaterally restrict
gun sales to legal buyers. But officials said executive action refers to limited
measures like directing more attention and resources to pursuing violations of
existing gun laws and studying gun violence.
The ammunition limit has drawn attention from Democrats in Congress, both
because they think it might be easier to pass and because it might have more
impact than an assault weapon ban. To pass the last assault weapon ban through a
Democratic Congress more amenable to gun control, Mr. Biden had to accept
compromises that allowed many guns to be sold.
The White House effort is coming even as some governors are seeking state
legislation that would limit the availability of guns and ammunition. In
Colorado, Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, a Democrat, called on Thursday for
universal background checks on all gun sales in his state.
In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has made gun control efforts a centerpiece of
his next year in office, pledging to pass a tough new assault weapons ban in his
state, limits on large-capacity magazines and measures to keep guns out of the
hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
Mr. Obama’s push for new federal action is the first serious one in many years.
Mr. Biden held several meetings Thursday with representatives of hunting and
wildlife groups, advocates of gun ownership, and officials with the
entertainment industry. At the start of the meetings, Mr. Biden said he would
give Mr. Obama his recommendations on Tuesday, though they may not be made
public until later.
In their own closed-door meetings with the vice president on Wednesday, gun
control advocates emphasized their belief that measures other than the assault
weapons ban could be even more effective in preventing the kinds of recent
massacres that have captured public and political attention, several
participants said.
“There’s a natural gravity that happens toward the ban in the wake of
tragedies,” said Dan Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence, who attended the meeting. “But it’s very important to point out that
background checks could have an even bigger impact.”
January 8,
2013
The New York Times
By ANNIE LOWREY
WASHINGTON
— In an Oval Office meeting on Dec. 29, 11 of President Obama’s top advisers
stood before him discussing the heated fiscal negotiations. The 10 visible in a
White House photo are men.
In the days since, Mr. Obama has put together a national security team dominated
by men, with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts nominated to succeed Hillary
Rodham Clinton as the secretary of state, Chuck Hagel chosen to be the defense
secretary and John O. Brennan nominated as the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency. Given the leading contenders for other top jobs, including
chief of staff and Treasury secretary, Mr. Obama’s inner circle will continue to
be dominated by men well into his second term.
From the White House down the ranks, the Obama administration has compiled a
broad appointment record that has significantly exceeded the Bush administration
in appointing women but has done no better than the Clinton administration,
according to an analysis of personnel data by The New York Times. About 43
percent of Mr. Obama’s appointees have been women, about the same proportion as
in the Clinton administration, but up from the roughly one-third appointed by
George W. Bush.
The skew was widespread: male appointees under Mr. Obama outnumbered female
appointees at 11 of the 15 federal departments, for instance. In some cases, the
skew was also deep. At the Departments of Justice, Defense, Veterans Affairs and
Energy, male appointees outnumbered female appointees by about two to one.
“We’re not only getting better than previous administrations, but we also want
to get better ourselves as well,” Nancy D. Hogan, assistant to the president and
director of presidential personnel, said in response to the Times analysis. “The
president puts a premium on making his team representative of the American
people.”
The White House itself employs almost exactly the same number of men and women,
and administration officials said they hoped to even out the ratio across the
government and help ensure that future Democratic administrations have a diverse
and deep bench of candidates for high-level jobs.
But Mr. Obama’s recent nominations raised concern that women were being
underrepresented at the highest level of government and would be passed over for
top positions.
For instance, many Democrats had hoped that Mr. Obama would name Michèle
Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense, to the Pentagon post. They had
also hoped that he might name Alyssa Mastromonaco or Nancy-Ann M. DeParle, who
are top White House aides, to the chief of staff job, or Lael Brainard, an under
secretary at the Treasury Department, as secretary. But speculation about the
chief of staff position now rests on Denis McDonough, the deputy national
security adviser, and Ronald A. Klain, a former chief of staff to Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr. For the Treasury position, most expect Mr. Obama to name his
current chief of staff, Jacob J. Lew.
“It’s not so much about checking a box, like on a census form,” said Tracy Sefl,
a Democratic political consultant in Washington. “It’s about the qualitative
properties that the candidate takes to the position. In this case you’re talking
about tremendous women, and then we get a whole bunch more white guys.”
Interviews with current and former members of the administration, both men and
women, suggested that there was no single reason for the gender discrepancy in
administration appointments, and several repeatedly spoke of the
administration’s internal commitment to diversity and gender equity.
But several said that the “pipeline” of candidates appeared to be one problem.
They said it seemed that more men than women were put forward or put their names
forward for jobs. In part, that might be a result of the persistence of
historical discrepancies: men have traditionally dominated government fields
like finance, security and defense.
The Obama administration has helped reverse that trend by putting women in top
policy-making jobs in traditionally male-dominated fields, officials said. “It
makes a huge difference when you have women who are leaders,” said Celeste A.
Wallander, who was a deputy assistant defense secretary until July. “They tend
to have networks of excellent women they can call on.”
In many areas of government, the Obama administration has brought the gender
ratio much closer to even than the Bush administration. At the Treasury
Department, which has a longstanding reputation as a boys’ club, men made up
about 57 percent of appointees, down from 64 percent during the Bush
administration as of 2008 and 60 percent in the Clinton administration as of
2000. Moreover, women now hold some of the top policy-making jobs in the
Treasury Department, including Ms. Brainard, the country’s top financial
diplomat, and Mary J. Miller, the under secretary for domestic finance.
But experts on the representation of women in government and business said that
the White House had more work to do to ensure that women were more equally
represented, including changing the work conditions within the administration.
“It is not just a pipeline issue,” said Marie C. Wilson, a women’s leadership
advocate who is the founder of the White House Project, a New York-based
nonprofit group. “The pipeline in government has loads of talented people in it,
and loads of talented women.”
She noted that women with young families, more so than men with young families,
tended to drop out of jobs that demanded long hours — a trend also noted by
administration officials. Perhaps as evidence of that skew, there were about 57
percent more male appointees than female appointees at the assistant or deputy
assistant level.
Experts said that family-friendly policies, like paid maternity and paternity
leave, might keep more women in administration jobs. “We’re the only
industrialized nation in the world with no mandatory paid leave,” said Victoria
A. Budson, the executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at
Harvard. “This is about creating a better system of labor throughout the course
of a person’s career.”
The Times performed a data analysis of the Plum Book, a government listing of
political appointees that comes out once every four years. The 2012 version
included about 4,000 named staff members appointed by the administration as of
June, and excluded members of the career Civil Service and certain
security-sensitive positions. Still, it provides a mostly comprehensive view of
the Obama administration, from the Defense Department to the tiny Arctic
Research Commission.
An analysis of a separate pool of federal personnel data found that the number
of high-level female political appointees outside the White House was about the
same under Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama, though it fell under Mr. Bush. Women held
about 35 percent of those positions, like assistant secretary, in 2011 and 1999.
Women held about 25 percent in 2007. The Clinton administration named
significantly more women to political appointments than prior administrations,
about 44 percent over all.
Though the percentage of women in the last two Democratic administrations has
held roughly steady, there are a record number of women in Congress this year:
20 in the Senate and 81 in the House.
Kitty Bennett,
Derek Willis and Sarah Cohen contributed reporting.
January 7,
2013
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON
— Risking a potentially rancorous battle with Congress at the start of his
second term, President Obama on Monday nominated Chuck Hagel, a former
Republican senator from Nebraska whom Mr. Obama hailed as “the leader that our
troops deserve,” to be secretary of defense.
Mr. Obama also nominated John O. Brennan, his chief counterterrorism adviser, to
be director of the Central Intelligence Agency, putting a close aide who was at
his side during the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden into the
top job at the agency.
The president extolled Mr. Hagel’s record as a decorated veteran of the Vietnam
War, describing how he once dragged his brother to safety after he struck a
landmine.
“Just as Sergeant Hagel was there for his brother, Secretary Hagel will be there
for you,” said Mr. Obama, who was flanked by Mr. Hagel and the current defense
secretary, Leon E. Panetta, at the White House ceremony.
“More than most, Chuck understands that war is not just an abstraction,” Mr.
Obama said.
Of Mr. Brennan, the president said he was one of the architects of the
counterterrorism strategy that dealt setbacks to the leadership of Al Qaeda.
“Think about the results,” Mr. Obama said, noting that Mr. Brennan had been a
tireless sentry for the American people.
The president also emphasized that Mr. Brennan had embedded counterterrorism
within a legal framework, saying, “he understands we are a nation of laws.”
The announcements, which were widely expected, complete a troika of personnel
moves, along with that of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who was
named as secretary of state last month, that fill out Mr. Obama’s national
security team for his second term.
The nomination of Mr. Hagel sets up a showdown between the president and
Congress, with Republican senators predicting he will face a bruising
confirmation because of his views on Israel, Iran and Islamic militant groups.
He has also faced criticism from gay rights organizations forremarks he made 14
years ago – for which he has since apologized – about an openly gay diplomat.
Conservative and Jewish groups say that Mr. Hagel has opposed sanctions on Iran,
has inadequately supported Israel and has advocated engagement with groups like
Hamas and Hezbollah. They also fault him for having once referred to pro-Israel
lobbying groups on Capitol Hill as “the Jewish lobby.”
Still, it was not clear how hard those groups would fight to block Mr. Hagel’s
nomination after having failed to derail his candidacy since he emerged as
front-runner for the job.
“We’re not in the opposition camp, we’re in the concerned camp,” said David A.
Harris, the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, a centrist
Jewish group. “We’re going to count on the Senate to examine, as it must, key
issues of concern.”
Mr. Harris said that Iran topped his list of concerns because Mr. Hagel had
voted against American sanctions against the Iranian government over its nuclear
program and had argued against using military force to prevent Tehran from
obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in
a statement that Mr. Hagel “would not have been my first choice, but I respect
the president’s prerogative.”
However, Mr. Foxman said that the senators should challenge Mr. Hagel on his
positions on Israel and Iran, which he said were “so out of sync” with those of
the president. “I particularly hope Senator Hagel will clarify and explain his
comments about the ‘Jewish lobby’ that were hurtful to many in the Jewish
community,” Mr. Foxman added.
Mr. Obama referred obliquely to the controversy swirling around Mr. Hagel,
saying that soldiers in the field were far away from the politics of Washington,
but should not be handicapped by it.
Mr. Obama’s choices for the Pentagon and the C.I.A. reflect a determination to
fill his central national security jobs with people in whom he has deep trust
and with whom he has personal rapport, according to White House aides.
Mr. Brennan, these advisers said, has developed exceptionally close ties to the
president in his four years at the White House, briefing him on terrorist plots,
pushing to expand the strategy of using unmanned drones to kill suspected
terrorists and advising him on decisions like authorizing the Bin Laden raid.
Mr. Obama’s rapport with Mr. Hagel goes back to their days in the Senate. In
July 2008, Mr. Hagel and Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island,
accompanied Mr. Obama on a trip to Afghanistan that helped establish the
Democratic presidential nominee’s foreign policy credentials.
Like the president, Mr. Hagel is deeply suspicious of a lingering American
military presence in Afghanistan, and would most likely be comfortable with a
more rapid drawdown of American troops after the United States and its allies
turn over responsibility for security to the Afghans at the end of 2014.
John Nagl, a retired Army officer and professor of history at the United States
Naval Academy, recalled Mr. Hagel addressing a class he was teaching at West
Point. “He said, ‘I was that 19-year-old rifleman. Look me in the eye and tell
me that if you send a kid to get killed, it will be for a mission that matters.’
”
“He’ll be a voice for G.I. Joe, and that’s a very valuable thing,” Mr. Nagl
said.
At Monday’s ceremony, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Panetta, the outgiung defense
secretary, whom he said earned a break after heading both the Pentagon and the
C.I.A.
The president also thanked Michael J. Morell, who stepped in to run the C.I.A.
as acting director after David H. Petraeus resigned in the wake of a sex scandal
last fall.
“I hope the Senate will act on these nominations promptly,” he said. “When it
comes to national security, we don’t like to leave gaps.”
January 3,
2013
The New York Times
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
WASHINGTON
— President Obama set aside his veto threat and late Wednesday signed a defense
bill that imposes restrictions on transferring detainees out of military prisons
in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But he attached a signing statement
claiming that he has the constitutional power to override the limits in the law.
The move awakened a dormant issue from Mr. Obama’s first term: his broken
promise to close the Guantánamo prison. Lawmakers intervened by imposing
statutory restrictions on transfers of prisoners to other countries or into the
United States, either for continued detention or for prosecution.
Now, as Mr. Obama prepares to begin his second term, Congress has tried to
further restrict his ability to wind down the detention of terrorists worldwide,
adding new limits in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, which
lawmakers approved in late December.
The bill extended and strengthened limits on transfers out of Guantánamo to
troubled nations like Yemen, the home country of the bulk of the remaining
low-level detainees who have been cleared for repatriation. It also, for the
first time, limited the Pentagon’s ability to transfer the roughly 50 non-Afghan
citizens being held at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan at a
time when the future of American detention operations there is murky.
Despite his objections, Mr. Obama signed the bill, saying its other provisions
on military programs were too important to jeopardize. Early Thursday, shortly
after midnight, the White House released the signing statement in which the
president challenged several of its provisions.
For example, in addressing the new limits on the transfers from Parwan, Mr.
Obama wrote that the provision “could interfere with my ability as commander in
chief to make time-sensitive determinations about the appropriate disposition of
detainees in an active area of hostilities.”
He added that if he decided that the statute was operating “in a manner that
violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my administration will
implement it to avoid the constitutional conflict” — legalistic language that
means interpreting the statute as containing an unwritten exception a president
may invoke at his discretion.
Saying that he continued to believe that closing the Guantánamo prison was in
the country’s fiscal and national security interests, Mr. Obama made a similar
challenge to three sections that limit his ability to transfer detainees from
Guantánamo, either into the United States for prosecution before a civilian
court or for continued detention at another prison, or to the custody of another
nation.
It was not clear, however, whether Mr. Obama intended to follow through, or
whether he was just saber-rattling as a matter of principle. He made a similar
challenge a year ago to the Guantánamo transfer restrictions in the 2012 version
of the National Defense Authorization Act, but — against the backdrop of the
presidential election campaign — he did not invoke the authority he claimed.
Several officials said that it was not certain, even from inside the government,
what Mr. Obama’s intentions were. While the signing statement fell short of a
veto, they said its language appeared intended to preserve some flexibility for
the president to make a decision later about whether to make a new push to close
the Guantánamo prison amid competing policy priorities.
Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, which
advocates closing Guantánamo, criticized Mr. Obama for not vetoing the
legislation despite his threat to do so.
“The administration blames Congress for making it harder to close Guantánamo,
yet for a second year President Obama has signed damaging Congressional
restrictions into law,” she said. “The burden is on Obama to show he is serious
about closing the prison.”
About 166 men remain at the prison.
Signing statements are official documents issued by a president when he signs
bills into law that instruct subordinates in the executive branch about how to
carry out the new statutes. In recent decades, starting with the Reagan
administration, presidents have used the device with far greater frequency than
in earlier eras to claim a constitutional right to bypass or override new laws.
The practice peaked under President George W. Bush, who used signing statements
to advance sweeping theories of presidential power and challenged nearly 1,200
provisions over eight years — more than twice as many as all previous presidents
combined.
The American Bar Association has called upon presidents to stop using signing
statements, calling the practice “contrary to the rule of law and our
constitutional system of separation of powers.” A year ago, the group sent a
letter to Mr. Obama restating its objection to the practice and urging him to
instead veto bills if he thinks sections are unconstitutional.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama sharply criticized Mr. Bush’s use of the
device as an overreach. Once in office, however, he said that he would use it
only to invoke mainstream and widely accepted theories of the constitutional
power of the president.
In his latest signing statement, Mr. Obama also objected to five provisions in
which Congress required consultations and set out criteria over matters
involving diplomatic negotiations about such matters as a security agreement
with Afghanistan, saying that he would interpret the provisions so as not to
inhibit “my constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations of the
United States.”
Mr. Obama raised concerns about several whistle-blower provisions to protect
people who provide certain executive branch information to Congress — including
employees of contractors who uncover waste or fraud, and officials raising
concerns about the safety and reliability of nuclear stockpiles.
He also took particular objection to a provision that directs the commander of
the military’s nuclear weapons to submit a report to Congress “without change”
detailing whether any reduction in nuclear weapons proposed by Mr. Obama would
“create a strategic imbalance or degrade deterrence” relative to Russian
stockpiles.
The provision, Mr. Obama said, “would require a subordinate to submit materials
directly to Congress without change, and thereby obstructs the traditional chain
of command.”
