Maureen Dowd
The New York Times
I felt a twinge of envy when I heard that my pal Tom Friedman had played golf with the president for five hours one September Sunday.
Tom learned a lot about Barack Obama’s positions on weighty issues and sporty ones. (This president doesn’t cheat and he does expect bets to be paid off.) My natural impulse was to shrug it off. Men have always craved private realms — the golf club, men’s club, garage, workshop, shed; a place to get away from the chatter and clatter of women and kids. (In Obama’s case, he may desire a testosterone break from his estrogen nest — a wife, two daughters and a mother-in-law.)
Gordon Thorburn, the British author of the book “Men and Sheds,” explained that the word shed derived from the Anglo-Saxon “scead,” or shade. It was, in a metaphorical sense, obscure, an “intellectual pantry” or “spiritual home” where a man could reflect and dawdle with tools and toys.
But I don’t kid myself that the presidential playing fields are merely about play. After Tom’s golf outing, Politico ran the headline: “Friedman jumps to the front of the influence list.”
Alexander Mooney
CNN Ticker Producer
Former President George W. Bush made his debut as a motivational speaker Monday night, telling a Fort Worth, Texas crowd it's futile to waste energy chasing popularity.
"It's so simple in life to chase popularity, but popularity is fleeting, it's not real," Bush said at a "Get Motivated!" business seminar, a multi-city event its organizers describe as an "energizing, action-packed, star-studded, fun-filled, spectacular stage show."
The president himself saw wild popularity swings during his eight years in the White House, garnering nearly a 90 percent approval rating in the months following the attacks on September 11, 2001 and exiting office with only the support of 31 percent of Americans, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll.
The former president was greeted enthusiastically by the 11,000 attendees of the event, according to the Fort Worth Telegram, and he spoke casually for about 20 minutes.
Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer
"Certainly from our standpoint this gives us a sense of momentum when the United States has accolades tossed its way rather than shoes."
That's the take of Hillary Clinton's State Department on President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, according to her spokesman, Assistant Secretary PJ Crowley.
Crowley was referring to an incident last December, when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during his final visit to Iraq during his administration.
Gloria Borger
CNN Senior Political Analyst
Sometimes, even in Washington, there's no way around a central truth: that in governing, there are moments when real, tough decisions must be made. No waffling. None of the usual "on the one hand, on the other hand." No hiding behind the votes cast by others.
There is one vote, and it belongs to the president.
It was that way with George W. Bush in December 2006, when, after conferring for three months with his generals and his Cabinet - not to mention the advice offered by the pooh-bahs in the Iraq Study Group - he decided on a surge strategy in Iraq. It was not a plan highly touted by many of his advisers, but by January, Bush told the nation "America will change our strategy ... [and] this will require increasing American force levels."
As it turns out, the surge worked.
World Public Opinion.org
A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of Iranians finds that six in 10 favor restoration of diplomatic relations between their country and the United States, a stance that is directly at odds with the position the Iranian government has held for three decades. A similar number favor direct talks.
However, Iranians do not appear to share the international infatuation with Barack Obama. Only 16 percent say that have confidence in him to do the right thing in world affairs. This is lower than any of the 20 countries polled by WPO on this question in the spring. Despite his recent speech in Cairo, where Obama stressed that he respects Islam, only a quarter of Iranians are convinced he does. And three in four (77%) continue to have an unfavorable view of the United States government.
"While the majority of Iranian people are ready to do business with Obama, they show little trust in him," says Steven Kull, director of WPO.
At the same time, there are some signs of softening. Trust in Obama is three times higher than the 6 percent of Iranians who expressed confidence in George W. Bush in a 2008 WPO poll. Unfavorable views of the United States government are down 8 points from the 85 percent unfavorable views in 2008 (WPO).
Bobby Ghosh
TIME
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush Administration might have had a tense weekend. After months of delay and controversy, the Obama Administration is expected on Monday to declassify the 2004 CIA inspector general's report into the agency's interrogation program. Cheney, the most prominent of several Bush-era officials who have vociferously defended the program, faces either vindication or more vilification.
Over the past two days news reports have quoted unnamed officials as saying the IG's findings include instances where CIA interrogators used power drills and even a gun to threaten a detainee; on another occasion, as first reported by Newsweek, they allegedly staged a mock execution. If true, these tactics would go well beyond the coercive techniques permitted by the Bush Administration's legal counsel.
CNN
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge says he successfully countered an effort by senior Bush administration officials to raise the nation's terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential vote.
"An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government" after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of President George W. Bush, writes Ridge in his new book, "The Test of Our Times."
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to "orange," even though Ridge believed a threatening message "should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level."
The former Pennsylvania governor also writes that he saw no reason for the move, which he now calls a bad idea, because additional security precautions had already been taken in advance of the election.
"We certainly didn't believe the tape alone warranted action, and we weren't seeing any additional intelligence that justified it. In fact, we were incredulous," Ridge said of the push. "... I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "
The idea that an attack might take place had been discussed, he says. "But at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm. ... It also seemed possible to me and to others around the table that something could be afoot other than simple concern about the country's safety."
In the end, the threat level was not raised.
Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by former Bush counsel Harriet Miers and political chief Karl Rove.
A campaign to oust Iglesias intensified after state party officials and GOP members of the congressional delegation apparently concluded he was not pursuing the cases against Democrats in a way that would help then- Rep. Heather Wilson in a tight reelection race, according to interviews and Bush White House e-mails released Tuesday by congressional investigators. The documents place the genesis of Iglesias's dismissal earlier than previously known.
The disclosures mark the end of a 2 1/2 year investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, which sued to gain access to Bush White House documents in a dispute that struck at the heart of a president's executive power. House members have reserved the right to hold a public hearing at which Rove, Miers, and other aides could appear this fall.
House Judiciary Chairman John M. Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) on Tuesday characterized the role of Bush White House figures in the firing episode as improper and inappropriate.
"Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing US Attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political horse trading and, in the most egregious case of political abuse of the US Attorney corps - that of US Attorney Iglesias - because he refused to use his office to help Republicans win elections," Conyers said. "When Mr. Iglesias said his firing was a 'political fragging,' he was right."
Add a comment
Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor
Much has been made of the involvement of former President Bill Clinton in the freeing of two Current TV journalists held in North Korea and facing 12 years of hard labor.
But considering that American taxpayers continue to pay for their office space, security detail and other perks of the office of a former president, why not put Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush to work for the good of the country?
There seems to be a tradition in this country of former presidents spending their time giving speeches, raising money for their presidential libraries, writing their memoirs and staying out of the way of the current occupant of the White House.
I get that. You had your shot and you want the new person to have their day in the sun and do it that way. Yet letting that experience and solid relationships go to waste makes no sense to me.
Asia Lindsay
AC360° Intern
Zambia's president was talking up his country’s economy at an outdoor press conference when a monkey sitting in a tree above urinated on him, mid-sentence.
President Rupiah Banda, whose controversial inauguration in 2008 provoked small-scale riots, called the press conference to speak about recent riots that have erupted throughout the country due to a deepening global recession and its effect on the price of copper, Zambia's principal export.
"You have urinated on my jacket!" he shouted back at the monkey.
“I will give this monkey for lunch to Mr. Sata,” he joked, referring to his political rival, Michael Sata.
Banda took control of Zambia in 2008 after the former president, Levy Mwanawasa, suffered a stroke.
Since his inauguration, he has focused on improving the economy and reducing taxes on food and fuel to “help Zambia to become a middle income country by 2030."
Zambia’s ruling party has already put Banda forth as a candidate for the 2011 presidential elections, despite widespread claims that his 2008 victory was fraudulent. Banda beat Sata by 2 percent, though Sata had led in the polls.
Strange incidents involving presidents and press conferences are not unprecedented, of course. At a 2008 press conference in Iraq, former U.S. President George W. Bush ducked to avoid a shoe thrown by an angry Iraqi journalist.
Bush was unphased by the incident, despite it being a grave insult in Arabic culture, saying later, “If you want the facts, it's a size 10 shoe that he threw”.
In the department of strange liquids landing on politicians, in March 2009 British Business Secretary Lord Peter Mandelson had a cup of green custard thrown in his face by political activist Leila Deen at a summit on low carbon industrial strategies in London.
Deen is a member of the environmental group ‘Plane Stupid’ and threw the custard in protest of the third runway at Heathrow Airport. She described the incident as a “last resort.”
In Zambia, President Banda took the monkey’s misstep with good grace, later laughing with journalists saying that, “perhaps these [monkey urine spots] are blessings.”
If so, there could be more such blessings. Plenty of animals live near the State House, including antelopes and birds.
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