Obama Kicks GOP Ass

January 29, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Here’s why we voted for Barack Obama. Above is a clip of Obama discussing health care at the GOP House Issues Conference. Obama took on and demolished every GOP argument. Whether its Kerry debating Bush, Obama debating McCain, or Obama debating the GOP House delegation, Republican views just cannot stand up to fact-based rational arguments.

Barack Obama vs. 140 Republicans just isn’t a fair fight. The Republicans didn’t stand a chance.

Obama repeatedly took loaded questions packed with all the usual Republican talking points and turned them against them.

The full transcript is available here. It was shown on C-SPAN and MSNBC is also replaying the event in prime time tonight. Marc Ambinder described the event:

Accepting the invitation to speak at the House GOP retreat may turn out to be the smartest decision the White House has made in months. Debating a law professor is kind of foolish: the Republican House Caucus has managed to turn Obama’s weakness — his penchant for nuance — into a strength. Plenty of Republicans asked good and probing questions, but Mike Pence, among others, found their arguments simply demolished by the president. (By the way: can we stop with the Obama needs a teleprompter jokes?)

More than the State of the Union — or on top of the State of the Union — this may be a pivotal moment for the future of the presidential agenda on Capitol Hill. (Democrats are loving this. Chris Hayes, The Nation‘s Washington bureau chief, tweeted that he hadn’t liked Obama more since the inauguration.)

During the presidential campaign, it was John McCain who proposed a form of the British Prime Ministers’ questions for the president. It was derided as a gimmick. This is no gimmick. I have not seen a better and perhaps more productive political discussion in this country in…a long time. 90 minutes worth!

Maybe since Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA. Republicans may have wished they had spoken to John McCain about what happened to him in the presidential debates before they decided to broadcast this session. The president looked genuinely engaged, willing to discuss things. Democrats believe that he tossed away the GOP talking points and lack of real plans into a bludgeon against them. “The whole question was structured by a talking point,” he told Jeb Hensarling. Obama took the blame for not living up to some of his promises on transparency in health care negotiations. He displayed a familiarity with Republican proposals that seemed to astonish those who asked questions of him. And at the end, Republicans rushed up to him, pens and photo cameras in hands, wanting autographs and pictures.

Mused one mid-level White House official: “This really is the best thing we’ve done in a long, long time”

Massachusetts was an eternity ago. The momentum is now in Obama’s direction as he gives the GOP the choice of joining in or walking away, with their decision being televised.

More video:

Posted in Barack Obama. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

More Stories From “Game Change” Including Clinton Sleaze and Conflict Between Obama and Biden

January 10, 2010 — Ron Chusid

More items from Game Change have come out since my run down yesterday. These include more examples of sleaze from the Clinton campaign and conflict between Obama and Biden.

While Hillary Clinton tried to disassociate herself from the smears against Obama based upon drug use when young, Mark Penn boasted to his staff how many times he managed to say “cocaine” on Hardball. Hillary was pleased by this:

“Hillary’s reaction to Shaheen’s remarks was, ‘Good for him!’ Followed by ‘Let’s push it out.’  Her aides violently disagreed, seeing what Shaheen had said as a PR disaster. Grudgingly, Clinton acquiesced to disowning Shaheen’s comments. But she wasn’t going to cut him loose. Why should Billy have to fall on his sword for invoking something that had been fair game in every recent election?”

While yesterday’s post dealt with John Edwards’ affair, there is also a section with McCain’s aides confronting Cindy McCain about her affair:

“The man was said to be her long-term boyfriend; the pair had been sighted all over town in the last few years. Members of McCain’s senior staff discussed the unsettling news, and their growing concerns that Cindy’s behavior had been increasingly erratic of late. [John] Weaver and others suspected that the Cindy rumor was rooted in truth. It was upsetting, Weaver believed, but not a threat.”

The Obamas flew to Nashville to get Al Gore’s assurance that he would not run before Obama decided to run. While the McCain campaign had problems with Sarah Palin’s ignorance, the Obama campaign had problems of their own with Biden’s mouth. From Politico:

The tensions began in September of 2008 word got back to Obama’s campaign headquarters that Biden had told reporters on his campaign plane that he was more qualified than his running mate to be president.

“A chill set in between Chicago and the Biden plane,” Halperin and Heilemann write in the book, to be released Monday. “Joe and Obama barely spoke by phone, rarely campaigned together.”

And when Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was asked about having Biden dial into the nightly campaign conference call, he responded: “Nah.” Instead, Biden had his own call with Plouffe and senior campaign adviser David Axelrod.

Obama himself was growing increasingly frustrated with his running mate after Biden let loose with a string of gaffes, including a statement that paying higher taxes amounted to patriotism and criticism of one of the campaign’s own ads poking fun at John McCain.

But when Biden, at an October fund-raiser in Seattle, famously predicted that Obama would be tested with an international crisis, the then-Illinois senator had had enough.

“How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?” he demanded of his advisers on a conference call, a moment at which most people on the call said the candidate was as angry as they had ever heard him.

Following his campaign plane braggadocio about being more qualified than the man who put him on the ticket, Biden’s access to the press was limited and he grilled new staffers that were assigned to him to try and determine if they were part of his team or loyal to Chicago…

When the ticketmates talked a few days after Biden’s prediction that Obama would be tested, Obama lit into his running mate. But Biden didn’t apologize – or even indicate he understood why his comments in Seattle were problematic, though McCain’s campaign had already cut an ad featuring the dark warning.

I noted both the low opinion of John Edwards by Democratic Party leaders as well as the conflict between John and Edwards over John’s affair in the previous post. These two narratives also came  together here:

There were apparently “two Americas” within the marriage between John and Elizabeth Edwards. The former North Carolina senator’s wife viewed herself as a worldly intellectual and publicly called her husband “a hick” and his parents “rednecks,” according to the authors.

“She was forever letting John know she regarded him as her intellectual inferior,” they write, mocking her husband, the presidential hopeful, as somebody who “doesn’t read books.”

Posted in Al Gore, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards, John McCain, Politics, Scandals. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Los Angeles Times Looks Back At Charles Johnson’s Parting With The Right Wing

January 8, 2010 — Ron Chusid

Last month Charles Johnson gave his reasons for parting with the right wing, which I discussed here. The Los Angeles Times was a bit slower than I was in discussing this. They noted how his parting of ways was received by fellow conservative bloggers:

In Johnson’s mind, he has not really changed but merely shifted his focus. Where once he was preoccupied with national security, staking out a hawkish, pro-military position, he now spends more time focusing on his liberal social views, and gripes with conservatives who disagree. “I like to think,” he told me this week, “I am pretty independent of [the] political winds.”

But not totally immune. As I talked to Johnson in his office, an alert flashed on one of his two giant computer monitors. An angry screed targeting him on another website concluded: “I think a visit to Mr. Johnson’s home might be warranted. Anybody got his address?”

Such veiled threats are at least one reason why Johnson, 56, relocated not long ago. He remains in the Los Angeles area, but now is in a gated community.

The man who once decried vitriol spread on liberal websites now says: “The kinds of hate mail and the kinds of attacks I am getting from the right wing are way beyond anything I got when I was criticizing the left or even radical Islam.”

His reasons for parting with the right are discussed further down in the column:

He believes his disagreements with some conservatives should have become obvious in the spring of 2008 when he slammed Ben Stein for his anti-evolution movie, “Expelled.” In numerous posts since, Johnson has derided what he sees as the right’s anti-science bent. “When they teach their children that,” Johnson said, “they are raising a generation of kids who aren’t going to be ready to deal with the world in which science is increasingly important.”

In recent months, Johnson’s jabs at right-wing icons have been more frequent. He now regularly takes digs at Fox News, vitriolic blogger Michelle Malkin and, with particular glee, Glenn Beck.

He lambasted the Fox star recently for loony fear-mongering over the federal government’s move to take “control” of Americans’ computers when they signed up for the cash for clunkers car buyback program.

Johnson called Beck a “Raving Freakazoid Nut Sandwich,” and when Beck repeated the phrase on the air, the blogger gleefully posted the video on his site.

When anyone asked directly, Johnson said he would tell them he had voted Democratic most of his life — including ballots for Bill Clinton and, in 2000, for Al Gore. Raised a Catholic, he now calls himself an atheist.

His growing discontent with conservatives “had been brewing in my subconscious for a long time.” It was with little planning, he said, that his 10 reasons for a formal parting with the right poured onto the blog one Monday night.

“The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes and off the cliff,” Johnson wrote. “I won’t be going over the cliff with them.”

No one should assume, Johnson said, that pronouncement makes him a committed lefty.

“I am still going to criticize what I think needs to be criticized, whatever it might be.”

This is another example of where the differences between the opposition to the right wing is no longer about ideology but about reality. Other than for a handful on the far left, everyone supports a market economy, even if there is disagreement on the specifics. Pretty much everyone supports defending the country against terrorism–although there are differences of opinion as to how this should be done and to what degree this should dominate our thought. Where rational people really disagree with the right wing is over whether we evaluate issues based upon rational evidence or based upon twisting the facts to fit the biases of the extreme right.

Posted in Bill Clinton, Blogs & Social Media. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Peter Hoekstra Continues To Play Politics With Failed Terrorist Attack

December 27, 2009 — Ron Chusid

Yesterday I noted how my Congressman, Peter Hoekstra, extended his long track record of playing politics with terrorism by using this week’s attempt to blow up a plane in Detroit for political gain. Hoekstra, who is now a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor in Michigan, continued this again today on (of course) Fox:

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said Sunday that it is fair to blame the Obama administration for the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day.

Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Select Intelligence Committee said that the administration has not taken the threat of terrorist threats on the U.S. seriously.

Asked by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace if it is fair to blame the Obama administration for the attacks, the Michigan Republican replied “”Yeah, I think it really is.”

Hoekstra said that increased domestic threats have made themselves more evidence this year, with this attack and the Fort Hood shootings, but said that the Obama administration is trying to “downplay” the threat.

“The Obama administration came in and said we’re not going to use the word terrorism anymore, we’re going to call it man made disasters, trying to, I think, downplay the threat from terrorism,” he said. “In reality, it’s getting much more complex.”

So it is Obama’s fault that a  terrorist entered the country on a visa granted under former president George Bush while I have never seen Hoekstra criticize Bush for the multiple errors in judgment which contributed to the success of the 9/11 attack. As I noted in the earlier post:

The Clinton administration left the Bush administration warnings about al Qaeda. The Bush administration not only ignored these warnings but lied about receiving them. Then there was that CIA briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” just before the attack which George Bush ignored. As Al Gore discussed in The Assault on Reason, paying attention to this warning should have led to a review of the State Department/INS watch list which already contained the names of many of the 9/11 terrorists. Others could have also been identified before the attack as they were using the same addresses or frequent flier numbers. In 2006 Keith Olbermann also reviewed the many warnings which were ignored.

It is total fiction on Hoekstra’s part to claim either that the Obama administration is not taking terrorism seriously or that “The Obama administration came in and said we’re not going to use the word terrorism anymore.”  Barack Obama has spoken out several times about the need to respond to terrorism including his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars back in 2007. Steve Benen recently noted that the Obama administration is not only taking action against terrorism, but has had significant successes. A report from ABC News last August quoted National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones who cited other ways in which the Obama administration is having greater success against terrorism than the Bush administration.

Taking such liberties with the truth is hardly new for Hoekstra who has previously made discredited claims of finding WMD in Iraq. He has also tried to play politics with terrorism previously. After having written an op-ed condemning others for divulging military secrets, he himself was found to have divulged secrets on Twitter. He previously resorted to scare tactics which have been criticized by several former national security officials when there was talk of moving prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to a maximum security prison in Michigan.

Posted in Barack Obama, George Bush, Michigan News, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Peter Hoekstra Once Again Helps Al Qaeda Spread Terror For His Personal Political Gain

December 26, 2009 — Ron Chusid

The dumbest thing  you can do in response to a terrorist attack is further the goal of the terrorists by spreading more fear. My Congressman, Pete Hoekstra, couldn’t resist doing this yet again in hopes of obtaining political gain following yesterday’s terror attempt in Detroit.

A Nigerian man claiming ties to al Qaeda attempted to set off an explosion on an international flight arriving in Detroit yesterday. He had a powder and a fluid strapped to his leg which he mixed in an attempt to create an explosion as the plane descended into Detroit Metropolitan Airport. The attempt failed with only a minimal explosion and the man was subdued.

In response to this attack there needs to be an investigation as to why someone who was already on terrorist watch lists not only managed to get aboard the plane but to do so with potentially explosive substances strapped to his leg. We need to find out if he was really acting under orders of al Qaeda and what other plans they might have. This highlights a security problem I have long feared–we are vulnerable to the weakest link in screening anywhere in the world as once someone gets past security at one airport they can travel internationally with far less scrutiny.

This is a time for reasoned evaluation of our security systems, not to attempt to instill further panic for political gain as Hoekstra has. Hoekstra is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee and is a candidate for the 2010 Republican nomination for Governor. Presumably he thinks that he improves his prospect among Republicans by making cheap political points such as this:

“It’s not surprising,” U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican, said of the alleged terrorist attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight in Detroit. A Nigerian who authorities said had told them he was ordered by al-Qaida to detonate an explosive was in custody. Reports linked the explosives to Yemen.

“People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration,” said Hoekstra.

Such conduct is hardly new from Hoekstra. He has previously made discredited claims of finding WMD in Iraq. After having written an op-ed condemning others for divulging military secrets, he himself was found to have divulged secrets on Twitter. He previously resorted to scare tactics which have been criticized by several former national security officials when there was talk of moving prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to a maximum security prison in Michigan.

Besides commenting before we have much information and unnecessarily spreading fear, Hoekstra’s message makes little sense in trying to blame a Democratic administration. It was the Republican Congress which blocked attempts to fight al Qaeda under Bill Clinton. Other Democrats such as John Kerry were warning about the threat of terrorism well before 9/11.

The Clinton administration even left the Bush administration warnings about al Qaeda. The Bush administration not only ignored these warnings but lied about receiving them. Then there was that CIA briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” just before the attack which George Bush ignored. As Al Gore discussed in The Assault on Reason, paying attention to this warning should have led to a review of the State Department/INS watch list which already contained the names of many of the 9/11 terrorists. Others could have also been identified before the attack as they were using the same addresses or frequent flier numbers. In 2006 Keith Olbermann also reviewed the many warnings which were ignored. Barack Obama has spoken out several times about the need to respond to terrorism including his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars back in 2007.

Playing politics with terrorism has also been commonplace from Republicans. After 9/11 we had a time of national unity when people of both parties were willing to support George Bush in taking reasonable action to respond. Instead the Republicans took advantage of 9/11 both for partisan gain and to push through their pre-9/11 agenda, including attacking Iraq, which has only acted to weaken the country and increase the risk of terrorist attacks.

There are many people in Michigan, including myself, who have family members who will be returning home from vacations on international flights through Detroit.I hope that rather than helping him politically, many more Michigan voters are repulsed by Peter Hoekstra’s irresponsible attempts to spread fear and seek personal political gain at a time when we need a serious review of the problem. Pete Hoekstra has demonstrated yet again that he is not fit to be Governor.

Posted in Al Gore, Bill Clinton, George Bush, John Kerry, Michigan News, Republicans, Terrorism. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

The Contributions of John Kerry

December 17, 2009 — Ron Chusid

John Kerry was kicked around by the left far more than he deserved both in 2004 and after his close loss to George Bush. The previous post notes the quiet contributions John Kerry has made to the health care reform legislation. He has also been hard at work in other areas including climate change and on foreign policy. I supported John Kerry in 2004 because of many of the qualities he has shown since losing–not because he was the most flashy or charismatic candidate.

Gail Collins compares Kerry to Joe Lieberman and now regrets much of what she said about Kerry in the past:

I frequently made fun of Kerry for being a terrible presidential candidate. Which he was. But there comes a point when we the people have to move on. And Kerry has been a really good former failed presidential candidate. He’s been working hard in the Senate on climate control and trying to help the White House on foreign relations, despite the fact that Barack Obama stiffed him out of the secretary of state job in favor of a person who had been somewhat less supportive than Kerry of Obama’s early presidential aspirations. He actually seems more interested in doing stuff than being admired.

Lieberman was a terrible vice presidential candidate. (Like John Edwards, he not only lost his vice presidential debate, he managed to make Dick Cheney seem likable.) But instead of going back to something he could actually do well, he ran for president. He failed to gain any traction with the voters whatsoever, and like John McCain, he came out of the process bitterly denying that he was bitter.

Let’s look at our two failed-national-candidate models. You can move on, and try to make yourself useful (Kerry, Al Gore). Or you can work out barely suppressed rage by attacking things that you used to be for, like trying to control Medicare costs (McCain) or expanding Medicare eligibility (Lieberman).

Maybe the difference comes from self-image. Lieberman and McCain both thought of themselves as “character” candidates whose success was due to the love and trust of the public, and whose ultimate failure was the work of evil forces beyond their control. Kerry and Gore never believed their success was due to their innate likability. When they lost the presidency, a part of them probably shrugged and remembered that they weren’t all that popular in prep school, either.

Considering that Kerry came closest of any challenger to a sitting president during time of war I wouldn’t be so hard on him as a failed candidate. I have no idea how popular he was in prep school, and that is hardly meaningful. What counts is the work Kerry has done in the Senate in recent years, following the path of another Senator from Massachusetts who wanted to be president but was unable to–Ted Kennedy.

Posted in Al Gore, Barack Obama, Congress, Health Care, John Edwards, John Kerry, John McCain, Op-eds. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment »

Right Wing Spin of A Gore Mistake

December 15, 2009 — Ron Chusid

A story in the conservative Times of London shows how the right wing media spins the news to promote denialism of climate change. Whenever people outside of science popularize the work of scientists, regardless of the field, it is inevitable that we will see some over-simplifications and mistakes. Even Al Gore, who has  generally been accurate in popularizing the work of climate scientists, has made a mistake from time to time. As Matthew Yglesias points out, this right wing spin shows why it is dangerous for Al Gore to make any mistakes:

Al Gore, speaking at Copenhagen, cited the work of Dr Wieslav Maslowki to the effect that “there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.” In fact, according to the Times (UK) “Maslowki, who works at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, said that his latest results give a six-year projection for the melting of 80 per cent of the ice.”

Now it’s true that projecting a 75 percent chance of completely ice free in 5-7 years and projecting 80 percent ice loss in 6 years are different things. Gore seems to have gotten this slightly wrong. Still, Gore’s point was that arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate and that is indeed what Maslowki’s research thinks. It’s totally fair of the Times to point out the error, but what they did was do a whole long article with the headline “Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don’t add up,” leading with the assertion that “The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change ’spin’ row.” The fact that Maslowki’s real figure is extremely close to Gore’s an supports the same overall point is suppressed all the way until the eighteenth graf of a story otherwise dedicating to implying that Gore in particular, and climate activists in general, are huge liars.

There’s a lot of shoddy reporting in the climate debate, but this is a reminder that all the way back to the 2000 presidential campaign there are some kind of special journalistic rules that apply to Gore.

While Gore’s error does not alter the real problem that the arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate, conservative bloggers are following the lead of the Times in trying to spin this to support their denial of the scientific consensus.

At least when Gore makes a mistake he is willing to admit it:

Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.

Instead of showing some journalistic integrity and reporting the facts, the Times further promotes the right wing spin on climate change:

The embarrassing error cast another shadow over the conference after the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, which appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to strengthen their argument that human activities were causing global warming.

This “appeared to suggest” manipulation of data only in the minds of global warming deniers who twisted and misquoted the hacked email. As noted in several recent posts, examination of the hacked email showed that the claims of those using it to try to cast doubt on the science were false and there was nothing in the email which alters the scientific consensus on climate change.

Posted in Al Gore, Environment, News Media. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

Sarah Palin Takes on William Shatner

December 12, 2009 — Ron Chusid

In July Conan O’Brian had William Shatner present a dramatic reading of Sarah Palin’s resignation speech(video here). Conan had Shatner on again to present a dramatic reading of Going Rogue. Shatner was then surprised by Sarah Palin coming on to give her own reading of William Shatner’s autobiography (video above).

We see who Sarah Palin feels confident to confront here. She’s been afraid to give interviews to real journalists such as those on the Sunday morning interview shows after her first couple of major interviews were such flops. She has taken pot shots at Al Gore on her Facebook page and wrote an op-ed packed with falsehoods, but has been afraid to take up the challenge of actually debating him on the issues. A windbag like William Shatner–that she has the guts to do.

Posted in Al Gore, Humor and Satire, Sarah Palin, Television. Tags: , , , . 6 Comments »

Green Hollywood

October 27, 2009 — Ron Chusid

olivia-wilde-ema-01

The Environmental Media Association had their 20th anniversary awards on Sunday night:

Founded by Norman and Lyn Lear and Alan and Cindy Horn, the Environmental Media Association encourages Hollywood to spread the word about going green.

Twenty years later, the group counts the Endangered Species Coalition, the Alaska Rainforest Campaign, the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Fund among its partners. It has been honored by the White House and praised by Al Gore — years before “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The group has met with hundreds of Hollywood writers, directors and producers, helping them incorporate green themes into their films and TV shows and encouraging them to make those productions more environmentally friendly…

The group celebrated its 20th anniversary with an awards ceremony honoring individuals and organizations that help increase public awareness of environmental issues.

Honorees included entrepreneur Richard Branson, who pledged to invest all proceeds from his Virgin Airlines toward developing clean fuels and renewable energy; the National Geographic Society, which supports environmental education through various programs and grants; Centropolis Entertainment, the production company led by director Roland Emmerich and producer Michael Wimer that released the first carbon-neutral film in Hollywood history, “The Day After Tomorrow”; and singer Jason Mraz, who has committed to green touring and using sustainable textiles.

Or if you look at the media reports of the event, an extremely high percentage of the reports featured pictures of Olivia Wilde, such as the one above.

Posted in Al Gore, Entertainment & Leisure, Environment. Tags: , . No Comments »

John Kerry: “De Facto Secretary of State”

October 21, 2009 — Ron Chusid

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John Kerry was the obvious choice to become Secretary of State when Barack Obama became president, but Obama found it politically advantageous to get Hillary Clinton out of the Senate, and prevent her from establishing an opposing power base, by offering the job to her. While Clinton officially has the title, when there are international problems, increasingly Obama has called upon John Kerry.

Joe Biden’s move to the executive branch (without Chenyesque confusion as to the role of the VP), opened the way for John Kerry to become Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and have a greater role in foreign affairs. There has always been a close relationship between Kerry and Barack Obama. Kerry gave Obama one of his earliest opportunities at national prominence in choosing him to give the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. Kerry endorsed Obama for the 2008 nomination in early January, as opposed to supporting either John Edwards, his 2004 running mate, or Hillary Clinton, who at that time had the support of the party establishment.

The Note‘s daily email writes “Sen. John Kerry serves as de facto secretary of state” and this is demonstrated in their on-line version:

Take a look at some of John Kerry recent accomplishments: saves climate bill, becomes the administration’s go-to guy on Karzai in Afghanistan. It took him nearly four years to find his rhythm following his 2004 loss, but Kerry is a player again. On two different fronts, he has stepped up and become a game-saver for his party. On climate/energy, he took a bill that was languishing in the Senate and recruited Lindsey Graham to breathe new life into it. The bill still has a long way to go, but there’s a path to passage and that’s in no small part thanks to Kerry. On Karzai, there are a few tick-tocks about the role he played (one here in the Wall Street Journal), including how the Obama administration used him to, well, super-cede Holbrooke and others. As one Dem strategist commented to us today, “Kerry finally got to show what kind of president he could have been.”

The Wall Street Journal explains why Obama called upon Kerry:

According to one Western diplomat, the Afghan president was more comfortable dealing with Sen. Kerry than with U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry or the administration’s special representative to the region, Richard Holbrooke. Mr. Holbrooke angered Mr. Karzai when he suggested shortly after the Aug. 20 election that a runoff might be needed…

U.S. and Western officials said the Obama administration latched on to Sen. Kerry as a key broker. In June, he played a similar role in the Obama administration’s efforts to build bridges to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to Syrian and U.S. officials.

Sen. Kerry was first drawn into the vote fraud crisis Friday when, at a dinner with U.S. troops from Massachusetts, Mr. Eikenberry pulled him aside and told him of fears Mr. Karzai would denounce findings by U.N.-led election investigators of widespread fraud.

That night, Sen. Kerry went to the presidential palace, where the two men, sometimes accompanied by Mr. Eikenberry and sometimes alone, hashed out Mr. Karzai’s concerns. “We had lot of hours together and talked about a lot of things, including the American experience in elections, and going back to 1864, Al Gore in 2000,” Sen. Kerry said. “I think it helped to put it into a certain framework.”

The Boston Globe notes the importance of Kerry’s diplomatic triumph:

Kerry’s successful talks, which ranged from broad issues of legitimacy to discussions of the statistical analysis used to disqualify ballots, appeared to be his most significant accomplishment since taking over the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this year, replacing Joe Biden.

“We may have just averted a crisis of government in Afghanistan. This may be the biggest thing that Kerry has done, other than run for president,’’ said Ralph G. Carter a professor at Texas Christian University who co-authored a book on the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Posted in Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, International, John Kerry, National Security. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »
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