By RICK KLEIN
Your political regional match-ups:
1. Barack Obama
16. No
8. Rush Limbaugh
9. Rahm Emanuel
5. Michael Steele
12. Michael Steele
4. Tim Geithner
13. Dow Jones Industrial Average
6. Facebook
11. Twitter
3. Public Outrage
14. AIG
7. John McCain
10. Earmarks
2. Jon Stewart
15. Jim Cramer
While we’ve got brackets on the brain, might some rivals be just what President Obama needs?
Team Obama knows that the online army now being deployed may be more effective if it’s against something — say, Rush Limbaugh, or “those who say,” or the Bush era, or Wall Street excesses, or just the party of “no.”
(Here’s guessing the president doesn’t mind having a rival in Dick Cheney, either.)
(And what does it mean to have Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke charging alongside the president in optimism for a recovery?)
Speaking of strong fundamentals, the president now begins to press his plan for a budget against an array of forces, both real and partly imagined. The Republican Party has found a voice — and a label. AIG has found some serious chutzpah.
The economy has found . . . well, we just don’t know where that one stands.
“The Obama administration is increasingly concerned about a populist backlash against banks and Wall Street, worried that anger at financial institutions could also end up being directed at Congress and the White House and could complicate President Obama’s agenda,” Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times. “Beyond that, a shifting political mood challenges Mr. Obama’s political skills, as he seeks to acknowledge the anger without becoming a target of it.”
And so it’s back to the organizing energy and power of the campaign, powering that Obama brand of populism, just with a less-exciting-sounding goal: passing the budget.
:“The White House on Sunday began harnessing every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political,” Politico’s Mike Allen writes. “David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database — which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers — will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.”
“Aides familiar with the plan describe it an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during Obama’s presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress. . . . Several individuals intimately involved in the planning of this campaign made it clear that they believe this is the moment Democrats have been waiting for and Republicans dreading since Obama’s election — the deployment of the volunteer army that helped catapult a freshman Illinois Senator to the presidency in support of his legislative agenda,” The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza writes.
(Why is a budget that just needs a majority vote such a perceived problem for a party that has wide majorities in the House and Senate? And if this push disappoints, how much juice does the Obama army carry into the next fight?)
(And how many more stories of bonuses like AIG’s before Team Obama takes some serious blame, too?
Helping put some life in the straw men: “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Republican Party doesn’t intend to offer a comprehensive alternative budget in the Senate. Instead, McConnell said, the GOP will offer numerous amendments to the administration’s budget plan,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos blogs after his “This Week” interview with McConnell.
Said McConnell: “Whether you have a comprehensive approach or whether you offer an amendment approach is something that parliamentarians can debate. But the point is, we’re going to have alternatives.”
The real targets? (Will the grass-roots army want to touch this?)
“Worried Democrats are seeking ways to rewrite and reduce the size of President Barack Obama’s budget proposals,” McClatchy’s David Lightman writes. “If all 47 Blue Dogs joined the House’s 178 Republicans, they could deny Democratic leaders a House majority of 218.”
How long before this becomes THE option? Reconcile this:
“The easier way would let the president negotiate with only fellow Democrats. The deal they strike could pass Congress this year by a simple majority vote — in a single budget bill with historic health and energy policy changes that Republicans could not filibuster,” John Harwood writes in The New York Times.
“It is not too soon to say that the Obama honeymoon period is over,” David Broder declares in his column. “His critics in Washington and around the world have found their voices, and they are subjecting his administration to the kind of skeptical questioning that is normal for chief executives once they settle into their jobs.”
Helping along the broad edges: “A broad coalition of left-leaning groups is quietly closing ranks into a new coalition, ‘Unity ’09,’ aimed at helping President Barack Obama push his agenda through Congress,” Ben Smith reports for Politico. “Conceived at a New York meeting before the November election, two Democrats familiar with the planning said, Unity ’09 will draw together money and grassroots organizations to pressure lawmakers in their home states to back White House legislation and other progressive causes.”
Will the Sunday night AIG disclosures help or hurt the push? (Disclosure is great — but won’t it always raise new questions?)
“After calls for more transparency, AIG disclosed Sunday that roughly two-thirds of the $173.3 billion in federal aid it received has been paid out to trading partners such as banks and municipalities in the U.S. and abroad,” Liam Pleven, Serena Ng, and Sudeep Reddy write in The Wall Street Journal.
“The disclosures came as AIG was lambasted for about $450 million in bonus payments planned for employees at a business unit that lost $40.5 billion last year,” they write. “The disclosures highlighted the increasingly close but uncomfortable relationship between AIG and the U.S. government, which six months ago was a restless creditor and now has little choice but to be a patient ally.”
The Los Angeles Times’ E. Scott Reckard and Tom Petruno: “The company said it shelled out nearly $100 billion in the final few months of the year to satisfy some of the contracts it had outstanding under credit default swaps and other insurance and investment agreements. The beneficiaries included major foreign banks such as Germany’s Deutsche Bank and France’s Societe Generale, as well as U.S. titans Goldman Sachs Group and Merrill Lynch & Co.”
“The American people are being played for fools by AIG,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Monday.
Now comes efforts to start building up public support: The White House Monday outlines new small business initiatives, aimed at thawing frozen credit markets for small businesses.
“These include details of an effort to unlock frozen credit markets for the Small Business Administration’s major programs — the 7(a) program, which allows small business owners to get up to $2 million in loans, and the 504 program, which provides a guarantee on up to $4 million in financing for economic development projects,” ABC’s Jake Tapper reports.
From the White House: “President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner will meet with small business owners and community lenders in the Roosevelt Room. There will be a pool spray at the top of this meeting. Following the meeting, the President and Secretary Geithner will deliver remarks to small business owners, community lenders, and members of Congress in the East Room.”
Bloomberg’s Kim Chipman: “White House officials are trying to counter criticism in Congress that a $700 billion financial rescue plan is benefiting mostly banks rather than consumers or non-financial companies. Banks are still hoarding cash after $1.2 trillion in writedowns and losses since 2007.”
Is this a hiccup? “President Barack Obama is set to release a plan Monday raising the federal guarantee on small-business loans up to 90%, but a study by Congress’s watchdog agency contends that insufficient oversight is in place for that program,” Jonathan Weisman writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Under the ‘credit elsewhere’ program, before issuing a loan lenders must provide supporting documentation from potential borrowers to show that they couldn’t get loans elsewhere. The study by the Government Accountability Office found that few of the participating banks are sufficiently documenting borrower need.”
Is it his yet? (No, but maybe soon.) The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz: “At some undefined point, the battered economy will be seen as Obama’s problem. The conventional wisdom when he took office was that he had a year to show some progress. But that was before cable commentators started handing out 50-day report cards and presidents were expected to solve problems before the next round of Sunday talk shows.”
The next sales job: “Under the emerging plan, Washington would finance the creation of several investment funds charged with buying up to $1 trillion of the toxic mortgage-backed securities and other bad assets now corroding the books of huge financial institutions such as Citigroup Inc.,” Maura Reynolds and Jim Puzzanghera report in the Los Angeles Times. “Money to purchase the assets would come from the government, in partnership with private investors. It’s not yet clear how large Washington’s contribution would be or the ratio of tax dollars to private capital.”
Who’s hurting? “President Barack Obama will headline the first fundraiser of his presidency this month, appealing to donors large and small even as the economy struggles through the worst recession in generations,” Bloomberg’s Hans Nichols and Jonathan D. Salant report. “Obama’s appearance at the Democratic National Committee’s March 25 event at the Warner Theatre in Washington, with tickets ranging from $100 to $2,500 per person, will be an early test of his ability to keep up the record-breaking fundraising he achieved during the campaign.”
What does this do for his plans? Obama will be a no-show at the Gridiron: “President Barack Obama deciding that he is too busy to attend the Gridiron’s annual banquet later this month is a slap. He’s the first president since Grover Cleveland to skip the white-tie-and-tails affair in his first year in office,” Anne Schroeder Mullins writes for Politico.
Another Clinton write-down: “Former President Bill Clinton has ended his high-profile business connection to his friend Ronald Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. by walking away from a final payment that was once estimated at up to $20 million,” John R. Emshwiller reports in The Wall Street Journal. “While the former president could have claimed additional money from Yucaipa, he decided not to, said a person familiar with the matter. He apparently made the decision early this year.”
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., has his challenger: “Former Republican Rep. Rob Simmons said Sunday that he plans to run against Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd,” the AP’s Andrew Miga reports. “In a hypothetical 2010 matchup, a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Simmons with 43 percent of the vote and Dodd with 42 percent.”
“Simmons, a Republican, has won eight of the 10 political races he has run in his career, including three terms for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 2nd District, which covers more than 50 towns from Madison to Stonington and Enfield,” Christopher Keating writes in the Hartford Courant.
Noam Scheiber profiles Larry Summers in The New Republic, delving into details of his career as a college debater: “When I wondered what steps he would take if there were no checks on his decision-making, Summers was deferential. ‘I think the right approach here is the president’s approach,’ he cooed.
Scheiber: “At which point I began to worry: What if we in the press have gotten it wrong? Collegiality is all well and good. But, in this moment of global crisis, when indecision could be disastrous and a wrong decision even worse, shouldn’t we want to unleash our hard-charging geniuses and get out of their way?”
Meg Whitman (and a horse named Brandy) take the cover of the new Fortune. Pattie Sellers reports that Whitman’s campaign guide is Joe Klein’s book, Politics Lost. And Whitman takes a dig at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif.: “Being CEO of the state is not a popularity contest. In the real world, business leaders cut expenses until the company is healthy again.”
Writes Sellers: “Whitman is eager to fight what will probably be the most expensive governor’s race in history. When I mention that I’ve heard that her campaign might cost $150 million to $200 million, she doesn’t bristle. And when I ask whether she’s willing to spend, say, $50 million of her own money, she nods and replies enthusiastically, ‘It’s conceivable!’ ”
Sad news: “Ron Silver, the Tony Award-winning actor who amassed an impressive list of roles based on real-life figures in movies including ‘Reversal of Fortune’ and ‘Ali,’ died Sunday. He was 62,” per the Los Angeles Times. “Silver, a longtime liberal political activist who became an outspoken supporter of former President George W. Bush’s military response to 9/11, died of esophageal cancer in New York, according to Robin Bronk, executive director of the Creative Coalition, which he helped found.”
Frank Luntz, on Silver’s decision to speak at the 2004 Republican National Convention: “He lost a few friends that night, but when people talk about that rare individual who practices what they preach, who lives the courage of their convictions, they are talking about Ron Silver.”
The Kicker:
“I was clearly not happy that we in effect left Scooter hanging in the wind, which I don’t think was appropriate. . . . I think he’s an innocent man who deserves a pardon.” — Former Vice President Dick Cheney, on Scooter Libby, who probably saw his best chance for a pardon leave town in a helicopter Jan. 20.
“The engagement is off, yeah.” — Levi Johnston, to ABC’s Neal Karlinsky on “GMA.” “Me not being mature enough, or something. . . . Better for us to separate for a while.”
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