The Note: Buzz Factor: Does Obama Have Something New to Say?

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

It's only overexposure if something's exposed that the White House would rather wasn't.

And it's only ubiquity if there's just enough revealed to hold our collective interest.

A president who's everywhere hasn't been much of anywhere when it comes to the biggest/only item on his domestic agenda.

Thursday's rally in College Park, Md., barely broke through — lost in a missile-defense flurry that seemed to surprise some US allies almost as much as it did the White House press corps.

On health care, President Obama has been letting Congress drive the bus this week — specifically, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who's been driving alone. (Though just maybe using a White House map.)

Now comes President Obama's latest big moment — except it's really three or four days' worth of moments. Those Sunday interviews take place Friday afternoon — look for a first glimpse of George Stephanopoulos' interview on his blog Friday, and on ABC's “World News.”

It's the president's chance (as if heeded to create them) to say his piece — over and over, and over and over, and over and over.

It's not a bad time to say something new. (And to try something new, with First Lady Michelle Obama talking health care at 11 am ET.)

Buzz alone doesn't change Senate math: “Even by the norms of his ubiquity, Mr. Obama has been on an especially prodigious media binge lately, pitching his health care plan seemingly everywhere but the Food Channel and Fox News,” Mark Leibovich writes in The New York Times. “One senior White House aide, speaking about media strategy only on condition of anonymity, cited a ‘buzz factor,' saying that by completing a feat unprecedented for a president, Mr. Obama would draw even more attention to his message. ‘Doing five becomes a story in itself,' the aide said.”

“Clearly, the White House has made its choice. Obama will hit the airwaves whenever he can, as often as he can, in as many formats as he can, any time he's got something to sell. Which is pretty much all the time,” The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz writes. “But here's the wrinkle. Obama may want to drive a message on Sunday about health care reform and how the economy is turning around. The hosts, however, can ask about whatever they want.”

Any number of topics, surely, are better than the current story:

Starting with … the new bipartisanship? The Senate bill might get the vote of “every Democrat and perhaps Olympia Snowe,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., per ABC's Z. Byron Wolf.

“I believe he'll get Snowe and he could get Collins and he might get three or four others,” former President Bill Clinton tells Bloomberg's Patrick Cole and Thomas R. Keene. “If they believe a bill is going to pass, some of them will vote for it.”

The Baucus bill, for all its faults and critics, still looks like the vehicle.

“Perhaps some of the fire aimed at Baucus should be redirected at the president,” Slate's John Dickerson suggests. “It also moves a stalled process forward, which also delights White House aides anxious to make a deal and move on. Now that all the pieces of legislation are on the table, the president can start building support for a final piece of legislation.”

An even bigger table: “After months when health care negotiations in the Senate were confined largely to Baucus meeting privately with five other Finance Committee senators to try to craft a bipartisan deal — ultimately without success — the dynamic was noticeably altered Thursday, a day after Baucus produced his long-awaited bill,” the AP's Erica Werner reports. “Many more senators were in the mix, and many of them had something to say.”

“The trick is to maintain the fiscal balance — lowering the deficit over time — that may be the Baucus bill's greatest selling point, as Democratic House and Senate leaders begin the arduous task of fusing five legislative efforts into a single final bill,” Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery report in The Washington Post.

“The White House tried — and failed — Thursday to cool fierce Republican opposition to its health care overhaul by announcing a $25 million preliminary program aimed at eventually revamping the nation's controversial medical-malpractice legal system,” McClatchy's David Lightman reports.

Is there an app for this? “Imagine the debate over health care legislation on Capitol Hill as a tussle among three friends out for dinner,” Noam M. Levey writes in the Los Angeles Times. “All three have been struggling to pay their bills lately. When the check arrives, they try to figure out how to divide it. The problem is no one can really afford the meal. And if one manages to pay less, the other two will go home even deeper in the hole.”

Will this turn down the heat? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who knew Harvey Milk and George Moscone, choked up thinking about the prospects of speech turning into political violence: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw — I saw this myself in the late '70s in San Francisco, this kind of — of rhetoric was very frightening and it gave — it created a climate in which we — violence took place,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Said NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas: “No longer content with criticizing concerned citizens for being 'un-American,' the Speaker is now likening genuine opposition to assassination.”

And Rahm Emanuel's ceasefire ends: Change Congress has a new ad up targeting Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of the “Blue Dogs” in the House, over his opposition to the public option. (Featuring Keith Olbermann, in more than a cameo, and narrated by Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig.)

What the president would like to turn around: “Everywhere you turn lately conservatives are winning the public debate,” Politico's Martin Kady II writes at “The Huddle.” “ACORN? De-funded. Van Jones? Long gone. The public option? On life support. Cap and trade? Punted to next year. Joe Wilson, sanctioned by the House, is a hero back home.”

Caking in perceptions: “What we are seeing is an electorate growing just as disgusted with the Democratic majority as it did with the Republican one in 2006,” Charlie Cook writes for National Journal. “Sure, November 2010 is a long way off, and the economy may well be substantially better by then. But Democratic lawmakers, who must face the voters two years before Obama does, should remember that the public's attitudes tend to eventually harden. Think cement.”

Getting to 60: “House lawmakers approved legislation last night that gives Governor Deval Patrick the power to appoint a temporary successor to the late Edward M. Kennedy in the US Senate, putting Massachusetts on track to have a new senator in place by next week,” Matt Viser reports in The Boston Globe. “The legislation now goes to the Senate, where top lawmakers believe they have enough votes for it to pass, presuming some supporters do not get cold feet. Republicans, however, vow to use parliamentary maneuvers to stall final passage for as long as possible.”

In the race to fill the rest of the term — Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., is up with the first ad, laying claim to the Kennedy legacy. “Only one candidate stood with Ted Kennedy against Bush's Iraq war and mirrors his progressive record,” the ad says, per Greg Sargent's “Plum Line” blog.

ABC's Jonathan Karl tracks more airports to nowhere: “Welcome to the Greenbrier Valley Airport, gateway to the posh Greenbrier resort, a place where rooms start a 500 bucks a night,” Karl reported on “Good Morning America” Friday. “The airport is about to get more than $2 million in stimulus funds to spruce up the terminal building. There are only two commercial flights a day like this one here at the Greenbrier Airport, and on average each of those planes only has about three to nine passengers.”

Karl reports: “The Senate [Thursday] rejected a measure to strip $1.4 million in federal funding for the John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.”

One of those other topics that just may get covered Sunday:

“President Barack Obama's decision to drop plans to deploy a ballistic-missile defense shield in Central Europe — drawing immediate cheers in Moscow and criticism elsewhere — is a gamble by the U.S. that scaling back its defense ambitions will improve security in the long run,” Mark Champion and Peter Spiegel write in The Wall Street Journal. “The U.S. about-face was a major diplomatic coup for Moscow, which has fiercely opposed the previous plan to put a battery of 10 ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic.”

“The Obama administration is not abandoning missile defense in Europe, but it is junking the previous administration's view of the missile threat posed by Iran and what that means for Europe,” the AP's Robert Burns reports.

“Officials say a new threat assessment suggests that the Iranian missile threat to Europe is focused more on short and medium range missiles rather than from long-range missiles currently under development,” ABC's Luis Martinez, Martha Raddatz, and Ann Compton report.

Vice President Joe Biden: “I am less concerned — much less concerned — about the Iranian potential. They have no potential at this moment, they have no capacity to launch a missile at the United States of America,” Biden told CNN, per ABC's Jake Tapper.

But: “Iran experts at the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency believe that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and worked on developing a missile system that can carry an atomic warhead, according to a confidential report seen by The Associated Press.”

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., (who supports the president's move) on ABCNews.com's “Top Line” Thursday: “We heard about how this administration was going to be so much more adept at handling diplomacy, but it turns out in one of the first major diplomatic actions that they've taken they just didn't handle it well at all. You just don't say to two countries who have stood up and said we're willing to do this, after considerable cajoling from us, that you're going to walk away from them and give them. . . 12 hours' notice.”

The Wall Street Journal editorial: “President Obama promised he would win America friends where, under George W. Bush, it had antagonists. The reality is that the U.S. is working hard to create antagonists where it previously had friends.”

ABC's George Stephanopoulos: “The big question: will Obama's decision in advance of next week's G-20 Summit and the October 1st start of nuclear talks including Iran make the Russians more open to tough sanctions against the Iranians? If so, conservative criticism is a small price to pay. If not, you ain't seen nothing yet.”

Making the Iranian issue more interesting: “Courting renewed international criticism, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on Friday called the Holocaust a myth as his country marked an annual pro-Palestinian demonstration amid reports of clashes between his supporters and opposition protesters,” reports The New York Times' Alan Cowell.

First Lady Michelle Obama is doing health care, fruits and vegetables, and the Olympics: “A top White House adviser said first lady Michelle Obama is planning to make a dramatic presentation when she offers the closing argument for the bid by her hometown of Chicago to win the 2016 Summer Olympics,” Bloomberg's John McCormick reports.

“There won't be a dry eye in the room,” said Valerie Jarrett, who plans to travel with the first lady to Copenhagen for the Oct. 2 International Olympic Committee vote. “I'm sure that it will touch the hearts of each of the IOC members.”

ACORN falls, again: “Key House Republicans say that the end of federal funds for ACORN is nearing after the lower chamber voted overwhelmingly to cut off taxpayer dollars currently sent to the controversial nationwide community organization,” The Hill's Molly K. Hooper and Walter Alarkon report.

(And now making its way into a GOP primary . . . Refresh Drudge until you see the ad with Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, with the question, “Got ACORN?”)

Starting Friday in Washington: Value Voters Summit 2009. Speakers include former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass.; Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn.; former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.; former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.; Bill O'Reilly; Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va.; and Carrie Prejean. Plus: a “National Health Care Townhall.”

But: “Nearly 2,000 social conservative activists from 49 states gather for a Values Voters Summit in Washington Friday and Saturday, but movement favorites former Gov. Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will not be addressing the throng,” Ralph Z. Hallow reports in the Washington Times. (Palin and Gingrich will be on the straw poll ballot, though Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, asked to be removed.)

Other Newt news: “Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is launching ‘The Americano,' a bilingual Web site to counter the liberal Internet sites on ‘all issues that concern American Hispanics today,' ” Hallow reports.

The T-Paw shift? “He just moved to block ACORN funding in Minnesota. Last week, he called fears over so-called death panels ‘legitimate' and ‘not irrational,' and floated the notion that asserting states' rights under the 10th Amendment might be a ‘viable option' to block federal health reform,” Rachel E. Stassen-Berger writes in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “All are recent pronouncements from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and all suggest a distinct shift of tone to the right.”

The Kicker:

“Yay for vegetables!” — First Lady Michelle Obama, welcoming the new farmer's market a block away from the White House.

“We'll have Elmo give Chuck a special briefing…. Elmo knows how to sneeze.” — HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, after NBC's Chuck Todd sneezed into his hand — not his sleeve.

For up-to-the-minute political updates check out The Note's blog . . . all day every day:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/

DeLay May Have Stress Fracture in Foot — but Still ‘Dancing’

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: “Dancing With the Stars” fans got quite a scare today with news that one of the show’s biggest draws in the new season has been injured.
“Old age is catching up to me, may have a stress fracture in my foot. no worries, it'll take more than that to keep me off the dance floor!” Tom DeLay wrote on his Twitter feed.

Fear not: “The Hammer” is tough as nails.

DeLay spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty said the former House majority leader injured himself in rehearsals earlier this week, and went to a doctor in Los Angeles today to check it out.

But he hasn’t missed any rehearsals, and still plans on making his “Dancing” debut next week.

“He’s is still OK to go for Monday’s performance,” Flaherty said. “He’s still been rehearsing and is still dancing.”

Hikers Who Crossed Into Iran Have Been Moved to Tehran

ABC News' Martha Raddatz reports:

American hikers detained by Iran after allegedly crossing over from Iraq have been moved to Tehran, aU.S. official tells ABC News.

The move may bea sign that the hikers' ordeal will continue to drag on.

Joshua Fattal, an environmental worker from Oregon, freelance journalist Shane Bower of Minnesota and Californian Sarah Shourd, who writes and teaches in the Middle East, have been held as prisoners in Iran since Friday.

The three tourists were detained after evidentlystraying into Iran while hiking in the mountains in the Iraqi border town of Ahmed Awah, a popular resort area famous for its pistachio trees and picturesque waterfalls. The border between Iran and Iraq is not clearly marked.

Americans have been repeatedly warned by the U.S. government not to travel to Iraq. Even though U.S. troops have withdrawn from major cities, violent attacks and bombings remain prevalent throughout the country.

According to Iran's state TV, the three were arrested for “illegal entry into Iran from Iraq's Kurdistan region.” Iranian authorities said the hikers ignored warnings from Iranian guards.

A fourth American, linguistics student and English teacher Shon Meckfessel from Seattle,hadpreviouslyhiked with the group. Meckfessel,who was taken tothe U.S. embassy in Baghdad, said he received a cell phone call from his friends saying, “We're surrounded.”

Fattal, who loved to travel, wanted to know more about his family's roots in the region. His father, Jacob Fattal, was born in Iraq.

ABC News' Huma Khan, Kirit Radia, Jim Sciutto and Ki Mae Heussner contributed to this report.

Bob Graham: Congressional Leaders Could Have Acted on Waterboarding

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: On ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” today, former Sen. Bob Graham told us that — as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also claims — he was never told about waterboarding in his role as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee in 2002.

But at the same time, Graham questioned Pelosi’s assertion that there was nothing congressional leaders could have done to stop waterboarding and other harsh techniques from being employed.

“There has been a history that in these covert action activities where there is a blowback from the members of Congress to the proposed activity that the administration has stopped, reconsidered, and not infrequently cancelled their original plans,” Graham, D-Fla., told me and ABC’s Jonathan Karl.

“Apparently [Pelosi] was also told either by statement or absence of statement [in September 2002] that these activities were not in fact being utilized. I think it’s the statement that, ‘This is what we are actually doing, and here are the people to whom it has been done,’ that would be such that would motivate you to go to the executive branch, to the president, and say, this is not in the American tradition.”

Graham was not at the briefing attended by Pelosi Sept. 4, 2002, though he was briefed just three weeks later.

The intelligence community’s report to Congress described Graham’s briefing in an identical fashion to the way it described Pelosi’s. Graham — like Pelosi — maintains that the report’s description of a briefing that included “the particular [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed” is inaccurate.

“There was nothing exceptional about my briefing. It did not refer to waterboarding,” Graham told us.

“It did not refer to Abu Zubaydah and what interrogation techniques he’d been subjected [to]. It was a fairly bland brief. It was done under circumstances that were quite unusual and that was there were staff members in the briefing. Generally if the CIA is gonna brief on a highly contentious and clandestine activity such as torture, they would only do it to the leadership of the committee and the leadership of the Congress [and] would not include outsiders, other members of the committee, certainly not staff.”

Graham left the intelligence committee in January 2003, and did not receive any further briefings on the subject on enhanced interrogation techniques. Neither did Pelosi — though she acknowledged yesterday that she became aware that waterboarding was used after a top national-security aide, Michael Sheehy, was included in a CIA briefing in February 2003.

Graham said that, if he had been told about waterboarding, “I would have reacted with great disagreement with that practice which broke 200 years of American history. There are a limited number of things that a member of the leadership can do. You can’t talk to members of the committee, you can’t talk to staff, you can’t consult with experts. About the only thing you can do is go to the administration which has initiated this policy and urged them to reconsider.”

Asked if Pelosi should have registered stronger objections once she learned of waterboarding, Graham responded: “I think you ought to ask the question of the speaker. I don’t know enough of the circumstances. I was off the intelligence committee in January of [2003] so I had no further briefings on the subject.”

Pelosi said yesterday she did what little she could to stop the Bush administration’s actions, but was essentially powerless.

“Well, they didn’t tell us everything that they were doing. And the fact is that anything we would say doesn’t matter anyway. We had to change the majority in Congress,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.

Graham also wouldn’t go as far as Pelosi did when she accused the CIA of misleading her.

“I wouldn’t say they misled me, they just left that out of the briefing and I think it had to do with the fact that they did not feel the circumstances of the briefing were such that they could discuss information of that high level of classification,” he said.

But, like Pelosi, Graham linked the CIA briefings with the Bush administration’s push to go to war with Iraq in late 2002.

“Let me put this in a broader context. This [briefing] also happened to be the very week that the CIA submitted its national intelligence estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Graham said.

“That was what people were focused on and as we have come to learn, that was rife with misinformation or inadequate or lack of information which led us to an unnecessary war only to find that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This could’ve been part of that larger misinformation effort that surrounded Iraq.”

Click HERE to see our interview with Bob Graham.

Also today, we spoke with Jane Hamsher, of the liberal blog FireDogLake, about concerns brewing on President Obama’s left, after he’s shifted positions on a few key areas.

“I think that a lot of people are concerned because he made specific promises during the campaign that he’s now backtracking on,” Hamsher said. “I think that that’s just a consistent concern of anybody who votes for somebody, if they start changing their tune once they’re in office and it seems to be happening with some frequency as with the backtracking on the photographs as with the military commissions. And people are concerned. They’re wondering what’s up.”

Watch our full interview with Jane Hamsher HERE.

Mark Penn: No Edwards Could Have Meant ‘Different Outcome’

ABC News’ Kate Snow and Rick Klein report: What if John Edwards hadn’t run for president in 2008?

What if he had followed the hindsight-is-20-20 advice being offered now by his wife and chief strategist, and decided against another run for the White House because of the risk that his extra-marital affair would become public?

ABC News put that question to Mark Penn, who was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief pollster and strategist during much of her 2008 campaign.

Penn acknowledged that all of this is unknowable. But he said that if Edwards backers had been up for grabs in Iowa and beyond, Clinton would have had a much better chance at defeating Barack Obama.

“No question in my mind, it would have been a very different race if he hadn’t run,” Penn said. “Most likely it would have been a two-way race and would have released a lot of voters who focused on demographics . . . voters who would later vote for Hillary Clinton.”

Edwards had placed second in the Iowa caucuses in 2004 and was strong there from the start. If he wasn’t a factor, that may have helped Clinton, Penn said.

“If he had come out and dropped out of the race particularly early, I think a lot of voters would have taken a good fresh look at Hillary Clinton,” he said. “Remember they supported Edwards ’cause they thought he was honest and trustworthy. And then they had questions about her being honest and trustworthy. And so if that equation had been reversed, she might well have picked up those votes.”

Clinton placed third in Iowa and then rebounded to win New Hampshire — only to fall to Obama in what turned out to be a far longer primary season than anyone anticipated.

Winning the first two states to vote would have placed any candidate “pretty much on the road and unstoppable,” Penn said.

“If [Edwards] would have dropped out there would have been a real contest for those votes,” he added. “And Obama might have won those votes. The history in the race further out was that Hillary was very successful getting Obama’s voters.

“If [Edwards] had dropped out early or not run at all, she would have had a much greater opportunity to get those voters. And if he dropped out explaining why he dropped out, she would have had an even bigger opportunity because people would have thought they were wrong about Edwards, and maybe they had been wrong about Hilary and might have opened a lot of voters to her.”

“It would have been a different race,” Penn said. “We will never know for sure . . . but it will be the woulda, coulda, shoulda of this race.”

Edwards placed second in Iowa but fizzled in subsequent primaries and caucuses. He dropped out of the race Jan. 30 and endorsed Obama in May — when Obama was considered the prohibitive frontrunner, but before Clinton dropped out of the race.

John Edwards publicly confessed the affair with Hunter in an interview with ABC in August of 2008.

The New York Daily News is reporting that Elizabeth Edwards, in her new book, writes that her husband should not have run for president, given the affair.

Joe Trippi, who was Edwards’ senior political adviser for the 2008 campaign, echoed that response in an e-mail to ABC News Thursday.