American Morning
A Centrist’s Defense of Obama’s First 100 Days
John P. Avlon is the author of Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. He writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Previously, he served as Chief Speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.
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By John Avlon
Special to CNN
Washington’s been crawling with professional partisans who delight in describing the death of President Obama’s post-partisanship at the end of his first 100 days.
For people conditioned to a vision of politics as an ideological blood sport between red states and blue, attempts at building broad coalitions to solve problems can seem saccharine and unsatisfying. Yes, President Obama has found a sometimes rocky transition from the poetry of campaigning to the prose of governing. The rules of Congress are rigged to reward hyper-partisanship, and interest-groups like to pump up the volume in their respective echo chambers.
But President Obama has made a good faith effort to follow through on his promise to end the politics of polarization. It’s only a start – and his rhetoric has often far outpaced his record on this front – but a culture can’t be changed in 100 days. The important thing is for President Obama to keep trying to write the presidential post-partisan playbook – because that’s been the secret of his success to date.
A CNN poll shows that 61% of independents approve of Obama’s job performance, edging toward the administration in the cavernous gap between the extremes. The Gallup Poll shows 62% of independents believe that President Obama is making a sincere effort to work with congressional Republicans, while they see congressional Democrats and Republicans as obstructing bipartisan efforts.
This is far from a blank check for the Obama administration – centrists and independents remain wary of the influence of the liberal House leadership on the Obama legislative agenda, especially on spending and the absence of checks and balances to special interest wish list items. But to this independent observer’s eyes, President Obama has earned a solid B+ in his first 100 days.
Longtime GOP Sen. Arlen Specter becomes Democrat
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WASHINGTON (CNN) - Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter told colleagues Tuesday that he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, Sen. Harry Reid says.
The Specter party switch would give Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate majority of 60 seats if Al Franken holds his current lead in the disputed Minnesota Senate race.
"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right," Specter said in a statement posted by his office on PoliticsPA.com.
"Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans."
McCain warns against torture prosecutions
The Defense Department will release "a substantial number" of photographs of alleged prison abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The new photographs could change the course of the political uproar over allegations of torture during the Bush era. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder went before Congress and weighed in on holding accountable the people who approved techniques like waterboarding.
“I will not permit the criminalization of policy differences. However, it is my responsibility, as the attorney general, to enforce the law. It is my duty to enforce the law. If I see evidence of wrongdoing, I will pursue it to the full extent of the law.”
Former Presidential Candidate and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has called waterboarding “torture” in the past, but he disagrees with prosecuting any former Bush administration officials. He spoke with Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Friday about any such prosecutions, saying they would set a “terrible precedent for the future.”
Kiran Chetry: What do you say to the Bush administration officials who call waterboarding “enhanced interrogation” and say it doesn’t cause any real harm?
John McCain: Well, I disagree. And that’s why we passed a thing called the “Detainee Treatment Act,” which prohibits cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. And the Geneva Conventions, which is for the treatment not only of uniformed but also enemy combatants, prohibits such treatment as well. But the point is, now, it's time to move on. The president went to the CIA and said people who were engaged in that would not be held responsible... We should move on. And to go back and hold people criminally liable for their best legal advice they gave to the President of the United States is unacceptable to me.
Air-pork?
What do you think? Is this wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars? Or is Rep. Murtha just doing his job?
Bill Bennett: Obama mystique will not last
President Obama hasn't shied away from controversy during his first hundred days, but a keen ability to rebound from criticism has some critics wondering why the outrage doesn't stick. CNN Political Contributor Bill Bennett is the author of "The American Patriot’s Almanac." He spoke with John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday.
John Roberts: The president attracted a fair amount of controversy at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago last week when he shook hands and was all smiles with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It prompted Jonathan Martin in Politico to write, “Several times a month in his young presidency, Barack Obama has done things that cause conservatives to bray, using the phrase once invoked by Bob Dole, ‘Where’s the outrage?!’” The president seems pretty Teflon in his first hundred days. A lot of stuff just kind of bounces off of him.
Bill Bennett: Yeah. The American people are giving him a lot of breaks. It is the first hundred days. They like him. They voted for him. They elected him. They want him to succeed. All of that is understandable. The second hundred days is going to be different. These are no longer matters of photo-ops with Hugo Chavez. What he has unleashed with the CIA interrogation memo is the furies. This is going to be a major issue and I think an embarrassment and problem for him. Maybe more important, you know, CNN has been great on this, covering the situation in Pakistan. This is the real world. This isn't the warm-up now. This isn’t rehearsal. This is the real game now. If the Taliban moves in on the capital of Pakistan, we are talking about serious international crisis, and then we'll find out about our Commander in Chief.
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