Marc Ambinder : The Atlantic

Obama Got Us Out of Iraq, but Voters Just Don't Care Anymore

2011-12-16T17:32:10-05:00

Although it was a signature issue for Sen. Obama during his campaign, President Obama won't get much political capital for following through on his promise.

The leitmotif of Sen. Barack Obama's early presidential campaign was the inherent wrongness of the war in Iraq and how it represented to him the protuberant ineptitude of the Bush Administration and the Washington establishment that enabled it. Obama liked to say that his speech against the Iraq war in Chicago in October 2002 was a brave stand at the time. True, it ran contrary to the "strong" Democratic position held by party leadership. But it bore little risk because at the time, he was considered a non-too-promising Senate candidate and certainly had no one pining to vault him to higher office. Indeed, liberals at the time opposed the war. Barack Obama was a liberal.

Don't question his prescience and judgment: most of the country would later move toward his position. And he got lucky: the war was so bad, as Democrats began to think about running for president in 2006 and 2007, that the new charismatic young senator from Chicago had a perfect answer to inevitable questions about his lack of experience.

In the campaign, he promised to fight the right war -- in Afghanistan, against core Al Qaeda -- and end the wrong war, Iraq, an evocation of a phrase he used in that Chicago speech:

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

If you can, read Obama's speech back then. His language is his own, although less varnished, and full of taunts.

Today, his campaign web site features a video of his stirring speech to soldiers at Ft. Bragg, and then a video looking back his consistent statements against the war.

To be sure, which is a phrase used by journalists then they're attempting to balance a point, the withdrawal of all American troops might not have been possible without the president's decision to supplement JSOC's insurgent campaign with David Petraeus's surge -- President Bush's decision. Nor would it be feasible without the Status of Forces Agreement signed by President Bush.

But Obama correctly foresaw the consequences of the Iraq war nine years ago, and has, as president, figured out how to end it. That's to his credit.

But what a difference a decade makes: our collective appreciation for soldiers aside.... Iraq isn't on the front pages anymore, and won't be.

Image: Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

U.S. Drone That Went Down in Iran Was High-Tech Intel Tool, Officials Say

2011-12-06T12:01:16-05:00

The drone that Iran claims to have shot down was a stealth RQ-170 "Sentinel"

The RQ-170 "Sentinel," a stealth unmanned U.S. drone / Wikimedia Commons

The super-secret drone that Iran claims to have recovered was on a CIA "Focal Point" mission, gathering intelligence and likely crashed though it remains uncertain whether it was able to self-destruct, U.S. officials told National Journal on Tuesday.

Controllers lost contact with the prized stealth unmanned aerial drone, the RQ-170 "Sentinel", last week over western Afghanistan, said one government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Based on its projected glide path, officials assume it fell just inside the Iranian border.

Though the CIA has used the Sentinel to monitor Iranian nuclear convoys before, the precise nature of the mission this time is not known.

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The Sentinel is the top-of-the-line UAV, with highly sensitive cryptographic and stealth technology. If it indeed reaches Iranian hands undamaged it will represent a compromise in the latest of U.S. stealth technology, said officials with knowledge of the program.

An investigation is under way and the rest of the small fleet of classified UAVs have been grounded. They number less than 10 and are piloted by the 30th Reconnaissance Squadron at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The drones are thought to be equipped with self-destruct capabilities in the event that they lose contact with their controllers, which is why the U.S. was initially skeptical of Iran's claim to have the drone in custody. The officials didn't say if they knew for certain that the fallen drone had managed to self-destruct.

Near Afghanistan's border with Iran, the U.S. operates non-stealth drones called RQ-7s for counter-narcotics missions. But all of those are accounted for, the officials say.

Every Sentinel mission must be approved by the National Security Staff in advance of its execution and elaborate measures are used to protect it.

The Sentinel achieves stealth due to its wing-like design, high altitude flying and energy redirecting paint. It was created to secretly monitor the proliferation activities of Iran and North Korea.

The cryptographic gear on board is state of the art, as are its sensor packages, which include radiation signature monitoring and advanced hyperspectral imaging.

A Hot Flash in the Cold War With Pakistan

2011-11-28T08:00:00-05:00

A NATO attack kills 24 Pakistani soldiers and Pakistan responds by closing U.S. supply routes into Afghanistan. Is the relationship between Washington and Islamabad about to disintegrate?

The relationship between Pakistan and the United States is, for both sides, like a raw nerve that keeps getting exposed. And at a tenuous time too: the NATO coalition in Afghanistan that errantly killed at least 24 Pakistanis on Friday is relying on Pakistan's help to broker peace negotiations between militants and the Afghan government as the coalition prepares to withdraw. The U.S. claims to be on the verge of defeating al-Qaida's core, thanks to the latest bombardment by unmanned armed drones launched from Shamsi Air Base inside Pakistan.

What happened is still not clear. Because insurgents so often attack Afghanistan from the relative safe haven of Pakistan, the two countries have a border alert system that allows commanders to warn the other side if troops are operating in an area. But it wasn't used this time, perhaps because NATO commanders don't trust the Pakistanis manning border positions, many of whom have ties to militants, not to expose the location of NATO troops. The Pakistani government counters that the two checkpoints where most of the Pakistani soldiers died were well-marked on U.S. maps.

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A familiar cycle of recriminations has begun in Pakistan: the press is using the incident to once again question why Pakistan keeps re-engaging with its own ally from hell, the United States, even though the U.S. seems to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for Pakistani sovereignty, much less for the tens of thousands of Pakistani soldiers who have been killed fighting a common enemy. Pakistan has shut down supply routes into Afghanistan, about as direct a punishment as there can be. It won't affect the war in Afghanistan much in the short-term, because NATO has several months worth of pre-stocked supplies, a contingency designed to anticipate cyclic breakdowns in the Pakistani-U.S. relationship. Further, it has asked the military and the C.I.A. to vacate Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan, where about half of U.S. military and intelligence activities inside Pakistan are coordinated.

The U.S. government is urging calm, both privately and publicly. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called President Asif Ali Zardari, asking for forbearance and offering an apology. A rare joint statement from the Departments of Defense and State stopped short of apologizing, since NATO hasn't figured out what provoked the shootings, and included a pointed reminder to Pakistan that it is in their "mutual interest" to maintain a relationship. The backdrop to this incident is what's known in the country as "Memo-gate." Husain Haqqani resigned last week as the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan after being accused of using an intermediary to suggest to the U.S. military that it participate in a coup to enshrine a pro-American civilian government inside Pakistan. Whatever denials come out of Washington, Pakistanis believe it, and the government, which dips into anti-American sentiment whenever it needs a booster shot of legitimacy, has opened several investigations.

Meanwhile here, a chorus of American lawmakers called on Sunday for tougher diplomacy against Pakistan. President Obama has said nothing so far, which is may be the most galling to Pakistan. As much as it pains U.S. officials to admit it, when they step into the shoes of the average Pakistani, there is not much to like about our country. A large amount of the money sent in aid is consumed by the army, which lives well in an otherwise poor country. Strategically, the U.S. seems only concerned about Pakistani vis-à-vis its geographic proximity to Afghanistan and as a stick in the eye of India, with whom the U.S. is establishing a strategic partnership to counter Chinese influence in the region. Pakistan sees itself as a U.S. stepping stone to something else.

And yet this incident will not end the relationship. Pakistan's Army, which runs the country, needs its money, and at the same time as it publicly creates a vision of the U.S. as an enemy, relishes the direct contact it has with leaders of the world's most powerful country. Pakistan is playing a significant, unheralded role in semi-secret peace talks between factions on both sides of the border, even as it plays factions against once another, gambling to see who will have influence when Americans leave.

What's needed is probably what will be forthcoming: humility from NATO, a series of hurried and contentious private meetings, and a return to the cold war that, just barely, justifies the interest each side has in maintaining ties to the another.

Mitt Romney Ramps Up Attacks on Obama

2011-11-27T21:00:58-05:00

Judging by his latest barrage of criticism, the former Massachusetts governor is already running against the president -- sort of

First there was the television advertisement in New Hampshire, which received widespread condemnation from the media elite for taking President Obama's words out of context. But widespread condemnation meant, for Mitt Romney's campaign, lots and lots of news coverage. And since then, while everyone else recovered from a tryptophan-induced stumble, while the Obama campaign had a Black Friday sale on its merchandise, the Romney campaign has gone on the attack, sending out no fewer than three separate releases castigating Obama for a variety of sins.

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Romney, fresh off not getting the big New Hampshire Union-Leader endorsement (which, to be sure, was never really in the cards), trained his focus on Obama, telling an interviewer on WMUR that Obama has been "MIA" on deficit reduction, raising the specter that the U.S. could turn into Greece.

Here's a broadside from Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul, keying off a Politico article that notices how Obama has become his own worst critic:

"President Obama will say and do anything to hold on to power. Despite what he said he would do for the middle class, President Obama has failed to create a single net new job and has wreaked more havoc on the middle class than any president in modern history. President Obama himself concedes he hasn't delivered on his campaign promises - however, he is still asking Americans to reward his failures with a second term. It is clear that this election is going to be about Candidate Obama running against President Obama."

None of this has anything to do with the primary elections...sort of. One of the reasons why Republicans seem to like Newt Gingrich is that they imagine he'll do great in a debate against Obama. And he also has the governing chops to take on the chief executive. So Romney needs to elevate himself to the same level. A more public, national fusillade against Obama satisfies his primary audience -- now consisting of primary and caucus votes -- and keeps the foot near the vicinity of the President's throat.

Image credit: Steve Pope/AP

Newt's Gift to Obama: A GOP Immigration Rift

2011-11-23T11:23:44-05:00

With his "humane" argument, the former House speaker has put the president's chief rival, Mitt Romney, in a difficult spot

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During last night's debate, Newt Gingrich moved in a direction that is decidedly orthogonal to the party's conservative base on immigration. Whether Newt stays in his new position is to-be-determined. But if he does, it might produce from the probable Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, the type of reaction that President Obama's campaign advisers would relish.

Said Gingrich:

"I do not believe that the people of the United States are going to take people who have been here a quarter century, who have children and grandchildren, who are members of the community, who may have done something 25 years ago, separate them from their families and expel them.
The party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families who have been here a quarter century. I'm prepared to take the heat for saying, let's be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families."

This show of "humane" feeling from the speaker will be the talk of the cablers today. It's no secret that the media establishment finds the prospect of deporting 11 million illegal immigrants to be horrifying, and tends to reward politicians who move toward this default position. It's kind of funny for Newt to be praised by the journalists he often criticizes, but that's secondary.

Mitt Romney reacted furiously to Gingrich's words. That very policy, he said, was a magnet for illegal immigrants. It was amnesty and Romney was against it.

"... we have had in the past programs that said people who come here illegally will get to stay illegally for the rest of their life, that will only encourage more people to come here illegally."
"... to say that we're going to say to the people that came here illegally that now you're all going to get to stay or some large number are going to get to stay and become permanent residents of the united states, that will only encourage more people to do the same thing."

Cue the DNC. I am not generally a fan of web videos produced by national party committees because they rarely escape the boundaries of the Beltway, but this one is a sign of what Gingrich's policy decision means for the general election. Quite simply, it could move Romney to the right, to a place where college-educated white voters question whether he is compassionate enough. Immigration is one of those suburban signal issues. George W. Bush was on the right side of it, as was John McCain, as was Bob Dole -- indeed, as were George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. It goes without saying that the DNC is also targeting Hispanics themselves.

Brad Woodhouse, the DNC's communications chief, says in an e-mail that "Mitt Romney's extreme anti-immigrant views were on clear display. Romney once again went to the right of every other Republican presidential candidate, refusing to agree with others on the stage that tearing apart families is wrong or that we shouldn't implement an extreme and inhumane immigration policy."

OK. Now, whether you agree with Gingrich or Romney, recognize that the DNC and the Obama campaign now has a new incentive to see Newt Gingrich become the true face of the GOP anti-establishment opposition to Romney, as ironic as that last phrase is. If Gingrich and Romney publicly argue over immigration, the DNC and Obama 2012 will do everything they can to reproduce this debate before college-educated white voters in Virginia, North Carolina, the Rust Belt and elsewhere. It's a perfect time, because the national electorate is starting to wake up and pay attention to the race. Now is the time when Mitt Romney, the guy who Chicago expects will be the nominee, is at his most tender, most doughy, and most mold-able.

On Tuesday, National Journal's Ron Brownstein helped Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin introduce their latest demographic study of the electorate, which projects that the share of non-whites voting in battleground states in 2012 will jump two percentage points, a boost for President Obama, or a cushion of sorts for any shedding of white voters. (Working class whites will correspondingly drop three percent.)

The demographic battleground, as Brownstein, Teixeira and Halpin see it, will be among college-educated whites, particularly women, who helped put Obama over the top in the Midwest, West, and in states like Florida and Virginia even though, across all the battlegrounds, that cohort gave its vote to John McCain by four points. Mitt Romney does better among these voters than any GOP candidate. And those college-educated white voters could question Romney's compassion if he takes too hard-line a stance on immigration.

Image credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Why Did Perry Get Into the Race, Really?

2011-11-09T22:17:52-05:00

Republican consultants at loose ends and looking for work sold the Texas governor a bill of goods about his prospects

So I have this theory about why Gov. Rick Perry decided to run for president, despite what appeared to be his instincts telling him that the job just wasn't for him. There came a point late last Spring when, as you will recall, a number of Republicans who could have posed a challenge to Mitt Romney decided not to. Mitch Daniels's consultants no longer had a horse to ride.

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Perry, I think, was sold a bill of goods. You're a governor of Texas, he was told. You have this incredible record on jobs. Romney is gonna get killed by health care and is so vulnerable. The other candidates are jokes. It's gonna be a lot easier than you think. You just have to let Romney self-destruct and you can roll. You can actually be president!

And that's basically what Perry did. He entered the race, dawdled, presented an economic plan late in the game, appeared to have no solid strategy, and thought he could coast. He didn't prepare himself for the discipline required of a modern presidential campaign.

I don't think Perry's consultants pushed him into the race just to make a buck. I legitimately think they thought that the race would be easy, and so the bar for Perry would be much lower than it turned out to be.

Will Nuclear Watchdog Report Change U.S. Policy Toward Iran?

2011-11-09T09:24:56-05:00

The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran may still be working toward a bomb

Iran's Head of Atomic Energy Organization Abbasi-Davani speaks at the 55th IAEA General Conference in Vienna / Reuters

The Obama administration insists that a major new U.N. report on Iran's nuclear program does not imply that Iran is significantly further along in its efforts to manufacture or obtain a nuclear explosive. But officials on Tuesday challenged Iran to respond to evidence that it continues to work clandestinely to build an atomic bomb.

President Obama has argued that harsh sanctions designed to isolate Iran, combined with periodic overtures to the Iranian people, and topped off by a healthy amount of covert action, would be enough to keep the Iranian nuclear program from maturing to a point where the country could pose an existential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries in the region. The report on Tuesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency will give opponents of that policy another whack, even though it does suggest that Iran isn't any closer to actually having or using a weapon. Even allies of Obama, however, are alarmed.

"Since 2002, the agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the agency has regularly received new information," the IAEA's report concludes.

Investigators for the nuclear watchdog found that Iran continues to work on heavy-water production, a key moderator in nuclear reactions, despite U.N. Security Council resolutions ordering them to halt all such work. Also, the IAEA suspects that the country is enriching uranium outside the facilities monitored by the agency. Iran has stated that it will enrich its uranium at 20 percent of capacity. Weapons grade uranium has a concentration of 90 percent.

Iran has refused to cooperate with the IAEA for several years, and has revealed at least one major nuclear facility after a Western intelligence agency discovered its existence.

The IAEA says it has evidence that figures associated with Iran's nuclear establishment have at numerous times sought to purchase spark gaps and high-speed switches for use in weapon-shell triggers, as well as technical material about how to turn processed nuclear material into explosives. Much of this information has been provided to IAEA by 10 countries and their intelligence agencies, who monitor Iran's inquiries and seek to avoid weapons proliferation by keeping close tabs on the black market.

And if there's a smoking gun for the IAEA, it's from intelligence that Iran used sophisticated modeling techniques to gauge the effects of a uranium bomb "subject to shock compression" - a reference to the way that nuclear fission is triggered using high-grade explosives, tamping devices, and precise geometries around the nuclear core.

"The application of such studies to anything other than a nuclear explosive is unclear to the agency," the report concludes. "It is therefore essential that Iran engage with the agency and provide an explanation."

Iran's critics pounced on the report, portions of which have circulated in Washington for days.

"Today, the IAEA has issued the clearest possible warning about a potentially catastrophic threat since the Hart-Rudman Commission in January 2001 predicted a major terrorist attack on our homeland," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn. "The IAEA's message is similarly stark: The extremist, terrorist regime that rules Iran is actively working to possess nuclear weapons, and the time to stop them is running out."

The administration counters that the "[t]he IAEA does not assert that Iran has resumed a full-scale nuclear weapons program nor does it [say] how advanced the programs really are," a senior administration official told reporters on a conference call. Though the press and many hawks have focused on the IAEA's conclusions that Iran continues to participate in activities that indicate interest in building a bomb, the administration chose to focus on the IAEA's conclusion that a "structured program" to develop a nuclear warhead was halted in 2003. "The organization ... that was conducting it was disbanding ... and the headquarters ... was subsequently bulldozed, so it no longer exists," the official said.

The IAEA is not known for intemperate judgments, and its words today will put immense pressure on the administration to justify its approach, or risk the threat of a unilateral attack on Iran by Israel - and potentially a response that could plunge the brittle region into war. There is little appetite in the U.N. for additional sanctions, which the U.S. might seek depending on the Iranian's government's response to the report. The administration will shift the spotlight to Iran, trying to force it to respond to the IAEA's report. A U.S. official said that sanctions imposed by the U.N. have crippled the Iranian economy and sowed division between the country's business class and ruling elite.

But the official acknowledged "serious" concerns about Iran's persistent interest in nuclear weapons.

The administration officials spoke on background because they did not want to catalyze a political debate about the report nor, by providing their names and titles, betray any significant concern about the report's conclusions.

"We will continue to consult with allies around the world on next steps," one of the officials said. One official said the U.S. is "preparing additional pressure mechanisms" for use against Iran - presumably including unilateral U.S. covert actions and increased diplomatic and financial pressure.

"A lot of conversations are taking place right now to find out what the best responses are going to be, but it clearly means we have to ratchet up on Iran, probably tougher sanctions among other things," Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., told reporters on Tuesday.

The U.S. has kept mum about reports that Israel's patience has run out and that that country is preparing for air strikes against known nuclear facilities. Shimon Perez, the president of Israel, has said that an airstrike against Iran's nuclear facilities was "very likely" in light of recent events. Israel's covert-action program against the country, which has reportedly included assassinations of scientists and a lead role in the creation of the Stuxnet computer virus which crippled, for two years, Iran's centrifuge production, has been quietly supported by the U.S.

A U.S. intelligence official said that Tuesday's IAEA report was the most comprehensive it has ever released publicly.

Obama to Issue 'Wikileaks Order'

2011-10-07T01:41:55-04:00

After the leak of classified State Department cables, the president will direct federal agencies on sharing information and guarding secrets

By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks exposure does not hamper collaboration across agencies.

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The so-called "WikiLeaks" executive order has been long awaited by the national security establishment and by the privacy and civil liberties communities. It was provided by the White House to National Journal. The order creates a government-wide steering committee to create and assess information sharing policies across the government, as well as a mechanism to determine whether internal auditing procedures work properly.

PFC. Bradley Manning, who the government believes provided WikiLeaks with most of the classified cables and reports it released, was able to access State Department cables that were not germane to his work as a forward-deployed intelligence analyst in Iraq without being detected.

A new Insider Threat Task Force led by the Attorney General will develop a government-wide strategy to see whether agencies that handle classified information can weed out the malcontents and people whose behavior suggests they cannot handle sensitive information appropriately.

The result will be a beefing up of federal counter-intelligence programs.

The intelligence community has worried about an over-reaction, reasoning that analysts who want more access to classified information to solve a problem will second-guess their own efforts because they don't want to trigger an investigation. The order does not specify how agencies ought to strike this balance, but suggests that each agency should establish policies that incorporate their own internal cultures, bearing in mind that the larger goal is to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Obama's executive order makes agencies primarily responsible for the information they obtain and share.

It also creates a Classified Information Sharing and Safeguarding Office to develop institutional knowledge about best practices across the government. This office will provide staff for the inter-agency steering committee, according to a White House fact sheet.

The executive order is the result of several months worth of a deliberation by a high-level task force formed after of the WikiLeaks disclosure. The government has taken several steps to prevent WikiLeaks-like incidents from happening again, including limiting the number of people with access to removable flash drives in classified environments and commencing a government-wide survey of existing internal auditing procedures.

Image credit:

Why U.S. Presidents Lecture the UN

2011-09-21T06:01:39-04:00

American leaders consistently hector the global body, challenging it to live up to its charter

So here was the main protocol problem the United States faced on Sept. 23, 2009: President Barack Obama was set to give his inaugural speech before the United Nations General Assembly, a ringing endorsement of common hope and values coupled with a warning that the great body faced irrelevance if it continued to "bicker about outdated grievances."

Waiting just offstage, where Obama would have to walk after he finished speaking, was Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi clad in his red frock, yellow hand-written papers in hand. There was no way to avoid an interaction between the despotic self-proclaimed King of Africa, who was making his first appearance at the U.N. in 40 years, and the American president.

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Then the U.N. team had an idea. Whether they coordinated it with President Obama's Secret Service detail or advance team is unknown. Right off the floor, the president of the General Assembly had an office. For some reason--probably security, but no one really knew--it could be locked from the outside. As Obama began to speak, Qaddafi was ushered into the room. It was a ... a gesture of respect, recalls one person who was there. The Libyan strongman could then watch the speech in private, in comfort.

A few minutes before Obama was finished speaking, the outside lock mechanism was triggered. Obama took his time greeting his admirers inside the hall, and then quickly departed, brushing right past the locked door. As soon as he was in his limousine, the lock opened, and Qaddafi was let out of his confinement, along with profuse apologies. This year, Obama was more than happy to meet with the Libyan delegation, as its mere existence represents a foreign-policy triumph for him, for NATO, and indeed, for the United Nations, under whose authority the president and his European counterparts launched a miltary campaign to help the rebels overthrow the Qaddafi regime. As far as Libya is concerned, the U.N. is suddenly relevant again.

ENFORCER OF PEACE?

In his address to the inaugural United Nations General Assembly, President Harry S. Truman called the U.N. "a world organization for the enforcement of peace." Whether it is serving that mission now is one of the great perennials of global debate.

President George W. Bush didn't think so, and after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, pursued the ideals that the U.N. was chartered to reflect unilaterally, often at the point of a gun. He, and President Reagan before him, treated the world body as an uncle in the attic--someone they had to feed from time to time but generally found annoying and whose contributions to the whole of the world family were minimal.

One reason why Obama appointed his close friend, Susan Rice, to be his ambassador there is because he agreed with Bush's conclusion about the U.N.'s effectiveness but not with his prescription. Rice's main charge has been to light a fire under the world body, to push it to live the values its charter represents. This reflects Obama's view that the U.S. cannot solve all the world's problems by itself, and by holding other large countries to account for their own promises, the U.N. could become more proactive and less reactive. Implicitly, the United States wants to check--or at least shape--the growing influence of China on world affairs. Obama thinks the U.S. can do so through strong and enforceable U.N. resolutions.

The U.N. has of course been an effective vehicle to organize the collective global response to famine, and to AIDS, and to educational disparities. But when the U.S. has acted as a steward, and not as combatant, it has become an instrument of U.S. power--a way for the U.S. to pursue its own geopolitical goals while distributing responsibility for enforcing them. Being the only superpower on the Security Council can be an enormous source of power for the United States, as China has long recognized.

Until 1991 there were two major sources of friction: the Cold War and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Where the U.S. kept faith with the U.N. before the collapse of the Soviet Union, even as the U.N. dithered and refused to take sides, it has often lost its patience over the body's longtime hostility to Israeli military retaliation to acts of terrorism, which the world would attribute to the way Israel has treated Palestinian refugees. Twice, under Republican presidents, the U.S. refused to pay its dues. Twice, under Democratic presidents, were the dues restored, and the tone modified, and the U.N. reengaged. Often, the U.S. has used its financial leverage over the U.N. to shape debates where it can.

Even as there has been a partisan divide in the way U.S. presidents deal with the U.N., there has been a remarkably consistent tone in their speeches. Virtually every presidential speech since 1945 has called for world behavior appropriate to an "era of interdependence" (Ford, 1974), a "global community in the sense that we face common problems" (Carter, 1977), the endorsement of a "resort to force reluctantly and only when they must" (Reagan, 1982), and the call for a "welcome shift from polemics to peacekeeping" (Bush, 1989).

U.S. presidents praise the U.N.--and then bury it with responsibility and warnings of its irrelevance if it refuses to act. Ronald Reagan noted in 1982 that the U.N. charter's "influence has weakened" because it refused to take sides against the Soviet Union's "ruthless repression" and proxy wars across the globe. "In these times when more and more lawless acts are going unpunished--as some members of this very body show a growing disregard for the U.N. charter ... let us finally make the charter live."

George W. Bush made it clear that "other multilateral institutions" were speaking up where the U.N. wasn't, a direct challenge to the body's regard for itself. Internally, his administration found the U.N. impossible to deal with, believing it to be a colossal collection of sinecures for do-gooders whose expiration date had long since passed. But so did Barack Obama, in his first address to the U.N., when he called for a future "forged by deeds, and not simply words." While noting that the U.S. once again was fully participating in the United Nations' more symbolic endeavors and had fully paid its dues, "We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st, that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for." Or, he said, the U.N. can finally give "meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations."

The U.S.'s legacy of hectoring, however, is predicated on the U.S.'s being able to lead. Obama's first speech promised that the U.S. was well on its way toward comprehensive energy reform, a promise he abandoned--or was forced to abandon--when the economy collapsed. He said he would work quickly to bring Israel and Palestinians back to the bargaining table directly, and has failed to do so.

As much as the legitimacy of the United Nations is at stake when it fails to fulfill the vision of its charter, the U.S.'s influence is limited when it cannot make good on its own promises.

Image credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Obama's Lonely Middle Ground

2011-09-08T15:13:30-04:00

The president and Congress just haven't gotten along. In tonight's speech, he'll face a tough political calculus yet again.

For two and a half years, President Obama has walked a narrow lane, like one of the bike strips that Mike Bloomberg (more technocratic, but of a like mind) paved in the middle of Manhattan streets. Obama aimed at the reasonable middle but found it very lonely: Washington's reasonable columnists and sympathetic centrists might get what he's doing, but to everyone else who wants him to succeed--still a majority of the country--he can seem stubborn and even impotent.

This is surprising given that Obama is the first president since John F. Kennedy to have been drawn from the Senate. It is not surprising given that Republicans are not only obstructionist when out of power--none of them voted for Bill Clinton's tax hikes either--but have taken a fencing match and turned it into a gun battle, twice bringing the government perilously close to the brink. This leaves any reasonable man looking lonelier by the day.

Which brings us to tonight's speech.

The mix of tax cuts, infrastructure increases, employment incentives, and spending increases contained in the $300 billion package the president will reveal before Congress is far milder than the sweeping policies that Obama's economic advisers believe are needed to convince businesses to hire and consumers to spend. Indeed, it's a document that seems resigned to being reasonable. Most of the proposals, save an extension of unemployment benefits, were at one point associated with mainstream Republicans. That's the point.

The White House line is this: If Republicans oppose this package, they're opposing proposals they've supported. And if they refuse to compromise with the president, they're basically denying the existence of the jobs crisis itself. They'll look totally unreasonable. And Obama will look like the adult. This is a refrain we've heard before.

The White House is convinced that the president will always seem like a reasonable middle ground between extremes, and that his priestly presiding over Washington's bickering will eventually be rewarded. But it hasn't yet. What objective evidence exists to convince Americans that anyone deserves to be rewarded?

Obama is addressing Congress tonight because his signature legislation didn't work the way he said it would. The stimulus didn't appreciably lower unemployment, and health care reform didn't ease anxieties. Both may have kept things from being worse, but they didn't do much else.

"Voters do give the president credit for being reasonable," says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. "They would just rather be giving him credit for making the economy better."

That's hard to do when the president and the speaker of the House do not like or trust each other. And it's especially difficult when the opposition Republican Party has based its organizing philosophy around a determination to completely discredit government at every turn. Getting things done--anything--means that government is doing something. And that's bad. So the worst thing that can happen is for anything associated with the president to pass cleanly, or even at all. If you're a Republican member of Congress, there is no real incentive to compromise.

The GOP has created a political feedback loop that is calculated to destroy President Obama's credibility as a change agent. They've figured out that when government is gridlocked and sclerotic, even silly and absurd, no one in Washington comes out smelling like a rose. No one seems reasonable, because nothing gets done. The reasonable man just looks weak.

A Washington Post poll in August found that 78 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country's political system is working, and almost as many have little or no confidence that Washington can solve the country's economic problems.

So what's Obama to do? When it comes to Congress, the answer is: not much. If he decides to change course and do the Full Paul Krugman--propose a huge new government-spending plan, a trillion-dollar stimulus--Keith Olbermann might be happy for a day, but that's about it.

If he turns ruthless on Republicans, he risks losing his role as the voice of reason, a role he is trying so hard to build in the hopes it will pay off when there's a Republican nominee to draw a contrast with.

The jobs speech may well be the last event of political significance that the president participates in from Washington, aside from his State of the Union address in January. His travel schedule will ramp up dramatically after the United Nations General Assembly closes in late September, and he'll set a campaign pace that will punish even the hardiest of Secret Service agents. If Dodge ain't working for you, you get out. So look to the president to take his case to the people that the reasonable man deserves a second term.

Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty

President Obama Leads Without Taking Charge

2011-06-30T15:52:36-04:00

At a time of uncertainty, do Americans want a more aggressive commander in chief?

President Obama is turning out to be a successful war president who can't find his voice on the most pressing issue of his time, which happens to be domestic.

Democrats took a lot of flack for inventing the euphemism "economic security" in the 1990s, partly as a way to describe President Clinton's complicated but generally effective strategy to rebalance risk in the economy. Back then, Americans felt more or less secure about their economic position. But since Obama became president, persistent economic insecurity has defined the political environment.

In a complicated, inter-connected global economy, the president has almost no unilateral authority to fix things. There's no such thing as a presidential jobs agenda -- trade agreements, payroll tax cuts, and regulation reviews are marginal adjustments to the status quo.

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In extraordinary times, presidents can sign their names to bills that do extraordinary things, like the $778 billion economic stimulus package that passed during the first month of Obama's presidency. But that measure was negotiated with another branch of government, with whom Obama shares power. That was, for all intents and purposes, his jobs plan: demand-side stimulus of the economy.

The president credibly argues that the intervention helped save the economy, but even the White House understands that the stimulus did nothing to alleviate economic insecurity or pessimism. (This was what health care reform was supposed to accomplish: a down payment to ending insecurity about health expenses. But the messiness of the debate completely squandered any chance of Americans feeling better about their health care system until the reforms actually kick in in force, which isn't until 2014 at the earliest.)

Americans see that Obama controlled Congress for two years and wasn't able to, or didn't choose to, solve the jobs problem. They understand that things would be worse, but they don't understand why things aren't getting better. They hear him promise, as regularly as the seasons turn, that the economy is turning a corner, that businesses are regaining confidence, and that jobs are coming back.

None of this comports with the reality that most Americans see.

And so Americans remain frustrated and Obama's approval rating remains at 48 pecent. The irony is that, so far as international crises go, Obama has been a successful manager. He has been a war president who has prosecuted a campaign against American enemies with precision and subtlety. He has repaired relationships with American allies. A neophyte Democrat, a young guy elected with virtually no foreign policy experience has restored to the Democratic Party a sense that it can act credibly in world affairs and in defense policy. That's an enviable achievement that the president gets no credit for. He did it with humility.

That's the key to his success. He figured out that the last thing the world wanted was another take-charge, head-cracking American president. Instead, he would assume a posture that respected what other countries said they aspired to do -- and then hold them accountable for doing so, using all the means available to him as president: diplomacy, American soft power, intelligence operations, relationships with other countries, and more.

He brings the same rhetorical approach to governing domestically. He doesn't shout or yell or thump his chest. He prefers to "lead from behind," setting out broad expectations and trying to create incentives for other political actors to fulfill them. He prefers long-term, lasting solutions to temporary ones.

He could have signed an executive order ending the ban on gays in the military, but he chose instead to embark on a process that would lead to the irrevocable end of the policy. It hurt him politically, but it means a Republican president won't be able to reverse it.

After a walloping at the ballot box last November, he set the terms for a lame-duck session and pulled about six rabbits out of a tiny hat. His approval ratings rose: Americans saw a guy who forced Congress to work together to achieve an end.

The idea that he's not leading frustrates the president. He noted, with sarcasm, that he met with Republicans and Democrats in both chambers of Congress on the debt ceiling, the leaders of both parties numerous times, put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of a process that made headway (agreeing to more than $1.3 trillion in cuts over 12 years) and ... it's suddenly up to him to show more leadership? How?

Well, for one thing, he could adopt an uncomfortable posture and act like more of a take-charge president. He could, in other words, become Chris Christie, a man roughly the same age with roughly the same contempt for baby boomers and their interest groups, but a man with a totally different style of governing. The New Jersey governor is not terribly popular in-state for it, but his model of holding constant town halls, of being in the room, and of showing the heads cracking has a certain street appeal at a time when hopelessness is the prevailing emotion.

Obama's constant refrain -- it's time for others to get serious -- sounds like an acknowledgement that he isn't in control. It sounds like he is wishing for a solution, rather than creating one. Obama actually tried this Chris Christie bit as Republicans threatened to shut down the government. Toward the end of the process, he summoned congressional leaders to the White House until they came to an agreement on a 2011 budget that House Republicans could (just barely) accept. But Christie doesn't present himself as an honest broker. He has his bottom lines out there and negotiates up from them. Obama kept the lights on in April, just barely, but he seemed to be part of the process -- intervening (to the eyes of Americans) way too late.

The truth is that the White House was involved in those discussions well before Obama was. But Obama specifically chose not to play the role of a prime minister. He reasons that he governs more effectively when he presides, rather than when he gets his hands dirty. Obama's mien exacerbates the perception that he lets events lead him, rather than the other way around.

People want to have confidence in Obama as president. They don't want to hear him complain about congressional inaction. They know that Congress and Washington are broken. They want the president to figure out a way around the obstacles.

It is indeed adult of the president to remind Americans that there are no silver bullets and that there's not much that can be done in the short term. But it makes things sound more hopeless than they are and makes people less confident in his ability to lead them.

Maybe this is the lot that Obama drew -- the way that his personal orientation matches up with the demands of the time. It has proven fairly effective in some domains of governing, but it has not, to date, helped him much on the economy, and it remains to be seen whether, over the long term, Americans come to accept it.

Withdrawal From Afghanistan Will Likely Be Slow

2011-06-15T13:00:19-04:00

The White House's war review is still pending, but it probably won't lead to a speedier departure

It's safe to say that Gen. David Petraeus will not present President Obama with a proposal to significantly reduce the footprint of the U.S. military forces in Afghanistan. Correspondingly, Obama doesn't see the need for a major course correction, even though he is impatient to end the war.

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The general, in Washington for his CIA confirmation hearings, will provide input important to the White House's pending Afghanistan strategy review, the results of which are due in July. But unlike past deliberations, which were carried out quasi-publicly through leaks and speeches, this one will be short, efficient, and largely quiet, White House officials said. There will be few formal meetings and very little public markers of decision points. Petraeus is reportedly hand-carrying his recommendations, has yet to share them with major flag and general officers, and has not committed them to an electronic format, lest they leak.

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Within the next few weeks, Obama will announce his decision about the pace of the transition. A small interagency review has already finished its work, which will provide the broader context for Petraeus's recommendations.

A White House official said that Obama has not yet decided whether his order will apply to all 130,000 NATO troops in the region, whether he will adjust the withdrawal pace to account for predicted surges in violence over the summer, or whether he will simply announce that a certain number of troops will return home by a certain date. Although some advisers had hoped that the significant progress made against al-Qaida in the past several months would allow Obama to accelerate the withdrawal, the president himself has not indicated that he is yet ready to take this gamble. (If he is, he has kept it to himself.)

Politically, justifying a more rapid drawdown in the wake of bin Laden's killing would make sense, as the stated goal of the war is to rout al-Qaida and prevent the Taliban from establishing a sanctuary for the terrorist network to regrow. As many members of Congres -- including Republicans -- regularly note now, Pakistan seems to be more of a haven for al-Qaida than Afghanistan. The budget crisis is forcing Republican hawks to take a second look at the billions spent monthly to fight a nebulous enemy in Afghanistan.

Obama ordered 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in late 2009 after taking a deep dive into the strategy pursued by President Bush. He is now confident that his strategy is the correct one, advisers say, even if the public continues to doubt it, and even though it is hard to articulate. Congress, for the most part, is likely to support the president's recommendations, even though support for the war itself is waning. Petraeus remains an iconoclastic figure and will provide cover if the president's chosen withdrawal pace is conservative.

At West Point in December 2009, Obama laid out two main goals under the broader mantle of disrupting, defeating, and dismantling al-Qaida. Coalition forces would arrest the Taliban's momentum and rigorously train the Afghan National Security Forces, holding them to a series of benchmarks and reducing attrition. Obama also disaggregated the Taliban from al-Qaida, and diplomats began a slow, often-secret reconciliation process with established Taliban tribal factions. The surge allowed the coalition to focus on populous provinces in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Obama will refer to these goals and assess progress toward them, framing them in the overall context of a full transition in Afghanistan by 2014. But even that definition is in question. It remains uncertain whether the majority of troops will be rebased by then, or whether 2014 is the starting point for a real transition.

Assessing progress is complicated. As National Journal's Yochi Dreazen reported, 2011 may turn out to be the deadliest year on record for Americans in the war. Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who sees classified and unclassified metrics on the capability of Taliban forces, doesn't seem to be sanguine in his latest report. While coalition troops have killed record numbers of Taliban fighters, discovered large weapons caches, and meaningfully enhanced both security and civil governance in certain parts of the country, the Taliban and allied forces like the Haqqani network in the Paktika province, remain potent, destabilizing forces. The insurgency has not expanded, in Cordesman's assessment, but neither has it been seriously degraded.

In April, Petraeus's staff concluded that the International Security Assistance Force "still does not fully understand the regenerative capacity of the insurgency."

As for the second main challenge - that of building a government to transition to in 2014, metrics are few, although the U.S. continues to insist that it is making progress.

But testifying before Congress, the new American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, noted that "[e]normous challenges remain: governance; rule of law, including corruption, which undermines economic growth and the credibility of the Afghan state; narcotics; sustainable economic development, including adequate employment opportunities, increased revenues along with the capacity for the government to provide basic services, such as education and health care."

Public opinion in America turned against the war last year and support for fighting it hovers anywhere between 35 and 43 percent, according to polls taken by Pew and by ABC News and The Washington Post in late May.

Image credit: Jason Reed/Reuters

Report: Nearly a Third of Companies Could Cut Health Insurance

2011-06-07T11:23:28-04:00

Democratic reforms were supposed to drive down costs and expand access, but a new study forecasts employers rolling back benefits

The more a company knows about coming changes to the nation's health care laws, the more likely it is to consider radically restructuring the way it provides insurance to employees, according to a study by the consulting firm McKinsey and Co.

The study, which is being circulated among Republicans, predicts that as many as 30 percent of companies will stop offering health insurance benefits, reduce the level of benefits, or offer benefits only to certain employees. If this prediction holds, the number of Americans who could see changes to their health insurance would be far more than the 9 million to 10 million estimated by the Congressional Budget Office.

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That means that the cost of subsidizing plans for those people -- about $19 billion a year, according to the CBO -- could more than triple. And, if the report's predictions are borne out, many Americans would lose their health insurance.

The study contradicts at least three others predicting that reform will have a negligible effect on employer-sponsored insurance. A Rand study finds the number of employees who would lose insurance to be "small," and the Urban Institute believes that the percentage "would not differ significantly."

"History has shown that reform motivates more businesses to offer insurance," said an administration health care expert who read the study at National Journal's request. "Health reform in Massachusetts uses a similar structure, with an exchange, a personal responsibility requirement, and an employer responsibility requirement. And the number of individuals with employer-sponsored insurance in Massachusetts has increased."

In first selling the plan to Congress, President Obama said that "no one" who liked their current plan would be dumped into a subsidized insurance market by their employers. But his language changed once it became clear that some employers would find it cheaper in the new system to not offer health benefits at all.

"When I say if you have your plan and you like it ... or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform," Obama said in June 2009.

With a few exceptions, beginning in 2014, companies with more than 50 employees would have to provide insurance to every worker or pay the government a fine.

If a company estimates that it would pay $3,500 a year per person for the plan, the economic incentive alone might lead them to drop coverage -- and give the employee a raise at the same time, McKinsey says.

McKinsey surveyed 1,200 companies and conducted other "proprietary research" to determine how companies, when presented with incentives in the new health care regime, would act in the future. It also surveyed thousands of employees across regions and industries.

According to the firm, most employers would try to fulfill the requirement to offer insurance, citing as reasons the company's reputation, the need to attract a talented work force, and the need to keep that work force happy. The law includes tax incentives to keep businesses from ending the benefit for employees. But McKinsey also found that about 85 percent of employees would consider remaining with a company even if they weren't offered health benefits.

"Overall, employees value cash compensation several times more than health coverage. Further, many younger employees also value career-development opportunities and work-life balance more than health benefits," McKinsey says. 60 percent of employees surveyed expect employers to offer higher wages if they drop insurance coverage, and most employers said they probably would.

Another reason why employees might tolerate the axing of their benefits is that the policies offered by the state exchanges may be better and cheaper for them.

"The subsidies will keep the cost of insurance coverage from the exchanges below what many employees now pay toward employer-sponsored coverage, especially for those whose earnings are less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level," McKinsey concludes.

Companies will find it economically beneficial to offer insurance to some employees -- and might conclude that workers with relatively less money would benefit more from participating in the health exchanges and receiving higher compensation at work.

In other words, both the employer and the employee might recognize that the most economically beneficial arrangement between the two could result from the lower costs an employee would pay for health care outside the workplace, because premiums and out-of-pocket costs would be subsidized by the government. At the same time, the employer could raise the employee's salary or increase wages by a smaller amount than the penalty it would pay for not insuring the employee -- provided that the wage increase plus the penalty does not equal the cost the employer would already bear.

Of course, if companies and employers don't pay for the health care, the cost burden shifts to the government.

McKinsey projects that many companies will take a hybrid approach.

"The discussion to date has largely focused on dropping versus keeping coverage, but for most employers the most value-creating options lie in between. Employers should evaluate the economic impact not only of expanding [employer-subsidized insurance] to every employee (compared with dropping it completely) but also of shifting toward part-time labor, allowing lower-wage employees to qualify for exchange subsidies through setting premiums above 9.5 percent of their household income, or adopting defined-contribution models," the study says. "These intermediate options will probably be the most effective way to secure a reasonable [return on investment] for benefits after 2014."

Image credit: meddygarnet/Flickr

Is the Press Fair to Palin?

2011-05-31T10:50:06-04:00

The former Alaska governor likes to criticize the "lamestream media." Does it hold her to a different standard?

Does the political press corps -- professional, accredited journalists as opposed to bloggers -- apply a different standard to Sarah Palin than it does to other candidates?

First, let's blow away a few straw men.

The outré conspiracy theories about Trig Palin not being Palin's son. That lunacy was not taken seriously (and, indeed, was dismissed) by most of the media.

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Palin was distrusted from the start. Maybe by John McCain's staff but not by the media. Look at the rapturous coverage after her convention speech. When she was new and genuine, she was new and genuine.

Game Change

Nothing that Palin has done since the election has given the political press corps any reason to collectively reframe its opinion of her. Her forays into policy have been more provocative than substantive. She quit her governorship in the middle of her first term. She popularized the misleading concept of "death panels."

The political press corps fashions itself as an umpire, calling balls, strikes, and fouls and occasionally throwing people out of the game. This is an imperfect construction because it is often hard to divine the objective "strike zone." Journalists, polls have shown, tend to have liberal social views; but for most reporters, the journey to figure stuff out begins there. For partisans, it ends there.

Palin gets mad when the "media" cover bloopers she makes, like her coinage of the word "refudiate." The press--as distinct from the partisan media--incorporates these errors into its lack-of-readiness narrative. Palin does not make a distinction between a political press corps that thinks she's not ready and a tribal belief among some Democrats that she is not smart. She does not distinguish TMZ from PBS. In her world, Bill Maher is Katie Couric. The New York Times is Daily Kos. Palin seems to genuinely believe that the press is unremittingly hostile to her. She believes that her children have been subject to humiliation and harassment.

Palin says that the people who cover politics for a living have a negative disposition toward her because of her faith. Plenty of evangelical candidates are given a fair shake by the press. Mike Huckabee's candidacy was boosted because the press corps actively liked him. Tim Pawlenty holds nearly every position ascribed to Sarah Palin and is not mistreated by the press, nor is he ridiculed for his beliefs. And the media that allegedly mistreats Palin somehow remains obsessed with anything she does. Every utterance is a national news story; every tweet triggers news cycles full of analysis. Palin has redefined what it means to get "free media."

On the campaign trail, she can be incredibly compelling. She forges an emotional bond with her audience, the type of bond that Mitt Romney has not managed to achieve. But until Palin figures out how to cross the plausibility threshold among the press and the Republican elites, she will remain at a disadvantage.

The press is not monolithic, and there are certainly some individual reporters who harbor animus toward Palin, just as there are reporters who like her and think that the rest of the pack underestimates her political skills. Finally, it's not the "lamestream" media or gossipy McCain aides who have offered the most-withering criticism of Palin. Her chances are pooh-poohed by everyone from Karl Rove (who has the ear of almost everyone in the GOP) to Bill Kristol (her onetime backer) to the professional conservative smart set (like The New York Times's Ross Douthat). If this is a display of liberal bias, then liberals are a lot more numerous than we think.

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Drop-down image credit: AP

5 Ways Obama Could Lose in 2012

2011-05-26T17:23:49-04:00

A lot can happen between now and Election Day. From foreign policy to health insurance premiums, here's what might help a Republican win.

Democrats are more confident about President Obama's chances for reelection than at any point since the economy bottomed out in the summer of 2009. Arguments used to batter him, like his inability to make a decision on a tough issue, have been neutralized by the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

None of Obama's potential opponents have made any particularly bold moves, save Tim Pawlenty's promise to wean Iowa off of ethanol subsidies. Mitt Romney fell on the grenade representing his support for an individual mandate in Massachusetts early in the campaign, alienating the conservative intelligentsia in the process.

And though Republicans forced the president to cut spending, they're not reaping any political benefit, thanks to a stiletto-knife-to-Medicare budget that all but four GOP House members signed on to as their own.

But political advantages are relative. No one, least of which his own staff, expects Obama to win by 10 million votes again. He has proved too polarizing--or incapable of extracting himself from the trap of polarization that afflicts all modern presidents. That means we're in for, at most, an election where the losing candidate grosses more than 60 million votes. We think of game-changers as major events: one-time, snap-like, existential interjections that swing millions. But game-changers are better described as concentrated periods of political evolution with demographic slices of the electorate. Or they can be filters--constraints--that screen potential ballot casters with certain allegiances from the voting pool. Most can't be predicted.

But here are some potential slow-motion game-changers that worry the White House now:

1. Asia Erupts

The killing of bin Laden, rapturous in the moment, actively destabilizes South Asia and forces the president to break his promise about withdrawing the majority of American troops from Afghanistan by 2014. The conventional wisdom says the opposite will happen--that Obama will be able to accelerate the withdrawal. He might, at first. But even absent the alarmism from some quarters, it's hard to argue that the region, right now, is more stable than it was a month ago. Obama wants to claim to Americans that he is winding down the two majors war of the Bush era, and that in doing so, he is restoring to America a sense of balance of equilibrium. India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan need to cooperate in order for that to be so.

2. Personal Income Slumps

There are hopeful signs for the economy in terms of job growth but plenty of grim ones, too, and that worries Obama's allies. Personal income growth could stall. In March of 2011, real (that is, inflation adjusted) disposable personal income increased by just 0.1 percent. Ominously, consumer spending declined. There is no single statistic that will be a better proxy for how individuals feel about their economic future. That's one reason why administration economists placed so much faith in the payroll tax stimulus that passed in late 2010. One possibility is that certain groups of people will feel the economic recovery more quickly than others. Right now, those making less than $100,000 in under-performing industries are still feeling the lasting effects of the credit shutdown and mortgage crisis. If they're young and entering the job market, they're not finding solid, professional jobs. Obama can poll well with young professionals but needs them to believe that his economic policies are working before they'll turn out for him in significant numbers.

3. Revenge of the Premiums

Health insurance premiums might rise dramatically in 2012, offsetting the solid political benefits that Democrats are reaping from the unpopularity of the Republican Medicare-reform plan. Many Democrats think Republicans have squeezed all the juice out of bashing Obama's health care reform as they can, but that's based on the assumption that the insurance market responds to the prospect of reform deadlines as the Obama administration expects it to.

4. Turnout Doesn't Turn Out

Successful Republican efforts to undercut labor unions' political power in a number of Midwestern states could reduce the ability of labor to be a force multiplier, which means that fewer potential Democrats will be registered. In Florida, an effort to restrict voter-registration efforts could prove troubling. On the other hand, the GOP assault on public-employee unions might energize that vote.

5. He's a Disaster

Never underestimate the power of chaos of television to sour people on their government, especially if the president mucks up a disaster. Though the administration wound up handling the BP oil spill as well as could be expected, the perception at the time was the opposite, and doubtless contributed to the negative effect on Democrats' and Obama's poll numbers. A president's executive power--the actual assets and resources he can move--in the modern era rests primarily in two areas: warmarking and disaster response. A well-regarded FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, is working overtime after a spate of nasty tornadoes. If Obama's inter-agency process fails him at some point down the line, Obama's competence will be questioned. It's unlikely to happen but it could--as could any of these nightmare scenarios for the White House.

Image credit: TushyD/Flickr

What Obama's Team Thinks of the Republican Field

2011-05-24T08:18:51-04:00

Why they consider Romney the most formidable and are relieved Daniels won't run

Gov. Mitch Daniels is a lot of things to a lot of people, but to President Obama's political team, the Hoosier was the most credible Republican spokesperson on economic recovery, the man whose results as Indiana governor would compare most favorably to the man in office. Now that he's not running, the Republican field lacks a credible Obama antithesis.

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The killing of Osama bin Laden takes the issue of competence and terrorism off the table (at least for now), but at the same time, the sluggish economic recovery is more conspicuous. If Republicans can't question whether Obama is fighting above his weight class--the jibe had been that he's "in over his head"--they'll bash him with facts and figures about personal income growth and employment rates. Democrats would want voters to associate Daniels with the deficits of the Bush era, but Daniels could probably escape that trap. Many of his ideas--he's told Republicans to "pass the brandy and get to work"--have (surprise?) made their way into law via the Obama administration.

So, no Daniels. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, can make a credible case that, so far as the economy is concerned, his policies turn 180 degrees from Obama's. But Paul's libertarian support seems to have a ceiling. And though some of his predictions about the economy have proven prescient, the media elite remains unconvinced about his ability to bring younger libertarians into the party at a fast enough clip to be a credible delegate-gatherer.

And the race, after all, is about delegates. Since activist tea party Republicans are not new to the party, the delegate makeup make not be as different as it appears. Though the caucus and primary calendar isn't fixed, one thing that is that the delegates prior to March 1, 2012, will be proportionally apportioned. That gives lesser-known candidates a way to stay in the race longer--and well-known candidates the impetus to invest heavily in races outside the core fourearly states--Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has proven she can raise a significant amount of money, but her burn rate is prodigious. Out of $16 million she accumulated last quarter, she spent $14.5 of it. That means she's investing heavily in direct mail, buying lists, and building a large network of small donors that can be tapped again and again, provided she gives them a reason to donate. If she's competitive in Iowa, she'll have plenty of money to be competitive elsewhere.

Jon Huntsman, Jr. is in a pickle. The former Utah governor will have the money to stay in the race as long as he wants and he's taking positions on economic and health care issues that should leave him in good standing with Republicans, assuming they can handle his being Obama's ambassador to China and his moderate stances on issues like civil unions for gays. But from the standpoint of Obama's brain trust, there is no compelling reason for Republicans to vote for him.

The White House considers Tim Pawlenty to be a formidable contender. He's a self-described "Sam's Club" Republican who strikes middle America as a nice guy, and he's got a solid Horatio Alger story that will distract people from his fidelity to orthodox conservative policy positions.

But Pawlenty, a plurality governor in a blue state, has no real innovative ideas to his name, was less popular when he left office, and seems to be betting on a strategy of allowing anyone who might beat him to collapse from their own weight. Candidates don't tend to win that way. Look at Lamar Alexander and his presidential bids, also premised on likability, competence. Pawlenty will be forced to focus attention on social issues to prevent Bachmann from taking his votes in Iowa and South Carolina. That'll make it tough to pull back to the center in the general election.

The primary race, most of Obama's team believes, is Mitt Romney's to lose. And here's the case they'd make for him: He was an effective governor of a very blue state with notable achievements (not just health care) to his name, a very smart policy-oriented brain, and an underappreciated asset: he saved the 2002 Olympics--or so the story goes. (Never underestimate the power of Americana during an election year.)

Romney's problem is similar to Obama's: he doesn't play well with downscale voters. He comes off as the manager who fired them, or who cut their wages--the "Richie Rich" know-it-all. Obama's demerits with these voters are different, but a general election race between the two would leave a large number of those voters up for grabs.

Since the nomination rests on delegate accumulation, a Republican can enter the race as late as November and still be eligible to win them in the big states. A candidate who says "no" today--even Mitch Daniels--might be persuaded to become a "yes" by November.

If the economy improves in a way that's perceptible to voters, if the private sector creates 200,000 more jobs a month, if inflation tames and gas prices decline, Obama can point to a body of evidence when he's asked to assess his unpopular decisions.

Health care remains one of Obama's fundamental problems, but the issue is turning around. Democrats were indelibly damaged by the health care debate, but it's Republicans who are now getting tripped up by the Medicare plan of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Image credit: AP

Drop-down image credit: AP

'The Beast' Gets Stuck in Ireland

2011-05-23T14:07:25-04:00

President Obama's touring limousine, "The Beast," can reportedly take a 50-caliber round fired at close range, but it proved no match for a piece of pavement in Ireland on Monday.

A steel-reinforced tire on one of the two identical limos got stuck as it attempted to roll over an exit ramp at the gates of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin. As steel contacted pavement, a loud clang was heard, the limo abruptly stopped, and crowds waiting to see Obama "ooohed."

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Because the president is never supposed to be outside in view of unscreened public and not moving, the Secret Service and Irish Garda quickly swarmed the small area while technicians worked to get the limo out of its predicament. A van and another car created a temporary barrier to protect operational security of the rescue operation.

Obama was in the second limo, and could only watch.

As video of the event shows, one of the motorcade's lead cars scraped its fender, suggesting that something about the pavement was hinky.

The day before a president arrives, the Secret Service agent assigned to the motorcade usually practices driving the route in the limousine to make sure that the unusually heavy car can fit into narrow spaces and complete turns without bumping into anything.

It's unclear whether the Dublin embassy exit was rehearsed.

After about 15 minutes, the motorcade was rolling. Watch the crowd's cheers turn to jeers in the video below:

Homeland Security's Top Cybersecurity Official Resigns

2011-05-19T10:16:00-04:00

Phil Reitinger, the point man on cybercrime at Homeland Security, decides it's time to move on

Phil Reitinger, the Department of Homeland Security's top cyber and computer crimes official, is resigning just days after the administration launched its most ambitious cybersecurity initiative.

"I have decided that the time has come for me to move on from the Department," Reitinger wrote in an e-mail to DHS employees this afternoon. Reitinger, who, as deputy undersecretary in DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate, was the department's senior interagency policymaker, said in an interview with National Journal that the timing of his announcement was not meant to signal any disapproval with the White House.

"I am fully supportive of the direction the administration is going. Because there has been a recent spate of announcements, because I think we've made a lot of progress, because I think we've built a good team, now is the time for me to leave some of the execution and further development to the team," he said.

Reitinger said he wants to spend the summer with his family - he has young children and he's been working in cyber security "since they were born."

He will step down on June 3. On Monday, four Cabinet secretaries unveiled a joint strategy for international cybersecurity coordination, and last week, the administration sent detailed legislative guidance to Congress on a number of critical issues. Reitinger told National Journal he is most proud of the team he put together.

His biggest concern upon departure, he said, is the "challenge" of "keeping cyber on the front burner."

"It's easy to say, 'well, we've made progress, let's go do something else.' We cannot do that. We have to stay focused like a laser beam," Reitinger said.

The DHS cyber team has monitored a surge of major cyber attacks in the private sector, with crises like the penetration of Google by Chinese hackers, aggressive attempts to break into NASDAQ's computers, and most recently, an audacious but simple infiltration of RSA, a top cybersecurity company perhaps best known for its SecurID computer security product.

"Phishing" - in which hackers use spam to lure their targets into opening up hidden malware on their work computers, giving up access to larger networks, remains the favorite tool of cyber-criminals.

Some in Congress want to elevate the position Reitinger held to a Senate-confirmable deputy with broader powers, and to give DHS's cybersecurity programs their own directorate. Since DHS was given the responsibility to protect the homeland from cyber threats, as well as direct authority to protect dot.gov domains from intrusions, it has competed for resources and attention with the Department of Defense, which stood up an entire cyber command and has the mighty computers of the National Security Agency at its fingertips. In October, DHS signed a groundbreaking memorandum of agreement with the Department of Defense, a statement of principles acknowledging that while the different departments had different legal duties, "we want to be able to work together as one team." In practice, that means that DHS and DOD cyber scientists and engineers work at each other's facilities.

Reitinger participates in a weekly secure video teleconference with officials from the Pentagon and other agencies. The domestic-focused orientation of senior DHS cyber managers conflicts with the military bearing of DoD cyber warriors, and concerns about data storage, privacy, and threats that cross domains continue to vex policymakers. Also, DHS wants to hire the best cybersecurity engineers and scientists, and has boosted pay in order to make the jobs more attractive than those in the private sector, which anticipates billions of dollars worth of growth in the cyber-protection realm.

DHS's National Cyber Security Division provides warning and advice to the government and private sector about potential threats through its National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, runs exercises to test the government's response to major intrusions, and has completed guidelines for the feds to follow in the event of a cyber-emergency.

Reported friction between DHS and other government agencies has diminished under the watch of White House senior director for cyber policy Howard Schmidt, who was charged by President Obama with de-conflicting and streamlining cyber response and policy priorities associated with it. Last week, Schmidt sent to Congress detailed guidance from the White House about legislation to establish a formal way to protect and certify the nation's critical private infrastructure, as well as formally give DHS authority over the dot.gov domain.

Rand Beers, Reitinger's direct superior at DHS, wrote in an e-mail to employees that Reitinger's "leadership, intellectual rigor, enthusiasm, and commitment to the mission and the people of NPPD have been a central feature in making our organization better. I, in particular, will miss him as a true partner in our work here. But we all move on eventually and organizations have to adapt."

Correction: an early version of this article misstated the number of children Reitinger has and the number of participants on a weekly video conference call.

Image: Hyungwon Kang/Reuters

The Little-Known Agency That Helped Kill Bin Laden

2011-05-05T17:08:08-04:00

The National Geospatial Agency mapped bin Laden's compound, analyzed drone data, and helped the SEALs simulate their mission

President Obama's first brush with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency was ignominious. Out for lunch in May 2009, at a Five Guys burger franchise in Washington, the new President started to shake the hands of other customers, TV cameras in tow. Then he turned to men with government ID badges.

"So what do you?" the president asked. "I work for at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency," one said.

"Outstanding. How long have you been doing that?" Obama wondered. "Six years." Obama then asked: "So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial..." His voice trailed off. "Uh, we work with, uh, satellite imagery." Obama: "Sounds like good work." The response is obscured by the audio.

Suffice it to say: Obama knows what the NGA does today.

Any number of officials and agencies have been in the limelight since the raid on Osama bin Laden, including the CIA and the Defense Department. But the little-known and little-heralded work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, often called the NGA, was central to the demise of the terrorist leader.

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The NGA integrates several core intelligence functions. It makes maps and interprets imagery from satellites and drones; it also exploits the electromagnetic spectrum to track terrorists and decipher signatures off of enemy radar. And notably, the NGA is the first intel agency to be headed by a woman: Letitia Long, a longtime intelligence veteran.

The NGA's contributions to the bin Laden mission are substantial. As described to National Journal by senior U.S. policymakers who do not work for the agency, they include:

Creating three-dimensional renderings of the Abbottabad compounds using imagery and laser-based sensing devices--laser radar, or ladar.

Analyzing data from a sophisticated next-generation drone that kept watch on the compound before, during, and after the raid. The drone was an RQ-170 built by Lockheed Martin.

Helping the Joint Special Operations Command create mission simulators for the pilots who flew the helicopters into the breach. (This was first reported by Washingtonian magazine.)

Providing to the CIA and other policymakers assessments of the number of people who lived inside the compound, their heights and genders.

NGA Director Long issued a statement on May 2 saying, "I am extremely proud of the work that NGA men and women have done that led directly to this outcome. Their GEOINT was critical to helping the intelligence community pinpoint bin Ladin's compound."

Long is being modest. The NGA also helped the CIA find the compound itself. Based on tips from human sources and intercepted cell phone conversations, intelligence analysts had a basic description of the type of place where the courier trusted by bin Laden lived. But it was NGA analysts who pored over detailed maps and crunched data, coming up with several places in Pakistan that fit the model. One of them was Abbottabad. The bin Laden compound itself was easily noticeable.

"We found a location, and it eventually, as we got more and more fidelity, we were able to render it visually. You can build a story and an understanding that you can take to the senior analysts," a senior NGA analyst said in an interview.

The analyst, who participated in the bin Laden hunt and who has been forward deployed to Afghanistan, was permitted to speak only on the condition of anonymity. His account was confirmed by intelligence officials who don't work for the agency.

Not surprisingly, NGA's technological capacities are very secret, because if the terrorists can ascertain what the agency can do with remote sensing data, they can alter their plans accordingly. But the NGA analyst, who had several tours of duty alongside warfighters in Afghanistan, described some of them.

NGA can determine, from quite a distance, what an object or a building is made out of.

It conducts sophisticated pattern analysis of human characteristics, like gait and body size.

It possesses some of the most sophisticated facial recognition software on earth.

It has mastered "all-weather" imagery analysis: hyperspectral and multispectral sensors on satellites and drones can see through thick clouds.

Professional defense and aviation journals suggest that NGA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the Air Force have developed sensors that can penetrate foliage on the ground, peek deep under water and even into the ground. Officials wouldn't comment.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, ran NGA during the first part of George W. Bush's administration. Though the agency is best known for its maps, he shifted its focus toward real-time, dynamic, three-dimensional support using all parts of the spectrum.

When Clapper said in a statement after the bin Laden raid that the intelligence integration he observed in the operation was "the best" he's seen in 50 years of intelligence service, part of his pride came from the knowledge that his former agency was a significant contributor to the mission's success.

NGA's work is expensive, but it has escaped much of the budget pressure faced by other national security agencies, in part because the premium on exploiting intelligence is so essential to a war on terror and in dealing with states with extensive nuclear ambitions such as Iran and North Korea.

"We are very proud of the role we played, but there are problems to scaling this," the analyst said. By scaling, the analyst means that demand, in other words, exceeds capacity. The agency describes itself as serving customers--other departments--and those customers are ravenous. It not only includes the military but also, say, helping the Federal Emergency Management Agency with hurricanes and wildfires. If it involves analyzing aerial data, the NGA is on it. In a world of climate change, terrorists and rogue states, the demand for the agency's analysis isn't likely to abate anytime soon even with the death of Osama bin Laden.

Image credit: Department of Defense

The Secret Team That Killed Osama bin Laden

2011-05-02T10:20:14-04:00

Elite Navy SEALs spent months training for yesterday's raid

isafmedia/flickr

From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.

Were it not for this high-value target, it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.

This HVT was special, and the raids required practice, so they replicated the one-acre compound at Camp Alpha, a segregated section of Bagram Air Base. Trial runs were held in early April.

DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units. They report to the president and operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directives. Though the general public knows about the special SEALs and their brothers in Delta Force, most JSOC missions never leak. We only hear about JSOC when something goes bad (a British aid worker is accidentally killed) or when something really big happens (a merchant marine captain is rescued at sea), and even then, the military remains especially sensitive about their existence. Several dozen JSOC operatives have died in Pakistan over the past several years. Their names are released by the Defense Department in the usual manner, but with a cover story -- generally, they were killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan. That's the code.

How did the helos elude the Pakistani air defense network? Did they spoof transponder codes? Were they painted and tricked out with Pakistan Air Force equipment? If so -- and we may never know -- two other JSOC units, the Technical Application Programs Office and the Aviation Technology Evaluation Group, were responsible. These truly are the silent squirrels -- never getting public credit and not caring one whit. Since 9/11, the JSOC units and their task forces have become the U.S. government's most effective and lethal weapon against terrorists and their networks, drawing plenty of unwanted, and occasionally unflattering, attention to themselves in the process.

JSOC costs the country more than $1 billion annually. The command has its critics, but it has escaped significant congressional scrutiny and has operated largely with impunity since 9/11. Some of its interrogators and operators were involved in torture and rendition, and the line between its intelligence-gathering activities and the CIA's has been blurred.

But Sunday's operation provides strong evidence that the CIA and JSOC work well together. Sometimes intelligence needs to be developed rapidly, to get inside the enemy's operational loop. And sometimes it needs to be cultivated, grown as if it were delicate bacteria in a petri dish.

In an interview at CIA headquarters two weeks ago, a senior intelligence official said the two proud groups of American secret warriors had been "deconflicted and basically integrated" -- finally -- 10 years after 9/11. Indeed, according to accounts given to journalists by five senior administration officials Sunday night, the CIA gathered the intelligence that led to bin Laden's location. A memo from CIA Director Leon Panetta sent Sunday night provides some hints of how the information was collected and analyzed. In it, he thanked the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency for their help. NSA figured out, somehow, that there was no telephone or Internet service in the compound. How it did this without Pakistan's knowledge is a secret. The NGIA makes the military's maps but also develops their pattern recognition software -- no doubt used to help establish, by February of this year, that the CIA could say with "high probability" that bin Laden and his family were living there.

Recently, JSOC built a new Targeting and Analysis Center in Rosslyn, Va. Where the National Counterterrorism Center tends to focus on threats to the homeland, TAAC, whose existence was first disclosed by the Associated Press, focuses outward, on active "kinetic" -- or lethal -- counterterrorism missions abroad. Its creation surprised the NCTC's director, Michael Leiter, who was suspicious about its intent until he visited.

That the center could be stood up under the nose of some of the nation's most senior intelligence officials without their full knowledge testifies to the power and reach of JSOC, whose size has tripled since 9/11. The command now includes more than 4,000 soldiers and civilians. It has its own intelligence division, which may or may not have been involved in last night's effort, and has gobbled up a number of free-floating Defense Department entities that allowed it to rapidly acquire, test, and field new technologies.

Under a variety of standing orders, JSOC is involved in more than 50 current operations spanning a dozen countries, and its units, supported by so-called "white," or acknowledged, special operations entities like Rangers, Special Forces battalions, SEAL teams, and Air Force special ops units from the larger Special Operations Command, are responsible for most of the "kinetic" action in Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials are conscious of the enormous stress that 10 years of war have placed on the command. JSOC resources are heavily taxed by the operational tempo in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials have said. The current commander, Vice Adm. William McRaven, and Maj. Gen. Joseph Votel, McRaven's nominated replacement, have been pushing to add people and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology to areas outside the war theater where al-Qaida and its affiliates continue to thrive.

Earlier this year, it seemed that the elite units would face the same budget pressures that the entire military was experiencing. Not anymore. The military found a way, largely by reducing contracting staff and borrowing others from the Special Operations Command, to add 50 positions to JSOC. And Votel wants to add several squadrons to the "Tier One" units -- Delta and the SEALs.

When Gen. Stanley McChrystal became JSOC's commanding general in 2004, he and his intelligence chief, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn, set about transforming the way the subordinate units analyze and act on intelligence. Insurgents in Iraq were exploiting the slow decision loop that coalition commanders used, and enhanced interrogation techniques were frowned upon after the Abu Ghraib scandal. But the hunger for actionable tactical intelligence on insurgents was palpable.

The way JSOC solved this problem remains a carefully guarded secret, but people familiar with the unit suggest that McChrystal and Flynn introduced hardened commandos to basic criminal forensic techniques and then used highly advanced and still-classified technology to transform bits of information into actionable intelligence. One way they did this was to create forward-deployed fusion cells, where JSOC units were paired with intelligence analysts from the NSA and the NGIA. Such analysis helped the CIA to establish, with a high degree of probability, that Osama bin Laden and his family were hiding in that particular compound.

These technicians could "exploit and analyze" data obtained from the battlefield instantly, using their access to the government's various biometric, facial-recognition, and voice-print databases. These cells also used highly advanced surveillance technology and computer-based pattern analysis to layer predictive models of insurgent behavior onto real-time observations.

The military has begun to incorporate these techniques across the services. And Flynn will soon be promoted to a job within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where he'll be tasked with transforming the way intelligence is gathered, analyzed, and utilized.

Bin Laden's Death: A Pivotal Victory for Obama, U.S. Intelligence

2011-05-02T03:28:07-04:00

The president silences his national-security critics heading into 2012, and the CIA stands tall after the damage of 9/11

The death of Osama Bin-Laden is a transcendent moment for the country and a pivotal one for President Obama.

As the president said, it "marks the most significant event in our effort to defeat Al Qaeda." The inability to capture Bin Laden has been the hole at the heart of the American national security establishment for ten years. More than 5,000 American soldiers have been killed pursuing terrorists and insurgents since the twin towers fell. Many thousand more have been injured. Untold numbers of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan suffered death and displacement. The American government was reorganized to protect the homeland and Americans saw loved ones march off to war and slugged through long airport security lines to avoid a replay of what happened that bright September morning.

The plot set in motion by this tall itinerant Saudi, born in 1957 opened a chaotic and difficult century for the world's superpower. The 20th century saw American armies victorious with tanks and planes and mired in the jungles of Vietnam. The wars of the 21st century from the Khyber Pass to Baghdad, tested American ingenuity and leadership. Could America deliver victories in this terrain?

As long as Bin Laden remained on the run, the answer was no.

The triumph of a pro American government in Baghdad and an ostensible American ally in Kabul was all good but as long as the man who started the wars of 9/11 was able to scurry from hiding place to hiding place without capture, then it cast a pall over the entire enterprise.

With Bin Laden's death, the importance of little known aspects of America's fighting capability--the paramilitary like forces of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command may soon be as well known as mainstays like the Army and the Marines. In the wars of the 21st century, on the eve of this long-awaited moment, the lesser known legions in the American military are now under the spotlight.

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The CIA had been caught off guard by 9/11 and caught up in the contratemps over faulty intelligence leading to the Iraq war. Its director, George Tenet, had famously said that the case for Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk."

Now the CIA stands much taller. Its intelligence helped pinpoint Bin Laden, but so did its patience: the genesis of the operation began four years ago, based on a fragment of information received years earlier than that from detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Just as Leon Panetta readies to leave his tenure as director, Langley has cause for pride.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, now retired, his successor at the Joint Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven, and Michael Flynn, McChrsytal's intelligence chief, transformed the way the military uses and fuses intelligence. This is their kill, too.

Inside the Pentagon today, the "Three Musketeers," as they're affectionately known -- CIA deputy director Mike Morrell, Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright and Mike Vickers, the civillian who oversees special operations, drove through artificial bureaucratic firewalls to make sure that secretive entities could work with one another.

Of course, we don't know yet what the practical impact of Bin Laden's death will be. His continued existence remained a source of inspiration and recruitment for the loose network - the "al-Qaida"- that he commanded, even as he lost the ability to directly order and supervise terrorist attacks. The death will not end terrorism. It may even draw a ferocious response from those who are sympathetic to bin Laden. It will almost certainly complicate the already severely strained U.S. relationship with Pakistan even as President Obama went out of his way praise Pakistan for its cooperation in the effort -- which was, to be sure, nil, because Pakistan had not been told about it beforehand -- and to encourage its continued help.

Bin Laden's death is anundeniable success for an intelligence community that missed the connections that might have prevented the attack. It coincides with the unofficial kick-off of the 2012 re-election cycle, where the incumbent, President Obama, has had his credentials as commander in chief repeatedly questioned by opponents and his citizenship mocked. Having scored the victory that remained beyond the grasp of George W. Bush--who graciously congratulated the president tonight--Obama's military bona fides will be harder to attack.

Whatever flaws the president's national security policies may have, and however infrequently Obama may have mentioned bin Laden, history will record that, when it came to getting Bin Laden, Obama got the job done and his predecessor, George W, Bush, whose entire presidency was tormented by bin Laden's actions on 9/11, did not despite Bush's claim that he would capture him "dead or alive."

The White House notified its Sunday press pool at 9:45 tonight that the lid they placed on coverage was lifted, and that the President would address the nation at 10:30. Then White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer Tweeted about it moments later. The cell phones of intelligence and national security spokespeople went straight to voice mail, suggesting they were overloaded or that their bearers had been asked to shut them off, so as not to inadvertently tip anyone off.

Several senior intelligence officials, including the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and the CIA Director, Leon Panetta, were called to the White House early today and have been out of contact with staff since then - a sign to them that something big was happening. Beginning around 9:45 p.m. ET tonight, White House officials and Panetta began to notify members of Congress, beginning with Speaker John Boehner. Former President Bush was also notified. He issued a statement shortly after Obama finished speaking. "The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: no matter how long it takes, justice will be done," Bush wrote in the statement.

Since going into hiding, bin Laden has issued about 30 rambling messages to the U.S., some of which have taunted President Obama personally. During a debate in the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said killing bin Laden and crushing al-Qaida was the "biggest national security priority." But in a CBS interview in January 2009, he walked back those comments, saying it would be enough to keep the terrorist organization "on the run."

"If we have so tightened the noose that he's in a cave somewhere and can't even communicate with his operatives, then we will meet our goal of protecting America," he said in the interview. Tonight, he exceeded his own expectations.

Obama's Reelection Report Card

2011-04-18T11:26:07-04:00

The president's political strengths and weaknesses, as he opens the 2012 campaign

As President Obama begins his reelection campaign, he faces an array of obstacles. The unifying theme that helped him win the 2008 election is a faint memory. Even if the economy grows briskly over the next 18 months, the unemployment rate is likely to remain above 8 percent on Election Day.

Consider this a preliminary report card regarding some of the president's challenges.

Political Identity: C. Who is this guy, and where does he want to take the country? Obama's hope-and-change platform in 2008 allowed people to fill in whatever details they wanted. This strategy served a little-known candidate, but it's untenable for an incumbent. Americans know that Obama has a vision--70 percent do, according to an April 9-10 CNN/Opinion Research poll of 824 adults.

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But there are several obstacles for Obama. One is the bizarre birther phenomenon, which cuts both ways: It paints Republicans as crazy to independent voters; but it also provides an avenue for some voters to express views that might otherwise be taboo to discuss, perhaps about his race or his religion.

Separate from the birther constellation is a cluster of beliefs with fairly high magnitude. Obama's style is conciliatory and concessional. Even liberals don't seem to know precisely where Obama wants to lead them. It's not a question of goals; it's a question of guts. Where will he fight? Perhaps his new deficit-cutting plan will show the way. This grade, incidentally, is given without reference to his potential opponents. Throw a Republican with an identity crisis into this mix and Obama's grade rises.

Campaign Team: A. Obama's reelection team is experienced, trusted, and not riven by the usual infighting that besets campaigns. It's true that they're cocky, but after any number of near-death experiences with health care and other issues, their hubris is a bit more muted. It must here be noted that several potential GOP opponents -- notably Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney -- are putting together A-list campaign teams too.

Leadership: C. Americans are not sure about Obama's leadership skills. A small majority see him as a leader, a number that has been in steady decline since he was elected, according to a Gallup poll of 1027 adults that was conducted March 25-27. Fewer than half think he can manage the government (see CNN/OPR poll).

One version of the case posits that Obama has spent way too much time blaming predecessors even as he continued Bush policies, from TARP to Guantanamo Bay. His leadership skills tie into his political identity. He seems rudderless at times. His advisers will say that Obama wants to fix problems and is a pragmatist, and that external events have made it all but impossible to chart a straight course and follow it. That may be true, but the challenge is to convince the American people that this style of governing is the right one.

Attributes and Values: A. Americans like Obama; they trust that he wants the best for them--even if they don't quite know what that is; they see him as honest, on their side, and likable (see Gallup). This will be a significant asset. It helped carry President Bush to reelection in 2004.

Organization: A. Regardless of whether there's a drop-off in volunteer intensity early on, there's no question that Obama's reelection operation will be formidable and well-funded enough to compete with whatever Republicans are able to construct. This includes outside groups who will try to chip away at Obama in battleground states. Democrats will have well-financed vehicles of their own.

Position Relative to His Opposition: B. The Republican field is unleavened at best. The all-but-declared Republican candidates (Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty) all have significant, if resolvable, flaws. Some of those thought to be considering the race -- from Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Donald Trump -- threaten to pull the GOP off its rails. Dark-horse challenges could make the field rougher, especially Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana.

Domestic Issues: C. The House Republican embrace of transforming Medicare under the plan put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is a godsend to the Obama team. Social issues don't seem to matter, as Obama himself noted on Thursday night. But Obama still faces formidable challenges. The economy, while moving in the right direction, is still sputtering. And one shouldn't underestimate the GOP's ability to portray Obama as a tax-raiser even if he is only proposing to restore higher income tax rates on wealthier earners. Keep an eye on the housing market and on gas prices as well as on personal income growth per capita -- a favorite statistic used by the Bushies to determine economic satisfaction. Obama is performing at roughly the Bill Clinton level in the comparable time period on questions about which political agent Americans trust more to handle domestic problems. (See CNN/USA Today/Gallup Trends data.)

Foreign issues: B. He continues the Bush war in Afghanistan and drew down the one in Iraq while joining one against Libya. There's no crowning achievement like a Middle East peace deal. Guantanamo Bay remains open. Independents liked Obama because he promised to repair America's relationship with the world and raise its standing. He has done that. He will remind independents of this. It will probably work. Obama's proposed defense cuts are going to be troubling to voters in the industrial Midwest and the Intermountain West.

Relations With Party Base: B. This is a hard one to grade. There are several different Democratic bases and they don't seem to overlap. The progressive elites, those who follow politics around the clock and have venues to broadcast their views, think Obama has abandoned core Democratic principles. Rank-and-file Democrats seem to be modestly influenced by these complaints. Republican elites have more influence over their base than Democratic elites, for a variety of reasons.

Among Democrats, Obama's job approval is about 5 percentage points away from where he needs to be. Three-fourths of self-identified liberals approve of Obama's performance to date. He needs these numbers to be higher. Liberal white Democrats and African-Americans are solid Obama supporters. But Obama's approval rating has dropped significantly among Latino voters (73 percent when he was elected; 54 percent now, according to Gallup), and slightly among younger voters (ages 18 to 29) who were hardest hit by the economic sluggishness. While 55 percent among this group is stronger than it was half a year ago, according to a huge Institute of Politics poll released last week, it needs to be higher. Still, in the absence of a Republican foil, these are generally sufficient numbers for the president. At this point in 1995, more than 4 in 10 Democrats wanted a primary challenger for Bill Clinton; fewer than 2 in 10 do for Obama.

Image credit: TushyD/Flickr

Drop-down image credit: TushyD/Flickr

5 Disadvantages for Obama in 2012

2011-04-04T11:01:12-04:00

Here are five disadvantages Obama faces as he begins his reelection campaign:

That the economy will not have fully recovered by November 2012 has been priced into Obama's stock. What matters is the perception of a relative recovery. And what feeds those perceptions is whether people know people who are struggling. A slow and steady increase in private-sector employment may not be sufficient, though, to remove the sense of urgency that voters project about jobs.

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Obama Announces Reelection Bid
Conflict's Known Unknowns Trouble Lawmakers

In the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way's analysis of Obama's 2008 coalition, the "droppers" -- Obama voters who stayed home in 2010 -- were mostly frustrated at politics in general. They were not disappointed in Obama per se. What reason will Obama give them to come out and vote? For self-described "switchers" -- those who voted for Obama in 2008 but chose Republican candidates in 2010 -- a recovery economy is not going to be the panacea. These voters had problems with the Democratic brand and the perception that Democrats tilted far to the left, becoming out of sync with their values.

Who is Obama? What are his answers to the fear that America is in permanent decline? It was beneficial to have that question open in 2008, but it might hurt him in 2012. We're supposed to know the man's mind now and shouldn't need to be told where he's going to go. By this point in his first term, Americans knew enough about President George W. Bush to allow the Bush campaign to run against John Kerry -- rather than in defense of Bush's policies. Larger world events shaped what voters thought, of course. But we don't have a fixed sense of who Obama is because he calibrates quite often, and there are thick threads of pragmatism running through his policy choices. He has a vision for the world, but he has communicated it better to the world than to audiences at home.

The petulance of professional liberals. Obama's pollsters think that this problem is overstated, pointing to surveys showing how popular the president remains with people who call themselves liberals and Democrats. But progressive elites have spent the past two years aggressively holding the president to his campaign promises, and in no way should Obama's campaign assume that they will distribute the energy of the grassroots as effectively as they did in 2008, when they had a raucous primary to get them all fired up. Obama's reelection command will have to be more humble. Contrast this with conservatives: They're fired up, they're organized, and they plan to raise hundreds of millions outside the party to discredit Obama before the GOP primary ends.

The crushing economic gloom of the Rust Belt and Midwest. It is here where Obama's coalition simply didn't show up in 2010, and Obama must find a way to win some combination of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, states that have shifted to the right. Skepticism of Obama remains intense here.

5 Advantages for Obama in 2012

2011-04-04T10:50:21-04:00

Here are five advantages Obama brings to the 2012 reelection campaign:

Independents remain fickle and not particularly enamored with Republicans, meaning Obama has a chance at winning them over. Also, the independents who voted for Obama in 2008 did so because he promised to restore America's standing in the world. He can argue he's done that in 2012.

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MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL:
Obama Announces Reelection Bid
Conflict's Known Unknowns Trouble Lawmakers
The Next America

Obama isn't losing the idea war. If anything, it's fluid, and he can exploit that. Some top (potential) Republican challengers have strong records, but what it will gain them is unclear. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has a roster of impressive accomplishments, Newt Gingrich is a conspicuous idea man, and Haley Barbour is known for his political acumen, but they each have their negatives. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty's record in Minnesota can help win him some votes in a primary, but it isn't necessarily scalable to a general audience. And Mitt Romney's best day in office, when he signed health legislation as Massachusetts's governor, is one he'd rather forget.

Obama has an extremely well-oiled, responsive, grassroots election machine. Organizing for America, which became the campaign-in-exile during the past two years, has spent a lot of its time building capacity for 2012. Obama also runs the party now; there will be no period of adjustment. Add to this the synchronization of his senior staff: Everyone knows each other, is on the same page, and dissenting voices have been, quietly, purged.

By and large, Americans do not cotton to the "projection of strength" view of the world that the previous administration accepted as its mantra. They may have questions about where Obama is going, but humility remains a plus -- not a minus -- so long as they still envision America winning. Americans seem to struggle along with Obama as he tackles foreign policy challenges. That could be a sign that he won't be hurt too much by those challenges in 2012.

Social issues, by and large, seem less and less important to those Americans whose votes are switchable. This is a plus for Democrats and a minus for Republicans.

Obama Announces Reelection Bid

2011-04-04T10:11:43-04:00

credit: Tim Shaffer/Reuters

President Obama opens his reelection campaign on Monday with a familiar cast of consultants; an economy that's improving, sluggishly; wars that he is struggling to extract himself from; and an implacable partisan fight in Congress that might shut down the government by week's end.

The Obama campaign made the announcement in an e-mail to supporters, accompanied by a video. Obama will hold several conference calls on Monday with donors and supporters and will begin to raise money for his campaign late next week.

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MORE FROM NATIONAL JOURNAL:
Five Reelection Advantages for Obama
Conflict's Known Unknowns Trouble Lawmakers
The Next America

"We're doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you -- with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends. And that kind of campaign takes time to build," Obama wrote in the e-mail.

"So even though I'm focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today. We've always known that lasting change wouldn't come quickly or easily. It never does."

(VIDEO: No Time to Rest for Obama)

The Republican National Committee responded quickly, blasting Obama's leadership in an e-mail entitled "Back Seat Presidency."

The trappings of the campaign, and even the soothing earth-blue colors of the website, are reminiscent of 2008. The slogans are modified but have the ring of an old song--"Change That Matters," "Progress," "Moving America Forward." But the challenges he faces could not be more different. For one thing, his signature domestic accomplishment, the largest expansion of health insurance ever, remains a flash point, and its future is uncertain. His party is losing ground to Republicans on spending cuts, and his refusal to stand and fight disappoints his own tribe.

(COLUMN: How Obama Could Lose in 2012)

The trajectory of Barack Obama's presidency was supposed to be vertical. He would reform the way Washington worked, restore a sense of pride in government, and bolster the liberal nostrum that government can be effective, efficient, and helpful. He would reform health care and use his Democratic majorities to put a price on carbon. People would feel better.

But he was confronted immediately by the imminent collapse of the economy, had to briefly nationalize the American auto industry, was forced to bail out the engine of capital flows (the big banks), which became particularly unpopular. Correspondingly, the White House never quite understood how much Americans distrusted government to fix the problem that they created.

More than ever, voters think America is declining as an economic force. They feel untethered from their government and mistrust concentrated power. They are not confident than their children will do better than they are doing--the first generation to think this way since professional polling began. Neither party has figured out how capture the attention of these voters.

"People are worried about the future and do not believe things are getting better," said Steve Duprey, a Republican strategist who worked for John McCain in 2012. "The person who can convey that Reaganesque sense of optimism and confidence wins."

(PICTURES: Meet the GOP's Potential 2012 Candidates)

Obama seems boxed in by his Defense Department on Afghanistan, having inherited a general officer corps that almost disdainfully constrains his options. Then there are wars that aren't really wars, like Libya, and crises that suggest the young president operates above his actual weight class.

For all of these problems, though, Obama has enduring strengths. Americans like him, and they like the idea of him. They believe he has their best interests at heart. They seem to understand that he surrounds himself with people who genuinely want to search for solutions, even if they get them wrong. And he has significant accomplishments to his name: the New START arms control treaty with Russia, the advancement of civil rights for gays, an education policy that is promising, a financial reform bill that shows signs of being tougher than expected.

(THE COOK REPORT: Obama's Advantage)

Assuming that roughly 80 percent of the electorate will vote for their party, Obama's reelection targets can be broken down by demography, propensity to vote and ideology. He can win if he replicates the coalition of young voters, blacks, Latinos, single women, and suburbanites that accepted his nebulous but optimistic message of change. He will have to peel back into the Democratic fold older voters who deserted the Democrats in 2010, and though the growth of minorities in key states can cushion the blow of defecting working class white voters, he needs to construct a floor underneath that constituency. A blowback over Republican efforts to deinstitutionalize labor might help him here.

Where Democrats have plans that address the structural difficulties that middle-class Americans face, Republicans tend to focus on what these voters don't like.

Obama won by 73 electoral votes in 2008. But in 2012 terms, his margin is lower, thanks to the census. The country is growing in the South and the West--and not the coastal West. The flip side: Obama can afford to lose Ohio, or Florida, North Carolina--or all three--and still win the election fairly comfortably. Early, early polls show Obama is doing well enough in Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, and North Carolina. He's underperforming significantly in Virginia and Indiana.