Month: May 2011

In the wake of the latest charm offensive, Alex Massie observes that Britain is still enamored:

Not being Bush still works in Europe. Indeed, such is Bush's legacy that Obama arrived in Britain as the least controversial president in more than 30 years. Ronald Reagan was adored by British Conservatives but loathed by the left and a "peace" movement that hated the presence of American nuclear weapons on British soil. George H.W. Bush was a politician's politician, not a media performer and though Bill Clinton was admired by the British left, the Conservatives viewed him with suspicion.

There has been a growing overlap between Obama's and Cameron's approach to foreign policy:

Mr. Cameron has generally been much tougher in his criticisms of Israel and more hawkish in his support of Arab revolutions than his U.S. counterpart, but Mr. Obama said they had “turned a corner” and built a common front. Mr. Cameron, standing beside the U.S. President, called his speech “bold” and “visionary.”

The interesting question for me is what the Cameron government will do when the UN vote on Palestine comes around in September. Cameron has no interest in giving Netanyahu any comfort right now, and suggesting a possible yay vote from the UK would maximize his and Obama's leverage to persuade Israel to sign on to a viable two-state solution. But when push comes to shove? I really don't know. An abstention?

More immediate is the G8 position. Everyone is on board – except, weirdly, Canada.

A reader writes:

You link this morning to a piece about Haim Saban. Saban was, from the beginning of the 2008 cycle, a Clinton donor who was over and over extremely critical of Obama (also he is not merely a Jew, but an Israeli with a certain political profile). He may have come around at the end but there was no love there to begin with. And you can see that those loudly attacking Obama are the usual left-Israel hawks who always take the Likud maximalist position–Dershowitz, Koch, etc.

I would ask that you take this story with a grain of salt.

It is in reality a Republican line of PR right now, so unless in a few months we see the number of Jewish supporters drop precipitously we have NO idea what is really going on in the background except for the stories being shopped by the WSJ and Commentary about Obama's Jewish doom. Really, you're repeating these stories without skepticism when there is an agenda there? Why not write about the countless Jews who after seeing Netanyahu insult their president on US soil are actually more and more supportive of a Palestinian state than they were before. While this is anecdotal I can tell you that people of my generation–30-45–are disgusted and ready to throw in the towel on Israel, and I'm a hard-core Zionist who lived in Israel, speaks Hebrew and lost friends to terrorist attacks.

Connie Bruck's New Yorker profile of Saban is also worth revisiting.

"You say that you cannot imagine the U.S. President even allowing himself to be photographed while hunting, or with his shirt off. But I can because I remember pictures of Theodore Roosevelt taken not just with a hunting rifle or a fishing rod in his hands, but with a lion he killed. And indeed, as recently as last summer, President Barack Obama was bathing in the Pacific Ocean in front of TV and photo cameras, and he was not wearing a tie, to put it mildly. Does this look like politically incorrect behavior? Not to me, and my ethnic origin has nothing to do with that," – Vladimir Putin in an insanely long interview with Outdoor Life.

(Hat tip: Russia Blog)

Jonathan Bernstein notes that Palin has been unable to grow her base:

Palin to date has been a factional candidate, representing little more than a personal faction. And while Jimmy Carter won a Democratic nomination as a factional candidate with a personal faction, that’s been a losing strategy for decades now. Presidential nominations are generally won by coalition-building, not factional, candidates. So while she can’t yet be counted out, unless Sarah Palin shows a so far unseen ability to expand her support, do the things that normal presidential candidates do, and run as a coalition building candidate, she’s relatively unlikely to be nominated.

In Israel:

Netanyahu's [Washington] trip not only put a brake on the drop in his popularity ratings, but actually reversed the trend.

And his phony outrage has also advanced his other key goal: defeating Barack Obama in 2012. By cutting off the donations.

Brendan Nyhan wonders why the president has had no major scandals. He insists "the first Obama scandal is likely to arrive sooner than most people think":

Obama has been extremely fortunate: My research (PDF) on presidential scandals shows that few presidents avoid scandal for as long as he has. In the 1977-2008 period, the longest that a president has gone without having a scandal featured in a front-page Washington Post article is 34 months – the period between when President Bush took office in January 2001 and the Valerie Plame scandal in October 2003. Obama has already made it almost as long despite the lack of a comparable event to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Why?

It couldn't be because he is not corrupt and that that standard has trickled down?

The amazing pregnancy of Sarah Palin – in photographs, in a major push from those still on the Trig-trail. All the photos and video-stills have been around for a while, except one new one from behind, from March 27. Laura Novak, in conversation with Brad Scharlott, whose paper on press response to the story, jumpstarted the whole debate again, is beginning to lose it:

The first thing I notice is that Mrs. Palin appears wider in March than she does in April. But playing the contrarian here, I’m going to say that’s just angles and lighting.

But also (too) in March, Mrs. Palin appears to have, as crazy as it sounds, a bulge in her upper back. And worse still, a light stripe down her back, just along her shoulder blade. As if she had a bullet proof vest or something ELSE PADDED on underneath her black suit. Again, I recognize that I have a tendency to SHOUT a lot during our conversations. But you see, I feel as if I’ve just fallen down a rabbit hole and I want to make sure you can HEAR ME because these photos are freaking me out. And I just want someone to Make.It.Stop.

Jesse Griffin piles on.

Paul Van de Water highlights it:

Ryan’s plan would increase total health spending for the elderly — the beneficiaries’ share plus the government’s share — by upwards of 40 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). There are two reasons why.  First, private insurance plans have much higher administrative costs than Medicare.  Second, private plans have less bargaining power with health care providers and are unable to negotiate payment rates that are as low as Medicare’s.

Larry Sabato isn't counting her out:

Sarah Palin can’t be underestimated; she could still grab the nomination since no one else has taken off. A lot would depend on whether, a year from now, Republicans see President Obama as ripe for the picking. If Obama can be beaten, then the G.O.P. may turn a bit cautious and try to choose someone who can capture swing voters. That isn’t Ms. Palin’s profile. In trial heats she fairly consistently loses to President Obama by the widest margin of all the better known G.O.P. candidates.

Yet if the economy is much better and the president looks to be romping to a second term, Republicans may just go with their hearts and not their heads.

Olathe, Kansas, 12.49 pm