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Dec 11

16

Obama’s crossover message, from kitchen to mansion

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FILE – In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo, President Barack Obama visits with Patrick and Donna Festa in their Scranton, Pa., home. Festa, a working-class couple in Scranton, Pa., and Jack Rosen, an affluent businessman from New York?s Upper East Side, live worlds apart. Campaigning for re-election, President Barack Obama dips into both worlds. On a recent trip, he joined the Festas in their tidy South Scranton home to discuss his jobs initiatives. Hours later, he was in Rosen?s spacious house, amid a trove of contemporary art, raising money from high-dollar donors. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

FILE – In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo, President Barack Obama visits with Patrick and Donna Festa in their Scranton, Pa., home. Festa, a working-class couple in Scranton, Pa., and Jack Rosen, an affluent businessman from New York?s Upper East Side, live worlds apart. Campaigning for re-election, President Barack Obama dips into both worlds. On a recent trip, he joined the Festas in their tidy South Scranton home to discuss his jobs initiatives. Hours later, he was in Rosen?s spacious house, amid a trove of contemporary art, raising money from high-dollar donors. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

FILE – In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo, President Barack Obama walks to his motorcade with members of security after visiting with Patrick and Donna Festa in their Scranton, Pa. home. Festa, a working-class couple in Scranton, Pa., and Jack Rosen, an affluent businessman from New York?s Upper East Side, live worlds apart. Campaigning for re-election, President Barack Obama dips into both worlds. On a recent trip, he joined the Festas in their tidy South Scranton home to discuss his jobs initiatives. Hours later, he was in Rosen?s spacious house, amid a trove of contemporary art, raising money from high-dollar donors. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

FILE – In this Nov. 30, 2011, file photo President Barack Obama’s limousine is seen under a tent outside a private residence as he speaks at a campaign event in New York. The White House is increasingly relying on working-class Americans to put a face on the president?s economic policies, arranging kitchen table chats or caf? roundtables between Obama and representative beneficiaries of his initiatives. It?s an involved process, requiring advance vetting to get the most illustrative individual or family to reinforce the president?s agenda. It?s a blend of reality and stagecraft designed to convey a front-page image or a six-second video clip on the evening news that advances the president?s story line. At the same time, with re-election in mind, the president is spending more and more time raising campaign money from wealthy donors. Intimate moments with contributors are rarely captured on camera, and while reporters get to hear the president?s opening remarks at fundraising events, the interaction with donors occurs after reporters have been ushered out. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Donna and Patrick Festa, a working-class couple in Scranton, Pa., and Jack Rosen, an affluent businessman from New York’s Upper East Side, live worlds apart.

Campaigning for re-election, President Barack Obama dips into both worlds. On a recent trip, he joined the Festas in their tidy South Scranton home to discuss his jobs initiatives. Hours later, he was in Rosen’s spacious house, amid a trove of contemporary art, raising money from high-dollar donors.

As he focuses his message on income inequality, Obama’s policy and political goals find him spanning the gulf between the 1 percent and the 99.

The White House is increasingly relying on working-class Americans to put a face on the president’s economic policies, arranging kitchen table chats or caf? roundtables between Obama and representative beneficiaries of his initiatives. It’s an involved process, requiring advance vetting to get the most illustrative individual or family to reinforce the president’s agenda. It’s a blend of reality and stagecraft designed to convey a front-page image or a six-second video clip on the evening news that advances the president’s story line.

At the same time, with re-election in mind, the president is spending more and more time raising campaign money from wealthy donors. Intimate moments with contributors are rarely captured on camera, and while reporters get to hear the president’s opening remarks at fundraising events, the interaction with donors occurs after reporters have been ushered out.

The juxtaposition may seem stark ? from coffee mugs to wine crystals, from a middle-class neighborhood in Las Vegas to the Bellagio Hotel and Casino. But Obama’s message to both is a variation on what has become a common refrain of spending to create jobs, payroll tax cuts and higher taxes on the wealthy.

“We don’t just ask for sacrifices from seniors, we don’t just ask for sacrifices from union members, we don’t just ask for sacrifices from teachers, we ask for sacrifices from the people who are in the best position to sacrifice,” he told donors recently.

Still, the contrast can provide rich fodder for Republican attacks. After Obama in October attended one fundraiser hosted by actor Will Smith and producer James Lassiter and another by the star couple Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, the Republican National Committee pounced with a news release headlined, “As Americans Continue to Deal With the Effects of Obamanomics, Obama Connects With His Celebrity Friends.”

No doubt, all leading candidates for president raise money from wealthy donors, and fundraising by incumbent presidents is especially visible. For the White House, it’s a matter of sticking to the same message no matter who the audience is.

“Anyone who’s in the game has to be sensitive to the fact that he’s going to be appearing before well-dressed, deep-pocketed audiences in very fancy houses and penthouse suites,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative and presidential campaign veteran. “You always have to be conscious and recognize the imperative of being consistent.”

When addressing donors, Obama says he is willing to cut spending but he also is asking “the most fortunate among us to do a little more to pay their fair share.”

“We’re not trying to sneak one by them,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “They understand, and they support the president because of it.”

Rosen, a developer and chairman of the American Council for World Jewry, said he’s had no problem recruiting donors because of the president’s stance on taxes. “For the most part, my friends and people I talk to say they don’t object to paying a higher tax,” he said in an interview. “Certainly in last week’s event, no one said they wouldn’t come because he’s trying to increase their taxes.”

When he does find reluctance from donors, he said, it tends to come from financial executives pushing back on Obama’s banking policies, not his calls for higher personal income taxes.

“I have a number of people I know on Wall Street who don’t like what they hear,” Rosen said.

As for creating clashing images with Obama’s outreach to the middle class, White House officials say that’s less a concern than showing the president being exposed to real-life examples of the economic struggles he wants his policies to address.

“Holding up a specific family or a specific business or a specific citizen and illustrating how they would tangibly benefit from the policy agenda that the president is promoting is one of the most effective ways to cut through what’s otherwise the jargon of the political process,” Earnest said.

People chosen for those set pieces often get word just days before an Obama visit. The Festas were notified on the Sunday evening before Obama’s trip to Scranton on a recent Wednesday.

Patrick Festa, an elementary school teacher, and Donna Festa, a graphic designer, fit the bill as the president promoted the advantages to the middle class of extending the current payroll tax cut. Their names were culled from a list provided by the White House Office of Public Engagement, and they were selected from three households that made a final list.

The Festas were sworn to secrecy. An advance team descended on their house to examine logistics. They removed glass from picture frames to eliminate camera glare, they relocated a Christmas tree, moved some furniture out of the way and arranged some Christmas decorations to make them more visually appealing. Eventually, the Secret Service let the neighbors in on the visit.

When reporters were finally ushered in, Obama was seated at the end of a dinner table adorned with Christmas balls. The cameras shuttered as Obama asked Donna Festa about her job. Within 40 seconds, the press was ushered away. Obama stayed about 10 more minutes.

“We told president we were fortunate that we had jobs,” Donna Festa said in an interview. “But that as for getting ahead, it’s very tight.”

The glass is back in the picture frames and the furniture has been relocated, but Donna Festa said the family liked where the Christmas tree ended up. It’s a mystery to her how they ended up on the White House short list.

“Our neighbors are still abuzz about it,” she said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-14-Obama-Stagecraft/id-cb3fb71b7f18474a845403d4c1443453

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Nov 11

18

Obama in Bali for summit of East Asian nations (AP)

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BALI, Indonesia ? Aiming to knit Asian allies ever closer as China’s might rises, President Barack Obama is completing a nine-day Asia-Pacific trip with a visit to his boyhood home of Indonesia, where he’ll become the first U.S. president to take part in a summit of East Asian nations.

Security issues and the U.S. vision for an increasingly robust American role in Asia are expected to be central themes for Obama’s participation in the East Asia Summit in Bali, where the president arrived Thursday night after traveling from Australia. But concerns over China may shadow the president’s meetings Friday and Saturday with leaders of smaller Asian nations increasingly alarmed over China’s claims to maritime passage and rich oil reserves in the South China Sea.

Obama will also get a chance to meet on the summit sidelines with leaders such as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with whom the president has an especially close personal relationship, as the U.S. looks to bulk up regional alliances and encourage big roles for friends.

For Obama, the visit will mark a homecoming to the country where he lived for four years as a boy after his mother married an Indonesian man and moved them to Jakarta. Obama visited Jakarta last year and spent time during that visit reflecting on his personal ties to Indonesia, something he probably won’t have as much time for on this trip. But Obama’s background as a Hawaii native partly raised in Indonesia has shown throughout his trip, which began with an economic summit in Honolulu and ends when he departs Bali on Saturday.

While in Bali, Obama will be aiming to expand commercial ties and export opportunities with fast-growing Asia, looking for ways to underscore the connection between his foreign travels and U.S. jobs with an election year approaching. Nuclear nonproliferation, disaster relief and maritime security also are U.S. priorities.

But behind it all, China looms large.

The centerpiece of Obama’s visit to Australia was announcement of a new military agreement that will allow more U.S. military aircraft and a rotating presence of U.S. Marines into Australia, a move largely seen as a hedge against China, which immediately objected.

In Bali, Obama will encounter more allies eager for U.S. support as China and its smaller neighbors argue over the South China Sea, an area that is critical to U.S. interests as well.

He arrives after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton earlier this week signed a declaration with her counterpart from the Philippines calling for multilateral talks to resolve maritime disputes such as those over the South China Sea. Six countries in the region have competing claims, but China wants them to negotiate one-to-one ? and chafes at any U.S. involvement.

Clinton said the U.S., during the East Asia Summit, “will certainly expect and participate in very open and frank discussions,” including on the maritime challenges in the region. Beijing said Tuesday it opposes bringing up the issue at the summit.

It’s not clear how much will be said publicly about the dispute, but U.S. officials are quick to note the importance of the South China Sea, where $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade moves annually, according to Adm. Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific Command. Briefing reporters traveling with Obama this week, Willard called it “a vital interest to the region, a national interest to the United States, an area that carries an immense amount of commerce, and an area in which we must maintain maritime security and peace and not see disruptions as a consequence of contested areas.”

On Thursday, China was muted in its public response, saying only that more robust American ties to Australia should not harm other countries.

“China has no opposition to the development of normal state-to-state relations,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in Beijing. “We also hope that when developing normal state-to-state relations, one should take into consideration the interests of other countries as well as the whole region and the peace and stability of the region.”

Behind the scenes, however, the more assertive U.S. policy toward China was setting Beijing on edge. The government’s Xinhua News Agency said the U.S. feels threatened by China’s rise and influence in Southeast Asia and said Obama’s goal was “pinning down and containing China and counterbalancing China’s development.”

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111117/ap_on_re_as/as_obama

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Nov 11

16

Not-so-great expectations for presidents in year 4 (AP)

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Washington ? President Barack Obama’s “we can’t wait” refrain is all about projecting a sense of urgency and bold action heading into his fourth year in office. It turns out other presidents haven’t had much luck with that.

The fourth year is often a disappointment, particularly when a president facing re-election is trying to coax action out of a Congress in the hands of the other party. The heady optimism of earlier years gets bogged down in partisan bickering, and big initiatives give way to less ambitious steps.

Bill Clinton, chastened by huge GOP gains in the 1994 congressional elections, ended up tacking to the center in his fourth year, a remarkable transformation captured in his 1996 acknowledgment that “the era of big government is over.” Clinton, helped by a solid economy, did enough to get re-elected, but it was a year largely characterized by small-bore initiatives like school uniforms and neighborhood curfews.

George H.W. Bush, frustrated that he couldn’t get action out of a Democratic Congress on his economic proposals, opened his fourth year in 1992 with words akin to Obama’s:

“My friends: The people cannot wait,” he said in his State of the Union address that January. “They need help now.”

By that November, voters in a down economy were tired of waiting for help, and gave the president’s job to Clinton. Bush’s heralded leadership of the Desert Storm coalition that expelled Iraq’s invasion forces from Kuwait in 1991 had slipped from people’s attention by then.

The second President Bush, in his fourth year, had the benefits of banner economic growth and a Republican-controlled Congress. That allowed him to deliver his fourth tax cut in four years just a month before Election Day 2004.

“The law I sign this morning comes at just the right time for America,” Bush said as he signed the bill in the leadoff caucus state of Iowa.

The time was just right for his re-election campaign, too, he might have added.

Bush’s larger accomplishments, though, came earlier in his term: education reform, big tax relief packages and managing the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. He took the country into war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

Each president has faced his own set of challenges and advantages as his first term wound down.

Franklin Roosevelt still had steam in his fourth year, as he continued to advance portions of his New Deal, and voters re-elected him in 1936 by a lopsided margin. Lyndon Johnson, who opted not to seek re-election in 1968, was slowing down but still managed to get through fair housing legislation. Jimmy Carter’s fourth year was dominated by the Iranian hostage crisis and continuing inflation, and so voters denied him a fifth. Ronald Reagan had a strong economy working for him in 1984, and was rewarded with a second term.

Overall, the track record of recent presidents in year four is somewhat depressing, says Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer.

“It is possible to govern in the fourth year, whether you’re popular or unpopular” he says, “but it’s obviously much more limited, usually, in terms of what you can get.”

Calvin Mackenzie, a presidential historian at Colby College in Maine, says the problem for sitting presidents is bigger than simply fourth-year blues.

“The system is stacked against effective presidential leadership,” says Mackenzie. “In everything that involves economic and domestic policy, the president is circumscribed by constraints everywhere he turns.”

Obama doesn’t need a historian to tell him that: The Republican-controlled Congress has made it clear that the president’s big jobs package won’t go anywhere, forcing the president to plead for bite-size pieces and look for chunks that he can put in place on his own.

“We can’t wait for Congress to do its job,” he said in on recent speech. “If they won’t act, I will.”

But in the same speech, he acknowledged a countervailing truth, saying: “The only way we can attack our economic challenges on the scale that’s needed is with bold action by Congress.”

Obama’s tone, a year out from the 2012 elections, is sharply different than when he spoke exactly one year out from Election Day 2008.

Then, he spoke optimistically of “an opportunity to deal with those challenges that we haven’t met for decades because of a political system in Washington that has failed the American people.”

“I’m running because I don’t want to wake up one morning four years from now and turn on one of those cable talk shows and see that Washington is stuck in the same food fight that it’s been in for over a decade.”

Well, it’s four years later, and Obama can point to some big accomplishments, such as health care reform, and winding down the war in Iraq.

But the partisan divide in Washington is as broad as ever, hemming in the president’s opportunities for further action and leaving many voters feeling disappointed.

And Mackenzie says the president must take a share of the blame for raising expectations unrealistically high.

“The problem is we do expect much ? and presidents encourage us to expect much,” Mackenzie says. “So we’ve got this awful paradox of rising expectations and diminishing ability of presidents to meet those expectations. So we’re constantly disappointed in our presidents.”

___

Nancy Benac can be followed at http://twitter.com/nbenac.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111114/ap_on_el_pr/us_obama_year_four

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Nov 11

15

Leaders: Asia-Pacific free trade vital to recovery

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U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit leaders plenary session in Kapolei, Hawaii on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit leaders plenary session in Kapolei, Hawaii on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle greet Chinese President Hu Jintao and his wife Liu Yongqing, left, before their dinner at the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, Pool)

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle greet Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda before their dinner at the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, Pool)

U.S. President Barack Obama hugs South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, as Obama’s wife Michelle, right, hugs Kim Yoon-ko, wife of South Korean President, before their dinner at the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, Pool)

U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle greet Philippine President Benigno Aquino III before their dinner at the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara, Pool)

KAPOLEI, Hawaii (AP) ? Opening markets to freer trade is crucial to a lasting global economic recovery, Asia-Pacific leaders agreed Sunday as they wrapped up a summit that produced tangible progress toward a U.S.-backed regional trade bloc.

The plan to forge a Pacific free trade area got a big boost Sunday when leaders of Canada and Mexico joined Japan in expressing support for a deal that has received a cool reception from rising power China.

The news was a coup for President Barack Obama, who made progress on the pact one of his top priorities for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, held in his home state of Hawaii. It comes after Japan, the world’s No. 3 economy, said Friday it wants to join the nine nations already involved in talks on what has been dubbed the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

In their summit declaration, leaders of the 21-member APEC said the region is now the vanguard for global growth thanks to previous progress in forging closer economic ties and free trade.

The meeting at a time of uncertainty for the world economy has strengthened the group’s commitment to cooperation, the statement said. Leaders also agreed on measures to promote green-based economic growth to ensure energy security.

“We continued our efforts to try to get the global economy to grow faster, the strong and balanced growth that we need,” Obama said in a closing speech.

The balmy weather for the annual APEC gathering at a resort on the west side of the Hawaiian island of Oahu contrasted with deepening pessimism over the economic outlook as the leaders finished a day of talks on how to spur growth and create jobs. With Europe again on the brink of recession, Asia’s vital role as a driver of global growth has gained even greater urgency.

IMF Director Christine Lagarde attended the summit, briefing the APEC leaders on the latest developments in Europe. The International Monetary Fund will play a key role in coming months in overseeing efforts by Italy, and other ailing economies that use the euro common currency, to rein in debt.

Europe’s quandary was among the wide range of issues that the leaders tackled in their one-day meeting.

Some might wonder why Pacific Rim leaders would be discussing troubles on the other side of the globe, Obama said, answering that “If Europe has a major recession, that will have a direct impact on our growth and ability to create jobs.”

The U.S. Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, welcomed the overtures from Canada and Mexico about joining the so called TPP, issuing a statement calling them America’s “neighbors and largest export markets.”

But China, which some economists say is on course to overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy this decade, has appeared reluctant to endorse the Pacific trade pact, likely wary of being drawn into what has become a U.S.-led initiative that encroaches on its own sphere of influence in Asia. China also has commitments to rival free trade blocs in East and Southeast Asia.

The TPP group now includes only four smaller, relatively affluent economies ? Chile, New Zealand, Brunei and Singapore ? but the U.S., Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Peru are negotiating to join.

U.S. officials have said all are welcome to come on board, while indicating that the agreement’s high standards would pose a challenge to countries whose economies are not fully open. That would likely include Russia, which is close to gaining long-sought membership of the World Trade Organization, and China, which has staked out large sections of its economy for protection from foreign competition.

Obama has said he is optimistic that work on the American-backed trade pact could result in a legal framework by next year.

For the U.S., the initiative is seen as a way to break through bottlenecks and open new business opportunities. Many in APEC see the emerging deal as a building block for a free trade area that eventually encompasses all of Asia and the Pacific ? covering half the world’s commerce and two-fifths of its trade.

“The Asia Pacific region is absolutely critical to America’s economic growth. We consider it a top priority. And we consider it a top priority because we’re not going to be able to put our folks back to work and grow our economy and expand opportunity unless the Asia Pacific region is also successful,” Obama told fellow leaders earlier Sunday.

Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an influential business lobbying group, praised the Pacific trade initiative.

“An important step to unlocking global economic growth will be expanding trade in the Asia-Pacific, and the TPP holds this key,” Donohue said. He urged the group to move quickly in drawing up a timeline that is “comprehensive, enforceable, and makes room for new entrants.”

One of the highlights of the closed-door APEC talks is usually a “family photo,” a ritual that has sometimes involved decking the often staid leaders in colorful shirts or other local fashions.

Despite speculation the leaders might don tropical themed “Aloha” shirts or perhaps leis this time, they posed in their usual business attire ? a reflection, perhaps, of the seriousness of their agenda.

“We’re here for business. We’re here to create jobs. We’re here to promote exports, and we’ve got a tangible set of steps that have been taken,” Obama said. “That’s what responsible leadership is all about.”

APEC joins economies, both huge and tiny, rich and poor. As always, the divergence between rich and developing economies ? and between the U.S. and China ? was apparent.

In Hawaii, Obama was also pushing hard on trade issues with China.

Before a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Saturday, Obama exhorted Beijing to “play by the rules,” citing controls that keep China’s currency undervalued as one example. He also cited lax enforcement of protection of intellectual property rights, favoritism toward state-run enterprises and other issues that have long dogged trade relations between the world’s two leading economies.

Speaking Saturday ahead of the meeting with Obama, Hu reiterated the Chinese government’s insistence that APEC respect the choices made by its members “to independently pursue green growth on the basis of their resource endowment, stage of development and capacity.”

APEC’s lack of negotiating power ? all decisions are by consensus ? means prospects for major, immediate changes are slim, though over time its incremental efforts have helped build support for closer economic ties and freer trade.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Feller, Erica Werner and Jaymes Song contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-13-APEC/id-61ec152ca1aa47028f8578ed2329675b

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