Obama's Pragmatic Foreign Policy
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Obama’s Pragmatic Foreig n Policy Returning from her first official trip abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was greeted by her first...
...The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells me that the number of people living in poverty has reached 37.3 million and is growing...
...After all, some famous probes like the Senate Watergate investigation and the inquiry into the Iran-contra scandal were initiated by Congress...
...The Obama White House, which sits on the documentary record of the Bush Administration’s cutting constitutional corners, has so far indicated no willingness to release the documents...
...Nor does the Justice Department seem much interested in laying bare the controversial acts of the Bush Administration...
...But maybe that’s the way they do change these days...
...As a sort of afterthought, the amendment empowered governors to make a temporary appointment pending the election...
...In presenting the State Department report on human rights around the world, Clinton, now back in Washington, said, “We will not rely on a single approach as we strive to overcome tyranny and subjugation that weaken the human spirit...
...At his news conference on Monday evening, February 9, he said, “I’m more interested in looking forward than in looking backward...
...Other Presidents have struck the unity theme...
...Obama has summoned America from “stale political arguments” to “common purpose and necessity...
...But “poverty” has become the great no-no in political discourse, associated with that other frowned-upon word . . . “welfare...
...To bring the process closer to the people, the 17th Amendment in 1913 provided for direct election of Senators, with vacancies to be filled by special elections...
...Conflict Resolution President Obama has engaged himself in a vast effort at national and global conflict resolution...
...But the Justice Department subsequently cited that privilege in moving to block a lawsuit seeking documents on “extraordinary renditions,” the practice of sending detainees to prisons in foreign countries...
...chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed a bipartisan inquiry on the model of the South African “Truth and Reconciliation” panel that documented the misdeeds of the apartheid regime...
...Clearly, if the Obama Administration wants to do something about repairing the social safety net, it will have to be done quietly...
...In the Dark of Night When he signed his economic stimulus package in Denver on February 17, President Obama spoke of lifting 2 million Americans from poverty into the middle class...
...When Vice President Joe Biden, in his Febr uar y 7 speech to the Europeans at the Munich Security Conference, offered to press the reset button with Russia, he was reflecting changes that already happened...
...During the recent Presidential campaign, we heard a lot from the candidates about aiding the middle class, but not much, if anything, about aiding the persistent poor...
...But, in secret, Nixon divided Americans between friends and enemies...
...In its simplest terms, the argument boils down to liberals seeking more spending, less tax cuts, and conservatives demanding less spending, more tax cuts...
...D.-Mich...
...But President Ronald Reagan scored political points by mocking the war as one that poverty won...
...But for now he can bask in the glow of support from Americans and foreign nations.For Obama, as Hamlet said: “The time is out of joint, oh cursed spite...
...President Obama says he prefers to look forward...
...Treasury bonds...
...The naming of Edward E. Kaufman in Delaware and Michael Bennet in Colorado did not create much of a stir...
...Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr...
...The proffered hand is soon to be tested in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, in Pakistan, in one or more countries in Africa...
...The ambiguous approach, which once would have been called “coexistence,” is also beginning to evidence itself in relations with Russia...
...Nothing preve nts the Congressional Democrats from mounting an inquiry without Presidential approval...
...It was not that way in the Great Depression of the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of rescuing the “one-third of a nation” who suffered in poverty...
...Amnesty International declared that it was “extremely disappointed” with the way she handled human rights in Beijing...
...But issues like wiretapping, mistreatment of terrorism suspects, and the transfer of detainees to other countries have not gone away...
...Internationally, the President has reached out to “the Muslim world” and offered to extend a hand to those who will unclench their fists...
...Although an election is costly, it is less costly than making a mockery of the process of filling vacancies...
...The memorandum was apparently intended to set rules for the incoming Administration, however, and made no reference to what had come before...
...Welcome to the Obama pragmatic foreign policy style...
...There followed exchanges of letters about what they could profitably discuss...
...chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been a persistent advocate of a grand inquest into the misdeeds of the Bush Administration...
...In a recent speech at Georgetown University, Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt...
...Until he had his bill, he talked very little about poverty, preferring to cite benefits he would seek for middle-class families struggling to pay tuition fees, who have lost jobs through no fault of their own...
...The time to end the practice of governors appointing Senators has surely come...
...Later, in an online chat, she asked China to join in an effort to curb greenhouse gases and “not make the mistakes that we made...
...The clash of ideologies remained visible in Congress over the multibillion-dollar stimulus package, now officially called “recovery package...
...He did not highlight the fact that the plan contains large benefits for the poor in the form of food stamps, services for the homeless, expanded Medicaid coverage, and housing allowances...
...Originally, the Constitution provided for Senators to be elected by legislatures...
...Conservative think tanks are watching carefully, suspecting that, in the dark of night, new entitlements are being created...
...has to continue pressing human rights issues, “but we know what they will say,” she is saying the United States needs China for too many purposes to allow a hang-up over conflicting values...
...Constituencies of One Fournew Democratic Senators have constituencies of one—the governors who appointed them to fill vacancies...
...A few days after the inaugural, Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev spoke with President Barack Obama...
...It seems characteristic of his approach that he praised his predecessor for “his service to our nation” even while denouncing past “recriminations and worn-out dogmas...
...In New York, Governor David A. Paterson made a spectacle of himself as he dilly-dallied over the candidacy of Caroline Kennedy before lurching into the appointment of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand...
...Lined up behind the economic crisis are other contentious issues like health care and climate change...
...Arrangements are being made for them to meet during the Group of 20 economic summit in London on April 2. President Obama appears committed to fostering a pragmatic new era of relations with the two giants, Russia and China...
...There may come a day when the new President’s summons to concord founders on the rock of discord, at home or abroad...
...That ever I was born to set it right...
...Bush’s Misdeeds John Conyers Jr...
...He said “all agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure...
...That could—and maybe should—happen again...
...So now one can see signs of social policy development lurking behind the economic shock treatment...
...But the U.S...
...Washington heartily disapproves of the Kremlin’s repression of dissidence, the invasion of neighboring Georgia, and the use of natural gas as a political weapon...
...But the designation of Roland W. Burris by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, himself soon ousted and facing allegations of corruption, became a national scandal...
...Obama, absorbed in pushing the economic stimulus plan, still is giving the idea no encouragement...
...Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, wants an amendment requiring Senate vacancies to be filled only by the voters...
...Subsequently, President Bill Clinton’s Administration made some big changes in welfare, and President George W. Bush’s Administration made some small ones...
...The day after his inauguration, Obama issued a memorandum to all government agencies calling for “affirmative steps to make information public...
...promised to review the Bush Administration’s use of the State Secrets privilege to shield its actions...
...On a Beijing television talk show she urged the Chinese to continue buying U.S...
...The practice is inherently undemocratic and subject to political manipulation...
...What triggered this reception was her telling reporters accompanying her that human rights issues “can’t interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis...
...needs Russian cooperation in arms control, in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and in achieving economic stabilization...
...The Washington Post said editorially that the effect would be to “demoralize thousands of democracy advocates in China...
...Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Obama’s Pragmatic Foreig n Policy Returning from her first official trip abroad, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was greeted by her first barrage of criticism...
...And in the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched a War on Poverty that left us with permanent institutions like Head Start and community health centers...
...Clearly the framers of the Constitution did not intend to leave the selection of a Senator in the hands of a politician with an agenda of his own...
...And to do that, he seems willing to soft-pedal their many differences...
...When Clinton asserts that the U.S...
...In 1968, the newly elected President Richard M. Nixon told of seeing, on a campaign stop in Ohio, a teenager holding a sign saying “Bring us together...
...Both men emphasized normalizing relations and “starting anew,” according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov...
Vol. 92 • January 2009 • No. 1
