The Note, 5/15/2009: Growing Pains -- Obama tacks right, Pelosi lashes back, and Dems take on new fights

May 15, 2009 8:14 AM

By RICK KLEIN

It wasn’t enough when Democrats were at war with Republicans. Then they started fighting themselves. Now they get to take on the CIA, too.

They get to do it facing backwards -- undoing (and sometimes redoing) Bush administration policies, rethinking campaign promises, and reviving arguments that they’d rather see dormant.

Welcome to the days of Democratic growing pains.

As long as they’ve got each other . . . the realities of governing are clashing with the freewheeling days of campaigning -- an anti-Bush push that started in 2003, and didn’t end really end cleanly with the inauguration of a Democratic president.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s defiant press conference keeps that story churning through another few news cycles, adding a few twists to the tale. (Keep in mind that she’s accusing the CIA of lying twice over: Once by telling her waterboarding hadn’t been used in her briefing, and again by saying it in last week’s report to Congress that intelligence officials did tell her about the interrogation techniques.) 

Hovering above it all is the nation’s newest hawk: President Obama, who continues with a series of decisions that look a bit more like those that would have been made by President Bush than Candidate Obama. (And that have at least the appearance of responding to pressure from his right -- to the dismay of those on his left.)

Yes, this is cleaning up messes left for the president by his predecessor. But it’s getting messy on Obama’s side of the room.

Coming Friday: “White House sources tell ABC News that President Obama will reinstate military commission trials for detainees, with more rights for defendants than the previous administration's commissions afforded,” ABC’s Jake Tapper reports. 

“Many human-rights activists are already saying the announcement today is just a continuation of the Bush policies that Mr. Obama assailed,” Tapper reported on “Good Morning America” Friday. 

Obama “will leave unresolved the issue of indefinite detention,” Jon Ward writes in the Washington Times. “The new tribunal process will restore a legal process for suspected and accused terrorists that was used under President Bush but drew considerable criticism from civil liberties and liberal groups.” 

Change we can believe in (if only because it solidifies a storyline): “The announcement would follow other moves by Obama that have disappointed his administration's liberal allies but heartened Bush supporters, including his decisions to withhold photos depicting alleged abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers and to retain the option of using a limited form of rendition, the practice of turning terrorism suspects over to other countries for questioning,” Julian E. Barnes writes in the Los Angeles Times. 

“The new President's decision was just the latest in a series of steps he has taken that move him decidedly toward the political center on issues of national security. No longer a mere senator representing a single state, Obama is now the commander-in-chief, and his reversal highlights the unique burdens that he alone now shoulders,” Time’s Mark Thompson reports. 

“Officials said the Obama administration expects to use revamped commissions not only for some of the roughly 240 current Guantanamo prisoners, but possibly also for some captured in future counterterrorism operations,” The Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin and Evan Perez report. 

Meanwhile, Pelosi, D-Calif., is hoping the CIA notes and congressional inquiries bear her out.

Pelosi’s press conference “dramatically raised the stakes in the growing debate over the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies even as it brought troubling new questions about the speaker’s credibility,” Dan Balz writes for The Washington Post. “Pelosi’s performance in the Capitol was either a calculated escalation of a long-running feud with the Bush administration or a reckless act by a politician whose word had been called into question. Perhaps it was both.”   

“The speaker’s charges about the CIA’s alleged deception and her shifting accounts of what she knew and when she knew it are likely to add to calls for some kind of independent body to investigate this supercharged issue, though Obama and many members of Congress would like to avoid a wholesale unearthing of the past at a time when their plates are full with pressing concerns,” he writes.

The New York Times’ Carl Hulse: “The issue is emerging as one of the toughest tests of Ms. Pelosi’s tenure, as she finds herself fending off accusations of hypocrisy from Republicans for criticizing the interrogation methods, even though she had known about them, and from liberal critics who say that she should have raised the alarm earlier if she knew what was transpiring.” 

Pelosi is “escalating a controversy grown to include both political parties, the spy agency and the White House,” the AP’s David Espo writes. “Pelosi's decision to respond to her critics was something of a surprise, since most polls show Obama and his policies are popular, and Republicans have exhibited virtually nonstop political disarray in the six months since last fall's elections.” 

“Edging ever closer to debating what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” Joseph Curl writes in the Washington Times. 

“Parsing isn't pretty, is it?” Melinda Henneberger writes for Politics Daily. 

“Nancy Pelosi is a woman of many talents. Yesterday, she performed the delicate art of backtracking while walking sideways,” The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank writes. 

Any sign this goes away? “With both guns blazing at an extraordinary news conference Thursday, the Democrat from San Francisco made good on that, accusing the CIA of lying when the agency said she was told about torture in 2002,” Carolyn Lochhead writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. “In doing so, Pelosi turned a distraction into a conflagration.”

“The news reignited a story that has been dogging Pelosi for weeks, through a surprise trip to Iraq and back, Mother's Day and the passage of the war supplemental,” Time’s Jay Newton-Small reports. “The Obama Administration this week reversed its decision to release hundreds of photos of detainees being intimidated and tortured in an effort to get away from a subject that is increasingly eating into their media coverage.” 

Tracking the fallout -- CIA spokesman George Little: “It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress.”

“It's outrageous that a member of Congress should call a terror-fighter a liar,” said Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, per ABC News. “It seems the playbook is, blame terror-fighters.” 

“I think that there is a question of veracity of her comments today, and if you look at her body language she certainly didn't look comfortable in what she was saying,” Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Thursday. 

Support among Democrats has been solid, if not spectacular: “After the press conference, eight of the 13 Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee assembled with talking points to back up Pelosi. They said members of Congress, especially those in the minority, have almost no power to change intelligence policies,” The Hill’s Mike Soraghan and Jared Allen report. 

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., whether he agrees with Pelosi that the CIA was lying to Congress: “I have no idea of that -- don’t have a belief of that nature because I have no basis on which to base such a belief. And I certainly hope that’s not the case. I don’t draw that conclusion,” Hoyer said, per Politico’s Glenn Thrush. 

(Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. -- who got briefings similar to Pelosi’s as top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, and who’s generally backed up Pelosi’s version of events -- is the guest on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Friday, live at noon ET, with me and guest host Jonathan Karl.)

Hello, social issues: “Now, Mr. Obama is suddenly in the thick of the battle he had hoped to transcend, and his delicate balancing act is being put to the test,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in The New York Times. “The confluence of two events -- his commencement speech on Sunday at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, and his forthcoming choice of a candidate to replace Justice David H. Souter, who is retiring from the Supreme Court -- threaten to upend Mr. Obama’s effort to ‘tamp down some of the anger’ over abortion, as he said in a news conference last month, and to distract from his other domestic priorities, like health care.” 

What will 2012 look like, with both Iowa and New Hampshire allowing gay marriage? “Governor John Lynch, appearing to pave the way for same-sex marriages in New Hampshire, announced yesterday that he would sign a bill legalizing the unions as long as the state Legislature made it clearer that religious groups would not be forced to conduct ‘marriage ceremonies that violate their fundamental religious beliefs,’ ” Eric Moscowitz writes in The Boston Globe. 

“Lynch's announcement sets New Hampshire, once viewed as a conservative enclave in a liberal region, on course to become the sixth state in the country -- and the fourth in the last six weeks -- to allow same-sex couples to marry. It would leave Rhode Island as the sole New England state to prohibit gay marriage.”

On the right: “Kevin Smith, the director of Cornerstone Policy Research, said the governor -- who has said he believes marriage is between a man and a woman - had employed a ‘smoke screen-religious-liberty-amendment cover to change his mind,’ ” Maddie Hanna writes in the Concord Monitor. 

Anyone think he’ll be the last Democrat to flip? “The recent approval of same-sex marriages in Iowa, Vermont, and Maine appears to have triggered a bit of a domino effect in the Democratic Party,” ABC’s David Chalian reports. 

Also on your daily agenda: “Karl Rove will be interviewed today as part of a criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys during the presidency of George W. Bush, according to two sources familiar with the appointment,” The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson reports. “Rove, a former senior aide to Bush, will be questioned by Connecticut prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who was named in September to examine whether former Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006.” 

How’s the momentum going? “Health care leaders who attended the meeting [at the White House] have a different interpretation. They say they agreed to slow health spending in a more gradual way and did not pledge specific year-by-year cuts,” Robert Pear writes in The New York Times. 

“Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, said ‘the president misspoke’ on Monday and again on Wednesday when he described the industry’s commitment in similar terms. After providing that account, Ms. DeParle called back about an hour later on Thursday and said: ‘I don’t think the president misspoke. His remarks correctly and accurately described the industry’s commitment.’ ”

Ron Brownstein is optimistic: “Maneuvers on health care and energy could signal a crucial shift in Washington's tectonic plates of power. Although disagreements remain on both fronts, each move suggests that key business interests have decided to cut deals with a dominant Democratic Party rather than bet on a weakened Republican Party that is hoping to ride uncompromising opposition to Obama back to power,” Brownstein writes for National Journal. 

Jonathan Alter, maybe less so: “A big reform this year is likely, but a half or quarter loaf won't cut it. If Congress rejects a public option -- the only real way to control costs -- and Obama goes along, a great moment will have been lost,” Alter writes for Newsweek. 

David Brooks, maybe even less so: “They are a collection of worthy but speculative ideas designed to possibly mitigate their effects,” he writes in his New York Times column. “The likely outcome of this year’s health care push is that we will get a medium-size bill that expands coverage to some groups but does relatively little to control costs. In normal conditions, that would be a legislative achievement.” 

And Senate Democratic leaders, maybe even less so: “With contentious fights over health care, climate change and Obama’s first Supreme Court pick ahead, some Democratic senators are now convinced that they can’t wade into some of the hot-button social issues their supporters would like them to pursue,” Politico’s Manu Raju reports. 

David Sirota isn’t sure whether optimism is warranted: “Obama is a health care mystery, struggling to muster consistent positions on the issue,” Sirota writes in his syndicated column. 

New face: “Dr. Paul Farmer, the global health crusader who has crafted lifesaving projects from Haiti to Rwanda, has told colleagues privately that he is mulling a possible appointment by the Obama administration to coordinate the United States' growing overseas health initiatives,” James F. Smith reports in The Boston Globe. 

Another new face: “President Obama will announce on Friday that he has chosen Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the New York City health commissioner, as the next director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” The New York Times reports. 

Raise your hand if you didn’t see this coming: “Sen. Arlen Specter said Thursday the ‘prospects are pretty good’ for a compromise on legislation making it easier for workers to form unions,” per the AP’s Kimberly Hefling and Sam Hananel. “Specter had come out against the bill in March, disappointing labor leaders. They had hoped he would be the crucial 60th vote needed to overcome an expected GOP filibuster of the Employee Free Choice Act.” 

One fewer fight for Specter, D-Pa.: “The former head of the National Constitution Center Joe Torsella faced up to the political realities of Sen. Specter's switch to the Democratic Party and announced today that he is ending his candidacy for the United States Senate,” ABC’s David Chalian reports. 

Coming up on “This Week”: Is the US safer under Obama? Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., debates Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. And don’t miss this roundtable: George Will, James Carville, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Steve Schmidt, and Liz Cheney.

The Kicker:

“First of all, I love ice cream.” -- Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., explaining why the junior senator from Nevada would spend a day in Iowa that includes a visit to Wells Blue Bunny Ice Cream Parlor, in Le Mars.

“You just lost the carelessly topless demographic.” -- NPR's Peter Sagal, to David Axelrod after the Obama adviser joked that Carrie Prejean was one of two runner-ups to White House dog Bo, at a taping of “Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me.”

Today on “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast: Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.; and blogger Jane Hamsher, of FireDogLake.com. Noon ET. 

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