The Note: Rogues & Reset -- Out of GOP Chaos, Dems Take Control

July 06, 2009 8:05 AM

By RICK KLEIN

One-party control? You betcha. Order out of the political chaos? That would be swimming upstream.

To go with this flow, this is what going rogue gets you: As scandals begat stunners -- as Ensign morphed into Sanford, and then all got swirled into your very Palin holiday weekend -- Democrats have been given a series of gifts that also happen to be burdens.

The disorder in the Republican Party, coupled with the long-delayed resolution of a Senate race that give Democrats 60 votes starting this week, gives Democrats control of the court, the clock, and maybe the scoreboard (to borrow yet another metaphor).

But it also puts complete governing responsibility on the party that isn’t imploding at the moment, the one that controls all the levers of government and even has fewer high-profile opponents to deal with on the other side.

The Obama White House has actually been hoping for some degree of order inside the GOP; as long as there’s none, President Obama will continue to be measured against himself, his actions judged based on unhappiness among his allies.
 
And as the president takes ownership of all that he inherited, admissions like these may start to matter: “The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy,” Vice President Joe Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, on “This Week” Sunday. 

All eyes are turn to Russia for the day, but this is a critical period for the Obama domestic agenda.

Govern now, if you can: “As President Obama confronts his testing time this summer, he holds major assets but faces deep tensions within his governing coalition. This will force him to make hard choices earlier than he might have preferred,” E.J. Dionne Jr. writes in his column. “In his first six months, Obama showed he was up to the job. This summer will test his ability to make agonizing choices -- and make them stick.” 

Key to understanding where things go: “The pace of the economic recovery heading into the fall -- electric smooth or diesel rough -- will determine whether Obama can prod Congress on the key features of his agenda with momentum or from a defensive crouch,” the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn reports. 

Heads down: “A more focused and on-point minority would be more troubling, but I think that has a lot to do with the quality of ideas,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod told Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman and Edwin Chen. “They need to regenerate themselves as an intellectual force and they haven’t done that work yet.” 

But first -- and before we get to Gov. Sarah Palin, R-Alaska -- we all get to be Sarah Palin: We see Russia, from the White House bubble.

President Obama’s meetings in Moscow commenced this morning, with a 10:30 am ET news conference at the Kremlin with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev providing your day’s highlight.

Among the striking aspects of this summit (with its separate meetings with Russia’s president and prime minister): The stated modesty of the goals.

We know President Obama wants to hit “reset”; we know less about what program he hopes to boot up thereafter. 

Coming Monday, per ABC’s Jake Tapper: “Sources from both the US and Russian sides say that everything is on track for an announcement today on a ‘joint understanding’ on reducing warheads from around 2200 to closer to 1500 per country.” 

“The focus of this first leg of the trip is the continued ‘reset’ of US-Russian relations, first expressed by then-President-elect Obama last December. White House officials said that they want to make progress in warming the recent thaw that has characterized relations between the two countries,” ABC’s Karen Travers and Jake Tapper report.

Complicating things: “Despite calling for an end to the Cold War mentality, when President Obama sits down with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday it may seem like the Cold War is still raging,” Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times. “For Mr. Obama, the meeting finds him on unusual territory - he's visiting a country where the population is not enamored of him.” 

It will be a “rather dull trip,” Time’s Bobby Ghosh writes. “The end of the visit is unlikely to be marked by grand declarations of friendship or announcements of breakthrough deals. Indeed, experts on both sides say the area where progress is most likely is in negotiations on the reduction of nuclear arsenals -- the continuation of a process that began back in the Reagan-Gorbachev era.” 

“Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appear to be taking a more pragmatic tack than did their predecessors: concentrating first on the issues that in the parlance of the diplomatic community are ‘deliverables,’ things that can get done, instead of getting stuck on thornier issues,” Tom Lasseter writes for McClatchy. 

Looming over the meetings: “President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in separate interviews this weekend, said that the accelerating crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran in recent days would not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations,” The New York Times’ David E. Sanger reports. 

President Obama, to Sanger: “We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community.”

The administration, Sanger writes, “has been preparing for two opposite possibilities: One in which the Iranian leadership seeks to regain a measure of legitimacy by taking up Mr. Obama’s offer to talk -- a situation that could put Washington in the uncomfortable position of giving credibility to a government whose actions Mr. Obama has deplored -- or one in which Iran rejects negotiations.” 

As for the vice president: “Three times, I asked Biden if the Obama Administration would stand in the way of an Israeli military strike. Three times, he repeated that Israel was free to do what it needed to do,” per ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 

In Russia, Obama “is sure to emerge with tangible signs of progress -- including another step toward the world's two largest nuclear powers reducing their arsenals -- thanks to agreements negotiated before he shows up,” the AP’s Ben Feller reports. “But what much of the world will watch for are signs of Obama's relationship with Russia's two leaders, President Dmitry Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.” 

All this with a Democratic Senate: “With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a ‘provisional basis’ until the Senate ratifies the treaty,” ABC’s Jake Tapper reports. 

The thornier issues: “The summit's centrepiece is supposed to be a groundbreaking pact on nuclear arms reduction, but Russia said there could be no agreement unless the US was prepared to heed its concerns on missile defence,” The Guardian’s Luke Harding reports. 

“This week's visit was supposed to break the ice, but some pre-summit moves have added to the chill,” David Ignatius writes. “The normally sure-footed Obama stumbled last week when he contrasted his ‘very good relationship’ with Medvedev against Putin's ‘outdated’ Cold War attitudes. This will look to Russians like an effort to play internal politics, and it will complicate his meetings.” 

Who to talk what with? “Mr. Medvedev holds the highest office in Russia, so protocol dictates that Mr. Obama meet and negotiate nuclear arms control and other matters with him. Yet questions about Mr. Medvedev’s authority hang over the summit meeting like an awkward familial arrangement that everyone acknowledges but no one knows how to handle,” Clifford J. Levy writes in The New York Times. 

Meanwhile, just over the horizon: “The FBI is taking the unusual step of declaring that Gov. Sarah Palin is not under investigation, as Palin herself left for Western Alaska and communicated to the world through her Twitter account,” Sean Cockerham writes in the Anchorage Daily News. 

Not another disappearing governor? “Palin ‘tweeted’ that she would be going to two ‘West AK’ villages on Sunday and indicated she'd soon be joining her family for a day of fishing at its commercial setnet site on the Nushagak River in Bristol Bay. That was the best indication of her whereabouts, as neither Palin's personal nor state spokeswomen responded to requests for comment. She remains the governor until July 26,” Cockerham writes.

“Republicans were offering a lot of theories, but really only a limited, tight circle of Palin advisers know what’s going on,” ABC’s Kate Snow reported on “Good Morning America” Monday, from Anchorage. “Gov. Sarah Palin was spotted on the sidelines of a July 4th parade this weekend -- but otherwise she laid low, after rocking the political world.”

Maybe we shouldn’t look too far for the causes: “Some Republicans here said she was increasingly troubled by growing criticism in her home state since she returned from her run as vice-presidential nominee,” The Wall Street Journal’s Jim Carlton reports. 

You don’t think she’s really disappearing, do you? “Sarah Palin is pretty much toast for 2012, but she can still make a lot of money for herself and the party, top Republicans said Sunday,” Richard Sisk writes in the New York Daily News. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial: “Giving up on an executive job a year and a half early isn't the best way to persuade voters you're ready for the more demanding rigors and scrutiny of the White House.” 

Karl Rove: “She marches to the beat of her own drum, and it's going to be very interesting to see how she pulls this off.” 

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.: “If she's looking to be a national political figure, it's not going to get easier.”

“If this is geared for her run for the presidency in 2012, it is one of the most politically tone deaf decisions that we've seen,” GOP consultant Stuart Roy tells ABC’s John Hendren and Kristina Wong. 

This simple? “You don’t need politics anymore once you’ve discovered that the alchemy of celebrity has turned you into a 24-carat phenomenon,” Tina Brown writes for The Daily Beast, saying that Palin’s performance reminded her of Princess Di. “Palin is clearly terrified. Her M.O. is to cloak her terror in grandiosity. Both shine through in the suppressed hysteria of her increasingly strange appearances before the camera.” 

She should have said no, Ross Douthat writes in his New York Times column: “Had she refused John McCain, Palin would still be a popular female governor in a Republican Party starved for future stars. Her scandals would be the stuff of local politics, her daughter’s pregnancy a minor story in the Lower 48, her son Trig’s parentage a nonissue even for conspiracy theorists. There would still be plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight, to bone up on the issues, and to craft a persona more appealing than the Mrs. Spiro Agnew role the McCain campaign assigned to her. Most important, nobody would have realized yet how much she looks like Tina Fey.” 

Back home: The critical phase for health care reform. “Let the trade-offs begin,” Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery write in The Washington Post. “While Obama may be prepared to compromise, it is not clear whether the public is ready for a less-than-perfect outcome, a key factor in determining the bill's long-term political success.” 

It may take a while: “Senate Democratic leaders’ hopes of approving health care reform before adjourning for the August recess appear all but dead, with the prospect of meeting President Barack Obama’s demand for a bill on his desk by Oct. 15 looking increasingly difficult,” Roll Call’s David Drucker reports. 

As for the economy, Biden’s comments are “likely to intensify calls for the administration to do more to counter job losses,” Deborah Solomon writes in The Wall Street Journal. “Some economists are pressing the White House to enact a second round of stimulus spending or find some other way to avert a prolonged job and wage slump.” 

Buckle up: “The unemployment rate will likely be higher in 2010 than in 2009, just as it’s ramped up over the course of the year,” Biden’s chief economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line.” 

On the hiring line: “Democratic strategist James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s presidential bid in 1992, is helping another challenger: a U.S.-educated rival of Afghan President Hamid Karzai,” Bloomberg’s Indira A.R. Lakshmanan reports. “Carville, who has close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said his advisory role to former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani shouldn’t be interpreted as tacit backing by the U.S. for a change of leadership in Afghanistan.” 

Book your tickets: “With the summer getaway season in full swing, the White House is busy arranging the president’s first vacation since taking office,” Jeff Zeleny reports in The New York Times. “The destination — officially, at least — is classified. Yet it is hardly a secret to the people on Martha’s Vineyard, several business owners and others said, where reservations have been made and preparations are under way for the Obama family’s August arrival.”

Closing out this wacky stretch -- Bloomberg’s Al Hunt gives us his Top 10 American political sex scandals. (No. 1 is Bill Clinton, and you go through Wilbur Mills and John and Rita Jenrette before getting to Eliot Spitzer and David Vitter.) 

The Kicker:

“Am I annoyed? You betcha.” -- Shannyn Moore, a blogger and radio talk show host in Anchorage, after Gov. Sarah Palin’s personal attorney threatened legal action against her over “defamatory” material. 

“Grateful Todd left fishing grnds to join me this wkend; but now he's back slaying salmon & working the kids @ the site; anxious to join 'em!” -- Sarah Palin, via Twitter, in the most concrete information she’s offered about her whereabouts since Friday’s resignation announcement. 

Today on “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; Mark Leibovich of The New York Times. Noon ET.

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