Yes people,
They still ask, who is this Barack Obama whom after close to 4 years, they still don't know and dont want to understand..........They looked at him and saw that he does not look like them and from the word go, they refused to welcome him; they rejected him. It is not because he did something bad, it is because they have not accepted him like one of them.
He came with an electrifying impact of peace and unity that no one could have resisted even if they wanted to. He energized the ground like never seen before. He found the world was lost in a frenzy of confusion and were thirsty for direction. Both the rich and the poor found themselves in deep trouble of economic instability they wanted to repair and fix, but did not know how to do it. He came with a promise of Hope to give life a new meaning on the wayforward; to be relieved from getting stuck in the mud and find meaning for life, the purpose for God's creation; but they will not give him a chance to do what he came for. He found everyone had lost hope and were living in despair in hopeless situation. Both rich and poor are caved in the same pit of confusion not knowing how to get out of the quagmire. They instead formed a wall of rejection to oppose all good plan he put forward in a bi-partisan fashion.
They did not know the answer was in the missing link of the Builder's cornerstone of Zion. The house of humanity with nature preservation is not complete without the Builder's cornerstone that balances and carries the weight to make the house firm and strong that cannot be shaken by any diverse storm.
President Obama carrying with him the hope of the missing link of the builder's cornerstone needed to complete the work. What he was asking and pleading for is cooperation from the other-side of the Special Interest who are afraid of shift in their confort zone; so in fairness, a bi-partisan collaboration can be found in Congress and in Senate able to make work easy and operational in Washington instead of staging blockages against facilitating public mandate in service delivery.
President Obama is a success story. His ways has been tested, he struggled and delivered in the midst of storm and so he can be trusted. We therefore trust that he is able to deliver with little or no obstruction, he needs cooperation so things can be done. The fact remain that, they rejected him from the word go, because he does not look like them. But this behavior must change. They are not rating him in value to what he is capable of doing, but they feel that he should not because of racial biasness and hate.
The missing link, which is in the blood of the black society, cannot be wiped-out, forgotten or be ignored in the wayforward at Global Progressive Agenda for shared mutual cooperation in the Emerging Markets. It cannot be said that black has nothing to offer in the progressive development agenda. The slaughter of the black and the blood of the black have reached heaven high and must come to a stop in the newness of life. It is the missing link that must be accepted with honor and dignity as valuable treasure to fix the problem in the missing link in the Builder's cornerstone. We are at a point of Referendum before choices that will be made by voters…….the point is at a crossroad where voters will choose between
In reference, the Biblical builder's cornerstone (Kidi Mar Jo Gedo) of the Zion is a symbol of unity that unites the two intersecting walls of the house. Symbolically, President Obama is that rock for Peace and our unity of common purpose can be found in fair share Partnership prospects of Liberation, and it depends in the Structural Plan in the missing link he holds as symbol for Unity in the newness of life. This missing link bonds humankind together and make us whole at peace with each other under the commandment of love as we all endeavor in struggle, in competition and challenges to make the best of lifestyle we all choose to engage. Without a cornerstone, the house is unlikely to withstand the storm and test of time in the Global Economic instabilities.
A second chance means electing bi-partisan people who are able to engage in a cooperative manner to join with President Obama in moving the country forward; those who truely are focused and are willing to play fair game to the benefit of all and are not selfish but in solidarity are able to move America on top of the world.
The kind of leaders who strives to fight the Govenment and struggles to reduce government ability to facilitate, control and balance public and business activities but instead, prefers to offer Special Interest freedom over the Government, need to check their facts. They are the cause of Global Economic collapse which has failed and cannot be relied on. Their business idiologies have caused enormous human pain and sufferings including those of environmental disastors.
Like the builder's cornerstone in Zion; President Obama is the present tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; those who trust and believe in peace and unity, will not be disappointed or dismayed. He is a good man and is likeable. He should be given a second chance to complete his term with honor and we all shall not live to regret.
Peace be with us all as we tred........
Cheers everybody......!!!
Judy Miriga Diaspora Spokesperson Executive Director Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc., USA http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com President Obama: "We've Come Too Far to Turn Back Now." Published on Aug 18, 2012 by BarackObamadotcom Help build this campaign: http://OFA.BO/nHAK2p Nice I think this is a good reason why Obama should win. Even if he fails miserably, I can say he tried to do good. More than I can say for most republicans with bad intentions and their successes only hurt America more. This made me cry. If Obama doesn't win i am leaving America! Tht was beautiful Best. President. Ever. THIS IS WHY I'M VOTING OBAMA! Just remember no matter how great our president is he can't do it alone. This should be obvious to everyone who has a pulse. President Barack Obama needs a Congress and Senate that are equally great. So on election day lets remember to vote for our progressive leaders that will help this country become great once again. GO AMERICA! President Obama Urges Congress to Pass American Jobs Act Uploaded by whitehouse on Sep 14, 2011 President Obama travelled to North Carolina State University where he delivered remarks on the American Jobs Act, emphasizing the need for Congress to pass it now and put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of working Americans, while not adding a dime to the deficit. September 14, 2011. Reid: Next Steps Towards Deficit-Reduction, Job-Creation Uploaded by SenateDemocrats on Aug 1, 2011 Senator Harry Reid, speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, says that once a compromise plan to reduce the deficit becomes law, Congress will focus on getting Americans back to work. Obama Urges Congress to Help Put Teachers Back to WorkBy Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – Sat, Aug 18, 2012With students heading back to school, President Obama is accusing Republicans of wanting to cut education funding to give tax breaks to the wealthy, saying their economic plan "undercuts our future." "This year, several thousand fewer educators will be going back to school," the president says in his weekly address. More than 300,000 local education jobs have been lost since the end of the recession, according to a new White House report on the impact of teacher layoffs. Obama says cuts in education "force kids into crowded classrooms, cancel programs for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and shorten the school week and the school year." Even in tough fiscal times, Obama says states should make education a priority, but adds, "Congress should be willing to help out - because this affects all of us." "That's why part of the jobs bill that I sent to Congress last September included support for states to prevent further layoffs and to rehire teachers who'd lost their jobs. But here we are - a year later with tens of thousands more educators laid off - and Congress still hasn't done anything about it," he says. The president says the Republicans' economic plan would "make the situation even worse." "It would actually cut funding for education - which means fewer kids in Head Start, fewer teachers in our classrooms, and fewer college students with access to financial aid - all to pay for a massive new tax cut for millionaires and billionaires," he says. "That's backwards. That's wrong. That plan doesn't invest in our future; it undercuts our future." Obama touts the steps he has taken to boost the nation's education system, including instituting the Race to the Top competitive grant program, giving states flexibility on No Child Left Behind requirements, and reforming the student loan program. Obama Says George Clooney Friendship Born in Sudan, Not HollywoodBy Matthew Larotonda | ABC News Blogs – 4 hrs agoPresident Obama's reelection campaign has benefited immensely from the backing of much of Hollywood's elite, but few share a closer relationship with him than George Clooney. In an interview to be aired Monday, the president contends those ties were born out of shared policy vision before assuming the Oval Office. "The truth is we got to know each other because of a substantive issue," the president says. "He is a terrific advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur, and to the people of Sudan who've been brutalized for a long time." Speaking with CBS' " Entertainment Tonight," Obama recounted laboring with Clooney on the troubled region when he was a senator. "That was an issue that I was working together on a bipartisan basis, and George, who had traveled there, done documentaries there, and was very well-informed, came to testify in Congress," he said. "And so we got to know each other, and he is a good man, and a good friend." Clooney has become a permanent fixture of humanitarian movements regarding Sudan, which the United Nations estimates still houses nearly 2.5 million displaced individuals after years of strife. In March Clooney was arrested outside Washington's Sudanese embassy in protest of the ongoing turmoil. Despite the close relationship, Obama says in the actor and film producer is acutely aware of the image problems involved with getting too close to the White House. "He's very protective about not bothering me. And he's also sensitive to the fact that if he's around a lot, then somehow it'll be tagged as 'Obama hanging out with Hollywood stars,' and that's not who he is," he said. Regardless, Clooney has contributed significantly to Obama's reelection campaign, most recently attending a star-studded fundraiser at his home in March that drew in $15 million. Obama's "ET" interview comes as he faces mounting criticism for a string of recent softball interviews with entertainment media and local television outlets outside the Washington press. On "Fox News Sunday" this morning, Obama campaign man and former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended the interviews. "The notion that this president is somehow not doing interviews is ridiculous. Not long ago, we were answering questions and charges that somehow Obama was over-exposed," he said. Republicans have attempted to pin the campaign on this point, with Mitt Romney taking the unusual step of making himself available to the press twice recently. However, Romney himself sat down with People Magazine last week, joined by running mate Paul Ryan and their families. Related Content
MARIKANA, South Africa (Reuters) - The police killing of 34 striking platinum miners in the bloodiest security operation since the end of white rule cut to the quick of South Africa's psyche on Friday, with searching questions asked of its post-apartheid soul. Newspaper headlines screamed "Bloodbath", "Killing Field" and "Mine Slaughter", with graphic photographs of heavily armed white and black police officers walking casually past the bloodied corpses of black men lying crumpled in the dust. The images, along with Reuters TV footage of officers opening up with automatic weapons on a small group of men in blankets and t-shirts at Lonmin's Marikana platinum plant, rekindled uncomfortable memories of South Africa's racist past. Police chief Riah Phiyega confirmed 34 dead and 78 injured in Thursday's shootings after officers moved against 3,000 striking drill operators armed with machetes and sticks at the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. A sombre-looking President Jacob Zuma, who cut short a trip to Mozambique for a regional summit because of the violence, travelled to Marikana and announced he had ordered an official inquiry into what he called the "shocking" events. "This is unacceptable in our country which is a country where everyone feels comfortable, a country with a democracy that everyone envies," he said in a statement read at a news conference. He did not take questions. Phiyega, a former banking executive appointed to lead the police force only in June, said officers acted in self-defence against charging, armed assailants at Marikana. "The police members had to employ force to protect themselves," she said, noting that two policemen had been hacked to death by a mob at the mine on Tuesday. However, the South African Institute of Race Relations likened the incident to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg, when apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing more than 50. "Obviously the issues that have led to this are not the same as the past, but the response and the outcome is very similar," research manager Lucy Holborn told Reuters. In a front-page editorial, the Sowetan newspaper questioned what had changed since 1994, when Nelson Mandela overturned three centuries of white domination to become South Africa's first black president. "It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects," the paper, named after South Africa's biggest black township, said. "It is continuing in a different guise now." Zuma, who faces an internal leadership election in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) in December, called on South Africa to mourn together. "It is a moment to start healing and rebuilding," he said at Marikana. "We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence," an earlier statement from him said. Despite promises of a better life for all South Africa's 50 million people, the ANC has struggled to provide basic services to millions in poor black townships. Efforts to redress the economic inequalities of apartheid have had mixed results, and the mining sector comes in for particular criticism from radical ANC factions as a bastion of "white monopoly capital". In Washington, the White House said it was saddened by the loss of life. "We encourage all parties to work together to resolve the situation peacefully," spokesman Josh Earnest said. POLICE PRESENCE Hundreds of police patrolled the dusty plains around the Marikana mine, which was forced to shut down this week because of a rumbling union turf war that has hit the platinum sector this year. Crime scene investigators combed the site of the shooting, which was cordoned off with yellow tape, collecting spent cartridges and the slain miners' bloodstained traditional weapons - machetes and spears. Six firearms were recovered, including a service revolver from one of the police officers killed earlier in the week. Before Thursday, 10 people had died in nearly a week of conflict between rival unions at what is Lonmin's flagship plant. The London-headquartered company has been forced to shut down all its South African platinum operations, which account for 12 percent of global output. South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world's known reserves of platinum, a precious metal used in vehicle catalytic converters. Rising power and labour costs and a steep decline this year in the price have left many mines struggling to stay afloat. Although the striking Marikana miners were demanding huge pay hikes, the roots of the trouble lie in a challenge by the newer Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) to the 25-year dominance of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a close ANC ally. "There is clearly an element in this that a key supporter of the ANC - the NUM - has come under threat from these protesting workers," said Nic Borain, an independent political analyst. Pre-crackdown footage of dancing miners waving machetes and licking the blades of home-made spears raised questions about the habitual use of violence in industrial action 18 years after the end of apartheid. "This culture of violence and protest, it must somehow be changed," said John Robbie, a prominent Johannesburg radio host. "You can't act like a Zulu impi in an industrial dispute in this day and age," he said, using the Zulu word for armed units. World platinum prices spiked nearly 3 percent on Thursday as the full extent of the violence became clear, and rose again on Friday to a five-week high above $1,450 an ounce. Lonmin shares in London and Johannesburg fell more than 5 percent to four-year lows at Friday's market open, although later trimmed their losses. Overall, they have shed nearly 15 percent since the violence began a week ago.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are eagerly renewing their fight against privatizing Social Security now that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. It was a fight that didn't go well for the GOP when President George W. Bush pushed the idea in 2005. In his 2010 "Road Map for America's Future," the Wisconsin congressman proposed a plan to allow younger workers to divert more than one-third of their Social Security taxes into personal accounts that they would own and could will to their heirs. Ryan wrote that the accounts would provide workers an opportunity "to build a significant nest egg for retirement that far exceeds what the current program can provide." Workers 55 and older would stay in the current system. Romney hasn't embraced the proposal and Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, didn't include it in either of the federal budgets passed by House Republicans the past two years. But now that Ryan is running for vice president, Democrats hope to capitalize on the issue. Bush's proposal for private accounts received a chilly reception from members in both parties in Congress, though Ryan embraced it. Democrats used the issue against GOP congressional candidates in the 2006 election, when they regained control of the House and Senate. "The very last thing we ought to be doing is putting at risk the retirement security of millions of America's seniors," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who heads the Democratic National Committee. Until now, Social Security had been largely absent from the presidential campaign. President Barack Obama has yet to lay out a detailed plan for addressing the issue, and his silence is drawing criticism from advocates who supported him in the past. Romney has been more forthcoming with proposals, but Social Security has not been a big part of his campaign, either. Romney, in his book, "No Apology," said he liked the idea of personal accounts. But, he wrote, "Given the volatility of investment values that we have just experienced, I would prefer that individual accounts were added to Social Security, not diverted from it, and that they were voluntary." Romney's current plan for Social Security doesn't mention personal accounts. Instead, he proposes a gradual increase in the retirement age to account for growing life expectancy. For future generations, Romney would slow the growth of benefits "for those with higher incomes." Romney says tax increases should be off the table, and current beneficiaries and those near retirement should be spared from cuts. "Mitt Romney and Paul support gradual reforms to Social Security that protect current beneficiaries from any benefit disruptions while strengthening the program to ensure that it doesn't go bankrupt," Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams said. The trustees who oversee Social Security say the trust funds that support the program will run dry in 2033. At that point, Social Security will generate only enough tax revenue to pay about 75 percent of benefits, triggering automatic cuts unless Congress acts. During the 2008 campaign, Obama said he wanted to improve Social Security's finances by applying the payroll tax to annual wages above $250,000. It is now limited to wages below $110,100, a level that increases with inflation. Obama also pledged to oppose raising the retirement age or reducing annual cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs. "Let me be clear, I will not do either," Obama said at the time. Last year, however, Obama put on the table a proposal to reduce annual COLAs during deficit-reduction talks with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. The talks ultimately failed and nothing came of the proposal, but it raised questions about whether Obama would honor his 2008 pledge. "A national politician would do well to strongly identify themselves with Social Security, not just with rhetoric, but to be very clear that they understand the pain people are experiencing today, that they stand behind this program and they will protect the citizenry and they will not cut benefits," said Eric Kingson, a Syracuse University professor who co-founded Social Security Works. "I hope to hear that from the White House. I have not heard that yet." Obama offered some principles to strengthen Social Security in his 2011 State of the Union address. "We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable or people with disabilities, without slashing benefits for future generations and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market," Obama said in the speech. Last week, Vice President Joe Biden made a more sweeping guarantee during a campaign swing in southern Virginia, telling a customer at a diner that Social Security will not be changed. "I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security," Biden told the customer, according to a White House pool report. "I flat guarantee you." A Biden adviser said later the vice president was merely reassuring the woman that her benefits would not be changed. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher said the president "has put forward a set of principles to guide bipartisan action to strengthen it for future generations. Rather than laying the groundwork for a bipartisan approach as the president has done, Mitt Romney's only solution would mean deep benefit cuts for future retirees. His running mate, Paul Ryan was an architect of privatization." Romney's campaign chided Obama's inaction. "His failure to lead on entitlements has put the future of Social Security at risk," said Williams, the Romney spokesman. "Mitt Romney is committed to ensuring that Social Security is there for future generations and he has a comprehensive plan to save Social Security with commonsense reforms."
Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney plans to make public his 2011 tax return by October 15, a senior campaign adviser said on Sunday, as President Barack Obama's re-election team pressed its criticism of Romney's decision not to disclose more about his personal taxes. Romney, a former private equity executive who is one of the richest men ever to run for president, has come under pressure for months from the Obama campaign to release more years of tax returns. He has released his 2010 tax return and estimates for 2011 but does not plan to reveal more years of returns. In April, he requested an extension from the Internal Revenue Service to file his 2011 tax forms, while estimating his tax liability at $3.2 million for last year. Ed Gillespie, a senior Romney adviser, indicated the former Massachusetts governor would release the 2011 return by October 15, about three weeks before the November 6 election, but refused to say exactly when. "Look, October 15 is the deadline for the IRS on an extension. We have said as soon as they're ready we're going to release them. And I believe they'll be ready before that," Gillespie told the "Fox News Sunday" program. "They're being finalized. There's a lot of forms that have to come in from other entities that the governor doesn't have control over," Gillespie added. He said Americans will have "ample information" about Romney's taxes with the disclosure of the 2010 return and the planned release of the 2011 return. The Obama campaign and its Democratic allies have targeted Romney's wealth and refusal to release more tax returns in ads that paint him as out of touch with ordinary Americans. Romney has an estimated net worth of up to $250 million. Obama's campaign said on Friday that if Romney releases five years of returns, it would not press him to release more - a proposal quickly rejected by Romney's team. 'MORE DAMAGING' "Look, Mitt Romney is a highly educated man. And he has clearly made a decision that what is in those tax returns is far more damaging to him than to do what every presidential candidate has done, which is show the American people your personal finances," Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs told "Fox News Sunday." Gillespie faulted the Obama team's focus on Romney's personal taxes. "It wasn't an issue in 2008 because President Obama wasn't trying to distract from a four-year-long record of failed policies," he added. Romney's vice presidential choice, congressman Paul Ryan, on Friday released tax returns showing he paid an effective tax rate of 20 percent last year, roughly in line with Obama's rate and likely higher than that of his running mate, Mitt Romney. Ryan's release of his 2010 and 2011 tax returns aligned him with Romney's position that giving out two years of tax returns is adequate. The top congressional Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, this month accused Romney of not paying taxes for 10 years, a claim Romney has strongly denied. Romney said on Thursday he paid at least a 13 percent tax rate every year over the last 10 years. Romney has released tax information showing that he paid a 13.9 percent rate for 2010. He said in January he would probably pay 15.4 percent for 2011. Obama paid a rate of 20.5 percent for 2011. Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" program, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, head of the Democratic Governors Association, said: "The only thing we know for sure is one year of returns. ... We know that he (Romney) has been engaged in tax avoidance schemes, with offshore accounts ... in Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. ... But it is tax avoidance." (Reporting by Will Dunham, Christopher Wilson, Jason Lange and Paul Eckert; Editing by Eric Beech)  Photograph by Luke Sharrett/The New York Times via Redux Paul Ryan at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Politics & PolicyPaul Ryan's Peculiar Definition of BipartisanshipBy Elizabeth Dwoskin on August 17, 2012 In early 2011, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was shopping around a Medicare plan, and he was in search of Democratic support. The previous year he'd released a proposal for privatizing Medicare that he had trouble selling to even his own party: Only 13 Republicans signed on. Clearly he needed to expand his base of support. Ryan found a partner in Alice Rivlin. A former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton White House and a Washington Wise Woman, Rivlin was serving with Ryan on the Simpson-Bowles Commission that was looking for ways to bring the federal deficit and national debt under control. After an extended back and forth, the two came up with a proposal both could live with: Instead of getting rid of the fee-for-service model—Medicare as we know it, in which the government pays providers directly—and opening everything to the free market, Medicare would compete directly with private plans regulated by government exchanges. And rather than pegging the growth rate of Medicare to the Consumer Price Index, as Ryan had proposed, Ryan appeased Rivlin with a more generous cost cap. Yet when Ryan released his first budget as chairman of the House Budget Committee that April, the outlines of the deal he and Rivlin worked out had been changed. (Ryan-Rivlin never officially got off the ground. Democrats on the Simpson-Bowles Commission refused to endorse it.) They'd agreed that private plans would compete with Medicare. But in Ryan's budget, the option for seniors to stick with traditional fee-for-service Medicare had disappeared. Democrats attacked the budget in ads featuring a man in a suit pushing an old woman off a cliff. In his defense, Ryan said the Medicare proposal was actually a bipartisan effort and pointed to his work with Rivlin. Announcing his budget at the Brookings Institution, where Rivlin is a senior fellow, he said Ryan-Rivlin was the basis of his plan. "Alice Rivlin and I designed these Medicare and Medicaid reforms," Ryan said in an appearance on Morning Joe in April 2011. "Alice Rivlin was Clinton's OMB director," he said. "She's a proud Democrat at the Brookings Institution. These entitlement reforms are based off of those models that she and I worked on together." Rivlin was not happy to see herself being held up as Ryan's partner on a bill that bore little resemblance to their deal, especially since, right before he released the budget, Rivlin had told him she couldn't support it. Rivlin came out publicly against the budget and denied Ryan's claims that she was his co-author: "When I called him on out it, he softened the tone of his references to me," Rivlin says. She isn't upset with Ryan. "He genuinely wanted a bipartisan bill," she says of his initial efforts. "I don't think he was doing anything bad," she adds. "He was pleased to have a Democratic partner." Something similar happened this week. In announcing his running mate, Mitt Romney praised Ryan as a man who works "across the aisle." As an example of Ryan's bipartisanship, Romney offered up Ryan's relationship with Senator Ron Wyden, a liberal Democrat from Oregon. After Rivlin-Ryan failed, Ryan continued to look for Democrats who would support his plan. Eventually he found Wyden, who has a reputation of teaming up with Republicans on ambitious legislation. In December 2011, they worked together on a blueprint for reforming Medicare. Ryan-Wyden wasn't a bill, but a white paper—a set of principles the two men endorsed. But what ultimately came out months later in Ryan's next budget didn't look to Wyden like what he'd signed on for. In the 2012 budget, Ryan agreed to keep traditional Medicare as an option. In the white paper, Ryan had agreed to Wyden's demand that if Medicare costs exceeded an agreed-upon cap, the costs would be covered by insurance providers—not beneficiaries. Ryan's budget cut the cap in half—and lost the guarantee. Wyden made his opposition known: He voted against the budget (which also repealed the Affordable Care Act entirely), which he argued shifted costs onto the most vulnerable, and let Ryan know that the new budget was not the same as Ryan-Wyden. Brendan Buck, a Romney spokesman, says in an e-mail exchange that the differences between his plan with Ryan and Wyden's, were "negligible." Wyden didn't think so: The senator, who typically avoids divisive comments, accused Romney of "talking nonsense" about his work with Ryan. Asked for other examples of Ryan's bipartisanship, Buck brought up … Rivlin. Just because she didn't ultimately support Ryan's Medicare plan, he says, "doesn't mean he hasn't worked in a bipartisan manner to find solutions to our debt crisis." Nearly four years after Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful office in the most powerful country in the world, the question remains: Who is he?
He seemed to come out of nowhere. He had served seven years in the Illinois Senate, and less than four years in the U.S. Senate — a meager political resume, augmented by a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. His was an exotic story, at least by the standards of the 42 white men who preceded him in office. Son of a black African and white Kansan, born in Hawaii, raised there and in Indonesia, he was something new, and America seemed ready for him. He won almost 9.5 million votes more than John McCain. And yet, "there was the feeling that we knew less than we needed to know" about our new president, says Janny Scott, author of "A Singular Woman," a biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother. "He didn't fit a comfortable template." Four years have passed. We have watched Obama as commander in chief, waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and we have seen him accept the Nobel Peace Prize. We have seen him grapple with a dismal economy and a relentless opposition. We have been spectators to a grueling fight over health care from which he emerged victorious — if only just barely. All of this in the glare of a fierce and unyielding media spotlight. By now, we should have a fix on the man who is asking for a second term. But still we ask: Who is Barack Obama? ___ On the last night of April in 2011, Obama put on his black tie for the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the Washington Hilton. Obama was in good form that night; he congratulated Donald Trump, then considering a run for the Republican nomination, on his recent decision to fire actor Gary Busey on "Celebrity Apprentice." "These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night," Obama said, to peals of laughter. "Well-handled, sir. Well-handled." What his audience didn't realize — what few people knew at that moment — was that Obama had, just hours before, given the go-ahead for the mission that would claim the life of America's Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden. It was a huge gamble, perhaps the biggest of Obama's presidency. "If that failed, it really would have been a political disaster," says historian Robert Dallek, who has written books on presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. "It would have been reminiscent of Jimmy Carter and the helicopter going down in the Iranian desert" in an ill-starred effort to rescue American hostages from Tehran. If Obama was nervous, he kept it hidden. In fact, he played nine holes of golf the next morning, before returning to the White House to monitor the unfolding mission during what he later described as "the longest 40 minutes of my life." It was retired Air Force Chief of Staff Tony McPeak, an Obama supporter, who first called him "No-Drama Obama" during the 2008 campaign. The nickname stuck, perhaps because sang-froid is central to Obama's personality. "That measured approach to everything characterizes a lot of what he has done," says David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. "It's kind of remarkable how he has stayed in character, as if he were the calm, cool grown-up in the room." This has not always worked in his favor; he has frustrated supporters who say he does not express righteous anger when he should. Kennedy recalls that in 1936, when FDR was running for his second term, he declared the start of the second New Deal — and pronounced himself ready to take on the many, moneyed powers aligned against him: "They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred." Obama, Kennedy says, is "temperamentally incapable" of taking that kind of stand. "It's just not in his bloodstream." ___ His education in Java, the main island of Indonesia, taught him not to show his emotions, author Scott says, and the story of his life with (and without) Ann Dunham explains a lot about her son. Not that everyone believes the Obama story. Drive along Interstate 78, near Fredericksburg, and you'll see a billboard in the gentle, rolling hills of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. It bears just five words: "Where's the real birth certificate?" ''Real" is in red, the rest in black. The name "Barack Obama" is nowhere to be found, but there is no mistaking the message. More than a year after the White House released copies of the birth certificate on file in Hawaii, a conservative website still questions whether the president is an American. The "birthers" are easy to marginalize; a Gallup poll in 2011 found that only 13 percent of Americans believed Obama was probably or definitely born in another country. But how to account for a recent Pew Research Center poll that found that only 49 percent knew Obama is a Christian? Perhaps it's just that his name sounds unusual to many American ears. The fact is, as certified by the state of Hawaii, Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. His birth certificate lists his mother's race as "Caucasian" and his father as "African." In June of the next year, his father — a brilliant economist from Kenya — would leave his young family to study at Harvard. He would never return. His son would tell the story in his own memoir, "Dreams from My Father," and it would be retold — with additions and amendments — by others, including Scott, New Yorker editor David Remnick and Washington Post writer David Maraniss. The outlines basically remain the same: — How he spent his youth alternately in the care of his grandparents in Hawaii and his mother, who moved to Indonesia and a short-lived marriage to a geologist there. In Indonesia he would eat dog and snake; in Hawaii he would sample marijuana, and sample it some more. —How he went on to Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law, and along the way struggled to come to terms with his identity as a black man of mixed heritage in a white society. Genevieve Cook, a girlfriend of Obama's from New York, told Maraniss how "he felt like an impostor. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body." And that she would later realize that, "in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black." —How he ended up in Chicago as a community organizer, working on the South Side. In doing so, he would credit his mother and her work in Indonesia as his inspiration. Much has been made of the omissions and inaccuracies found by Obama's biographers in his memoir. For example, Obama did not identify Cook, and would acknowledge later that he conflated her with another girlfriend. Some of Obama's opponents saw these discrepancies as evidence of slickness, or even con-artistry. In her research, Scott found that Ann Dunham did not lack health insurance when she was dying of cancer, as her son would claim in pressing for his health care overhaul. Instead, she lacked disability insurance that would have paid other expenses. "I don't see these things as an indictable offense," Scott says, chalking it up to a "failure of memory." ___ It is instructive that Obama, now 51, brought his own personal narrative — his most powerful weapon — to the health care fight. It is the signal achievement of his first term, but it came at great cost: time and energy and political capital in the midst of a raging recession. "The president is an intellectually ambitious man who is temperamentally cautious," says Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton. For health care, he was all in. "I don't think a system is working when small businesses are gouged and 15,000 Americans are losing coverage every single day; when premiums have doubled and out-of-pocket costs have exploded and they're poised to do so again," Obama told a gathering of Republican lawmakers in 2010. "I mean, to be fair, the status quo is working for the insurance industry, but it's not working for the American people. It's not working for our federal budget. It needs to change." The Republicans did not agree, and though his party had control of the House for the first two years of his presidency, Obama had to compromise again and again to ensure that he could hold on to every Democratic vote in the Senate, because he needed every vote. In 2008, Obama offered the promise of a post-partisan age. That glimmering vision died in the debate over health care. All along the way, Obama encountered lock-step opposition from Republicans. The most dramatic example, perhaps, was last summer's confrontation over raising the debt ceiling, in which the country came perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. Obama thought he had reached a "grand bargain" with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to cut spending and raise revenues, but then Boehner walked away. The Republicans insist they never neared an agreement. Some opponents have charged that Obama was advancing socialism. His government did take over much of the auto industry for a time, seeing General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy. He did press for stronger regulation of the financial industry in the wake of the crisis that launched the Great Recession, and like most Democratic administrations his government is generally more bullish on regulation than are Republicans. But daunted by the challenge of winning congressional approval, he sought a smaller stimulus than many thought necessary. His efforts to protect homeowners threatened with foreclosure have come up short. And surprisingly few bankers — but no high-level executives of major banks — are in jail on charges related to the financial crisis. ___ So he's not a socialist. In some ways, it's easiest to define Obama by what he's not. He is clearly not a pacifist, though he was elected on a pledge to end the Iraq War, and he did. But he also sent men to kill bin Laden. He helped engineer the international campaign that ended the life and regime of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. He decimated the leadership of al-Qaida, cutting them down from above with a drove of drones. And he escalated the war in Afghanistan, threading the needle between generals who wanted an even larger force and his own vice president, Joe Biden, who wanted to pull troops out. In his book, "Obama's Wars," Bob Woodward describes a president who is deeply involved in planning, one who recoiled when military leaders tried to convince him that his only real option was to send 40,000 troops with an open-ended commitment. "I'm not going to make a commitment that leaves my successor with more troops than I inherited in Afghanistan," Obama said. In the end, he decided to send 30,000 more troops immediately, and to begin to withdraw them in July 2011. He would later tell Woodward that he was too young to be burdened with "the baggage that arose out of the dispute of the Vietnam War" — he didn't feel any adversarial relationship with the military, or "a hawk/dove kind of thing." Nor was he worried about defeat. "I think about it not so much in the classic, do you lose a war on my watch? Or win a war on a president's watch? I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it." This is a man, remember, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, before he had even served a year in office. When he was informed of the award, he seemed abashed, describing himself as "surprised" and "deeply humbled." When he accepted the prize, though, he gave an acceptance speech like no other. First, he noted the irony of accepting a peace prize even as he was commander in chief of a military waging two wars. Then, he went on to explain that, while he revered Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., he could not follow their example in every way. "I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms. ... "And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such." ___ The Oslo speech was widely praised. It was an exception in that way; in his first term, Barack Obama rarely delivered the kinds of extraordinary speeches that sent him to the White House in the first place. Instead, he offered well-written, logical addresses that were rarely memorable. The irony: Elected as a master communicator, he is sometimes criticized for failing to use his skills to enlist the public in his causes, like health care reform. "Most people thought he would let his rhetoric do the work for him," says Douglas Brinkley, a historian whose books include biographies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. But "he hasn't told his story well enough," Brinkley says. Obama himself has said as much: "The mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right," he told CBS' Charlie Rose last month. "But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people." Many thought that in electing Obama, Americans had chosen a president who would be bold and steadfast in pressing his agenda. Instead, he has drawn criticism from both the right and the left for being too coy, too willing to step back and let others lead. "Instead of drawing clear lines and putting forward detailed proposals," conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times after the debt ceiling fiasco, "the president has played Mr. Compromise — ceding ground to Republicans here, sermonizing about Tea Party intransigence and Washington gridlock there, and fleshing out his preferred approach reluctantly, if at all." All agree that he does work hard, and is truly engaged by his work. CBS Radio's Mark Knoller keeps track of presidents' comings and goings. This past May, he said Obama had spent all or part of 54 days at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. At the same point in his first term, George W. Bush had been there for all or part of 256 days. This is not to say that Obama is averse to regular-guy moments of fun — say, a quick trip to a burger joint with the vice president. He startled an audience at a fundraiser at Harlem's Apollo Theater by breaking into a few bars of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." But the informal Obama is not necessarily convincing. When white police Sgt. James Crowley arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates as he tried to get into his own home and charged him with disorderly conduct, Obama said Crowley had "acted stupidly." (He later would say the phrase was ill-chosen.) To settle the issue, Obama held a "beer summit," inviting Gates and Crowley to come to the White House for a few brewskies. The event was lampooned: "This could be trouble, because the last time Obama got a few beers in him, he bought General Motors," said comedian Conan O'Brien. Mostly, he remains a dignified and graceful figure — graying, like many of his predecessors, under the weight of office. He is, at heart, a dad, and Brinkley thinks that is one of the reasons his popularity ratings remain high. "His strongest suit may be in the end that he is such a tremendous husband, a tremendous father," says Brinkley. "Even his mother-in-law lives in the White House." There's also first lady Michelle Obama; and 11-year-old Sasha and 14-year-old Malia; and there is Bo, the Portuguese water dog the girls were promised as a reward for leaving Chicago to move to the executive mansion. Obama's fatherly impulses have surfaced at many of the most painful moments of the past four years. When he visited the victims of the shootings in Aurora, Colo., and their survivors, he said he was doing so as a "father and as a husband." And after the killing of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., Obama spoke not only of his feelings as a parent, but as a man who understood firsthand the possible consequences of skin color: "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." No other president could have said those words. |
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