Plotting Bush's Undoing

Sammon writes: "When I quoted from this passage to Bush during an Oval Office interview, the president seemed irritated to learn he had been taken to task by the senator he once counseled.

"'I thought I was actually showing some kindness,' Bush said indignantly. 'And out of that he came with this belief?'

"The president added with a bit of a scowl: 'He doesn't know me very well.'"

Keeping His Distance

Linda Feldmann writes in the Christian Science Monitor: "Barack Obama speaks, and the world listens -- more intently, at this point, than it does to the actual president of the United States. President-elect Obama can inspire and alarm, calm markets or add to jitters. And with the nation in economic crisis, he seems keenly aware of that. . . .

"But he is avoiding doing anything now, either as a sitting senator or as president-elect, that would give him ownership of decisions made between now and Inauguration Day. Obama will not attend the G-20 meeting on Nov. 15, a summit of world leaders to be convened in Washington for crisis economic talks."

And Robert Schmidt and Kristin Jensen write for Bloomberg: "Barack Obama doesn't plan to name a Treasury secretary or fill other top positions on his economic team this week, people familiar with the matter said, as he tries to keep from being drawn into Bush administration decisions he may disagree with. . . .

"Postponing the appointment beyond this week avoids putting Obama's team in an awkward position as Bush hosts a world economic summit in Washington Nov. 14 and 15. Obama's advisers don't want the president-elect or any senior appointees to be involved in meeting.

"'The Bush administration is of the mind that misery loves company,' said Paul Light, a professor of organization studies at New York University. 'Obama is well advised to stay away from the summit and keep his staff away from the summit.'

"Leaders of the European Union last week gave Obama an out, calling for a second summit meeting at least 100 days after this weekend's gathering in Washington. That would mean the next meeting would occur after Obama has been sworn in as president on Jan. 20."

Transition Watch

Robert Barnes, Dan Eggen and Anne E. Kornblut write in The Washington Post: "Faced with one of the most important transfers of presidential power in American history -- amid wars on two fronts, the looming threat of terrorism at home and a full-blown economic crisis -- the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team have responded with exceptional cooperation on those issues, aides and outside experts say. . . .

"Bush's chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, said the White House is even preparing a 'tabletop' exercise to simulate how Obama's national security officials should respond in the event of a terrorist attack. . . .

"'I think that Bush sees this as an important part of his legacy and really believes that how you go out is a good measure of who you are,' said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is advising the transition panel."

But give it time.

"The Bush White House has a 'well-deserved reputation for secrecy,' [Paul C. Light, a transition expert at New York University] said, which he expects to come into conflict with the desire of the Obama team for classified information, ongoing policy memoranda and ways to 'penetrate the day-to-day workings of the administration.'

"'Obama is going to want more access than Bush is willing to give,' Light said."

Opinion Watch

Frank Rich writes in his New York Times opinion column about Obama's victory: "The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place -- in cities all over America.

He continues: "The post-Bush-Rove Republican Party is in the minority because it has driven away women, the young, suburbanites, black Americans, Latino-Americans, Asian-Americans, educated Americans, gay Americans and, increasingly, working-class Americans. Who's left? The only states where the G.O.P. increased its percentage of the presidential vote relative to the Democrats were West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas. Even the North Carolina county where Palin expressed her delight at being in the 'real America' went for Obama by more than 18 percentage points.

"The actual real America is everywhere. It is the America that has been in shell shock since the aftermath of 9/11, when our government wielded a brutal attack by terrorists as a club to ratchet up our fears, betray our deepest constitutional values and turn Americans against one another in the name of 'patriotism.' What we started to remember the morning after Election Day was what we had forgotten over the past eight years, as our abusive relationship with the Bush administration and its press enablers dragged on: That's not who we are."

Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek that "after nearly eight years of a president who could barely form a coherent sentence, much less a strategic thought . . . [w]hat Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind. And for this reason as much as any, perhaps I can renew my pride in being an American."

Nicholas Kristoff writes in his New York Times opinion column that Bush "adopted anti-intellectualism as administration policy, repeatedly rejecting expertise (from Middle East experts, climate scientists and reproductive health specialists). Mr. Bush is smart in the sense of remembering facts and faces, yet I can't think of anybody I've ever interviewed who appeared so uninterested in ideas."

Maureen Dowd writes in her New York Times opinion column that "now we have the delicious irony that a white president from a patrician family, whose administration was so negligent about America's poor and black citizens, was so incompetent that he helped elect the first black president."

Dead Ender Watch

Jim Towey, the former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his former boss: "Count me among those who will miss him and his bedrock decency. . . .

"Mother Teresa was asked at the end of her life whether she was discouraged because after decades of caring for the dying and destitute in Calcutta little seemed to have changed. She replied, 'No. God doesn't call me to be successful. God calls me to be faithful.'

"History will decide whether George W. Bush was a successful President. But he was faithful. He had a charge to keep and he kept it."

Another Secret Order

Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti write in the New York Times: "The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

"These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States. . . .

"According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called 'Al Qaeda Network Exord,' or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said."

Bush Legacy Watch

Jonathan Mahler writes in the New York Times Magazine: "The assertion and expansion of presidential power is arguably the defining feature of the Bush years. Come January, the current administration will pass on to its successor a vast infrastructure for electronic surveillance, secret sites for detention and interrogation and a sheaf of legal opinions empowering the executive to do whatever he feels necessary to protect the country. The new administration will also be the beneficiary of Congress's recent history of complacency, which amounts to a tacit acceptance of the Bush administration's expansive views of executive authority. For that matter, thanks to the recent economic bailout, Bush's successor will inherit control over much of the banking industry. 'The next president will enter office as the most powerful president who has ever sat in the White House,' Jack Balkin, a constitutional law professor at Yale and an influential legal blogger, told me a few weeks ago."

George Packer blogs for the New Yorker: "Since the Clinton years, this has been the era of the permanent campaign, with the line between running for election and running the country practically erased. Bush took Karl Rove into the White House, turned policy into an arm of politics, and governed the same way he campaigned: treat the press as an out-of-favor interest group, control the message at all cost, repeat it incessantly regardless of changing facts, admit no mistakes, show no uncertainty, reward loyalists, and ignore critics or else, if necessary, destroy them. This approach to what's known as strategic communications won Bush two elections; it also helped destroy his Presidency. Campaigning and governing are not the same. They are closer to being opposites. . . .

"The problem with strategic communications is that the White House that lives by it slowly becomes incapable of dealing with reality. When bad news comes, the impulse is to deny it, and that impulse turns into a mental habit. Eventually, those in power are the last to figure out the truth (in this sense, Katrina was a direct result of the kind of mentality that had already led to disaster in Iraq). The Administration can't answer the arguments of its critics because it has long since stopped listening to them. It finds itself increasingly isolated, not just from potential supporters, but from the truth."

Packer urges Obama to "make himself and his aides more, not less, available to reporters than they've been. Not just because I belong to that particular interest group and it would be the democratic thing to do. It's because I want him to succeed."

Late Night Humor

Jimmy Kimmel, via U.S. News: "Obama held the first news conference today as president-elect. Some veteran White House reporters were a little bit confused because he didn't make up any words and almost everything he said made sense."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on the cheering crowds, Dwane Powell on getting ready for the big visit, Daniel Wasserman on filling Bush's shoes, Kevin Siers on Bush's victory phone call, Jim Morin on the big trap, Rob Rogers on Bush's legacy and Ann Telnaes on Bush's sprint to the finish.