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Bob Woodward
David Ignatius argues in his new column that congressional Republicans are the "primary culprits" in the sequestration mess, and it's time for President Obama to step up. How? Obama "should take the steering wheel firmly in hand and drive the car toward the destination where most maps show we need to be heading.... It's time for an intervention, to take the keys away."
Got it. But before we move on, perhaps someone can remind me: how is this legal?
I don't mean to be a stickler for details, but we live in a constitutional system in which there's a rule of law. Congress has the sole power to allocate funds and lay taxes. To be sure, the legislative branch is acting with breathtaking recklessness, acting against the nation's interests, but the last time I checked, there is no legal mechanism in place that allows the executive branch to "take the keys away" from the legislative branch. Indeed, I believe that would be fairly characterized as a coup.
My point is not to pick on Ignatius, whose frustrations I share. My point is that many exasperated pundits, when they're not reflexively and unfairly blaming "both sides" for Washington's ills, have also abandoned Civics 101. Ignatius would like to see Obama take away Congress' power of the purse; Ron Fournier thinks Obama can issue orders that Congress must follow, and Bob Woodward thinks the president should simply start ignoring federal laws.
"Can you imagine Ronald Reagan sitting there and saying 'Oh, by the way, I can't do this because of some budget document?'" Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"Or George W. Bush saying, 'You know, I'm not going to invade Iraq because I can't get the aircraft carriers I need' or even Bill Clinton saying, 'You know, I'm not going to attack Saddam Hussein's intelligence headquarters,' as he did when Clinton was president because of some budget document?" Woodward added. "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the president going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement, I can't do what I need to do to protect the country. That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
There's some "madness" on display, all right, but I don't think it's coming from the White House.
In this case, Woodward is outraged because the deep sequester cuts to the Pentagon have interfered with the deployment of the U.S.S. Harry Truman, which will remain stateside due to budget constraints.
For Woodward, there's no reason for the president to be limited by a "piece of paper" or "some budget document." What the journalist is referring to, however, is a little something known as the current law of the United States.
In other words, Bob Woodward -- who used to go after presidents for breaking the law -- went on national television this morning to condemn a sitting president for not ignoring federal law.
In Woodward's mind, President Obama should simply blow off legal constraints, because it's only written on a "piece of paper." I wonder what Woodward might have said 40 years ago if Nixon defended his actions by saying it would be "madness" for a president to feel limited by laws written on "pieces of paper."
I really don't know what's gotten into Woodward lately, but it's a genuine shame. The man is a legendary journalist, but he clearly has some kind of unusual contempt for President Obama, and it's leading him to make some alarming errors of fact and judgment.
I can only hope Woodward pauses, takes stock, considers his recent missteps, and gets back on track.
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This from the very same dickhead that uses the Constitution like a club anytime Obama speaks. But NOW? OH HOLY CRAP. He must DO something or he's not LEADING!
They want President Obama to ignore federal law and the constitution so that they can impeach him.
So, to Woodward the Constitution is only a piece of paper. Interesting...
Didn't Woodward write in one of his books that Dick Cheney or maybe GWB said something similar a few years ago? I wonder what percentage of the content of his books are real reporting and how much is merely projection of his personal views.
Idolize the man for who he is, not who he isn't.
Great experimental scientists have created historic revolutions in thinking- for example Hubble's methodical collection of data concerning the red shift of the stars. Like the experimental scientists, Woodward collects and faithfully records data. He is great at it. People have remarked at the volume of detail in his books- how you almost feel like you are reading from yellow legal pads with rapidly scrawled records of conversations. That raw data can give people rare and sometimes revolutionary episodic glimpses about how the world outside of their projections actually behaves. The data in cases can bring down the powerful.
But Great experimental scientists are very seldom great theoretical scientists.
Why should we assume it is any different in Woodward's case. His interpretation of the data is on the face of it absurd. It seems to me he is succumbing to the pride of an older man who is not content with who he is or what he is good at.
It seems to me he does damage to his reputation, but he is at the age he may not give a flip. Old guys sometimes want to have another charge at glory. Maybe that is what this is about. Bob just wants to make a difference again, and he does not suspect he will get the kind of access he needs in the current and likely Dem successor administration. Which means no more contributions for the rest of his life?
He is another grumpy white GOP guy resentful about Change, and taking to the airwaves to vent rather that do what he is good at.
Hey Bob- how about doing some investigative work on Energy companies? If you burned too many bridges in DC, talk to the guys who don't shut the door on you.
Please.
Make yourself useful at what you are good at.
The examples Woodword cites involve the use of the military. Is he suggesting that Obama should order an airstrike on the next Republican House caucus meeting?
Hmmm . . . .
mpguy- Funny how people tend to conflate being President and being Commander-In-Chief. The Presidents role as C-in-C doesn't affect me, nor most of America, because it refers to his role as the decision maker for the military, which I am no longer a part of.
mpguy, #2.3
No, that is my idea. LOL
Woodward would have apparently been one of those favoring empire and the destruction of the republic in Ancient Rome as well.
Bring on the Caesars! Pizzas for everyone!
And the Ides of March approaches.
In the Morning Joe thing that this refers to, Woodward was not suggesting that the President break the law, but approve the discretionary decisions that Woodward favors and cut the activities that Woodward does not approve of.
It's equally silly, and Woodward has a fairly idiotic interpretation of the Presidents role in this latest austerity crisis manufactured by the GOP. Nonetheless, Woodward was not advocating the president break the law.
Woodward did not mistate the facts. Again, it is Woodward's spin regarding missing information. He says he has nothing in his notes that supports Jack Lew's statement that he believed the GOP leadership wanted to see an automatic trigger as in Graham-Rudman-Hollings. Lew could have been convinced of this many ways- possibly in some informal brainstorming with staffers of the GOP leadership.
Woodward is splitting hairs. The administration was playing 20 questions with a guy holding a gun to the head of the US economy.
It's a stupid game. The GOP wants small government and wants the president to take the political heat for a policy he doesn't even agree with.
As Clinton quipped, it takes a lot of brass.
Or simple insanity. The problem was the prescription to bring the GOP out of their "fever". Obama believed that crushing Romney with 320 electoral votes would "break the fever" of the GOP. He realizes now that he was wrong and Pelosi was right. Again- just as she was right in 2009. The expenditure of a billion for this sweep was great for vanity, but not governance. Having 20 more votes in the House is what mattered.
But the media didn't want to cover the boring House races in Swing districts, and OFA couldn't cut lose a few million for these races. The DCCC didn't have it. Even today, OFA seems to have an aversion to getting mixed up in congressional elections (witness the Kelly race in Illinois).
If we did have those 20 odd seats, then no one would care about Woodward's revisionism about the August debt crisis, or his opinions of how the President should spend more limited DOD funds.
It was Howard Dean who first started championing (re-championing) a 50-state strategy, campaigning everywhere, for the long game, if nothing else. Don't give up anything without a fight, even if a hopeless one.
Would be interesting to re-approach this idea with a Moneyball/Nate Silver-type calculus-- looking at real numbers and potential gains, instead of the stupid way most non-math people look at statistics, as if there is one single axis point, one "top line" to be gleaned.
With all the fancy new high tech tools that are much touted from the Obama team (as opposed to the beyond stupid failures of technology with the Romney team), these kinds of numbers SHOULD be available.
Except, I think I read somewhere, exit polls were not conducted in areas that weren't "swing districts," and so, as Sauron's great eye looks the other way... big data fails.
The data collection is the part that I don't understand Chris. My impression was that their data collection for the electorate in a district was from canvassing. As for people already wired into the online mailing list, there is lots of stuff you can do to surreptitiously poll- simply detecting whether they opened an email and/or clicked a link lets you make inferences that in aggregate are accurate.
But to do a district decisively you would either have to do a lot of standard door knock canvassing, or get a significant number of people in the swing districts on a mailing list that was more neutral than OFA's. Possibly you'd have multiple mailing lists so that you would know which independents or leans republican voters were persuadable.
Mmm Hmmm:
Another President (Bush II) said it's my job to catapult the propaganda, which is what the TPubs are so upset with PBO about. It's OKIYAR again.
Also, this quote above needs to be "repeated until the people know the truth".
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x129448
But the topic was SS reform, but you could use this at least 2 ways. The Bush campaigning to repeat the propaganda, or the lie about WMD needed to be repeated propaganda.
I think President Obama is doing the same thing President Bush did. Some folks want the President to go out and convince the public to call their Reps, but it depends on which President and which topic. If Rmoney won, they would be on some other topic, not deficit/debt.
The thing President Obama is doing is trying to get people to see the effects of this self imposed crisis that Congress needs to ultimately fix (without planting more bombs?) and some folks would think that he should do more, but what? He would sign a budget, but Congress has not passed any. They keep saying the President hasn't passed a budget, but the President proposes budgets, and signs or vetoes what Congress "passes".
They want him to get the blame for what they did not do, when this crisis was to avert the prior crisis.
The people need to stop pointing fingers, but the crises are because Congress has not passed anything and the TPubs are particularly entrenched in something that the majority of what the people do not want.
But when I bring up the fact the Bush II policies and spending (including raiding the SS surplus on phony budgets), I get "the business" about Pres. Obama has not fixed that fast enough. Well, now is not the time to quibble over that, but we best remember our history and not repeat it. Neither is it the time to chop off arbitrary cuts and say we will not do any more revenue increases. Well, we already have cut, so we can admit that there will be needed both cuts and revenue, which is what the President has been saying for a very long time. Which cuts CONGRESS? The President should not have to tell you what to cut, just so you can say the President made this happen.
President Obama has repeatedly said neither party is going to be happy. Both will be bloody, but they (Congress) have to get in the ring. It's as if TPubs want the Dems to "take a fall" and they never have to take any more punches. Maybe we should do something less bloody, like basketball, home run derby, race cars or break dance fighting.
John, here's the details on Narwhal, the first from before the race (the hype)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/victory_lab/2012/02/project_narwhal_how_a_top_secret_obama_campaign_program_could_change_the_2012_race_.html
and the second from after the race (the proof of concept).
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/nerdiest-election-ever/
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/built-to-win-deep-inside-obamas-campaign-tech/
The part that is most interesting to me, in all the standard "heroic hacker hero" narratives that are just SOP for every tech story (and they always involve a MAN), is that the IDEA of correlating live poll worker exit data with other big data sources for direct up to the minute mobilization is that the idea (in my mind, at least) seems to have originated with...
AARON SCHWARTZ.
I started realizing this at his memorial service, but nobody brought it up. Was it just something out in the ethers with the Slashdot crowd, so no one was claiming it, and then Narwhal picked it up and ran with it, or was it more Schwartz's typical self-effacement and desire for everything to be open source and activist-focused?
Or did the Open Source crowd attending the Aaron Schwartz events not read Dangerroom or other post mortem's on Project Narwhal's MO? Am I delusional? Aren't there really ODD correlations between the two?
Bah. SWARTZ. Dyslexics R Us. Sorry Aaron. No harm intended.
It's funny, cause Right-Wing Nutjobs will say how Obama is going to declare a dictatorship and take over the country and then with the next breath they call Obama out for... not declaring a dictatorship and taking over the country.
Oh, there you go with that consistency thingy again. :)
As the old saying by Ralph Waldo Emerson goes, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."
To Republicans, the right argument to make is whichever one works best at the moment. Anything said in the past, whether its 15 seconds or 15 years ago, just doesn't exist, as far as they're concerned.
Remember, we just had a Republican presidential candidate run an entire campaign on that basis.
He's either a closeted racist or starts to develop dementia. At least that's how it looks from the outside.
Or perhaps, someone is helping him to benefit financially from his current diatribes??
It is long past the time when Woodward needs to retire to some sunny clime. Perhaps President Obama could send Mr. Woodward to Gitmo, for some R&R.
As Woodward says, "Under the Constitution, the president is commander-in-chief and employs the force"
So... after fifty years of steadily ceding war powers from Congress to the Executive, we're now at the point where we should cede budget & spending decisions too? In order to consolidate those dodgy war powers?
Ok Bob.
Maybe the TP's have a point about reading the Constitution aloud in a yearly refresher.
Is there anyone more boring than Bob Woodward? I should record him and play him back when I can't sleep. Yawn......speaking of drones.......
I'm amazed that Woodward continues to get much respect. Yes, in his youth he helped break Watergate, but today he mainly produces bestsellers of questionable accuracy. I lost regard for him years ago when he implausibly claimed to have interviewed the dying William Casey in his hospital room. Later he supported the Bush administration's claims on Iraqi WMDs when others were far less gullible.
I think Woodward is missing the forest for the trees. Sure, if Obama really wanted to, he could keep the USS Roosevelt going. He would just have to sacrifice something more important somewhere else. It's not about the Roosevelt, it's the whole damn thing!
Hey Steve, what did your Morning Joe colleagues say about this? I'm sure they all agreed with Woodward and said the President was failing to lead by not ignoring Congress and breaking the law. MSNBC needs to clean up morning Joe before you get all outraged by the things said on it.
I happened to watch the Morning Joe segment with Woodward, and I was completely stunned when he was basically saying that the president should blithely ignore the Constitution and take on dictatorial powers. Of course the Morning Joe crew sailed on past that monstrous iceberg without taking note, but of course, they took great pains to say that Woodward was correct in asserting that the sequester was all Obama's idea. If Obama has such great powers, could he demand by fiat that single-payer is the law of the land? That he can singlehandedly declare war, or repeal the Second Amendment? Where does the President's powers end in Woodward's opinion?
My Merriam-Webster dictionary defines treason as: "the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance....."
So, is Woodward promoting the idea that the Justice Dept should bring charges against the Speaker of the House, Eric Holder and the 100+ tea party members of Congress who have vowed to ignore the interests of the people whom they represent and bring down the government as we know it? Eric Holder, where are you?
"That's a kind of madness that I haven't seen in a long time."
Well Bob is old and heading toward senility. Truth is Bob's been moving further and further right with every book sale/speaking fee/award. I was a kid when Watergate happened, but I remember reading the reporting being done by him and Bernstein, I thought that they were good journalists. Over the last decade Bob has on more than one occasion made me re-think my position about him.
I believe the right have a type of collective amnesia when it comes to 1) getting things done "their way", 2) when they've flubbed it, then they refuse to own it, 3) when it's something they want to "get around". That's neither leadership or being an adult. My Grandma used to do the same thing when she didn't want to hear what was being said she'd start asking "what'd he/she say" after repeating themselves enough most people stopped including her in the conversation, which was her whole point and she didn't mind one bit. The thing is in politicians, pundits and journalists that's not just childish, it's reckless. feckless, an abdication of their position and dangerous and should be enough to remove them from the public sphere.
Woodward's problem is he's been riding that Watergate wagon far too long down the hill and the wheels are getting worn and wobbly. Watergate is the only thing he's ever done of substance in his life and it's all he has to bank on.
Mr Woodward has no excuses for not know the very history of controversial Presidential spending and impoundment when the last major legislation happened at the height of his career regarding the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.
Title X of the law was written specifically to prevent Mr. Nixon from exercising arbitrary controls on spending by starving programs he didn't like despite the authorization by Congress.
Mr. Woodward you are a foolish old man, and most definitely part of the problem. Your comments sound like the rantings of a man already in a retirement home and are not the type of serious conversation to be heard on national TV as anything that would pass as informed conversation. Shame on you.
My take on it is that Woodward wants President Obama to declare it a national security issue , and spend all the money he wants to on DEFENCE , so america can go ahead and gut food stamps , education etc. , and all those things that just annoy THE CORPORATE MSM MILLIONAIES IN THE BUBBLE .....
As if we did not just go thru 10+ years of war spending and waste? This is how out of touch these people are ...And Woodward is suffering from old white guy disease , this young black man could not possibly run the nation as well as old senile mccain could have , mccain would have built 3 brand new aircraft carriers , invaded Venezuelan , and Woodward would have a new book out by now
This is how Julius Caesar came to be popular in Rome, as he destroyed the Roman Republic, which had gotten itself tied in knots not dissimilar to what we have done, and for similar reasons of unrecognized international empire (following the Punic Wars, as ours followed World War II) conflicting with domestic republican principles, and the economic and political turning loose of the patrician class from loyalty to the Republic. And we all know what a success that was, overthrowing the Roman Republic...
Woodward continues to prove he was the opportunistic hack, clinging to the coat tails of the real journalist Bernstein, back in the day.
Bob Woodward has recently violated the trust I put in him. Case in point is his casting aspersion concerning President Obama’s leadership. All evidence would suggest that the leaders of the Republican House of Representatives refuse to work with the President. He invites them to the White House and they refuse to come, He calls them and they refuse to take his calls. They shout out during his speeches. They refuse to stand when he enters a room. They use their own contemptible behavior in snubbing the president to further their own reputations among their fellow radical conservatives. Everyone knows the House of Representatives handle “all” financial matters, all, not just some; “all” spending and taxing authority rests in that body. Given their refusal to deal with our President and their constitutionally mandated authority the lack of leadership is Boehner’s failure as Speaker of the House and not the President. Woodward, you are defaming your profession by trying to put the blame on the President. Restore my faith in your reporting; your next headline should be “Boehner’s Lack of Leadership Hurts America”.
Well said @Firetree.
On Friday, Obama is meeting with the Republicans at the white house. I'm pretty sure we won't be seeing the sequester. As usual, in the 11th hour, they will do something to avert it. I just hope the president does not cave on the much needed revenue. I have lost some of my former faith in him in that regard.
He has already cut the debt in half. These Republicans need to go back a few years to Argentina, Bolivia and other places where the GOP "Friedmanites" brought a number of countries to their knees with the same austerity policies they are trying to pass here, now.
Austerity will certainly work for these Republicans if their goal is to sink the country into recession, and then blame it on Obama.
Ask me if I think they are dirty enough and stupid enough to do that.
Firetree, #16,
No president in my lifetime has been shown such disrespect as President Obama.
The GOP leaders have snubbed him at every turn, as have many Republican governors. I cringe every time I see it. It is just unbelievable. One example, he invited them to the white house to watch the movie, LINCOLN. They did not show. They don't show for dinners or anything. They literally do not want to be seen with him.
Now they have turned Chris Christie into a leper for being nice to Obama after Sandy hit NJ. At the same time they've invited Sarah Palin, Rick Perry and Alan West to their C-Pac meeting.
C must stand for circus! Or crazy!
We are being governed by lunatics. The GOP has everything backward. Austerity will never help and will really hurt this country.
Yes, just imagine. Where would the deficit be then? (Not to mention all those needlessly killed)
This is one of the dangers of giving someone from the press lavish praise for one single story, Watergate. Woodward would be nothing without Deep Throat coming in and dotting all the i's. In the right wing media they call Woodward an avowed Democrat, which is par for their course...
All this is starting to make me wonder whether Woodward was ever all he's cracked up to be, or whether he just lucked into being in the right place and the right time forty years ago and has been coasting ever since. Admittedly, I don't know all that much about the factual history of how Watergate broke, but I wouldn't count on the "heroic journalists" of the movies being absolute truth.
Reagan and "W" should have been impeached, and the latter face war crime charges, for the very things Woodward was celebrating--this from the man that helped break Watergate.
For the Republicans, the the president does it, it's not breaking the law--that it, he reigns as King. Therefore, Bush/Cheney basically called people disagreeing with them traitors, and any non-Republican President can not be legitimate. It's been that break down of "rule of law" under Republican administrations that has really hurt our country.
The White House does have some (limited) flexibility it what it can and can not do, e.g. shift money around to avoid default when the debt ceiling isn't lifted in time. But our country requires all parts of our government to work together to function properly. Woodward just wants to blame Obama for the behavior of Republicans and the complete failure of "conservative ideals". He is too lazy to call out the Republicans in Congress for all of their blatant lies. A complete failure of the MSM.
BREAKING!!!! Amer Sociological Assoc Files Amicus Brief Tomorrow
There is an historic brief being filed tomorrow by the American Sociological Association.
Tomorrow they are going to be telling the Supreme Court that there is no scientific evidence that the children of gay parents do worse than the children of straight parents.
I would urge you to contact the American Sociological Association to book an on camera interview with the lead author on the brief.
This IS really historic, as the ASA is the very last large national Scientific Professional organization to answer the question of if children do just as well by having two loving mothers or two loving fathers.
Recently a Sociologist Dr. Mark Regnerus out of the University of Texas Austin published a study that has been reported (falsely) that children are harmed if their parents are of the same sex. The ASA brief directly takes this paper on and gives it no credibility as to answering the question of same sex parenting.
The ASA Brief unequivocally states that children raised by same sex parents fare just as well as those raised by heterosexual parents.
Again, the ASA is the LAST remaining large National Scientific Professional Association to tell the Courts about the scientific research on this topic. This is the FIRST TIME the ASA has filed an Amicus Brief answering this question.
I would encourage you to look for this Amicus brief tomorrow and talk with the lead author and scientific leaders of the American Sociological Association about their brief.
Media Contact:
Daniel Fowler, American Sociological Association, (202) 527-7885, pubinfo@asanet.org
Dr. Sally Hillsaman, Executive Officer, American Sociological Association 202-383-9005 x 316 hillsman@asanet.org
Sincerely,
SGM
Hasn't been able to relive the journalism integrity from his Watergate days. Sad to see such a great man (and institution in the WAPO) decline so rapidly
Well I've stopped watching MJ because mainly of, well . . . Joe. I don't know how he reacted. Does Woodward remember Reagan committed impeachable offenses in Iran-contra scandal? I guess he would abandon law for style..W had lots of style and is now an un-indicted war criminal. Just like John McCain - woodward has been too long at the fair.
The Republican idea of governing is to FK the country and blame Obama. They Fked the country for 8 years under brainless Bush, FKed it the last 4 years and intend to Fk it for the next 4 years.
It's time to say, "FK the Republican party".
"Can you imagine Richard Nixon sitting there and saying 'Oh, by the way, I can't have the CIA tell the FBI not to investigate the Watergate burglars' money trail, giving the trumped-up justification that national security is involved, just because some silly statute says it would be obstruction of justice?'" Woodward said Wednesday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
OK, he didn't say that, but it sure would have fit in perfectly.