The Note, 4/30/2009: Politics 101 — Next 100 days starts with new GOP messaging (yes, again)

By RICK KLEIN Cover your mouth, wash your hands, and prepare to be enchanted. As the ocean liner of a battleship of a ship of state moves from the first 100 days into the second, the lesson is that this next stretch will be choppier than what’s in our wake. The natural marking point is now gone — and Hallmark would have been proud of President Obama’s performance right up to and including Wednesday night’s press conference, delivered with a budget in place, and 60 in his grasps in the Senate. Yet day 101 looks like it may belong to the opposition party — if not the don’t-call-it-swine flu, or a bankrupt Chrysler, or Pakistan or Afghanistan or torture memos or the Gitmo debate. As the news conference made clear, Obama continues to be a politician defined through his caution — a desire to keep his options open for later, with on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand formulations. That works in the first 100 days — but it gets late early in seasons like this one. “There are even harder issues down the road — and the most difficult of all flow from the executive orders that Obama signed and released on the second day of his presidency,” Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff writes. “The new president pledged to shut down Guantánamo within a year. He also ordered a sweeping cabinet-level review of U.S. detention policies, including a case-by-case review of what exactly should be done with the more than 200 prisoners still at the facility in Cuba. But if anything is clear from the president’s first 100 days, it’s that these goals are only becoming harder to achieve, not easier.”  That torture answer broke ground: “I believe that waterboarding was torture,” Obama said in response to the question from ABC’s Jake Tapper, on whether the Bush administration sanctioned torture. Vice President Joe Biden danced around a direct answer, too: “I think the Bush administration misread the law,” Biden told ABC’s Robin Roberts on “Good Morning America” Thursday. “We believe it was torture.” “In a strikingly defensive explanation of his stance on Bush-era anti-terrorism tactics, President Obama on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the harsh interrogation techniques he has banned might have yielded useful information, but that he was nonetheless willing to rule them out on moral grounds,” the Los Angeles Times’ Peter Wallsten and Greg Miller report.  “Coming as Obama confidently assessed his work during his first 100 days in office, his comments on torture underscored a gnawing dilemma: His desire to roll back elements of President Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ could be more complicated than he had envisioned,” they write. “Obama is caught between growing public sentiment against igniting a national debate over past interrogation tactics and a still-emerging insistence by his liberal base that is growing more aggressive in its calls for investigations and prosecutions.” A Rooseveltian 100 days — right through a fireside chat called a primetime news conference. (How did hand-washing techniques and other flu tips not come up during all those Democratic primaries?) “Roosevelt managed to retain the public’s support throughout the Great Depression, despite signs that much of his New Deal didn’t work. He had a gift of inspiring confidence in the future,” AP’s Ron Fournier writes. “Are Obama’s gifts as great? So far, he has managed like Roosevelt to give many Americans a common purpose.”  Look for Republicans to press Obama on national security on day 101 — picking up a theme that started to get hot earlier this month. GOP House leaders will unveil a new Web video with a sharper version of the argument than they’ve offered before: “What are Democrats doing to make America safer?” the video asks.  Also coming Thursday: the latest Republican branding effort. The National Council for a New America — organized by the office of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va. — “to persuade the public that the GOP is the party of ‘new solutions’ to people’s everyday challenges,” per ABC’s Teddy Davis.  Republicans are planning a kick-off event Saturday in the Washington area with former governors Jeb Bush, R-Fla., and Mitt Romney, R-Mass., with other big names involved including House and Senate leadership, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Davis reports. Politico’s Ben Smith: “Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring says [Gov. Sarah] Palin was invited to join the group, but they haven’t heard back. Dayspring said [Michael] Steele and [Newt] Gingrich, because Steele heads a party and Gingrich a 527, were too explicitly partisan a figures to be involved in an organization that’s meant to be non-partisan.”  On that subject — meet a new Twitterer, @AKGovSarahPalin.  (First two people she signed up to follow: @newtgingrich, and @KarlRove. As of 8 am ET, she wasn’t following: @SenJohnMcCain.) Karl Rove helps with the framing, again: “Mr. Obama’s policies are less popular than his personality, the pace of polarization with Republicans has proceeded faster than ever in history, and independents are thinking more like Republicans on the issues and less like Democrats,” Rove writes in his Wall Street Journal column. “In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.” More unfinished business . . . Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., writes, “The American people don’t want murderers back on the battlefield, where they can plan future attacks. And they certainly don’t want these men released into their neighborhoods, as some in the administration have shockingly proposed, according to news reports.”  What they’re reading in Nancy Pelosi’s hometown: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pushing for a ‘truth commission’ to investigate the CIA’s use of ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques like waterboarding — until Republicans started shining the spotlight on Pelosi herself. Now she is not so adamant,” Debra J. Saunders writes in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Spokesman Brendan Daly told me that Pelosi wants a truth commission, ‘but she still realizes the political reality’ — as in the opposition of President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The rest of the reality may well be this: Pelosi knew that White House lawyers had sanctioned waterboarding in 2002 — and did not protest.”  As for the press conference, Jeff Zeleny’s question got the most buzz: “Obama decided to play along in a mini-masterpiece of improvisational message-making,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos writes. “Taking each idea in turn, the President managed to praise the military with misty-eyes, slam bankers with a laugh, remind people that he was dealt a bad hand, and make a cheerful plea for persistence.”  (Didn’t he answer the question like a job interviewee — where your weaknesses are secretly your strengths?) This one got Obama himself taking notes: “The evening turned when Obama was asked what had humbled, surprised, enchanted, and troubled him the most about the presidency. Once he transcribed the various parts of the question, he said he’d been surprised by the sheer number of issues he had to face, which gave him a chance to reiterate that he wasn’t expanding government for its own sake but to deal with contingencies,” Slate’s John Dickerson writes.  Signals that don’t sound big-government: “President Barack Obama said he wants to get the government out of the private sector as fast as possible — but that as long as his administration is acting as a major shareholder for large sectors of American commerce, from cars to finance, he won’t hesitate to shape decisions at those firms,” The Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman write.  The benefits of boring: “Far from electric, this was a tranquilizing performance. So much so that it was impossible not to conclude that a president who certainly knows how to be exciting was making a calculated effort not to be,” John F. Harris and Jonathan Martin write for Politico. “Preservation of his own options was the recurring subtext of the evening.”  Salon’s Mike Madden calls him “Mr. Calm”: “From the town hall to the press conference, Obama stuck to one overarching message: His administration was working hard to fix the problems George W. Bush left behind — and doing a fine job of it.”  “Some things are better after 100 days. Cheese. Caterpillars. Barack Obama,” Roger Simon writes in his Politico column.  Back to those metaphors: “He was suggesting that this cruise he’s signed up to guide is not a Hundred Day Cruise. It’s a longer voyage, with much more heavy weather likely to be ahead,” Carl Cannon writes for Politics Daily.  Dana Milbank marks the holiday by rhyming: “White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had it right when he said the inevitable observance of President Obama’s first 100 days in office would be a ‘Hallmark holiday.’ But that doesn’t mean the White House was discouraging anybody from buying cards and flowers to mark the occasion.”  As for looking ahead, “it turned into more of a look back in anger, complete with finger-pointing,” Joseph Curl writes in his Washington Times column. “Throughout his hourlong session in the White House East Room on Wednesday, the candidate who vowed a new post-partisan Washington, free from the rancorous bickering that often grinds the city to gridlock, ripped Republicans as the members of a do-nothing party of no.”  Obama was a tad more upbeat about automakers’ fate, but that could change soon: “Talks between the Treasury Department and lenders aimed at keeping Chrysler LLC out of bankruptcy broke down Wednesday, making it all but certain the car maker will file for Chapter 11 protection Thursday,” The Wall Street Journal’s Neil King Jr. and Jeffrey McCracken write. “Administration officials, who have been braced for a Chrysler bankruptcy filing for weeks, say all the pieces are in place to get the company through the court quickly, perhaps in a matter of weeks.”  Also from the real world: “The Fort Worth school district shut down all 144 of its campuses until at least May 8 shortly before the first Tarrant County case of swine flu was confirmed at one school late Wednesday,” per the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “County health officials advised the 80,000-student district to close after four probable cases of swine flu were found in district students.”  (Don’t secede just yet: “Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration Wednesday for the entire state, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 16 cases of swine flu in the state. . . . The disaster declaration will allow officials to begin emergency protective measures and seek reimbursement from the federal government.”)  The president’s (activist) response: “Addressing the most recent crisis to land on his desk — the swine flu pandemic, which has already been blamed for more than 150 deaths, including one in Texas — Obama reassured Americans last night that ‘their entire government’ was taking precautions to control the dangers from the virus, and that it was not necessary to close the border with Mexico,” The Boston Globe’s Susan Milligan writes. “Such a move would be akin to ‘closing the barn door after the horses are out,’ Obama said, urging that people wash their hands frequently, cover their mouths when they sneeze, and stay home if ill.”  Coming Thursday, from the Workforce Fairness Institute — a letter with a video link, with a plea to spread it around. “Please take a look at this video footage of a former union organizer talking about the tactics employed by representatives of Big Labor as they try and take over small businesses across America.  This is not a joke, they will say and do ANYTHING to organize a union and this video exposes some of their deceptive tactics.”    How much does Arlen Specter love this story? “Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) began his first full day as a Democrat since the early 1960s at a party-switching celebration hosted by President Obama and Vice President Biden. He ended it by casting another vote against Obama, opposing his budget as too authoritarian in the rules it establishes for the health-care debate later this year,” The Washington Post’s Paul Kane writes. ” Same Arlen Specter, different party label.”  How much does John Cornyn love this story? “Much as Specter’s decision reflects an increasingly serious weakness in the Republican Party, there is no escaping the fact that it is also an opportunistic move by one of the most opportunistic politicians of modern times,” David Broder writes in his Washington Post column.  What Rove sowed? “Democrats from around the country should give a special thanks to Karl Rove. Because if Rove was an architect of anything, it was helping lead the Republican Party on the right-wing path to electoral self-immolation,” Chris Kofinis writes for The Hill.  “If not divorcing him, Republicans had constructively deserted him,” Margaret Carlson writes for Bloomberg. “If the Republican Party dies, as heretics are driven out by the delusional wing willing to lose elections in the cause of purity, there will be no need to sort through conspiracy theories. Their death will be ruled a suicide.” Fun in the caucus: “Several Democrats are furious with Sen. Reid (D-Nev.) for agreeing to let Specter (Pa.) keep his seniority, accrued over more than 28 years as a GOP senator. That agreement would allow Specter to leap past senior Democrats on powerful panels — including the Appropriations and Judiciary committees,” The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports.  The Kicker: “The only thing I have against her is that she threatens to surpass me in attracting the left’s hatred.” — Ann Coulter, on Sarah Palin, in the new “Time 100.” “In the unfortunate and unlikely event that Senator Norm Coleman loses his legal battle in Minnesota . . . ” — Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “They have their 60 votes here in the Senate — or will probably have their 60 votes in the Senate.” — Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., maybe a tad more realistically. Don’t miss “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast, hosted by Rick Klein and David Chalian, at noon ET. Thursday’s guests: Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Politico’s Jonathan Martin. Follow The Note on Twitter: http://twitter.com/thenote For up-to-the-minute political updates check out The Note’s blog . . . all day every day:

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