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Over the course of 21 months of campaigning, Barack Obama assembled a roster of millions of devotees. The question now is: How can he harness their enthusiasm for his presidency? It won’t take much, writes Frank Greve in McClatchy. “Certainly, Obama reaches the White House with the biggest, best organized, fastest-acting grass-roots army in the history of presidential campaigning,” he asserts, and quotes one volunteer from the campaign (a 37-year-old mother of three) as saying, “I’m going to be sitting at the phone, asking, ‘What do you want me to do? I’m ready.’” But will this army of supporters stage a coup and devolve into factions of special interests? “How Obama will use his ardent laptop-armed cadres is unclear. So is the extent to which they'll rally behind his priorities, press him for their own or both.”
Call him the Teflon John. This afternoon the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan announced the former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer won’t face charges for paying for sex with a high-end hooker. The investigators found no evidence that Spitzer had used public money or campaign funds to pay for the services, and declared that a full prosecution would not be “in the public interest,” according to U.S. Attorney Michael J. Garcia. But Garcia wouldn’t say whether the overall investigation is over and done with for good. In a statement, Spitzer responded to the announcement: “I appreciate the impartiality and thoroughness of the investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office, and I acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conduct it disclosed.”
Russian business daily Vedomosti reports that Dmitri Medvedev might step down as early as next year, paving the way for Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin. The report comes after Medvedev's announcement of a proposal to extend the presidential term from four to six years. It is rumored that Medvedev would then step down, calling for a special election that would most likely result in Putin's return to the presidency, an office he could now hold for another twelve years. Under current Russian law, presidents are limited to two consecutive terms. Putin resisted amending the Constitution while he was in office to avoid seeming unethical. Having Medvedev do it provides some small cover of constitutionality and decency to Putin's ambitions.
America might not have to wait until 2012 for Sarah Palin to return to national politics. Should Senator/convicted felon Ted Stevens win reelection, he will be expelled from the Senate, putting Gov. Palin in a position to appoint herself to his seat. Palin would, however, have to run for the seat in a special election within 90 days of her appointment due to an Alaskan law. At this point, the possibility of Sen. Palin is pure speculation, but you can bet there are members of the press praying it comes to pass.
In 2005, Josh Green profiled Obama’s new Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for Rolling Stone as the Illinois Representative headed up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The piece has some fun anecdotes, like when Emanuel sent a rotting fish to a pollster who angered him, and comments on Emanuel’s ruthlessness and aggression. (In the Clinton White House, meetings typically began with Emanuel yelling at the staff for 45 minutes). It also hints at how why he will be valuable to the Obama administration. Emanuel is, according to Green, “a certified member of the Beltway establishment, and a political centrist to boot” who “has received generally positive reviews from the increasingly noisy—and powerful—grass roots of the Democratic Party.” Uniting these two wings of the Democratic party, as DSCC chairman he rode “a national wave of anti-Washington sentiment rooted in the mounting instances of corruption and sleaze that have piled up in the Republican-led Congress.”
Among the many fates that the election’s close has left up in the air, none is more pertinent than that of Nate Silver, the polling guru who became America’s favorite pundit during the campaign. Will we have to wait until the 2012 election to resume our crush? According to The Wall Street Journal, Silver is hatching something new. Silver “says he's considering applying the site's predictive tools to congressional votes, movies' box-office performance and other topics.” Which means you get to keep FiveThirtyEight.com on your bookmarks.
How monumental was Obama’s election? Well, The New York Times announced the event by printing the word “Obama” on its front page in 96-point type, which it has only used on three other occasions: the moon landing, Nixon’s resignation, and September 11. "It told the story. Less is more," said a Times spokesperson. It was apparently a wise decision: The papers are selling for upwards of $100 on Ebay.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Barack Obama on his election, apparently without preconditions. Ahmadinejad sent Obama a message, applauding him for “attracting the majority of the voters in the election.” It is the first time since the 1979 Revolution that any Iranian leader has offered such a blessing to an American president-elect. Cue the rightwing frenzy.
In The Independent, Jay McInerney compares the mood in New York City after Obama’s victory to that after 9/11: hugs from strangers, crowds on the streets, sold-out newspapers. “In many ways, this moment feels like the obverse of that terrible morning after,” he writes in The Independent. “And it feels like some sort of vindication for those of us who feel that our country lost its bearings not long after that… After eight long dark years, we feel that history is with us again, and that America is with us again.” The country may be with the city again, but New Yorkers shouldn’t feel too superior, he cautions. They owe their return to the fold to Virginia, Ohio, and Florida.
The Spanish government did not buy Omar Osama Bin Laden's claim that his life would be in danger if he returned to Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden claims that he is no longer safe in any Arab country, but Spanish officials believe he is only trying to garner publicity for a book he is writing about the 20 years he spent with his father. An initial report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees supports Spain's decision. Bin Laden has hired a Spanish lawyer and filed an appeal, a move that could delay a final decision for another two months.
As if Barack Obama wasn’t already, like, celebrities’ most favorite person ever, he now has the blessing of music’s most famous man, Bob Dylan. “I was born in 1941 -- Pearl Harbor,” Dylan said in a concert on election night. “Things have been in darkness ever since. Things are going to change.” A rather remarkable comment from one of the figureheads of the 60s. How about a cabinet post for the old guy?
John Leonard, the dazzling television critic for New York magazine, passed away last night at 69. Leonard wrote his first piece, a book review, for New York in its third issue, and became its TV critic in 1984. Before that, he edited The New York Times Book Review in the early seventies. His last two pieces appeared in the latest issue of New York—reviews of Crash and Crusoe. Of the latter, he wrote, “Like Huck and Jim, or Ishmael and Queequeg, Crusoe and Friday embody the triumph of homoerotic male bonding over the steeps of race, culture, and ethnicity.”
Here’s your bit of irony for the day: The Museum of Tolerance received permission last week from the Israeli Supreme Court to build a new campus in West Jerusalem on a 400-year-old Muslim cemetery over the protests of Arabs. “We will not tolerate the construction of the Museum of Tolerance," said an Arabic leader. The Israeli Court pointed out that, 40 years ago, a parking lot built in the area raised no objections. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has pledged $250 million for construction of the museum, which will be designed by Frank Gehry.
The 2012 presidential election is nearly 1,500 days away, just soon enough for eager Republicans to begin plotting a run against Barack Obama. So, who do Republicans want to carry the party's mantle? NBC-WSJ GOP pollster Neil Newhouse conducted a survey last night to find out. The majority of Republicans, 33 percent, favor Mitt Romney as the new head of the party, while 20 percent prefer Mike Huckabee. Another 18 precent are behind nominee Sarah Palin, meaning that the barracuda will have some work to do.
Sarah Palin has denied reports that she's a "diva." Let's check that against the leaks now flowing freely from the McCain camp. The New York Times notes that as McCain prepared to deliver his concession speech, Sarah Palin turned up with a draft of her own speech. It was up to Mark Salter and Steve Schmidt tell her that their campaign wouldn’t be breaking with tradition and letting the veep candidate address the nation. The paper says that by the end McCain and Palin spoke only “occasionally,” with tensions running high about Palin’s positioning for a 2012 run. Fox News has the juiciest dish today: McCain sources say Palin was not only unable to name the countries in NAFTA, but that she thought Africa was a country, not a continent.
Politico reports that, in Barack Obama's first major move as president-elect, Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel is likely to accept his offer to serve as White House chief of staff. Some question, however, whether Emanuel, who served as a senior adviser in the Clinton White House, is right for the job. He is famously in-your-face, and is something of a primadonna: According to The New York Times, in the early days of the Clinton Administration, he drove around in a monogrammed car, and Hillary lobbied to have him fired (eventually, she got him demoted). But Politico cites several reasons why Obama might want Emanuel, including his knowledge of Washington and his loyalty, and the Times has one big reason why Emanuel may want to accept: "The chief of staff is one of the most powerful posts in all of government, the gatekeeper to the president on every issue, and the person with the last word."
This is getting interesting. CNN reports that McCain aide Randy Scheunemann was fired from the campaign last week. Campaign manager Rick Davis jettisoned the senior foreign policy adviser “after determining that he had been in direct contact with journalists spreading ‘disinformation’ about campaign aides, including Nicolle Wallace and other officials” in the final weeks of the campaign. The Times adds that said journalist was none other than Bill Kristol, who, according to a source, was fed “a constant stream of poison.” Scheunemann denies he was fired; anyone who says otherwise is “lying or delusional or a whack job.”
The New York Times’ Peter Baker zeroes in on the major challenge facing Team Obama: how to balance “change” with the temptation to stock the White House with Clinton officials? So far, Bakers notes, Obama has tapped Clintonites John Podesta and Rahm Emanuel for key roles; he wants a Clinton veteran as National Security adviser. And yet Obama and the Clintons have had a tempestuous relationship, brought on, in part, by Obama’s reluctance to praise the glory days of the old administration. A Democrat tells The Times that the tension all but rules out Larry Summers returning to the Treasury Department. “You don’t want to have Clinton’s Treasury secretary,” the source says. “This can’t look like Clinton 3.”
Superb piece in The Journal today profiling the African-American power players who are set to rise to prominence with the Obama administration. At the top of the list are Valerie Jarrett, the Chicago real estate investor and Obama confidant, and John Rogers, of Ariel Capital Management, whose power is reflected by the fact that Obama spent yesterday working out of his office. The players, The Journal says, are “bound by an intricate social web that operates largely out of sight from whites: family connections, black law-school alumni organizations, black fraternities and sororities, as well as popular vacation spots for affluent African-Americans like Martha's Vineyard.” Eric Holder, who met Obama at a dinner party two years ago, is an odds-on-favorite to become attorney general.
Many thought this happened months ago, but here it is: Dick Fuld has been fired as Chief Executive Officer of Lehman Brothers. "He is being terminated," Lehman's chief bankruptcy officer said yesterday. "He will receive no severance or bonuses." That marks the end of Fuld's run, which began in 1993, as the longest serving head of a Wall Street bank. Though Lehman collapsed in September, Fuld was helping it to divide up its assets. The instinct upon news of a firing is usually sympathy, but lest you feel too sorry for him: Lehman paid Fuld nearly $500 million since 2000.
Politico reports that Rahm Emanuel has accepted Barack Obama’s offer to serve as his White House chief of staff. Emanuel was widely believed to be in line to be the next Democratic congressman to serve as Speaker of the House, but “accepted the [chief of staff] job because he thought it was important to serve this historic administration.” According to Politico, “The announcement will send a signal that Obama is eager to work with Congress, and plans a swift launch of an aggressive agenda that will focus on the economy, taxes, energy, education and health care.”
Polls a few months ago showed California's Proposition 8 failing by as many as 17 points. On Election Night, it passed by four. What happened? The Los Angeles Times reports that Proposition 8's supporters ran a shrewd campaign that focused on insinuations of the effects of same-sex marriage on schools, churches, and children. They alleged that children would be indoctrinated with same-sex marriage at school against their parents’ wishes and that churches that did not perform the marriages would be punished. The measure was very successful among black voters who, out in large numbers to vote for Barack Obama, supported Prop 8 2-to-1.
The economy, our relationship with the world, and now the floundering movie business—what can’t Barack Obama fix? The Hollywood Reporter notes that since 1980, the inauguration of a Democratic president has always coincided with an uptick in box-office receipts. Republicans sport a more mixed record, with three inaugurations coinciding with a good year at the box office and two with a plunge. “Most striking, the two worst years for box-office in past thirty years came the year after a Republican candidate was re-elected (after Reagan and Bush were given second terms).” The case of the latter, the movies were hopeless to match the real-life spectacle.
You may never glimpse Michael Crichton's marble bust in the hallowed halls of the Western Canon, but the late thriller author was not without his contributions to literature. "I will always owe him a major debt," Maxim Jakubowski writes in The Guardian. "Thanks to him, my son began to read books." Those who snub their noses at Crichton should take note: "I am convinced that there is a whole generation of young boys out there, like mine, who discovered through Crichton that novels can be fun and exciting, and became fervent readers thanks to him. In an age when fewer and fewer children bother about books, I believe we must be mightily grateful to Michael Crichton for keeping the flame of reading alive."
With all the election coverage earlier this week, we managed to overlook a big story from the world of letters: Beatnik-fans will be thrilled to learn that the book that started it all—And the Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, written by both William S Burroughs and Jack Kerouac in 1944, 13 years before On the Road—will finally be published. The book, which is a crime story about gay obsession and murder and whose chapters were written alternately by Burroughs and Kerouac, was previously unpublished because Burroughs did not want to damage the reputation of his friend Lou Carr, on whom it is based. Carr's death in 2005 freed it for publication.
George W. Bush is so unpopular in the world that it may be easier to describe his enemies in terms of continents rather than countries. Lucky for him, he can still count one continent (hint: also a country) in his friends column. "The world may hate George W. Bush," Greg Sheridan writes in The Australian, "but by God he was a good friend to Australia. He did almost every single thing any Australian government ever asked of him." The article is rather thin on examples, but says that with Obama in the White House American-Aussie relations are likely to suffer. The evidence? "[Obama's] Foreign Affairs article on his proposed foreign policy didn't mention Australia. John McCain's did, more than once."
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