Daily News Channel
When then-President-elect Barack Obama first asked Hillary Clinton to be his top diplomat, she turned him down and recommended others for the job, the secretary of state said in an interview broadcast Sunday.
Most presidents are easy to pin down on our cultural maps. Ronald Reagan was raised in Dixon, Ill., but we placed him in Hollywood, telling America’s story on the big screen. Bill Clinton may have been the Man from Hope, Ark., but the mischief of nearby Hot Springs was in his blood.
Barack Obama began his latest overseas trip on a mission to increase international cooperation, with a visit to Islam’s holiest land, Saudi Arabia, and its most dynamic intellectual hub, Cairo. He ended it four days later at a monument to what such common purpose can achieve. Sixty-five years ago today, 135,000 allied troops launched the largest seaborne invasion in history on the beaches of northern France, a move that would eventually decide the outcome of World War II.
It may just be coincidence, but The Tonight Show somehow seems to know when America is going through a generational moment. Johnny Carson took over the show in Camelot-era 1962, after J.F.K. became the first greatest-generation President.
Sometimes location is everything. Other times, it’s just a convenient place to spend the night. On both sides of the Atlantic, much has been made of Barack Obama’s decision to spend Thursday night in Dresden, the German city known primarily as the site of a horrific bombing campaign by U.S.
President Obama went to Notre Dame, a Catholic university, to do the abortion speech, and to the National Archives to do the Guantanamo speech, so James Zogby hopes when Obama gets to Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday, he’ll do the Middle East speech.
Barack Obama has an uncanny ability to disarm critics, especially those itching for a fight, and it was on full display this past week. His choice of federal judge Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court nominee, of course, got all the attention. But another key appointment of a Hispanic with top-notch credentials and a compelling personal story also showed just how good the President is at keeping his opponents off balance.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had his famous rules, a written roster of commands about how to deal with Washington, including such pearls as “It is easier to get into something than to get out of it.” Robert Gates — his successor in the Bush Administration and, as of this week, the Obama Administration — doesn’t have a list of rules. Those who only see his serious pronouncements about the nation’s wars might even get the impression that Gates doesn’t have a personality
“The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion,” Barack Obama said in his elegant Notre Dame commencement speech, “and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm.” You can say that again. In recent weeks, the President and just about every other major politician from both parties have been boggled by soldier-lawyer disputes.
The photograph was shocking: a hooded detainee, in U.S.