Ezra Klein (Washington Post): I had some issues with David Brooks’s column Friday on the two parties’ sequester positions …. A transcript of our conversation follows.
Ezra Klein: In the column, you said that the Obama administration doesn’t have a plan to replace the sequester. I feel like I’ve had to spend a substantial portion of my life reading their various budgets and plans to replace the sequester, and my sense is that you’ve had to do this, too. So, what am I missing?
David Brooks: First, the column was a bit of an over-the-top lampooning column about dance moves. I probably went a bit too far when saying the president didn’t have a response to the sequester save to raise taxes on the rich. In the cool light of day, I can say that’s over the top. There’s chained CPI and $400 billion in health proposals. So I should say I was unfair. I’m going to attach a note to the column, if it’s not up already.
As David Roberts (@drgrist) put it on Twitter: “Seriously, David Brooks’ answer to this first question is remarkable. Why wouldn’t you fire him for this?”
5:0 EST: President Obama departs West Palm Beach, Florida
7:30 EST: Arrives White House
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NYT: The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.
The project, which the administration has been looking to unveil as early as March, will include federal agencies, private foundations and teams of neuroscientists and nanoscientists in a concerted effort to advance the knowledge of the brain’s billions of neurons and gain greater insights into perception, actions and, ultimately, consciousness.
Scientists with the highest hopes for the project also see it as a way to develop the technology essential to understanding diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, as well as to find new therapies for a variety of mental illnesses.
NYT: President Obama skipped dessert at a long summit meeting dinner in Cambodia on Monday to rush back to his hotel suite. It was after 11:30 p.m., and his mind was on rockets in Gaza rather than Asian diplomacy. He picked up the telephone to call the Egyptian leader who is the new wild card in his Middle East calculations.
Over the course of the next 25 minutes, he and President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt hashed through ways to end the latest eruption of violence, a conversation that would lead Mr. Obama to send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the region. As he and Mr. Morsi talked, Mr. Obama felt they were making a connection. Three hours later, at 2:30 in the morning, they talked again.
…. The White House phone log tells part of the tale. Mr. Obama talked with Mr. Morsi three times within 24 hours and six times over the course of several days, an unusual amount of one-on-one time for a president. Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver.
President Obama talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a phone call from his hotel suite in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Nov. 19 (Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, aboard Air Force One during the flight from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Washington, D.C., Nov. 20. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon listens at right. (Pete Souza)
President Barack Obama talks on the phone with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in the Oval Office, Nov. 21. Chief of Staff Jack Lew, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough listen in the foreground. (Pete Souza)
10:25: Delivers remarks at Capitol Square, Concord
11:50: Departs Manchester, New Hampshire
2:50: Arrives Hollywood, Florida
3:40: Delivers remarks at McArthur High School, Hollywood
5:0: Departs Hollywood
7:10: Arrives Cincinnati, Ohio
7:55: Delivers remarks at 5th/3rd Arena, Cincinnati
9:10: Departs Cincinnati
MDT
9:50: Arrives Aurora, Colorado
10:25: Delivers remarks at Community College of Aurora at Lowry
11:30: Departs Aurora
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Monday: The President will travel to Madison, Wisconsin and Columbus, Ohio for campaign events. In the afternoon, the President and the First Lady will travel to Des Moines, Iowa for a campaign event. In the evening, they will travel to Chicago where they will remain overnight.
Tuesday: The First Family will spend Election day in Chicago.
Wednesday: The First Family will return to Washington, DC.
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NYT Editorial: …. The truth is that Mr. Obama was right when he talked about “real progress” in the economy during a campaign swing in Ohio, where the state unemployment rate has declined from 8.6 percent a year ago to 7 percent recently. Republican obstructionism has made it much harder to achieve the improvement we have seen, but it has failed in its seeming intent to ensure stagnation.
That left Mr. Romney flailing around for a response. His proclamation that the economy was at a “virtual standstill” is believable only if you adopt Mr. Romney’s denial of stark reality. A candidate who could ignore Chrysler’s announcement of 1,100 new jobs in Toledo and claim that Chrysler was moving jobs to China can just as easily see a flat line in an upward trend.
…. Republicans have been determined to keep the economy as weak as possible to hurt Mr. Obama’s campaign. The Republicans’ last-minute tactic has been a cynical one — to make it clear that they will continue obstructing Mr. Obama if he wins. That is a hollow argument for Mr. Romney. And it does not change the fact that Mr. Romney has no good ideas and Mr. Obama has plenty.
… Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it….
…. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.
Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness ….
….. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, [Romney's] ideology has not replaced sound policy.
10:10: President Obama delivers remarks at a campaign event at Delray Beach, Florida
11:0: VP Biden delivers remarks at a campaign event on the campus of the University of Toledo, Ohio
3:50: The President and VP Biden hold a rally at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio
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NYT Editorial: Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.
…. At his worst, Mr. Romney sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question. “We want a peaceful planet,” he said. “We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and prosperous future and not be at war.”
…. Mr. Romney’s problem is that he does not actually have any real ideas on foreign policy beyond what President Obama has already done, or plans to do…
…. Mr. Romney’s closing statement summed it all up. He said almost nothing about foreign policy. He moved back to his comfort zone: cheerfully delivered disinformation about domestic policy.
Steve Benen: The Blowout in Boca …. CBS polled undecided voters again last night, and found Obama winning this debate by 30 points.
…. I not only thought the president excelled last night, I think Romney very nearly embarrassed himself. After six years of campaigning for the nation’s highest office, asking voters to make him the leader of the free world, the former one-term governor conveyed an unnerving message to the nation in the year’s final debate: he neither knows nor cares about international affairs. As a New York Times editorial noted, Romney at times “sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question.”
Greg Sargent: …. Tonight, America was introduced to Peacenik Mitt — and watched him take a pummeling….
Romney didn’t take many of the shots he was expected to take — while Obama landed a number of very hard blows on Romney early on. Obama got right to his core message: We got Bin Laden, and we’re ending Bush’s war … Oddly, Romney again and again supported Obama’s positions, at one point basically acknowledging that Obama had made it clear that the United States has Israel’s back.
…. Perhaps most important, Obama repeatedly connected his insistence on fiscal sanity on defense, and savings from drawing down the Bush wars, to the need to invest in nation building at home. In other words, Obama successfully connected tonight’s debate over foreign policy to his core domestic policy message about the imperative of investing in long term middle class security. I don’t know how much tonight will change the race, if at all, but my bet is polls in the days ahead will show stronger public preference for Obama’s overall vision.
LA Times: …. Monday’s presidential debate featured a forceful and articulate defense of Obama’s foreign policy. That was no surprise. What was surprising was that it came from Romney.
…. Once Romney intimated that he might keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past NATO’s 2014 deadline. No more. Now he agrees with Obama that it is feasible to transfer combat responsibilities to the Afghans by that point. On Iran, Romney emphasized economic sanctions rather than the threat of a military attack, effectively endorsing Obama’s approach…..
… Romney dusted off his canard that the president had conducted an “apology tour” through the Middle East. To be clear: Obama has not apologized for American influence; every time Romney says otherwise, he reinforces the many reasons to distrust his honesty.
…. If Romney believes in a thoughtful and centrist foreign policy, which he hadn’t until Monday night, it would argue for his candidacy. But if that vision is attractive — and it is — why not stick with the president who is already pursuing it?
RT @NerdyWonka: FLOTUS quotes MLK: "You don't get to the promised land until you pass through the wilderness." Tells graduates to never giv… 1 hour ago
RT @NerdyWonka: FLOTUS: "Look at Barack Obama; he lost his first race for Congress and now, he gets to call himself my husband." FLOTUS smi… 1 hour ago
