Roots of Rural Resentment

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Democrats have paid a steep price for their withdrawal from rural America.

Lloyd Green at The Guardian:

The fact is, residents of Republican-run states are more than 20% more likely to join the military and after Iraq and the great recession, the disconnect between white rural America and coastal and cognitive elites swiftly became a chasm.

In 2016, parts of the US that felt the effects of the 9/11 wars more as reality than abstract moved to the Republican column. According to Douglas Kriner of Boston University and Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota, “Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan could very well have been winners for [Hillary] Clinton if their war casualties were lower.”

Wisconsin is the 20th-most rural state. A quarter of Michigan is rural. Pennsylvania has been characterized as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama in the middle. As Trump prepares for his rematch with Joe Biden, all three states are toss-ups.

Schaller and Waldman also downplay the impact in rural areas of Democratic messaging on hot-button issues such as crime. It’s no longer just “the economy, stupid”. Culture wars pack an outsized punch. Outside New England, white rural Democrats are a relative rarity.

Inexplicably, Schaller and Waldman do not examine the case of Jon Tester, the three-term Democratic senator from deep-red, highly rural Montana who faces a stern fight to keep his seat this year. In 2020, in the aftermath of widespread protests for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis officer, but also rioting and looting, Tester criticized his party.

See state data on the cost of post-9/11 wars. 

From CDC:

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury death in the United States, resulting in approximately 52,000 deaths in 2015. Rates of drug overdose deaths are rising in rural areas, surpassing rates in urban areas. Although the percentage of people reporting illicit drug use is lower in rural areas, the effects of use appear to be higher. The percentage of people with drug use disorders among those reporting past-year illicit drug use in rural areas was similar to that in urban areas.

Most overdose deaths occurred in homes, where rescue efforts may fall to relatives who have limited knowledge of or access to naloxone and overdose follow-up care. Understanding differences in illicit drug use, illicit drug use disorders, and drug overdose deaths in urban and rural areas can help public health professionals to identify, monitor, and prioritize responses

Post-Mortems

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state elections.  The 2021 off-year races are a curtain-raiser for the midterms.

Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

Although they had braced for a close race for Virginia governor, Democrats were caught off guard by the intensity of the backlash against their party in major off-year elections. Republicans claimed all three statewide offices in Virginia, will likely take control of the state’s House of Delegates and came close to upsetting Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, whose re-election had been presumed safe by officials in both parties.

Just as jarring for Democrats were some of the less prominent contests: The powerful New Jersey State Senate president, Steve Sweeney, was trailing a truck driver who ran a shoestring campaign; a Latino Republican flipped a Democratic seat in South San Antonio; and Democrats were thrashed in local races across Long Island.

...

“We were so willing to take seriously a global pandemic, but we’re not willing to say, ‘Yeah, inflation is a problem, and supply chain is a problem, and we don’t have enough workers in our work force,’” said Representative Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat facing a bruising re-election. “We gloss over that and only like to admit to problems in spaces we dominate.”

More pointedly, Ms. Spanberger said Mr. Biden must not forget that, for many voters, his mandate was quite limited: to remove former President Donald J. Trump from their television screens and to make American life ordinary again.

“Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” she said, alluding to the sweeping agenda the president is seeking to enact with the thinnest of legislative majorities.

Ally Mutnick and Elena Schneider at Politico:

“This is 2009 all over again,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, the New York Democrat who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee right after the disastrous 2010 election, when Democrats lost more than 60 House seats. “The only benefit they have now over 2009 is knowing just how bad it can get.”

Democrats’ House majority — and their path to the White House in 2020 — was built in large part on suburban, college-educated voters who spurned former President Donald Trump. But Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin’s inroads with them — carving deep into the northern Virginia counties where Democratic dominance in the last governor’s race foretold the 2018 “blue wave” — proves Democrats’ support in those suburbs is soft. That's especially true as Biden and congressional Democrats struggle to clinch a deal on their social spending packages and Republicans double down on culture war campaigns.

Alayna Treene at Axios:

The entire Republican ecosystem has been hitting the same five issues since the start of 2021.

1. Inflation/the rising cost of living.
2. Immigration/border security.
3. Crime/calls to defund the police.
4. President Biden's handling of Afghanistan.
5. Teachers' unions/ school mask mandates.

 

Death in Kabul

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the role of foreign policy in the campaign.

At WP, Sean Sullivan and Anne Gearan report on the politics of the Kabul terror attack, which killed at least 13 Americans.

At least two Republican senators quickly called for Biden’s resignation or impeachment. “It’s time for accountability, starting with those whose failed planning allowed these attacks to occur,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said in a statement. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) added, “It is now painfully clear he has neither the will nor capacity to lead. He must resign.”

The most vocal criticism on the Democratic side came from Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who wondered whether Taliban guards had failed by allowing the ISIS bombers get so close to the Kabul airport. “One thing is clear: We can’t trust the Taliban with Americans’ security,” Menendez said.

The killings clearly marked a pivotal moment in Biden’s presidency and an episode that is likely to be part of his legacy. Biden keeps a tally of U.S. service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan on a card in his breast pocket, and now, for the first time, that tally will include some who lost their lives on his watch.

Afghanistan Opinion

  Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the role of foreign policy in the campaign.

Public reaction to what’s happened in Afghanistan is negative but the public draws a distinction between the desire to leave Afghanistan - which most still have - and how it is handled, which 74% of Americans say has gone badly. pic.twitter.com/xPtNxc8hub

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) August 22, 2021

NBC poll shows significantly larger impact from COVID than Afghanistan. CBS shows both having impact.

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) August 22, 2021

Peter Nicholas at The Atlantic:

For all the intense focus in Washington on the Taliban’s resurgence, the broader public seems more preoccupied with other issues, like the still-raging coronavirus pandemic. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and is now a Democratic representative from Arizona, tweeted last weekend, “What I am feeling and thinking about the situation in Afghanistan, I can never fit on Twitter. But one thing that is definitely sticking out is that I haven’t gotten one constituent call about it and my district has a large veteran population.”

One former Biden campaign aide told me, “It’s tough to imagine that in the midterm elections or certainly in 2024 that the Afghanistan withdrawal will be front and center. These things often seem urgent, and the implications seem enormous in the moment. But at the end of the day, voters care about things that affect them and their families.”

The Fall of Afghanistan

 Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the role of foreign policy in the campaign.

How quickly can the politics around Afghanistan change? Here's a section on the RNC's website in June; click it now and you get a 404 error. (Rest of page was about Kosovo/Israel-Arab deals.) https://t.co/kDJo95QfiF pic.twitter.com/HkZok9mgJW

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) August 15, 2021

Trump in April: “Getting out of Afghanistan is a wonderful and positive thing to do. I planned to withdraw on May 1st, and we should keep as close to that schedule as possible.” https://t.co/RzbLQePTMD pic.twitter.com/KEs5x3zAJQ

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) August 15, 2021

“I started the process, all the troops are coming home, they (Biden) couldn’t stop the process. 21 years is enough. They (Biden) couldn’t stop the process, they (Biden) wanted to but couldn’t stop the process.”

- Trump, 1 month ago pic.twitter.com/9UPPbseyiI

— david nussbaum (@theNuzzy) August 15, 2021

Bailing Out of Trumpworld

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway. 

An unusual aspect of the campaign is the number of high-profile Republicans attacking Trump or supporting Biden.

James Hohmann at WP:

Former national security adviser H.R. McMaster called President Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan a big mistake that will make America less safe. “He, in effect, is partnering with the Taliban against, in many ways, the Afghan government,” the retired three-star general told CBS in an interview that will air Sunday on “60 Minutes” ahead of the publication of his new book, “Battlegrounds,” on Tuesday. “Terrorist organizations who pose a threat to us are stronger now than they were on September 10, 2001.”


Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s former chief of staff, Josh Venable, joined a group of 25 other Trump alumni on Thursday who want to see the president defeated. Former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor formed the Republican Political Alliance for Integrity & Reform, which will be known as REPAIR. Taylor told Politico that a current senior administration official is also part of the group, but he declined to name that person.

The biggest splash of the day came from Olivia Troye, who worked as Vice President Pence’s homeland security, counterterrorism and coronavirus adviser until she left the White House last month. The lifelong Republican endorsed Joe Biden, citing Trump’s lack of seriousness behind closed doors when she was a senior adviser on the coronavirus task force. “There were a lot of closed-door conversations I have had with a lot of senior people across the administration where they agree with me wholeheartedly,” Troye told The Washington Post.

She recorded this blistering video for Republican Voters Against Trump: 

Latest from the Lincoln Project:

BountyGate Gets Worse

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well underway.  

The story about Russian murder bounties is not going away.

Charlie Savage and colleagues at NYT:

American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said.

The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter.

The new information emerged as the White House tried on Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings — including reiterating a claim that Mr. Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious.

But that stance clashed with the disclosure by two officials that the intelligence was included months ago in Mr. Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation of the government’s latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Mr. Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.

James LaPorta at AP:

 Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.

The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.

The White House did not respond to questions about Trump or other officials’ awareness of Russia’s provocations in 2019. The White House has said Trump was not — and still has not been — briefed on the intelligence assessments because they have not been fully verified. However, it is rare for intelligence to be confirmed without a shadow of a doubt before it is presented to top officials.

Trump on 1/2/19:   But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.

Brutal Ads

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Trump knew since March that Putin had placed and paid the Taliban $$ bounties $$ to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

When his soldiers needed him, he looked the other way.

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The Greatest Generation sacrificed everything for our country. But @realDonaldTrump wants to sacrifice them for the economy when they're in their greatest time of need. pic.twitter.com/tWrQ7CT0Op

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 28, 2020

"Dopes and Babies"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

At The Washington Post, Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker report on a 7/20/17 national security briefing for Trump.  He berated the military for not winning in Afghanistan and taking the oil the Middle East.

Trump by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they have not been reported until now.

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

Mattis and Pence held their tongues.

Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.

“He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

Trump's Taliban Fiasco

In Defying the Odds, we discuss foreign policy issues in the 2016 campaign. Our update takes the story through the 2018 election.

At NYT, Peter Baker, Mujib Mashal and Michael Crowley report on the collapse of Trump's bizarre plan to invite Taliban negotiators to Camp David during the 9/11 anniversary week.

When [US negotiator Zalmay] Khalilzad left Doha after the last round of talks concluded on Sept. 1, two days after the Situation Room meeting, he and his Taliban counterparts had finalized the text of the agreement, according to people involved. Leaders of both teams initialed their copies and handed them to their Qatari hosts.

Before the end of the meeting, Mr. Khalilzad brought up the idea of a Taliban trip to Washington. Taliban leaders said they accepted the idea — as long as the visit came after the deal was announced.

That would become a fundamental dividing point contributing to the collapse of the talks. Mr. Trump did not want the Camp David meeting to be a celebration of the deal; after staying out of the details of what has been a delicate effort in a complicated region, Mr. Trump wanted to be the dealmaker who would put the final parts together himself, or at least be perceived to be.

The idea was for Mr. Trump to hold separate meetings at Camp David with the Taliban and with Mr. Ghani, leading to a more global resolution.

...

 But Taliban leaders, having refused to negotiate directly with the Afghan government until after the group had an agreement with the United States, said the Americans were tricking them into political suicide.

A senior Taliban leader said on Sunday that Mr. Trump was fooling himself to think he could bring the Taliban and Mr. Ghani together at Camp David “because we do not recognize the stooge government” in Kabul.

On Fox, Chris Wallace on Fox asked Pompeo about inviting murderous thugs to Camp David:

QUESTION: I want to get to the bigger question. Who thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States – you had an agreement in principle already, your envoy meeting with Taliban leaders in Qatar. Fine. Who thought it was a good idea for the President of the United States to meet with Taliban leaders, who have the blood of thousands of Americans on their hands, just three days before 9/11?

SECRETARY POMPEO: We know the history of Camp David. We reflected on that as we were thinking about how to deliver for the American people. And so as we considered the right path forward, your point about an agreement in principle – I think that’s true. We weren’t complete. There were still lots of implementation issues, lots of technical issues that needed to be worked on, even though we’d been doing this for months. President Trump ultimately made the decision. He said: I want to talk to President Ghani. I want to talk to these Taliban negotiators. I want to look them in the eye. I want to see if we can get to the final outcome that we needed so that we could sign off on that deal, so we found that arrangement acceptable, that the verification was adequate. And we concluded this was a perfectly appropriate place. You know the history of Camp David. Lots of bad folks have come through that place. There have been lots of peace negotiations taken place. It’s almost always the case, Chris, that you don’t get to negotiate with good guys. The reason you’re in negotiations to end wars, to end conflict, to end violence, to reduce risks to the American people, is almost always because the person across the table from you isn’t exactly the finest.

One wonders what "bad folks" he was talking about.  Sadat?

"They Were Right to Be There."

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's character and record of dishonesty.

Trump at a January 2 Cabinet meeting:

I think India should be involved in Afghanistan. I gave our generals all the money they wanted. They didn't do such a great job in Afghanistan. They've been fighting in Afghanistan for 19 years. General Mattis thanked me profusely for getting him several hundred billion and thanked me more the following year when I got him $716 billion. He couldn't believe it because our military was depleted. Now we're rebuilding our military. Pat was very responsible for a lot of the orders for the new F-35 fighter jets and F-18s including ships and missiles and everything. But General Mattis was so thrilled. But what's he done for me? How has he done in Afghanistan? Not too good. Not too good. I'm not happy with what he's done in Afghanistan and I shouldn't be happy. But he was very thankful when I got him $700 billion and the following year $716 billion. So, I wish him well. I hope he does well. But as you know, President Obama fired him and essentially so did I. I want results.

We're going to do something that's right. We are talking to the tall ban, we're talking to a lot of different people but here's the thing because you mentioned India. Andria as there. Russia is there. Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. So, you take a look at other countries. Pakistan is there. They should be fighting. But Russia should be fighting. The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt. They went into being called Russia again as opposed to the Soviet Union. A lot of these places you're reading about now are no longer a part of Russia because of Afghanistan. But why isn't Russia there? Why isn't India there in we there and we're 6,000 miles away? But I don't mind. We want to help our people, help other nations. You do have terrorists, mostly Taliban but is. I'll give you an example. So tall ISIS is an enemy. We have an area where Taliban is here, ISIS is here and they're fighting each other. I said why don't you let them fight? Why are we getting in the middle of it? I said let them fight. They're both our enemies, let them fight. Sir, we want to do it. They go in and end up fighting both of them. It the craziest thing I've ever seen. I think I would have been a good general but who knows.

Trump says that Russia was in Afghanistan because terrorists from there were going into Russia. He’s confusing it with Chechnya. Also says that Pakistan is there and should be fighting. It is—it’s promoting the Taliban which has been fighting against the US and its allies. 🤦‍♂️ https://t.co/eH39OTLs0H

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) January 2, 2019

Trump says the Soviets were right to invade Afghanistan. Who gave him that bizarre idea? https://t.co/4Ripv0mCEh

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) January 3, 2019

There’s a lot of “Wow, Republicans sure aren’t the party of Reagan anymore” lamentations these days but it’s kinda hard to top endorsing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) January 2, 2019

The Bergdahl Burden

Pew reports:

The prisoner exchange that freed U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl from the Taliban in Afghanistan gets a more negative than positive reaction from the public.

Overall, 43% say it was the wrong thing for the Obama administration to exchange five Taliban prisoners for captive soldier Bergdahl, while fewer (34%) say it was the right thing to do; 23% do not offer an opinion.

The new national survey by the Pew Research Center and USA TODAY, conducted June 5-8 among 1,004 adults, finds that while this specific prisoner exchange is viewed negatively on balance, most think the U.S. has a responsibility to do all it can to free captive U.S. soldiers in general, regardless of the circumstances of their capture.

...

President Obama has received criticism for failing to notify Congress 30 days in advance of the transfer of five Guantanamo Bay prisoners in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. When asked to think generally about situations like the exchange, most Americans (64%) say “the president should be required to inform Congress in advance of decisions like these”; just 30% say he “should have the flexibility to make decisions like these without informing Congress in advance.”

This view is nearly unanimous among Republicans (87%-11%), and 67% of independents also say the president should be required to inform Congress in advance of decisions like these. Democrats are more divided, with a narrow 53%-majority saying the president should have the flexibility to act without informing Congress in advance, while 44% say he should be required to notify Congress.

And the kicker:

The Obama administration’s decision to exchange five Taliban prisoners for U.S. solider Bowe Bergdahl tied with reports about problems with care at veterans hospitals around the country as the public’s top story last week. Overall, 34% say they very closely followed each news story.

Republicans (51%) were much more likely than Democrats (31%) to say they followed news about the prisoner exchange very closely.

Relatively few say they followed news about a plan by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit carbon emissions from power plants (16%) or news about the 2014 Congressional elections (14%). Similarly small percentages of Republicans (18%) and Democrats (17%) followed midterm election news very closely.

POTUS and the Permanent Campaign

At The Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes:

In a political culture that long ago surrendered to the permanent campaign, Obama has managed to take things to a whole new level. According to statistics compiled for a book to be published this summer, the president has already set a record for total first-term fundraisers — 191 — and that’s only through March 6. Measured in terms of events that benefit his reelection bid, Obama’s total (inflated in part by relaxed fundraising rules) exceeds the combined total of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.

It’s not just the gatherings officially categorized as campaign events. To a greater extent than his predecessors, Obama has used the trappings of his office to promote his reelection prospects even while handling taxpayer-funded business.

According to the same book, “The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign,” by Naval Academy political scientist Brendan Doherty, Obama was the first commander in chief in at least 32 years to visit all of the presidential battleground states during his first year in office. He has kept that pace, devoting nearly half of his travel to 15 swing states that account for just over a third of the population.

The Hill reports:

President Obama risks having his own “mission accomplished” moment in Afghanistan nine years to the day President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

Obama’s surprise trip to the war zone was timed for the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, not Bush’s May 1, 2003 landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. And Obama spoke to the nation against a modest backdrop of military trucks, a break with the dramatic setting for Bush’s speech.

Yet, like Bush’s speech in front of a “mission accomplished” banner, Obama’s intention was to put an election-year exclamation point on his decision last year to send Navy Seals into Pakistan to kill bin Laden. Obama also sought to remind voters of his 2008 promise to target the terrorist leader by focusing on what he said was a war Bush had forgotten.

AP reports:

The Taliban struck back less than two hours after President Barack Obama left Afghanistan on Wednesday, targeting a foreigners' housing compound with a suicide car bomb and militants disguised as women in an assault that killed at least seven people.

It was the second major assault in Kabul in less than three weeks and highlighted the Taliban's continued ability to strike in the heavily guarded capital even when security had been tightened for Obama's visit and Wednesday's anniversary of the killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

Bin Laden Politics

A new Obama campaign video plays up the killing of bin Laden and questions whether Romney would have done it:

Politico reports:

The White House is finally offering some comment on its decision to open the situation room to Brian Williams and the NBC News cameras for next Wednesday's interview about Osama bin Laden, which NBC is calling a "first for network television."

"The piece is in large part pegged off of that iconic situation room photo," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor explained via email.

"A year later there's still enormous interest in the events of that day and the operation to kill UBL," he added. "This is another window into that remarkable day."

Vietor added that the White House held a video tour of the facility on its blog, and that the Bush Administration gave reporters a tour of the situation room in 2006.

AP reports:

The strategy underscores the fact that the Obama who ordered the raid as commander in chief is now seeking a second term as president. The risk is the political blowback that can come if he is seen as crossing a line into politicizing national security.

"Sad," said a Romney spokeswoman. "Shameless," said 2008 Obama election foe John McCain.

Biden even combined the killing of the al-Qaida leader and Obama's support for a failing auto industry into what he called a re-election bumper sticker message.

"It's pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," the vice president said in a speech on Thursday.

Obama's campaign followed that Friday with a new web video questioning whether Romney would have taken the same path Obama did. If features a quote from a 2007 Romney interview in which he said it was not worth "moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."

That prompted Obama's 2008 opponent, Arizona's McCain, to issue a scathing statement in which he accused Obama of playing politics with the bin Laden killing and "diminishing the memory of September 11th."

"This is the same president who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't `spike the ball' after the touchdown," he said. "And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get re-elected."

The GOP and Afghanistan

Foreign policy is playing a secondary role in the campaign, but could become more important. The Washington Post reports:

The massacre of at least 16 Afghan civilians, apparently by an American soldier, forced the Obama administration Sunday to confront yet another nightmare from the war zone and fresh evidence that patience back home is increasingly wearing thin.

A majority of Americans — 55 percent — believe that most Afghans are opposed to what the United States is trying to accomplish in that country, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. About as many Americans — 54 percent — want the U.S. military to withdraw even before it can train the Afghan army to be self-sufficient, a pillar of President Obama’s war strategy.

While most Democrats and independents soured on the war a long time ago, the poll found that Republicans, for the first time, are evenly split on whether the ­decade-long war is worth fighting.

 The divide was reflected in Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s call Sunday to withdraw. “I think we’re risking the lives of young men and women in a mission that, frankly, may not be doable,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” Among Republican candidates, that view puts Gingrich closer to the position of Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), who has long called for an end to the war.

In contrast, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former senator Rick Santorum (Pa.) have staked out the opposite position, criticizing Obama for pledging to withdraw U.S. combat troops by the end of 2014. They have said that declaring a firm timetable for ending the war is a sign of weakness and puts American troops at risk.

MSNBC reports:

Rick Santorum today said that the United States should apologize for the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians killed by an American soldier on Sunday.

"This was something that was deliberately done by an American soldier to innocent civilians," Santorum said to reporters after delivering an energy address here. "It’s something that the proper authorities should apologize for."

An often-repeated rallying cry from Santorum on the campaign trail has been that he would not apologize for America. He has been critical of President Obama for apologizing what U.S. military officials say was an accidental burning of Korans by soldiers in Afghanistan last month.

The difference, the former Pennsylvania senator seemed to indicate, is that the Koran burning was accidental, while the massacre in southern Afghanistan was not.

Foreign Policy and the Campaign

Will foreign policy help or hurt President Obama in November? At AEI, Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg write:

Our take is that it all depends on how the issue is framed and what’s going on in the world. Polls show that President Obama gets better marks on handling foreign policy than on domestic policy. But still, his ratings aren’t that strong. In the latest poll, for example, 46 percent approve and 46 percent disapprove (Quinnipiac).

In the February AP/GfK Roper poll, 48 percent trusted Republicans to do a better job on protecting the country while 40 percent trusted the Democrats. In the December 2011 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Republicans had a 3-point advantage on handling Afghanistan (26 to 23 percent) and a 13-point advantage on handling terrorism.

President Obama receives high marks for his planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. In a February Pew poll, a majority (53 percent) thought that Obama was handling removing troops from Afghanistan “about right.” Twenty-two percent thought he wasn’t withdrawing troops quickly enough. While Iraq receives scant news coverage, Obama receives positive marks for handling the situation there in all recent major polls.

Former Aide Criticizes Ron Paul

At Right Wing News, former Ron Paul staffer Eric Dondero writes that Paul is neither racist nor anti-Semitic, but....

He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.
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It’s his foreign policy that’s the problem; not so much some stupid and whacky things on race and gays he may have said or written in the past.

Ron Paul is most assuredly an isolationist. He denies this charge vociferously. But I can tell you straight out, I had countless arguments/discussions with him over his personal views. For example, he strenuously does not believe the United States had any business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWII. He expressed to me countless times, that “saving the Jews,” was absolutely none of our business. When pressed, he often times brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand, or that WWII was just “blowback,” for Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy errors, and such.
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There is much more information I could give you on the sheer lunacy of his foreign policy views. Let me just concentrate on one in specific. And I will state this with absolute certainty:

Ron Paul was opposed to the War in Afghanistan, and to any military reaction to the attacks of 9/11.

He did not want to vote for the resolution. He immediately stated to us staffers, me in particular, that Bush/Cheney were going to use the attacks as a precursor for “invading” Iraq. He engaged in conspiracy theories including perhaps the attacks were coordinated with the CIA, and that the Bush administration might have known about the attacks ahead of time. He expressed no sympathies whatsoever for those who died on 9/11, and pretty much forbade us staffers from engaging in any sort of memorial expressions, or openly asserting pro-military statements in support of the Bush administration.

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 69

From a July 22 interview with Voice of America:

Q. 14:26:01 You mentioned military budgets, and I’m sure that one of your considerations for the withdrawal, is the cost of the war. A broader question is to what extent does the current budget crisis drive your foreign policy in terms of what the U.S. can and can’t do? 14:26:19

A. 14:26:20 The truth is that these considerations were not based on budgetary calculations. They were based on a strategy that I had laid out 18 months ago, and I wanted to make sure that we abided by because I made a commitment to the American people that the surge would only last for 18-24 months. 14:26:44 First and foremost, it was driven by the strategic recognition, that the only way for us to have a secure Afghanistan over the long term, is to make sure that Afghans have capacity and that we can’t patrol villages and police their streets. Ultimately, Afghans have to do that. 14:27:08 What is no doubt true, is that the United States has carried an enormous burden financially, from not only the Afghan war, but the Iraq war. One of the arguments that I made in talking to the American people about this drawdown is that our strength, our power, has always been based first and foremost on our own economic strength and prosperity. We have to be more judicious in how we project power. That’s good strategy. It’s good for our national security. It happens to also be good for our budget. 14:27:45

Bad Numbers for POTUS

CNN reports:

Economic growth slowed to a crawl in the first three months of the year as a spike in gasoline, higher overall inflation and continued weakness in the housing market all took a toll on the recovery.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economic health, rose at an annual rate of 1.8%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That's a significant slowdown from the 3.1% growth rate in the final quarter of 2010.

Most predictions for growth have fallen precipitously over the past several weeks as rising prices spooked forecasters. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney were predicting growth of 2.0% in the first quarter. But some estimates were as high as 4.3% just two months earlier.

Gallup reports:

More than half of Americans (55%) describe the U.S. economy as being in a recession or depression, even as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) reports that "the economic recovery is proceeding at a moderate pace." Another 16% of Americans say the economy is "slowing down," and 27% believe it is growing.

David Lightman writes for McClatchy:

Public disapproval of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy reached a new high in mid-April, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll, as gasoline prices neared $4 a gallon and Washington lawmakers fought a bitter battle over the federal budget.

Some 57 percent of registered voters said they disapproved of Obama's economic management, while only 40 percent approved. That's the lowest score of his presidency.

"These numbers spell political trouble," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion in New York, which conducted the survey. "To get re-elected with a 57 percent disapproval rating would be a very tall order."

Meanwhile, public pessimism is growing: Fifty-seven percent of U.S. adults said they thought the worst was yet to come for the U.S economy, up sharply from 39 percent in January. And 71 percent said the nation was still in a recession, even though the slump, which began in December 2007, officially ended in June 2009.

Tom Bevan writes at RealClearPolitics:

As President Obama gears up for his 2012 re-election bid, a new poll of voters in Pennsylvania presents some ominous warning signs for the president. A Quinnipac University poll of 1,366 registered Pennsylvania voters conducted last week shows Obama's job approval rating slipping to just 42 percent, an all time low, while 53 percent disapprove of the way the president is handling his job.

The finding represents a sharp decline in the president's standing in the Keystone State. Quinnipiac's last poll in Pennsylvania, taken just nine weeks ago in mid-February, showed 51 percent of voters approved of the job the President Obama is doing, while 44 percent disapproved.

Perhaps even more concerning to Obama's campaign team is that for the first time a majority of Pennsylvania voters say President Obama does not deserve another term in the White House. Fifity two percent of voters -- including 56 percent of independents -- say Obama does not deserve re-election, while just 42 percent believe he does.

In 2008, Obama carried Pennsylvania by a comfortable 11-point margin over John McCain, 55 to 44.

The Washington Post reports:

More Americans disapprove of President Obama’s management of the war in Afghanistan than support it, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a finding that reflects the public’s broader concern over the course of the nearly decade-old conflict.

Americans have given Obama wide leeway in escalating the conflict in Afghanistan, which as a presidential candidate he called “the war we have to win.” That latitude is changing — and fairly quickly — as the longer-running of the two wars he inherited approaches the 10-year mark.

In the Post-ABC News survey released Monday, 49 percent of respondents said they disapprove of Obama’s management of the war and 44 percent voiced approval. The disapproval mark is the highest on record in Post-ABC News polling. Overall, the figures have essentially flipped since January, the last time the poll asked the question. In that survey, 49 percent approved of Obama’s handling of the Afghanistan war and 41 percent disapproved.

Steele on Afghanistan

Michael Steele's comments on Afghanistan have drawn fierce criticism from his own side. William Kristol writes:

Your tenure has of course been marked by gaffes and embarrassments, but I for one have never paid much attention to them, and have never thought they would matter much to the success of the causes and principles we share. But now you have said, about the war in Afghanistan, speaking as RNC chairman at an RNC event, "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." And, "if [Obama] is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?"

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There are, of course, those who think we should pull out of Afghanistan, and they’re certainly entitled to make their case. But one of them shouldn't be the chairman of the Republican party

Steele comments call to mind what President Eisenhower said of Senator William Knowland: "In his case, there seems to be no final answer to the question, `How stupid can you get?""