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America Held Hostage: Sequester Day 6
For the next 1,418 days the top issue on the mind of President Barack Obama and his ever-tightening inner circle will involve the six letters: L.E.G.A.C.Y. Just as years three and four were totally focused on the President's re-election; so the last two years of his second term will be focused on the legacy he leaves behind. Will it be Jimmy Carter's well-intentioned ineptness? Or FDR's history changing vision? One thing is for sure: Unless the Democrats win control of the House and maintain control of the Senate Obama's legacy will be an eight-letter word: Gridlock.
Well, well, well. Here we are. March first. Sequester Day. America Held Hostage; Day One. President Obama has been criss-crossing the country proclaiming the dire effects of March 1 if the Republicans in the House didn't bow to his demands. We don't know what his demands are, but he spent a lot of money accusing the GOP of not caving into them. The Department of Homeland Security is made up, apparently, of the only group of people in America that believed Obama. A division of DHS got a jump on Sequester Day by letting "several hundred" illegal aliens who were in jail, out of jail and into what a spokesperson called "placed on an appropriate, more cost-effective form of supervised release."
A recent poll by the Pew organization showed that while those of us in Our Nation's Capital and the 2,375 people who watch cable chat shows are consumed by the looming sequester, the other 75% of Americans are just shrugging, sighing, and smiling knowingly that the world will go on after Friday. The underlying issue about the size of the deficit (about $1 trillion for FY 2013) and the national debt (a touch under $16.6 trillion) is the way the government spends our money. Not its money. Our money.
Let's start with my theory about the Academy Awards. I am not anti-Oscar. Neither am I anti-NBA playoffs. I want to know who won, but I don't want to sit through the agony of watching the processes. With that in mind, I am free to type this beginning at 7:30. I have closed Twitter for the evening while still wondering how Danica Patrick went from 3rd to 8th in about 50 yards on the last lap of the Daytona 500 yesterday afternoon.
The other day, the President railed against Congressional (read: Republican) inaction on averting the sequester by giving a speech while surrounded by uniformed policemen. The picture was designed to make the point that if the automatic cuts go into effect, people across the country will lose police protection. Back when mules were the principal form of transportation, I was a member of the City Council of Marietta, Ohio 45750. One of my committee assignments was as chairman of the Police and Fire Committee.
The latest projectile-sweat-producing event in Our Nation's Capital is the looming automatic cuts in the federal budget known as "sequestration." Sequestration is not a word we get to use every day in a sentence, most of us, but it is fun to say because we get to use the tip and the back of our tongues to say it. According to Webster's, sequestration is a 14th century word from the Latin *sequesrare* - to hand over to a trustee or some other third party. Today it is an intransitive verb meaning to segregate (as a jury), to seclude, or to seize (via a writ of sequestration).
Quick! What's the name of the White House Chief of Staff? I didn't know, either. It's Denis McDonough. He was only appointed to the post by President Barack Obama January 25, meaning he has been on the job for less than a month, but yesterday, he showed being a foreign policy expert does not a political expert make when he got himself involved in immigration reform. What happened was someone leaked a copy of the Administration's plan which CBS News Senior White House Correspondent Bill Plante reported "was not a planned leak."
The title of MULLINGS following the State of the Union speech Wednesday morning was: "Not a Long, Nor a Long-Lasting Speech." Boy, was I right. Not only did the speech slip into history among the cable chat shows, even President Obama didn't see the need to keep up any momentum as he will be in Chicago this morning then head to Palm Beach, Florida for a mini-vacation over the holiday weekend. The cable chat shows made far more of Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Florida) leaning out of the frame for a sip of water during he rebuttal remarks than they did Mr. Obama's long list of new programs that he said will not cost one dime in new spending.
"The state of the Union," the President reported last night, "is stronger." He said, to prove his point, we have more created new jobs, sold more American cars, bought less foreign oil, and are sending fewer soldiers into battle. That is like saying (on the day pitchers and catchers officially reported to Spring Training sites) that a batter going 4-for-4 has raised his batting average by .100 percentage points, without pointing out he was batting .053 and is now batting .153.
Paris, France -- I am in Paris for one afternoon and overnight because the non-stop service from Oujda, Morocco to Dulles International Airport just outside Washington, DC hasn't yet begun. We flew into Orly Airport which is the Newark Airport of Europe. If you can arrange a trip that doesn't include Orly, I recommend you do that. But, any story that ends with, "and then we had dinner in Paris" is a pretty good story. Washington, DC is awash in activity surrounding the President's State of the Union address tomorrow night at nine Eastern time. As we have discussed before every association, DC-based government affairs office, lobbying shop, law firm, union, and coalition is working like the devil to get its client's issue mentioned in the President's remarks.
Oujda, Morocco -- To catch you up on my travels, I have been (and still am) in Morocco on a teaching/training mission with Legacy International. We spent Wednesday in Casablanca including a must-do lunch at Rick's Café (see the Mullfoto of me at the piano) then onto Oudja for the rest of the week. Oujda is pronounced "OOZH-duh." It is located about 8 miles from the Algerian border on the eastern edge of Morocco. Mullings Director of Standards & Practices Alert: We did *not*, in spite of my begging and pleading, go any closer than about two kilometers to the border and I was never in any danger of being taken into custody as a cute-as-a-button 66-year-old American by Algerian slavers.
Rabat, Morocco -- Yesterday I had the great opportunity to meet with, and do some teaching to, women Members of the Moroccan Parliament and, a little later in the day, the journalism school students who want to, one day, cover them. This trip is sponsored by Legacy International through a grant from the U.S. Department of State. It was not all that long ago that women Members of Congress in the U.S were still an oddity, and women members of the Senate were a rarity. In the 113th Congress, including non-voting Members, there are 81 women Members of the House and 20 female Senators. In the Moroccan Parliament there are 67 women among the 395 total members; a slightly lower percentage than the Congress, but still a pretty good level of representation.
I am in Morocco with Mullpal Peter Fenn as a bipartisan team to meet with and help train young people in and out of the Moroccan government on communication strategies. The trip is sponsored by Legacy International through a grant from the U.S. Department of State. I am not going to make you read 750 words about Morocco, but I wanted you to know why I am not grading the Superbowl ads: Morocco is five hours ahead of Washington, DC so as I begin typing this, it is 11:30 PM and the Superbowl is about to start in New Orleans. The Superbowl was mentioned exactly zero times today here in Northwest Africa and it is not on local TV so I am watching a black-and-white Egyptian movie -- in Arabic, which I don't speak -- to provide background music.
I subscribe to the general theory that a President -- Republican or Democrat -- should be able to have the people running his Departments, Commissions and Agencies that he wants. Unless there is some overriding disqualifying reason to reject him or her, the Senate should abide by the terms of Article II, Section 2 that says the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... Officers of the United States." The nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense is an excellent case in point. I may not agree with Hagel on the 3 I's -- Iran, Iraq, and Israel -- but we don't generally allow Secretaries of Defense to make foreign policy. Nor, for that matter, do Secretaries of State make foreign policy.
In another example of his highly developed strategy of "leading from behind," President Barack Obama gave a speech in Las Vegas coming out in favor of Immigration Reform just a day after a group of Senators announced the outlines of a bipartisan plan for Immigration Reform. Get used to this. In his first four years in office, President Obama pretended he had nothing to do with almost anything going on with the economy or in foreign policy. If it was going badly -- whatever "it" might have been -- it was all George W's fault. Or the Republicans in Congress. Or both. If it was going well -- whatever "it" might have been -- it was a first person victory "I did it," or "My administration did it."
We all know the term "The Bill of Rights" which are the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution although few of us (including me) could name them. Hint: None of them start "Thou shalt not ..." Rather they tend to start "The Government (or Congress) shalt not ..." Keep that in mind. The First Amendment is a catch-all of rights upon which the Congress may not trample: It protects an individual's freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press, as well as the right to assemble and to petition the government. The American press corps is very, very focused on the First Amendment and will go to great lengths to make sure that right is not diminished.
**Editor's Note:** *In the original version I said that Dee Dee Meyers was representing Jill Kelly. I was wrong -- or, as we like to say, mistakes were made. Judy Smith, head of Smith & Company, is handling Mrs. Kelly. Ms. Meyers is representing Paula Broadwell. Thanks to another pro, Amy Weiss, for pointing out the error. Herewith the corrected version:* A couple of things happened in Our Nation's Capital this week that caught my eye, and might be of use to you as you prepare for your Public Relations 312 midterm exams.
One hundred years, and 100 pounds ago I was the coxswain on the freshman crew at Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio 45750. During that year I learned that "starboard" means right facing forward, and "port" means left facing forward. President Barack Obama's inaugural address on Monday was a clear signal that he intends to steer the ship of state hard a-port. During the speech I Tweeted that it was "1/3 Gettysburg, 1/3 FDR, and 1/3 State of the Union." The speech didn't have the traditional reach across the aisle to the other political party suggesting Republicans and Democrats are smart enough, dedicated enough, and patriotic enough to find common ground and make America a better place.
For foreigners, the only thing nuttier than watching the way we elect our Presidents is watching the way we inaugurate them. For a nation that wears its egalitarianism not just as a badge of honor, but (as we saw this past November) almost as a requirement for office, the pomp and circumstance involved in a modern U.S. Presidential inauguration would have moved Louis XIV to modesty. Both parties face the same issue: Looking for the balance between demonstrating a public outpouring of interest, if not affection, for the person preparing to take the oath of office without giving your political opponents any more ammunition than necessary.