NQ Must Read for First Responders

Today’s round-up has a story about 9/11 victims’ families and a couple about the latest Obama presser. One columnist thinks Obama gets prickly when he’s defending a poor position. Another thinks Obama’s foreign policy is the real litmus test of his presidential power. What do you think?

1) The NYT published a story yesterday about Saudi links to extremist groups.

Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.
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The new documents, provided to The New York Times by the lawyers, are among several hundred thousand pages of investigative material obtained by the Sept. 11 families and their insurers as part of a long-running civil lawsuit seeking to hold Saudi Arabia and its royal family liable for financing Al Qaeda.
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The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

Supposedly contained in those records:

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

A self-described Qaeda operative in Bosnia said in an interview with lawyers in the lawsuit that another charity largely controlled by members of the royal family, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to the terrorist group in the 1990s and hired militant operatives like himself.

Another witness in Afghanistan said in a sworn statement that in 1998 he had witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (now worth about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader.

And a confidential German intelligence report gave a line-by-line description of tens of millions of dollars in bank transfers, with dates and dollar amounts, made in the early 1990s by Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz and other members of the Saudi royal family to another charity that was suspected of financing militants’ activities in Pakistan and Bosnia.

The suit brought by 9/11 families has an uphill slog, not the least because suing a country’s leaders is not likely to be successful due to a 1976 law on “sovereign immunity.” However, the families have also been disappointed in the Obama administration’s backtracking on a promise.

Kristen Breitweiser, an advocate for Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the World Trade Center, said in an interview that during a White House meeting in February between President Obama and victims’ families, the president told her that he was willing to make the pages public.

But she said she had not heard from the White House since then.

The NYT says the documents do not contain a “smoking gun” linking Saudi rulers directly to terrorists. Maybe there wouldn’t be

2) Politicsdaily had a very interesting story yesterday about the Obama presser. The author has noticed a pattern in Obama’s mood: He get’s prickly when he’s trying to defend something not exactly right. I guess he “lashes out when he’s feeling” down?

Barack Obama, as everyone knows, is one of the most disciplined, controlled and unflappable political leaders in modern times. Except when he grows testy. And during Tuesday afternoon’s press conference, the president’s inability to mask mild annoyance was on full display.

Asked whether his rhetoric on Iran had changed in response to criticism from Senate Republicans such as John McCain, Obama at first deftly waved off the question with a joking, “What do you think?” Seconds later Obama channeled Lyndon Johnson’s belligerent “I’m the only president you’ve got” crack. (The milder Obama version: “Only I’m the president of the United States.”) Then Obama disingenuously claimed that “the Iranian people…aren’t paying a lot of attention to what’s being said on Capitol Hill and probably aren’t spending a lot of time thinking about what’s being said here.” (If that level of disinterest were indeed the case, then why did Obama go out of his way earlier in the press conference to solicit a question that had come in by e-mail from Iran?)

Then in response to the next question – about the potential consequences if Iran continued to suppress demonstrations – Obama said with a sharp edge in his voice, “We don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out. I know everybody here is on a 24-hour news cycle. I’m not. Okay?”

Shapiro goes on to say that presidents are, understandably, aggravated with questions from the press. After all, the press has a famously short-term attention span while a president has to consider more long term problems. So, it’s not as if being a tad cranky is unforgivable in the nation’s chief executive.

But still, he has an idea here.

Instead, I am bringing this up because I want to tentatively advance a larger theory about the president’s public moods. Obama tends to drop his cool veneer and sound exasperated when he knows that he is in the wrong.

Shapiro goes on to say Obama’s exasperation showed through not on a large policy question, but on a personal one.

But it was on a far smaller matter (and not one that often comes up during his morning national security briefings) that Obama really put his ire on the fire. What set the president off was a question trying to link Obama’s own smoking history with new legislation giving the FDA the power to regulate nicotine. In response, Obama claimed that the reporter just thought that it was “neat to ask me about my smoking, as opposed to it being relevant to my new law. But that’s fine. I understand. It’s a interesting human — it’s a interesting human-interest story.” (Words alone cannot convey Obama’s mocking tone and his obvious disdain for this “human-interest story.”)

And Shapiro’s aside about Obama’s tone? Been there, seen that. Obama’s mocking tone and dripping sarcasm was evident from time to time on the campaign trail. But everyone pretended not to notice or question when he got testy. After all, he’s the coolest, right?

3) WaPo also published a bit by Dana Milbank today about the Obama presser yesterday. Milbank objected to what he saw as the “prepackaged” nature of the press conference and called the presser and subsequent news media appearances “The Obama Show.” Heh.

In his first daytime news conference yesterday, President Obama preempted “All My Children,” “Days of Our Lives” and “The Young and the Restless.” But the soap viewers shouldn’t have been disappointed: The president had arranged some prepackaged entertainment for them.

Milbank referred to the planted question from the HuffyPot, ostensibly from a real Iranian - in Iran.

Pitney [HuffyPot writer] asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world — Iran included — that the American press isn’t as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn’t so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, “The Obama Show.” Missed yesterday’s show? Don’t worry: On Wednesday, ABC News will be broadcasting “Good Morning America” from the South Lawn (guest stars: the president and first lady), “World News Tonight” from the Blue Room, and a prime-time feature with Obama from the East Room.

Milbank goes on to say Obama operated like a celebrity rather than a president and he highlighted how Obama deflected questions and got testy with the press.

As if to compensate for the prepackaged Huffington Post question, Obama went quickly to Fox News for a predictably hostile question from Major Garrett. “In your opening remarks, sir, you said about Iran that you were appalled and outraged,” Garrett said. “What took you so long?

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” Obama volleyed testily, calling his toughening statements on Iran “entirely consistent.”

The host of “The Obama Show” dispatched with similar ease a challenge from CBS’s Chip Reid, asking whether his hardening line on Iran was inspired by John McCain. “What do you think?” Obama replied with a big grin. That brought the house down. And the studio audience laughed again when ABC’s Jake Tapper tried to get Obama to answer another reporter’s question that he had dodged. “Are you the ombudsman for the White House press corps?” the president cracked.
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. . . Later, Obama passed over the usual suspects to call on Macarena Vidal of the Spanish-language EFE news agency. The White House called Vidal in advance to see whether she was coming and arranged for her to sit in a seat usually assigned to a financial trade publication. She asked about Chile and Colombia.

A couple of more questions and Obama called it a day. “Mr. President!” yelled Mike Allen of Politico. “May I ask about Afghanistan? No questions about Iraq or Afghanistan?”

Sorry: Those weren’t prearranged.

We all probably remember the outrage about prearranged questions during the Bush administration. If not, here’s an example.

Hey, in the long list of why Obama is better than Bush, we can now strike “plants questions/questioners in WH press conferences.”

4) Dick Morris, at Realclearpolitics, has another article calling Obama a weak president. Not a new idea and not terribly interesting, Morris is, IMHO, not a trusted source either. However, he offers a consideration that is worth thinking about.

If only President Obama were a third as tough on Iran and North Korea as he is on Republicans, he’d be making progress in containing the dire threats to our national security these rogue nations represent. As it is, the president is letting the perception of weakness cloud his image. Once that particular miasma enshrouds a presidency, it is hard to dissipate.

If foreign policy issues actually involve war and the commitment of troops, they can be politically potent. But otherwise, the impact of international affairs on presidential image is largely metaphoric. Since foreign policy is the only area in which the president can govern virtually alone, it provides a window on his personality and use of power that domestic policy cannot.

The second paragraph is the meat here. Foreign policy is headed up by the administration while domestic policy has a limitless number of players. So, it is likely US foreign policy will be the least diluted Obama policies out there. If so, it seems he bases his foreign policy on exporting his cult of personality. Good luck with that.

So here’s the thing. Obama is stronger domestically with the government behind him and the collective will of Kool-aid drinkers and others just hoping things will get better. Internationally, he can only really depend on US money (in shorter supply than ever), power (ditto), goodwill established over time (could be improving) and his SoS. His travels and speeches abroad suggest Obama is trying to establish the same adoration overseas he enjoys here. But it looks as if the Obama cult is a harder sell where people have long been used to watching the US from the outside. Personally, I think that while other peoples are excited about what Obama might do, they are, by habit, paying very close attention to what the US President actually does. That’s the reverse of what our domestic media does, BTW.

So, what we have, basically, is a president overly dependent on himself as a personality, who desperately needs a teleprompter, doesn’t like questions about himself personally and is quite content to use the policy templates left for him by his predecessor.

The more things change. . .