Fineman: "Obama Puts Passion Into Jobs Speech Rarely Seen In His Presidency" (with video)

Howard Fineman with video (05:49):

Most presidents kick off their re-election campaigns with a speech on the campaign trail somewhere, or from the Oval Office. President Obama did it in a novel, telling and shrewdly chosen place: in the middle of an address to Congress.

If people were wondering what template Barack Obama would choose for his re-election effort -- some had suggested FDR in 1936 or Ronald Reagan in 1984 -- we now have an answer:

Harry Truman in 1948, the "Give 'Em Hell Harry" who challenged Congress to tackle with the post-war nation's problems and castigated the Republican Congress for its obstinate failure to do so. MORE...

Howie P.S.: Some are not yet ready to celebrate:

Lee_Rosenberg:

Obama has given several great speeches in his presidency. And they've often been followed by legislative failures.

Fineman: "Obama Aide Discusses 2012 Campaign Strategy"

Howard Fineman:

...as he and the Republican field launch the active, above-ground phase of the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama’s strategists are planning to focus less on his record –- which is spotty at best -– than on what they regard as the frightening prospect of a Republican Party not only of wrong but medieval thinking.

The strategy will be more accusatory, alarm-filled and defensive than the one used during the uplifting, even joyous campaign of 2008, symbolized as it was by depicting the first letter of the candidate's name as a rising sun.

Asked how President Obama could win reelection in the face of persistently high unemployment, a stagnant economy and restiveness in his own Democratic base, a top Obama strategist gave a three-part answer: MORE...

Howard Fineman on Obama's "Doctrine of Process" on Libya (with video)

HufPo with video from MSNBC (09:41).

Howie P.S.: Fineman calls it "a sliding scale of conscience and cost."

"Howard Fineman Discusses Wisconsin And Unions On MSNBC's 'The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell" (with video)

HuffPost TV with video (06:16):

The Huffington Post's Senior Political Editor Howard Fineman appeared Tuesday night on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" to discuss Wisconsin and the current dispute over labor unions.

Fineman pointed out that "the public is already on the side of the public employee unions." He elaborated, "lots of other Republican governors, Mitch Daniels in Indiana, Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania, Rick Scott in Florida, all have said to one degree or another that they would not go after employee bargaining rights in order to cut the budget...the Governor of Wisconsin is way out there on a limb and Obama wants to just leave him there."

Expanding on the political calculations of the White House, Fineman said, "the President and his advisors feel that they're getting some political benefit out of this nationally. And one way they are is a fired up labor movement."

Big $$$, Secret $$$

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
"Astroturfing The Airwaves: Right-Wing Groups Have Now Aired 60,000+ TV Ads Since Aug. 1" (Political Correction-Media Matters):

Some changes this week to our ongoing coverage of TV activity from heavy-hitter conservative groups. We have expanded the list to 10 groups because the National Rifle Association's PAC has gotten in the game in a big way. The NRA had limited its electioneering to radio ads and direct mail until last week, but FEC filings show they've spent almost $2.7 million on TV ads. The advertising data we reviewed suggests the nation's leading pro-gun group has aired 1,822 ads across four Senate races. MORE...

"Secret Donations Could Haunt 2012" (Howard Fineman):

Corporations are funneling money into trade associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- a fact that President Obama is noting at every campaign stop.

But the bulk of the action -- and money -- tends to involve individual, high-rolling conservative donors who stayed away from the action in 2006 and 2008.
Story continues below

Now they are back, and in greater numbers, according to a top campaign-finance lawyer, who declined to be named because he may advise a candidate.

There are questions about whether high rollers, secret or not, would want to get involved in GOP intramurals -- even at presidential level. "These are guys who want to be in the inner circle," said the lawyer. "If you're 'independent,' you have to stay on the outside."

No one expects Karl Rove, the hub of the wheel of independent GOP spending, to choose sides in the GOP primary early on -- let alone lead an independent campaign for or against a presidential contender.

But many of the donors -- and others -- may well feel differently. Conservative cash supporting Tea Party candidates will see no reason to rest once the congressional campaign has ended -- and the more established contenders may hope that friends will defend them.

"I could see a Mormon-Harvard-Bain Capital coalition getting out there to defend Mitt Romney even before he is attacked," said Tracey. It's a potential gold mine for an enterprising "independent" consultant. (I wouldn't be surprised if some guy with a Power Point isn't on his way to Boston even as I write.) MORE...

Fineman: "In Oslo, Obama Sounds Like Bush"

Howard Fineman:

The Norwegians weren't applauding the peace-prize acceptance speech President Obama just gave in Oslo and I know why. The speech in many ways could have been written for, and delivered by, a man they loathe: George W. Bush.

Sure the speech had the pleasant stuff about banning torture and the value of negotiations, and Obama gave a nod to Martin Luther King, whose own Nobel speech in 1964 was a paean to pacifism. But Obama wanted to make it clear that he was NOT Martin Luther King. He was a commander in chief leading two wars, confronting an implacable terrorist foe, burdened by a wobbly job rating and a dysfunctional Congress, and facing a dicey electoral future for his party in 2010 and himself in 2012.

So Obama accepted most of the fundamental premises of his maligned predecessor's post-9/11 theory of the world. Yes, Obama said, there is evil in the world and it must be confronted. Al Qaeda is evil, he said. No, "Holy War"—jihad—can never be a "just" war. America not only has a duty but self-interest in spreading free speech and freedom of religion around the world, even in places and cultures that seem to reject it, because those values are "universal."

There was more. The word "terrorism"—recently absent from Obama's foreign-policy speeches—made a comeback, big time. He praised the peace-making maneuvers of two Republican presidents (Nixon and Reagan) and of Pope John Paul. Obama challenged Europeans and others to stand up to Iran and North Korea—which, he said indirectly but clearly, want to develop nuclear capability so that they could "arm themselves for nuclear war." He was careful to avoid anything more than the most anodyne reference to the conflict between Israel and Arabs—a conflict Europeans depict as a one-sided saga of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, whom Obama didn't mention.

And in the theatrics of the visit to Oslo - skipping dinners and receptions; flying in and out and barely doing a drop by to pick up his award - Obama (a gracious guy) managed to seem rude and impatient with ceremony in a way that Bush, back in Dallas, had to admire. It was as if Obama was saying: even THIS president doesn't do canapés and champagne with European peaceniks! Hoo-ah! After the speech, Karl Rove was crowing, if you can crow by Twitter. "Tweeted that Gerson and Thiessen had gone to work at the Obama White House," he e-mailed me—Gerson and Thiessen being the two neo-con wordsmiths in the Bush shop.

The fascinating question of course is: why did Obama give the speech he gave? Surely there is something about reading those morning CIA briefings concerning Al Qaeda (something Bush famously didn't always do) that concentrates the mind. There's that hoary old line that conservatives like to use: "a conservative is a liberal mugged by reality." But there is some truth to it.

Obama's speech is not that surprising, actually. Even though his breakthrough speech was the one he gave against the war in Iraq in 2002, he doesn't have the reflexive fear of the use of military force that so burdened Baby Boomer leaders. Even in 2002, and certainly in later years, he has made it clear that he views the American involvement in Afghanistan as not only strategically justified but also morally justifiable. Many of his early supporters didn't listen. Having just decided to send 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, he had no choice but to make the case he made—however uncomfortable it was to do so in Oslo.

Of course American politics was involved. Obama is having enough trouble with the conservatives in his own party—the Blue Dogs and various "gangs of"—to discomfit them culturally by hobnobbing with the Norwegian socialists who chose him for the Nobel award. Obama has health care and climate change and financial regulation and a whole lot of "government" to sell Congress. It's bad enough to represent "the Washington power elite" without having to be seen in the admiring embrace of Europeans in white tie and tails.

Remember: Obama won the White House in good measure because of swing voters in states such as Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Virginia. Look at Oslo through their eyes, and you can see why Obama went late and left early and sounded like a Texan. Not to mention the fact that fewer than one in four American voters think he deserves the prize.