Four More Pinocchios for POTUS

Last week, President Obama turned up the heat on the U.S. immigration debate by announcing a series of administrative actions to delay the deportation of some categories of illegal immigrant, particularly those whose citizen children would be harmed by such a deportation. In my view, it's about time. Moreover, I applaud Obama for taking the fight to Republicans on this, challenging them to pass a real immigration reform bill.

But,....

Among the talking points issued and repeated by White House officials was that other presidents had essentially done the same thing. If President Obama's executive actions were different, they were differences of degree, not kind. Of particular note, the White House pointed to administrative action taken by George H.W. Bush in 1990 which, the Obama Administration claims, covered a much larger percentage (1.5 Million, or 40%) of the illegal population in the U.S. than anything being proposed by the current president. 

Well, not so fast! Turns out that the White House argument rests on a single suspect source from 1990 that differed widely from other estimates of how many people would be covered by Bush's program.

The Obama White House seems to be trying to take some of the sting out of those critics who claim his immigration actions are a significant overstep of his authority. Best to do that when the facts really are on your side.....

For this Washington Post, this earned President Obama 4 Pinocchios out of 4. Ouch!

It's Official.... Carter Syndrome!

Good grief! Can things get any worse for the Obama Administration? This morning, Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel resigned after less than two years on the job. Many will recall that he more or less limped into the job after being roughed up pretty severely by his former colleagues during his Senate confirmation hearings. As a result of that lacklustre reception, many believe Hagel deliberately took a back seat on national security matters to people like Secretary of State, John Kerry or the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey.

Things are not going swimmingly anywhere at the moment. In addition to all of the existing problems on the President's plate (ISIS, Russia-Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc), Benghazi continues to fester (with only a little help from Republicans, a la Whitewater in the 1990s). More seriously, it was also announced that nuclear talks with Iran remain at an impasse and that the deadline for completion will be extended once again, this time to July 2015.

Back in May, I wrote about Presidential Doctrines and suggested they were difficult things (link here). Foreign policy is messy, and it's not hard for a president to be called out for inconsistency over them. Moreover, that alone is probably the main reason such Doctrines are seldom coined by presidents themselves. It was all a small asterisk next to my joining the bandwagon of critics who were taking shots at Obama's foreign policy. Tell-all books by former officials are a robust cottage industry at the best of times. But the list of those throwing this particular Commander-in-Chief under the bus is both long and distinguished; Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta have all had unflattering things to say. I expect Chuck Hagel will soon be dishing on a book tour of his own.

Hence, with this morning's news about Hagel's resignation-- quite obviously encouraged by POTUS himself-- it is hard to craft an interpretation of Obama's foreign policy that doesn't conclude it's in near free fall. Who in their right mind would accept the President's nomination to be Hagel's replacement? The President will, of course, find someone. But who ever it is will receive a rough ride from a GOP majority in the U.S. Senate still smelling victory vapours following their midterm wins earlier this month.

Asterisk removed! Obama is in Carter-land!

POTUS Gets 3 Pinocchios

Anyone that regularly reads the Washington Post knows that they have a group of staffers fact-checking the various distortions of fact used by public officials. To be fair, many such distortions are actually laudable efforts to simplify complex issues into more digestible component parts. In other instances, such oversimplifications cross the line into distortions so large that they deliberately mislead the public. Part of the problem is that which of these one sees in the pronouncements of public officials is often in the eye of the beholder. The Washington messaging machine is in a constant spin-cycle where, too often, coming up with a clever-- but too frequently disingenuous-- sound bite for the 24 hour news cycle is all that really matters.

This weekend, the Post decided to fact check some of President Obama's claims regarding the merits of the Keystone XL pipeline. Many of you know that the Keystone XL debate heated up again last week as both the House and Senate took up measures supporting the line's construction (see my post on this). As many of you also know, the key measure under consideration was taken up in the Senate and ultimately defeated 59-41(link).

Yet, in many ways it was comments by President Obama about Keystone XL made while he was in Asia that struck many observers because they suggested a strongly negative view of the merits of the project. The essence of his remarks was that Keystone XL was essentially a conduit through American territory for Canadian oil to be exported to overseas markets. Americans, he argued, would see few of the benefits. It is a line of argument that the Washington Post has called the President out on and issued him a dubious award of 3 Pinocchios out of 4 (see story here).

I think President Obama has lots of good reasons (politically) to hold off approval of Keystone XL. As I've argued in previous posts, Keystone is a small card he could play with Republicans on some other issue during his next two years as an increasingly lame-duck president. However, he doesn't help his own credibility on the issue by stooping to the same level of oversimplification as his political opponents. For a president that is often accused of being so deliberative that he is often indecisive, his simplistic statements on Keystone XL are both a bit of a surprise and indicator of the steep political hill Keystone XL still needs to climb.

3 Pinocchios!!!! Nicely done, Mr. President.

Tombstones, Cornerstones, and Keystones, Oh my!

This morning Stephen Blank and Monica Gattinger of the University of Ottawa published a fantastic piece with the Canadian International Council about the Keystone XL debate. It's great because it puts the necessity of the Keystone pipeline in the context of the profound changes taking place in North American energy markets. I've noted a few of these changes in earlier posts, but Blank and Gattinger are far more thorough, laying them all on the table, including the big changes being initiated with Mexico's PEMEX. Together, they raise a number of critical questions about the future of the Keystone XL pipeline.

I've linked Blank and Gattinger here: Keystone XL: Tombstone or Cornerstone?

Blank and Gattinger wisely refrain from making predictions, but their piece reaffirms my own sense that Keystone XL will be a tombstone for the next president to deal with, perhaps sometime in 2017.

Keystone about to be built?... Don't bet on it...

The Keystone XL pipeline issue was thrust onto the Washington political agenda again this past week, scarcely a week after the drubbing at the polls suffered by Democrats in the Congressional midterms. In a series of twists and turns that can only really be understood inside the Washington beltway, the Keystone XL pipeline project suddenly seems to have new life.... or does it?

I may have to eat some humble pie six months from now, but I don't think everyone should be getting too excited about this. Shovels are no closer to going in the ground this week than they were last week.

In fact, I predict that Keystone XL will still be on the next president's desk when he or she assumes office in January 2017.

Is NAFTA a Dead Parrot?

Depending on when you decide to mark the occasion, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) turned twenty years old this year. In last week's Edmonton Journal, former federal MP Rob Merrifield, and current Alberta Envoy to Washington, along with Congressman Bill Owens (D-NY) penned an op-ed piece extolling the virtues of the NAFTA at Twenty (link to story here). For Merrifield and Owens, the NAFTA has been a tremendous success and remains a golden opportunity for all three countries. I agree!

The problem with some of this happy talk about North America is that it increasingly resembles Monty Python's Dead Parrot skit (linked here). Like the shop-keeper who insists the parrot isn't dead, only resting, some advocates of North America seem stuck in a time-warp, unaware of how far away from the North American vision we've actually drifted.