USA - domestic:
The Washington Post keeps up his coverage of the Health care debate with this piece on perks in the medicare advancement.
President Obama has proposed cutting more than $100 billion in subsidies over 10 years, a contentious component of health-care reform that will be fought in earnest as the bills move through Congress. But unlike some issues that touch off partisan sparring, Medicare Advantage has an unlikely band of bipartisan defenders who have already battled to restore $10 billion of the proposed reductions.
Dan Balz of the WP is taking a look at the implications of passing a law on Health Care on teh political system Asking questions such as
What then are the potential political implications for the president, his party and minority Republicans if the year ends with the president hosting a big signing ceremony to herald a new era for the American health care system? A big win for the Democrats? Despair among Republicans? Not surprisingly, Democrats and Republicans have sharply different expectations for what may happen.he further argues that this would show the democrats as the party to get a job done and the republicans as a "party on the sidelines".
Democrats assume substantial political benefits, both for getting the job done and for changes that they believe the public will see as improvements in the kind of health care coverage they have. They believe the passage of a health care bill will stand with other landmark achievements that have come under Democratic presidents, such as Social Security and Medicare.
Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist, predicts that, at a minimum, there will be a huge, short-term benefit for the president and his party. "Big social problems create big political and policy challenges, but also huge political payoffs," he said.
Foreign Affairs offers an insightful view on how the U.S. can manage and balance the dollar and thus prevent a new crisis
Rothkopf over at Fp is comparing Obama to Carter asking if he is perhaps a Jimmy II.
John western at Duck of Minerva is pitching in on the debate on Obama and his decisionmaking style. offering insights like:
couple of points: First, in the post-World War II period most presidential decisions on the use of force have been relatively rapid decisions in response to particular crises or triggering events. Circumstances often dictated the necessity of quick decisions, e.g., Truman on Korea in June, 1950; Eisenhower on Lebanon; Reagan on Grenada; Bush 41 on Kuwait, Clinton on Kosovo. The situation in Afghanistan is an entirely different type of case. The situation is deteriorating, but there is no immediate time pressure. Second, as a result, we should be comparing apples to apples and we have had a number of cases in which presidents have had some luxury of having time to weigh a change in strategy or resources. What is interesting about many of these cases is how quickly and casually various presidents have made decisions on troop escalation or changes in strategic objectives without thorough analysis or consideration of various counterfactuals. [...] The bottom line is that there is no set of exigent circumstances dictating a decision today or tomorrow in Afghanistan. Obama has tasked his advisers and their staffs to do a thorough review of the strategic objectives and then a review of the various approaches to meet those objectives. The White House also has been clear that this will not be an open ended process and that Obama will make a decision by the end of this month. Ultimately history will judge Obama more on the outcome of his policy decision than the process, but for those of us who study decision making processes, this is about as sound as it gets.
U.S. - Afghanistan:
Ben Pershing of the WP looks into the deepening divide of Capitol Hill on the debate on Afghnaistan's Strategy.
In the span of just a few hours Tuesday, the chairmen of the House and Senate appropriations committees -- both Democrats -- made markedly different public statements on what President Obama should do next and whether more troops should be sent to bolster the war effort, with Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) voicing support for a new counterinsurgency strategy and Rep. David Obey (Wis.) reiterating his doubts about the entire venture. The split matters, since an increase in troops for Afghanistan would likely require the Obama administration to ask Congress for more money, and Inouye and Obey would need to agree. [...] While acknowledging the high cost of sending more troops, Inouye said: "If, after further consultation and deliberation we decide we need 40,000 more troops or 50,000 more troops in Afghanistan, that's what we'll send but much more discussion has to take place before a final decision on troop levels can be made."
Obey, meanwhile, delivered a speech in Stevens Point, Wis., where he made clear that he does not believe the national will exists for a big troop buildup, nor does he believe the U.S. has reliable partners in this fight.
"When you have to work through two weak reeds like the Pakistan government and Afghan government, it severely limits what you can accomplish," Obey said, according to the Wausau Daily Herald (as was flagged by "The Cable" blog on ForeignPolicy.com).
While Foreign Affairs is taking a look at how to win hearts and minds in a country used to fighting between western forces and the Taliban.
The light footprint strategy, which called for less rather than more foreign intervention and was sanctioned by the United Nations and the West following the collapse of the Taliban, failed to take into account that a post-Taliban Afghanistan was a country without institutions, leaving a leadership vacuum that could only be filled with the cadre of leaders that had emerged from 30 years of war -- fighting men who ruled by the power of the gun.
That rule has returned: Afghanistan today looks a lot like the Afghanistan of 2004, only a little bit worse. It also resembles the pre-Taliban Afghanistan of 1995 and 1996, when venturing on just about any highway was a risk and visiting a government office required a pocketful of bribes. The only difference between then and now is that the Afghan factions are no longer firing at each other and killing civilians who get caught in the middle. That is now being done by the Taliban and the international forces.[...] When the Taliban were driven from power, Afghans from across the country wanted to be allies of the international community, happy to see the back of the wretched Taliban regime. Eight years on, most people, including the young man from Musa Qala, are fed up. They see their country heading for destruction, led by corrupt and conniving leaders enabled by an international community unable to figure out the good guys from the bad guys.
Not long ago in Kabul, an Afghan friend who has stayed in his homeland through the communists, the mujahideen, and the Taliban, and who was always certain of a better day, told me that his optimism had run out. "I want out," he said. "You always wondered at how I could always be so optimistic, and now it's gone."
On the Af-Pak Channel on FP, David Fidler weighs in with a look at the debate around the strategy on Afghanistan in this piece.
USA - Cuba
Miami herald reports a new development in U.S. Cuban relations While keeping travel restrictions in place. Cuba allowed State Departmetn officials to visit jailed U.S. Cubans on the island.
Havana's decision to allow the prison visits ``reflect the benefits that could accrue to both countries as a result of better communications and, conversely, how our interests are poorly served when we don't communicate,'' said Bob Pastor, the top Cuban expert in Jimmy Carter's administration.
The State Department confirmed Wednesday that acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bisa Williams visited with jailed dual U.S.-Cuban citizens there during her trip to Cuba last month to discuss a possible resumption of direct mail services between the two nations. No further details on the visits were available.
USA - Russia
The NYTimes is reporting on Clintons visit to Moscow with this piece on her speech before 1000 students at Moscow State University.
Russia, she said, could best fulfill its potential by protecting basic freedoms.
“That’s why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress,” she said. “The more open Russia will become, the more Russia will contribute.”
As if to illustrate that point, Mrs. Clinton then traveled from Moscow to Kazan, the 1,000-year-old capital of Tatarstan, a Russian republic where Muslims, Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics live together peacefully, with none of the violent separatism that afflicts places like Chechnya.
