Morreu Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Eunice Kennedy Shriver, irmã do ex-Presidente John F. Kennedy (e também, claro, de Bobby Kennedy, antigo procurador-geral e candidato presidencial em 68, e de Ted Kennedy, senador pelo Massachussets), mãe de Maria Shriver (primeira dama da Califórnia), criadora dos Special Olympics, morreu esta terça-feira, aos 88 anos, no Cape Cod Hospital, em Hyannis. Caiu uma das últimas representantes da linhagem Kennedy, uma grande senhora, que abdicou de grande parte da sua vida pública para ajudar a irmã, Rosemary, vítima de profundo atraso cognitivo.

A busca pela valorização de Rosemary fez com que Eunice criasse os Jogos Olímpicos para deficientes, uma ideia que se universalizou. Morreu esta manhã. Paz à sua Alma.

«Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a member of one of the most prominent families in American politics and a trailblazer in the effort to improve the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, died early Tuesday morning at Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, Mass. She was 88. Her death, at 2 a.m., was confirmed by her family in a statement. A family friend said that Mrs. Shriver had been in declining health for months, having suffered a series of strokes.

A sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy and the mother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Mrs. Shriver never held elective office. Yet she was no stranger to Capitol Hill, and some view her work on behalf of the mentally retarded, including the founding of the Special Olympics, as the most lasting of the Kennedy family’s contributions.

“When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” U.S. News and World Report said in its cover story of Nov. 15, 1993.

Edward Kennedy said in an interview in October 2007: “You talk about an agent of change — she is it. If the test is what you’re doing that’s been helpful for humanity, you’d be hard pressed to find another member of the family who’s done more.”



As an example, Mr. Kennedy cited the opening ceremony of the 2007 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Shanghai, where a crowd of 80,000 cheered as President Hu Jintao welcomed more than 7,000 athletes to China, a country with a history of severe discrimination against anyone born with disabilities.

Mrs. Shriver’s official efforts on behalf of people with mental retardation began after she became the executive vice president of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation in 1957. The foundation was established in 1946 as a memorial to her oldest brother, who was killed in World War II. Under Mrs. Shriver’s direction, it focused on the prevention of mental retardation and improving the ways in which society deals with people with intellectual disabilities.

“In the 1950s, the mentally retarded were among the most scorned, isolated and neglected groups in American society,” Edward Shorter wrote in his book “The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation.” “Mental retardation was viewed as a hopeless, shameful disease, and those afflicted with it were shunted from sight as soon as possible.”

The foundation was instrumental in the formation of President Kennedy’s Panel on Mental Retardation in 1961, development of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (which is now named for Mrs. Shriver) in 1962, the establishment of a network of mental retardation research centers at major medical schools across the United States in 1967 and the creation of major centers for the study of medical ethics at Harvard and Georgetown in 1971.



In 1968, the foundation helped plan and provided financing for the First International Special Olympics Summer Games, held at Soldier Field in Chicago that summer.

“I was just a young physical education teacher in the Chicago Park District back in the summer of 1968, a time of horrific tragedy for the Kennedy family, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver wrapped her arms around the very first Chicago Special Olympic games held at Soldier Field,” Justice Anne M. Burke of the Illinois Supreme Court said in an e-mail message. “I will never forget at the start of the games when she asked me to go to Sears and buy her a $10 bathing suit so she could jump in the pool with the Special Olympics swimmers.”

Just weeks after her brother Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed, Mrs. Shriver said in her address at the opening ceremony, “The Chicago Special Olympics prove a very fundamental fact, the fact that exceptional children — children with mental retardation — can be exceptional athletes, the fact that through sports they can realize their potential for growth.”

This was an extraordinary idea at the time. The prevailing thought had been that mentally retarded children should be excluded from physical activity for fear that they might injure themselves. As a result, many were overweight or obese.

The first Special Olympics brought together 1,000 athletes from 26 states and Canada for competition. In December 1968, Special Olympics Inc. was established as a nonprofit charitable organization. Since then the program has grown to almost three million athletes in more than 180 countries.

The Kennedy family learned firsthand about mental retardation through Rosemary Kennedy, the third of nine children and the oldest daughter, who was born mildly retarded in 1918, about a year after John F. Kennedy. Rosemary spent her childhood in the Kennedy household, unlike many mentally retarded children who grew up in institutions, sometimes as their families told friends that they had died.

Rosemary and Eunice developed a close bond, participating in sports including swimming and sailing and traveling together in Europe. “I had enormous affection for Rosie,” Mrs. Shriver said in an interview with NPR in April 2007.

She added: “If I never met Rosemary, never knew anything about handicapped children, how would I have ever found out? Because nobody accepted them anyplace. So where would you find out? Unless you had one in your own family.”

As Rosemary grew older, she had bouts of irritability and mood swings. In 1941, when she was 23, her father arranged for her to have a prefrontal lobotomy in an effort to calm her. But the procedure, which was relatively new, only further incapacitated her, and she was sent to an institution in Wisconsin, where she died in 2005.

Rosemary’s disabilities were a closely held family secret until 1962, when Mrs. Shriver — with the approval of President Kennedy — wrote an article about her sister for The Saturday Evening Post. Referring to Rosemary’s move to an institution, Mrs. Shriver wrote, “It fills me with sadness to think this change might not have been necessary if we knew then what we know today.”

Earlier the same year, Mrs. Shriver began what became the forerunner of the Special Olympics when she opened a summer camp for mentally retarded children at her home in Maryland, called Timberlawn. The idea was born when a mother telephoned her and complained that she could not find a summer camp for her retarded child.

She recalled the telephone conversation this way in an interview with NPR: “I said: ‘You don’t have to talk about it anymore. You come here a month from today. I’ll start my own camp. No charge to go into the camp, but you have to get your kid here, and you have to come and pick your kid up.’ ” With that, the conversation ended.

For years, Camp Shriver provided physical activity for mentally retarded children, and Mrs. Shriver took a hands-on role, even jumping into the pool to give swimming lessons.

Senator Kennedy said that many of the activities at the camp were based on games the family had played with Rosemary on camping trips to western Massachusetts when they were growing up.

Her family said in a statement Tuesday morning, “She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more.” Mrs. Shriver, her family said, “taught us by example and with passion what it means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others.”

Eunice Mary Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on July 10, 1921, the fifth of nine children and the third daughter of Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Her maternal grandfather was John Francis Fitzgerald, the Massachusetts politician known as Honey Fitz who served as mayor of Boston and a member of the House of Representatives. She attended Convent of the Sacred Heart Schools in the United States and England and Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. She received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Stanford in 1943.

After graduation, she worked in the Special War Problems Division of the Department of State, then was executive secretary for a juvenile delinquency project in the Department of Justice. In 1950, she became a social worker at the Penitentiary for Women in Alderson, W.Va. The next year she moved to Chicago to work with a shelter for women and the Chicago Juvenile Court.

In 1953, she married Robert Sargent Shriver Jr., a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School and a former Navy officer, who worked for her father’s firm in Chicago, the Merchandise Mart. Mr. Shriver became the first director of the Peace Corps in the Kennedy administration and the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate in 1972. He survives her, along with their five children: Robert Sargent Shriver III; Maria Owings Shriver, who is married to Mr. Schwarzenegger; Timothy Perry Shriver; Mark Kennedy Shriver; and Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver.

She is also survived by 19 grandchildren as well as her brother Edward and her sister Jean Kennedy Smith, former ambassador to Ireland.

Among the awards Mrs. Shriver received for her work on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities are the Legion of Honor, the Prix de la Couronne Française, the Albert Lasker Public Service Award, the National Recreation and Park Association National Voluntary Service Award and the Order of the Smile of Polish Children. She was also made a dame of the Papal Order of St. Gregory. On Nov. 16, 2007, she was honored with a personal tribute at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, with many Kennedy family members present.

In 1984 President Ronald Reagan awarded Mrs. Shriver the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In an interview with CBS News in 2004, Mrs. Shriver’s son Robert said: “My mom never ran for office, and she changed the world. Period. End of story.”»

in New York Times, artigo de Carla Baranauckas

Hillary Clinton em Angola

«LUANDA, Angola, Aug. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was greeted in Luanda, Angola, Sunday by the country's foreign minister.

Angolan Foreign Minister Assuncao Dos Anjos told Clinton on the airport tarmac that women in Angola are making great strides and are moving swiftly ahead, The New York Times reported.

Clinton arrived in the energy-rich country as part of an 11-day trip to seven African nations. She was to meet with Angolan President Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda to discuss good governance and the economic potential of the nation's energy resources, her aides said.

Angola is a major supplier of petroleum and liquefied natural gas to the United States.

Clinton arrived in Angola after a two-day stop in South Africa where she met with President Jacob Zuma and visited a housing project near Cape Town, where she and daughter, Chelsea, laid the first bricks 12 years ago, CNN reported Sunday.

Clinton began her trip in Kenya and is due to visit Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia and Cape Verde before returning home.

"In each nation, she will emphasize Africa as a place of opportunity, built on an ethic of responsibility," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said.»

in UPI.com

Obama no México para cimeira tripartida com Canadá e mexicanos

Um artigo de Ginger Thompson e Marc Lacey, no New York Times:

«President Barack Obama began a summit meeting here Sunday night with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts that touched on a broad range of issues including climate change, the economic crisis, the swine flu pandemic and the battle against illegal drugs.

President Obama greeted Carlos Pascual, the United States ambassador to Mexico, after landing in Guadalajara on Sunday.
The annual meeting was started four years ago as a way for the neighboring countries to build on ties established by the North American Free Trade Agreement. As much as they bring the countries together, the meetings have also served to highlight deep differences, particularly on trade and immigration.

Expectations were low that those differences would be resolved in the whirlwind of meetings on Sunday and Monday.

“I think the summit is going to be a step in the continuing dialogue from which agreements will undoubtedly come,” Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, said before the meetings began. “I think we’ll see more of these dialogues. And as I said, from that, I think good things will come.”

Immigration was raised again, but this time tensions were expected to be focused on Mexicans entering Canada, not the United States.

Too many Mexicans, the Canadian government complained, are fraudulently claiming political asylum in Canada, overwhelming the system. So Canada announced last month that it would begin requiring Mexican citizens to secure visas before entering the country, a decision that elicited outrage in Mexico.

The Mexicans struck back with an announcement that Canadian diplomats and government officials would now require visas to enter Mexico.

Although some angry Mexican lawmakers urged President Felipe Calderón to go further and require visas for all Canadian visitors, Mr. Calderón held off, not wanting to damage Mexico’s tourism industry, which relies heavily on North American visitors.

Mexico also raised a trade dispute that began when the United States Congress canceled a program, in violation of Nafta, that allowed Mexican trucks to operate in the United States.

Mexico responded by imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on American products. The Obama administration said it was seeking to resolve the dispute, but did not have a deal ready in time for the meeting.

Another irritant is the “Buy American” clause in the Obama administration’s economic stimulus plan, which both Canada and Mexico oppose. An aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada told reporters last week that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the Canadian leader raised the issue of protectionism with Mr. Obama.

Even on the issue of combating Mexico’s drug violence there is political discord. The American aid package for Mexico says that 15 percent of the funds can be disbursed only if the State Department decides that the Mexican government meets certain human rights conditions. Reports that Mexico’s army has engaged in torture and other abuses while carrying out the drug war have prompted some in Congress to oppose releasing those funds.

Mr. Calderón’s government has characterized any abuses as isolated. And in a meeting with reporters before Mr. Obama’s trip to Mexico this week, his aides defended the army’s record and argued for the aid to be released.

The Obama administration has indicated that it favors giving the aid.

“I think the Calderón government has, in fact, performed very courageously in the face of these cartels, and I think we have to do everything we can to be a helpful neighbor and partner,” said General Jones, the national security adviser.

Another topic on the agenda is the political crisis in Honduras, where the provisional government and the president it sent into exile in a cou p in June, Manuel Zelaya, have been unable to come to terms.

The country’s interim leader, Roberto Micheletti, said Sunday that he would not allow a delegation of the Organization of American States and regional delegates to enter Honduras for crisis talks this week if the O.A.S. secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, was among them. Mr. Micheletti accused Mr. Insulza of lacking “impartiality and professionalism.”

A senior White House official said that he believed there was still time to work out an arrangement for the delegation’s visit, scheduled for Tuesday, and news agencies later reported that Mr. Micheletti’s government said that a meeting could be held if Mr. Insulza was only an observer. It was not clear when the meeting might take place.

The delegation had planned to visit Honduras to build support for a proposed settlement forged in negotiations mediated by President Óscar Arias of Costa Rica. The plan calls for Mr. Zelaya to return as president, although with significantly limited powers.»

Susan Rice vê «progressos» no Afeganistão

Susan Rice, embaixadora dos EUA nas Nações Unidas, ainda não confirma a ideia de uma presença militar americana no Afeganistão «para dez anos» e identifica «melhorias passo a passo» no terreno.

O discurso de Hillary Clinton no Council on Foreign Relations

«Devíamos prestar atenção discurso de Hillary Clinton (ndr: no Council on Foreign Relations) por duas razões. A primeira tem a ver connosco. A secretária de Estado conhece muito bem a Europa, mas o seu discurso mostra claramente que o Velho Continente é apenas um dos sítios onde a Admnistração Obama vai tentar arranjar soluções para os principais problemas da política internacional. (...)

Clinton acha que a questão decisiva é saber como é que Washington vai liderar durante o próximo século. Também acha que um mundo com parceiros múltiplos é claramente preferível a um mundo multipolar, caracterizado pela competição geopolítica.

O que é que isto tudo mostra? Par começar mostra que a Administração Obama não teme a ascensão de outras potências e actores transnacionais. A ambição de Washington não é conter est ascensão, mas sim tentar moldá-la»

MIGUEL MONJARDINO, no Expresso

Mensagem semanal: Obama insiste na «urgência» de reformar o Sistema de Saúde e rotula de «absurdos» os ataques dos republicanos

200 dias de Administração Obama (III): Economia começa, lentamente, a recuperar

As boas notícias na Economia (com o desemprego na América, finalmente, a desacelerar) podem diminui o impacto da perda de popularidade de Obama devido às clivagens na Reforma da Saúde.

Um artigo de Irwin Steltzer, na Weekly Standard:

«Washington will be a different place now that the Senate has followed the House of Representatives' flight from the city. On vacation? Certainly not. According to the official House schedule, its members are on their "Summer District Work Period", a time off from legislating that the Senate calls its "State Work Period". Translation: members of both Houses will take some time off, and spend some time hearing from constituents. With Congress's approval rating at around 24 percent, members should get an earful. More on that in a moment.

When Congress leaves town, the lobbyists cannot be far behind. Nor will the president: the Obamas will be heading for Martha's Vineyard, the summer playground of wealthy, liberal Democrats, the sort of people who are unlikely to ruffle the presidential feathers by reminding him of his failure to get his health care or energy program through the Congress, or of his inability to persuade voters that the budget's red ink will turn to black just as soon as they pass his health care reforms. Little wonder: the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reckons the president's program will cost some $1 trillion, making people wonder how another trillion of spending can reduce a budget deficit.

This means that the president will interrupt his vacation to flit around the country selling not only his health care plan -- which he now dubs a plan to reform the insurance industry -- the "villains", as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi calls them. He also has to persuade votersto press their senators to back the House-approved cap-and-trade plan to reduce CO2 emissions. That chore was made more difficult when Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that his country would not even consider accepting limits on its greenhouse-gas emissions until 2020, if then. India, like China, points out that Europe is not meeting its Kyoto commitments, America is a major polluter, and poor countries have a right to develop their economies. India and China insist on adding massively to their coal-based generating capacity, which means that nothing the Senate can do will affect global warming -- and that the high cost of limiting U.S. emissions would merely be an act of economic masochism.

The problems the president faces in persuading voters that the huge deficits he is running up are sustainable, that the government can run the health care industry that accounts for one-sixth of the economy, and that taxes on energy are a good idea has caused a shift in the administration's strategy. The name of the game now is to trumpet the nascent economic recovery, and take credit for it.

Here, the president is on firmer ground. In the jobs market, less bad is good. Friday's report showed that the economy lost only 247,000 jobs in July, way down from the almost-750,000 monthly loss in January. The unemployment rate ticked down to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent, but that was due largely to a reduction in the size of the work force, and so doesn't mean much. Average hourly earnings ticked up by 0.2 percent, and the work week lengthened a bit, both good signs. Even the broader measure of unemployment, which includes those able to find only part-time work and workers too discouraged to continue their job search, dropped a bit, from 16.5 percent to 16.3 percent. Still worrying, but given the favorable trend, some economists are now claiming that the recession has ended.

The housing market also seems ready for a transfer from the intensive care unit. Prices have stopped falling and in some cities are rising, sales of new single-family homes rose 11 percent from May to June, and the supply of new homes available for sale is dropping. Pending home sales (under contract but not yet closed) have risen for five consecutive months, suggesting that existing sales are due to rise.

The rest of the economy is also improving. The manufacturing sector rose in July for the seventh straight month, propelled by a growth in new orders for construction equipment, turbines and electrical equipment. Second quarter GDP declined by only 1 percent, compared to a drop of 6.4 percent in the first quarter, and the economy has likely already started to grow. Banks are on the mend, able to raise capital and to charge more for services now that many competitors are no more. Several have repaid the bail-out money they received at the height of the credit crisis, giving the government an estimated 20 percent profit on those loans. Prices investors are willing to pay for risky loans still on banks' books have risen to 90 percent of face value, the highest level in over a year.

"The optimism is justified," Goldman Sachs headlines the latest report of its Investment Strategy Group. For the firm, euphoria would be justified. Goldman made more than $100 million in trading profits on 46 days in the last quarter, during which it racked up record profits
of $3.4 billion, the largest quarterly profit in its 140-year history. So far this year profits total $22 billion, of which half is being reserved for staff bonuses. The company's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, has bowed to the populist wave sweeping the liberal Democratic Congress and the Oval Office, and asked all employees to eschew ostentatious purchases. Make the old Ferrari do for a while at least. And other firms on Wall Street -- banks and lawyers -- are looking forward to $1 billion in fees for managing the break-up of insurer AIG.

Obama can't take credit for those profits, but since government spending is up by about 10 percent while consumers continue to keep their wallets zipped, he can reasonably claim that the stimulus package he pushed through Congress should get some credit for the improved condition of the economy. But he is being appropriately cautious lest this prove to be a false dawn -- and that caution takes a scary form, "There's still a lot of work to do." Not "they also serve who only stand and wait" for this activist president.

Still to come are more write-downs of loans on the banks' books. The business default rate exceeds 11 percent, and is headed toward 13 percent, compared with 2.4 percent last year. Business are loaded down with over $1 trillion in high-yield bonds and loans, and so will have to concentrate on debt repayment before they can undertake major new investments. The number of prime borrowers behind on their mortgage payments rose 13.8 percent between March and June, according to a study by Standard & Poor. Delinquencies on consumer credit cards are rising. And estimates are that some $30 billion in loans backed by commercial property will have trouble getting renewed, and might end up having to be written off.

And all is not well in the credit markets. Loans held by the 15 largest banks declined by 2.8 percent in the second quarter, with new businesses still unable to get loan officers to stamp "OK" on their applications.

Most ominous, the massive deficits, soon to be increased by an estimated $20 billion over five years to finance the training and expansion of the Afghan army, are forcing the Treasury to auction off more and more IOUs. The increased supply of these bonds and notes has forced down their price, which means that the interest rate the government must pay is rising. If the increase in rates spreads to other securities, the recovery will be slowed as consumers and businesses find borrowing to spend and invest more expensive.

Still, Obama has a good story to tell about the economy, a lot better than the story he can tell about his now largely discredited health care plan. So look for him to scale back his ambition to set up a government-run health system, and instead prepare for next year's congressional elections by claiming credit for the emerging economic turnaround. And if he can do that, he will add, you certainly can trust him to be right on a host of other plans to "transform" the U.S. economy.»

200 dias de Administração Obama (II): 51 por cento acham «um sucesso»

Mesmo com a taxa de popularidade a cair de forma significativa (76 por cento em Fevereiro, foi máximo histórico; 63 por cento à passagem dos 100 dias e 58 por cento agora nos 200 dias, de acordo com uma sondagem CNN/ORC), Barack Obama ultrapassa a barreira das duas centenas de dias no comando da América com níveis de aprovação ainda muito aceitáveis:

SONDAGEM CNN/ORC
«Considera os primeiros 200 dias de Presidência Obama...?»
-- Um sucesso: 51 por cento
-- Um fracasso: 37%
-- Ainda é cedo para dizer: 11 por cento
-- Não sabe/não responde: 1 por cento

Os 200 dias da Presidência Obama, em dois minutos

Robert Gibbs, porta-voz da Casa Branca, desdramatiza quebra de popularidade de Obama

Obama felicita a confirmação de Sonia Sotomayor para o Supremo

Uma visão crítica do 'ObamaCare'

Barack Obama e a secretária da Saúde, Kathleen Sebelius: a Reforma da Saúde é o teste mais duro do primeiro ano de mandato desta Administração


Um artigo de Ramesh Ponnuru, na Time:

«There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, "the status quo is untenable." Our health-care system is rife with "skewed incentives." It gives us "a whole bunch of care" that "may not be making us healthier." It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is "bankrupting families," "bankrupting businesses" and "bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change."

Obama's second major point is that--to quote from the same broadcast--"if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don't want you to have to change ... So what we're saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."

So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?

Again and again, their effort has brought us into a land of paradoxes. Public skepticism is warranted when the President promises to cut costs while simultaneously providing coverage to nearly 50 million uninsured people. It is even more warranted when his congressional allies seek to raise taxes to pay for all the new spending that this cost-cutting entails. We aren't talking about short-term spending either; this isn't a trillion-dollar investment in a new system that will ultimately save money. The Congressional Budget Office says the leading health-care-reform proposals will increase health-care spending and make the budget harder to balance in the long run. Yet saving money is the President's principal stated rationale for reform.

Health-care reformers send out mixed messages on the uninsured as well. The moral imperative of improving their health care is what drives the passion of most liberal activists for reform. But when you read the liberal policy analysts, it quickly becomes clear that getting young and healthy people to pay more in premiums than they will spend on medical expenses is the point of forcing them to buy insurance. Which is it? In aggregate, are we trying to rescue the uninsured or bilk them? Is reform something we are doing for them or to them?

The reformers' speed belies their words as well. If health-care reform is so critically important, as they keep insisting, why not take the time to get it right? Hard as it is to believe, at one point Obama was urging the House and Senate to pass legislation by three weeks after they began debating it.

One final contradiction may lie beneath all the others. Democrats, particularly those involved in health policy, were scarred by President Clinton's failure to achieve reform in 1994. They are determined to avoid a similar debacle. So on every procedural question, they have done the reverse of what he did.

Everything is different this time--everything, that is, except the plan. The Democrats are seeking mostly the same policies they sought 15 years ago: mandates, regulations on insurance companies, new government-managed markets. The major difference is that this time they also want a "public option," an insurance program open to everyone and run by the government. Obamacare is Clintoncare with a little more liberalism.

The Democrats have apparently concluded that it was tactical blunders that sank Clinton. It wasn't. It was his plan. Like today's plans, it had too many conflicting goals.

Stanley Greenberg, who was polling for Clinton back then, recently reminded Democrats that the insured public in the early '90s just could not be persuaded that the President was going to cut its costs by expanding coverage for others. No amount of clever strategizing is going to make the sales job easier this time. Instead, the President is in a series of double binds. The more he emphasizes how much has to change, for example, the more people are going to doubt his pledge that they can keep their doctor.

Congress may yet pass the health legislation Obama wants. If it does, that success will reflect the Democrats' numbers in Congress and their determination, not public enthusiasm. This time there is no barrage of Harry and Louise ads to blame. It is health-care reform's own contradictions that are causing it to sink.»

O êxito diplomático de Bill Clinton na Coreia do Norte: ponte para uma nova etapa?

Bill Clinton chegou a Pyongyang e conseguiu libertar as duas jornalistas americanas presas há meses na Coreia do Norte. Quem iniciou as negociações foi a sua mulher, Hillary, como secretária de Estado. Hillary começou por sugerir Al Gore e, depois, Bill Richardson, como enviados-especiais, mas os coreanos terão exigido Bill. O ex-Presidente voltou a mostrar que mantém um enorme capital político na Ásia -- e ajudou a uma vitória importante para o que poderá ser o início de uma nova relação entre a Coreia do Norte e os EUA.

Obama, por enquanto, tem-se mantido na expectativa quanto a esta questão, ciente da delicadeza do dossier nuclear. Mas este episódio com final feliz pode servir de pretexto para uma nova etapa.

Um artigo de Lanny Davis, no The Hill:

«The release of the two journalists by the North Koreans on Tuesday night D.C. time was the result of a tour-de-force, trifecta combination of the three most talented and truly great political leaders of our times — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; her husband, former President Bill Clinton; and President Barack Obama.

Without the special talents and the synergistic magic of the three of them working together, I don’t believe Euna Lee and Laura Ling would be back in America from imprisonment in the national prison called North Korea.

For reasons that are not yet clear, last March, the two journalists were allowed to place themselves in great danger while working on a story on human trafficking for Current TV, co-founded by Vice President Al Gore, by either approaching the China side of a shallow river between China and North Korea or actually crossing over, as the North Koreans claim. (It has been reported that Ms. Ling told her sister that they had broken North Korean laws, but it is impossible at this juncture to know whether that was a coerced statement. Two other colleagues fled and escaped arrest.)

The story of what happened and why remains to be told. Perhaps once they’re home safely, we will learn why this trip was taken in the face of such obvious dangers.

But make no mistake: The North Koreans put the two through a mock trial and then levied the inhumane sentence of 12 years of hard labor for what was, at most — if at all — a border-crossing violation.

This inhumane and disproportionate sentence rightfully outraged most Americans, and certainly the secretary of State as well as President Obama. It was clear that the secretary was not going to relent until these two young women were home safely. Initially, she expressed public dismay at their arrest, and even more at the excessive sentence of 12 years of hard labor.

But soon, Secretary Clinton’s expression of outrage and dismay could be seen to modulate. She was focused on the right strategy to get them home, and when Hillary Clinton is focused, that is really focused. She knew that the only strategy to free them was to find the right words and the right approach to allow Kim Jong-il to save face.

She knew it’s all about face — for she is someone who has the rare ability to know how to walk in other people’s shoes and see the world through their eyes.

After initially declaring her dismay at the arrest and the sentence, she remarked that the two women felt “great remorse” and their families were “anguished.” The shift in words could not have been accidental, and must have been noticed in Pyongyang. Then came the most significant shift — from asking for their release for “humanitarian reasons” to requesting amnesty on their behalf.

Amnesty, she knew, would allow dictator Kim to claim the two were, in fact, guilty, but were being granted amnesty by his grace.

But words would not be enough. Kim needed to receive the recognition of a visit by a transcendent American leader, someone respected not only around the world but even within his own closed society of North Korea, a private citizen — since the Obama administration could not officially recognized this outlaw regime by dealing with it directly — but also a citizen of the world.

Enter former President Bill Clinton. No one else on the planet fit that description but Bill Clinton. While reports are the deal was already done or President Clinton never would have gone, there was always a risk the erratic Kim could have changed his mind with one wrong word from Clinton.

But it was a safe bet that Bill Clinton would pull it off. And he did.

It took great self-confidence for Hillary Clinton to send her husband without worrying about the small, vicious people who would second-guess her decision to allow her husband to take center stage again.

But then, the third member of the trifecta had to be there — the foundation of making it all possible.

It also took someone with the great self-confidence (and self-comfort) of Barack Obama to feel no threat to put Secretary Clinton and Bill Clinton front and center to achieve this great diplomatic and human victory.

President Obama has once again shown the inner strength to follow in the footsteps of his presidential hero, Abraham Lincoln, in putting front and center his true “team of rivals” — with the result that Laura Ling and Euna Lee are now home safely, and this horrible nightmare is over.»

Hillary Clinton sobre o êxito diplomático do marido na Coreia do Norte

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Jornalistas libertadas na Coreia: um sucesso para Bill Clinton

Foi um sucesso a viagem relâmpago de Bill Clinton à Coreia do Norte. O encontro com Kin Jong Il resultou num «perdão especial» do líder norte-coreano. As duas jornalistas americanas, de ascendência chinesa, já foram libertadas. É o regresso do ex-Presidente às missões especiais, depois da intervenção no Sudeste da Ásia, após o tsunami, ou na crise gerada em Nova Orleães, após as cheias, em 2005.

Um artigo de John Harris e Mike Allen, no POLITICO.com:

«A controversy-prone ex-president rides to the rescue to defuse a crisis provoked by an erratic dictatorship on the Korean Peninsula. Most people breathe a sigh of relief, but there are skeptics who wonder if the breakthrough was won through appeasement.

Not only has Bill Clinton seen this movie before, he’s starred in it — though in a different role than the one he’s playing this week with his burst of globe-trotting diplomacy in North Korea.

The 42nd president’s success in forging a behind-the-scenes deal for the release of two American journalists in exchange for Clinton’s surprise appearance in Pyongyang may signal a new chapter in one of the United States’s most vexing and dangerous relationships. Or it may turn out to be another false start with an isolated and paranoid regime.

In either event, however, this week marks a curious full circle in the life of Bill Clinton, who until this week was an elder statesman who seemed without a clear identity or useful role in Barack Obama’s presidency. A Clinton adviser said the former president is ready and eager for more Obama assignments.

History, it turns out, is full of inside jokes.

The first time Clinton found himself in a stare-down with North Korea was in the spring of 1994. Then, Clinton was an unseasoned new president, still seen by many in the public and some of his own aides as wobbly in the face of foreign crises.

With deep reluctance, Clinton was on the brink of ordering a major military buildup in response to North Korea’s decision to end international inspections and start a nuclear bomb-building program. Inside Clinton’s government, many thought the buildup itself might provoke war on the peninsula. North Korea, delicate as ever, was warning of a “sea of flames.”

In 1994, the ex-president roaming on the Korea scene was Jimmy Carter. The Clinton White House had not exactly invited him to go to North Korea, but — since Carter made clear he was going anyway — it had not tried to dissuade him either.

At the last minute, even as Clinton was in a meeting to approve the buildup, Carter struck a deal in which North Korea claimed it would halt its nuclear program in exchange for direct talks with the United States. Carter went on CNN to announce the deal, while Clinton’s aides in Washington stared at their sets and groaned at the former president’s grandstanding.

Unlike Carter, Clinton was plainly not freelancing on his assignment to win the release of documentary journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Though ostensibly in Pyongyang as a “private citizen,” he was there with the approval of the White House and his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Like Carter, however, Clinton is finding that the best place to prove his relevance as an ex-president is in international hot spots.

A Clinton admirer, Democratic commentator Donna Brazile, said the North Korea trip shows “Bill Clinton still has the juice.

“I hope this is a sign of things to come,” she added, “given all the fires that this country faces. People trust him, and he has an important role to play. And this shows President Obama’s determination to try all kinds of diplomacy, including third-party diplomacy.”

Obama advisers were not willing to discuss Clinton’s role on the record. On background, one said, “This big victory helps him get his groove back.” The sentiment is notable, given the skepticism that still exists in many quarters of Obama’s inner circle since the Obama-Clinton sniping during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Historical legacies change constantly with new events and new interpretations of old events. So far, however, the Obama presidency has had the effect of dimming Clinton’s light. Obama is dealing with economic crises and wars abroad that seem far larger than what Clinton grappled with, and many Democrats are delighted to have a president eager to embrace a big and interventionist role for the national government.

But even before he became president, Bill Clinton always displayed a knack for jostling his way to the center of the action. A top Clinton adviser said: “It’s not like he’s been called on to broker Middle East peace. But [the hostage release] shows he has incredible respect and appeal. And we hope he’ll have a way to use that going forward.”

Former North Korea negotiator Robert Gallucci, now president of the MacArthur Foundation, said Clinton was an obvious choice to serve as intermediary to defuse this episode, given his history with the peninsula and his celebrity.

“Bill Clinton may have the highest profile on the planet, so I don’t think it was a hard choice for them,” said Gallucci.

Clinton’s presence was a highly visible way for the North Koreans to prove that deference was being paid to their regime in exchange for a concession. A senior administration official said Tuesday night that his intervention was requested by the families of the journalists, who were on assignment for Current TV, a citizen documentary channel co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

Clinton may also have believed he had special insight into the psychology motivating the Koreans. In “Going Critical,” a memoir that Gallucci and two fellow Korean diplomacy veterans wrote about 1994 crisis, Clinton gave his view of the climb back from the ledge — in a comment that illuminated his larger philosophy about dealing with adversaries.

“Look, I knew I was going to take some heat for letting Carter go there,” Clinton recalled. “But I also knew I needed to give the North Koreans an escape hatch, some way to climb down without losing face. I figured if they could say to themselves that a former president had come to their country, it would allow them to do that.”

The debate now is whether the United States may be losing face in trying to engage with a nation that skeptics believe has proved itself impervious to diplomatic blandishments and incapable of reform.

After the 1994 crisis, North Korea signed on to the “Agreed Framework,” in which the regime said it would abandon any nuclear bomb ambitions in exchange for billions of dollars in subsidies from foreign government for energy production. But the agreement eventually broke down amid allegations that the North Koreans were cheating on its terms and continuing a nuclear program.

But confrontation has not been notably more successful. George W. Bush for most of his presidency was a diplomacy skeptic who labeled North Korea part of the “axis of evil.” But the regime continued with its aggressive behavior, and its bomb-building capacity flourished during the Bush years.

Clinton’s trip, and the rush of publicity it has occasioned, will renew the U.S. debate about whether coaxing or confrontation is the right approach with North Korea.

“North Korea does this all the time. They do all these provocations and get everyone all pissed off until someone comes and helps them off that ledge,” observed Victor Cha, who was director for Asian affairs at the White House from 2004 to 2007 and is now Korea chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dan Senor, a Bush administration official now with the Council on Foreign Relations, said: “It’s unlikely that [dictator] Kim Jong II would have agreed to a pardon [of the journalists] without something tangible in return. No matter how justified, given the lives on the line, those tangibles may make some people nervous, especially among our allies in the region.”

Yet another Bush veteran, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, was even more skeptical: “Obviously, everyone is happy that the two hostages have been released, but whenever you’re in a situation like this, you want to make sure that the result doesn’t make it more difficult in trying to deal with future hostage situations.”

Bolton added that North Koreans will “see this as weakness, and they will link the hostage situation to the nuclear weapons program.”

But Joel Wit , who was a senior adviser to Gallucci and co-authored "Going Critical" with him and Dan Poneman, offered a more hopeful interpretation. North Korea may be signaling that the regime is ready to respond to a new president in Washington by reviving diplomacy.

“I would hope that [Clinton’s trip] means that the administration understands that in addition to taking tough steps after North Korea's recent actions, they need to open some dialogue,” he said. “This may constitute the beginning of some new direction in the relationship.”»

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

(Barack, Michelle, Sasha e Malia festejam o 43.º aniversário do então candidato ao Senado dos EUA, pelo Illinois, a 4 de Agosto de 2004)


4 de Agosto de 1961. Em Honolulu, Hawai, Ann Dunham dava à luz o seu filho, Barack Hussein Obama. Faz hoje 48 anos.

Bill Clinton na Coreia do Norte para tentar libertar duas jornalistas americanas

O ex-Presidente, marido da secretária de Estado, é o segundo antigo chefe de Estado americano a pisar solo norte-coreano, depois de Jimmy Carter.

«Former President Bill Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il Tuesday to begin discussions aimed at earning the release of two detained American journalists.

According to North Korea’s state news agency, Clinton supplied Kim with a verbal message from President Barack Obama shortly after landing in Pyongyang. The report said Clinton’s message was “courteously” conveyed.

Kim and the former president then sat down for what the state media described as a “wide-ranging exchange of views.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement emailed soon after Clinton’s landing Tuesday that the Obama administration will not be commenting on the situation during the former president’s visit.

“While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment,” Gibbs said. “We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton's mission.”

The two journalists – Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36 – were captured on March 17 after venturing across the border from South Korea while reporting a story for Current TV, a San Francisco-based cable network. The two were later sentenced to 12 years of labor.

A Washington source said the Clinton trip came about after North Korean officials told relatives that the government would release the women to the former president.. The families then approached Clinton.

The source told POLITICO that the White House approved the mission, which has been secretly planned for weeks.

The delicate journey comes amid increasing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, which continues to pursue and test nuclear capabilities.

Clinton was accompanied to North Korea by his former chief of staff, John Podesta, who more recently headed Obama’s transition team.»

in POLITICO.com

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