Obama e a aprovação do seu Plano: «A Major Milestone»

'Inside Obama's economic crusade'

Tim Geithner, o 'czar' das Finanças da era Obama, tem razões para pôr as mãos à cabeça: mesmo com o Plano de Recuperação e Reinvestimento aprovado no Senado, sobram dúvidas sobre os efeitos que poderão surgir na Economia americana desta enorme intervenção do poder federal. São 787 mil milhões de dólares, naquele que é, de longe, o maior plano de emergência alguma vez aplicado por um governo numa economia aberta


Um artigo de Nina Easton, editora da revista Fortune:

«On a day in early February when incoming White House officials under previous administrations would have just been learning how to use their office phones, the Obama economic team is already racing against the clock.

As Christina Romer rushes back from an urgent meeting on the economic stimulus package, she passes by a Scotch-taped paper next to her door denoting her new title as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. The President's much-vaunted Economic Recovery Advisory Board - outside experts led by Paul Volcker - isn't yet in place, even though Obama's plan almost is. From a bare-walled office in the Old Executive Office Building, Austan Goolsbee is busy calling the 16 CEOs, labor leaders, and economists who have been chosen for it.

Over in the West Wing, Jason Furman dials up members of Congress from a paper-strewn desk crammed outside the small office he will eventually have to share with fellow National Economic Council deputy Diana Farrell. Their boss, Lawrence Summers, insists I meet him downstairs in the ornate Roosevelt Room rather than in his work-in-progress corner office upstairs. Both men are swamped, fielding queries from Capitol Hill on President Obama's ambitious economic plan.

At this White House there's no time to settle in. Even as their wall art sat in bubble wrap, Obama's economic team was pushing through Congress the most expensive emergency spending package in the nation's history. And they were helping Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner craft his own sweeping plan to rescue the nation's banking and housing sectors, phase two of a $700 billion effort launched by his predecessor, Hank Paulson.

That's just the start. The team is fast at work on health-care reform, energy independence, vast changes in banking regulations, and the possibility of a "grand bargain" to curb entitlement costs that envisions historic sacrifices on both sides of the aisle: Republicans supporting tax increases and Democrats conceding to benefits cuts. "This is not a small-ball President," says Summers, Obama's top economic advisor and chair of the National Economic Council. "He wants to take on the large issues."

There is a breadth and breathlessness to these under-takings, a frenzy of policymaking that will shape the contours of America's economic future. Top Obama advisors who talked (often as they walked) with Fortune in early February put a premium on speed - speed to catch the right moment to turn around a deepening recession, speed to take advantage of this moment of crisis to put in place a Democratic vision of government's role, speed to pass major legislation while the President is riding high in the polls. Obama's White House has been endlessly compared to Lincoln's team of rivals, or J.F.K.'s best and brightest. But we might also toss in the image of Sandra Bullock trying to control a runaway busload of passengers before the bomb goes off. (That scene was of course from the movie - "Speed.")

If that means rolling over a growing chorus of critics and forsaking a more measured and thoughtful lawmaking process, Obama officials insist they have no choice. Romer's own academic research concludes that no post-World War II recession (nor the Great Depression) was solved by fiscal policy. While opponents say this proves that the spending-laden package that barreled through Congress is a nearly $800 billion experiment to overcome that history, Romer insists it's all about timing. The main reason fiscal policy didn't work in the past, she says, was government hesitation. "Normally that process didn't happen until the recession was practically over," says the former Berkeley economist. "What's so exciting and amazing is precisely that we're getting our act together in time to do some good."

On the other side of the White House, in the cavernous Treasury Department, the kinetic and boyish-looking Geithner shifts in his sedate wing chair like a man who can't sit still - and he hasn't since he took office: Ethics rules were issued the first day, pay caps on executives seeking government help the 12th day, massive changes to the financial rescue effort known as TARP the 15th day - the last item the product of eight weeks of furious work.

"There is a basic lesson on financial crises that governments tend to wait too long, underestimate the risks, want to do too little," Geithner told Fortune. "And it ultimately gets away from them, and they end up spending more money, causing much more damage to the economy." The Treasury chief seems chastened by his experience of the past 18 months, when as head of the New York Federal Reserve he was a central figure in the escalating bailouts of the banking system. Geithner now believes the federal government should have acted in early 2007. "What happened was that the Fed had broader authority than the government did," says Geithner. "But this was not going to get solved by liquidity. Financial crises require governments. The tragic mistake was to not get authority earlier, not to ask."

Are there unforeseen consequences to this rush to expand the federal government's presence in a free- market economy? "I know of no evidence that more speed is the answer," says Stanford economist John B. Taylor, author of a forthcoming book critical of past government interventions. "Just last year the government acted as speedily as possible with a big stimulus package sending $115 billion worth of checks to people. It did no good. So the idea that 'all we need is speed' should be questioned based even on very recent experience."

Vincent Reinhart, former director of monetary affairs at the Fed and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, warns against the lasting effects of hasty actions. "We have limited resources," he says. "Everything we spend has to be financed and the interest paid. A dollar spent inefficiently is a dollar too much. Changes to entitlements tend to stick. A bridge can be built in the wrong place. These are long-term decisions that affect the budget baseline for years to come."

Geithner was so eager to get his bank and home-owner rescue plan out the door that he unveiled it without the kind of operational detail that would soothe investors: The stock market reacted by plunging. "Geithner leaves questions, and markets make him pay," shouted a Bloomberg headline that echoed others. Likewise with the stimulus package. While top Obama officials like Summers and Furman spent hours meeting with labor leaders, executives, and economists to design the broad outlines of a stimulus package, they punted the details to Congress led by liberal Democrats.

Publicly Obama officials insisted that the new President wanted everyone's input rather than handing out a dictate from on high. Privately, however, they acknowledge that they weren't equipped during the transition to write such a large and complex piece of legislation. As a result, disgruntled Republicans labeled the Economic Recovery Act in the House "Nancy Pelosi's bill" and it failed to become the bipartisan expression-of-unity bill that Obama once promised. The bill contributed to the loss of Obama's third Cabinet nominee when his choice for Commerce Secretary, GOP Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, withdrew his nomination over "irresolvable conflicts" with the President's agenda.

Furman, who met with House and Senate budget writers nearly a dozen times before taking office, notes, "We did go to Congress with a reasonable degree of specificity in terms of the overall size, in terms of the breakdown between taxes and spending, in terms of priority areas for spending. But this timetable was thrust on the President by the state of the economy. It wasn't a timetable he chose."

Obama's economic team sees both the TARP and the stimulus as just the first steps in their prolonged war against a deepening recession. In interviews, both Summers and Geithner left open the possibility of asking Congress for more funds beyond the $700 billion already slated for the financial rescue effort, which now includes a new public-private investment fund to buy bad assets and a $50 billion measure to stem foreclosures. But they note that the partnership to buy up toxic assets is an investment cost that the government can recoup, not outlays of taxpayer dollars never to be seen again.

"We're going to do it at a minimum cost to the taxpayer, with maximum benefits. But we've got to make sure we do enough," says Geithner. "There's this big, dangerous dynamic" of an ailing financial sector working against the economy - and an ailing economy working against a turnaround in finance. "It's like riding your bike into a 40-mile-an-hour headwind," he says.

The economic team is geared up to monitor the stimulus plan, with the possibility of mid-course corrections. "We have to make sure it works the way it's designed to work, to make sure all the money hits the ground the way we want it to," says domestic policy advisor Melody Barnes. Adds Goolsbee: "Within six months, for sure, you want to see that the recovery package is doing things." The University of Chicago economist says he'll consider the effort successful if the worst scenarios don't come to pass, "if by the end of 2009 we aren't looking at GDP numbers that are huge negatives, if unemployment rises to the 8% range rather than the 11% that some are predicting."

Even in this rush of events, close associates say Geithner understands (more than his predecessor did) that he needs to spend considerable time as salesman to both Congress and the public. As with Summers, the brilliant and sometimes abrasive former Harvard president, people skills aren't his strong suit. Where Geithner succeeds, though, is in internal bureaucratic warfare, where he has a reputation for coming to the table with a smart and detailed plan that trumps opponents.

"He's the guy who can bring order to chaos in a roomful of people," says a former Treasury official. "He can get 15 exhausted people in a room on a Sunday night before the Asian markets open and come to a conclusion." Already the Treasury Secretary has beat back efforts by White House political strategists to put more controls - including more stringent pay caps - on banks receiving federal aid.

Part of reassuring markets that he has Obama's ear means distancing himself from Paulson, his Bush administration mentor and fellow Dartmouth grad. And so far that's exactly what Geithner is doing, not only in policy changes he says will bring the accountability and transparency that had been missing in past months, but also in how he presents his life story.

Three days before unveiling his new financial rescue package, Geithner traveled to Williamsburg, Va., to persuade a closed session of Democratic lawmakers that he is not a creature of Wall Street. He told them he was the son of a Navy pilot and a teacher, that he tended bar and washed dishes to work his way through school, and that he is married to a social worker and sends his kids to public school.

As president of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner made $411,200 last year and spent much of his time earning the trust of Wall Street titans. But in front of Democratic lawmakers, he stressed his credentials as a longtime public servant who was "deeply offended" by what he has witnessed on Wall Street.

In their rush to action, Team Obama doesn't mind leaving critics on the roadside because of an über-confidence that the facts are on their side. Goolsbee, an economist who has been at Obama's side since day one of the campaign, likes to call the economic team "data dogs" who bring post-partisanship to policymaking because they are driven by evidence rather than ideology. But Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist who chaired Bush's CEA for two years - and who counts many of Obama's picks as friends - offers a more politically charged label: Keynesians, after the British economist who championed interventionist policy. "They are extremely committed Keynesians," he says. "I hope they show the requisite humility that not all economists share their view."

I asked Romer if she would apply the label Keynesian to herself, and she reacted the way many successful women today refuse the title feminist. "I think it's an old-fashioned term," she says. "If that's how you define Keynesian - that changes in government purchases are going to matter, then absolutely. But it's based on empirical research rather than what I read or what I was taught in graduate school."

On an afternoon in early February, Larry Summers emerges from an hour-long meeting with Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the few House lawmakers whose brain wattage is on a par with his. As the President's advisor stands in the hallway conferring with aides, the rumpled figure of Frank flies out the door to offer one last thought on their meeting, which covered everything from TARP's new foreclosure plan to changes in financial regulation. They part ways with cracks about "being bipartisan" that have a sarcastic tone.

"No comment," says Summers when I ask about it. In fairness, one could overhear the same kinds of conversations among Republican lawmakers. Just weeks after Obama came into office promising an end to bitter partisanship, there is deep distrust on both sides. Part of the problem is that all of Obama's conciliatory rhetoric can't gloss over the fact that there are serious divisions between Republicans and Democrats on the role of the federal government. To Team Obama, the onset of the financial crisis only proves their argument that Americans need a more muscular federal government. "I think events have emphasized for us that while the market system is self-stabilizing most of the time, it is not self-stabilizing all the time," says Summers.

The President's first budget, expected to be unveiled by budget director Peter Orszag within weeks, will chart much of the administration's ambitious course beyond stimulus and TARP - and it will be a document that Obama's own shop, not Congress, produces. "In his budget the President is going to lay down markers around his seriousness on all the major issues," notes Summers.

It's likely that the decisions and debates on these issues - ranging from health-care reform to what government programs should be cut to ease the deficit - will keep on coming at Congress at mind-numbing speed. The President wouldn't have it any other way.»

Já está: o Senado aprovou o Plano Obama por 60-38*

* depois de a Câmara dos Representantes o ter feito, por 246-183 (sem qualquer voto de congressistas republicanos), o Senado confirmou a aprovação de um plano de 787 mil milhões de dólares. Foi difícil, teve muitos recuos, não foi de facto uma aprovação amplamente bipartidário, mas a partir de agora, depois do que sucedeu sexta à noite, a Administração Obama já terá condições para iniciar a recuperação económica. Veremos quanto tempo demora...

Michelle, uma biografia

«Em 1989, Barack Obama foi contratado para a Sidley Austin como associado de Verão, o que era notável e lhe conferiu distinção. Ele tinha acabado de terminar o seu primeiro ano em Harvard e não era habitual a firma contratar alunos do primeiro ano para associados de Verão. Martha Minow, professora de Direito de Harvard, contou ao seu pai, Newton Minow, sócio sénior da Sidley Austin, que Barack era talvez o aluno mais dotado que jamais tinha tido.

Michelle ficou um pouco irritada com estes rumores; achou que as pessoas ficavam surpreendidas por um negro ser competente e desenvolto. Quando ouviu o seu nome e soube que tinha crescido no Havai, imaginou que seria 'tonto, estranho e desagradável' e decidiu que não iria gostar dele.

'Ele era demasiado bom para ser verdade', contou ao jornalista do Chicago Tribune David Mendell»

in «Michelle, uma Biografia», de Liza Mundy, jornalista do Washington Post, editado em português pela Planeta

Só mesmo um Presidente 'cool' conseguiria fazer humor com o caso Gregg...

As explicações (pouco esclarecedoras) de Judd Gregg

Completa surpresa: Judd Gregg desiste

Judd Gregg, senador republicano eleito pelo New Hampshire, lançou hoje uma autêntica bomba política, ao recuar na decisão de aceitar o cargo de secretário do Comércio da Administração Obama.

O cargo parece estar embruxado: primeiro, foi o recuo de Bill Richardson, figura próxima do Presidente, agora esta inesperadíssima decisão de Gregg, que tem contornos bem diferentes.

Se Richardson foi forçado a recuar por motivos que se prendiam com os problemas que tinha com uma investigação judicial ligada ao financiamento da sua campanha presidencial, a decisão de Gregg parece ser, essencialmente, de ordem política.

E isso acaba por ser mais grave: Obama jogou forte ao escolher um republicano (para mais senador) num cargo desta importância. Apresentou Gregg com o senador ao lado (aparentemente orgulhoso e sintonizado com a nova Administração) e, em poucos dias, tudo mudou.

A base do problema, disse Gregg, terá sido o acordo obtido no Senado para aprovar o 'stimulus package' de relançamento da Economia americana. Gregg fará parte da maioria republicana que discorda do plano e considerou que «não estaria a ser ele próprio» se entrasse para uma Administração que acaba de aprovar tão importante Plano.

Depois de Bill Richardson, depois de Tom Daschle, agora Judd Gregg. Decididamente, Obama não está a ter vida fácil nas suas escolhas para postos que, não sendo tão relevantes como os do quarteto VICE-PRESIDÊNCIA; DEFESA; DEPARTAMENTO DE ESTADO; TESOURO (aí, as escolhas de Joe Biden, Bob Gates, Hillary e Tim Geithner têm-se revelado certeiras), mas numa linha imediatamente a seguir, postos como a Saúde e o Comércio estão a dar muitos problemas.

Não é, por isso, de estranhar que este comportamento de Gregg tenha caído muito mal na Administração a que iria juntar-se. Robert Gibbs, porta-voz, lamentou a «súbita mudança de opinião» do ex-futuro secretário do Comércio; o chefe de gabinete, Rahm Emanuel, admitiu que «foi melhor que isto tenha acontecido agora do que depois de Gregg estar em funções»; o próprio Presidente deixou escapar a um jornal do Illinois que ficou «um pouco surpreendido» com esta decisão de Gregg.

Na conferência de Imprensa em que anunciou o inesperado, Judd Gregg falou em «conflitos insanáveis» entre ele e a Administração Obama, alegando divergências de opinião quanto ao 'stimulus package'.

Membros do núcleo duro de Obama têm passado a ideia de que foi Gregg a oferecer-se ao cargo a que agora renuncia. Sem confirmar o assunto, o senador republicano pede desculpa ao Presidente, assumindo que «o erro» foi dele ao disponibilizar-se.

Barack Obama contava ter em Gregg o terceiro republicano em postos de alta responsabilidade na sua Administração (depois de Gates e LaHood), mas, no caso de Gregg, foi o próprio senador pelo New Hampshire a admitir que «a ponte era demasiado grande para que eu a pudesse percorrer».

Lincoln nasceu faz hoje 200 anos (III)

O TRIBUTO DO PRESIDENTE OBAMA

Lincoln nasceu faz hoje 200 anos (II)

O DISCURSO DE GETTYSBURG, PROFERIDO POR ABRAHAM LINCOLN A 19 DE NOVEMBRO DE 1863:

«Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.»

Lincoln nasceu faz hoje 200 anos (I)

Abraham Lincoln, o primeiro Presidente republicano, o líder que aboliu a escravatura na América, nasceu a 12 de Fevereiro de 1809, há precisamente 200 anos, em Hardin County, Kentucky. Foi o 16.º Presidente dos EUA. Tal como Obama, representou o estado do Illinois; tal como Obama, era advogado; tal como Obama, ousou fazer rupturas


OBAMA E LINCOLN

«Obama sente-se fascinado pelos paralelismos: ambos são do Illinois, ambos tiveram infâncias modestas e difíceis, ambos eram relativamente desconhecidos antes de surgirem no palco nacional, ambos são grandes comunicadores que assumiram o cargo em tempo de crise, em grande parte devido ao poder das suas palavras. Obama tirou partido das semelhanças simbolicamente: citou Lincoln no discurso de vitória, veio para a capital no comboio tal como Lincoln, prestou juramento sobre a Bíblia de Lincoln e até mandou servir o prato preferido de Lincoln no almoço da tomada de posse. Mas é mais a vida interior que o fascina. Não poderia escolher melhor mentor».

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, historiadora, autora do livro «Team of Rivals», em entrevista a Tony Jenkins, no Expresso

O dia 23 da Presidência Obama*

* Barack e Joe Biden continuam a promover a necessidade de começar já a aplica o Plano de Recuperação e Reinvestimento; Tim Geithner prefere ser... «cândido» e diz: «Isto vai custar muito e vai implicar riscos para o Governo»

Michelle Obama é capa da edição de Março da Vogue

A Primeira Dama dos EUA foi fotografada por Anne Leibovitz

'Barack Obama: a Primer for Foreigners'

Um artigo na New Republic de Bernard-Henry Lévy, filósofo francês, autor do livro «Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the Barbarism»:

«The major news, of the inauguration and of every day since then, is that Barack Obama is no longer black. Yes, indeed. And so goes the United States. Some people voted for him because he was black and because his election would be the crowning achievement of the long march that began with Martin Luther King Jr.'s "dream" two years after Obama's birth. Some voted against him because he was black and because there remained, despite the unparalleled Cultural Revolution the nation had accomplished in a half-century, reserves of segregationism and racism.

The battle has been won. The age of State segregation has been relegated to the past. And Barack Obama is, just like the slogan he launched at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, on the occasion of his first "big" speech the 44th president, not of this America, or of that America, but of the United States of America. The restructuring of the field of the visible. The end of politics conceived as the domain of pigmentology. Neither black, nor white, nor biracial: Obama.

The second thing that we Europeans need to quickly get into our heads is that Barack Obama is not on the "left." There is indeed, contrary to the belief popular on this side of the Atlantic, an American left. There is the fringe left of the Democratic Party that in fact never rallied without reticence or resistance to Obama, who was at the time of that speech only the charismatic young senator from Illinois. Barack Obama is not a leftist. Barack Obama has named to key posts Republicans (Robert Gates, kept in his post as defense secretary; former Illinois Rep. Ray LaHood as transportation secretary) and ultrapragmatic technocrats (Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary; Lawrence Summers as director of the National Economic Council; Peter R. Orszag as director of the Office of Management and Budget) who, frankly, do not have a lot to do with what we in Europe call the left.

Barack Obama is not Che Guevara. Barack Obama is not an honorary member of the French Socialist Party. Barack Obama is the meeting in the same body, on the dissection table of American iconology, of the souls of King and John F. Kennedy.

The third inanity from which one would hope to be spared during this initial avalanche of commentary: Barack Obama is not, will not be, the president of the "decline of the American empire." He has ordered the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, naturally. He will leave Iraq before the end of 2011 as he has promised. He will break with the Bush administration's "messianic" and "inevitable" ideology regarding the exportation of democratic ideals, it is likely. And he will use, in his relations with his allies, a rhetoric inflected with the multilateralism so sorely lacking in his predecessor. But Europeans should not count on him to either admit America's guilt or capitulate to Chavez or Ahmadinejad, or even to hurry along the advent of the multipolar world that the Russians and the Chinese dream of.

The United States will remain the United States. The United States will not provide planetary anti-Americanism with new switches for administering beatings. Whether we like it to or not, a United States lead by Obama will do what it can to remain the premier economic, political and military power in the world.

The change, then? In domestic politics, it will be deployed on three main grounds. The overhaul of a health insurance system that excludes 46 million Americans and with which all of the presidents of the United States up until Obama (including, alas, Bill Clinton) grappled and then gave up. A neo-Keynesian New Deal aimed at reconstructing the nation's infrastructure (roads, bridges, levees in New Orleans, neglected neighborhoods in Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles and Buffalo, N.Y.) which is in some areas comparable to that of the most cast-off countries of the Third World. And then the reform of the financial system: Before this crisis its most acute observers _ Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University; Harry Markopolos, a former investment officer who tried to alert the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard Madoff was a fraud; Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the premonitory author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" _ howled that the world was being lead to catastrophe, but the prevailing deregulatory ideology drowned them out. That Obama gets down to these three tasks, that he opens this triple work site without delay; that is, in the America of today, more than a change of course. It is a revolution.

And as for foreign politics: Finally, what is known about the new president's convictions, declarations, and even ulterior motives leads me to believe that his administration's foreign policy includes, in addition to Iraq, two major points of reorientation. Already in the case of the Middle East, he is not waiting until the end of his second term, like Clinton and Bush, to become informed about the urgency of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and then throwing himself into a final and pathetic sprint to obtain an impossible accord between the two parties.

The question of the relations with Pakistan: He will maintain the alliance, perhaps he will even strengthen it, but he will break with the unconditionality that was custom under the last three administrations, and that made the "land of the pure" the most dangerous country on the planet. In other words, he will put forth conditions that are linked to the sincerity of the Pakistani government's fight against the al-Qaida agents who have infiltrated the country's secret services, conditions that are based on the government's control of its nuclear arsenal, which no one can guarantee will be kept out of the hands of the jihadists. And for these two reasons, too, Obama's presidency is a chance for the world.»

Obama volta a falar numa «tempestade perfeita» nos mercados e na economia real*

* em entrevista à ABC, o Presidente avisa: «Não há saídas fáceis»

Confirmado: o Senado aprovou o «stimulous package» por 61-37

O Pacote de Recuperação e Reinvestimento de 838 mil milhões de dólares, preparado pela Administração Obama, acabou de ser aprovado no Capitólio, com o voto de 61 senadores (três deles republicanos) e 37 votos contra.

'The Fighting Conciliator'

Um excelente artigo de E.J. Dionne, no Washington Post, em que o histórico colunista analisa a forma combativa como o Presidente se tem batido pelo stimulous package, apesar do seu perfil conciliador:

«It took less than three weeks for the real Barack Obama to come into view. He turns out to be both a conciliator and a fighter.

These are not contradictions in his character. They represent different sides of a politician who sees some issues as more susceptible to compromise than others, and who wants his adversaries to know that his easygoing style does not make him a pushover.

The sudden clarity emerged in the two best speeches of his short presidency and in the ongoing saga of the stimulus bill.

Obama addressed the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday with a warning against the use of religion "as a tool to divide us from one another -- as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance."

Obama did not cite Isaiah's injunction that we should come and reason together, but it seemed to be on his mind: "For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God."

That was in the morning. By evening, when the president spoke to Democratic House members in Williamsburg, Va., he had cast aside his efforts to placate Republicans who had no intention of reasoning with him on the stimulus bill. Obama had turned the other cheek often enough.

"Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis," the born-again campaigner thundered. "We are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin."

Deploying a preacher's unapologetically judgmental cadences, Obama denounced "the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face." He reiterated that argument in his Saturday radio address and will press it in speeches on the road this week.

The Williamsburg speech let loose a great gnashing of teeth from those who seem to believe that bipartisan form matters more than substance. But the new tone reflected the very thing about Obama that has won so much notice: He's a pragmatist who takes a method and tries it until it no longer works.

Initially, Obama hoped to win broad Republican support for his stimulus package, but most Republicans preferred to bloody up this new, young president. Obama adjusted. If the GOP wanted a fight, he would not back down.

Obama's tougher rhetoric and the terrible new economic news helped push a handful of wavering senators to agree to a compromise stimulus bill on Friday. Still, there was a cost to Obama's delayed response to Republican provocations. By giving conservatives a week to savage the House-passed stimulus, Obama weakened his negotiating hand.

The changes made in the proposal to pick up votes from a few Republican senators made it less effective than the House bill. Programs that would spur the economy -- aid to fiscally ailing states, more help for the needy, spending on education and the environment -- were cut back. Kept in were tax cuts with limited stimulative value that the Senate had added.

Nonetheless, Obama staved off defeat, and the Senate bill is better than it might have been. A House-Senate conference should fix some of the inequities in the compromise, and its critics can use Obama's own arguments to explain their insistence on a better final product.

But fighting for his recovery program does not preclude Obama's efforts to ease the cultural conflicts that have divided the country since the late 1960s. Obama is happy to wage war on right-wing economic theories and overpaid Wall Street executives; he does not want to pick fights with those who are moderate or conservative on cultural and religious matters.

Obama's own cultural instincts run right down the middle of the road. His politics are more neo-Truman than neo-Woodstock, more compatible with "It's a Wonderful Life" than "Easy Rider."

He supports abortion rights but argues for fewer abortions. He supports religious liberty, but thinks religion has a legitimate public role. MTV loyalists love him, but he models a family life more likely to play on the Disney Channel.

So Obama's decision to fight Republicans on the stimulus bill doesn't mean he's lost his conciliatory instincts. It means he's neither a chump nor a wimp. There are rank-and-file cultural conservatives willing to join Obama to end the feuds of the 1960s. But Washington conservatives, insisting that tax cuts are the one and only important matter in American life, are stuck in a 1980s time warp.»

Um Presidente 'cool': a resposta de Obama aos «30 por cento de hipóteses de falhanço» apontados por Joe Biden*

* a conferência de Imprensa dada ontem pelo Presidente teve na pergunta de Major Garret, da Fox News, o momento potencialmente mais tenso, que acabou por ser mais uma prova do jogo de cintura de Obama...

Obama admite: na política externa, o grande desafio «é o Afeganistão»

Momento inspirador: uma grande entrevista de Chesley Sullenberger, o piloto que amarou no Hudson, a Katie Couric no «60 minutes» da CBS*

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* e reparem na forma como os americanos agem nestes momentos: depois do milagre, o piloto encontrou-se com passageiros e seus familiares e foi homenageado na sua terra natal. Parece que não, mas estas coisas contam...

«KATIE COURIC-- O que sente quando lhe chamam herói?
CHESLEY SULLENBERGER -- Não me sinto muito confortável com a ideia, mas começo a perceber por que o fazem. As pessoas estão desejosas de boas notícias, necessitam de voltar a sentir-se úteis no Mundo.»

Barómetro semanal: 76 por cento de aprovação

Actualização (como sempre, às segundas) do Barómetro de popularidade de Barack Obama:

-- APROVAÇÃO: 76 por cento
-- DESAPROVAÇÃO: 23 por cento
(fonte: CNN/Opinion Research Corporation)

Significativo: Obama, como Presidente, é muito mais popular do que o seu «stimulous package». De acordo com a mesma sondagem, uma curta maioria dos americanos (54 por cento), aprova o Plano de Recuperação e Reinvestimento, contra 46% que desaprovam ou, pelo menos, têm reservas.