The Obama team is already on defense about the lack of accomplishments from the President’s failed Asia tour, so they are returning to their traditional standby answer of lashing out at the Bush administration.  Before even leaving for Washington, the Obama Administration accused President Bush of failing to lead on critical issues in Asia.  Not only is the White House trying to rewrite the impact of Obama’s trip to Asia, they are also trying rewrite the Bush Administration’s strong record on foreign policy issues in the region, claiming, “American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years.”

As one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams, once said, “facts are stubborn things.” They are indeed, and they speak for themselves: 

• In 2008 President Bush signed the landmark United States-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement, “a key foreign policy priority for both the Indian and US governments” that left a “significant and unprecedented legacy.”
  
  
• Indian Prime ... more
  
  

White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod must be on cloud nine right now; or at least his head is.  Yesterday, Axelrod spoke about President Obama’s town hall in China, saying "The fact is that he had the first-ever town-hall meeting in China -- broadcast in Shanghai, streamed on our website, a text of which was on their website and widely read.”  However, a quick glance at Obama’s predecessors’ trips to China reveals that there was nothing “unprecedented” about this meeting.  As Josh Gerstein of Politico reports: 

• When President Bill Clinton visited China in 1998, he took questions from Chinese students while visiting and speaking at Peking University (Beida). The following day, Clinton fielded questions from a radio audience as part of a call-in talk show in Shanghai.
  
  
• And when President George W. Bush visited China in 2002, he also took questions during a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

And, as The Washington Post reported Monday, “virtually every aspect of the ... more

Today, we issued a Real Stimulus Report Card in response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' release of last month's rising state-by-state unemployment numbers.  In addition, working with the same creative genius that designed our Health Care Lap Dog Match Game, we helped our friends in the Press shop support Sheriff Biden's search for stimulus jobs. So mount up, posse, and send your state's WANTED poster to your friends and family.  The way the tumbleweeds are rolling through Stimulus Jobs Valley, Sheriff Biden's going to need all of the help he can get!

Lael Brainard, President Obama’s nominee for undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, is the latest Democrat to have tax problems. The Associated Press reports that Brainard was late paying real estate taxes in 2005, 2006 and 2007.  She also seems to have gotten too creative with her deductions, making her the “fifth presidential nominee to reveal tax issues during the congressional vetting process,” according to the AP.  Her potential boss, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was another one of those nominees, having failed to pay $34,000 in back taxes and interest.  Is the president letting Charlie Rangel choose his nominees?

While Obama has no problem placing tax-inept individuals in high end Treasury posts that will deal with international tax issues, he takes great issue with businesses that defer taxes on profits earned overseas. By seeking an end to this practice, Obama is making it more difficult for U.S. companies to compete with businesses in other ... more

Welcome Back, Mr. President

President Obama must be thrilled to get back to the White House tonight: it’s been a long week abroad.  We were told President Obama would “rely heavily on oratory and personal popularity to try to boost U.S. influence” on his trip, but unfortunately for Obama, his eloquence and charm did not translate into results.  As Mike Allen of Politico writes:

President Barack Obama returns from his maiden Asian swing with none of the concrete accomplishments that White Houses typically put in place before big trips, setting up a stark test for his idealistic theory that the United States should act more like a wise neighbor than a swaggering superpower.

And The Washington Post noted President Obama will return with no foreign breakthroughs.

But is his biography-as-diplomacy approach beginning to show its limits?  Obama does not fly home with any big breakthroughs or any evidence that he has forged stronger personal ties with regional leaders.

But leave it ... more