US Elections

Most Americans Now Back Marriage Equality

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

8 July 2011

Public attitudes in the U.S towards gay rights and equality continue to evolve , and now polls show that, for the first time, a majority of Americans support allowing same sex couples to marry. In 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a 57% to 35% margin.

A May Gallup poll found that 53% of Americans believe marriages between same sex couples should be recognized by law with the same rights as traditional marriage, while only 45% believe it should not.

More states are moving towards marriage equality legislation, even as some other are moving to ban gay marriage. There's a recent analysis of states likely to pass their legislation here. The Wall Street Journal developed a map showing each state's laws with respect to this issue here.

Not surprisingly, in states that have already passed marriage equality legislation, recent polling finds strong support for the law - 54% of New Yorkers support the law that just passed, and only 40% oppose. Among voters under 35, support is 70% vs 26%; however, among seniors, a majority oppose it 57% vs 37%, illustrating the substantial age divide that exists everywhere on this issue.

In Rhode Island, whose legislature just passed civil union legislation, voters support it 50% vs 41%. In Washington DC, support is 56% vs 35%. Polling also finds movement towards support in states where marriage equality has not yet passed - Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia.

Even states that repealed marriage equality legislation have shifted recently towards supporting marriage equality. In Maine, which passed Question 1 in 2009, 47% of voters now support marriage equality, while 45% oppose. In California, support appears to be growing: a March 2010 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 50% of Californians support marriage equality.

Meanwhile today CBS News reports that The Family Leader, an influential Christian group led by Iowa conservative Bob Vander Plaats, is unveiling a pledge that asks Republican presidential candidates to make a commitment to oppose same-sex marriage and Sharia law and to be faithful their spouses. Vander Plaats' endorsement could prove to be significant in the state, where 60% of the Iowa Republican electorate in 2008 calls itself "born-again Christian."

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July 4 on Nantucket

By Lesley Russell in Nantucket Island, MA

5 July 2011

Happy July 4 from Nantucket Island – a perfect place to spend Independence Day. This morning everyone and everything (man, woman, child, dog, stroller, bicycle and wagon) showed up on the cobblestoned streets of Nantucket Town dressed in red, white, blue and that peculiar shade of pink called Nantucket Red (is it derived from cranberries?). They hob nob, look for celebrities (I spotted David Gregory from NBC's Meet the Press), enter in the blueberry pie eating competition (no hands) and the watermelon seed spitting competition. Then comes the highlight – the Nantucket Fire Brigade truck, ladder raised to fly a huge American flag, sprays everyone on the street with water. Actually they soak everyone, with some liberal help from young children with huge water pistols. Really, it's lots of fun, as you can see here.

Tonight there's lobster, corn and peaches for dinner and fireworks are promised.  But this afternoon the fog rolled in, and a gentle grey cloud has wrapped everything and who knows what we will see of the fireworks.

Elsewhere in the U.S. there are parades and you can take your choice between skiing or fighting fires.

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Political music choices

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

2 July 2011

There was a fun piece in the Style section of yesterday's Washington Post about the songs politicians choose for their campaigns and rallies – and what the musicians think about this.

The genesis for the story was the report that Tom Petty had objected to Michele Bachmann blasting his song "American Girl" at her Iowa launch and later in South Carolina. It was suggested that perhaps she could use Randy Bachman's "American Woman" instead – an inside joke that requires that you know the lyrics of this song are quite anti-American. Apparently she has also been asked to desist from playing "Walking on Sunshine" (Katrina and the Waves). Ted Nugent however has volunteered that he is keen to help out.

Presidential campaign songs have long been part of the ritual – dating back to 1840. Someone has compiled a list here. Did you know that in 1992 Ross Perot used Patsy Cline singing Willy Nelson's song "Crazy"? And who can forget Bill and Hill and Tipper and Al bopping to "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow"?  It seems Tom Petty has history here. In 2000 he threatened to sue George W Bush for using his "I Won't Back Down" and then performed the song at Al Gore's home minutes after Gore conceded the election.

Do politicians or their aides even listen to the words of the songs they choose, or are they just taken with the titles? For example, does Michele Bachmann know that the second verse of :American Girl" ends with "God, it's so painful/Something that's so close/Is still so far out of reach"? Those words were uncomfortably prophetic for Hillary Clinton, who was permitted to use the song in 2008.

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Congress on vacation

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

1 July 2011

Washington is getting ready to celebrate the July 4 long weekend, and people are already leaving town. Most notable in their early departure are the Members of the House of Representatives, where the Republican leadership has decided – as President Obama noted in his press conference yesterday – that there's no time like the present to take the whole week off.

To date this session the House has been in session for 79 days. This compares to 84 for the same time frame in 2010, and 80 in 2009. And even when they are here, the Members are just not very busy legislating to fix the unemployment and economic woes of the country. As Congressman Henry Waxman pointedly pointed out in his statement at a recent hearing by the Committee on Energy and Commerce, this Committee, with its key areas of jurisdiction, has to date reported out just 12 of the 417 bills and resolutions referred to the committee, and none of these has been signed into law.

To date only 20 bills have been sent to the President for his signature: four of these cut spending and kept the government funded through this fiscal year, five named courthouses and post offices, and the remainder were mostly temporary extensions of existing programs.

It stands in sharp contrast to the 111th Congress that passed laws affecting more Americans than any since the "Great Society" legislation of the 1960s. Thirty eight of these bills came from the Energy and Commerce Committee.

The last time House and Senate control was split between the two parties was under Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 99th Congress in 1985 and 1986, when Democrats controlled the House and Republicans had the Senate. In the first 12 months of that Congress, 240 bills were signed into law, and another 424 were enacted the next year.

New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has argued that a do-nothing Congress would be one way to fix the deficit problem. If the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire at the end of 2012 and the Clinton era rates allowed to return on 1 January 2013, that alone would solve about 75 percent of the deficit problem over the next five years and 40 percent of the deficit over the next 20 years.

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Tackling American history

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

30 June 2011

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has put herself squarely in the eye of the public and the media as she begins her run for the Republican presidential nomination. As a consequence, her statements will be up for considerable scrutiny. Let's hope she employs a better fact checker than she's had in the past. The website Politifact rates her as one of the worst at distorting (or even ignoring) the truth.

Now a certain amount of distortion of the facts is to be expected in political campaigns but Bachmann has a unique understanding of American history.

In January, extolling the notion that "all men are created equal," she said of the early American immigrants that, "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status. Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?"

In a prepared speech she talked about the fact that the Founders of the Nation, the men who wrote the Constitution, "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States", ignoring that fact that many of the founding fathers owned slaves and that none of them was around to see slavery abolished.

When given the chance last weekend to revoke this position, she refused to do so, and invoked John Quincy Adams, who "would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country." It's true JQA battled slavery, but he was quite young at the time of the Revolutionary War (he was 16 when it ended) and he died in 1848, many years before the proclamation of emancipation.

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Budget talks

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

28 June 2011

It was always predictable that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was going to walk away from the talks on the budget and the debt ceiling. There are two main reasons:  The Republicans want President Obama's fingerprints on any deal that is done; and Cantor wants Speaker Boehner's fingerprints on any deal that is done.

With respect to the first reason:

It is really clear to everyone (including Cantor) that reducing the deficit will take much more than cutting back domestic spending; entitlements, defence and tax cuts also need to be on the table. After taking some real hits as a consequence of Republican support for the proposed Ryan Medicare / Medicaid, if any money is to be taken from entitlement programs in the future, the Republicans want to be able to say that President Obama forced them to agree to these. Normally Republicans would regard the defence budget as sacrosanct, but the impact of the Tea Party means that they are losing their monolithic opposition to this and might be more willing to cut the Pentagon budget than to close the loopholes in the tax code. But they insist that these cuts should be made by congressional appropriations committees. And of course, there remains implacable Republican opposition to tax cuts, or even closing tax loopholes – opposition which seems quite hypocritical given that one of the major contributors to the national debt is the Bush tax cuts and the Ryan budget plan, which all House Republicans have voted for, adds a further $5.4 trillion to the debt even as Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling.

And secondly, Eric Cantor has no intention of taking any (negative) political hit for any deal that is finally reached. If Boehner doesn't give in, and the talks fail or whatever deficit-reduction plan that gets done has no credibility in the markets, then the onus is on the Speaker and the President. And if Boehner does gives in on taxes, will Cantor and the House Republicans fall loyally in line and vote for such a package?

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Pentagon activities

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

23 June 2011

The focus today is on President Obama's announcement about troop withdrawals from Afghanistan. So much so that it has over-shadowed the most bipartisan move in the Senate in this Administration – a rare 100-0 vote for Leon Panetta as the incoming defense secretary. This morning Panetta was reportedly visiting the Pentagon.

Perhaps he was admiring the almost completed refurbishment of the building – a huge process that has taken 17 years, beginning in 1994.

The Pentagon was built in a rush during World War II – total construction time was 16 months – at a cost of $83 million. It has floor space three times that of the Empire State Building, 17.5 miles of corridors, and houses a working population of round 24,000 employees, both military and civilian.  But its age was beginning to show. There were asphalt tiles on miles of corridors, wooden signs on the walls, and ancient fixtures in the restrooms. Before the Renovation Program began, none of the original major building systems- electrical, plumbing, heating and air-conditioning had ever been replaced or significantly upgraded. Constructed for an era of manual typewriters, the Pentagon needed to be entirely reconfigured to meet modern communications and technology demands.

Now that has changed with the slab-to-ceiling renovation. Section by section, nearly all of the building has been gutted and the interior has been rebuilt. The project cost is $4.5 billion.

The Sept. 11 plane attack, which occurred during the renovation, highlighted the need for special safety mechanisms. The plane struck a newly renovated section, which had blast-resistant windows, structural supports and fire sprinklers which saved lives.  After the attack, the renovation program began the Phoenix Project, a race to rebuild the destroyed portions of the building within one year. By the first anniversary, employees were back working in the offices where the plane struck.

You can read more about the Pentagon renovations and the problems encountered here.

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Rebukes for Republican candidates’ isolationist stands.

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

20 June 2011

Last Monday's New Hampshire GOP debate was mostly about beating up on President Obama. So keen in fact was the gang of seven to take on Obama that they were willing to miss opportunities to take on each other. Moreover, in their partisanship, they all dumped what would normally be considered Republican dogma – U.S. support for the fight against international terrorism and for freedom, both in Afghanistan and Libya.

However on the Sunday programs this week two senior Republicans – John McCain and Lindsey Graham – opened up strongly on this isolationist approach. McCain in particular, on ABC's This Week, spoke scathingly of all the candidates, but particularly Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney, wondering aloud what Ronald Reagan would think of their statements.

He went so far as to ask of the candidates and Members of Congress, "If this were a Republican president, would you be trying to impose these same conditions?" He went on to states, " This is isolationism. There's always been an isolation strain in the Republican Party, the Pat Buchanan wing of our party. But now it seems to have moved more center stage, so to speak. And what you're talking about is all the Republicans on the stage of that debate on Monday seeming to waver from what's a traditional Republican position on national security."

On NBC's Meet the Press Graham took much the same line, repeating his criticism of Mitt Romney and others in the Republican Party over their dovishness on Afghanistan, saying that he feared isolationist sentiments in the party. "If you think the pathway to the GOP nomination is to get to Barack Obama's left, you're going to meet a lot of headwinds," Graham said.

The shift in conservative foreign policy is driven in part by the rise of the tea party, which is more ambivalent toward an aggressive foreign policy because of the accompanying high cost. This shift has been noted by retiring Defense Secretary Gates who, on Fox News Sunday, acknowledged that the nation was war weary, but said that only examining the bottom line is short-sighted.

"But the president's responsibility—and I have seen this in his predecessors—his responsibility is to look out for the long-term national security interests of the United States," Gates said. "He has to have a longer view. And frankly, other than the first couple years of World War II, there has never been a popular war in American history."

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The President Tees off with Boehner

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

18 June 2011

This weekend, while the rest of the golf world will be transfixed by the U.S. Open which is being held at the Congressional Country Club in the Washington suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland, the real power players will be out on a different course in the nation's capital. On Saturday, House Speaker John Boehner, who has publicly bemoaned the fact that the President has never invited him to play golf, will finally get to face him on the golf greens. Obama has chosen Vice President Joe Biden as his partner, while the speaker is bringing along Ohio Governor and former House member, John Kasich. Kasich was chairman of the House Budget Committee during deficit negotiations with the Clinton White House.

Weeks of tense negotiations led by Biden have yielded little progress on raising the debt ceiling, but no-one really expects the 'Deficit Open' to deliver a deal. The White House is playing up the event as social, but doesn't deny that it could have political implications. But as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said: "I think I can say with great confidence that they will not wrap up the 18th hole and come out and say that we have a deal. It certainly can't hurt it, unless someone wins really big."

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The New Hampshire GOP debate

By Lesley Russell in Washington DC

16 June 2011

Read what Politico thought about the New Hampshire GOP debate. I can't add much to this except that I thought it was boring and predictable and full of one-liners with no substantive answers to how problems would be solved.  The Atlantic agreed.

Surprisingly, Fox News couldn't find much red eat in the debate. But if you can stand it, you can watch Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and others talking about the debate here.

Best of all, watch Jon Stewart grade the debate candidates here.

Now that Michele Bachmann has entered the fray - self-described as The Lady With 23 Foster Kids and The Candidate Who's Gonna Make Barack Obama A One-Term President – there are two important questions to be answered. Where is Sarah Palin – strangely silent as Bachmann moves out from her shadow? And how will this play on Saturday Night Live?

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