AP promoted me to the White House beat because I knew Clinton, his family, friends, and staff better than anybody in the national press corps. Those contacts helped me break a few stories and get my career in Washington jump-started. Ron Fournier Read Quote
Don’t kid yourself. President Obama’s decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States’ ‘position of strength’ in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home. Ron Fournier Read Quote
At his best, Obama promised to work with Republicans to reduce the deficit in a way that honors both individualism and community. Ron Fournier Read Quote
The question is whether voters, particularly independents, believe that Obama truly values personal liberty and responsibility as much as the government-bought safety net. Ron Fournier Read Quote
President Obama is casting his lot in the middle of a debate as old as America itself: Are we rugged individualists pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps? Or are we a nation of community, all connected and counting on one another? Ron Fournier Read Quote
Obama does not need to worry as much as past Democratic presidents about being labeled soft on national security – not after giving the order that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. No, his biggest concern is being labeled tone deaf on joblessness and debt. Ron Fournier Read Quote
Barack Obama won a second term but no mandate. Thanks in part to his own small-bore and brutish campaign, victory guarantees the president nothing more than the headache of building consensus in a gridlocked capital on behalf of a polarized public. Ron Fournier Read Quote
Obama is capable – as evidenced by his first-term success with health care reform. But mandate-building requires humility, a trait not easily associated with him. Ron Fournier Read Quote
Andrew Jackson was the first president to claim that the desires of the public overrode Congress’s constitutional prerogatives. Virtually every president since Jackson has claimed the mantle, even while lacking two ingredients of an electoral mandate: a landslide victory and a specific agenda. Ron Fournier Read Quote
A concrete agenda and landslide victory might not even guarantee a president his mandate in a capital as polarized as Washington. Ron Fournier Read Quote
