The October employment report is in and it’s a shocker.

The unemployment rate jumped to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983 when it was also 10.2 pct. If you don’t want to do the math, that was 26 years ago. It was worse than expectations for 9.9 percent.

This is not good news for President Barack Obama who is struggling to pull the economy out of the worst recession since the Depression.

The employment numbers were also worse than expected with October payrolls falling 190,000, a bigger drop than the 175,000 decline expected.

It’s a day of mourning at Fort Hood in Texas after an Army psychiatrist went on a shooting rampage that killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounded 30.

“It’s difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil,” President Barack Obama said yesterday.

“I was saddened to learn of the tragic incident at Fort Hood. Laura and I are keeping the victims and their families in our thoughts and prayers during this difficult time,” former President George W. Bush, who lives in Texas, said in a statement.

Suspected gunman Major Nidal Malik Hasan was in stable condition but investigators had not yet been able to interrogate him, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Fort Hood commanding officer, said on NBC’s “Today” show.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Obama makes remarks about shooting at Fort Hood on Nov. 5)

Former President George W. Bush used to talk about the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” He was talking about education in the United States.

But these days, that phrase could easily refer to the U.S. government’s attitudes towards Afghanistan. Just look at the following phrases from American officials this year.

“We never promised Afghans a perfect democracy,” “Afghans have lower expectations in terms of security,” “we have to recognise Afghanistan will always remain a poor, conservative land with a low-level insurgency,” “our goal in Afghanistan is simply to prevent al Qaeda using its territory to attack us.”

All perfectly reasonable in many ways, but hardly a compelling manifesto to win Afghan hearts and minds.

The concern is that there has been such a concerted effort to lower the bar in Afghanistan this year, and to downplay what is achievable, that failure sometimes seems almost inevitable.

The United States convinced Hamid Karzai to agree to a run-off election, but failed to convince him to clean up the Election Commission that had perpetrated the fraudulent first round. That made more controversy almost inevitable.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs just declared Karzai the “legitimate leader of Afghanistan” and that the world could take heart that the laws of Afghanistan had prevailed.

Abdullah Abdullah and many Afghans would surely take issue with that bold statement. The laws of Afghanistan do not allow for elections to be rigged and for perpetrators to go unpunished.

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies argues that the Afghan decision is the “defining test” of Obama’s leadership.

“President Obama will have to take personal responsibility for the outcome of the war in Afghanistan, betting his historical reputation and second term on the outcome,” Cordesman said.

The United States, some experts argue, needs to show a clear and unwavering commitment to winning the war in Afghanistan — and demand a clear and unwavering commitment from the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the same goal.

Half-measures will never work. Weakness or a lack of commitment will embolden the worst elements of Karzai’s government, encourage the Pakistanis to keep playing both sides, and be exploited ruthlessly by the Taliban.

It isn’t just a question of how many troops are sent, but whether there is a coherent strategy that will leave Afghanistan standing on its own two feet.

If the war, as Obama once said, is one of “necessity,” then it is surely time for what Cordesman calls “real leadership.”

Much as the president likes to find a middle road, there simply does not seem to be one any more in the Hindu Kush.

What do you think is the best route for Obama to take through this potential minefield?

Photo credit: Reuters/Morteza Nikoubazl (Afghan man dances in celebration of Karzai’s victory),  Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Protest group Code Pink near White House on Halloween)

President Barack Obama fired back on Tuesday at conservative critics who say he has not accomplished enough in his first nine months in office.

He told them they should “grab a mop” to help him clean up the mess he inherited from Republican President George W. Bush.

Many Republican critics say the continued sluggishness in the economy and the rise in the unemployment rate to 9.8 percent were a sign that Obama policies on the economy were not effective.

But at a pair of Democratic fund-raisers in New York, the president emphasized the dire straits the economy was in when he took over from Bush.

“I don’t mind cleaning up the mess that some other folks made. That’s what I signed up to do,” Obama said. “But while I’m there mopping the floor, I don’t want somebody standing there saying, you’re not mopping fast enough or you’re not holding the mop the right way.”

For more Reuters political coverage click here.

Photo Credit:Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama at a Democratic party fundraiser in New York City)

Even before sunrise in Washington, tongues were wagging over the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s choice of President Barack Obama to receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. And the big question — aside from whether a first-term president in his ninth month in office has done enough to deserve the award — was, what was the committee thinking?

We know what they say they were thinking. Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “When we have a person whose ideals are so close to the ideals of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, we wanted to give whatever support we could to continued action in these fields.”

But if you read the official announcement, it sure sounds like it translates to: Obama isn’t George W. Bush.

There could be other considerations, of course. Perhaps the committee was still irked on Obama’s behalf about the public snub from Arizona State University, which invited the president to speak at commencement but didn’t give him an honorary degree because “his body of work is yet to come.” Obama joked about it when he gave the speech and the university eventually named a scholarship after him.

Or maybe they wanted to steal the thunder from NASA’s moon bomb project, which was ballyhooed by U.S. TV networks and shown live on the morning talk shows. If that’s the case, they needn’t have bothered. The NASA event was a bit of a damp squib, at least visually. If they find water at some point, that would be a different matter and the Nobel folks may have to consider the rocket scientists for a physics prize.

Was it a super-duper consolation prize for Obama, after his trip to Copenhagen last week failed to net the 2016 Olympic games for Chicago?

Possibly another factor was in play. If Obama goes to Oslo to collect his prize in December, it would be only a quick hop to Denmark, where international climate change talks are scheduled. The committee mentioned climate change in its citation. Were they hinting that he ought to go and put his stamp on these negotiations?

CORRECTS: Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is in Oslo not Stockholm.

No way to know at this point. But we can definitely ask: what do you think?

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (Obama at Arizona State University commencement, May 13, 2009)

REUTERS/Bob Strong (Nobel award ceremony in Stockholm, December 10, 2008)

Alberto Gonzales was probably one of the most controversial U.S. attorneys general in history and left in a swirl of controversy about fired federal prosecutors and his role in authorizing harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects.

After keeping a relatively a low profile since resigning in the summer of 2007, he has now begun his stint as a visiting professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he will teach a course entitled “Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch” that will encompass crafting legislation and shepherding a Supreme Court nominee through the Senate

He sat down with Texas Lawyer for one of the most wide-ranging interviews he has given since leaving office in which he offers insights into many of the controversies.

On the issue of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush Justice Department — which are in the spotlight now as the new Obama administration is examining whether they broke the law — Gonzales said it was natural that such guidance is revised over time.

“What the lawyers tried to do (during the Bush years) was to define, to give boundaries to what the statute allowed,” Gonzales said. “When I was in the administration I encouraged lawyers to continually look at our legal position and to get comfortable if we were in fact on solid ground. And if people wanted to continue to revise, I think that was the appropriate role for lawyers.”

As White House counsel, Gonzales made a controversial visit to the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to push for approval of a secret surveillance program. Gonzales said he would discuss the incident in greater detail in his forthcoming book but that he went at President George W. Bush’s behest.

“The reason we went to General Ashcroft is because he is the one who had been approving this program and these activities for a number of years. And he had been the Senate-confirmed attorney general, and as far as the president was concerned, that’s the person he wanted us to talk to,” Gonzales said.

However, at the time, the deputy attorney general, James Comey, was in charge (and he was also confirmed by the U.S. Senate) while Ashcroft recovered from surgery.

Gonzales in the interview also again strenuously defended his role in the firing of several federal prosecutors and said he had been cleared of wrongdoing by the inspector general.

One final interesting tidbit from the interview is a rather stark contrast between Gonzales and Vice President Dick Cheney over who is chief U.S. law enforcement officer.

In a Fox News interview on Sunday, while discussing the Obama administration’s decision to appoint a special prosecutor to examine whether there was any wrongdoing in the harsh interrogations, Cheney said the president is the chief law enforcement officer in the administration. But Gonzales said the attorney general holds that title and must fulfill that obligation.

The Justice Department’s website offers the historical support for Gonzales’ position, here.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

Teacher, author and now television correspondent.

Not a bad resume for a former first daughter .

Former President George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna Hager, a Baltimore teacher, is joining NBC’s “Today” crew as a correspondent, the show’s executive producer Jim Bell told AP on Sunday.

Hager, 27, will work out of NBC’s Washington bureau, but she won’t be covering politics. Nor does she intend to talk about her eight years under public scrutiny known mostly as one of the Bush Twins.

“I hope to focus on what I’m passionate about because I think I’d do the best job on them — education, urban education, women and children’s issues and literacy,” Hager said.

Being a television correspondent wasn’t something she’d always dreamed of doing, but Hager told AP she was intrigued by the idea when Bell came calling.

“I think one of the most important things in life is to be open-minded and to be open-minded for change.”

But it’s a part-time gig for now, Bell says. Hager intends to keep working at her school.

For more Reuters political news click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Jenna and husband Henry Hager on White House South Lawn, Sept. 27, 2008)

The nation’s first Homeland Security secretary is airing some dirty laundry from the Bush administration: He says he was pushed to raise the terror alert level on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.

The level was never raised but Tom Ridge reveals how threats of terrorism were used to influence voters in his upcoming book ”The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege … and How We Can Be Safe Again”.

According to the promotion material released by the book’s publisher, Ridge said the DHS was pressured to connect homeland security to the international “war on terror”. He also said he effectively thwarted a plan to raise the alert level before the 2004 election, which Bush won.

Several other Bush administration officials disagree with Ridge’s characterization. Former Homeland Security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend called it “way off base”. She said there was a debate about raising the alert level at that time but politics were never discussed at that meeting.

Politico quotes former White House chief of staff Andy Card saying the Bush administration was very disciplined in its efforts to make sure politics did not influence national security decisions.

So were politics involved? What do you think?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Segar (Ridge addresses 2008 Republican National Convention)

How would you spend the dog days of summer, if you were a former vice president? If you were Dick Cheney, you would be ensconced in your new office above the garage in McLean, Virginia (just down the road from the CIA!), writing your memoir of the administration of George W. Bush. But would you tell all?

The Washington Post indicates Cheney might. In a front-page story that was one of the paper’s most-viewed online, unnamed sources say the former veep was frustrated with Bush, especially in the second term.

When Cheney was asked at an informal meeting to discuss his memoirs if he had any regrets, one meeting participant told the Post: “(Cheney) said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took … The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”

If Cheney does open up about his problems with Bush and others in that administration, that would be unusual. Cheney himself has shown public disapproval of those who leave office and then write about what went on behind the scenes. As former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the Post, “If he goes out and writes a memoir that spills beans about what took place behind closed doors, that would be out of character.”

Since he left office, Cheney has been one of Obama’s most vocal critics, taking aim especially at the current president’s opposition to harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. He is also at the heart of a planned House of Representatives investigation into the concealment of a secret CIA program from Congress. One senator said the program was hidden on orders from Cheney; Republicans see a partisan attack.

Throughout his career, Cheney has remained largely silent on the inner workings of government and policy, but that could be at an end when his memoir comes out. According to the Post, Cheney has said “the statute of limitations has expired” on many of his secrets.

What do you think: should Cheney tell all, and let the chips fall where they may? Or would that be unseemly, impolitic and dangerous?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Larry Downing (Washington, November 6, 2008)

President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser on Thursday offered a pointed critique of several of former President George W. Bush’s catch phrases on terrorism.

Veteran spy John Brennan, once in line to head the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama and apparently no great fan of the Bush White House, gave a lengthy speech outlining Obama’s strategy for fighting terrorism which attempts to go beyond, using military might to include economic and social policies.

Brennan criticized Bush’s moniker “global war on terror” as playing into the “warped narrative that al Qaeda propagates.” He added that it “plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the U.S. is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world.”

He also had choice words for Bush regularly describing the terrorism battle as one against “jihadists,” saying that the term has a legitimate use (purifying oneself or waging a holy struggle for a moral goal) and using it “risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

Officials from the Obama and Bush administrations have been trading volleys for months about each other’s policies, though for the most part the two presidents have stayed above the fray.

One other phrase that Bush used two months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington was about countries being involved in or distancing themselves from the coalition that went into Afghanistan.

“Over time it’s going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity, that you — either with us or you’re against us in the fight against terror,” Bush said during a news availability with then French President Jacques Chirac.

That drew another rebuke from Brennan, who said that the Obama administration was reaching out instead of issuing sweeping warnings.

“Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism—whether they are with us or against us—the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas,” he said.

Brennan did acknowledge that it was eight years ago this very day that he was reading intelligence that warned Osama bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States, “but our government was unable to prevent the worst terrorist attack in American history that would occur on 9/11.”

For more Reuters political news, click here.

- Photo credit: Jonathan Ernst (Brennan walks outside the White House earlier this year)

It's one thing they can agree on... baseball. 

Major League Baseball is bringing all five living U.S. presidents together at next week's 80th All-Star Game.

President Barack Obama and his predecessors George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter will appear in a 7-minute video presentation as part of the U.S. sports league's all-star festivities on Tuesday in St. Louis. Baseball called it the first time all living U.S. presidents would participate in a ceremony at a sporting event.

The video address will be part of a pre-game ceremony honoring 30 men and women being recognized by MLB and People magazine for acts of giving and service to their communities. Each person represents one of the sport's 30 teams.

President Obama will follow the video presentation by thorwing out the ceremonial first pitch for the game.

Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Bush hosted meeting at White House for all presidents after  Obama became president-elect)