President Obama makes no small plans. One day after announcing the biggest budget deficit since World War Two, Obama flies to a Marine base in North Carolina to announce a withdrawal timetable for troops in Iraq.

Obama envisions an end to combat operations by August 2010, though a force of around 50,000 will remain. That’s too many for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Democrat, but former Republican presidential rival John McCain thinks it’s about right.

The Iraq news should provide a welcome change of focus from the economy, which continues to be terrible. Government data showed the U.S. economy contracted more sharply than estimated in the fourth quarter, with gross domestic product falling at an annual rate of 6.2 percent. The Treasury Department has said it will convert its $25 billion stake in Citigroup to regular shares, giving it 36 percent ownership of the troubled banking giant. Citi’s shares are down 19 percent in premarket trading.

What about the other troubled banking giant? Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis flew to New York yesterday so state attorney general Andrew Cuomo could press him to release a list of employees who got bonuses in 2008. Lewis said he cooperated, but the AG’s office said otherwise.

How did Lewis get to the meeting? He flew in a $50 million private jet, according to ABC News.

One bit of good news: it’s almost the weekend.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mohammed Ameen (U.S. forces in Baghdad, Feb. 20)

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For Detroit’s struggling automakers, the wait continues.

There will be no word on the fate of the struggling industry’s financial bailout at least until President George W. Bush is safely home later on Monday after ducking shoes in Iraq and visiting U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the White House says.
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Most analysts and observers are expecting White House action soon to help the carmakers after the Senate’s failure last week to approve a $14 billion bailout that could avert catastrophic failures and millions of job losses in a recession-wracked economy.

But White House spokesman Dana Perino said there was no timetable for a decision.

The future of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich also hangs in the balance. He remains in office but largely out of sight nearly a week after being charged with putting President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat up for sale.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said Sunday she heard there was a possibility he would step aside on Monday, but Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero said there would be no resignation.

One thing is certain: Obama will hold a news conference at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) to name members of his energy and environmental team, and he will face more questions about who on his staff might have talked to Blagojevich about the U.S. Senate seat.

Obama is expected to name Nobel physics laureate Steven Chu as energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner to head a new council to coordinate White House energy, climate and environment policies.

Obama is also expected to name Lisa Jackson, chief of staff for New Jersey’s governor, to run the EPA, and Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, as head of the White House Council on environmental quality.

Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado, who once practiced as an environmental lawyer, is a leading contender for secretary of the interior.

Meanwhile, Reuters and Politico, the Washington political newspaper, have done a deal to distribute each other’s political, government and business news to subscribers in the United States and worldwide

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Photo credit: Reuters/Ali Jarekji (Saudi men read about shoe attack on Bush in Iraq)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is leading a double life these days.
 
Maybe that’s not so tough for a former spymaster but it does make for some awkward moments.
 
As the only member of President George W. Bush’s Cabinet asked to stay on under Barack Obama, Gates has to juggle working for the current White House and preparing for the next administration with the president-elect’s transition team.
 
“There’s only one commander-in-chief at a time and so I’m not forgetting at all, for a second, who is the president until noon on Jan. 20,” the former CIA director stressed to reporters on board his plane as he flew to Afghanistan this week.
 
But Gates admitted his dual role did “create some occasional awkwardnesses.”
 
Sometimes, he recounted, he has to say: “I would love to come to this meeting at the White House but I actually have a meeting with the transition.”
 
Gates made clear he had never missed a meeting with Bush.
 
But he added: “Let’s just say that if I’m faced with a choice between attending a principals’ meeting on an issue that I think is not particularly hot and meeting with the transition folks, I’ll opt for the latter.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Pool (Gates shakes hands with U.S. Air Force officials at a base in Kyrgyzstan on Dec. 11)

NEW YORK - President George W. Bush in 2003 landed aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on a Navy jet where he delivered a speech saying major combat operations in Iraq had ended with a “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, which later caused his administration headaches as the war dragged on.

On Tuesday, Bush landed on another aircraft carrier but this time was on much safer political ground. He landed on the Intrepid, a carrier that has been transformed into a museum which Bush helped re-dedicate as part of his last Veteran’s Day speech as commander-in-chief.

“Not only do we honor those who have worn the uniform, those who are wearing the uniform, we honor their families, and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts,” Bush said. ”We have a moral obligation to support our families, and we have a moral obligation to support our veterans. It has been my privilege to work with members of the United States Congress to nearly double the funding for those who have worn the uniform.”

His landing was not without incident however. 

As the Marine One helicopter carrying Bush landed on the flight deck, the wind from the rotors blew a Bell AH-1J Sea Cobra helicopter on display into another aircraft sitting next to it — and right by several reporters, photographers and camera crews awaiting his arrival. No one was hurt.

And the re-dedication did not exactly go off as planned either.  The champagne bottle to christen the ship failed to break as it was released by First Lady Laura Bush and Sally Hoover Casale, the granddaughter of the woman who christened the ship in 1943.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Young (Marine One lands on the Intrepid in New York)

WASHINGTON - Republican White House hopeful John McCain tried to use a bracelet of a fallen U.S. soldier given on the campaign trail to drive home his point that he would not withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq based on an arbitrary timeline.

The mother of a soldier gave him a bracelet and asked him to promise “that you will do everything in your power to make sure my son’s death was not in vain,” McCain said in the first presidential debate, contrasting his views with Democratic rival Barack Obama, who has said he would withdraw forces within 16 months.

Obama shot back that he too had a bracelet from the mother of a soldier who asked that no other mother endure the loss she was experiencing.

“She asked me ‘can you please make sure that another mother is not going through what I’m going through,’” Obama said. “No U.S. soldier ever dies in vain because they are carrying out the missions of their commander in chief.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Jim Bourg (McCain and Obama gesture during presidential debate)

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said on Wednesday she would be ready to deal with foreign policy if she and John McCain win the White House and offered to play “stump the candidate” to test herself on specific policy issues.

In their first joint “town hall meeting” with Palin taking questions from voters, an audience member asked Palin to dispel concerns that she lacked foreign policy experience. She responded by saying she expected critics to look for things to attack. “I think because I’m a Washington outsider that opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize,” she said.

“As for foreign policy, you know, I think that I am prepared and I know that on Jan. 20, if we are so blessed as to be sworn into office as your president and vice president, certainly we’ll be ready,” Palin said.

“I’ll be ready, I have that confidence,” she said. “If you want specifics with specific policy or countries, go ahead and you can ask me, you can even play ’stump the candidate’ if you want to, but we are ready to serve.”

The crowd applauded and McCain stepped in to highlight Palin’s experience dealing with energy issues in Alaska, command of the Alaska National Guard, and her son’s deployment to Iraq.

“I think she understands national security challenges and we’ve had many conversations, and I … am convinced she understands the challenges this nation faces,” McCain said. 

About an hour had passed at that point — roughly the time allotted for the campaign event — and McCain opted not to take any more questions. Neither did Palin, who made closing remarks after the Arizona senator had concluded.

“Stump the candidate” would have to wait for another time.

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Aaron Josefczyk

 BERLIN - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama dropped a plan to visit wounded U.S. troops in Germany to avoid perceptions that the stop was political.

“Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, an adviser to Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Gration said the Pentagon had informed Obama’s staff that a visit to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center would be viewed as a a campaign event and Obama opted against going forward with it.

“Senator Obama did not want to have a trip to see our wounded warriors perceived as a campaign event,” Gration said.

The visit to Landstuhl had not been officially announced but Obama’s campaign acknowledged it had been planned after Republicans criticized Obama for canceling the visit.

Senior Obama aide Robert Gibbs noted that the Illinois senator had visited troops during the earlier part of his foreign tour in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a stop at a combat support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad.

“The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign,” Gibbs said.

The campaign of Republican John McCain, Obama’s rival in the November election, criticized the statement from Gibbs.

“It is never inappropriate to visit and comfort our brave men and women who have served in combat,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz (Barack Obama waves to crowd as he leaves hotel in Berlin)

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama drags with him a gaggle of reporters (wire services, newspaper, radio and television) wherever he goes, but when he heads overseas soon, he will have some television news stars accompanying him.

All three broadcast television network anchors, ABC’s Charlie Gibson, CBS’s Katie Couric and NBC’s Brian Williams, are negotiating to tag along, and according to the Washington Post they could each have an exclusive interview in different countries.

Obama is expected to travel through Europe (there has already been a kerfuffle about where he speaks in Berlin) and the Middle East, and he is also expected to make stops in Iraq and Afghanistan to see firsthand the status of the wars. He has been an outspoken critic of the conflicts, arguing the Bush administration took its eye off al Qaeda in Afghanistan to go to war with Iraq.

The interesting contrast the Washington Post and New York Times make about Obama’s trip is that when his rival, Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, went to London, France and the Middle East no television network anchors joined the trek.

But there are risks associated with having high-profile anchors and bright television spotlights along for the ride — if Obama makes a gaffe, it has the potential to lead the nightly newscasts and give McCain an opening to attack. 

One need only look at McCain’s March trip when got tangled up in Amman, Jordan, where he mistakenly accused Iran of backing the Sunni extremist group al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes it is Shi’ite militants that Iran is backing and Democrats jumped all over him. 

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- Photo credit: Jim Young (Williams with Obama in May after an interview); Molly Riley (Couric before an interview in 2007)

WASHINGTON — Republican candidate John McCain touts his independence from President George W. Bush and his plan to fight global warming in a new TV ad.

Two liberal groups, meanwhile, are slamming McCain’s support for the Iraq war in an ad of their own.

McCain’s ad, highlighting an issue important to many independent voters, will run on local TV in 11 battleground states, as well as national cable channels like Fox News and CNN. An aide said the ad buy would be “substantial,” but declined to provide a figure.

“John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming,” the ad’s narrator says.

It’s the second national TV ad for McCain.

Some of those same viewers might see this ad by MoveOn.org and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. An actress portraying a mother holds up her child and asks McCain: “When you said you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”

The two groups say they plan to spend $540,000 to air the ad in three battleground states — Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin — and nationally on cable.

What about Obama? His campaign isn’t buying any national TV ads yet, though they were sitting on a much larger pile of cash at the end of April ($47 million vs. McCain’s $22 million, according to the latest FEC filings).

Colin Powell was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s supporting the presidential bid of fellow Republican John McCain.

“I’m looking at all three candidates, I know them all very, very well, I consider myself a friend of each and every one of them, and I have not decided who I will vote for yet,” Powell said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Powell, like McCain, is a military veteran who publicly supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and he served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the first Gulf War in 1991.

But while McCain wants a continued U.S. military presence there, Powell said the armed forces will simply be unable to maintain 140,000 troops in Iraq beyond next year.

Whoever is president next year, “they will face a military force, a United States military force, that cannot sustain, continue to sustain, 140,000 people deployed in Iraq,” Powell said. “They will have to continue to draw down at some pace.”

Powell said he was impressed with fellow African-American Barack Obama, despite the Democratic Illinois senator’s relative lack of experience.

“Sen. Obama, he didn’t have a lot of experience in running a presidential campaign, did he, but he seems to know how to organize a task and he seems to know how to apply resources to a problem at hand,” Powell said.

“So that gives you some indication that (despite) his inexperience in foreign affairs and domestic affairs, he may be somebody who can learn quickly.”

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Photo credit: REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won (Powell speaks at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul October 17, 2007)