Summit Notebook

How do White House staff know when it’s time to leave?

It’s an age old question that even applies to senior staff working in the White House: At what point do you decide it’s time to quit your job and move on?

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs predicted at the Reuters Washington Summit that some people working in the White House will soon decide they want to go back to a less hectic life. Especially those who worked on President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign which lasted two grueling years.

“It’s a tremendous privilege to come and work in that building each and every day,” said Gibbs.

Gibbs said he told himself early on in the job, when he was driving to work on a dark and cold morning, that if he ever lost his awe of the White House it would be time to go.

“If you don’t really think and stop when you’re driving in and see that building and think ‘wow, this is where I work’ — if you ever drive in and that doesn’t happen that’s when you should give somebody else a chance to do it,” Gibbs said.

“My guess is that everybody that works in that building understands and believes that this is probably the most exciting job they’ll have in their lifetime. So while I think most people will stay, certainly some people will leave.”

One person is Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who is contemplating running for mayor of Chicago — which wouldn’t exactly be relaxing.

Shift in power on the horizon in Washington?

Republicans stand poised to gain substantial influence in Congress, putting at stake billions of dollars in investment as a shift among power brokers throws legislative initiatives old and new into doubt. Reuters Washington Summit will bring together an influential line-up of insiders just weeks before Americans cast their votes, promising a must-read stream of exclusive news on the outlook for Congress and President Barack Obama’s agenda. Editors and correspondents from the Reuters Washington bureau are sitting down with senior lawmakers, including GOP heavyweights in line for leadership, and regulators whose implementation of Wall Street and healthcare reform could be complicated by a change in control on Capitol Hill.

The Summit will generate exclusive stories, investable insights, online videos and blog postings, which will be immediately available only to Thomson Reuters clients during the Summit. Key interviews will air live exclusively on Reuters Insider – a new multimedia platform delivering relevant news, analysis and trade ideas presented through a personalized video experience. Visit http://etv.thomsonreuters.com/

ABA’s Yingling sees danger in rhetoric: it’s Wall Street, not banks

Ed Yingling, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, is a little worried about the rhetoric that’s been flying around as Congress tries to produce financial reform legislation.

And he wants people to be clear that the problems are with Wall Street, not banks.

Though, the differentiation gets a little tricky here because some of the largest banks in the country and biggest players on Wall Street are members of his organization and received taxpayer bailouts. The thousands of other banks that his trade association represents did not.

“The general tone has I think been harmful, particularly to the banks we represent,” Yingling said at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit 2010.

But at least one key person got it right — President Barack Obama in his speech on “Wall Street Reform” last week, Yingling said.

“He never used the term bank in any pejorative sense,” he said. “He used it in a factual sense.”

“It was clear that they realized that they need to differentiate between banks and Wall Street activities,” he said.

Pratt and Whitney’s Hess: corporate jets got bad rap

Pratt and Whitney President David Hess says corporate jets got a bad rap from Washington and the rhetoric hurt the industry.

Remember the furor over automakers arriving for congressional hearings late last year in corporate jets to ask for bailouts? And how President Barack Obama and his administration was publicly angry that Citigroup was purchasing a $50 million plane while receiving government funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Well all of the rhetoric hurt the corporate jet industry, Hess said in an interview at a Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit.

“Some of the criticism of the business jet industry was very unfortunate early this year. That’s a great industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.,” Hess said. Companies that make corporate jets have lost jobs and their suppliers have been affected like Pratt and Whitney Canada which is expected to see engine deliveries down about 20 percent this year, he said.

“I think there was a lot of rhetoric from the current administration that vilified the industry and people who use business jets which I think was very unfortunate,” he said.

It wasn’t just the political environment and the rhetoric, he acknowledged.

“Typically, business jet deliveries follow corporate profits. They track pretty closely. so clearly the industry would have suffered because of the economic downturn,” Hess said.

Lockheed CEO: “Not miffed” over Obama nixing presidential helicopter

President Barack Obama was quite blunt earlier this year about a  new fleet of presidential helicopters being built by Lockheed Martin Corp., citing it as an example of the procurement process “gone amok.”

And he axed the program, forcing the defense contractor to stop development of the helicopter in mid-air, so to speak.

But Lockheed Chief Executive Officer Robert Stevens says no hard feelings.

“I am not miffed at the president,” he said in an interview at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit.

“I think the responsibilities that accrue to the president of the United States are well beyond my own personal experience of the responsibilities that come across my desk,” he said.

“There are going to be changes of priorities, our job is to get alignment with our customers, understand what the emerging priorities will be,” Stevens said.

He rattled off a number of programs that are supported by the Obama administration such as tactical aircraft. Lockheed is also keen to participate in a “winner-take-all” competition in 2010 for a combat ship, he said.

Upstarts!

The U.S. government has pumped more than $100 billion into Detroit over the past year to keep automakers General Motors and Chrysler alive. But some of the sector’s remaining capitalists are having a hard time stomaching a $25 billion Department of Energy loan program intended to spark new developments in electric cars. 

Start-ups Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors have won about $1 billion in combined funding, while longtime players Ford and Nissan have received substantially larger loans from Washington to work on vehicle electrification — a technology the White House and many in the industry hope will reduce the United States’ dependence on imported oil and lower emissions of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas. 

Funneling federal money to new entrants to the automaking world does not sit right with Tim Leuliette, chief executive of parts supplier Dura Automotive. 

“If there’s a real market for electric vehicles, the OEMs will do it,” Leuliette said, using industry jargon for automakers. “We don’t need to have people who have never built a car in their life take $1 billion of our tax money and say ‘I can do it too.’” 

Government funding muddles market signals, Leuliette argued at the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit.

“When government writes a check, it says the smart money investors are hesitant to fund it,” Leuliette said. “When markets say it’s now wise enough … there’s more than enough money.” 

For his part, the founder of Fisker Automotive — which aims to build plug-in hybrid cars at a former GM plant in Wilmington, Delaware — said government funding is a logical way to kick start a technology that private U.S. companies have been slow to focus on. 

Senator McCain: Republicans in search of message to woo angry voters

The Republican Party is in search of a message to attract voters who are angry with just about everything — healthcare, the U.S. deficit, Wall Street bonuses, increased unemployment and home foreclosures to mention a few.

“There’s a lot of anger out there and there’s a lot of frustration,” said Republican Senator John McCain, who was defeated by Democrat Barack Obama for president last year.

Thousands of people are turning up at townhall meetings and “tea party” protests against government policies, he noted.

“So there’s something going on out there. And I’d love to sit here and tell you that we Republicans are attracting all of those unhappy people but we’re not, we’re not,” McCain said at a Reuters Washington Summit.

“They’re out there kind of in the middle and they haven’t found a home. And in fact they haven’t even channeled their anger yet,” he said.

Many have swung into the Independent category — “They’re leaving the Democrats but they’re not coming home to Republicans” — because of the deficit increases during the previous 8 years of a Republican (George W. Bush) White House, McCain said.

“So they are not finding a message from the Republican Party that resonates with them, and so I think we’re in one of the most interesting times politically in Amercia,” he said.

Senator Levin: partisanship has no place during war

A war of words over U.S. policy on Afghanistan is heating up between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill as they await President Barack Obama’s new strategy.

“This kind of partisanship in the middle of a war I find to be really out of place,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, said.

He was responding to House of Representatives Republican leader John Boehner’s statement that “the current political uncertainty should not be used as a pretext for the White House to back away from the counter-insurgency strategy the president announced in March.”

Levin, at the Reuters Washington Summit, said former Republican President George W. Bush took three months to decide on the troop surge in Iraq — “Nobody was saying that President Bush is jeopardizing anything by taking three months to deliberate on a new strategy.”

Levin said he agrees with much of what General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, says.

“One of the things he (McChrystal) says is the deliberative process is useful and healthy. So, I wish Boehner would listen to McChrystal,” Levin said.

For more news from the Reuters Washington Summit, click here.

Grassley grades Obama’s performance C to F

We asked Senator Charles Grassley to grade President Barack Obama’s performance (close your ears Sasha and Malia) and the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee was a bit of a tough schoolmaster.

“He’s still learning an awful lot,” Grassley said at a Reuters Washington Summit.

But Obama gets a D on foreign policy, a C on domestic policy, and an F on trade (ouch!)

We asked him to explain the grading.

“If you go to class, college, and you don’t do anything you get an F,” Grassley said on trade. He noted that Obama has put a 35 percent duty on tires from China, which the senator believed was not a good idea, but he would have been willing to overlook that if the president was pushing forward on trade agreements.

And why the D on foreign policy?

“He’s taken a month to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan,” Grassley said.

Washington divided, more trouble ahead for Obama?

Washington insiders say that not since the 1890′s have the people that represent the U.S. been so divided. From Gay rights to Afghanistan lawmakers are at polar opposites on issues that are on the Obama administration’s agenda. What’s next? And, what’s likely to get the green light or the stop sign?