Tales from the Trail

So far, the U.S. Senate has spent six days debating New START — the strategic nuclear arms limitation treaty with Russia. Not so long, you say? Democrats are rushing it through? Well consider this, Congress has already spent longer on this agreement than it did on START I almost two decades ago — and the original is a much more complex treaty.

It is not just President Barack Obama and the Democrats who support this treaty. Former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, supports it. So does Republican Condoleezza Rice and every other former secretary of state who is still alive. And the military? Well those folks really support it, just ask the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the uniformed officers in charge of nuclear security.

So what’s the problem?

“The American people don’t want us to squeeze our most important work into the final days of a session,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell argued. Republicans, it seems, think Obama and the Democrats just want to notch one last victory before Republicans take the House in January.

Russia’s foreign minister warned U.S. senators not to make changes to the treaty during debate because it might not just delay the deal, it could kill it altogether. Not exactly the Christmas present Obama was hoping for in 2010.

Here are our top stories from Washington today…

Arms treaty debate increasingly testy in Senate

Debate in the Senate over President Obama’s strategic nuclear arms treaty with Russia grew increasingly testy, but the White House expressed confidence lawmakers would approve the accord before their break. Republican senators pushed for a series of amendments in an effort to kill the New START treaty by forcing a renegotiation. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned that any amendment would be a deal-breaker.

We were all primed for the release of the Treasury’s global currency report this afternoon, which would have included a ruling on whether China was a currency manipulator. But a decision was taken to delay the report until after the Group of 20 summit in Seoul in mid-November.

Pressure from lawmakers and business had been mounting on President Barack Obama to act, but the delay shouldn’t come as a big surprise. After all, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress last month he wanted to rally the G20 around the issue and take a multilateral approach. Perhaps more importantly, the administration is conveniently ducking the issue until after the Nov. 2 congressional elections.

Some Democrats, who have made China’s currency practices an issue in their campaigns, are disappointed today. Our Breakingviews columnist James Pethokoukis says Obama should be given credit for resisting populist pressures for the second time this week, after also declining to heed appeals to impose a national moratorium on home foreclosures.

Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state to former President George W. Bush, returns to the White House this afternoon for a chat with the man who succeeded her boss, President Barack Obama.

It’s not totally unheard of for presidents to chat with predecessors’ Cabinet members. And the one-on-one in the Oval Office is probably just a show of respect for a former U.S. foreign policy leader.

But the private meeting was at least worth raising even  half an eyebrow, although observers didn’t quite know what to make of it. (Obama does like to cast a wide net for advice on foreign policy, economics and other issues).

WASHINGTON – The word of the day at the White House was winsome.

Not as in ‘you win some, you lose some,’ but just plain winsome as a description of President George W. Bush’s mood five days before he relinquishes the presidency to Barack Obama.

“He’s not tired.  He just has a ton of energy,” Ed Gillespie, counsellor to Bush, told reporters. “I would say that he’s gotten a little more winsome.”

That raised the question of whether Gillespie had actually meant wistful since the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of winsome is: “generally pleasing and engaging often because of a childlike charm and innocence” or cheerful, lighthearted.

Don’t look for Condoleezza Rice to get all sentimental about waving goodbye to Washington after the Bush administration leaves office on Jan. 20.

It’s no secret that the Secretary of State plans to go back to California. But will she miss life in the U.S. capital?

“No,” Rice said, laughing, in a CNN interview.

She has been a top adviser to President George W. Bush for eight years — first as national security adviser before moving to the State Department in 2005.

Tis the season to be, er, generous with taxpayers’ money.

The White House and Democrats in Congress are busy putting the finishing touches to a whopping $15 billion Christmas present for the U.S. auto industry. The two sides have been haggling for several days over the terms of the bailout to rescue the “Big Three” Detroit car manufacturers but are now reported to be close to agreement.

 House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi told NBC’s “Today” breakfast television show that if Congress approved the agreement a “car czar” charged with restructuring the industry could be appointed as soon as this week. She said she favored former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker for the post although he may already have his hands full — President-elect Barack Obama has named him as his senior adviser on jolting the economy out of recession.

 Obama has been critical of the Bush administration’s efforts to tackle the mortgage foreclosure crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of Americans lose their homes. The issue will be under the spotlight at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT), when the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee holds a hearing on the role of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the financial crisis.

George W. Bush heads to Peru this morning for his last scheduled trip abroad as U.S. president. Accompanied by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he will attend an Asia-Pacific summit in Lima, Peru, where he will seek support for global financial reforms.

The 21-nation APEC grouping accounts for nearly half the world’s trade. U.S. officials have rejected characterization of the visit as a swan song for a lame-duck president with record low approval ratings.

Back in a chilly Washington D.C., the country’s attorney general, Michael Mukasey, 67, was reported to be resting comfortably in hospital after collapsing while delivering a speech at a hotel in the capital.
Video showed Mukasey slurring his words about 15 minutes into his speech and then slumping forward onto the podium before members of his FBI security detail rushed to his side. The cause of his collapse has not been made public.

CRAWFORD, Texas – Condoleezza Rice, ever the sharp diplomat, found some nice — and some would even say effusive — comments about the man who was just picked to be the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket for the November election.
 
Rice, a Republican who plans to back John McCain, offered the kind words about Sen. Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as she traveled again to the Middle East to try to broker peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

“I am not going to comment on the politics of it. I’ll just say that Sen. Biden is obviously a very fine statesman,” she told reporters aboard her plane as she flew to Israel.
 
“I’ve known him for a long time. He’s been a really very supportive committee chair for — and before that, ranking member for the State Department and for our diplomatic efforts,” she said. “And so he’s a — you know, he’s a true, true patriot.”
 
The White House was a bit more circumspect. Spokesman Tony Fratto said that it was an honor for anyone to be a presidential or vice presidential nominee but that was really about as far as he went.
 
“It’s a great honor for anyone who has that opportunity to run in a national election like that, to aspire to represent the country; and so a very personal thing for him and his family,” Fratto told reporters in Crawford, Texas. “Obviously, we’re — we would be happy for him.”
 
Asked about Rice’s proclamation that Biden was a “great stateman” and “true patriot”, Fratto replied that, “He’s done tremendous work over a long period, and I know he has been supportive of Secretary Rice’s State Department.”  

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Ho New (Rice arrives in Tel Aviv.)