Tales from the Trail

Did President Barack Obama step on his own healthcare message last night?

Morning TV shows led with his comments about  black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates who was arrested after trying to get into his own home.

Obama said police acted “stupidly,” a comment likely to lose him some friends in law enforcement, and that the incident was a reminder the race issue “still haunts us.”

It was a brand new comment from the president on a hot-button issue: race relations in America.

So how could the healthcare comments, which dominated the nearly hour-long news conference, compete? They ended up playing second fiddle because it was the same pitch heard over and over recently.

Next week will be crunchtime to see if Congress will give the new president a feather for his cap by voting on healthcare legislation before the August recess.

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush may be deeply unpopular at home and reviled abroad but in some places people, apparently, are sorry to see him go.

The BBC reports  that Dubya has approval ratings of around 80 percent in Africa where his administration increased aid funding and raised the alarm over the Darfur crisis. In fact, children born in the Sudanese region are routinely named George Bush, the BBC reports. And in Kosovo a main street was named after him to thank him for supporting Kosovo’s independence.

Israelis will miss Bush too. Bush has been a staunch supporter of Israel and some analysts believe Israel’s current offensive in Gaza was timed to coincide with the final days of his administration because the Jewish state knew it could count on his support. ”Israel is probably the only place on earth where Bush can still get a standing ovation,” Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution told the BBC.

WASHINGTON – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and his defeated Republican rival, John McCain, are engaged in somewhat of a rematch. The two are trying to help their respective parties win a razor-close U.S. Senate race in Georgia. 

McCain has accepted an invitation to attend a rally in Atlanta on Thursday for Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, while Obama aides are being dispatched to the state to provide a hand to Democratic challenger Jim Martin, a former state senator.

A Dec. 2 runoff is being held because neither Chambliss nor Martin obtained the majority required under state law in the Nov. 4 election to be declared the winner.

LYNCHBURG, Virginia – Democrat Barack Obama scolded Russia again on Wednesday for invading another country’s sovereign territory while adding a new twist: the United States, he said, should set a better example on that front, too.

The Illinois senator’s opposition to the Iraq war, which his comment clearly referenced, is well known. But this was the first time the Democratic presidential candidate has made a comparison between the U.S. invasion of Iraq and Russia’s recent military activity in Georgia.

“We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies,” Obama told a crowd of supporters in Virginia. “They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.”

WASHINGTON – What does it mean to be Georgian? To President Mikheil Saakashvili, who is looking toward the United States for help in his battle with Russia, it is more than just words.“Yesterday I heard Sen. (John) McCain say we are all Georgians. Well very nice … but of course it’s time to pass from words to deeds,” Saakashvili said in an interview with CNN.

The Republican presidential candidate in a strongly worded statement against Russia’s military operations in Georgia on Tuesday said the United States and its allies “must stand united” in trying to persuade Russia to withdraw its troops from Georgia.

McCain told reporters after he spoke by telephone with Saakashvili that the Georgian president knew that the “brave little nation” had the thoughts and prayers of Americans.

TEANECK, N.J. – Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Lieberman slammed Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday over the Russian invasion of Georgia and said that the Democrat still wasn’t experienced enough for the White House.
“We’ve got a real clear choice to make. And I say it respectfully to Sen. Obama because he’s a gifted young man. But he’s not ready to be president on Jan. 20th of 2009,” Lieberman, of Connecticut, told a fund raising event for Republican hopeful John McCain.

“As the Russians move into Georgia as aggressors, and if you read the statements from the beginning, from Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama, one had a kind of moral neutrality to it that comes I think from inexperience.

“The other’s — Sen. McCain’s — was strong and clear and principled and put America where America always want to be, on the side of freedom,” he said while introducing McCain.