Tales from the Trail

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it clear she’s upset — “ticked off” — that her private criticism of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs leaked out.

That’s the word from one of Pelosi’s fellow Democrats who attended another closed-door meeting with her on Thursday, two days after her now well-publicized complaints about President Barack Obama’s chief spokesman.

“She said these meetings should be an opportunity for us to speak candidly with each other,” said the Democrat, asking not to be identified by name. “She was ticked off it leaked out.”

At a meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday, Pelosi ripped into Gibbs for saying Democrats may lose control of the chamber to Republicans in the November election. “There’s no doubt about that,” Gibbs told NBC on Sunday.

Pelosi was quoted as calling Gibbs’ remarks “very damaging,” suggesting they could hurt fundraising and urging Democrats not to be distracted by this “friendly fire.”

In the latest twist in the Obama-Clinton family drama, the current president has enlisted the past president to help shore up sagging confidence in his economic leadership and repair his tattered relationship with business. 

Barack Obama has asked Clinton to come to his meeting with business leaders today to discuss job creation and investment. That is a day after he also enlisted the help of long-time Clintonista Jack Lew to be his budget director after he presided over surpluses during Bill’s tenure.

It is quite a transformation in the Obama-Clinton relationship, from bitter foe with a dash of alpha male rivalry during the primaries (when the other Clinton was running for president), to rock solid partners in the Democratic cause.

After Spain’s victory in the World Cup, LeBron James’ move to the Miami Heat and his own golf outing on Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama clearly has sports on the brain.

As he introduced Jacob Lew as his nominee to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, Obama sprinkled his remarks with allusions to sports.

“If there was a Hall of Fame for budget directors, then Jack Lew surely would have earned a place for his service in that role under President Clinton, when he helped balance the federal budget after years of deficits,” Obama said.

What do presidents dream of when living at the White House?

For President Barack Obama it’s the simple things in life that he misses.

“Taking walks. There is a value to anonymity in terms of just being able to wander around, sit on a park bench, take your kids to get ice cream without having Secret Service and helicopters over you,” Obama said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 television.

“That part of this life I’ll never get used to,” he said.

“In fact, I remember when I first visited Jerusalem, I could wander through the Old City and haggle for some gifts to bring back to Michelle, or stand at the Wailing Wall, and people didn’t know who I was.”

U.S. Independence Day was an “all-service” holiday at the White House this year as President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama welcomed about 1,200 people — men and women from all of the branches of the U.S. military and family members.

“This is the day when we celebrate the very essence of America and the spirit that has defined us as a people and as a nation for more than two centuries,” Obama said in a greeting from a White House balcony draped in red, white and blue bunting.

Obama said was that he couldn’t think of a better way to spend the Fourth of July than with men and women in uniform. But he said he was glad to see most weren’t in uniform, given the stifling heat. But he pointed to one service member on the balcony who was decked out in a black suit because his grandmother insisted he dress up.

Obama gave a shout-out to an individual member of each branch of the services, including a soldier who did 150 missions in Iraq after being seriously wounded. The U.S. Marine Band provided the music (patriotic favorites, according to the White House pool report).

After feasting on hot dogs, burgers and other barbeque, the White House guests had some of the best seats in the city for a spectacular fireworks display that capped Washington’s Fourth of July celebration.

President Barack Obama suggested to visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that it might be time to toss out the red phone from Cold War days and open new lines of communication between the United States and Russia — Twitter.

(Although Obama may want to get the terminology down first, it’s Twitter not Twitters).

Obama cracked the joke at a news conference at the White House with Medvedev, who earlier this week visited technology firms in California and stopped at Twitter offices where he sent his first tweet.

The sound of palms slapping foreheads could be heard all over Washington, the physical exclamation of ”what were they thinking?”

The spectacularly frank quotes from General Stanley McChrystal and his aides mocking Vice President Joe Biden and other top advisers to the president and commander-in-chief were jaw-dropping, not because that’s what they really thought, but because the views were uttered to a reporter working on a profile for Rolling Stone magazine.

Right from the first headline of the article titled “The Runaway General” it was apparent what was to come: “Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

BP CEO Tony Hayward takes time off to watch his yacht race in British waters, President Barack Obama goes golfing over the Father’s Day weekend.

Is that acceptable when the BP oil spill, the worst in U.S. history and a huge environmental disaster, is entering a third month in the Gulf of Mexico?

Well, depends on who you talk to.

The White House on Monday made a cutting remark about Hayward’s yacht trip: “Look, if Tony Hayward wants to put a skimmer on that yacht and bring it down to the Gulf, we’d be happy to have his help,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said at the daily media briefing. 

President Barack Obama, in his first formal press conference  in almost a year (since July), answered questions about his handling of the oil spill.

There was the one about Katrina comparisons. (Slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina turned into an albatross for former President George W. Bush).

“I’ll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons … and make judgments on it, because what I’m spending my time thinking about is how do we solve the problem?” Obama said.

Republicans want answers — and a little political mileage. The White House wants the whole thing to go away. And until somebody starts talking, neither side is going to get what they want.

On Wednesday, Republicans renewed their daily demand that Representative Joe Sestak, the Democratic Senate candidate from Pennsylvania, and White House officials come clean about what Sestak said was a White House offer of a job if he dropped his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter.

Sestak, who first made the allegation to a local interviewer three months ago and confirmed it in television interviews on Sunday, won the primary last week but has refused to provide any more details. The White House says only that it looked into the issue, and nothing inappropriate happened. But it won’t say what actually did happen, or who was involved.