Usually it is former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan who is mum, but he’s all talk this week trying to sell his memoirs and instead the people who want to be president — and thus inherit the wobbly economy — are the quiet ones.
 
Only one of the top candidates’ campaigns, Republican Mitt Romney, offered reaction to Greenspan’s criticism that tax cuts and spending on military and prescription drug benefits under the Bush administration were not appropriate with growing deficits.
 
The former Fed chief said in a Reuters interview that the chances of a recession had now risen from one-third to “somewhat less than 50 (percent)”. He also offered in a Wall Street Journal interview some criticism of Democrats, particularly for their reticence about free trade.
 
Romney, the former Republican Massachusetts governor, has pledged to cap non-military discretionary spending at inflation minus 1 percent.
 
“He has consistently and repeatedly pointed out that Republicans have to start acting like Republicans again on fiscal issues, and that means we have to take a stand against wasteful spending and challenge the Washington mindset,” his spokesman Kevin Madden said.
 
The campaign for Republican Fred Thompson did not respond to a request for comment, but said a former Bush administration economic aide, Larry Lindsey, would serve as a senior economic adviser to his campaign.
 
Representatives for Republican Rudy Giuliani and Democrat Barack Obama declined to comment while the campaigns for Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Greenspan’s observations. 

Photo credit: Jim Young;  Bush and Greenspan share a laugh in early 2006

Sequels rarely are better than the original — just ask Hollywood.

Yet, Democratic presidential front runner Hillary Clinton is hoping that voters will forget her famous failed bid to overhaul the U.S. health care system when her husband Bill occupied the White House and instead focus on her new plan to insure the 47 million Americans without health care coverage.

Her plan mandates coverage but also offers tax breaks to help individuals get it. Her attempt in 1994 to get universal coverage crashed amid harsh criticism about its complexity and in part by an insurance industry TV ad (Harry and Louise) arguing it was a government takeover of health care.

Clinton’s new plan quickly drew fire from Democratic and Republican rivals alike.
Democrat John Edwards made the case for his own health care strategy before a big union group, the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Chicago, offering to deny himself and other politicians health care coverage until universal health care reform is approved.

Republican hopeful Mitt Romney, who helped design a statewide health care system in Massachusetts that has received its share of yays and nays, went to the New York senator’s home turf of Manhattan to denounce her plan before she unveiled it.

“If you’ve seen the report this morning on the latest version of Hillarycare, you’ll see that version 2.0 is not like to have any more success than 1.0,” he said outside St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.

And second-tier Democratic candidate Sen. Christoper Dodd laid the blame for lack of universal health coverage squarely at Clinton’s feet: “While she talks about the political scars she bears, the personal scars borne by the American people are far greater,” he said. “The mismanagement of the effort in 1993 and 1994 has set back our ability to move toward universal health care immeasurably.”

– Photo by Stephen Jaffe, Clinton in 1994 fighting for health care plan.

Nothing like a little arm-chair quarterbacking by maybe 2008 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on the Iraq war and how the White House should handle its PR.

The former speaker of the House of Representatives told reporters at the posh Hay Adams Hotel in Washington that he did not think President George W. Bush needed to speak to the nation in a televised address on Thursday evening, leaving it to his minions.

Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker spent the week trying to convince Congress that some progress has been made in the four-year-old Iraq war and that about 20,000 U.S. troops would be coming home by July 2008.

That was enough for Gingrich.

“The right people to talk about Iraq were Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker,” Gingrich said. “I would simply suggest that thinking through and mastering how you communicate with the American people is at the heart of the presidency.”

The former Georgia lawmaker, who has been on the speaking circuit since leaving office and flirting with joining the crowded 2008 presidential field, suggested reporters should ask newly minted White House counselor Ed Gillespie why Bush spoke.

Before Bush’s address, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reported that 30 percent of Americans approve of Bush’s handling of Iraq, up 8 points from July.

Despite his unpopularity, it’s never been Bush’s style to shy away from a public fight. While he readily admits he fumbles some speeches, he seems to relish mixing it up and challenging the Democrats on pulling out of Iraq quickly.

“The president thought it was important for the American people to hear that as commander-in-chief he was accepting the recommendation of General Petreaus to begin bringing some of our troops home from Iraq,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

However, maybe Gingrich has a point, Bush’s televised broadcast averaged 28.8 million viewers, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen, down dramatically from the 42.5 million who tuned in to Bush’s Jan. 10 address on Iraq. 
     
– Steve Holland and Jeremy Pelofsky

Everything seemed to be going swimmingly at a forum hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation about Iraq on Thursday as the host finished introducing the day’s panel of experts who would debate progress in the unpopular, four-year war.

Then a middle-aged woman, dressed to match the think tank’s tony style, popped up onto the dais and announced a change in the program: the scheduled discussion would be delayed for a brief peace memorial honoring dead American soldiers.

A second woman rose to the dais with the bereaved father of a fallen U.S. soldier, who clutched his son’s uniform, boots and an American flag folded in funerary fashion into a blue triangle of stars.

A third held a pink banner that read: “Bring the Troops Home Now.”

CODEPINK, the feminist antiwar group that has been a constant presence at numerous congressional hearings dressed in pink, had penetrated an august center of conservative American political discourse and chaos soon erupted.

The organizers briefly tried to escort the activists from the stage, while a smattering of audience members attempted to shout them down. “This is un-American!” grumbled one aggrieved man in a business suit. 

In the end, with a C-SPAN camera filming, the Heritage Foundation gave the protesters about five minutes to make their presentation. It included a reading from a New York Times op-ed article criticizing the Pentagon that had been written by seven soldiers, including two who died in Baghdad on Monday.

CODEPINK activists also videotaped the spectacle and later posted it to YouTube.com.

The drama wasn’t over yet, however. With another half-dozen CODEPINK women in the audience, they managed to jar the atmosphere at least two more times.

The most boisterous was a woman in a dark pant suit who jumped onto the dais as the experts were speaking and loudly denounced both panel and audience.

“The country is falling apart! One million Iraqis have died since we invaded. One in every third child has died of starvation!” she shouted as U.S. Capitol Police (the first to respond to the request for police presence) removed her from the auditorium. “You are all complicit and so is the press!”

Police reported no arrests. A Heritage Foundation spokesman said he was not aware of any other protest being staged at one of the foundation’s events.  — David Morgan

Arriving slightly late to his 8:15 a.m. speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strode directly to the podium, unable to take advantage of the eggs and bacon breakfast that would be off-limits to lawmakers under ethics legislation awaiting Bush’s signature.
Also off-limits, it turned out, were reporters.
A few minutes into McConnell’s presentation, Chamber of Commerce officials sheepishly told two journalists covering the event that the senator’s aides were demanding that reporters be escorted out.
By then, McConnell had finished prepared remarks to the nation’s biggest business group, accusing Democrats controlling Congress of suffering from a twin obsession: the Iraq war and conducting investigations, instead of getting down to the real work of Congress.
Just as McConnell began a question-and-answer period that started with the topic of energy legislation, Chamber officials shut down coverage, saying the event actually was closed to reporters, despite its billing as a public event on Washington calendars.
Later in the day, Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said there had been an agreement with the Chamber that the senator’s appearance was to be a “closed briefing,” like many he has done for other groups.
An annoyed Eric Wohlschlegel, executive director of communications at the Chamber, also insisted, “This was a closed event from the very beginning.”
McConnell received the support of the Chamber this year for requiring that business tax breaks be added to the first increase in the U.S. minimum wage in a decade. He also helped defeat a top priority of organized labor, a measure that would have made it easier for workers to unionize.
Maybe McConnell’s best gems came in the Q&A. But during the prepared speech, the four-term Kentucky senator wasn’t giving the business group anything he hasn’t freely told reporters repeatedly on Capitol Hill:
*He’s “deeply disappointed” the new Democratic-controlled Congress has not tackled the “tough issues,” like Social Security;
*Immigration reform turned out to be “too complicated” to work out this year. (Translation: conservative Republicans nuked it);
*Besides their “preoccupation” with the Iraq war, Democrats spend their time dreaming of “taxation, regulation and litigation. It’s in their DNA.”  — Richard Cowan

(Reuters file photo of McConnell)

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has the most heavily trafficked Web site of all the presidential candidates, pulling in nearly three-quarters of a million visitors in the month of July.

The Nielsen Company, which released its NetRatings on Thursday, says Obama’s tally of 717,000 visitors easily outpaced Hillary Clinton’s 437,000 and John Edwards’ 348,000.

Fred Thompson’s Web site was the most heavily trafficked among Republican contenders for the presidency, even though he was still only testing the waters in July and didn’t actually jump in the race until Wednesday night.

Rudy Giuliani’s Web site drew 124,000 visitors, while Mitt Romney’s attracted 116,000, Ron Paul’s got 113,000 and John McCain’s received 104,000.

Although Giuliani’s Web site drew only about a third as many visitors as Thompson’s, the former New York City mayor and Republican front-runner may not be terribly worried. His visitors spent an average of 7 minutes, 33 seconds browsing his site, while Thompson’s guests spent only 1 minute, 35 seconds. Romney’s Web site guests spent even less time visiting him — an average 49 seconds.

The timing numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, though.

Carolyn Creekmore, a senior director of media analytics with Nielsen, says some candidates house bulky content like video images on other Web sites. Visitors who click on video on the Romney site, for example, may be transferring to another site to watch it.

Democrats, who are more established online than Republicans at this point, were generally better at keeping their guests on their sites. Obama’s visitors lingered for 7 minutes, 53 seconds, Clinton’s stayed 8 minutes, 17 seconds and Edwards remained 3 minutes, 43 seconds, Nielsen said.

Photo: Reuters

The agency that monitors federal campaign financing has given the all clear to blog sites like the DailyKos.com that do political advocacy and fund raising.

The Federal Election Commission says the sites are media just like newspapers and magazines and do not need to be regulated, even if they do provide a platform for candidates to raise money.

“As long as you’re not touching the money and directing it youself, you’re clear,” says Adam Bonin, an attorney for Cozen O’Connor who represented the DailyKos before the agency.

The ruling came after a conservative blogger complained the DailyKos was acting as a political committee because it accepts advertising and provides space for candidates to do advocacy and fund raising. The FEC rejected those arguments.

The FEC also rejected complaints against an Internet blogger who set up a site to parody California Rep. Mary Bono. Bono’s attorney complained the blogger was essentially giving a gift to Bono’s political opponent.

Bonin said the twin FEC rulings on Tuesday were a positive sign for political activity on the Web.

“It is not the role of the FEC to make the press nonpartisan or objective,” Bonin said. “The FEC just wants to take a hands off attitude toward the Internet.”

America’s Mayor has decided that maybe this Internet thing might be worth checking out after all. Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani rolled out a new website on Tuesday that, among other things, allows supporters to link up with him on mySpace and Facebook, the popular “social networking” sites that have drawn millions of young users.

He’s the last candidate from either party to stake out space on the social networks, which campaign experts say can be a great tool for building support among difficult-to-reach young voters.

While net-savvy candidates like Barack Obama have culled thousands of volunteers through social networking, Giuliani’s 20th-century approach has drawn criticism from young supporters and Republican insiders alike.

It didn’t help that the campaign’s Web site was offline for more than 24 hours during the overhaul.

Still, Giuliani 2.0 drew a favorable review from one Republican reviewer. “Their online strategy appears to be transforming into one that is modern, effective and relevant on the 2008 campaign trail,” Republican consultant David All wrote on TechPresident.com, a Web site that tracks communications technology in the presidential campaign.

–Andy Sullivan

Picture: Giuliani at the Iowa State Fair/Reuters