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Um ano

O CASA BRANCA faz hoje um ano. A 10 de Novembro de 2008, seis dias depois da eleição de Barack Hussein Obama como 44.º Presidente dos Estados Unidos da América, dei início a um caminho que está quase a atingir a marca dos 1000 posts.

Desde 26 de Junho passado, o acompanhamento noticioso que tenho feito aqui neste blogue está a ser complementado com textos de análise que publico no site de A Bola, secção Outros Mundos, na rubrica com o título «Histórias da Casa Branca».

A todos os que, com maior ou menor regularidade, por cá aparecem, muito obrigado. Os meus agradecimentos, também, a quem já comentou posts no blogue e igualmente a quem, noutros blogues, referenciou o CASA BRANCA.

Vamos continuando a ver-nos por aqui, então...

Reforma da Saúde aprovada na Câmara dos Representantes (IV): o ObamaCare em quatro minutos

Reforma da Saúde aprovada na Câmara dos Representantes (III): Obama elogia «coragem política»

Um artigo de Carl Hulse e Robert Pear, no New York Times:

«WASHINGTON — President Obama, seeking to build momentum on Capitol Hill after the House passed a $1.1 trillion, 10-year plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system, urged the Senate on Sunday to “take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line.”

Heavier Americans Push Back on Health Debate (November 8, 2009) Speaking in the Rose Garden exactly 24 hours after he appeared there Saturday to call for House passage of the bill, Mr. Obama praised House members for what he called a ‘’courageous vote” that “brought us closer than we have ever been” to extending coverage to millions of uninsured Americans. He said the bill fulfilled his promise to bring sweeping change to the lives of millions of Americans.

“Moments like this are why they sent us here,” the president said in his brief appearance. He also praised Iraq’s parliament for approving passing a much-delayed election law, calling the two votes “milestones that represent encouraging progress for our country.”

After an extended clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted late Saturday by 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance, while bringing spiraling health care costs under control.

But Mr. Obama said the bill would ensure health-care coverage for most Americans, without increasing the federal deficit.

He said that he had telephoned a cancer survivor, one Katy Gibson of Montana, whose insurance had been canceled because of her illness, to tell her that with the vote Saturday, “We’ll be able to protect Americans just like her.”

The bill is the biggest health care legislation since the creation of Medicare for the elderly four decades ago.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said he would bring a bill to the Senate floor for debate as soon as possible. The two chambers will still need to negotiate and approve a final bill.

As the debate moves to the Senate — with Democrats still hoping for final passage before year’s end, while acknowledging they face a tight schedule to achieve that — it was clear that the battle to fundamentally revamp the health-care system was far from over.

“The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He noted that the bill passed without the support of 39 House Democrats, and he predicted that such legislation would not pass in the Senate. “I hope and pray it doesn’t,” he said, “because it would be a disaster for the economy and health care.”

Only one Republican, Representative Anh Cao of Louisiana, voted for the bill; he told CNN on Sunday that he did so because many of his constituents are poor and uninsured.

House Democrats were forced to make major concessions on coverage for abortions to attract the final votes for passage — the speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi, decided Friday to let abortion opponents try to tighten any use of federal money to fund the procedure — a wrenching compromise for abortion-rights advocates.

Abortion-rights advocates hope to modify the amendment during negotiations with the Senate. The vote brought the United States — which outspends every other country on health care while leaving millions of Americans uncovered and underperforming in important categories like infant mortality — a large step closer to the health-care practices of most other advanced countries.

Democrats say the House measure, paid for through new fees and taxes, along with cuts in Medicare, would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance while creating a government health insurance program. It would end insurance company practices like not covering pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they become ill.

Republicans showed no sign of lessening their nearly united opposition. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the House bill amounted to “a government takeover” that would undermine patient choice, burden states’ budgets and harm elderly Medicare recipients.

On the House floor, however, Democrats cheered wildly — and Republicans sat quietly — when the tally display showed the 218th and decisive vote.

The vote came on a day when Mr. Obama traveled to Capitol Hill to make a personal appeal for lawmakers to “answer the call of history” and support the bill.

The House also defeated the Republicans’ more modest plan, whose authors described it as more fiscally responsible, though it would have expanded coverage to just three million of the uninsured.

The Democrats who balked at the final measure represent mainly conservative swing districts, signaling that those who could be vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections viewed voting for the measure as politically risky.

Some Democrats said they voted for the legislation so they could seek improvements in it. “This bill will get better in the Senate,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat. “If we kill it here, it won’t have a chance to get better.”

Lawmakers credited Mr. Obama with converting a final few holdouts during his appearance at an eleventh-hour closed-door meeting with Democrats.

Many Democrats also credited Ms. Pelosi for pulling off a victory that proved tougher than many had predicted. “She really threaded the needle on this one,” said Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts.

Mr. Obama made his rare weekend appearance on Capitol Hill as part of an all-out effort to rally Democrats. During a private meeting with Democrats, the president acknowledged the political difficulty of supporting major legislation in the face of tough criticism from conservatives.

But, those present said, he urged them on, saying, “When I sign this in the Rose Garden, each and every one of you will be able to look back and say, ‘This was my finest moment in politics,’ ” language he repeated on Sunday.

Republicans said the measure was too costly and would end up burdening the nation for decades to come. Some Democrats expressed the same view in explaining their opposition. “This bill is a wrecking ball to the entire economy,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia. “We need targeted specific reforms to help people who have fallen through the health care cracks.”

The House vote was a significant step in the long-sought Democratic goal of enacting broad changes in the way health care is delivered. The House legislation, running almost 2,000 pages, would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties — an approach Republicans compared to government oppression.

Most employers would have to provide coverage or pay a tax penalty of up to 8 percent of their payroll. The bill would significantly expand Medicaid and would offer subsidies to help moderate-income people buy insurance from private companies or from a government insurance plan. It would also set up a national insurance exchange where people could shop for coverage.

“Our plan is not perfect, but it is a good start toward providing affordable health care to all Americans,” said Representative Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon.»

Reforma da Saúde aprovada na Câmara dos Representantes (II): só um republicano votou a favor

Anh 'Joseph' Cao, congressista republicano da Luisiana, foi o único membro do GOP a votar a favor da Reforma da Saúde

«Once a year, Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao gives the Washington establishment a little jolt.


In November 2008, the nationally unknown Vietnamese community activist captured a seat for Republicans in majority-black New Orleans, becoming an instant — albeit short-lived — celebrity for the GOP.


On Saturday night, 368 days later, he handed Democrats their only Republican vote on the centerpiece of their domestic agenda, a massive overhaul of the nation’s health care system that promises to enhance coverage for tens of millions of Americans and thousands of Cao’s constituents. Now he’s a bit of cult hero on the left — a profile in courage, Democrats say — and television bookers were scrambling to find cell phone numbers for his aides Sunday.


Republicans and Democrats who have worked closely with Cao in Louisiana and Washington say they weren’t a bit surprised — even if much of the political world did a double take — when Cao registered a green light on the scoreboard in the House chamber.


“I think he works hard. I think he studies things, and I think he tries to do the right thing,” said an administration official who has worked with Cao. “People in the administration reach out to him a lot because he’s willing to talk about things nondogmatically.”


Of course, Cao and the Obama administration have a major area of shared interest in the rebuilding of New Orleans, which puts him in regular contact with the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Education.


On health care, Cao met with the White House point person, Nancy Anne DeParle, in his office and spoke to her repeatedly by phone during the past couple of months, according to an aide. President Barack Obama called him Saturday, giving Cao an opportunity to press the president to help with hospital development and forgiveness for disaster loans in New Orleans.


All along, Cao was looking for reasons to support the bill, according to spokeswoman Princella Smith. But there was one seemingly insurmountable obstacle among a series of reservations: The former Jesuit seminarian was dead-set against voting for it if it expanded abortion rights into a new health care exchange.


He met with members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and called Democrats to help secure their votes for the Stupak-Pitts amendment sharply limiting federal dollars from subsidizing abortions, according to Smith.


“When the Stupak amendment passed, his decision to go for it was made,” she said.


“When the Stupak amendment passed, his decision to go for it was made,” she said.


There was a bit of visual drama on the House floor Saturday night, with Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) cozying up to Cao to try to keep a unified Republican line against the bill. Cao, in a move courteous to GOP leaders who wanted to force as many Democrats as possible to cast “yes” votes — and preserving his options — waited until the other side had posted the 218 votes necessary for passage before casting his yea.


Perhaps because few believed that a Republican with little money and no national party support could ever win in New Orleans, most of Washington’s political class was surprised when Cao arrived in Washington — and many wrote him off early as a one-term wonder.


But there may be a certain freedom in the possibility that, as a Republican in New Orleans, his political career is living on borrowed time.


“This is ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’ He’ll tell you, ‘I don’t know whether I’m going to be here in two years, so I’m going to do everything I can for my district.’ That’s all I’ve seen,” said Paul Rainwater, executive director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority in Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration.


Rainwater, who is a former senior aide to Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, said Cao hit the ground running when he was first elected, asking for briefings on local issues and the matrix of agencies involved in Gulf Coast recovery.


“I’ve been impressed with the way he attacks an issue,” Rainwater said. “You can’t help but like him. You can’t help but like his energy, and you can’t help but like his honesty.”


Cao’s take?


“I’ve always been focusing on making the right decisions for the people of my district, whether or not it will cost me my political future,” he told CNN on Sunday.


Though Cao and his aides insist he will remain a Republican, he at times seems closer to Democrats — friends like California Rep. Mike Honda, administration officials who work closely with him and a bipartisan staff — than to his colleagues in the GOP.


There’s no guarantee that his vote for the health care bill will make him popular enough with Democrats in New Orleans to win next November and give a third jolt to the political establishment, but it’s made him a few Democratic friends in Washington for the moment.


“This was, as you observed, a bipartisan vote,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said at a postvote news conference.»

HISTÓRICO: Câmara dos Representantes aprova a Reforma da Saúde (I)

Desemprego nos EUA ultrapassa os 10 por cento

Christina Romer, da equipa de conselheiros económicos de Barack Obama, comenta números preocupantes:

A semana política em retrospectiva

Um ano após a vitória (V): O dia em que o Mundo abriu a boca de espanto

Texto publicado no site de A Bola/Outros Mundos, inserido na rubrica «Histórias da Casa Branca»:

http://www.abola.pt/mundos/ver.aspx?id=181742

O dia em que o Mundo abriu a boca de espanto

Faz hoje um ano, o Mundo abriu a boca de espanto. Não é que o resultado das eleições presidenciais não fosse o esperado: afinal de contas, todas as sondagens realizadas nos 20 dias anteriores apontavam a vitória de Obama. Só que a dimensão histórica do momento fez com que muitos tivessem preferido ver para crer.

Os dados estavam à vista e davam uma clara vantagem a Obama sobre McCain: a crise bolsista, o desemprego crescente, a vontade de mudança, a campanha bem mais eficaz do democrata. Mesmo assim, nos dias que antecederam a eleição, lá veio a teoria do 'Bradley effect', segundo a qual, na hora da votação, quem respondeu nas sondagens que iria escolher Obama poderia recear votar no «candidato negro».

Sucede que quem deu demasiada importância a essa tese se esqueceu de dois aspectos fundamentais. Por um lado, Obama não era um candidato negro tradicional. Mostrou-se, isso sim, nos quase dois anos de corrida eleitoral, um candidato «transracial», com enorme capacidade de captar votos em todos os segmentos. Por outro lado, Barack já havia sido escrutinado em todas as zonas da América, durante as primárias, e revelara-se muito forte em estados com percentagens de brancos acima dos 90 por cento.

E a 4 de Novembro de 2008, o que poucos meses antes parecia impossível tornou-se real: Barack Hussein Obama, terceiro negro a chegar ao Senado desde a Reconstrução, primeiro afro-americano a obter a nomeação presidencial de um grande partido do sistema, tornava-se o 44.º Presidente dos EUA, ao obter uma vitória claríssima sobre John McCain.

«Landslide»
Obama venceu em 29 estados, arrecadando mais de 70 milhões de votos expressos – de longe a maior votação de sempre (em números absolutos) de um Presidente americano. Em percentagem, a diferença também foi clara: 53% para Barack contra 46% de McCain e cerca de um por cento dos «terceiros candidatos». No Colégio Eleitoral (aquilo que realmente interessa para a eleição presidencial), Obama ficou com 365 Grandes Eleitores, contra apenas 173 de McCain – um 'landslide'.

A dimensão histórica do triunfo de Obama esteve longe de se esgotar na originalidade racial. Como candidato democrata, Barack conseguiu romper fronteiras que, nas últimas décadas, pareciam vedadas ao seu partido: arrecadou a Virgínia, estado que escapava aos democratas há 44 anos, vencendo ainda em terrenos muito difíceis como o Indiana, a Carolina do Norte, o Nevada e, claro, o Ohio (que se manteve como o melhor barómetro: desde John Kennedy, em 1960, que quem lá vence é eleito Presidente).

Barack Obama foi o primeiro democrata a obter a maioria absoluta do voto popular nos últimos 32 anos -- Bill Clinton foi eleito duas vezes sem nunca ter ultrapassado a fasquia dos 50 por cento e Jimmy Carter apenas atingiu 50,1%, em 1976.

O histórico triunfo de Obama baseou-se numa coligação de votações esmagadoras em segmentos que, até agora, ainda não se tinham juntado: 96 por cento dos negros, 68 por cento dos latinos, 66 por cento dos jovens, 56 por cento das mulheres. McCain venceu no eleitorado branco tradicional, mas por uma curta diferença: 54/46. Conclusão: o factor raça não só não prejudicou Obama como, na verdade, se mostrou favorável.

Ponto de viragem
Antes das primárias, o fenómeno Obama continuava por legitimar. O estado de graça do senador negro já durava há mais de três anos, desde o discurso na Convenção Democrata de 2004, mas pairava uma certa ideia, mesmo que não verbalizada, de… ‘isto não vai poder acontecer’. Ao arrebatar, folgadamente, um estado do Midwest, com 97 por cento de eleitores brancos, Barack provou que podia mesmo lá chegar. A partir desse momento, tudo mudou.

A eloquência de Obama começava a levar a melhor sobre o projecto sólido, mas demasiado colado ao passado, de Hillary. Do campo de Clinton, até havia quem lançasse o desabafo, perante os sinais de ultrapassagem de um Obama que parecia portador de um toque de Midas, que o problema seria que estas primárias se disputavam entre «uma senadora por Nova Iorque que nasceu no Illinois e um senador pelo Illinois que nasceu numa manjedoura...»

O poder retórico de Barack foi o catalisador da mais notável campanha de que há memória na política moderna: «É o melhor orador político desde Mario Cuomo. Melhor que Bill Clinton. Melhor que Reagan. É brilhante, de uma eloquência empolgante. Talvez só comparável a Martin Luther King», aponta Michael O’Hanlon, investigador do Council on Foreign Relations e antigo conselheiro da campanha de Hillary Clinton.

A «Obamania» foi crescendo e impressionava pela diversidade. Conquistou enorme popularidade na América, mas ainda maior no resto do Mundo: 75 mil pessoas num comício em Portland, Oregon, Costa Oeste americana; duzentas mil em... Berlim. Barack agarrou a tecla da «mudança» e da «esperança», num tempo de nuvens cinzentas em quase todos os campos: económico, social, moral.

A 4 de Novembro de 2008, numa noite fria de Chicago, Obama proclamou após a vitória: «All things are possible».

O que se tem passado desde que Obama entrou na Casa Branca, com o fantasma da decepção a persegui-lo em várias frentes, já é outra história – e será tema dos próximos dois textos. A gigantesca tarefa que pesa sobre os ombros do agora Nobel da Paz pode vir a dar razão ao ditado que avisa: «Cuidado com os teus sonhos, eles podem tornar-se realidade».

Um ano após a vitória (IV): Já terá chegado a mudança?

Um artigo de John Harris, no Politico.com:

«In the year since he was elected president, Barack Obama has revealed himself as one of the boldest leaders to occupy the Oval Office in the modern era.


In that same year, Obama also has revealed himself to be an innately self-protective, constantly calibrating and, in some surprising ways, supremely conventional politician.


So who is Barack Obama? The drama of this presidency — in sharp relief with Wednesday’s one-year anniversary of his 2008 triumph — revolves around how Obama navigates his own contradictions.


Obama turns out not to be a Bill Clinton-style centrist or a Paul Wellstone-style liberal. His plans for health care and his trillion-plus dollars in new spending have earned the ire of Rush Limbaugh for being too grandiose and of Arianna Huffington for not being grandiose enough.


Obama is the president as grand improvisationalist: a leader of epic ambitions who — when faced with a difficult choice — almost always pursues his aims with a pedestrian strategy and style.


This may be a shrewd approach to governing. But it manages almost by definition to defy and disappoint the huge — and wildly divergent — expectations Obama encouraged supporters to harbor for his presidency.


As the election anniversary approached, Obama several times in public remarks acknowledged the sense of letdown and pleaded for patience.


“‘Well, why haven’t you solved world hunger yet?’” Obama said in New Orleans the other day, mimicking the cries of critics. “‘Why — it’s been nine months. Why?’ You know? I never said it was going to be easy. What did I say during the campaign? I said change is hard. And big change is harder. And after the last nine months, you know I wasn’t kidding.”


Obama may not have promised change would be easy. But he did convey what now looks like a too-glib impression that he could unite opposites and reconcile contradictions by the power of personality — hard to do when his own personality has competing strands.


Obama has the soul of an ideologue. He wants to be a transformational president — unconfined by the limitations of conventional politics and determined to put a lasting mark on his era.


In his first year, he has presided over more new domestic spending than Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, did in eight years. The “big bang” agenda he laid out earlier this year on health care, energy and financial regulation unmistakably signaled his ambition to vastly expand the role of government in American life.


But Obama also has the soul of an operative. He and his West Wing team — dominated at the top by people whose expertise is in the world of campaigns and Washington maneuvers — have proved to be far more familiar political types than they admit to themselves or than was forecast by his insurgent campaign and the expansive, at times almost messianic, rhetoric that powered it.


“What surprises me most is the loss of Barack Obama as movement leader,” Malika Saada Saar, a human rights organizer, said on POLITICO’s Arena forum.


As Obama’s campaign reached its climax, in Saar’s memory, it conjured up echoes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now that he has entered office, she finds that spirit missing: “During this time of economic decline, two raging wars and an uncertain future for so many Americans, we need a movement-leader president who can call forward our courage and relentlessly move us toward making the difficult policy changes that we need.”


When it comes to policy, Obama is more willing than any Democratic president since Lyndon B. Johnson to propose expansive goals — but is insistent always on preserving flexibility in the name of realism or political self-protection.

On health care, it is clear that Obama’s team is more concerned with a victory — one his team expects by the end of the year — than with the programmatic details. On national security, he so far has offered far more continuity with George W. Bush on Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies than many of his most ardent supporters were expecting.

When it comes to politics, Obama and his team have proved more comfortable navigating within the Washington system that greeted them than with changing the culture of the capital. A West Wing that features skilled operatives like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs is no less politically obsessed than when Karl Rove roamed the same halls.


“I suppose what has surprised me most is how quickly the promises of comity, outreach and post-partisanship were abandoned,” James G. Gimpel, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, said on the Arena forum. “But maybe that’s because I was starting to believe the hype, and I should have maintained an appropriately skeptical stance all along. In this last year, we have again been reminded that governing is not campaigning.”


As it happens, the Obama team is never happier — as in its frequent public disputes with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or the insurance industry — than when it can adopt campaign-style tactics to frame an adversary for public advantage.


The logic of this approach is clear but also plainly at odds with Obama’s stated desire to unify Americans and drain politics of its anger and addiction to unproductive conflict.


In the year since Election Day, there is scant evidence that Obama remains a movement politician.


The legions of activists and volunteers — the people whose e-mail lists and social-networking skills were supposed to be a potent weapon in Obama’s arsenal during legislative battles — have not made themselves felt in meaningful ways since last year.


And what looked like a transformative result -- an electoral map redrawn by Obama’s ability to mobilize both the Democratic base and post-partisan independents -- now seems more tentative. In 2008, Obama became the first Democrat to win Virginia in 44 years, based on massive turnout from African-Americans and big support from independents. In 2009, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate was routed in Virginia, largely because of lower African-American turnout and a flight of independents toward the Republican. If these trends are repeated nationally in 2010 and Democrats lose significant ground, Obama’s ambitions to be a transformational president most likely will be put on pause. Instead, he’ll be forced to practice a more defensive brand of politics, much like Bill Clinton was after his party was routed in 1994.


In terms of the culture of Washington, he has made it a bit harder for lobbyists to land government jobs (though there have been plenty of exceptions granted to lobbyists Obama happened to especially want). Yet few people in Washington still regard Obama — clearly at ease with establishment values and personalities — as a dangerous boat rocker. The capital remains a bull market for special-interest deal making. The pharmaceutical lobby, for instance, found Obama eager to do business in which drug makers’ interests were protected in exchange for backing health care reform.


This let’s-make-a-deal impulse isn’t pretty to watch sometimes, especially for Obama’s more idealistic followers, but that doesn’t mean it won’t pay off in the end. Obama stands a good chance of passing a health reform bill in coming months, a significant win for the president even if Congress passes only a watered-down version of the bill.

But as the year wears on, there’s a danger for Obama that all that improvisation could start to look feckless, not strategic but simply indecisive or lacking in principles. He has so far avoided falling into the same trap as Clinton, for whom “triangulation” became a defining character trait, an all-purpose explanation for every compromise or centrist impulse or second helping at the dinner table.

Obama’s backtracks are too fresh, and too discreet, to fully define him or become the narrative of his presidency, at least not yet. But he’s edging toward dangerous ground. Nowhere is that clearer than Afghanistan.


He has carried out his deliberations in public view — either an impressive display of confidence by a young president willing to question his commanders’ call for more troops or a slightly unnerving process of recalibration and second-guessing by a leader who set his Afghan strategy just seven months ago. Obama made finishing the war in Afghanistan central to his campaign claims of a muscular foreign policy, but that was before a war-weary public soured so completely on the conflict; and, now, even Obama is showing signs of doubt.


Other Obama lines in the sand are also getting blurred. A one-year deadline to close Guantanamo? It won’t happen. Pass health care before the August recess? Didn’t work out. Crack down on Israeli settlements to restart the Mideast peace process? Not anymore.


The tension between transformational ambitions and conventional instincts even carries over to Obama’s personal style. What happened to the new Camelot that was to dawn over the Potomac?


“I think that was writers planting their hopes on the first couple. I think that was fantasy,” said Carol Joynt, who writes on the Washington scene for the New York Social Diary. “They’re behaving like parents who travel a lot and live in a big house. ... I haven’t seen what some other people got all wound up about. I haven’t seen radical change in fashion. I haven’t seen radical change in the social scene.”


This sense of disappointment, of letdown — how can a campaign that shattered so many expectations have produced a presidency that already feels quite ordinary? — extends from the nearly cosmic to the nearly comical. What could be more conventional — more downright old-fashioned — than a president who likes to golf every Sunday, whose idea of sweeping change extends to lowering his own handicap?


“We thought we were getting a man of action. Instead, we got someone who’ll spend six hours chasing a white ball around a park,” Joe Mathews, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, said, with tongue planted only partly in cheek. “If voters had known about the golf, they would have been less surprised by his lack of urgency on many issues.”»

Um ano após a vitória (III): «By The People: The Election of Barack Obama»

Um documentário da HBO a ser transmitido no primeiro aniversário da vítória de Obama.

«All Things are Possible», o discurso de vitória de Obama na noite eleitoral


Joe Biden: «America's Ready»

Um ano após a vitória (II): recessão económica estancou, mas a recuperação vai ser lenta

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Palavras moderadamente optimistas, mas ainda muito cautelosas, do secretário do Tesouro, Tim Geithner.

Um ano após a vitória (I): o biovideo de Barack Obama

O CASA BRANCA começa hoje uma série especial que assinalará a passagem do primeiro ano da eleição de Barack Obama para a Presidência dos Estados Unidos. A vitória foi a 4 de Novembro de 2008, fará esta quarta-feira um ano.

O receio de uma influência negativa de Bill Clinton terá levado Obama a não escolher Hillary para vice

Esta é, pelo menos, a versão contada por David Plouffe, no livro que será lançado na próxima terça-feira, sobre a campanha presidencial de Obama, com o título «The Audacity to Win»

«Some Democrats had dubbed the possibility of a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton pairing last year as a "dream ticket," though the notion that the two once-bitter primary rivals would team up always seemed far-fetched.

But then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was more seriously considering picking Clinton as his running mate than any of his senior aides realized, according to a forthcoming book by former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Yet in the end, it may have been her husband President Clinton -- who had made headlines for his outbursts on the campaign trail during the primary season -- that ultimately scuttled the possibility.

In the book, excerpts of which are running in the new issue of Time magazine, Plouffe said Obama took both him and senior aide David Axelrod by surprise when he insisted on including Clinton on the initial list of potential picks for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

"Obama was clearly thinking more seriously about picking Hillary Clinton than Axelrod and I had realized," Plouffe writes. "He said if his central criterion measured who could be the best VP, she had to be included in that list."

While Obama continued to consider picking Clinton throughout the summer of 2008, he ultimately eliminated her name from the list in early August, fearing, Plouffe writes, that there "were just too many complications outweighing the potential strengths."

"I think Bill may be too big a complication," Plouffe quotes Obama as saying. "If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship."

The new book, "The Audacity to Win," hits book stores November 3.»

in CNNpolitics.com