THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: As Mitt Romney closes the gap, it is 1980 all over again for the man in the Oval Office.
Until recently, Barack Obama’s re-election was regarded as inevitable – in the same way that summer follows spring, or a monsoon follows a hosepipe ban. The president’s poll lead over Mitt Romney was strong, while the Republican’s character was assassinated by a primary fight that permanently spoiled the reputation of his party. To court the GOP’s conservative base, Romney was forced to adopt positions on abortion, contraception, health care and welfare that are thought to be unpopular among moderate swing voters. Obama, by contrast, is the man who killed bin Laden and toppled Gaddafi. A choice between Obama the moderate statesman and Romney the craven conservative is surely no contest at all.
But in the last two weeks, things have changed. Obama’s re-election is no longer guaranteed; some pollsters think it is unlikely. Day by day, the odds are improving that Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United States.
What changed? For a start, voters are getting gloomier about the economy. Joblessness remains high and debt is out of control. According to one poll released this week, only 33 per cent of Americans expect the economy to improve in the coming months and only 43 per cent approve of the way that the president has handled it. Voters think Obama has made the debt situation and health care worse. The man who conducted the poll – Democrat Peter Hart – concluded that “Obama’s chances for re-election… are no better than 50-50.” » | Tim Stanley | Friday, May 25, 2012
Friday, March 09, 2012
The Road We've Traveled Official Trailer - Obama for America 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Nicolas Sarkozy Says Britain Has 'No Industry'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: President Nicolas Sarkozy has stated Britain is a country with "no industry" as he set out "shock measures" to reinvigorate France's faltering economy.
Mr Sarkozy announced he would increase VAT by 1.6 per cent. When a journalist made the point that there had been an increase in prices in Britain after VAT rises, Mr Sarkozy claimed: "The United Kingdom has no industry anymore."
A UK official said: “It is not true. The percentage of GDP that is manufacturing is11 per cent, the same as in France.”
Manufacturing as a percentage of GDP was 11 per cent in the UK and in France in 2009, the last comparable figures.
“UK industrial production as a share of GDP was 15 per cent, compared to 12.5 per cent in France in the same year. What he said is not true. He has got an election.”
Defending his efforts to save the euro and the French economy, Mr Sarkozy said: “The financial crisis is calming down. Europe is no longer on the edge of the abyss...The elements of a stabilisation of the financial situation in the world and in Europe are in place.”
Mr Sarkozy all but announced his candidacy for the two-round election, due to be held on April 22 and May 6. “I have a rendezvous with the French,” he said. “I will not shirk my responsibility.”
But the uncharacteristically downbeat president admitted to having "regrets" about some of his policies, which he said he would address "at the appropriate time".
His remarks came a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany backed his — as yet unannounced — re-election bid by unexpectedly announcing that she would join him on the campaign trail.
In a hour-long “do or die” TV interview broadcast simultaneously by nine channels, Mr Sarkozy adopted Churchillian tones as he unveiled measures from reducing working time and salaries to save jobs to raising VAT in order to cut employers’ contributions by €13 billion (£11 billion). However, the man who staked his presidency on boosting the French economy faces a tough task as he lags in the polls, unemployment stands at a 12-year high and public debt is at record levels. Read on and comment » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Barack Obama: There Are Days When I Say One Term Is Enough
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: President Barack Obama has said his family was "not invested" in a second term in the White House and would have been content if he had decided against running for re-election.
He said first lady Michelle Obama would be the first to encourage him to do something "a little less stressful" if she no longer believed in what his administration was doing.
"Michelle and the kids are wonderful in that if I said, 'You know what, guys, I want to do something different', they would be fine," he told NBC.
"They're not invested in daddy being president or my husband being president."
There were, he conceded, days when he thought "one term was enough", but "if the family is doing well and Michelle is putting up with me I've got enough energy to do the work I am doing".
Despite the hothouse atmosphere of the White House, he said that his two daughters Malia, 13, and Sasha, 10, were turning out to be "poised, kind and well mannered". » | Alex Spillius, Washington | Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Obama is giving himself an out because he knows that he might well not be re-elected for a second term. This president is about as ambitious as presidents get. I don't believe that he doesn't want a second term deep down. In any case, his big ego will drive him to seek re-election. Wasn't this man supposed to be the Messiah? Wasn't this man going to change everything in US politics in particular, and in the US in general? One lesson he has surely learnt whilst in office: It's a lot easier talking about being a president than it is being one. And what was that nonsense Michelle said about her husband? "This man doesn't take a day off. "Oh yeh? What about all the holidays he's taken whilst in office? What about all the golfing days he's had? Weren't those days off?
THE TELEGRAPH: Few Americans consider themselves bigger than the presidency but Obama might be one of them. The man in the Oval Office, argues Toby Harnden, may already be preparing for a role as a post-president in a post-American world.
When David Plouffe, President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign manager, wrote recently that his former boss was "not concerned with his re-election", there was predictable scepticism.
After all, it has long been a truism that every politician wants to cling to power and a reality that presidential campaigns are planned years in advance. Pronouncements about not looking at polls and concentrating on getting things done are, moreover, standard fare from poll-driven, election-obsessed politicians and their apparatchiks.
In this case, however, Plouffe may inadvertently be onto something. Almost everything Obama does these days suggests that he doesn't care much about being re-elected. Strange as it might seem, perhaps he wants to be a one-term president.
Obama was elected in 2008 at an extraordinary moment in American politics. Suddenly, this charismatic figure, elected to the Senate without serious opposition in 2004 and without any executive experience, was catapulted into the White House.
His presidential bid had been based on the power of his life story and his ability with the spoken word. Doubtless he was as surprised as anyone else that he pulled it off. Governing has been altogether more difficult for him and there are signs he is already tiring of it.
Obama's intervention on the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" issue is a case in point. There was no need for him to get involved - the Islamic community centre two blocks from the 9/11 site is unlikely to get built and there was no political advantage in his making a statement.
What he said about religious freedom was typically Obama - high-minded, principled and legalistic. He is, after all, a former constitutional law professor. What his words lacked were any real empathy with what Americans felt and practical considerations about resolving the issue - never mind the political downside for him. >>> | Saturday, August 21, 2010
Monday, December 07, 2009
Battered Not Beaten: Iranian Opposition Plays the Long Game
TIMES ONLINE: The Iranian opposition is brave and inspiring. Its members repeatedly risk their limbs, lives and liberty by taking to the streets in defiance of the regime and its ruthless security forces. They do so despite six months of arrests, beatings, torture and show trials that have resulted in death penalties and years of incarceration. But are they achieving anything?
The demonstrations are smaller than they were. The grip of the security forces has never looked seriously threatened. Western governments, preoccupied with the nuclear issue, appear to have accepted President Ahmadinejad’s re-election and written off the "green" movement.
Opposition activists are not discouraged, however. They insist they are playing a long game the goal of which is gradually to win over the provinces, the small towns, members of the basij volunteer militia; to eat away at whatever support the regime still has until eventually it topples.
They scribble anti-government slogans on banknotes, daub graffiti on walls, disseminate information on e-mail trees to counter the propadanga of the state-controlled media. Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mr Ahmadinejad’s election rival, has likened the regime’s attempts at censorship to stopping a flood with barbed wire. >>> Martin Fletcher | Monday, December 07, 2009
Tehran Univeristy Demonstration for Students Day
Manifestation sous haute tension à Téhéran
Les manifestants de l'opposition ont une nouvelle fois défilé lundi à Téhéran pour contester la réélection en juin dernier du président Ahmadinejad. Crédits photo : Le Figaro
LE FIGARO: Des milliers de manifestants de l'opposition ont défilé lundi dans la capitale iranienne pour protester une nouvelle fois contre la réélection du président Ahmadinejad. Des mouvements rapidement réprimés par les forces de l'ordre.
Nouvelle poussée de violences dans les rues de Téhéran. La police, déployée en force lundi dans la capitale iranienne, a utilisé des gaz lacrymogènes pour disperser les milliers de manifestants de l'opposition venus protester contre le président Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, en marge de la «journée de l'étudiant». Cette dernière commémore chaque année la mort de trois étudiants lors d'une manifestation anti-américaine en décembre 1953. Et donne lieu, depuis les années 1990, à des rassemblements en faveur des réformes. Les étudiants, fer de lance de l'actuel mouvement d'opposition né au lendemain de la réélection contestée d'Ahmadinejad en juin dernier, ont ainsi profité de cette journée pour manifester.
Selon un témoin, les affrontements entre les forces de l'ordre et les manifestants ont eu lieu sur l'avenue Enghelab, qui longe l'université de Téhéran, elle-même encerclée par des policiers anti-émeute et des gardes révolutionnaires. >>> Le Figaro.fr (avec agences) | Lundi 07 Décembre 2009
Proteste in Iran: Polizei knüppelt in Teheran
ZEIT ONLINE: In Iran demonstrieren Regimegegner, Sicherheitskräfte setzen Schlagstöcke und Tränengas ein, die Universität ist umstellt. Anlass der Unruhe ist der sogenannte Studententag.
Im Zentrum Teherans ist die Polizei mit Gewalt gegen Demonstranten der Opposition vorgegangen. "Die Polizei setzt Schlagstöcke ein, um die Demonstranten zu zerstreuen", sagte ein Augenzeuge der Nachrichtenagentur Reuters. Auch Tränengas kam zum Einsatz. "Die Leute skandieren Parolen gegen die Regierung." Die Zusammenstöße ereigneten sich demnach auf dem Platz Ferdowsi. Zuvor hatte die Polizei die Universität von Teheran umstellt, um Proteste der Opposition zu verhindern. >>> Zeit Online, Reuters, dpa | Montag, 07. Dezember 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Merkel Wins German Election, Has Majority for Center-Right Government
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: German voters re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and have enabled her to form a coalition with her preferred partner, the Free Democrat Party, according to TV projections based on exit polls. The Social Democrats slumped to their worst result since World War II and will go into the opposition.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term in Sunday's federal election and will be able to form a government with the pro-business Free Democrat Party, ditching the center-left Social Democrats with whom she has ruled since 2005 in an uneasy coalition, reliable TV projections of the result showed.
The projections show she will have a comfortable center-right majority in the Bundestag lower house of parliament with an estimated 323 seats, 15 more than the absolute majority of 308 seats, according to a projection broadcast on ZDF television.
According to the ZDF projection, Merkel's conservatives won 33.8 percent, down 1.4 points from the 2005 result of 35.2 percent, while SPD support fell to a record low of 23.0 percent, down 11.2 points from 34.2 percent.
"I am happy that we have achieved a great thing, to get a stable majority in the new government made up of conservatives and the FDP," a beaming Merkel told supporters at the headquarters of her Christian Democrat Union party in Berlin.
"I want to be the chancellor of all Germans to enable our country to do better and come out of this crisis," she said, smiling coyly as supporters chanted "Angie, Angie!” >>> cro – with wire reports | Sunday, September 27, 2009
FACTBOX: German Free Democrat Leader Guido Westerwelle
REUTERS: BERLIN - Guido Westerwelle is head of Germany's business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), with whom Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to form a government after Sunday's election.
He is widely expected to become foreign minister. >>> Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Dominic Evans | Sunday, September 27, 2009
