Democrats Abroad New Zealand
1.30.2007
Obama Blasts Bush Administration on Katrina (ChicagoTribune.com)
By Mike Dorning
Tribune national correspondent
Published January 29, 2007, 8:48 PM CST
NEW ORLEANS -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama blasted the Bush administration Monday for the slow pace of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, saying reconstruction no longer seems to be a White House priority.
"There is not a sense of urgency in this administration to get this done," said the senator from Illinois. "You get a sense that will has been lacking in the last several months."
Obama, the Senate's only African-American member, was in New Orleans for a field hearing on Gulf Coast rebuilding conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In the days after Katrina, the devastation of New Orleans and the botched federal response turned into a dramatic international emblem for charges of incompetence in the administration and of indifference to the plight of poor people, particularly blacks and other racial minorities. The flooding and tardy rescue efforts had the greatest impact on low-income black residents, many of whom did not have personal transportation or financial resources to evacuate easily on their own.
The broken homes and vacant streets of the city's flood-damaged neighborhoods remain a potent political symbol. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards kicked off his campaign in December outside a damaged home in one hard-hit neighborhood.
After Monday's field hearing, the Senate committee took a bus tour of the city's Lower 9th Ward, a low-income black neighborhood where many ruined homes sit empty and bear the painted X-marks used in the chaotic weeks following the hurricane to show which buildings had been searched for survivors.
Testifying to the committee, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said he still doesn't see "the will to really fix" his city and suggested that race was a factor.
"I think it's more class than anything, but there's racial issues associated with it also," said Nagin, who is black.
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Local News)
Tribune national correspondent
Published January 29, 2007, 8:48 PM CST
NEW ORLEANS -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama blasted the Bush administration Monday for the slow pace of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts, saying reconstruction no longer seems to be a White House priority.
"There is not a sense of urgency in this administration to get this done," said the senator from Illinois. "You get a sense that will has been lacking in the last several months."
Obama, the Senate's only African-American member, was in New Orleans for a field hearing on Gulf Coast rebuilding conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In the days after Katrina, the devastation of New Orleans and the botched federal response turned into a dramatic international emblem for charges of incompetence in the administration and of indifference to the plight of poor people, particularly blacks and other racial minorities. The flooding and tardy rescue efforts had the greatest impact on low-income black residents, many of whom did not have personal transportation or financial resources to evacuate easily on their own.
The broken homes and vacant streets of the city's flood-damaged neighborhoods remain a potent political symbol. Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards kicked off his campaign in December outside a damaged home in one hard-hit neighborhood.
After Monday's field hearing, the Senate committee took a bus tour of the city's Lower 9th Ward, a low-income black neighborhood where many ruined homes sit empty and bear the painted X-marks used in the chaotic weeks following the hurricane to show which buildings had been searched for survivors.
Testifying to the committee, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said he still doesn't see "the will to really fix" his city and suggested that race was a factor.
"I think it's more class than anything, but there's racial issues associated with it also," said Nagin, who is black.
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Local News)
Labels: Chicago Tribune, Katrina, Obama
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1.17.2007
Obama Takes First Step in White House Bid (ChicagoTribune.com)
By Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons
Washington Bureau
Published January 16, 2007, 10:00 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama took an important formal step on Tuesday toward a Democratic presidential campaign that would make him the most formidable African-American candidate ever, offering a call to common purpose as a remedy to bitter partisan divisions and marking a potential turning point in the nation's race relations.
By filing papers to form a presidential exploratory committee, the first-term Illinois senator signaled his intent to run for the presidency, a move that he has been publicly considering for months. Advisers said Obama and his family had made the personal commitment to a grueling, two-year presidential bid and the senator now would concentrate on assembling a campaign apparatus and testing support among financial backers and grass-roots activists.
The Democratic lawmaker will make a formal announcement on his candidacy Feb. 10 in Springfield, Ill., where barely two years ago he served as a mere state senator. He will return a cultural phenomenon, a best-selling author coveted as a guest by television talk show hosts and followed by celebrity photographers. He has come to embody the hopes and dreams of many Americans.
His candidacy would create a historic moment, as the American public contemplates a leader of mixed-race heritage, the son of an African father and white Kansan mother. Race would be a spoken and unspoken subtext to a campaign that also would raise grave policy issues on the war in Iraq, with Obama an early and consistent critic of the ongoing U.S. military mission there.
His efforts to reach toward the center with appeals to common ground is a reversal of the recently successful political formula of polarization to drive up turnout among base voters that won President Bush re-election in 2004.
Obama made the official announcement of his exploratory committee on his Web site, in a simple video that featured him seated, wearing a coat and no tie, telling viewers he wanted to be the first to tell them of the development. He sounded a theme of change, saying he was "struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Breaking News)
Washington Bureau
Published January 16, 2007, 10:00 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama took an important formal step on Tuesday toward a Democratic presidential campaign that would make him the most formidable African-American candidate ever, offering a call to common purpose as a remedy to bitter partisan divisions and marking a potential turning point in the nation's race relations.
By filing papers to form a presidential exploratory committee, the first-term Illinois senator signaled his intent to run for the presidency, a move that he has been publicly considering for months. Advisers said Obama and his family had made the personal commitment to a grueling, two-year presidential bid and the senator now would concentrate on assembling a campaign apparatus and testing support among financial backers and grass-roots activists.
The Democratic lawmaker will make a formal announcement on his candidacy Feb. 10 in Springfield, Ill., where barely two years ago he served as a mere state senator. He will return a cultural phenomenon, a best-selling author coveted as a guest by television talk show hosts and followed by celebrity photographers. He has come to embody the hopes and dreams of many Americans.
His candidacy would create a historic moment, as the American public contemplates a leader of mixed-race heritage, the son of an African father and white Kansan mother. Race would be a spoken and unspoken subtext to a campaign that also would raise grave policy issues on the war in Iraq, with Obama an early and consistent critic of the ongoing U.S. military mission there.
His efforts to reach toward the center with appeals to common ground is a reversal of the recently successful political formula of polarization to drive up turnout among base voters that won President Bush re-election in 2004.
Obama made the official announcement of his exploratory committee on his Web site, in a simple video that featured him seated, wearing a coat and no tie, telling viewers he wanted to be the first to tell them of the development. He sounded a theme of change, saying he was "struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics."
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Breaking News)
Labels: 2008 election, Chicago Tribune, Obama
¶ 21:51 0 comments
1.16.2007
Obama Inches Closer to Announcing (ChicagoTribune.com)
By David Mendell
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 15, 2007, 9:26 PM CST
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama inched closer to revealing his intentions about running for president on Monday, adding a "very" to the "soon" in his assessment about when an announcement will come.
"We will have an announcement very soon," Obama (D-Ill.) told reporters outside St. Mark Cathedral in Harvey after delivering an emotional keynote speech to celebrate Martin Luther King's birth.
Prefacing his address in the church, Obama turned to media crews and declared that he was "not making news today" about a run for the Oval Office.
In recent weeks, Obama has sought advice from a widening circle of political advisers and has hired staff in key states.
Even if many blacks view Obama as the premier political leader, he said that the day of celebration for King would have been the wrong moment to declare whether he will seek the presidency in 2008.
"I didn't want to use this day to indicate my plans because I am humbled by what Dr. King accomplished," he said. "I don't think that whatever my political plans are, [they] are comparable to the heroic struggles that he went through, and I don't want to draw false parallels."
Obama said that he is weighing issues such as his personal safety and loss of privacy but hinted that those matters would not affect his decision.
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Breaking News)
Tribune staff reporter
Published January 15, 2007, 9:26 PM CST
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama inched closer to revealing his intentions about running for president on Monday, adding a "very" to the "soon" in his assessment about when an announcement will come.
"We will have an announcement very soon," Obama (D-Ill.) told reporters outside St. Mark Cathedral in Harvey after delivering an emotional keynote speech to celebrate Martin Luther King's birth.
Prefacing his address in the church, Obama turned to media crews and declared that he was "not making news today" about a run for the Oval Office.
In recent weeks, Obama has sought advice from a widening circle of political advisers and has hired staff in key states.
Even if many blacks view Obama as the premier political leader, he said that the day of celebration for King would have been the wrong moment to declare whether he will seek the presidency in 2008.
"I didn't want to use this day to indicate my plans because I am humbled by what Dr. King accomplished," he said. "I don't think that whatever my political plans are, [they] are comparable to the heroic struggles that he went through, and I don't want to draw false parallels."
Obama said that he is weighing issues such as his personal safety and loss of privacy but hinted that those matters would not affect his decision.
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Breaking News)
Labels: 2008 election, Chicago Tribune, Obama
¶ 22:09 0 comments
10.23.2006
Is This Obama's Time? (ChicagoTribune.com)
Published October 20, 2006
If the crowd is large enough, even mumbles can grow deafening. So it is that the Democratic Party's sudden `It' candidate for the presidency in 2008 is an Illinois chap named Barack Obama.
Many rank-and-file Democrats would love to see Obama run. They see the first-term U.S. senator as an honest-eyed embodiment of charisma and content. He evokes what FDR and JFK evoked--a focus not on the tiresome past or the troubled present, but the ennobling future.
But many rank-and-file Republicans would love to see Obama run too. They relish a presidential candidate they would portray as an inexperienced prospect for a nation sure to be tested for many years in a war with Islamist extremists: Think Bambi, but more touchy-feely.
Barack Obama alone will decide whether this is his time. He has the luxury and the burden of mulling whether an attempt at the presidency would be good for his country, good for his family, good for him.
What some see as his reason to run now is, paradoxically, also his reason to wait:
- Senators rarely move up Pennsylvania Avenue (see Dole, Bob, and Kerry, John, two names among many). The likely reason: Their years in the Capitol leave them with long voting records for opponents to dismantle. Thus the thinking in some circles that Obama should leap into a presidential race before he has more experience, a.k.a. more of a record.
- The counterargument is that every election cycle is hostage to the context of its time. In the comparatively calm moments of 1976, 1992 and 2000, voters grew comfortable with newcomers to the national stage who knew little of foreign affairs--Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In ostensibly more challenging years such as 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1988 (George H.W. Bush), voters gravitated to candidates steeped in Washington experience. Come Nov. 4, 2008, as they cast their presidential votes in private booths, would Americans see Obama as refreshingly free of Washington baggage--or as a young man who still needs more seasoning?
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Editorials > Is This Obama's Time?)
If the crowd is large enough, even mumbles can grow deafening. So it is that the Democratic Party's sudden `It' candidate for the presidency in 2008 is an Illinois chap named Barack Obama.
Many rank-and-file Democrats would love to see Obama run. They see the first-term U.S. senator as an honest-eyed embodiment of charisma and content. He evokes what FDR and JFK evoked--a focus not on the tiresome past or the troubled present, but the ennobling future.
But many rank-and-file Republicans would love to see Obama run too. They relish a presidential candidate they would portray as an inexperienced prospect for a nation sure to be tested for many years in a war with Islamist extremists: Think Bambi, but more touchy-feely.
Barack Obama alone will decide whether this is his time. He has the luxury and the burden of mulling whether an attempt at the presidency would be good for his country, good for his family, good for him.
What some see as his reason to run now is, paradoxically, also his reason to wait:
- Senators rarely move up Pennsylvania Avenue (see Dole, Bob, and Kerry, John, two names among many). The likely reason: Their years in the Capitol leave them with long voting records for opponents to dismantle. Thus the thinking in some circles that Obama should leap into a presidential race before he has more experience, a.k.a. more of a record.
- The counterargument is that every election cycle is hostage to the context of its time. In the comparatively calm moments of 1976, 1992 and 2000, voters grew comfortable with newcomers to the national stage who knew little of foreign affairs--Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In ostensibly more challenging years such as 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1988 (George H.W. Bush), voters gravitated to candidates steeped in Washington experience. Come Nov. 4, 2008, as they cast their presidential votes in private booths, would Americans see Obama as refreshingly free of Washington baggage--or as a young man who still needs more seasoning?
(More ... Chicago Tribune > Editorials > Is This Obama's Time?)
Labels: 2008 election, Chicago Tribune, Editorials, Obama
¶ 21:15 0 comments
