President Obama visits Parkville Middle School in Maryland on February 14. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
–Secretary of State Clinton on protests in Tehran: “We wish the opposition and the brave people in the streets across cities in Iran the same opportunities that they saw their Egyptian counterparts seize.”
–The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recognizes Obama’s budget proposal is fundamentally a political document:
…had the budget included a large array of specific proposals for longer-term deficit reduction — ranging from increased taxes to changes in Social Security — that likely would have made it harder, not easier, for the Administration and Congress to eventually reach bipartisan agreement on those matters. Specific presidential proposals would have invited immediate attacks from lawmakers across the political spectrum and almost certainly led to pledges by scores or hundreds of members of Congress never to agree to them.
–Ezra Klein thinks the Pentagon got off light. Defense Secretary Gates goes off on the House GOP for offering $14 billion less in defense funds.
–Nytimes.com has a nifty budget graphic.
–Andrew Sullivan, who’s been a reliable Obama booster that always seems to see a “long game” in the President’s maneuvering, excoriates his budget proposal.
–Obama will hold a press conference (one presumes on budgetary matters) at 11 a.m. ET.
–As one would expect, Mitt Romney is way ahead in New Hampshire (albeit in very early polling on an opaque field.) Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin think the headline is Sarah Palin’s tepid showing.
–Nate Silver parses the field and concludes, for now, it’s weaker than usual:
So it does look like Republicans have some legitimate reason to worry. In the previous five competitive primaries — excluding 2004 for the Republicans, when Mr. Bush won re-nomination uncontested — each party had at least two candidates whose net favorability ratings were in the positive double digits, meaning that their favorables bettered their unfavorables by at least 10 points. All five times, also, the nominee came from among one of the candidates in this group. Republicans have no such candidates at this point in time.
–Haley Barbour issues a statement saying his former lobbying firm BGR Group “never advocated amnesty for illegal aliens,” but doesn’t deny working on immigration issues for the Mexican government.
–If you asked observers in early 2009 which Obama cabinet member or economic adviser would be first out the door, most of them would have said Tim Geithner. From Noam Scheiber’s worthwhile profile:
And yet, at the midway point of Barack Obama’s first term, Geithner is the lone remaining member of the president’s original economic team and arguably the administration’s second-most valued official. Indeed, that the White House was willing to let him face down Issa is only the latest sign of a rather remarkable transformation. (Issa ultimately blinked.) Geithner owns the economic portfolio with China and has been tasked with confronting Republicans over the nation’s debt limit. He has taken the lead on corporate tax reform and overhauling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. With his former lieutenant, Gene Sperling, now running the National Economic Council, Geithner will no longer form part of the multiheaded “war cabinet” that included Sperling’s predecessor, Larry Summers. He is set to play the first-among-equals role of a traditional treasury secretary.
–Edward Glaseser writes the triumph of the Fannie and Freddie report may be that it acknowledges rental: “This does not mean our goal is for all Americans to be homeowners.”
–Just in case you were wondering: The House did extend those Patriot Act surveillance measures.
–And India’s foreign minister is pretty much the Ron Burgundy of the U.N.
