Rise and Shine

President Obama talks with PM Tusk of Poland in the private residence of the White House, Sept. 17, 2009. NSC Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is in the background (Photo by Pete Souza)

Washington Post: President Obama will name deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough, a longtime trusted aide, as his new White House chief of staff Friday, officials said.

McDonough, 43, has spent the past two years as the No. 2 official in the National Security Council, helping guide some of the administration’s most high-profile decisions, including the military drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the response to earthquakes in Haiti and Japan and the aftermath of the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last fall.

Obama considers McDonough one of his “closest and most trusted advisors for nearly a decade,” a White House official said.

More here

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Today:

11:0: V.P. Biden Speaks on the Administration’s Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence (Richmond, Virginia) – White House live (audio only), CNN

12:10: President Obama makes a personnel announcement

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GOPolitico: The White House will also announce several other promotions Friday, including moving communications director Dan Pfeiffer to the job of senior adviser, and shifting deputy communications director Jennifer Palmieri into Pfeiffer’s old job. Pfeiffer’s move comes as David Plouffe, a longtime Obama political adviser, plans to leave the White House this month.

Other senior-level moves include:

Rob Nabors – Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy
Tony Blinken – Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor
Danielle Gray – Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary
Katy Kale – Assistant to the President for Management and Administration
Lisa Monaco – Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (upon confirmation of John Brennan as DCIA)
Miguel Rodriguez –Assistant to the President and Director of Legislative Affairs
David Simas – Assistant to the President and Deputy Senior Advisor for Communications and Strategy

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will give a joint interview at the White House on Friday afternoon to CBS News’ Steve Kroft, for broadcast Sunday on “60 Minutes.”

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Steve Benen: We don’t yet know exactly why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave up on ambitious reforms of filibuster rules. After months of voicing support for sweeping changes, it’s possible Reid just didn’t have the votes from his own caucus to pursue bold reforms through the “constitutional option.”

Whatever the reasoning, however, it’s important that folks understand that when Reid says protecting the filibuster is necessary to keep the Senate from being like the House, he’s wrong…..

More here

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Greg Sargent: Now that the smoke has cleared from the wreckage of yesterday’s filibuster reform debacle, what’s next for those who want to fix our broken Senate? There is no denying that yesterday’s outcome was a terrible disappoint for those who still hold out hope for functional government. At the same time, there are some silver linings…..

More here

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President Obama attends a Sandy Hook interfaith vigil at Newtown High School, Dec. 16, 2012 (Photo by Pete Souza)

NYT: The White House has decided to circumvent Capitol Hill as it concentrates its gun-control efforts on speeches and other public appearances by President Obama and Vice President Biden outside of Washington, according to officials with knowledge of the plans.

With Obama’s gun agenda dependent on centrist Democratic senators who are nervous about their reelection prospects, the administration has calculated that the president is better off helping to build a groundswell of popular support within the lawmakers’ states rather than negotiating directly with them, officials said.

More here

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NYT: The White House delivered a strong message to Wall Street on Thursday, taking the unusual step of choosing two former prosecutors as top financial regulators.

But translating that message into action will not be easy, given the complexities of the market and Wall Street’s aggressive nature.

At a short White House ceremony, President Obama named Mary Jo White, the first female United States attorney in Manhattan, to run the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Obama also renominated Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position he has held for the last year under a temporary recess appointment without Senate approval.

With the appointments, the president showed a renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable for wrongdoing, extolling his candidates’ records as prosecutors.

More here

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President  Obama greets a local resident on Main Street in Moneygall, Ireland, May 23, 2011 (Photo by Pete Souza)

Irish Examiner: The US President is to be immortalised in the birthplace of his ancestors with the Barack Obama Plaza in Moneygall, Co Offaly.

Around €6m is being invested in the plaza by Supermac’s founder Pat McDonagh, to commemorate the visit by the President and his wife Michelle in 2011.

It will also see the establishment of the Barack Obama Community Facility, where exhibitions of historic and current material marking the relationship between Moneygall and the United States will go on display.

This is the single biggest investment on the Offaly/Tipperary border region in decades and will bring 60 new jobs to the area, as well as 75 jobs during the construction phase.

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Morning!

This and That

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Bo, the Obama family dog, plays in the snow in the Rose Garden of the White House, Jan. 24 (Photo by Pete Souza)

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Helloooooooo everyone – how are you all doing? I still haven’t replied to recent emails …. but tomorrow, hopefully. 😕

morning

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NYT: President Obama travels to ground zero in Lower Manhattan Thursday afternoon … he plans to lay a wreath at a memorial to the nearly 3,000 victims of the 9/11 attacks. He will also meet privately with family members of the victims, firefighters and other rescue workers who died in the September 2001 attacks.

…On Friday, the president will go on the road again to Fort Campbell in Kentucky for a less somber occasion: to pay tribute to those who flew the Navy Seal team to Bin Laden’s compound deep inside Pakistan. The Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which provided air transportation for the Navy assault team, is based at Fort Campbell.

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E.J. Dionne (Washington Post): Barack Obama is not the man many Americans thought he was. This sudden realization has transformed American politics … The sheer audacity of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden has forced Obama’s friends and foes alike to reassess what they make of a chief executive who defies easy categorization and reveals less about himself than politicians are typically drawn to do.

Obama is hard to understand because he is many things and not just one thing. He has now proved that he can be bold at an operational level, even as he remains cautious at a philosophical level. His proclivity to gather facts and weigh alternatives does not lead automatically, in the venerable phrase, to the paralysis of analysis. It can also end in daring action tempered by prudence – for example, making sure that additional helicopters were available to our Navy SEALs.

… one of his close aides told me long ago, there is inside a very cool, tough, even hard man. Obama is not reluctant to use American military power …. because he ordered this attack, and because it was successful, no one will ever view Barack Obama in quite the same way again.

Full article here

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(Thanks Lee)

Jo-Ann Armao: Right call on bin Laden photos …. I have to confess to breathing a sigh of relief on hearing the White House’s decision not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s bloodied corpse. Just as I found the dance-on-his-grave celebrations that followed Sunday’s announcement of his death a tad unseemly, the idea of America proudly displaying its kill was unsettling.

….what purpose would be served by releasing these photos, said to be profoundly gruesome? Those who say it would eliminate questions about whether bin Laden actually died are kidding themselves that the bin Laden doubters would accept photos released by the U.S. government as real proof.

….the only purpose served by the photos’ release would have been to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a public that’s become accustomed to blood and violence as entertainment. The cost could well have been inflaming public opinion in places where American troops are serving and that’s simply – as the administration wisely determined – too high a price to pay.

Full article here

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Eugene Robinson: Why I would’ve released the bin Laden photos … I understand why President Obama decided otherwise, and of course I respect that decision. But I think showing the world evidence – however gruesome – of the terrorist butcher’s death would have been the better call.

Why? Because while gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden….Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man.

It’s also true that photographic evidence would silence most, but not all, of the conspiracy theorists … but this is just a secondary consideration, because the wing nuts won’t get any traction. I doubt that even Donald Trump is going to endorse a theory that requires calling Navy SEALs a bunch of bald-faced liars – not to mention the entire military and intelligence chains of command.

The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.

Full article here

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The Fix (Washington Post): In the days since the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has adopted a simple strategy: be big.

Big as in magnanimous. Big as in bipartisan (or, better yet, nonpartisan). Big as in inclusive.

…Let’s first revisit some of the decisions Obama has made in recent days.

* Obama’s speech announcing the death of bin Laden was somber and short – devoid of triumphalism or credit-taking.

* In making the decision not to release a photo of the deceased bin Laden … Obama made an appeal to a shared American value system. “That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies. We don’t need to spike the football.”

* Obama invited former President George W. Bush to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at Ground Zero tomorrow (Bush declined) and took a pass on making remarks at the event…

Full article here