Subject: Correct The Record Sunday August 31, 2014 Roundup
From: Burns Strider <[email-masked]>
To: CTRFriendsFamily <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:33:50 -0400
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**

*Correct The Record Sunday August 31, 2014 Roundup:*

*Headlines:*

*The Hill: “Hillary's summer: Five takeaways”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/216290-hillarys-summer-five-takeaways>*

“Key super-PACs Ready for Hillary and Correct the Record have repeatedly
highlighted the work she did for women as secretary of State.”

*Los Angeles Times: “Potential GOP presidential hopefuls woo donors,
activists at summit”
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-american-dream-summit-20140831-story.html>*

“‘I don't think Perry can win. He's not as good in debates. He's not going
to beat Hillary,’ Danson said, alluding to the presumed candidacy of former
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

*New York Post: Ed Klein: “Why Mitt Romney may again be the GOP’s next
great hope”
<http://nypost.com/2014/08/30/why-mitt-romney-may-be-the-gops-next-great-hope-again/>*

“Establishment insiders in the GOP tell me that the third time may be the
charm.”

*Washington Post: “Obama sets his own pace in a world whirling with crises”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-sets-his-own-pace-in-a-world-whirling-with-crises/2014/08/30/3e4874da-304b-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html>*

“Even former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has expressed
skepticism that Iranian negotiations will reach a successful conclusion and
has been vocal in disagreeing with Obama’s earlier decisions not to
intervene more directly to support rebel forces in Syria.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Celebs gin up votes for midterm push”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/216306-celebrities-gin-up-youth-votes-heading-into-midterms>*

“Musicians and celebrities often jump into the political game, most often
for Democrats. For instance, Katy Perry has already promised to write
Hillary Clinton's campaign song if she runs for president.”

*Associated Press: “Militia Says It ‘Secured’ US Compound in Libya”
<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_LIBYA?SITE=AP>*

“The Islamist-allied militia group in control of Libya's capital has
‘secured’ a U.S. Embassy residential compound there, more than a month
after American personnel evacuated from the country over ongoing fighting,
one of its commanders said Sunday.”

*Articles:*

*The Hill: “Hillary's summer: Five takeaways”
<http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/216290-hillarys-summer-five-takeaways>*

By Amie Parnes

August 31, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EDT

The political world is still waiting for a decision from Hillary Clinton on
the 2016 presidential race.

But observers have recently got a preview of what would lay in store from,
and for, Clinton should she take the plunge.

Over the summer months, she released a book, “Hard Choices,” about her time
at the State Department and waded into domestic policy for the first time
in four years.

So, what did we learn?

1) Anything Clinton says is news. So is anything Clinton doesn’t say.

 When Clinton last week weighed in on the events in Ferguson, Mo. following
the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of a police officer,
her comments drew instant headlines and lit up the Twitterverse.

During a paid speech at a tech conference in San Francisco, Clinton said
that “we can’t ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system”
and referred to how the unrest in Ferguson had made “our streets look like
a war zone.”

But the silence that preceded those remarks, which stretched out for more
than two weeks during a string of book-signing appearances, also became
news.

MSNBC host Chris Hayes took to Twitter to call her failure to comment
“downright bizarre.” Hayes’ tweet followed remarks by civil rights activist
Rev. Al Sharpton, another MSNBC host. At a rally, Sharpton had demanded
that Clinton, along with potential GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush,
should not “get laryngitis on this issue.”

“Nobody can go to the White House unless they stop by our house and talk
about policing,” Sharpton said.

Hillary allies defended her decision to refrain from immediate comment.

“I think it was appropriate that she not quickly discuss it, in part
because she is not a candidate yet, and she was not out and about giving
speeches at the time,” said one former longtime Hillary aide.

“She also is appropriately cautious in reviewing developing circumstances.
She is aware that anything she says is dissected, debated, supported and
attacked so that gives her good reason to be measured in remarks on most
anything,” the aide added.

2) The left doesn’t really hate her after all

In recent weeks, critics and even some Democratic allies have worried that
Clinton has failed to satisfy some on the left.

On Vox.com earlier this month, Ezra Klein wrote that “liberals walk away
unnerved” after almost every interview Clinton had done around her recent
book tour.

“She bumbled through a discussion of gay marriage with [NPR’s] Terry Gross.
She dodged questions about the Keystone XL pipeline. She’s had a lot of
trouble discussing income inequality,” Klein asserted.

Other progressives have expressed a desire to see a candidate rooted within
the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(Mass.), challenge Clinton.

But poll numbers provide succor to Clinton supporters.

A CNN poll conducted in late July showed that there was essentially no
difference in the backing Clinton received from self-identified liberal
Democrats over Democrats as a whole. Sixty-six percent of liberal Democrats
supported her, as did 67 percent of all party supporters.

Clinton allies object to the notion that the former secretary of State is
in trouble with the left.

“She is progressive and has support from the vast majority of progressives,
which I would argue spans from the left to the middle, including some
conservative Democrats along the way, too,” said one longtime aide.

Another ally who has worked for Clinton took it a step further, insisting
that the he idea of widespread unease about her on the left was a
“fictional plot that people want to believe is true.”

3) She’s learned her lesson with women

When Clinton’s campaign ended in 2008, she conducted an unsparing
post-mortem on what went wrong, spending meeting after meeting trying to
get to the bottom of the matter.

One of the biggest takeaways from those sessions was that she had made a
fatal flaw in not embracing the historic nature of her campaign as,
potentially, the first female president. Senior strategist Mark Penn had
discouraged highlighting gender, a tactic other aides came to see as a
monumental error.

Clinton has already determined not to make the same mistake this time
around, even before she has made a formal decision on whether to mount a
second presidential bid.

Key super-PACs Ready for Hillary and Correct the Record have repeatedly
highlighted the work she did for women as secretary of State. And in recent
days, it was announced that Clinton will be addressing a women’s forum
organized by the DNC next month, further highlighting her interest in
appealing to this key constituency.

4) She’ll keep facing questions about Obama

Both Clinton and President Obama say they have put the bitterness of their
2008 primary struggle behind them.

But more and more, Clinton has distanced herself from the president on
issues, including the civil war in Syria.

Earlier this month, the separation grew more obvious when Clinton said in
an interview that “great nations need organizing principle and ‘Don’t do
stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”

“Don’t do stupid stuff,” had previously been put forth by Obama as a key
rule-of-thumb for his own foreign policy.

Clinton ended up having to call Obama to offer an explanation and her
spokesman issued a statement pledging that the two would “hug it out” later.

Further parsing of her relationship with Obama is sure to be a running
theme during any future campaign.

5) People love to hate her (and love to love her.)

Alongside, “Hard Choices,” two prominent anti-Clinton books hit the
bookshelves this summer:” “Clinton Inc.” by Daniel Halper and “Blood Feud”
by Ed Klein.

While some criticized Klein’s book as less-than-credible — even Rush
Limbaugh publicly questioned some of the dialogue featured in its pages —
it sold well and even bumped Clinton’s own tome from the top spot on the
New York Times bestseller list.

But Hillary supporters say the summer also showed the depth of enthusiasm
for a Clinton presidential candidacy. To date, Ready for Hillary reports
having more than 100,000 donors, receiving more than 150,000 contributions
and attracting nearly two million supporters on Facebook, far outstripping
any comparable operation for a potential candidate from either party.

The support for a presidential run has to be evident by now, former aides
note.

“It's gotta be in her head,” one said.

*Los Angeles Times: “Potential GOP presidential hopefuls woo donors,
activists at summit”
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-american-dream-summit-20140831-story.html>*

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske

August 30, 2014, 9:06 p.m. EDT

Potential Republican presidential candidates paraded before more than 3,000
conservative activists and donors from across the country here for a
two-day summit that ended Saturday, touting their records and trying to
look like the future of their party.

The eighth annual Defending the American Dream Summit was sponsored by
Americans for Prosperity, among the most powerful conservative political
groups in the country, backed by GOP donors Charles and David Koch, whose
family amassed a fortune in the oil business.

It's not clear who the Koch brothers might back, given their support for
Republican and libertarian causes.

David Koch attended the summit, at one point addressing the crowd and
thanking the speakers, in particular Texas Gov. Rick Perry for hosting the
summit.

Both Perry and junior Texas Sen. Ted Cruz received raucous applause when
they appeared, with many chanting Saturday, "Run, Ted, run!"

"Oddly enough, that's the same thing my wife, Heidi, says to me when I go
to the gym," Cruz quipped, never revealing during his speech or a briefing
afterward whether he plans to run — though he presented a pretty clear
platform.

Cruz vowed to roll back Obamacare and hold the line against "amnesty" for
immigrants who entered the country illegally, daring President Obama to
"join me at the border." He suggested that the U.S. put more economic
pressure on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and attack Islamic State —
"bomb them back to the Stone Age."

"We need a president who will stand up and use every tool at our disposal,"
Cruz said to applause and repeated standing ovations.

Greg Danson, 30, a conservative from Houston who works in the oil industry,
said he was wowed by Cruz, who he said appears more intellectual than
Perry, more like the future of the party than the folksy past of George W.
Bush.

"I don't think Perry can win. He's not as good in debates. He's not going
to beat Hillary," Danson said, alluding to the presumed candidacy of former
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Perry, who has been visiting key
primary states, emphasized his tough stance on border security.

When Obama refused to send in the National Guard to address the recent
border crisis, Perry told the crowd Friday, he sent the troops himself.
That earned the governor a standing ovation.

Perry said that when Obama stopped in Dallas earlier this summer, he asked
the president to come see the border crisis.

"He turned me down, saying he doesn't do photo ops," Perry said. A man in
the audience shouted, "Shame!"

Perry derided what he called Obama's "era of lawlessness," comparing it —
in a nod to tea party activists prominently represented here — to British
tyranny over American colonists.

"We need to make Washington as inconsequential in our lives as we can,"
Perry said to more applause. He added with a chuckle, "In Texas, we
actually do pretty well without Washington's advice."

Brandon Rogers, 30, said that out of all the potential candidates, he found
Perry most inspiring. Rogers, a filmmaker from Los Angeles, considers
himself somewhat libertarian, but not enough to vote for Kentucky Sen. Rand
Paul, whom he saw as an idealist. He liked Cruz, too, but said, "Perry
could mobilize a movement and inspire a nation."

Few indicated they were put off by Perry's recent indictment on two felony
charges that stemmed from his threat to withdraw funding for a public
integrity unit.

Activists at the summit also heard from Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who
emphasized his record as a fiscal conservative, promising to reduce the
scope of the federal government and taking a swipe at spending under the
last Republican in the White House, George W. Bush.

"I felt like the Republican Party was a tall ship with a capable captain
and a strong crew that was very dangerously off course into the rocky
waters of big government," Pence said of the Bush administration. "It's a
new season in the Republican Party and the conservative movement."

Pence noted: "Some people say our next nominee should be a governor, and
I'm certainly sympathetic to that."

Carol Jones, 67, of Bastrop, Texas, drew a smile from Pence when she called
out: "Would you please run for president?"

Jones, a retired field director for Americans for Prosperity, said she had
grown disillusioned with Perry and was divided between Paul and Pence.

"I just love what he has done in Indiana. My God, if he can do that in
Washington — that's what we need," she said. "He stacks up better than a
lot of these other candidates, except Rand Paul."

Some in the crowd were concerned that Paul, son of longtime libertarian
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, would be unwilling to use U.S. military might
overseas, particularly against Russia and in the Middle East.

"He's too much of an isolationist," said Doug Vile, 58, a furniture
manufacturer from Pauls Valley, Okla., who prefers Cruz and Perry. "One of
our responsibilities is to help people all over the world. We're the
peacemakers."

But Jones said Paul, whom she got to know campaigning for his father, would
take action overseas if needed.

Paul took the stage here and quickly abandoned the lectern, pacing and
addressing the audience in a breezy, conversational style that drew
applause.

Young attendees clapped and cheered as Paul urged them to join him in
recruiting unlikely Republicans — minorities in urban areas, at
historically black colleges and, yes, even in Berkeley.

"If we're going to be the party that wins, we have to be a bigger party,"
he said. "We don't need to be Democrat light. We need to reach out to new
people."

*New York Post: Ed Klein: “Why Mitt Romney may again be the GOP’s next
great hope”
<http://nypost.com/2014/08/30/why-mitt-romney-may-be-the-gops-next-great-hope-again/>*

By Edward Klein

August 30, 2014, 4:09 p.m. EDT

The most likely Republican presidential candidate for 2016 is . . . Mitt
Romney?

The former Massachusetts governor has run and lost two bids for the White
House — in the 2008 Republican primaries and again in the 2012 general
election. What’s more, he proved to be a foot-in-mouth candidate who blew
his chances of winning in 2012 by writing off 47% of the electorate and
suggesting that illegal immigrants “self-deport.”

And yet, establishment insiders in the GOP tell me that the third time may
be the charm.

“The smart folks in the party are not committed to any presidential
candidate this early,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for
the US Chamber of Commerce, the powerful business lobby that has scored a
string of establishment victories over Tea Party candidates in this year’s
Republican primaries. “But Romney can’t be dismissed as the guy who lost
last time.

“You watch him on TV these days, and he’s a new guy with total command of
the issues and a real presence,” Reed added. “He could throw an
organization together and get the money.”

A wealthy New York-based Republican with close ties to members of the donor
class, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, wholeheartedly agrees.

“Most of the people I talk to who are involved in Republican politics as
donors want a winner,” he told me. “And many of these people are talking
about Romney because so many of the things he said in 2012 — about Russia
being a ‘geopolitical foe’ and people losing their health insurance under
ObamaCare — have come to pass.”

Until a few months ago, the favorite among establishment Republicans was
Chris Christie. And there are still those in the GOP, such as Kenneth
Langone, the billionaire co-founder of The Home Depot, who support the New
Jersey governor.

“To me, politics is practical,” Langone told me. “We Republicans don’t have
the luxury any more of having an ideological litmus test in the party.
Chris is a candidate who can win. And though he has never given me a
definite indication that he is going to run in 2016, in my humble opinion,
he’s in.”

However, most Republicans think Christie has suffered too many
self-inflicted wounds to be considered a front-runner.

The list of internal grievances against Christie is long and includes: his
hug-a-thon with President Obama after Hurricane Sandy; his
it’s-all-about-me keynote address at the 2012 Republican National
Convention; his bungled handling of the Bridgegate scandal; and his
appointment or reappointment of several liberal judges in New Jersey.

With Christie fading in the presidential sweepstakes, many Republican
donors and operatives turned, for a while, to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
as the party’s great hope. But Bush is playing Hamlet, unable to make up
his mind.

“Jeb has several problems that give him pause,” said a major Republican
source. “To begin with, he has staked out a position on immigration reform
and the Common Core education standards that may make him too moderate for
today’s Republican Party. Then there are his family problems to take into
consideration. His wife isn’t into being a public figure, and his daughter
has had drug issues in the past.”

In my conversations with Republican operatives, none could think of a time
since the 1980s when there wasn’t an obvious front-runner.

This past week, several potential candidates, including Indiana Gov. Mike
Pence, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz, showed up at a presidential
cattle call in Dallas that was organized by the conservative billionaire
Koch brothers.

“We are six months away from when some presidential campaigns in the
Republican Party will launch, and it doesn’t appear that the donors are
coalescing yet,” said Spencer Zwick, a fund-raising expert who is so close
to Romney and his wife, Ann, that he is often described as their “sixth
son.”

*Washington Post: “Obama sets his own pace in a world whirling with crises”
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-sets-his-own-pace-in-a-world-whirling-with-crises/2014/08/30/3e4874da-304b-11e4-994d-202962a9150c_story.html>*

By Karen DeYoung and Dan Balz

August 31, 2014, 10:30 a.m. EDT

Short of world war, it’s rare that a chief executive goes through a foreign
policy month like President Obama’s August.

U.S. warplanes struck in Iraq for the first time in years, as U.S.
diplomats struggled to establish a new government in Baghdad. Islamic State
militants beheaded an American journalist in Syria and spread their reach
across the Middle East.

War raged between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. In Afghanistan, U.S. plans for
an orderly exit at the end of the year teetered on the brink of disaster.
Russia all but invaded Ukraine and dared Obama to stop it. Libya descended
into violent chaos.

As events cascaded, Obama juggled rounds of vacation golf with public
statements addressing the conflicts. But his cool demeanor, and the
split-screen imagery of a president at play and at work, seemed ill-matched
to the moment.

Then came a Thursday news conference and a comment that only reinforced
criticism of a president neither fully engaged nor truly leaning into world
problems. Speaking of the Islamic State, he said, “We don’t have a strategy
yet.”

The statement may have had the virtue of candor, as Obama weighs the
military and diplomatic components of a U.S. response and seeks support
from other nations. But it hardly projects an image of presidential resolve
or decisiveness at a time of international turmoil.

Republicans pounced on the statement. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), speaking
Friday in Texas, said, “If the president has no strategy, maybe it’s time
for a new president.” He said in a later e-mail that he would call a joint
session of Congress to seek authority “to destroy ISIS militarily,” using
another name for the Islamic State. Texas Gov. Rick Perry accused Obama of
“lurching from crisis to crisis, always one step behind.”

On Sunday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said
Obama’s comments show that his foreign policy is “in an absolute free fall.”

“If you look at China, you look at ISIS, you look at Russia, you look at
Iran and North Korea, we have a serious host of problems presenting itself,
and our traditional allies are now standing up and saying, ‘Well, maybe
America is not the best one to lead us through these troubles,’ ” Rogers
said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Some Democrats also express dismay at Obama’s pace. “I think I’ve learned
one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe in
this instance, too cautious,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The Islamic
State, she said, is a “vicious, vicious movement. And it has to be
confronted.”

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Obama will continue to move at
his own speed to respond to these crises, regardless of criticism. “There’s
no timetable for solving these problems that’s going to meet the cable news
cycle speed,” he said. “It’s not a tenable thing. We’d much rather do this
right than do it quickly. We tried the opposite [during the Bush years] and
it worked out very poorly.”

This week, Obama will have an opportunity to show global leadership at a
crisis-packed summit with European allies. Immediately afterward, Secretary
of State John F. Kerry will travel to the Middle East, where potential
partners, waiting to see whether Obama has the capacity to chart a clear,
decisive course, are hoping for direction.

As the administration heads into those meetings, Kerry offered crisp and
forceful marching orders. “Airstrikes alone won’t defeat this enemy,” he
wrote in a Saturday op-ed article in the New York Times. “A much fuller
response is demanded from the world. We need to support Iraqi forces and
the moderate Syrian opposition, who are facing ISIS on the front lines.”

The world Obama now confronts is far different from the one he inherited
when he came into office almost six years ago, and it is testing equally
whether the style and substance of his leadership can win supporters and
prevail against enemies.

In the first years of his presidency, Obama’s principal foreign policy
goals were far less reactive and were more dependent on his initiative and
sense of timing.

With a schedule for Iraq withdrawal already set, he developed policies for
ending the then-faltering war in Afghanistan. In a pattern that would
repeat itself on other issues, he deliberated for months, and then split
the difference by simultaneously announcing a surge of troops and the
timing of their departure.

But as he tried to engage the world on his terms, Obama quickly found out
that the world had thoughts and plans of its own. Far from the reset Obama
sought with Russia, President Vladimir Putin sought a new balance of power
through aggression in Ukraine. While Obama offered a fresh start for the
United States in the Muslim world, the Arab Spring headed toward
destabilization rather than democracy.

Six years later, events seem to have spun out of his control, and Obama
must react to the actions of others. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has
sparked the greatest East-West crisis since the Cold War. Islamic State
advances have swallowed up a large swath of the Middle East and threaten a
global upheaval far beyond the shock of al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks.

Obama now must contemplate what could be a lengthy and messy recommitment
of U.S. military might in a region that continues to defy his efforts to
create stability. Having promised respectful relations among the big
powers, he must prove that the non-military tools of power — diplomacy and
economic pressure — will eventually force Russia back within its own
borders.

Historian David Kennedy of Stanford University noted that Obama has
struggled throughout his presidency to articulate a large and integrated
vision in both domestic and foreign policy and contrasted that with the
rhetorical and communications skills of Candidate Obama in 2008.

But he said Obama faces something of “devil’s brew” as he deals with a
world of proliferating aggressors and the palpable exhaustion of the
American people for military engagement. “There’s an expectation especially
since World War II that the United States and president in particular can
command events,” he said. “That’s not true and less true today than ever.”

Presidential advisers argue that Obama’s foreign policy management has born
fruit, from getting the Syrians to give up their chemical weapons to
bringing Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program to
engendering the trust and credibility with other leaders to get European
nations to support sanctions against Russia and rebuild a global coalition
to deal with the Islamic State threat.

A senior official called Obama’s Iranian policy “a perfect example of a
disciplined response that potentially leads to a good outcome.” Yet even
former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has expressed skepticism
that Iranian negotiations will reach a successful conclusion and has been
vocal in disagreeing with Obama’s earlier decisions not to intervene more
directly to support rebel forces in Syria.

Officials across the government spent Friday trying to clean up after
Obama’s Thursday news conference. They insisted that his “no strategy”
remark had been misinterpreted and that what was being portrayed as
hesitation and delay was instead a sign of due diligence and a sharp focus
on developing an effective long-term plan.

Earlier statements by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin
Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the overall threat
posed by Islamic State militants and the necessity of eventually taking the
fight into Syria, coupled with reports that the United States had launched
surveillance flights over Syria, prompted speculation of potentially
imminent military action.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest denied a contradiction. “I think
the president was pretty explicit that he is determined to make sure that
every element of his national security strategy is thought through,” he
said.

As Obama sought to nudge the debate back into his deliberative comfort
zone, others urged him toward action. Ryan Crocker, who has served as U.S.
ambassador in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, pleaded with the president to
stop deliberating and start acting. “I don’t think we have an alternative
to swift, decisive military action to degrade ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.
Give them no safe place to plan further attacks,” he said in a CNN
interview Friday.

U.S. officials rejected the notion that they are not acting. They
emphasized that Obama moved quickly in Iraq with airstrikes and said that
this month’s operations there are the first step in a larger strategy
against the Islamic State. They indicated that they will not be pushed into
an immediate response to recent events in Syria.

“The dynamic that you want, that I think is possible, is that [Islamic
State] has overreached and overextended itself, both in terms of the
territory it’s tried to claim, and the number of enemies it’s managed to
make,” a senior administration official said.

Limited airstrikes in Iraq, and the formation of a more inclusive version
of Iraq’s Shiite-led government, will encourage Sunni Arab states to work
together, under U.S. leadership, in ways that have eluded them thus far,
the official said.

He added that the “international outrage in countries like Britain, France,
Australia and Canada” over militants’ brutality, and the threat from
Western passport holders within the Islamist organization, will make those
countries more willing to participate in military and other operations
against the militants in response to a patient and well-conceived U.S.
strategy.

U.S. allies say they have a residual well of confidence in Obama despite
what they saw as the failure of U.S. leadership over the past year in Syria.

“What I do regret,” said a senior European official, is that the Islamic
State organization has become “exactly what we feared” last year, when
Obama held back in arming moderate rebel forces in Syria and reversed
course on U.S. military action there.

The Syria airstrikes, planned last August to punish President Bashar
al-Assad for using chemical weapons and to destroy his weapons program,
might have avoided the current mess by sending a message to Syrians and
U.S. allies that Obama was engaged and recognized the growing Islamist
threat, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid
publicly criticizing the president.

But the official believes that this summer has been different. Obama’s
taking the lead on sanctions against Russia — and pressing reluctant
Europeans to join — and the airstrikes this month against Islamic State in
Iraq have gone some distance in restoring allied confidence in the
president.

“It’s not my job to defend the administration,” the official said. “But
they have acted, more than I expected.”

Obama addressed the global angst during a Friday fundraiser for the
Democratic National Committee in Purchase, N.Y. He said that anyone
watching the nightly news might feel that “the world is falling apart.” He
acknowledged these are challenging times and that an unsustainable “old
order” that had been in place for decades in the Middle East was destined
to come apart.

“What we are seeing is the old order not working, but the new order not
being born yet — and it is a rocky road through that process, and a
dangerous time through that process,” he said.

American leadership “has never been more necessary, and there’s really no
competition out there for the ideas and the values that can create the sort
of order that we need in this world. . . . Our values, our leadership, our
military power but also our diplomatic power, the power of our culture is
one that means we will get through these challenging times just like we
have in the past,” he said.

Jim Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations,
said Obama’s inability to inspire confidence among critics has more to do
with the complexity of the problems than the president’s leadership style.
“He has a sort of perfect storm of messy problems, lousy options,
ambivalent allies and a skeptical public,” he said.

Obama’s attempt at reassurance begged the question not only of exactly what
course of action he will decide to take, but whether those policies will be
too little, too late.

The crises in Ukraine and Syria-Iraq have overshadowed equally turbulent
situations where the administration’s track record has not been
encouraging. This summer’s war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip
continued for weeks, despite repeated U.S. efforts to stop it, until a
tentative cease-fire was agreed upon under Egyptian auspices last week.

Despite two emergency visits by Kerry in the past several weeks,
Afghanistan appeared headed toward a political train wreck, as the two
candidates vying to replace President Hamid Karzai continued to dispute the
results of this summer’s election. With the withdrawal of U.S. combat
forces in December fast approaching, it remains uncertain whether there
will be a government to agree to Obama’s plan to leave nearly 10,000 troops
there for training and counterterrorism missions.

Kennedy, the historian, said that Obama, in dealing with multiple crises,
also is trying to change perceptions of what U.S. leadership and any
president can realistically accomplish. “It’s difficult virtually to the
point of impossibility to have a grand strategy in a world that is so fluid
and in which we no longer yield the power we once had. In a sense that is
Obama’s strategy, a recognition of that fact. So that rhetorically as well
as in reality, he’s trying to diminish the expectation that we can control
events.”

*The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Celebs gin up votes for midterm push”
<http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/216306-celebrities-gin-up-youth-votes-heading-into-midterms>*

By Jesse Byrnes

August 30, 2014, 5:10 p.m. EDT

With young voters more apathetic about voting and government than ever,
several organizations are trying to woo the “selfie generation” to the
polls this fall.

"About half of those who vote in presidential elections do not vote in
midterms," explained Andy Bernstein, executive director of HeadCount, a
non-partisan organization that partners with musicians to get youth engaged
in politics.

While overall turnout among young voters in presidential elections has
grown, turnout for midterms has stagnated, according to the Center for
Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIVIC).

In 2010, the under-30 vote dropped 27 percent since Obama first sailed to
victory two years earlier, according to CIVIC analysis of Census data.

Bernstein's group hopes to engage these so-called drop-off voters by riding
the popularity of musicians.

HeadCount will go on tour with the band The Black Keys for 15 shows in more
than a dozen cities from Sept. 6 through Nov. 3 registering young voters.

The group also plans to drive voter turnout through its Pledge to Vote
postcards, which involves celebrities taking photos of themselves holding a
sign to register to vote and posting it to social media.

During National Voter Registration Day in 2012, for example, HeadCount got
about 200 musicians, actors and comics to hold the signs, including Stephen
Colbert, Dave Matthews and 50 Cent.

Their cause was also cheered by actress Susan Sarandon, Cyndi Lauper and
musician Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, among others. As a result, the group
registered about 40,000 people in a single day.

Musicians and celebrities often jump into the political game, most often
for Democrats. For instance, Katy Perry has already promised to write
Hillary Clinton's campaign song if she runs for president. Other
entertainers were heavily involved in President Obama’s presidential runs,
including Beyonce, Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen.

While their focus is usually on presidential races, the groups’s uphill
task ahead of 2016 is getting youth involved in the elections happening
this year.

Of likely midterm voters ages 18-29, 44 percent of Mitt Romney supporters
in 2012 plan to vote this year compared to 35 percent of Obama voters,
according to another Harvard Institute of Politics survey.

Still, in an election with Senate control up for grabs, Republicans are
unlikely to see much of a bump from young voters – less than one in four
(23 percent) will "definitely" be voting in November, according to the
spring poll.

That's the case in other surveys, too. While 72 percent of those 18-31 said
they would "definitely" or "probably" vote in the 2016 presidential
election, less than half – 49 percent – said they were likely to vote in
the upcoming midterms, according to a poll from Democratic pollster Paul
Harstad in early spring.

During every election, it's important to use cultural leaders to get young
voters interested in the issues, said Ashley Spillane, president of Rock
the Vote.

Celebrities, artists and musicians help draw young voters interested in
other issues, Spillane said, such as voter ID laws, women's health and
college affordability.

"When you are thinking about this generation, in terms of messaging we are
constantly expressing our opinion on a myriad of social platforms,"
Spillane said, noting the importance of offering tools and meeting the
so-called digital natives where they are at to register – online.

Have to print a form, find an envelope and put it in the mail? "Most young
people can't tell you where to get a stamp these days," she said.

Rock the Vote, which works with hundreds of organizations to run events,
has a handful of large events to roll out soon.

A big push for the youth vote will be National Voter Registration Day on Sept.
23. The day, which started in 2012, became a holiday when the National
Association of Secretaries of State designated the fourth Tuesday each
September through 2019.

This year, more than 300 entertainers and musicians will post photos on
social media holding HeadCount's Register to Vote signs linking to their
online voter registration page and the group will host events in 20 cities
that day.

The group will also have young people sign pledges to vote – and get
entered for a chance at a musical vacation getaway. Those pledges will get
mailed back to them as a reminder, which has been shown to increase
participation.

Growing the youth vote is critical for both parties. Following the 2012
election, the GOP published its 97-page report on attracting more voters,
including youth, and noted it must draw young voters with its message and
candidates. The report even recommended establishing an "RNC Celebrity Task
Force" to get entertainment folks to highlight fundraisers.

Democrats contend, however, that young voters are naturally left-leaning on
most issues, putting the focus for Democrats, then, on mobilization.

"The message doesn't matter if they're not on the same page ideologically,"
said Rob Flaherty, youth media director for the Democratic National
Committee.

Still, young voters, like Americans in general, are mostly concerned about
jobs, the economy and healthcare, Republicans argue based on recent polling.

"While celebrity endorsements are nice, young Americans are more interested
in policies that will benefit them rather than having a famous person tell
them who to vote for," Raffi Williams, the Republican National Committee
deputy press secretary, wrote in an email.

"They fell for the celebrity endorsements when it came to Obama and are not
going to fall prey to the same tactic that has left them behind six years
later," he added.

*Associated Press: “Militia Says It ‘Secured’ US Compound in Libya”
<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_LIBYA?SITE=AP>*

[No Writer Mentioned]

August 31, 2014, 12:40 p.m. EDT

The Islamist-allied militia group in control of Libya's capital has
"secured" a U.S. Embassy residential compound there, more than a month
after American personnel evacuated from the country over ongoing fighting,
one of its commanders said Sunday.

The Islamist militia's move likely will reinvigorate debate in the U.S.
over its role in Libya, more than three years after supporting rebels who
toppled dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It also comes near the two-year
anniversary of the slaying of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other
Americans in Libya's second-largest city of Benghazi.

An Associated Press journalist walked through the U.S. Embassy compound
Sunday after the Dawn of Libya, an umbrella group for Islamist militias,
invited onlookers inside. Some windows at the compound had been broken, but
it appeared most of the equipment there remained untouched. The journalist
saw treadmills, food, televisions and computers still inside.

A commander for the Dawn of Libya group, Moussa Abu-Zaqia, told the AP that
his forces had entered and been in control of the compound since last week,
a day after it has seized control of the capital and its international
airport after weeks of fighting with a rival militia. Abu-Zaqia said the
rival militia was in the compound before his troops took it over.

The Dawn of Libya militia is not associated with the extremist militia
Ansar al-Shariah, which Washington blames for the deadly assault on the
U.S. Consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, that killed Stevens and the
three other Americans.

A video posted online Sunday showed unarmed men playing in a pool at the
compound and jumping into it from a second-story balcony. Voices heard in
the video identified it as the U.S. Embassy compound.

In a message on Twitter, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones said the
video appeared to have been shot in at the embassy's residential annex,
though she said she couldn't "say definitively" since she wasn't there.

"To my knowledge & per recent photos the US Embassy Tripoli chancery &
compound is now being safeguarded and has not been ransacked," she wrote on
Twitter. She did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate. State
Department officials in Washington also declined to immediately comment.

On July 26, U.S. diplomats evacuated the compound and the capital to
neighboring Tunisia under a U.S. military escort as fighting between rival
militias intensified and thousands fled. The State Department said embassy
operations would be suspended until the security situation improved.

Typically, local forces provide security for diplomatic posts, but Libya's
government has largely relied on militias for law enforcement since
Gadhafi's ouster, as its military and police forces remain weak. In the
past several weeks, the security vacuum in Tripoli deepened as militia
violence worsened. It remains unclear who the U.S. left in control of
guarding its facilities after its personnel evacuated.

Libya's militias, many of which originate from rebel forces that fought
Gadhafi, have become powerful players in post-war Libya. Successive
governments have put militias on their payroll in return for maintaining
order, but rivalries over control and resources have led to fierce fighting
among them and posed a constant challenge to the central government and a
hoped-for transition to democracy.

Following weeks of fighting that brought the capital to a standstill, the
Dawn of Libya militia said last week it managed to seize control of
Tripoli's airport and drive a rival militia from the mountain town of
Zintan out of the capital. It is now deployed around the capital and has
sought to restore normalcy in the city. The group called on foreign
diplomats to return now that the fighting has subsided.

*Calendar:*

*Sec. Clinton's upcoming appearances as reported online. Not an official
schedule.*

·  September 4 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton speaks at the National Clean
Energy Summit (Solar Novis Today
<http://www.solarnovus.com/hillary-rodham-clinto-to-deliver-keynote-at-national-clean-energy-summit-7-0_N7646.html>
)

·  September 9 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the DSCC at
her Washington home (DSCC
<https://d1ly3598e1hx6r.cloudfront.net/sites/dscc/files/uploads/9.9.14%20HRC%20Dinner.pdf>
)

·  September 14 – Indianola, IA: Sec. Clinton headlines Sen. Harkin’s Steak
Fry (LA Times
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-tom-harkin-clinton-steak-fry-20140818-story.html>
)

·  September 19 – Washington, DC: Sec. Clinton fundraises for the DNC with
Pres. Obama (CNN
<http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/27/politics/obama-clinton-dnc/index.html>)

·  October 2 – Miami Beach, FL: Sec. Clinton keynotes the CREW Network
Convention & Marketplace (CREW Network
<http://events.crewnetwork.org/2014convention/>)

·  October 6 – Ottawa, Canada: Sec. Clinton speaks at Canada 2020 event (Ottawa
Citizen
<http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/hillary-clinton-speaking-in-ottawa-oct-6>
)

·  October 13 – Las Vegas, NV: Sec. Clinton keynotes the UNLV Foundation
Annual Dinner (UNLV
<http://www.unlv.edu/event/unlv-foundation-annual-dinner?delta=0>)

·  October 14 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton keynotes
salesforce.com Dreamforce
conference (salesforce.com
<http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF14/highlights.jsp#tuesday>)

·  October 28 – San Francisco, CA: Sec. Clinton fundraises for House
Democratic women candidates with Nancy Pelosi (Politico
<http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/hillary-clinton-nancy-pelosi-110387.html?hp=r7>
)

 ·  December 4 – Boston, MA: Sec. Clinton speaks at the Massachusetts
Conference for Women (MCFW <http://www.maconferenceforwomen.org/speakers/>)