Thanks to the Tea Party, several radio interviews and a great plug from Glenn Beck, my book “Barack Obama and the Enemies Within” has jumped up to number 87 on Amazon (out of 600,000 titles).

Off to a good start. Hopefully we can maintain the momentum.

Making the top 100 on Amazon is a huge feat, especially for a Kiwi author. Of course the book is not on NZ politics, but US politics or specifically on Obama.

Having said that, I am very unenthused about the 2012 presidential election. I’d almost vote for Obama over Romney. Huntsman would be great, but he has little chance of winning the nomination.

Labour leader Phil Goff says United States President Barack Obama is a great leader whereas Prime Minister John Key is a poor leader despite both nations having high unemployment and receiving credit downgrades since both leaders took office.

Unemployment in New Zealand has doubled and our credit rating has been downgraded twice by Standard and Poors since 2008.  

The United States’ unemployment has also doubled since before the global financial crisis and they have received a credit downgrade too.

Mr Goff told Firstline this morning that President Obama and Mr Key are incomparable because they inherited different fiscal situations.

From the Wall Street Journal.

These are not of course all Obama’s fault. But it shows the challenge he will face with re-election. At present his best advantage is the comparative weakness of the Republican contenders.

Enjoy this mashup of John Belushi in Blues Brothers, with Obama talking about the credit downgrade.

The Atlantic looks at Perry and Obama on jobs:

If Texas Governor Rick Perry is the Republican nominee for president, the 2012 election will have a striking parallelism. President Obama would ask voters to overlook a bad national economy for which he’s not fully responsible. The Republican challenger would ask voters to credit him for an impressive state economy for which he is also not fully responsible.

There are two themes here. One is that the likelihood of a politician to take ownership over an economy is directly proportional to the health of the economy. The other lesson is that even as political leaders can try to guide an economy, they are ultimately victims, or beneficiaries, of its underlying fundamentals.

The Texas miracle is, like so many miraculous things, complicated upon closer inspection. Texas accounted for 40 percent of the nation’s new jobs since June 2009. This impressive statistic is the result of geology, geography, history, and politics.

Texas is only 8% of the US population, so 40% of new jobs is an impressive figure.

Texanomics is well-suited to a recession stemming from a financial crisis. When consumers’ balance sheets are hurting, they seek out low cost-of-living. That’s Texas. When companies don’t have access to credit, they hire cheaper labor. Texas again. When young couples look to start a family, they’re drawn to affordable housing, nice weather, and industries that hire: Energy and aerospace in Houston, health care and military in San Antonio, tech and education in Austin, and communications and more energy Dallas.

And the politics:

That the stimulus was a PR-failure says more about the strength of the downturn than the weakness of the administration. But that’s an economist’s distinction, not a campaign platform. The president’s message to voters asks them to see the successes of his policies by imagining how bad things would be without them. In a rotten economy, Obama has to run on a hypothetical. The governor’s economic message is simpler. It’s reality. It’s “Look at Texas.” Perry isn’t entirely responsible for the state’s economic record. But he’s a record worth claiming.

Perry is at 39% to win the Republican nomination on In Trade. Next is Romney on 32%.

Obama’s price for re-election is at 52%, down from 56% a few weeks ago.

But the mission was flawless – no soldiers dead, no civilians dead, no neighbour destroyed etc.

Now this will not guarantee Obama is re-elected, but it sure will give his poll numbers a boost for a fair while. And it will pretty much permamently put heed to any notion of him not being tough enough on the war on terror.

Nate Silver blogs:

Historically, the correlation between a president’s overall approval rating and his rating on foreign affairs is stronger than is the case with his rating on the economy. If you place the two variables into a regression equation, it finds that foreign affairs is the more important component, although both are clearly statistically significant.

That is a surprise, as common wisdom is economic issues trump everything.

Unless the economic indicators significantly outperform consensus expectations, the election is still liable to be fairly close, with Mr. Obama hardly assured of coming out on top.

I think one of the boggest factors will be the quality of the Republican candidate also. Donald Trump is threatening to turn the race into a joke.

1440: Obama yet to speak, but the Osama speculation is now widespread and being reported. A good day for mankind, so to speak. Not the end of terrorism, but a major blow. Yay. Obama now expected on at 1450 NZST.

1443: Seems the US has his body. I guess this means Donald Trump won’t demand a copy of the long form death certificate

1510: It seems he was killed in Pakistan, not far from the capital. No statement yet.

1536: It’s now official, with Obama making his statement. I wonder if the delay was teleprompter broke down

More seriously while this is news that will be welcomed by hudnreds of millions, my thoughts are with the families of the 9/11 victims. For them, this is more personal. Today is the equivalent of having the guy who killed your Mum or Dad sent to prison for life. The guy primarily responsible for their deaths is no longer a threat to anyone else.

1539: The operation was only launched today on Obama’s orders. No US deaths and they got Bin Laden’s body. Obama is about to shoot up in the polls. He is no Jimmy Carter.

Responding to critics’ relentless claims, US President Barack Obama has produced a detailed Hawaii birth certificate in an extraordinary attempt to bury the issue of where he was born and confirm his legitimacy to hold office. He declared, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.”

By going on national TV from the White House on Wednesday (local time), Obama portrayed himself as a voice of reason amid a loud, lingering debate on his birth status. Though his personal attention to the issue elevated it as never before, Obama said to Republican detractors and the media, it is time to move on to bigger issues.

Maybe now people will STFU on this issue. It has been the right wing equivalent of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists on the left.

I suspect Obama finally released his long form record as Donald Trump has started championing the birthers claims.

In 1982 Ronald Reagan, now considered one of the most popular politician of all time, faced a tough economy and a democrat controlled congress. As the chart below from USA Today shows, Obama is clearly ahead of where Reagan was at the same time in his presidency.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/presidential-approval-tracker.htm

This is a fascinating tracker poll. You can track any president against any other using the compare chart.

Tracker polls like this are interesting because they point to historical precedent. So when the media start talking about low approval ratings for Obama it pays to be skeptical as to how much influence this has on his reelection campaign.

Also worth noting that Obama’s approval is on the rise.

1. A deal with the Republicans on cutting taxes to stimulate the economy
2. Ratification of an arms reduction treaty with Russia
3. Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

It’s a nice combination of something for everyone. Almost all Americans like treaties which reduce the number of nuclear weapons. Those sympathethic to the tea party movement will like the tax cuts and the liberals will hail the repeal of DADT.

His net approval rating is now just a -2% average.

The Republican’s main problem is finding the right challenger. A generic GOP candidate out polls Obama, but the moment you put a name in there, Obama leads. This article divideds up the potential candidates as being populists or managers. Populists include Palin, Huckabee, and Perry, Managers are Romney, Daniels, Barbour with Gingrich and Pawlenty (my pick) being a bit of both.

A recent poll has Obama vs Palin being a 54% to 39% landslide for Obama. If Bloomberg enters the race as an independent, then it is 47% to 31% to 18%.

Another poll has Obama beating Romey 47% to 40%.

The net favourability ratings for Obama and the three leading Republicans are:

1. Huckabee +11%
2. Obama +5%
3. Romney +3%
4. Palin -15%

So Huckabee has some popularity, and is a rare person who can rally the christian base without scaring off liberals. However fiscal conservatives do not trust him, and hard to see the tea party rallying behind him.

If the economy picks up in time for 2012, Obama will be hard to defeat – unless the Republicans can find a candidate who appeals to both their religious and fiscal conservative wings – but also does not scare off independents and moderates.

• Extend the Bush tax cuts for two further years which were due to expire at the end of 2010
• Reduce for one year the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%
• Increase the threshold for the death tax from $1m to $5m ad reduce the rate from 55% to 35%

It will be interesting to observe the President’s poll ratings in the next month.

So what has this bipartisan group recommended:

• $200 billion of domestic and defence savings by 2015
• Tax reform that reduces rates, simplifies the code and broadens the base to reduce the deficit
• Measures to control long-term health cost growth
• Mandatory savings from farm subsidies, military and civil service retirement
• Ensure social security solvency for next 75 years

This would achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction by 2020, reduce the deficit to 2.2% of GDP by 2015 and caps revenue at 21% of GDP (note NZ is well over 30%).

Obama, to his credit, has not rejected it. Sadly Congressional Democrats look likely to – which will impose future generations with horrific levels of debt and interest on the debt.

The situation in NZ is not so dire, but we still need bold measures to stop borrowing $250 million a week.

This is very enjoyable. It’s pro-Obama, but done in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan.

A federal judge issued a worldwide injunction Tuesday immediately stopping enforcement of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, suspending the 17-year-old ban on openly gay U.S. troops.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ landmark ruling also ordered the government to suspend and discontinue all pending discharge proceedings and investigations under the policy. …

the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights organization that filed the lawsuit in 2004 to stop the ban’s enforcement.

So who would have thought that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would not be killed off by Obama (who had promised to do so), but instead by the Log Cabin Republicans.

1. Eisenhower 75%
2. Bush GWH 74%
3. JFK 67%
4. LBJ 65%
5. Bush GW 65%
6. Nixon 55%
7. Ford 48%
8. Carter 43%
9. Clinton 43%
10. Reagan 41%
11. Obama 41%
12. Truman 34%

Reagan, Clinton and Truman all went on to win another term, so maybe Obama is following their strategy of not peaking too early!

A senior member of the Obama Administration has praised the Prime Minister as a “key player” on the international stage, who has developed a “real chemistry” with the US President. …

Speaking at a seminar on United States-New Zealand relations in Washington, Dr Campbell said Mr Key had “animated the discussions” and “drove the deliberations” at the President’s Nuclear Summit in April.

Labour, and many in the wider left, have been underestimating John Key for years and years, and still do so. This is partly why they lost the 2008 election – they were convinced Clark would destroy Key in the debates.

Even today they have their fantasies that he is some sort of smile and wave lightweight, whose only asset is his smile. And you compare that to Campbell’s assessment that Key drove deliberations at the US convened nuclear summit.

Dr Campbell said the Obama Administration had at first considered the US-NZ relationship was “profoundly underperforming”.

The change of regime in both counties has probably helped

Very watchable attack ad on Obama. The production quality is excellent.

US President Barack Obama has fired top Afghanistan commander General Stanley McChrystal over inflammatory comments that angered the White House and threatened to undermine the war effort.

Obama relieved General McChrystal of his command after a private, 30-minute meeting at the White House and named General David Petraeus, commander of the US Central Command, to replace him, a senior administration official said.

That’s a smart decision, Petraeus is well regarded. Ironically it is technically a demotion for Petraeus, but I suspect he won’t mind being closer to the action.

Republicans love Petraeus. If things do not progress well in Afghanistan, any other appointment could have seen greater attacks on Obama’s strategy.

The tiff between General Stanley McChrystal and the White House is the most extraordinary airing of military-civilian tensions since Harry Truman stripped Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command a half-century ago.

Which doomed any chance of Truman standing again for President. Mind you he was justified – MacArthur was a great general and leader, but he was refusing to follow orders.

The White House summoned McChrystal to Washington to explain disparaging comments about his commander in chief and Obama’s top aides. The meeting, set for tomorrow, is a last-ditch moment for the general once considered the war’s brightest hope.

If not insubordination, the remarks in a forthcoming Rolling Stone magazine article were at least an indirect challenge to civilian management of the war in Washington by its top military commander.

The comments are pretty much inexcusable. The military are sworn to not be partisan and to be loyal to their elected Commander in Chief.

However if Obama sacks McChrystal, he may doom his own strategy for Afghanistan. It will be fascinating to see what he does,

I do like the annual tradition of the President having to make fund of himself (and others) at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

My favourite lines are about how is still popular in the country of his birth, and how glad he is to see Jay Leno, as his ratings have fallen even more than his.

The US presidency is the most powerful position in the world, and this semi-requirement to take the piss out of yourself is a healthy one. It is unthinkable that this would happen in Russia or China.