Visual Source: Newseum
The New York Times:
[Republicans] have also made clear their particular disdain for Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor and prominent reformer who has been working as a presidential adviser to set up the bureau.
The White House has recently floated another possible nominee, Raj Date, a former banker who is now working with Ms. Warren. Mr. Date has an impressive résumé, but not nearly as impressive as Ms. Warren’s.
Why go with a compromise candidate when Republicans have vowed to block any nominee? Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats should back Ms. Warren and expose to American voters just exactly whose interests the Republicans put first.
Mr. Obama has been criticized for not doing battle for another excellent nominee, Peter Diamond, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics who withdrew his name after Republicans vowed to block him from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. They said his background in labor economics made him unqualified, even though full employment is one of the Fed’s mandates. Mr. Diamond clearly could have served ably, but Republicans were more interested in obstruction. It’s past time for President Obama to take off the gloves.
Dana Milbank:
“Assume the position!” CNN’s John King ordered the candidates as they approached their lecterns just before airtime for Monday night’s debate.
The Republican presidential contenders did as the moderator told them.
Mitt Romney assumed the position of the capable but cautious frontrunner.
Tim Pawlenty assumed the position of a timid challenger, afraid to take on the leader.
Newt Gingrich assumed the position of a bored college professor.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain assumed all sorts of positions – privatizing Social Security? Loyalty tests for Muslims who want to serve in government? – while Rick Santorum assumed he could get by reciting platitudes.
There was one candidate who rose above the usual positioning, though she stood a head shorter than the six men on the stage. Eleven minutes into the debate, Michele Bachmann stole the show, and she didn’t return it in the subsequent hour and 49 minutes.
L.A. Times:
The seven contenders present at Monday's first debate concentrated their fire on Obama's economic stewardship and his health care reform law, while offering such familiar nostrums as lower taxes and fewer regulations. Left largely unaddressed was how to balance the budget while cutting taxes, and how to cover tens of millions of uninsured people if "ObamaCare" is repealed.
Carl M. Cannon:
If there was a surprise, it was the deference Romney received from the other candidates. The frontrunner often is the brunt of attacks from other candidates, and four years ago - even when he wasn't leading the polls -- Romney was particularly singled out for criticism by Republican rivals who did little to hide that they just didn't like him very much.
Maybe Romney has mellowed in four years, or perhaps this crop of Republicans is just a more accommodating crew, but if they are harboring any particular resentment for the handsome and rich former governor of Massachusetts they did a pretty good job of hiding it Monday night.
Eugene Robinson:
Romney is a conservative by any reasonable definition of the word. It’s just that he has a habit of taking objective reality and the views of his constituents into account.
When he was running one of the nation’s most liberal states, he governed as if he were pro-choice. When he looked for Republican-endorsed ideas to expand health-insurance coverage, he settled on the universal mandate that lies at the heart of, groan, Obamneycare. When the nation was on the precipice of a new Great Depression in 2009, he supported an economic stimulus package but differed with the one that Obama and the Democrats enacted.
Romney believes in science and therefore accepts that human activity is contributing to climate change. He said in 2007 that he supported cap-and-trade energy policy “on a global basis,” but not for the United States alone. He was for comprehensive immigration reform until his campaign four years ago, when he became a hard-liner, but now he seems to be trying to edge back toward reality on the issue.
I’ve always believed that Romney’s chief asset as a potential GOP nominee is his ideological flexibility. But his chief impediment to winning the nomination is a recidivist pragmatism that causes him to commit deeds that today’s GOP will not let go unpunished.
Joanna Weiss:
But retail politicking isn’t necessarily a test of how someone would fare as president. It’s more a test of commitment: How to tell who truly wants the world’s hardest job, and who wants an easy ride or a platform for pitching side ventures. It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump making the rounds of New Hampshire women’s groups. Gingrich, Scala notes, has been similarly scarce. A rare visit to New Hampshire last week was built around screening a documentary he and his wife made . . . about the pope.
It’s likely no match for the nitty-gritty of a long campaign, with its exhaustion, boredom, constant threat of germs and humiliation. And that’s a good thing for democracy. Politicians, once in office, spend plenty of time getting treated like stars. It’s useful to know that they also have to spend time kowtowing to regular people.