Checking on the promises Obama didn't make

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

The commitments that President Barack Obama did not make during last year’s campaign could end up being as significant over the next four years as the promises that he did. Now that he is president, those unmade commitments give him room to maneuver.

Like reading the spaces between tea leaves, vows left unsaid by a candidate can provide important clues on which areas a president considers to be politically untenable to pursue.

In Obama’s case, his refusal to make firm commitments on policy matters with far-reaching implications — such as the U.S. military deployment to Afghanistan, judicial nominees and the future of the big-ticket entitlement programs — suggest he sees them as potentially troublesome, or that he simply wanted to use his mandate with maximum freedom.

He had every reason to be confident that he would have a mandate: Most polls in key states, such as Wisconsin and Colorado, showed him far ahead of Republican John McCain as early as June, a lead he never lost.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that Obama will probably make his decision on sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan this week or next. Gates said he’d be wary of sending more than 30,000 forces to Afghanistan, in addition to the nearly 40,000 already there.

Despite the skittishness of many Democratic members of Congress over the prospect of a military commitment in Afghanistan that would last for the next four years, candidate Obama never pledged to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by a certain date, as he pledged to pull out U.S. forces from Iraq.

He made his stance clearer in his press conference Monday night.

Video   Troubled times in Afghanistan Feb. 11: Author Tom Ricks debates whether President Barack Obama can bring the U.S. troops home from Iraq and maintain stability in that country while continuing to add troops to Afghanistan in an effort to resolve the problems there. Hardball

“I do not have yet a timetable for how long” it will take to ensure that terrorists have no safe havens in Afghanistan, he said.

Obama noted that last week he met with some of the survivors of people who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, “a reminder of the costs of allowing those safe havens to exist. My bottom line is that we cannot allow al-Qaida to operate. We cannot have those safe havens in that region.”

Congressional Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have expressed worry about the open-ended nature of the U.S. deployment.  The question Democrats will face this year or next is whether they will vote to approve the military spending to pay for Obama’s Afghan deployment — or whether they will challenge their president on a critical national security question.

Appoint some Republicans to the courts
Obama has the opportunity to reshape the federal bench: 62 vacancies await him, including 15 appeals court judgeships. They are especially significant, because most cases are decided by the appeals courts and never make it to the Supreme Court.

INTERACTIVE Track President Barack Obama's promises Explore and track the president's campaign pledges. See if Obama keeps his word, and vote on his progress during the first 100 days. NBC News

A theme of Obama’s campaign last year was his promise to be bipartisan, or as he said on the night he won the Iowa caucuses, “to move beyond the bitterness and pettiness and anger that's consumed Washington.” But will his promise of bipartisanship extend to his court choices?

One way for the president to demonstrate bipartisanship would be to do what his predecessor George W. Bush did as a conciliatory move when he first took office in 2001: appoint a judge from the other party to the bench.

In 2001, in his first group of nominees to appeals court vacancies, Bush included Roger Gregory, a Bill Clinton nominee whom Republican senators had stymied for months before Clinton gave him a temporary recess appointment.

There’s no record of Obama pledging during the campaign that he would appoint Republicans to the bench.

A way to demonstrate bipartisanship
The Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal editorial pages and Sen. Arlen Specter, R- Pa., the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have urged Obama to demonstrate bipartisanship by nominating a few Republicans to vacancies on the bench.

The Times editorial focused on one Bush nominee whom Democrats never gave a chance to get a vote in the Judiciary Committee, Peter Keisler.  “Re-nominating Keisler could signal the beginning of a long overdue truce in the judge wars,” the Times said.

But Nan Aron, president of the advocacy group Alliance for Justice, which opposed many Bush judicial nominees, dissents from this view.

“Unlike Roger Gregory, the nominees they’re talking about, such as Keisler, never had bipartisan support,” she said.

Aron said there’s no reason to think Obama’s judicial nominees won’t enjoy bipartisan support. But, she added, “I would think they (Obama and his aides) would want to make their own picks rather than rely on those of George W. Bush.”

MORE FROM FIRST 100 DAYS

First 100 Days Section Front

Obama touts ‘New Foundation’ for growth Fact check: Obama disowns deficit Transcript: ‘We have a lot of work left to do’ Obama to be spectacular success — or failure? Scoop: Celeb magazines loved Obama’s first 100 days First 100 days: Obama's approach to two wars Obama has miles to go, promises to keep Newsweek: Obama struggles with life in spotlight NYT: Survey — Obama nudges views on race First 100 days of the Obama economy First 100 Days Section Front   Add First 100 Days headlines to your news reader: