Domestic Policy

Not long ago, shortly after one of a series of meetings on next year's federal budget, President Bush was chatting with a small group of reporters. "Darman just walked out," he said, "and when you see him walking out, I go through a period of about 60 minutes of gloom." Richard G. Darman, Bush's budget director, often makes people here gloomy. It is certainly understandable.

As the White House embarks on another staff shakeup, President Obama announced Tuesday that he has tapped a senior aide, Cecilia Munoz, to run a major office that helps create and execute national domestic policy -- a perch that may empower her to bring fresh attention to the immigration issue. Munoz comes to the job at a moment when the Obama administration faces myriad domestic policy challenges: high unemployment, a rocky housing market and an immigration system that is the target of widespread complaints.

The White House on Thursday announced the resignation of Kenneth T. Cribb as domestic policy adviser to President Reagan and said he would be succeeded by former aide Danny Crippen. Cribb, 40, a one-time White House associate of then-presidential counselor Edwin Meese III, went to the Justice Department to serve as chief of staff to Meese when he became attorney general in early 1985. Cribb returned to the White House last year.

The White House during President Clinton's second term was a combustible, ambitious place. While to the public it appeared that the chief executive was spending most of his time embroiled in scandal, a small group of staffers worked behind the scenes to pursue an aggressive policy agenda. Elena Kagan was one of them. She had come to the Clinton domestic policy shop in 1997 after serving as an administration lawyer. By the time she left two years later, she had put her stamp on the office, a unit that took on tobacco and gun industries, advocated campaign finance reform, backed affirmative action and worked to preserve abortion rights.

President Bush on Friday named Republican Party chief Clayton K. Yeutter to be his domestic policy adviser and recommended that political consultant Richard N. Bond succeed Yeutter as GOP chairman. Bush made the announcement as he addressed the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee. Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Yeutter's formal new title would be counselor to the President for domestic policy and that he would have Cabinet status.

President Bush's domestic policy advisor, Claude A. Allen, has resigned to spend more time with his family, the White House said. Allen had been working for the administration since Bush's first year in office -- first as the No. 2 official at the Health and Human Services Department, and for the last year as domestic policy advisor in the White House.

It is surely asking a bit much to expect the President of the United States to lay out a comprehensive domestic program in the middle of a war. But it is also absurd to expect that the long-range security of the United States won't be harmed without one. America faces serious problems at home, and over the months and years to come, the enemies within our borders could threaten democracy as much as any threat abroad. These enemies are far too numerous, not to mention obvious, to enumerate.

Shaky economy. Deteriorating infrastructure. Political system with declining credibility. The Soviet Union? Yes, but of course to a much less calamitous degree, the United States as well: It has major problems too. That's sometimes easy to forget, or at least to minimize, when you look at what's happening elsewhere in the world. And it's easy to lose sight of crucial domestic policy issues during the Bush Administration's skillful conduct of foreign policy.

Last week, Ross Perot spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell most Americans what they had already figured out for themselves: Our economy is in serious trouble. The Bush Administration has compiled the worst economic record in 50 years, with the slowest output growth, the slowest jobs growth and the slowest income growth since the Great Depression. Since President Bush assumed office, America has lost 1.3 million manufacturing jobs.

Finally, albeit belatedly, President Bush is acknowledging the mounting domestic problems that are sapping the nation of confidence and economic steam. That is a welcome first step toward confronting domestic-policy woes. But in canceling a trip to Asia in order to spend more time at home, the President is making a symbolic political point at the expense of vital foreign-policy interests. He should reconsider.

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama spooled out a long list of proposals to lift the economy, create jobs and carry out his broader policy agenda. Some of the ideas are new; others had been announced. The following is a summary of the initiatives cited in the speech and where they stand: The economy and jobs To ease unemployment, Obama urged Congress to pass a jobs bill. The House narrowly passed a $174-billion measure in December, but the Senate has yet to act. The bill is one of Obama's main vehicles for jump-starting employment, which is the centerpiece of his 2010 agenda.

An energized President Obama took a feisty message on the road Thursday, hammering home the points of his State of the Union address and suggesting he has plenty of political fight left in him as he enters his second year in office. At a town-hall-style meeting in Tampa, the president laughed and joked with a buoyant crowd, poking fun at political opponents and offering a lighthearted critique of recent media coverage that he disliked. Though his mood was light, Obama had a clear message for those who threatened his healthcare plans and who hoped to chip away at his political capital in the months leading to this fall's midterm congressional elections: He's not giving up on his agenda.

As President Obama's standing among voters slumped last fall, the president and his aides decided it was time for a course correction. Polls suggested that many people who had voted for Obama now thought the president was spending too much time on healthcare and foreign policy instead of on the public's top priority: fixing the economy. So White House strategist David Axelrod and others proposed what they called "a hard pivot" -- a sudden, dramatic change in the president's public profile.

Responding to a surge of terrorism cases involving American suspects, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says her department is deploying more intelligence analysts nationwide and expanding teams that do outreach with Muslim communities. In an interview this week, Napolitano outlined a strategy against radicalization that features stepped-up intelligence sharing with state and city law enforcement agencies as well as increased efforts to engage American Muslims and prevent backlash against them.

Citing e-mails that critics say cast doubt on global warming, congressional Republicans called on the Obama administration Wednesday to suspend efforts to combat climate change until the controversy is resolved. In a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, the lawmakers requested that a pending move to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act be halted, along with plans to limit emissions from vehicles, power plants and other sources, "until the agency can demonstrate the science underlying these regulatory decisions has not been compromised."

After months of almost single-minded focus on healthcare, President Obama is about to shift the White House spotlight to global warming -- first with a speech to the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, then later in the week at the G-20 economic conference in Pittsburgh. The renewed emphasis on climate change and reducing carbon dioxide emissions comes at a crucial time: Negotiators are entering the home stretch in the drive to unveil a comprehensive new international agreement to curb rising temperatures at a December conference in Copenhagen.

Shifting focus from Iraq to domestic matters, Sen. John F. Kerry said Saturday that President Bush was "stubborn, out of touch and unwilling to change course" on policies that harm the middle class. "It's not just in Iraq," Bush's Democratic challenger told supporters who filled an Orlando high-school auditorium. "Over the last four years, he has made a series of serious misjudgments here at home."

Alejandra grabs a seat off the aisle and stares out a window as her MTA bus begins its rush up the tree-lined streets and past the stately homes of Old Pasadena. Soon the homes will give way to suburban strip malls, spacious parks and family restaurants, and then, as the bus begins to fill, the strip malls will give way to shuttered crack houses and cluttered pawnshops.

In calling last month for "common ground" on abortion, President Obama launched his search for an unlikely political sweet spot -- a popular stance on an issue that has long been dominated by extremes. But the slaying Sunday of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller has raised the level of mistrust between the very factions that the White House has been trying to bring together. The administration had already been struggling to soothe simmering tensions.

If it seems arbitrary -- even unfair -- to take the measure of a new president after just 100 days in office, you can blame Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933, with the nation in a financial meltdown, Roosevelt came to the White House and, with an enthusiastic Democratic Congress at his command, enacted a whirlwind of emergency legislation.