WBEZ | President Obama

Obama taps Penny Pritzker for Commerce secretary

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:48:00 -0500

President Barack Obama on Thursday chose two old friends with corporate executive experience for top posts on his economic team, naming longtime fundraiser Penny Pritzker as Commerce secretary and adviser Michael Froman as U.S. Trade Representative.

Pritzker, a Hyatt hotel heiress, businesswoman and philanthropist, is Obama's pick to fill a Cabinet post that has been vacant since former Secretary John Bryson resigned last summer, after he said he suffered a seizure that led to a series of traffic collisions.

Froman is one of Obama's law school classmates and senior economic advisers who previously worked as an executive at Citigroup. The Cabinet-level trade representative performs as the administration's top adviser and negotiator on international trade. If confirmed by the Senate, Froman would replace Ron Kirk, a former Dallas mayor who stepped down as trade representative in February after serving in the post throughout Obama's first term.

Obama made the nominations in the White House Rose Garden just before departing for Mexico. He said the two will help fulfill his top priority to grow the economy and create middle class jobs, in part by opening new markets overseas to sell U.S. products.

"They've got a lot of work to do, and I intend to work them to the bone as soon as they're official," Obama said to laughter from a crowd that included the nominees' families and administration staff.

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Pritzker would become the fourth woman serving as secretary in Obama's current Cabinet. She also would be the wealthiest in the Cabinet by far, with Forbes estimating her net worth at $1.85 billion and ranking her as the 277th richest American.

Pritzker is a lifelong Chicagoan who has known Obama since the 1990s and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for both of his presidential campaigns. She was his finance chairwoman in 2008, served as co-chair of Obama for America 2012 and gave $250,000 to help put on his inaugural festivities in January.

Obama selected her for his 16-member Presidential Economic Recovery Advisory Board in 2009. When that board expired, Obama included her in his 26-member Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Pritzker has led several companies and currently serves as chair of investment firms Pritzker Realty Group and Artemis Real Estate Partners. She's also on the board of the Hyatt Hotels Corp., the chain co-founded by her father.

Pritzker has donated generously to education and the arts and resigned from the Chicago Board of Education in March as she was being vetted for the Commerce nomination.

"She knows from experience that no government program alone can take the place of a great entrepreneur," Obama said. He also noted he was nominating her on her 54th birthday and joked, "For your birthday present, you get to go through confirmation. It's going to be great."

Sure to come up is the Pritzker family's co-ownership of Superior Bank, a Chicago-area thrift that failed in July 2001 after losing millions on risky, high-rate mortgage loans to borrowers with bad credit. With about $1.7 billion in assets, it was at the time the largest insured U.S. financial institution to fail since 1992 and cost the deposit insurance fund $286.3 million.

Federal regulators blamed risky business strategies by Superior's management for the collapse, but they also cited failures on the part of its auditor Ernst & Young.

The Pritzker family and its partner in Superior agreed to pay $460 million without admitting any liability in a settlement with the regulators. In exchange, the owners were allowed to receive 25 percent of any money the government recovered from Ernst & Young, which came to about $31 million.

Froman, Obama's deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, is steeped in the issues confronting the trade representative.

He has been Obama's main representative at international economic summits such as the meetings of the Group of Eight and Group of 20. He is responsible for coordinating White House policy on international trade, investments, energy, climate and development.

Obama credited Froman with helping negotiate trade agreements for South Korea, Colombia and Panama that the president said have supported tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.

"He has also won a reputation as being an extraordinarily tough negotiator while doing it," Obama said. "He does not rest until he's delivered the best possible deal for American businesses and American workers. He's fought to make sure that countries that break the rules are held accountable."

Froman served during President Bill Clinton's administration as chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin. He also worked as deputy assistant secretary for Eurasia and the Middle East and did a White House stint similar to his current job under Obama.

Before joining the Obama economic and national security teams he worked in various capacities at Citigroup, including as managing partner of the Wall Street bank. He also has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

Among the top ongoing trade issues are negotiations over the Trans-Pacific partnership, an Asia-Pacific trading bloc that is key to Obama's efforts to boost exports to Asia. Members include the U.S., Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Vietnam, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Singapore and Peru. Last month, the U.S. approved Japan's entry into negotiations on the trading bloc.

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AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace, AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon and AP writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

Playing hoops with the President

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 06:00:00 -0600

It was not an ordinary pick-up game. There was a star bigger than any player former Bulls guard Randy Brown had met with on the court. Bigger than his former teammate Michael Jordan. Another former teammate, Scottie Pippen, was there. But the spotlight was on the President.

It was a day Brown will remember for the rest of his life. Brown knew President Barack Obama and had played basketball with him before. However, this day was different. It was Election Day.

Brown played 12 years in the NBA and from 1995-2000 he was a member of the Chicago Bulls. He was part of three NBA titles with the Bulls. He became aquainted with Obama while playing here when Obama was a Illinois state senator. They played pick-up games at the East Bank Club during those days. The President had the same modus operandi for Election Day in 2008, but the former Bull was in California and not part of the action that day.

When Brown and I talked about the 2012 Election Day game, he still seemed astonished by the magnitude of the moment. The President’s close friend and confidante Marty Nesbitt, initiated the contact through another former NBA player and it was all supposed to be done under secrecy.

“They didn’t want the crowds around the gym," Brown said. "We were told to keep it a secret. I tried my best.”

He did have to spill to a few people, mainly his bosses. Brown works for the Bulls as an assistant to General Manager Gar Forman. He told Forman and Bull's President John Paxson so he could get permission to leave the office. There was one more person he couldn’t keep the secret from, his wife Tamara. They did manage to keep it from their children. After the fact, when they found out that their dad had participated in this game with the President, Brown was “cool” again to his children.

As to the actual action, Brown wasn’t figuring it was going to be much of a contest, just a little “hoop” play.

It was four-twelve minute quarters, with three referees and fouls and free throws.

“It was like a real game,” Brown said.

There were at least 20 participants, including staff members, Reggie Love, John Rogers, former Bull Jeff Sanders and Arne Duncan. Nesbitt was the coach for the team that included Brown and Pippen. The President’s team was coached by his brother-in-law and Oregon State coach Craig Robinson.

Father time may be catching up to this group, but Brown said it was competitive and the President can still shoot. Maybe the two-and-a-half hour game was an omen. The President’s team pulled out the win.

“He was calm, laid back and casual,” Brown said about Obama. “He just wanted to go out and have fun.”

Randy Brown wasn’t a star in the NBA; he was a role player from the West side of Chicago.

When I asked him what this pick-up game meant to him in regards to his basketball career, Brown hoped his former Bulls teammates won’t mind his sentiments.

“My first NBA Championship in my hometown was a dream come true," Brown said. "I got to play with the President of the United States of America. It is right up there.”

Follow Cheryl on Twitter @CRayeStout and Facebook Cheryl Raye Stout #AtTheGame.

Obama will use family Bible for presidential swearing in

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 16:05:00 -0600

When Barack Obama is sworn in as president during the private Sunday ceremony, he’ll bring some of his wife’s family history to that ritual, namely the Bible from wife Michelle's family — the Robinsons.

The Robinson Family Bible was a gift from the First Lady’s father to his mother. Fraser Robinson III gave it to LaVaughn Delores Robinson on Mother’s Day in 1958. She used the Bible regularly.

Omar McRoberts, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago who studies black religious life, said Obama’s use of the Robinson Bible gives the public a peek into the president.

"It’s a statement about his private identity, that is, his personal identity. As someone who identifies closely with his wife’s family’s African-American Christian heritage," McRoberts said.

On Monday Obama will be sworn in using two other Bibles: President Abraham Lincoln’s and Dr. Martin Luther King’s.

The president as 'Decider in Chief'

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Michael Lewis scored a journalistic coup with the recent publication of the article “Obama’s Way” in Vanity Fair. For six months, Lewis was granted almost unlimited access to the President. He “hung around” Mr. Obama in the White House, aboard Air Force One, on the basketball court and even in the president’s favorite private place, the Truman Balcony, which faces the South Lawn of the White House.

As a student of leadership, the most fascinating factoid in the piece for me was President Obama’s reflections on decision-making. To begin with, both Lewis and Obama agree that if there is a central task of the presidency, it is making decisions. “Putting it the way George W. Bush did sounds silly, but he was right: The president is a decider.” From the moment the president wakes up in the morning, and often when an emergency causes him to be awoken in the middle of the night, decisions are thrust upon him. Some of these decisions are pre-scheduled or planned in advance. For example, cabinet meetings to decide on this or that policy or legislative act. But many if not most decisions are thrust upon the president out of the blue and without warning. Decisions like what to do or how to respond to “oil spills, financial panics, pandemics, earthquakes, fires, coups, invasions, underwear bombers, movie-theater shootings, and on and on and on!”

The president lamented that most of the things that hit his desk are not “perfectly solvable.” And no matter how much information you have in front of you, it’s either never perfect or never enough. And so, said Obama, you wind up dealing with “probabilities,” best estimates and well warranted guesses. Mr. Obama suggested that in theory you want to be able to reduce all choices to a “binary decision.” It’s either this or that, but most situations are full of nuances and shades of grey, which don’t always allow you to say: The answer it A and clearly not B, so let’s go with A. In the end, said the president, you make a choice, you hope it’s right, and you learn that right or wrong, you’re going to have to live with that choice.

Michael Lewis learned in the course of his time with the president that Obama has come up with a few tricks in order to survive as our national “decider.” 1) Work out every day. 2) Find time for yourself away from the job. 3) The act of making decisions actually degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. So, said Obama, you need to remove as many day-to-day decisions as you can. “I wear only gray and blue suits… I’m trying,” said the president, “to par down my decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing… I have too many other (important) decisions to make.”

In this job, Mr. Obama suggested there’s no place to hide. Decisions can’t be avoided. Decisions must be made.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Best Game in Town: Rising temperatures mirror political climate

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:01:00 -0500

With less than 100 days before the general election, August temperatures aren’t the only things on the rise. Political campaigns have grown more contentious—and expensive. President Obama shattered fundraising records when he raised more than $750 million for his 2008 campaign. But that was before Citizens United. The Supreme Court decision recognized political spending as a form of protected free speech, giving corporations and unions the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money to support or denounce a candidate. And while Obama remains the reigning champ, Mitt Romney appears to be the odds-on favorite to get dough from America’s top CEOs. According to a review of federal records by NBC News, the former governor and presumptive Republican nominee, charms four chief executives for every one the president nabs.

Campaign cash isn’t the only high-stakes game in presidential politics—it’s not even the best pun. For that, political watchdogs and odds-makers look to the almighty Veepstakes. Still no word on a ticket-mate for Romney but time is running out (pun entirely intended): The Republican National Convention kicks off in Tampa, Florida on August 27^th.

So, as the political climate began to boil, Afternoon Shift threw the Best Game in Town back on the burner. Host Steve Edwards was joined by a pair of political strategists: Democrat Kitty Kurth and Republican Doug O’Brien, of Prairie State Strategies. Together they tackled a host of hot topics--from key local Congressional races to campaign blunders made thus far.

With the party conventions on the horizon, O'Brien (not this one, the other one) expects the events to be a bit of a snooze--unless Romney announces Justin Bieber as his VP. To which I say, in the name of Beliebers the world over..."Never Say Never."

David Maraniss demystifies President Obama's early years in new biography

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:08:00 -0500

If nothing else, David Maraniss is thorough. But he and his new biography, Barack Obama: The Story, are so much more. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Clinton biographer poured four years of research, hundreds of interviews and his meticulous review of thousands of documents, letters and journals into a nearly 600-page, multigenerational portrait of the 44th president.

Despite its girth, the biography is incomplete: Maraniss begins decades before the president is born and ends before he enters Harvard Law School. But the buzz around the bio is that Maraniss’ account is more complete than the president’s own, as told in his 2004 memoir, Dreams of My Father.

Presidential biographies are nothing new; really, they’re inevitable. The difference here is that Obama is a sitting president—running for reelection. As such, the book is fair game for fodder. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh discussed Maraniss' book on his show and said, "He [Maraniss] thought he was writing an election-year Valentine for Obama." But instead, Limbaugh posited, Maraniss highlighted a flawed understanding of the president.

Maraniss joins Afternoon Shift host Steve Edwards for an extended chat about the book. Maraniss will be signing copies of Barack Obama: The Story at the Harold Washington Library Center Wednesday night at 6:00 p.m.

Feds, 5 states to push for Great Lakes wind farms

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:37:00 -0500

The Obama administration and five states have agreed to speed up approval of offshore wind farms in the Great Lakes.

There are no wind turbines in the lakes at present. Proposals have met fierce opposition from people worried the structures would ruin views and harm the environment.

Under the deal, federal and state agencies will develop a plan to speed regulatory review of proposed offshore wind farms. Officials say the projects would have to meet safety and environmental standards.

States that signed the deal include Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania.

Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin declined.

Administration officials disclosed the agreement to The Associated Press before a scheduled announcement Friday.

Worldview 1.25.12

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:37:00 -0600

Worldview delves into the foreign policy dimensions of President Obama’s State of the Union address with Uri Friedman. He's associate editor at Foreign Policy. Also, Wael Ghonim has been called the “Facebook freedom fighter” and “the man behind the revolution.” To mark the one-year anniversary of Egypt’s uprising, Worldview talks to Wael. The activist and former Google executive is credited with jump-starting the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s 30-year dictator, and creating momentum that spread across the Arab world. His new memoir is Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People is Greater than the People in Power. Ahmed Rehab, executive director of Chicago’s Council on American-Islamic Relations, will also join the conversation.

While defense gets cut, budget remains bigger than mid-1990s

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:42:00 -0600

President Obama went to the Pentagon today to announce a broad, new defense strategy that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to the current military budget. The president said that despite the cuts, the U.S. would maintain its military "superiority."

Worldview takes a look at the new plan with Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at Center for American Progress. He was assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan.

AP-GfK Poll: More than half say Obama should lose

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:36:00 -0600

A majority of adults say President Barack Obama does not deserve a second term but are evenly divided on whether he will win re-election next year, says a new Associated Press-GfK poll that highlights some of the campaign obstacles he faces.

Although the public would prefer Obama be voted out of office, he fares relatively well in potential matchups with Republicans Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Another bit of good news for the Democrat: For the first time since spring, more adults said the economy got better in the past month than said it got worse.

The president's approval rating on unemployment shifted upward - from 40 percent in October to 45 percent in the latest poll - as the jobless rate fell to 8.6 percent last month, its lowest level since March 2009.

But Obama's approval rating on his handling of the economy overall remains stagnant: 39 percent approve and 60 percent disapprove.

Heading into the 2012 campaign, the poll shows the challenges facing Obama as he tries to win a second term among a public that does not support his steering of the economy, the most dominant issue for Americans, or his reforms to health care, one of his signature accomplishments. Yet voters appear to be grappling with whether to replace him with Romney or Gingrich.

For the first time, the poll found that a majority of adults, 52 percent, said Obama should be voted out of office while 43 percent said he deserves a second term. The numbers represent a clear reversal since last May, when 53 percent said Obama should be re-elected while 43 percent said he didn't deserve four more years.

Separately, 49 percent expected Obama to win re-election while 48 percent think he will be voted out of office.

Obama's overall job approval stands at a new low: 44 percent approve while 54 percent disapprove. The president's standing among independents is worse: 38 percent approve while 59 percent disapprove. Among Democrats, the president holds steady with an approval rating of 78 percent while only 12 percent of Republicans approve of the job he's doing.

"I think he's doing the best he can. The problem is the Congress won't help at all," said Rosario Navarro, a Democrat and a 44-year-old truck driver from Fresno, Calif., who voted for Obama in 2008 and intends to support him again.

Robin Dein, a 54-year-old homemaker from Villanova, Pa., who is an independent, said she supported Republican John McCain in 2008 and has not been impressed with Obama's economic policies. She intends to support Romney if he wins the GOP nomination.

"(Obama) spent the first part of his presidency blaming Bush for everything, not that he was innocent, and now his way of solving anything is by spending more money," Dein said.

Despite the soft level of support, many are uncertain whether a Republican president would be a better choice. Asked whom they would support next November, 47 percent of adults favored Obama compared with 46 percent for Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Against Gingrich, the president holds a solid advantage, receiving 51 percent compared with 42 percent for the former House speaker.

The potential matchups paint a better picture for the president among independents. Obama receives 45 percent of non-aligned adults compared with 41 percent for Romney.

Against Gingrich, Obama holds a wide lead among independents, with 54 percent supporting the president and 31 percent backing the former Georgia congressman.

Another piece of good news for Obama: people generally like him personally. His personal favorability rating held steady at 53 percent, with 46 percent viewing him unfavorably. About three-quarters called him likable.

The economy remains a source of pessimism, though the poll suggests the first positive movement in public opinion on the economy in months. One in five said the economy improved in the last month, double the share saying so in October. Still most expect it to stay the same or get worse.

"I suppose you could make some sort of argument that it's getting better, but I'm not sure I even see that," said independent voter John Bailey, a 61-year-old education consultant from East Jordan, Mich. "I think it's bad and it's gotten worse under (Obama's) policies. At best, it's going to stay bad."

Despite the high rate of joblessness, the poll found some optimism on the economy. Although 80 percent described the economy as "poor," respondents describing it as "very poor" fell from 43 percent in October to 34 percent in the latest poll, the lowest since May. Twenty percent said the economy got better in the past month while 37 percent said they expected the economy to improve next year.

Yet plenty of warning signs remain for Obama. Only 26 percent said the United States is headed in the right direction while 70 percent said it was moving in the wrong direction.

The president won a substantial number of women voters in 2008 yet there does not appear to be a significant tilt toward him among women now. The poll found 44 percent of women say Obama deserves a second term, down from 51 percent in October, while 43 percent of men say the president should be re-elected.

About two-thirds of white voters without college degrees say Obama should be a one-term president, while 33 percent of those voters say he should get another term. Among white voters with a college degree, 57 percent said Obama should be voted out of office.

The poll found unpopularity for last year's health care reform bill, one of Obama's major accomplishments. About half of the respondents oppose the health care law and support for it dipped to 29 percent from 36 percent in June. Just 15 percent said the federal government should have the power to require all Americans to buy health insurance.

Even among Democrats, the health care law has tepid support. Fifty percent of Democrats supported the health care law, compared with 59 percent of Democrats last June. Only about a quarter of independents back the law.

The president has taken a more populist tone in his handling of the economy, arguing that the wealthy should pay more in taxes to help pay to extend a payroll tax cut that is worth about an additional $1,000 to a family earning about $50,000 a year. Among those with annual household incomes of $50,000 or less, Obama's approval rating on unemployment climbed to 53 percent, from 43 percent in October.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted Dec. 8-12 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Associated Press writer Stacy A. Anderson and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.