Mullen: I'll give the new President the "best advice I can"

This is the first administration transition during wartime in forty years, and traditionally, a crisis will occur during that period, said Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a press briefing at the Pentagon.

Mullen said he believes it’s critical to pursue all the issues in the CJCS Guidance memorandum, which includes defending vital National interests in the broader Middle East; Resetting, Reconstituting, and Revitalizing our Forces; and properly balancing our global strategic risk. In addition to these issues, he said, there is a whole range of other global concerns such as tensions in Eurasia and Africa, and the impact of the economic crisis.

The Joint Staff has done a lot of work to prepare, he said, and he’s comfortable they are meeting the goals of the transition to the new administration [of Barack Obama]. We serve one leader, he said, and that’s the sitting Commander in Chief.

During the question and answer period, Mullen said he assumes the pirates that captured the super oil tanker off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Saturday, November 15, will ask for a ransom. The piracy does not seem to be connected to al-Qaeda or terrorism, he said.

Dismantling the forces in Iraq is “very doable” but it’s not the sort of thing we can do overnight, Mullen said. In regards to “we have to be out by 2011,” Mullen said it’s in his view that three years is a long time, and conditions can change. We will continue to have discussions with them [the Iraqis], he said, and clearly it’s theoretically possible to pull the troops out by 2011 but conditions would dictate the outcome. We have 150,000 troops in Iraq right now, and a lot of equipment, Mullen said, and clearly we want to be able to withdraw the troops safely.

It is his understanding, Mullen continued, that the Status of Forces Agreement troop withdrawal specifics is in regard to American troops, and does include removal from certain cities by the year 2009. Using Baghdad as an example, Mullen said they’ve been improving security and are attempting to turn one city over at a time [to the Iraqis].

Upon being directly questioned and asked for a yes or no answer, Mullen simply answered “yes” to the specifics of the SOFA agreement: yes, American troops have to be out of Iraq by 2011 regardless of conditions.

As for the timetable of “16 months” (the policy stated by President-Elect Obama), Mullen said that he looks forward to the discussion he will have with Obama, and will give him the “best advice I can.” He continued, saying, “I will not pre-state” what that conversation will entail.

President-Elect Obama: We need to think pratically about moving ahead with the economy

President-Elect Obama held a press conference, addressing the failing economy and his plans once in the White House on Jan. 20th. "Immediately after I become President, I will confront this economic crisis head-on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families, and restore growth and prosperity," Obama said.

Obama said that one of the first things his administration needs to do will be to implement a rescue plan for the middle class that invests in immediate efforts to create jobs and provides relief to families that are watching their paychecks shrink. "A urgent priority is a further extension of unemployment insurance benefits for workers who cannot find work in the increasingly weak economy," Obama stated.

The second thing the President-Elect said needs to be done is to address the spreading impact of the financial crisis on other sectors of the economy; Small businesses that are struggling and state and municipal governments facing devastating budget cuts and tax increases, "We must also remember that the financial crisis is increasingly global and requires a global response," Obama said.

The last thing the new administration will need to do is to review the implementation of the previous administration's financial program to ensure that our government's efforts are achieving their central goal of stabilizing financial markets while protecting taxpayers. "It is critical that the Treasury Department work closely with the FDIC, Housing and Urban Development and other government agencies to use the substantial authority they already have to help families avoid foreclosures and stay in their homes," President Elect stated.

The National Coalition: Organize! Organize! Organize!

The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation held a conference on the post-election polls about African American voters. Melanie Campbell, Executive Director and CEO for The National Coalition, said that there were a record number, four million black voters who cast their votes on Nov. 4th. “For this election we emphasized-vote early, vote absentee, just vote. We really wanted people to utilize the vote early feature for this election,” Campbell said.

Jerry Lopes, Vice President of Programs for the American Urban Radio Networks, said that it was alarming to see how many young voters were ill-informed of political issues surrounding the elections. “We had to raise awareness to the young voters because they don’t watch the news as much as older folks do,” Lopes said.

Lorretta Johnson, Executive Vice President for the American Federation of Teachers, said the key to this election was education. “We had the attention of some folks for the first time, so we had to let them know how to do things. The folks we helped and taught are those folks that will be in our positions for the 2012 elections.” Johnson went on to state, “We have to take advantage of the fact that we have connected with the ‘Lost Generation’ (the youth) and now we have to make sure we keep them involved and interested.” Johnson stressed that if authority figures don’t educate young voters and keep them engaged then they will lose interest again until someone or something brings them back in.

Demographics between Obama and McCain voters are significant

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research held a panel discussion to present and analyze the results of the 2008 election.

There were significant differences in the manner that some demographics voted. Women favored Obama by large margins while men did not. Unmarried voters favored Obama overwhelmingly, while married voters barely favored McCain. The religious gap was also significant, as weekly churchgoers favored McCain and voters who never attended church favored Obama by a huge margin.

Democrats participated at a higher rate than Republicans during the primaries and general election, said Michael Barone, a fellow at AEI. “What really shaped the last 40 days of the election was the financial crisis,” said Barone. “When you look at the...average of polling Barack Obama passes John McCain on September 18th and is never behind after that.”

The panel also discussed the future of the GOP. The current Republican strategy will not increase the base, said David Frum, a fellow at AEI and former special assistant to President George W. Bush. He pointed to evidence showing that extremely poor Whites, college-educated Whites and Latinos where growing increasingly Democratic.

There will be “A strong argument within the Republican party that there is nothing wrong with our message,” said Frum. He further stated that Republicans will try to continue saying their message, only they will say it louder.

“I think this would be a very wrong wrong way to think,” said Frum, “this is not going to be helpful and this is not going to work. The great question over the near term Republican future is do they figure that out now or do they figure that out in 2013...or 2017? It took the Democrats three presidential terms to figure out that the days of the New Deal and the Great Society were behind them...the more successful you have been with a particular political formula the longer it can take to realize it has reached its sell-past date.”

Obama and McCain's record-breaking campaign finances

A discussion at the Brookings Institute focused on campaign effects of the money, ads and mobilization of the 2008 presidential election.

Both campaigns broke records and raised a combined total of $1 billion, said Anthony Corrado, a fellow at the Brookings Institute. While McCain's campaign was well-funded, it was dwarfed by Obama's campaign, which raised more money than John Kerry's and George Bush's 2004 presidential campaigns combined.

In order to compete with Obama, McCain had to rely heavily on the Republican party to run advertisements, said Corrado. Thus, McCain had less control over the messages of the ad. Overall the Republican ads took a negative tone and also attacked other Democrats running for office, making them appear more partisan than Obama's ads.

The overall increase in campaign financing and the huge advantage that Barack Obama has isn't troubling to political scientists, said Larry Bartels, director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics. "To put [it] into historical comparison," said Bartles, "if you go back to before the reforms 1970s, it was quite common for Republican presidential candidates to have two-to-one funding advantages over their Democratic opponents...to gauge the effect of that on the election outcomes, it looks like that contributed something like three percentage points to the average Republican vote margin."