President

WASHINGTON - A campaign to persuade Republicans to support President Barack Obama's budget is morphing into something broader, with the White House political machine and its allies focusing pressure on conservative Democrats and anyone else who might be tempted to vote no. Targeted Democrats are balking at some of the tactics, a sign that campaign methods so effective in getting Obama elected might not be easily transferable to the policy realm....

JERUSALEM -On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called Israeli President Shimon Peres to congratulate him on the general elections held here the day before. The White House quoted President Obama's remark to President Peres that "the Israeli people should be very happy about the democratic example they have set for the world." The White House went on to tell us that the two men "had a good discussion." Ah, but how did the discussion proceed? Here is my best guess: "Mr. President, let me congratulate you on the general elections held in your country."

WASHINGTON - The president wants a BlackBerry, the president gets a BlackBerry. It's no secret that the Secret Service was none too happy about President Barack Obama's fondness for his personal e-mail device. That's because the addictive hand-held communicators are popular targets for the worldwide web of password scammers and malicious hackers. More worrisome for those who must protect the president: Mobile phones can be used to track the whereabouts of their user. But Obama has struck a deal with his protectors, aides said yesterday.

Watching presidents go into free fall near the end of their tenure makes me quite nervous. Not so much for their sake, but for ours. Several presidents ago, while still early in my years as a Treasury Department public servant, I underwent such a change in bosses at the top. We were called on once again to write memos as a primer to one in a long string of novices - as treasury secretaries almost always are - on the department's role, the issues that...

SEOUL, South Korea -- Posters paper the downtown, urging people to vote for the candidate who promises a "Clean Korea, Reliable President," or alternatively "A President For The Economy Who Makes It Happen." Organizers herd supporters they bus in from the countryside for outdoor rallies, where barrel-chested policemen are dispatched to tamp down trouble and candidates are welcomed with flickering candles held aloft in the chill evening air. All the usual signs of a political campaign in its frantic last stages are on display in Seoul as South Koreans prepare to elect a new president Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- Buoyed by success abroad and roused by congressional gridlock, President Clinton relaunched his domestic agenda yesterday, trying to seize the middle ground against a Republican Party that the president said has "poisoned" Washington with "petty bickering" and "bitter partisanship."In a policy speech at Georgetown University, Clinton spoke in quiet tones about "an unprecedented consensus of conscience and common sense" in America regarding new gun controls, an increase in the minimum wage, restrictions on campaign fund raising, and protections for managed-care patients.

WASHINGTON -- Ten months ago, as a team of lawyers was launching his impeachment defense, President Clinton strode into the House chamber to propose, in his State of the Union address, one of the most ambitious policy agendas of his presidency, including a revolution in Social Security financing, a pricey expansion of Medicare coverage and the linkage of federal education aid to student performance.Now, with Congress adjourned for the year, the White House is boasting again of besting the Republicans in the budget battle.

WASHINGTON -- At a 1997 news conference, after the famously gregarious Bill Clinton had been carrying forth with reporters for nearly 90 minutes, a senior adviser received a pleading page from another top Clinton aide: Buddy the puppy is lonely for the president. Please come home.The days of such long-winded presidential meetings with the media -- and, via television, with the American public -- have receded into memory, overwhelmed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal that pushed Clinton into a virtual quarantine from reporters.

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge ordered President Clinton yesterday to pay $90,686 as a sanction for "giving false, misleading and evasive answers" in the Paula Corbin Jones case to hide his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.Clinton, who was the first president ever found in contempt of court, is now the first ever forced to pay a penalty for a civil violation.The president will have 60 days to pay Jones' lawyers the $89,484 that Judge Susan Webber Wright concluded they had to spend as a direct result of Clinton's false testimony.

AFTER having been beaten repeatedly by Bill Clinton on budget issues, you'd think Republicans would wise up. Instead, they're again pursuing a losing strategy.When it comes to drawing up and approving the federal budget, the president -- any president -- holds the high cards. Mr. Clinton is a master at this game.Yet the GOP's chief strategist, House Majority Whip Tom De Lay, won't give in. Instead, he seeks political advantage over the president that Republicans can use in next year's election.

WASHINGTON - -When Barack Obama steps inside a University of Maryland arena today, he will be making his latest appeal in what is quickly becoming the most extensive presidential selling job in years. Since his nationally televised speech on health care to Congress last week, Obama has rallied supporters at election-style events in Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. On Sunday, he will hit no fewer than five TV talk programs and, for good measure, will appear on David Letterman's late-night show on Monday.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, speaking in highly personal terms as the son of an absentee father, devoted much of his workday Friday to promoting the importance of parental commitment and mentoring. Celebrities from the worlds of music and sports joined the president at the start of Father's Day weekend for what Obama called the beginning of a national conversation about fatherhood and personal responsibility. "I decided that if I could be one thing in life, it would be to be a good father," he told a White House audience, after saying that his father's decision to walk away from his family had left "a hole in a child's heart" that couldn't be filled.

WASHINGTON - A campaign to persuade Republicans to support President Barack Obama's budget is morphing into something broader, with the White House political machine and its allies focusing pressure on conservative Democrats and anyone else who might be tempted to vote no. Targeted Democrats are balking at some of the tactics, a sign that campaign methods so effective in getting Obama elected might not be easily transferable to the policy realm....

It's been a tough week for President Barack Obama, who has found himself juggling many competing priorities, beleaguered by congressional Democrats as well as Republicans and forced to acknowledge that his campaign promise of middle-class tax cuts and other goals laid out in his first budget proposal may not be quickly achieved. But if Mr. Obama was hammered by the populist fury set off by the payment of $175 million in ill-deserved bonuses to gambling traders at AIG and shocked by a projected multi-trillion-dollar increase in the federal deficit, he has largely preserved his equanimity, revealing only a flash of frustration.

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama, rejecting former Vice President Dick Cheney's contention that Obama has put the United States at greater risk of terrorism, suggests in an interview airing today on 60 Minutes that the previous administration's stance was an "advertisement for anti-American sentiment." "How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama asks. "It hasn't made us safer," Obama says. "What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

JERUSALEM -On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called Israeli President Shimon Peres to congratulate him on the general elections held here the day before. The White House quoted President Obama's remark to President Peres that "the Israeli people should be very happy about the democratic example they have set for the world." The White House went on to tell us that the two men "had a good discussion." Ah, but how did the discussion proceed? Here is my best guess: "Mr. President, let me congratulate you on the general elections held in your country."

WASHINGTON - The president wants a BlackBerry, the president gets a BlackBerry. It's no secret that the Secret Service was none too happy about President Barack Obama's fondness for his personal e-mail device. That's because the addictive hand-held communicators are popular targets for the worldwide web of password scammers and malicious hackers. More worrisome for those who must protect the president: Mobile phones can be used to track the whereabouts of their user. But Obama has struck a deal with his protectors, aides said yesterday.

Barack Obama, you have your work cut out for you. The economy is in tatters. The war in Iraq is in limbo. Health care needs reforming. The environment is sick - every day another polar bear drifts out to sea on an ice floe because of global warming. Or so they say. But once you're sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, here's one of the first things you should do: put up a basketball hoop at the White House. Put it right out there in the driveway for all to see, too. I say this because finally we have a president who plays a real sport.

CHICAGO - With the world suddenly hanging on his every word, Barack Obama answered questions yesterday for the first time as president-elect, speaking cautiously about a skittish economy and joking that his family's discussion of a new puppy had become "a major issue." But he wasn't careful enough on another subject, making an ill-considered comment about seances and former first lady Nancy Reagan, for which he later issued a personal apology. Meeting with reporters, Obama sought to reassure the nation and world that the financial crisis has his full attention, while delicately trying to bridge the transition from the current presidency to his own. "Oh, wow," Obama said, as he walked into a basement ballroom in the Hilton Chicago, expressing surprise at the tradition of reporters standing when a president or president-elect walks into a room.

A final repudiation of Bush's leadership The long dark night of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney was repudiated on Tuesday ("It's Obama," Nov. 5). They weren't on the ballot, but make no mistake, it was they whom the people vanquished, not the stand-in surrogates of Sen. John McCain and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Sen. Barack Obama has come to the rescue, and not a moment too soon. With his eloquence and inspiration, he has brought hope, as plainly seen in the tears of the throngs of people that we witnessed Tuesday night in Chicago's Grant Park - and not just to them but to people everywhere in this country and all around the world.