American Politics Newsletter 3/29/2010

This edition of the American Politics Newsletter includes reaction to the health care bill, and it's impact on the 2010 midterm elections, as well as current opinions on Obama's meeting with President Sarkozy, and the current state of Afghanistan.





American Politics:
Obama to sign health-care 'fixes' bill Tuesday in Alexandria
By Anne E. Kornblut President Obama will sign legislation making fixes to his sweeping health care bill -- and enacting sweeping changes to higher education financing -- at a ceremony in Alexandria next week, the White House announced Friday.
Obama's Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, as the bill is known, will be signed into law on Tuesday morning at Northern Virginia Community College.
While the legislation includes changes that House Democrats insisted upon before passing the Senate bill, the administration is eager to emphasize the education components, which include making it easier to repay student loans and significantly more funding for Pell Grants.
In its announcement about the event, the White House declared that the bill delivered a "significant down payment on the president's ambitious agenda to make higher education more affordable and help more Americans earn a college degree."
By Anne E. Kornblut March 26, 2010; 5:44 PM ET

In Partisan Battle, Clashes Over Health Lawsuits
By KEVIN SACK
ATLANTA — Reflecting the bitter partisan divide over health care, governors in at least six states are at war with attorneys general from the other political party about whether to join litigation challenging the new federal health insurance mandate.
In four states — Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington — Democratic governors are criticizing Republican attorneys general for joining the lawsuit over their objections. On Friday, those governors wrote to the federal attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to offer their assistance in defending the new law against the litigation filed by their own states.
In Georgia and Mississippi, meanwhile, Republican governors are chafing at the reluctance of Democratic attorneys general to join the lawsuit on their behalf. They are exploring ways to circumvent their states’ top legal officers and join the case anyway.
The disputes carry a heavy overlay of election-year politics. Not only are Democrats and Republicans supporting the positions of their national parties, but three of the attorneys general are running to succeed the governors they are battling, and a fourth is considering a race in 2012. Each faces a primary that requires appealing to the party base.
Here in Georgia, Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker is competing in a crowded field for the Democratic nomination for governor. On Wednesday, he formally declined Gov. Sonny Perdue’s request that the state join the lawsuit, saying it had “no legal merit.”
“I concluded that any litigation would fail,” Mr. Baker said in an interview, “and that it would cost the taxpayers of Georgia significant amounts of hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”
Mr. Baker cited constitutional provisions that give federal laws supremacy over state actions. “This is not a tough legal question,” he said.
Mr. Perdue, a Republican who will leave office in January because of term limits, announced Thursday that he would deputize a special attorney general to file a lawsuit for the state. Mr. Baker does not dispute the governor’s authority to do so.
Mr. Perdue’s spokesman, Bert Brantley, said that many lawyers had volunteered to handle the case pro bono and that mail and calls from constituents were running heavily against the new law.
Twelve attorneys general, all but one of them Republican, joined a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Florida by Bill McCollum, a Republican attorney general who is running for governor. The attorney general of Virginia, also a Republican, has filed a separate challenge.
Their primary claim is that the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Obama exceeded their constitutional authority in enacting legislation last week that will eventually require most Americans to obtain health insurance. Mr. McCollum called the mandate, which takes effect in 2014, “an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of the American people.”
Attorneys general are charged with representing the governor and executive branch agencies, but also may initiate and intervene in litigation in the interest of the citizenry. It is not uncommon, given that governors and attorneys general are elected independently and can be from opposing parties, that they clash over questions of authority.
In Michigan, Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat who cannot run again this year because of term limits, wrote a blistering letter last week to Attorney General Mike Cox, a Republican who announced on his Web site that “Michigan has joined” the health care lawsuit.
Ms. Granholm, a former attorney general, chastised Mr. Cox for “speaking for the State of Michigan” and told him his stand was “directly contrary to the position of this administration.”
She questioned whether he had the constitutional authority to supersede her own. And she directed him, as her lawyer, to assist in the defense of the case, asking his office in essence to work against itself. Mr. Cox, who is running in a competitive primary to succeed Ms. Granholm, said he was obligated to do so.
“I’m perfectly willing to let her exercise her option of being wrong and being represented while she does so,” Mr. Cox said. “The reality is that the federal court recognizes the attorney general as the voice of the state in federal litigation.”
The thrust and parry has been much the same in Pennsylvania. Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a Democrat who is also barred from seeking re-election this year because of term limits, urged Attorney General Tom Corbett to withdraw from the lawsuit. “It’s hard to imagine that you take this action on behalf of those who may be sick or have a chronic illness but are uninsured,” Mr. Rendell wrote to Mr. Corbett, the leading Republican running to replace him.
Democrats who control of the State House of Representatives threatened to slash Mr. Corbett’s budget, but the Republicans in charge of the State Senate said they would not let that happen.
In Washington, Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, said she was open to using the state budget process to block Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, from spending money on the suit.
“I don’t know who he represents,” Ms. Gregoire said at a news conference last week. “He doesn’t represent me.”


Midterms pose major challenge for Obama's grass-roots political organization
By Amy GardnerWashington Post Staff Writer
TUCSON -- President Obama's strategy for helping Democrats win the midterm elections was in full view at a former dance studio here more than a week ago as rotating teams of volunteers made thousands of calls about health care to residents of Arizona's 8th Congressional District.
The effort was run by Organizing for America (OFA), the president's grass-roots political organization, and the volunteers were urging Obama voters to contact Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D) and express support for legislation to overhaul health care. In the end, OFA made 40,000 calls in the district, and Giffords, despite heavy targeting from opponents, voted yes.
Whether OFA, now a project of the Democratic National Committee, can sustain that success and apply it to the fall elections is uncertain. It is one thing to rally supporters behind Obama's signature domestic policy initiative. But it's something else entirely to draw that level of enthusiasm for an election in which he won't even be on the ballot.
"Getting health care passed is huge," said Jeremy Bird, OFA's deputy director, who was in Arizona recently rallying volunteers. "But we have a lot of work to do to make sure we maintain control of the House and Senate."

Health-care battle
Ina Smalzer, 65, a retiree, was one of the volunteers making calls from the headquarters of the Pima County Democratic Party. Squinting periodically at the tiny keypad of her personal cellphone, Smalzer only loosely followed the provided script, which directed her to urge people to attend an upcoming rally, call Giffords's office and write letters to the local newspaper.
"The paper today indicated that she's leaning toward a yes," Smalzer spoke clearly over the din in the room, her phone pressed to one ear and a finger plugging the other. "But it's critical that we get her vote, and because of that, we are going to have a rally so she knows that her constituents want her to vote yes." Smalzer paused, listening. "Um, we can't get the message across loud enough or often enough. We can't take a chance."
About 200 activists rallied at Giffords's office two days before last Sunday's vote, part of OFA's final 10-day push. According to organizers, more than 500,000 calls were placed to Congress, more than 1,200 rallies were held nationwide, more than 300,000 letters were mailed, and more than 150,000 text messages were sent.
C.J. Karamargin, an aide to Giffords in her Tucson office, said the number of calls from constituents was about evenly split between those for and against the health-care bill. But OFA organizers said that counts as a victory when the public -- and many in Congress -- believed that the voices against the legislation were louder.
"There was so much misinformation about the bill," said Giffords, who estimated that national opponents, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, spent about $300,000 on television ads in her district in the final days before the vote.
"If you watch 10 of these ads in the last day when you're trying to watch the basketball game, and a live person calls you and is willing to talk to you about this bill -- that makes a difference," Giffords said.
Bird, OFA's deputy director, said the perception that Obama's base had withered is a "D.C. bubble thing." But he acknowledged that the decibel level of the opposition has succeeded at times in drowning out the president's message.
Rebuilding the brand
Organizing for America came into existence shortly after Obama's inauguration with the goal of transforming the campaign's fabled grass-roots operation into a permanent structure that could mobilize 13 million supporters for any political or policy cause with a keystroke.
OFA began as a bare-bones operation involving two people within the DNC, but by mid-2009, it began building a national organization in preparation for the health-care debate. That effort was overshadowed, however, by opponents of the health-care bill, who made headlines with angry displays at town-hall meetings across the country.
It's still not clear that the breadth of Obama supporters from the presidential campaign is fully engaged today. The health-care issue drew out large numbers of older volunteers as part of a "Senior to Senior" effort that OFA staged across the country, matching the demographics of its current crop of volunteers with its target audience.
"I believe very strongly in health care," Smalzer said. "I thought it was critical, vital, that it be passed. And I felt I needed to do something."
If OFA is to have an impact on the midterms, it must elicit similar commitment from people who were not so engaged on the health-care issue. Democrats face a particularly difficult election season because of the state of the economy, mistrust of Obama's agenda and an energized opposition. Then there is the challenge of adapting a grass-roots organization centered on the popularity of one man to hundreds of congressional campaigns across the country.
"We don't have the brand we had in 2008, when we elected the first African American president," said Ashley Piñedo, OFA's regional field director for the Phoenix area.
There may be no better example of that challenge than the electoral defeats Democrats have suffered since Obama took office. First were the gubernatorial races last year in New Jersey and Virginia. Most stinging of all for Obama supporters was the election of Republican Scott Brown on Jan. 19 to the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who died Aug. 25. If OFA could not rally its base to ensure that the seat once held by the nation's most ardent proponent of health-care reform remained in Democratic hands, how can it hope to cut its losses this fall? It is a view that weighs heavily on the minds of Obama supporters.
"Did OFA not have any staffers in Massachusetts until January?" asked Kathy Killeen, a Democratic organizer from Green Valley, a suburb of Tucson, at a strategy session with state organizers this month. "From our perspective, you didn't have a very good result. You lost an election, and you waited too long to show up."
Mapping out a strategy
Supporters have other misgivings about OFA and its prospects as well, but they say they are more energized than they have been in months. On a warm evening at OFA's Arizona headquarters in Phoenix this month, about 60 supporters gathered for a strategy session to map out the future of the local organization. It was one of several hundred such sessions held across the nation, intended to re-engage the base from 2008.
The gathering had the feel of a political campaign, a pep rally for volunteers complete with posters on the walls ("Respect. Empower. Include.") and sign-up sheets on the tables. A state director, regional directors and community organizers were on hand to urge action with PowerPoint slides, breakout sessions and rousing speeches about keeping alive the hope they all felt in 2008.
They touted Obama's accomplishments: the economic stimulus bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice.
They showed how many voters they must reach this year to raise turnout and reverse the trend line of midterm election results. Only 42 percent of first-time voters in 2004 returned to the polling booth in 2006. There were 437,000 first-time voters in Arizona in 2008, a group that is young and heavily Latino. At least 80,000 of them are unlikely to vote without contact from OFA, organizers say.
"If we only focus on [past] midterm voters this year, Democrats will lose," said Jessica Jones, OFA's Arizona director.
They brainstormed how to reach those voters. And there was a mix of excitement and frustration about Obama's path thus far.
"There have been too many changes, too many compromises to the promises of President Obama," said Gurpreet Brar, 33, a researcher from Glendale.
"We have allowed the other side to control the conversation," said Phoenix resident Terry Araman, who works at a homeless shelter.
"OFA was the cavalry that came in and saved the day!" said Michael Popovich, a teacher and OFA community organizer.
It remains to be seen whether the cavalry can ride again.

Foreign Policy:
In Afghanistan, Obama Presses Karzai to Fight Corruption
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — President Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan on Sunday, his first as commander in chief to the site of the war he inherited and has stamped as his own.
Air Force One landed at nighttime at Bagram Air Base after a 13-hour nonstop flight for a visit shrouded in secrecy for security reasons; Mr. Obama quickly boarded a helicopter for the trip to Kabul, landing at the presidential palace for talks with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.
While Mr. Obama noted that military progress has been made in Afghanistan, he added, pointedly, that “we also want to continue to make progress on the civilian process,” mentioning several areas, including governance, anti-corruption and the rule of law.
His remarks came as he stood next to Mr. Karzai at the presidential palace after their meeting. Mr. Karzai is expected to visit Washington in May for additional talks.
In his comments, Mr. Karzai promised that his country “would move forward into the future” to eventually take over its own security, and he thanked Mr. Obama for the American intervention in his country, The Associated Press reported.
White House officials said before the meeting that Mr. Obama planned to press Mr. Karzai on a number of concerns, in particular the failure of Mr. Karzai to make good on promises he made to the international community on anti-corruption, governance and even reintegration with certain reconcilable members of the Taliban insurgency.
Gen. James L. Jones, the National Security Adviser, told reporters aboard the flight to Bagram that Mr. Obama would try to make Mr. Karzai “understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since day one.” General Jones said those things included “a merit-based system for appointment of key government officials, battling corruption, taking the fight to the narco-traffickers,” which, he said, “provides a lot of the economic engine for the insurgents.”
At the presidential palace, Mr. Obama and Mr. Karzai walked and chatted along a red carpet as they made their way to an Afghan color guard, where the national anthems of both countries were played, in a welcoming ceremony that lasted 10 minutes.
White House officials disclosed no information about the trip until Mr. Obama’s plane had landed in Afghanistan, and had even gone so far as to inform reporters that the president would be spending the weekend at Camp David with his family. In fact, Mr. Obama’s trip occurred during the Afghan night, and he was already headed back to Washington.
Besides General Jones, Mr. Obama was accompanied by his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and several White House and Defense officials.
Mr. Obama also met with some of the tens of thousands of American troops who have been sent to Afghanistan since he took office. His visit with the troops is particularly significant because it comes at the same time that military officials report that the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan has roughly doubled in the first three months of 2010, compared to the same period last year.
The number of soldiers wounded in combat has also spiked dramatically. Military officials have warned that casualties are likely to continue to rise sharply as the Pentagon completes the deployment of another 30,000 soldiers, per Afghanistan strategy announced by Mr. Obama back in November. The reason for the spike, military officials said, is because American forces are aggressively seeking out Taliban insurgents in the country’s population centers, and are planning a major operation in the Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban.
Mr. Obama’s trip to Afghanistan caps a high-profile week in which the president coupled a singular domestic policy victory — the signing of a health reform bill — with the foreign policy achievement: reaching an arms control agreement with Russia in which the two nuclear powers agreed to slash their nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels in half a century.
The Afghanistan trip also shows the president pivoting to national security concerns now that he has gotten the bulk of the health care fight behind him. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is to visit Mr. Obama this week in Washington, and Mr. Obama will be hosting a nuclear nonproliferation summit in Washington next month.
The Palm Sunday visit to American combat troops by their commander in chief is meant, in part, to project the image of an American president keeping on top of several issues at once.
At the same time, though, Mr. Obama’s visit to Afghanistan as commander in chief has been a long time coming. While he visited troops at Camp Victory, Iraq, three months after he was inaugurated, the White House has held off on a presidential visit to Afghanistan as Mr. Obama went through a rigorous months-long review of Afghanistan strategy, and as that country endured the twists and turns of a disputed election.
Even after Mr. Karzai was inaugurated and Mr. Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 American troops, Mr. Obama still put off a trip as he focused on his domestic priorities, including a health care bill.
Indeed, some members of the military have privately expressed concern that since announcing the Afghanistan troop increase, Mr. Obama has not talked much about the war there.
Mr. Obama appeared to be trying to address that on Sunday during his remarks with Mr. Karzai. “One of the main reasons I’m here is to just say thank you for the incredible efforts of our troops and our coalition partners,” he said. “They make tremendous sacrifices far away from home, and I want to make sure they know how proud their commander in chief is of them.”


Sarkozy, and France, Look to U.S. Visit
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
WASHINGTON — President Nicolas Sarkozy of France travels to the United States on Monday for a two-day trip designed to underscore his close cooperation with President Barack Obama on Afghanistan, Iran and other issues, and apparently to make a statement about their personal relationship.
The trip, culminating in a news conference Tuesday and then a private dinner at the White House, comes at a crucial time for both.
Mr. Obama has just scored two major victories — the passage of historic health-care legislation and agreement with Russia on a new strategic arms control treaty — and is heading into a period of heavy international engagement.
Mr. Sarkozy, for his part, has seen his popularity fade and his party suffer stinging defeats in regional elections. At the same time he is preparing for a crucial stint on the world stage as France takes leadership of both the Group of Eight and the Group of Twenty.
As the newspaper Le Parisien put it, “This meeting could not come at a better time” for Mr. Sarkozy.
The closeness of the Sarkozy-Obama relationship — and for that matter, of Mr. Obama with other European leaders — has been questioned, based on issues like Mr. Obama’s decision in February to skip an annual U.S.-European summit meeting.
But in an interview here last week with the International Herald Tribune and three French correspondents, the national security adviser, James L. Jones Jr., repeatedly rejected the notion of any strains.
He called Mr. Sarkozy a “very helpful and steadfast ally” on Iran and “a strong adviser and supporter on the Middle East.” If Mr. Sarkozy sometimes urges the American president to push harder in both areas, said the general, Mr. Obama appreciated the “honest exchange of views.”
General Jones, a former supreme allied commander in Europe, said that Mr. Obama had particularly appreciated Mr. Sarkozy’s decision to bring France back into NATO’s military wing and Paris’s “strong support” on Afghanistan.
The United States has been pressing its NATO allies to provide more military trainers for Afghanistan. French officials have been quoted as saying they will send no more, but General Jones appeared to leave open the possibility that Mr. Sarkozy would make such a gesture during the visit.
While the general acknowledged that as NATO commander he had known frustration over allied contributions in Afghanistan, he said that he had never seen better cooperation within NATO. “We’ve achieved a major breakthrough in how we think of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said, “and there is a new sense of energy that we can be successful.”
He played down two areas of friction. The announcement that France had agreed to sell four Mistral-class warships to Russia might once have raised American hackles. But General Jones seemed unperturbed. “It was not the subject of any serious bone of contention,” he said, adding that the United States, too, wanted better relations with Moscow.
Europeans were deeply unhappy when the Pentagon, while taking bids for a huge contract to supply aerial refueling tankers, changed the plane’s specifications in a way they interpreted as giving an advantage to the chief American bidder, Boeing, to the detriment of the European aerospace group EADS.
General Jones asserted that as a former director of Boeing he could not comment. But he said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates had “assured the president that the Department of Defense wants the competition to be fair and equal for all parties.”
The presidents also are expected to discuss some differences: France wants the United States to institute tougher financial regulations and to undertake more resolute action on climate change.
Mr. Sarkozy is to open his trip with a speech Monday at Columbia University in New York. He then is to meet with the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.
In Washington on Tuesday, he plans to meet with several senators before the presidents hold a late-afternoon news conference.
They are then to adjourn, with Michelle Obama and Carla Sarkozy, for a private dinner that French officials are calling “testimony to a particularly close friendship.”
Opinion Pieces:
Health-care overhaul begins nowBy Ezra Klein
As someone who has spent the past year tangled in the minutia of excise taxes and curve bending and subsidy levels, it is good to finally say this: With the passage of the reconciliation fixes, the health-care reform debate is finally over. But if you're thrilled to hear that, then I also have some bad news: Health-care reform itself is just beginning.
This bill marks an evolution, not a revolution, for our health-care system. Whether it proves the cornerstone of a better, fairer, more affordable system or simply another expansion of the federal welfare state has as much to do with what happens when the law is implemented as with what's written in the legislation.
The system will not change in a year. Even by 2014, when it is broadly implemented, life will not change for most people. This is not single-payer (though you wouldn't know it listening to the GOP) or the ambitious Wyden-Bennett reforms. Come 2019, about 10 percent of Americans will have a different insurance arrangement than they would have had without the bill. Most of us won't notice any difference.
But right around then, the system could go one of two ways. The key is the regulated insurance exchanges. They are where the bill's most transformative reforms happen: Risk-adjustment payments so insurers aren't penalized for having sicker customers, regulations so they can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, and transparency requirements so individuals can see the full cost of insurance plans and compare them based on quality and satisfaction measures.
But they're closed to most Americans.
At the beginning, the exchanges will be open to individuals and very small businesses. In fact, states can operate two exchanges: one for individuals, and one for small businesses, though why they would is beyond me. Either way, a large employer cannot simply buy its workers into the exchange. Nor is an employee of a large firm that offers health-care insurance allowed to buy in on her own.
There are two reasons for this, one good and one bad. The good: The bill's architects were worried that only employers with older and sicker workers would enter the exchanges at the beginning and that would overwhelm them; this way, the exchanges have time to get up and running before employers enter. The bad: The bill's architects were worried about letting employers change the coverage they offer workers.
In 2017, states can decide whether to let large employers into the exchanges. That's important: The exchanges are the bridge between the employer-based system we have -- where few know how much their insurance costs or have any choice about what kind to buy -- and the competitive system we need. But just because there is a bridge doesn't mean we'll walk over it. At this point, you can imagine two paths for health-care reform:
In one world, states wouldn't open the exchanges. The markets would remain limited to individuals and small businesses. Most of the participants are lower income and using subsidies. We'd stay in a tiered health-care system, in which the exchanges would join Medicaid as a place where those who can't afford coverage could get it and the employer market would remain the central organizing structure of the health-care system.
In another world, the states would open the exchanges. And in that world, they've been preparing to open the exchanges. That means they would run them efficiently and conscientiously. Also states would take advantage of the law's provision allowing them to partner with one another. An exchange run by Delaware and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Virginia is going to be a lot stronger and have a lot more competition among insurers than an exchange run by Delaware alone.
At that point, large employers, tired of administering their own health-care plans, would begin buying their workers into the exchanges. More customers would mean a more competitive market that has clear prices and quality measures and would create a virtuous cycle in which prices go down and quality goes up.
Does that sound hopelessly idyllic to you? Yeah, me too. But that's because we're used to the dispiriting mess that is the American health-care system. This rosy future is pretty much how things work in Switzerland and in the Netherlands, so it's certainly not impossible. You're really saying that the Swiss are better than us?
The legislation Obama signed into law last week doesn't promise sufficient reform, but it does lay down many of the necessary preconditions for it. It is an incremental bill with a comprehensive vision tucked inside. Tired as we all are, the work of realizing that vision starts now.


Pass the arms treaty
By John F. Kerry
A YEAR ago, President Obama threw his weight behind efforts to make the world safer from nuclear weapons. It is working. On April 8, he will sign a new arms control treaty with Russia that would cut the nuclear arsenals of both countries and reinforce America’s leadership on efforts to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons.
A few weeks later, responsibility for reviewing the treaty will fall to the Senate. A two-thirds vote will be required to approve its ratification. This means Democrats and Republicans will have to support this treaty.
Skeptics will say this is poor timing for any measure that depends on bipartisan backing. The passage of health care reform over unified Republican opposition is only the latest evidence of the bitter divisions between the two parties. But it is incumbent upon my colleagues to break the partisan stalemate by considering this treaty on its merits.
The new agreement is the result of a year of hard-nosed negotiations. Even when the old treaty expired last December and some warned that immediate action was required, American negotiators were patient and fought to guarantee that no provisions would weaken our national security or restrain our ability to defend ourselves.The result will be significant reductions in the nuclear warheads and strategic delivery systems of both the United States and Russia, and a verification regime that insures Russia will keep its pledges. It builds on President Ronald Reagan’s maxim: “trust, but verify.’’
Senate approval would tell the world that the two countries with 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons are fulfilling their obligations to reduce their arsenals under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. In crafting the treaty, the administration listened to the concerns of the Senate. The final language does not tie our hands on missile defense, and the verification regime reflects the realities of our post-Cold War world. For the first time, we will count the number of actual warheads on Russian missiles.
Critics contend that any negotiated reduction in our nuclear weapons endangers our national security. From everything I have seen and heard, this treaty bolsters our security and merits our support.
No one expects a treaty with Russia to end the nuclear ambitions of countries like Iran and North Korea and terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. But by signing this treaty, the president will change the global dynamic on non-proliferation and allow us to increase pressure on Iran to adhere to its commitment under the NPT not to develop nuclear weapons. Signing the treaty also will reflect progress in our relations with Russia. Since President Obama “reset’’ the relationship, the Russians have pledged to support diplomatic efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and helped get supplies to US troops in Afghanistan. Uncertainties and differences remain between the two countries, but that should be seen as an argument for the treaty, not against it.
There is reason to hope for bipartisan support. Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats approved arms control agreements with Russia in 1992, 1996 and 2003. During the 2008 presidential campaign, both Obama and Senator John McCain agreed to put America on the path toward a world without nuclear weapons, a position endorsed by a bipartisan group of 17 of the last 24 secretaries of state and defense and national security advisers. Obama should bring this august group to the Rose Garden to demonstrate this new consensus to the public and the Senate.
In the coming weeks, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will conduct vigorous hearings that will probe every aspect of the treaty. We will hear from key officials from the current and past administrations. With the help of Senator Richard Lugar, the committee’s ranking Republican, I am sure we will achieve the necessary level of certainty to reassure our colleagues and the American people that this treaty will make our world safer.