Goodbye, Dubya

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George W. Bush says he isn't sure how he'll feel a week from today, when he gets up in the morning and is no longer president of the United States.

But three out of four people apparently will be relieved when his eight-year presidency comes to an end.

I don't know if Barack Obama has the answers. But I'm glad the country will be going in a different direction.

I don't know if, as some have suggested, the "worst" of the recession is behind us. But if the worst is behind us, what remains appears to be bad enough.

I don't know if the recovery will begin in 2009 or if that's merely wishful thinking.

What I do know is that this country has been taking a self-destructive approach and needs to shift gears.

Retail sales during the holidays were worse than expected.

Like my fellow Americans, I hope for the best for the new administration. And I hope Obama truly will be open to points of view that differ from his own.

If an idea has merit, it shouldn't matter whether it comes from the left or the right.

What's important is results.

P.S. Bush has asked for 10-15 minutes of airtime on the major TV networks to give a farewell address to the nation tomorrow night. As of this writing, there has been no announcement regarding if — or when — he will be accommodated.

A Constitutional Problem for Clinton

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"No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time."

U.S. Constitution
Article 1, Section 6

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That's a tricky clause for Hillary Clinton to get around in her quest to become secretary of state, as bloggers have been writing lately.

The QandO blog points out that, while the salary for the secretary of state has gone up while Clinton has been in the Senate, the increase was achieved through executive order, not congressional action.

That, says Professor Michael Stokes Paulsen, does not matter.

"[T]he content of the rule here is broader than its purpose," he writes. "And the rule is the rule; the purpose is not the rule."

President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team today. It remains to be seen if Clinton's nomination will be permitted to stand.

I'm not a lawyer, nor am I an expert on the Constitution. But it seems to me that, because the salary increase was achieved through executive order, no one from the legislative branch should be disqualified from holding a "civil office."

But I also think it's an issue that should be clarified by the courts.

Sources Say Clinton Announcement to be Monday

CNN is reporting that sources in the Democratic Party are saying Hillary Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state will be announced tomorrow.

She could hardly become the secretary of state-designate at a more perilous time. The attacks on Mumbai have prompted The Telegraph of London to proclaim India one of the 20 most dangerous places in the world.

The Washington Post editorializes that India and Pakistan must work together to preserve the peace. "The United States ... must continue nudging these two rivals toward cooperation," writes the Post.

As secretary of state, that will be Clinton's mission. One of many.

Dean Nelson writes, in The Times of London, that authorities in India "claimed to have proof that the Mumbai terrorists were receiving instructions from Pakistan and discussing tactics with their handlers during the three days of attacks in which they killed at least 195 people," an allegation that is all but guaranteed to raise the tension level in that part of the world.

Joshua Kurlantzick warns, in The New Republic, that terrorism won't be beaten in India any time soon.

It is also said that Obama will announce tomorrow that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is staying and retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones will be national security adviser.

"All of the selections are hardly a surprise after weeks of fevered speculation," reports Ed Henry of CNN. "In fact, they're such an open secret that retiring Republican Sen. John Warner, a veteran member of the Armed Services Committee, released a statement Saturday night praising all three nominees before they have been officially named at Monday's rollout."

Gates is already in office, but there's plenty to keep Clinton and Jones occupied until they start their new jobs in the next couple of months.

It seems hardly likely that the importance of Mumbai in foreign affairs will diminish in any way between now and the inauguration. But until this past week, many Westerners didn't seem to understand the vital role Mumbai plays in maintaining economic stability in that part of the world.

Today, only a few days after the terrorist attacks in that city, India and Pakistan appear to be mobilizing — possibly for war.

DEBKAfile reports that "Asia's two nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, took their first steps towards a conventional war. India, claiming evidence of Pakistan's involvement in the Islamist terrorist assault on Mumbai, placed its air and missile units on war preparedness, while Pakistan, disclaiming the charge, diverted its armed divisions from the Afghan border to its frontier with India."

The escalating tension between Hindus and Muslims, combined with the presence of nuclear arms on both sides, makes it a hot spot in international politics.

It's not the only one, of course. Just the one that's been in the news lately.

"[T]he attacks will aggravate a growing fault line between Hindus and Muslims within India itself," cautions Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic.

There's no shortage of those who are ready to point fingers at the real culprits and victims in these attacks.

"We already know what we really need to know," writes Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. "The sites of their attacks may vary ... but the object of their quarrel with history remains the same: modernity."

Mark Steyn warns, in the Orange County Register, that the attacks in Mumbai could happen again — anywhere, anytime. He's right, of course, but there are certain things that make some places less likely to be targets than others.

Major commercial centers are always prime targets, especially at a time when the global economy is struggling. It's one of the factors that has made New York such an appealing target for terrorists in the past.

To say that it could happen anywhere any time may well be true, but it isn't accurate. It misleads the listener into thinking that the local Holiday Inn is as likely to be attacked as the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai.

That's how fear operates.

Obama's First Test

"If it is indeed confirmed that Americans and Britons were targeted and that the attacks were inspired by al-Qaida's radical ideology, then the difficult transition phase in Washington has become even more complicated," Gregor Peter Schmitz says in Der Spiegel about Wednesday's terror attacks in Mumbai.

It is past daybreak now in Mumbai — it's getting close to 8 a.m. Friday in that part of the world. CNN is reporting that fighting has broken out "between government soldiers in a helicopter and gunmen holed up inside a Jewish center."

Back in the United States, it is Thanksgiving evening — and it seems to be a fairly typical one, even in a decidedly down economy.

Football fans are watching games on ESPN and/or the NFL Network.

Early-bird Christmas shoppers are catching a few winks before heading out to the stores at 4 a.m. (Honestly, those shoppers get up and about earlier than I had to when I was a little boy and I was roused from a sound sleep in a warm bed to go fishing with my father and grandfather.)

I don't think the guests in those Mumbai hotels have been getting too much shut-eye in the last 36 hours.

Nevertheless ...

To continue with Schmitz's observation — "The crisis could be Obama's first big foreign policy test," he writes. "The world is going to dissect his response."

Most Americans know about all the jobs that have been "out-sourced" to India in recent years.

But, unless those Americans work in the financial services sector, they may not have been aware — until Wednesday's attacks — of the role Mumbai plays in the financial community.

It is one of the top 10 centers of commerce in the world. It may be more readily recognized by Westerners when referred to by its old name — Bombay.

Although the casualties are not as great as the ones suffered on Sept. 11, 2001, the attacks in Mumbai are being referred to, as The Telegraph of Calcutta reports, as "India’s 9/11 for their massive scale and ruthless efficiency."

And the impact on the financial community, at a time of global financial distress, may be more acute than it was seven years ago.

My advice to Obama would be — Tread lightly.

Short Memories?

I know that everyone's busy these days.

Barack Obama's busy assembling his Cabinet — and some people are busy feeling betrayed because Obama appears to be on the verge of naming Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state.

The Rocky Mountain News, however, finds Obama's choices for his Cabinet "reassuring."

Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times writes about Clinton's "potential pitfalls" and compares her anticipated nomination to Franklin Roosevelt's nomination of Cordell Hull to be secretary of state in 1933.

They're busy recounting votes in Minnesota and preparing to count a whole new round of votes in Georgia in the last two unresolved Senate races.

The government is preparing to spend billions to bail out Citigroup. I worked for Citi for several years, and I'm just as baffled by this as a former co-worker, who confessed to me, via e-mail, that he doesn't know what to think about it. "I just cannot believe they are that messed up," he wrote.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped consumers are looking for the best deals for Christmas gifts on a tight budget when they're not making arrangements for visitors for Thanksgiving dinner.

It makes me think about a scene in the last segment of the 1989 miniseries "Lonesome Dove," when Woodrow Call (played by Tommy Lee Jones) hauls Gus' body back to Texas for burial.

In the scene, Call stops off in Nebraska, where Gus' old flame, Clara, and the reformed prostitute, Lorena, are living. He wants to give them the letters Gus wrote for them before he died and to tell Lorena that Gus left her the proceeds from his share of the cattle herd they drove to Montana.

Lorena's grief for Gus is so great that she spends hours outside, standing next to his coffin, speaking softly to the body inside. And she laments the fact that no one else grieves for him.

"They all forgot you, Gus," she says to the casket. "They've all got their own doings."

That's the feeling I'm getting these days on national security. Everybody's got their own doings.

The economy is clearly on people's minds these days — and rightfully so. But that doesn't mean that the terrorists have given up on their intention to do serious harm to this country and its people. If anything, it seems to me that a period of national economic instability is a good time for an adversary to attack.

And some observers haven't gotten so involved in their own doings that they've forgotten about the ever-present threat of terrorism and international conflict.

Less than two weeks ago, the Times of London reported that Obama was "being given ominous advice from leaders on both sides of the Atlantic to brace himself for an early assault from terrorists."

TWsPress worries that America has "fallen asleep ... it seems to us that we are sitting in the midst of a potential perfect storm ... precious few people [seem] concerned about being attacked again."

I don't think it's an absence of awareness. For many of those voters who supported John McCain — including my brother — national security was always at the top of their list of concerns.

But that group was in the minority. On Election Day, exit polls indicated that the overriding concern was the economy.

It was clear that far more attention was devoted to the economy during the general election campaign, which was to be expected, given the economic meltdown the country has experienced.

The loss of a job or a home has much more direct impact on American voters than the detonation of a roadside bomb half a world away.

Even so, I presume the incoming administration is aware of what can happen in foreign affairs.

Near the end of the presidential campaign, when it appeared more likely that Obama would win, his running mate urged supporters to stand by him in the transitional period because he was almost certain to be "tested" by his foreign adversaries in the first six months of his presidency.

That test will include Obama's secretary of state.

And, if that turns out to be Hillary Clinton, maybe she'll be getting that 3 a.m. phone call after all.