Two former Secretaries of State, James Baker III, a Republican, and Warren Christopher, a Democrat, chaired a commission looking into the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The resolution was passed by Congress toward the end of the Vietnam War and was intended to revamp the way that the nation was led into armed conflict. The resolution states that the president may only take the armed forced into conflict with the express approval of Congress through an authorization or a declaration of war. President Nixon vetoed the resolution when it passed, calling it unconstitutional, a position supported by every president since. Congress was able to override that veto.

Baker and Christopher admit that the resolution may indeed be unconstitutional and have proposed a new law aimed not at fixing the War Powers Resolution, but at creating a new regime for executive and legislative branch cooperation in matters of war and defense.

"Our proposed new law, the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009, does not pretend to resolve the underlying constitutional issues - only a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court decision could do that. It would reserve the ability of both Congress and the president to assert their constitutional war powers. In drawing up the statute we focused on a common theme that almost all past proposals shared: the importance of meaningful consultation between the president and Congress before the nation is committed to war."

The Constitution divides the war powers of the federal government between Congress and the president. The president is the commander-in-chief of the military and has exclusive authority to command the armed forces in war time. Congress has the sole authority to declare war, although it has not done so since World War II, and controls the funding for military operations. The president has Constitutional authority to use military force in times of emergency or defensive necessity, but must go to Congress for authorization if hostilities are expected to last for an unspecified longer period of time. It is that lack of specificity that Baker and Christopher are trying to address with their proposal.

Ha! Gallup disses their own survey...

In 9 of the past 15 U.S. presidential elections, the candidate who was leading in Gallup polling roughly four months before the election ultimately won the popular vote for president. However, narrowing the set of races to the nine that were competitive, the early polling proved prescient in only three of those.

I think this is pretty strong evidence that predicting a winner in November based on polls in July is largely a fool's game. Events happen, narratives shift, the mood shifts, the bases consolidate. But the biggest problem is that right now there are barely 5% of the people who are right now, as we speak, thinking "election". Everyone else is thinking %$^@ gas prices! You can ask the American people who they'd pick right now all you want, but most of them are not thinking seriously on this subject and won't be for at least another four months.

This is the time when campaigns won't make direct pitches to folks, but they have two main tasks. Build a foundational perception of their guy that they can build on later. McCain is serious, McCain is honest, etc. Later on they can say that McCain is serious about .... At the same time they can work on tearing down the foundations of the other guy.

But polls? Entertainment value only. The newspapers and bloggers have to print something.

A new poll released by Insider Advantage/Poll Position has supporters of Sen. Barack Obama believing that he can win one of the reddest states in the nation, Georgia. With fifteen electoral votes, Georgia is a very attractive prize for the Obama campaign. If Obama is able to wrest Georgia from Republican hands on election night, it would be nearly impossible for Sen. John McCain to win the White House, and could be indicative of a national sweep for the Democrats. The poll shows Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain in a virtual dead heat in the state, McCain leading 46-44% with six percent undecided. Libertarian candidate and Georgia native, Bob Barr, receives four percent in the poll. The numbers are consistent with Insider Advantage's previous poll results in the state, which showed a 44-43 McCain lead on June 20.

Insider Advantage credits the large African-American population and relatively young voting age with Obama's success in the state. It also notes that Obama is "saturating" the state with television ads, while McCain has little in the way of advertising running in Georgia. The poll also asked respondents if they would be more or less likely to vote for Obama should he choose former U.S. Senator from Georgia Sam Nunn as his running mate. Fifty-one percent said that they would be more likely to vote for an Obama-Nunn ticket.

The Obama campaign believes that it can fundamentally change the electoral map that has held pretty much unchanged for the last two presidential elections. Georgia, however, will be a difficult state to flip. Georgia last voted for a Democrat in 1992, voting to send a Southern governor, Bill Clinton, to the White House. Prior to that, Georgia voted for the Republican three straight elections after voting for favorite son candidate Jimmy Carter twice in 1976 and 1980. Georgia has again been trending Republican in recent years, voting for Dole, Bush and Bush in 1996, 2000, and 2004. Furthermore, intrastate politics in Georgia has been going the Republican Party's way as well. Governor Sonny Perdue is the first Republican governor in the state since 1872 and was easily reelected to a second term in 2006, bucking a national trend favoring Democrats. Both houses of Georgia's legislature have been controlled by Republicans for all of Perdue's tenure, and the state has a majority Republican Congressional delegation, including two Republican Senators.

At least he's in double digits. Rasmussen is out with a poll that finds just 9% -- NINE percent! -- of voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Not surprisingly, a number that low is unprecedented. It's the first time that rating has fallen to single digits since Rasmussen started polling.

Congress hasn't received higher than a 15% approval rating all year. Here's the breakdown by party:

The percentage of Democrats who give Congress positive ratings fell from 17% last month to 13% this month. The number of Democrats who give Congress a poor rating remained unchanged. Among Republicans, 8% give Congress good or excellent ratings, up just a point from last month. Sixty-five percent (65%) of GOP voters say Congress is doing a poor job, down a single point from last month.

But wait, there's more. Independent voters, those not party affiliated, are especially unimpressed with our representatives on Capitol Hill. Only 3% of those voters give Congress positive ratings.

What's the source of the cynicism?

Most voters (72%) think most members of Congress are more interested in furthering their own political careers. Just 14% believe members are genuinely interested in helping people.

Hmmm. Hard to argue with that kind of logic.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports that Democratic Representative Henry Waxman may introduce a bill that would keep political advisers from officially serving in the White House. Members of Congress already operate under similar conditions. The law would prevent another Karl Rove-type hybrid official. Rove guided President Bush's 2004 reelection while earning a salary as a member of the president's staff.

Waxman asked rhetorically, "Why should we be using taxpayer dollars to have a person solely in charge of politics in the White House? Can you imagine the reaction if each member of Congress had a campaign person paid for with taxpayer dollars?"

I can imagine that reaction--there would be no reaction because Waxman is talking about a nuance very few voters understand. Rove's move into the White House in 2000 was widely unprecedented (and ignored).

In his book The Architect journalist Wayne Slater explained the inherent conflict of interest.

First glimpse, at least for me, of the Obama brood interacting. The whole family is interviewed for Access Hollywood and the kids tease their dad about his surprising status as a fashion plate:

I touched on this earlier, but the evidence is starting to pile up that when John McCain shook up his campaign last week, he didn't shake hard enough. Even in a turtle-orgy-slow news cycle, McCain is managing to do damage to himself through inept campaigning, while failing to leave a scratch on opponent Barack Obama.

The biggest disaster, from a campaign standpoint, is McCain's sloppy and poorly-received new economic plan, but the latest is a complete dismantling of McCain's most recent Spanish-language radio ad by Factcheck.org:

McCain's new radio ad, in Spanish, aims to show Florida would benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which he supports. But every number in the ad is wrong, except one, a prediction of job gains taken from a group favoring the trade deal. And even that number is rounded upward so generously as to flunk third-grade arithmetic.

I also noticed, the fact that McCain's new economic plan contains a proposal for a gas tax holiday to begin on Memorial Day, 2008. I initially chalked that up to McCain simply wanting to score those points regardless of the fact that it is July now. Upon reflection, I'm starting to think it was more sloppiness than anything else. The McCain campaign admitted that there was really nothing new here, and that this was a repackaging. I think they forgot to check the expiration date.

Barack Obama's campaign responds the RNC ad on energy. It's a directly negative contrast against McCain using what most liberals call "Rovian big lie" politics. It's a tough ad. This is the first negative attack ad from a candidate.

And it's what you expect from a professional Chicago politician, nothing new about Obama.

Whether it's Iraq or Crocs, the song remains the same. John McCain gets all his favorite talking points from the president.



But, hey, my kids love them, too.

Senator Obama continues to meet with resistance from supporters of the Hillary Clinton campaign, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal. It seems that among fundraisers who previously had donated at least $1,000 to the Clinton campaign, 115 "made their first donations to Sen. Obama, another 115 former Clinton backers made their first big donations to Sen. McCain."

The McCain campaign has actively pursued former Clinton voters, with some apparent success. Campaign bigwig Carly Fiorina has already held important meetings with former Clinton backers and more are seeking to meet with her soon.

The information follows a recent CNN poll indicating only 54% of former Clinton voters so far say they will back Senator Obama in November. Almost half of the polled voters won't commit to voting for Obama, with nearly a third expressing an intention to stay home on election day.

The numbers and fund-raising problems couldn't come at a worse time for Senator Obama, who has had one of his worst fund-raising months just as he backed out of his promise to use public financing.