by Frank James

There's this CNN video flying around the Internet from the G20 meeting last weekend that shows President Bush walking on the stage for the "class photo" and no one shaking his hand.

Rick Sanchez, the CNN anchor, said it looked like Bush was snubbed because he's unpopular and a lot of people on the web have adopted that interpretation.

It's an example of people seeing what they want to see.

Here's an alternate explanation. The G20 has a weird protocol where the leader of the host nation doesn't shake hands while walking on stage for the final photo op with other leaders.

Each of these events is choreographed to the nth degree including where all the leaders stand. Looking at the video, it would also be possible to come to the view that many of the world leaders were feeling weighed down that day since they walked along the stage with their heads bowed.

But what they're actually doing is looking for their marks which are taped to the carpet on the floor.

Just another example of why what you see is not always what you think you see.

by Frank James

President Bush (remember him?) is making the rounds of the federal bureaucracy doing something of a farewell tour.

Today, he was at the Transportation Department talking up all that employees there and his administration have done to improve the nation's transportation system, such as better management of the New York City airspace, improvements that should have the salutary effect of making life better for holiday travelers, the president said.

Of course, because of economic slowdown, the airlines will be flying fewer planes so don't expect the airports to be any less crowded.

Anyway, the president started off with a joke which contained a kind of heckuva job compliment to the department's employees :

I appreciate you giving me a chance to come by and visit with you today. I want to thank you very much for the great job you are doing to make sure that across America our railroads and highways and airways are working to keep our citizens moving. You have done a terrific job, as far as I am concerned. The past eight years I have not seen a traffic jam -- (laughter) -- waited for an airplane -- (laughter) -- or had my bags lost. (Laughter.)

Yes, it's good to be the king. In Washington, he's the guy who creates the traffic jams.

I'm sure he didn't mean to rub anyone's face in it.

No doubt a lot of people next week will be wishing they could travel by private jumbo jet and motorcades with police escort to grandma's house.

by Mark Silva

It's foggy this morning at Foggy Bottom, where an international press corps has assembled at the State Department for a summit of international leaders -- presidents and prime ministers of some 20 nations and organizations - focusing on a global economic crisis that spans from China to Western Europe.

President Bush convened this Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy, staged at the National Building Museum across town, and welcomed fellow leaders there this morning after an opening dinner last night in the State dining room of the White House. The summit is expected to wrap up with a statement of mutual understanding mid-afternoon.

"I am pleased that we're discussing a way forward, to make sure that such a crisis is unlikely to occur again,'' said Bush, calling on leaders to resist the temptation to tamp down on free trade among the nations.

"One of the dangers of such a crisis as this is that people will start implementing protectionist policies,'' Bush said in a brief public statement at the National Building Museum this morning. "We had a good frank discussion last night and I look forward to the discussions today. ''

"Frank discussions:'' Legendary diplomatic code-word around the White House for talks that may not be going so well behind the curtains.

by Mark Silva

This is the line that jumps out of the agenda for the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy that President Bush is convening:

3:05 pm (EST) Saturday: "President Bush makes a statement...''

"Interpretation will be provided.''

That's not Texan to English, however.

That's English to Arabic and Chinese and French and German and Japanese and Russian and much more for the leaders of the G-20 nations assemlbing in the State Dining Room of the White House tonight for a summit dinner and then attending meetings Saturday morning at the National Bulding Museum.

It will be the first of many such talks about the global economic crisis -- with 15 nations in Europe already recording the official recession-defining two quarters of declining growth and the United States solidly in its first quarter of decline. But it will be the last chance for Bush to preside over such an assembly.

President-elect Barack Obama is sending his own representatives to the summit to report back.

With their own interpretation of events.

by Mark Silva

President Bush, his job-approval hovering around 25 percent in most polls, has spoken out before about what he regrets most during his presidency -- those defiant words about hunting down the terrorists "dead or alive,'' for instance.

Now, near the end of his terms, with a successor in lne, he is repeating that lament, yet waxing nostalgiac about the good deeds -- most notably his aid for Africa.

Of his meeting this week with President-elect Barack Obama, Bush said in an interview today with CNN aboard the USS Intrepid in New York: "To the extent he asked my advice, and he may want to ask it again, and the best way to make sure he feels comfortable asking it again is for me not to tell you in the first place what I advised him.

"So, we had a very private conversation,'' Bush said. "It was relaxed. It was interesting to watch a person who is getting ready to assume the office of the president. This will be a fantastic experience for he and his family....

''My choice didn't win,'' Bush said in his first media interview since Election Day. "I was for John McCain. I felt he battled hard. But I meant what I said after the election, that the election of Barack Obama is an historic moment for our country. ''

On that question of regrets, the retiring president told CNN's Heidi Collins: "You know, I regret saying some things I shouldn't have said.... Like, dead or alive, bring them on. .. And, by the way, my wife reminded me that, 'Hey, as president of the United States, you better be careful of what you say.' I was trying to convey a message. I probably could have conveyed it more artfully.''

See the rest of the talk here, courtesy of CNN:

(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

by Frank James

President Bush landed on another aircraft carrier today, the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum which is permanently moored at a pier on the West Side of Manhattan.

Today's carrier landing by Marine One helicopter made a lot more sense than his last one by combat jet on the USS Abraham Lincoln where the president infamously appeared before the big "Mission Accomplished" banner in a premature victory lap for the Iraq War.

It allowed the president to appear on Veterans Day at the re-dedication of the World War II vintage carrier-museum which was recently overhauled without having his motorcade tie up New York City traffic. An unpopular lame-duck administration has to accomplish its missions where it can.

President Bush meets with USS Abraham Lincoln crew members. May 1, 2003. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

by Frank James

President Bush was said to be seeking a horse-trade from President-elect Obama during their White House meeting yesterday. The current president evidently offered to support a bailout for the auto-industry if the future president supported the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

In terms of domestic politics, it doesn't seem that Bush's pushing of the free-trade pact at this particular moment would help the Republican Party rebuild its image in states with large numbers of union workers and lots of anti-free trade agreement feeling, like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That he's tying it to possible help for the auto industry makes even less sense.

Meanwhile, it's hard to see any benefit to Obama to make a deal of this sort with the sitting president. He received strong organized labor support during the presidential campaign and there's visceral opposition to such free-trade agreements in the Midwest where he did particularly well, especially because of the economic downturn.

Obama has opposed the Colombia free-trade pact because of violence against unions. Not much has changed in Colombia on that score.

The president must know all this, of course. Maybe this was Bush's way of saying no without saying no. Or it may have been an opening negotiating position. But it seems like a non-starter.

(White House photo by Eric Draper.)

by Frank James

President Bush and President-elect Obama sat in front of the fireplace in the world's most famous office. Often when we see a photo of the president sitting in the arm chair, it's with a visiting foreign head-of-state and the photographers take the photo with the fireplace in the background.

But Eric Draper, a White House photographer, took the photo from behind the president and president-elect, to show the "Resolute" desk. It was used by presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt but not in the Oval. In that office, it's been used by Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43, the White House's present occupant. It's hard to imagine Obama choosing to use any of the other available presidential desks.

.

President-elect Obama lifts daughter Sasha, out of his vehicle as daughter Malia, looks on, as he dropped them off at school in Chicago, Monday, Nov. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

by Frank James

In his fun little paperback book, "What Do We Do Now?" written as a workbook for presidential transitions, Stephen Hess, one of Washington's top experts on the presidency, has some advice for a president-elect like Barack Obama since these get-togethers tend to take a certain shape.

Obama, known for his smarts and deliberateness, probably has already worked through in his mind what he wants to ask Bush and how he plans to ask it. But Hess's advice is really meant to give the rest of us a better sense for how these meetings work.

-- Have your staff "game-play" what the president will want from you and possible responses.

-- The White House press corps will expect a statement of how useful the meeting has been.

It's a safe guess that the economy and national security will take up a lot of today's session and that there may even be a meeting of the two economic and national security teams after Bush and Obama meet privately.

by Frank James

The Associated Press has a little news segment on the difficult state of affairs President Bush leaves his successor to deal with.

We all know the litany by now: the ailing economy and financial markets, Iraq, Afghanistan, global warming and so on.

The video includes a snippet of what looks to be a Bush press conference in the White House East Room in which he says his view of his job was "to confront problems, to not pass them on to future Congresses. Or a future president."

Obviously the president missed the mark on that goal.

The video led me to think. did Bush accomplish anything that could be viewed as helpful to his successor?

by Mark Silva

The global economic meltdown is beginning to sound somewhat like the crisis of global warming, something which every important industrial nation in the world must do something about, but a problem which everyone is not willing to address in the same fashion.

President Bush, who had called for a world summit of the nation's industrial powers on global warming before he left office at the end of this year, instead will be leaving with a summit on the global economy.

The leaders of some 20 nations and international organizations will assemble in Washington, starting on Nov. 15, the White House announced this week. Today, in his weekly radio address, the president explained his summit.

"This summit will be the first in a series of meetings aimed at addressing this crisis,'' he said. "The summit will bring together leaders of the G20 nations -- countries that represent both the developed and the developing world. And the summit will also include the heads of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Financial Stability Forum, as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations.

"During this summit, we will discuss the causes of the problems in our financial systems, review the progress being made to address the current crisis, and begin developing principles of reform for regulatory bodies and institutions related to our financial sectors. While the specific solutions pursued by every country may not be the same, agreeing on a common set of principles will be an essential step towards preventing similar crises in the future.''

Of course, Bush will officially be a lame-duck president at this juncture, with little or no influence over a lame-duck Congress whose balance of party power may well be tipped by the same elections naming Bush's successor, so whatever solutions are floated at this summit are likely to serve more as recommendations for the next crew.

by Mark Silva

President Bush has been sparing in the exercise of his pardon power, but more of his clemency - 157 pardons and six commutations of sentences - has gone to convicts in his home state of Texas and his younger brother's home state of Florida than to those in any other states.

P.S. Ruckman Jr., a professor of political science at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., who keeps track of all matters of clemency, also has found that eight of the top-10 states on Bush's list of pardons and commutations are "red states'' in the political calculus of presidential votes.

Now, it's difficult to see where pardoning criminals might enhance a president's reputation or party's chances in any one state. And the most famous of Bush's pardons, the commutation of prison time for Lewis "Scooter'' Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff convicted of obstruction of justice in the federal investigation of the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent whose husband had debunked one of the Bush administration's contentions for the invasion of Iraq, is a District of Columbia case.

So it's probably just a matter of population - Texas, home state of the former governor who was elected to the White House in 2000, and Florida, home state of the former governor, Jeb Bush, elected in 1998 and 2002, are big states, and they have a lot of criminals - that Ruckman's review of the presidential pardon power has turned up this accounting of Bush's pardons and commutations.

(But, then, the two biggest states of all, California and New York, have a good share of criminals as well, and they are decidedly blue states, and look where they sit on the list. And, then, as Ruckman has found, presidents grow most generous with their pardons at the ends of their terms, so Bush still has time to balance out the map).

This is the count, so far:

by Mark Silva

The White House, which pushed Congress earlier this year to enact an "economic stimulus,'' placing tax "rebates'' in the pockets of millions of Americans, says it's open to congressional talk of a second stimulus

"I think we just need to wait and see,'' White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said today, en route to Louisiana with President Bush to talk about what the government already is doing to try to revive the economy. "We're open to ideas and we'll take a look at what comes our way.''

Earlier this year, before the financial meltdown that has seized the financial markets, and before anyone around the White House was even willing to talk about any chance of a recession, the president called the tax rebates a "booster shot.''

"When the money reaches the American people, we expect they will use it to increase consumer spending and that will spur job creation as well,'' Bush said in March, before hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost this year. "My message to the American people is this: I know this is a difficult time for the economy,'' he said then, "but we recognized the problem early and provided the economy with a booster shot.''

"We're continuing to have conversations with members of Congress and we're open to ideas that they would put forward that would -- both Democrats and Republicans alike -- that would stimulate the economy and help us pull out of this downturn faster,'' she said.

"We'd like to see the details of what would be proposed, because there are several programs that have been recommended that are coming in a cloak of being stimulative, and we don't think that those would actually stimulate the economy,'' the White House spokeswoman added. "So anything that we would do, we would have to take a careful look at, and I'm sure the Fed Chairman would want to make sure that those elements of a program would actually stimulate the economy and meet that test...

"Obviously, we were open to a stimulus package last January and one of the things that we agreed with (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi on was that the program needed to be targeted, temporary, and timely,'' she said. "We do think that it will have the effect of helping prevent what could have been even a worse downturn in our economy.''

Does Bush, for his part, believe a second booster shot is needed?

"I haven't spoken to him about that in particular,'' he said. "I think what he would look to is -- all of his advisors... to advise him best as to whether or not they think, collectively, that there is a need for a stimulus package right now.

"So we'll remain open to the idea and then we'll just have to see when Congress gets back, if they decide to move forward, what sort of package they want to draft into legislation -- whether it be principles or actual legislation -- and then see if it actually would stimulate the economy.''

by Mark Silva

President Bush, announcing a government move to purchase one-quarter of a trillion dollars of shares in struggling banks, vowed today that this will be a temporary action to regain some stability for banks, businesses, borrowers and lenders alike.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "will make clear that each of these new programs protects taxpayers,'' the president said this morning, in his third appearance in the Rose Garden in five days.

"The government's role will be limited and temporary,'' Bush said. "These measures are not intended to take over the free market, but to preserve it.''

With the purchase of bank shares, the U.S. is joining European partners in injecting new capital into banks which have frozen lending in a system clogged by bad mortgage-related assets.

The U.S. money is coming from the $700 billion that Congress authorized the Treasury to invest in bad mortgage assets - with the Treasury Secretary having authority over the first $250 billion and then requiring approval of White House and Congress for the disbursement of the remaining bailout money.

Bush had met with his economic advisers this morning before announcing the newest twist in the federal government's series of actions to stabilize the economy - starting with a bailout of failing banking and insurance firms, continuing with injection of capital into the market and now a move to bolster the banks.

"We discussed the unprecedented and aggressive steps the government is taking,'' Bush said. "Federal agencies have moved decisively... and the United States has worked with partners around the world to coordinate our activities to get our economies back on track.''

"These are wise and timely actions,'' Bush said, "This new capital will help struggling banks... so they can resume lending.''

This is a "short term measure'' designed to allow the banks to repurchase these shares later, Bush said.

Among the new moves, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. also will temporarily guarantee most new lending, and will insure all non-interest bearing transaction accounts, which businesses use to meet expenses. "Every dollar,'' Bush said. "We will give small business owners piece of mind, and bring greater stability to the banking system.

"I know Americans are deeply concerned about the stress in our financial markets and the impact it is having on their retirement accounts... college savings and other investments,'' the president said. "These efforts are designed to directly benefit the American people by helping stabilize the overall financial system... ..It will take time for them to have their full impact.''

by Mark Silva

President Bush, meeting with representatives of the world's major industrial nations, maintains that they are making concerted efforts to confront a global freezing of lending that is dragging down markets worldwide.

"I'm confident that the world's major economies can overcome the challenges we face,'' Bush said in an address from the Rose Garden this morning, his second in two days aimed at delivering a message of action and confidence.

"There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned their energies against each other, or sought to wall themselves off from the world,'' Bush said. "This time is different. The leaders gathered in Washington this weekend are all working toward the same goals. We will stand together in addressing this threat to our prosperity. We will do what it takes to resolve this crisis. And the world's economy will emerge stronger as a result.''

Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met this morning in the West Wing with the finance ministers of the other G-7 nations - Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Japan. They also met with the president of the Eurogroup of countries, the directors of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and chairman Financial Stability Forum.

"In my country, it is important for our citizens to have understood that which affects Wall Street affects Main Street as well,'' Bush said in the Rose Garden following the G-7 finance ministers' meeting. "And all of us recognize that this is a serious global crisis and, therefore, requires a serious global response for the good of our people...

"The United States has a special role to play in leading the response to this crisis. That is why I convened this morning's meeting here at the White House, and that is why our government will continue using all the tools at our disposal to resolve this crisis. At our meeting, Secretary Paulson and I described the bold actions the United States has taken over the past few weeks:

"To help thaw frozen markets, the Federal Reserve has taken unprecedented measures to boost liquidity,'' he said. "The Securities and Exchange Commission has cracked down on abusive practices in the markets. Federal agencies have significantly expanded the amount of money insured in bank and credit union accounts. My administration worked with the Congress to pass legislation authorizing the government to recapitalize banks by purchasing troubled assets or providing insurance or purchasing equity in financial institutions. These extraordinary efforts are being implemented as quickly and as effectively as possible.

"The benefits will not be realized overnight,'' he said. "But as these actions take effect, they will help restore stability to our markets and confidence to our financial institutions.''

by Mark Silva

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. - For President Bush, the end is near. On Sunday, he will have 100 days left in his presidency.

He warned everyone that he would be "sprinting'' to the finish, but nobody had an international financial meltdown in mind when Bush vowed that he would be working to the very end.

Bush may be down in the polls - with 25 percent public approval, his all-term low, in the latest Gallup Poll - but he still finds comfort in certain quarters. The Simpsonville Little League Softball team, the world champions, where happy to see him.

The team greeted Bush at his landing Friday night at the Charleston Air Force Base. Another couple hundred people were assembled behind a fence on the tarmac on an overcast evening at the end of a rainy day - one assumes this was the family and extended family of the 2008 World Series of Little League Softball champions.

Bush had seen some admirers along the road on his way out of South Florida on this day, people standing on corners along the route of the presidential motorcade in Coral Gables and waving American flags and cheering - the supporters far outnumbering the few protesters along the motorcade route, quite the opposite ratio of that most recent Gallup Poll on presidential approval, which put Bush just one point above Richard Nixon's all-time low (24 points) before resignation in 1974 and jut three points above Harry Truman's low in 1952, the all-time low in Gallup surveys.

And, in the aftermath of three tortuous weeks of economic turmoil, the president was ready for some crowd-love. He and first Lady Laura Bush had gone separate ways in their travels this day, the pair splitting up at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland in the morning and reuniting in Charleston in the evening. And the two worked the crowd from left to right before posing with the ball team for photographs - and then taking off by helicopter for a Republican Nation Committee fundraiser on Kiawah Island.