Stock answers (THE OBAMA TRUST FUND - SUDDENLY, BARACK HUSSEIN IS NOT SO "ARTICULATE")

WASHINGTON -- White House hopeful Barack Obama was on the defensive Wednesday over stock purchases from companies whose investors included his political donors.

And Obama revealed that he terminated a "quasi-blind" trust he created for the stock purchases -- called the "Freedom Trust" -- after realizing that it wasn't blind after all.

Obama's campaign team ramped up a rapid reaction defense after a story about his portfolio hit the front page of Wednesday's New York Times and was the subject of scrutiny Monday on thestreet.com.

Denies any connection The political damage potential is high because one of the firms Obama bought stock in was developing medicine to treat avian flu -- with the purchase coming as Obama started to champion more federal funding to fight the disease. Obama, who has made ethics one of his signature issues, took questions at a news conference in the Capitol called originally to tout an immigration bill. He denied any connection between his investments and legislation. Meanwhile, Obama's research team -- aware that every part of his life is under a microscope -- turned up unpaid parking tickets from his days as a Harvard law student. In January, an Obama representative paid $400 in fines and penalties, according to the Somerville News.

Obama had about $100,000 he wanted to invest in 2005. The money was a portion of the $1.2 million he got from a book contract. He said Wednesday he decided the $100,000 could be put into something "more high risk" and asked a friend to recommend a stock broker. That friend was donor George W. Haywood, who held what the New York Times called "major" positions in the two stocks Obama ended up owning, Skyterra and AVI BioPharma.

Another Obama donor who invested in the same stocks -- which were characterized as "obscure" in thestreet.com story -- was Jared Abbruzzese. He was also a donor to the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and is being investigated by the FBI in New York for public corruption. Obama declined to name the UBS broker. Net loss on the investments: $13,000.

"I thought about going to Warren Buffett, but I decided it would be embarrassing with only $100,000 to invest to ask for his advice," Obama quipped.

The 'quasi-blind' trust: "Now obviously the thing didn't work the way I wanted it to," Obama said.

The Senate Ethics manual has detailed rules about blind trusts and qualified blind trusts. Obama did not want to sign on to either of those options because he did not want to wash his hands of the responsibility of investments made in his name, attorney Robert Bauer said.

Because the off-the-shelf trusts were not satisfactory, "We tried to see if we could jigger it to make it work better," Obama said. He signed papers on May 31, 2005, for the custom trust designed to shield him from knowing how his money was invested -- but let him respond to media inquiries about potential conflicts. Obama realized his system was not working when he received some sort of shareholder letter in fall 2005.

Katten Muchin Rosenman attorney Michael Hartz in Chicago drew up the papers for and was the trustee of the "Freedom Trust." Bauer said this particular kind of trust did not require any clearance from the Senate Ethics Committee because he did not ask to be relieved from any reporting rule. Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, said that if any kind of blind trust was created, "you should have the Ethics Committee sign off on it."

The trust was revoked on Dec. 31, 2005. Obama put his money in cash and mutual funds.

While Clinton and Obama fight it out on issues that don't have any significance on the national stage, many important questions go unanswered. Daniel Henniger of the WSJ has some questions for the candidates that need answers now.

This is a part of the article on Opinion Journal:

The world beyond America's borders isn't dormant; it is a globalized world trembling with problems and troubles that will remain after George Bush leaves office. Iraq's future, Iran's bomb, homicidal Islam, conniving North Korea, unhelpful Russia, rising China, booming India, Venezuela's oil, Mexico's human export. In our system, these matters are the responsibility of a president. But the campaign is devolving into a campaign about nothing. Rudy's kids? Hillary's "apology"? Set against the moment of the office they wish to hold, this is infantile.

Republican candidate policy is unavoidably yoked to the Bush patrimony, more or less. (John McCain is the undisputed master of the art of more or less.) The greater burden of proof falls on the Democratic contenders. The Democratic Party has built opposition to the presidency of George Bush wholly around the war in Iraq. So much so that the Democratic Party's worldview by now resembles a Steinberg New Yorker cartoon--a wavy circle around Iraq, or even just Baghdad, with nothing beyond but vaporous nation shapes. It's no accident that their major foreign-policy effort should be "non-binding."

For the purposes of picking the next president, we should be glad that Democrats have made the presidency itself--its foreign-policy decisions and the use of presidential authority (Guantanamo, wiretapping, the war decision)--the core of their criticism. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are their standard bearers. Logically, one wonders: What do they think a presidency should be? What are their views on the exercise of presidential authority? Let's find out now, before it's too late.

Historically, a U.S. president's tools are two: soft power and hard power. Soft power is diplomacy. Hard power is the military. The question that one wants answered soon is: Have the Democrats become a soft-power-only party? Hillary Clinton especially has berated the Bush presidency for not being willing to "talk" to the likes of Iran and Syria. Reading Democratic foreign-policy intellectuals of late, it is hard to find the conditions under which they would deploy U.S. military resources. The military option may be on the Democrats' table, but it's buried beneath a foot-high pile of talking points. Have the Democrats, in their opposition to the Bush Doctrine, forced anyone seeking their nomination into a soft-power-only corner? Someone should ask them.

This matter links unavoidably to presidential authority.

Presidents and the Congress live in perpetual tension over the uses and limits of presidential authority. Nothing new there. And with George Bush, both Republicans and Democrats have sought to rein in presidential power, notably in their dispute over wiretaps and the FISA statute. But the Democrats have gone further. The current Murtha proposal in the House on troop deployments is a hard challenge to presidential authority. They also have tried to thwart less controversial exercises of presidential authority--refusing votes on judicial nominees and putting holds on executive-branch appointments.

Sen. Clinton, as president, would you assent to these limits on executive power, or would you refuse to abide them? Sen. Edwards, is Carl Levin's reading of the FISA statute on the wiretapping of suspected terrorists your reading of that statute? Sen. Obama, do you support the Murtha proposal on Iraq? Could you all elaborate your understanding of the term, "commander in chief"? Or the War Powers Resolution. Or the pardon power.

Congressional ambivalence toward presidential authority is likely a large part of the fact that no sitting senators other than John F. Kennedy and Warren G. Harding have ascended to the presidency. Rudy Giuliani may be outstripping John McCain because voters see Sen. McCain as a creature, however eminent, of Congress. Bill Clinton established the outer limits of domestic presidential authority. Would Clinton-44 settle for less? Not likely, but someone should ask her.

Even if you argue that Mr. Bush brought this on himself, the fact remains that presidential authority is in a hole. At this rate of erosion, there will be such lack of clarity about the presidential role come January 2009 that any new president will spend an entire term merely reestablishing his or her authority. A Democratic president who hasn't drawn a line in the presidential sand will be in hock to the party's pacifist left. Absent a vigorous debate on these matters, we are likely to elect a weak President, no matter who wins.

There is no bigger campaign issue than the proper role of the presidency. On current course, our winner the morning of Nov. 5, 2008 may be uttering Robert Redford's famous last line in "The Candidate": "What do we do now?" As with the primaries, let's move up the answer to that question from too late to very early.

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