Obama Faces Chillier Reception Abroad

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Leaders at Asian Summits Back Austerity Moves Opposed by President; Ceding the Bully Pulpit to Republicans at Home

President Barack Obama steps back onto the world stage Friday, when he leaves for two economic summits in Asia after a big electoral rebuke.

But his troubles will not ease overseas.

The U.S. and nations abroad are at odds over economic policy. Among the issues, conservative governments in Britain and Germany are pressing for fiscal austerity measures in Europe that Mr. Obama's administration is resisting implementing in the U.S.

"The rest of the world is looking more like the tea party," which wants to rein in government spending, according to Kenneth Rogoff, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

The president's 10-day swing through India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan was long planned, and has two global economic summits on the schedule—one in Seoul, the other in Yokohama, Japan.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to return before Congress comes back to Washington for a lame-duck session on Nov. 15, when key questions on spending, taxes and arms control are likely to be decided. But in his absence, newly empowered Republican leaders will have the bully pulpit to themselves.

Moreover, the president's pledge to negotiate with Congress over the expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts will now be put on hold for a week.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday the president would stay in the domestic news with several press conferences in Asia.

Mr. Obama next week attends the summit of the Group of 20 largest economic powers in Seoul. He will still wield considerable influence.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in the run-up to the meeting, helped prompt the body to address trade surpluses and deficits as part of efforts to restore balanced global growth. The president also took a leadership role in the push for stronger global banking regulations, one of the centerpieces of the coming economic summit.

U.S. President Obama hopes to increase economic ties between the U.S. and India on his trip to the second-most-populous country in the world.

But two years ago in London, Mr. Obama and his economic team were greeted at the G-20 summit as something akin to rock stars. At the G-20 in Seoul next week, "they're not going to have a lot of allies," said Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has close ties to the White House.

On some economic issues, the trip will play out as Mr. Obama against the world, with the U.S. president as one of the last adherents to Keynesian economic policies, which promote the use of deficit spending and tax cuts to spur economic growth.

The recent election in Britain brought down Mr. Obama's ally on economic policy, Gordon Brown, and brought to power a prime minister, David Cameron, who is going the opposite way. He is pursuing budget cuts and tax increases designed to quickly tame the U.K. budget deficit. He hopes a boost to private-sector confidence will offset the pain of austerity. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is lobbying European countries that have large budget deficits to follow suit.

Republicans, swept to power on Tuesday by voters worried about swelling deficits, are proposing budget cuts of their own. But they're also calling for tax cuts, which doesn't follow the Cameron model.

Mr. Obama and his allies advocate a different course, though he was careful to say Wednesday he recognized voter concerns about rising government debt.

Lael Brainerd, undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs, said "there is broad agreement that the United States needs to continue providing support to the economy until the handoff to the private sector is well established." She defended the administration's record on deficit-cutting, saying the government is well on its way to meeting its commitment to cutting the deficit in half by 2013.

The White House does believe Washington needs to control federal deficits in the long term by curtailing the growth of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security. But given the fragile economy, they see short-term austerity as dangerous.

"We have to deal with this, absolutely," said Christina Romer, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who recently resigned as chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. "But you don't do it by cutting $100 billion in 2011. That would hurt the recovery, and it wouldn't accomplish much. The deficit is fundamentally a long-run problem that requires a long-run solution."

"It's almost as if no country has gotten it right," said Peter Orszag, the president's former budget director, who says countries should be locking in long-term deficit controls but spending more now, as economies world-wide struggle back onto their feet.

The global economy notwithstanding, this is likely to be a foreign trip focused disproportionately on domestic U.S. politics. World leaders will be keen to divine the policy implications of Tuesday's election, said Daniel M. Price, who served as George W. Bush's liaison to the G-20. That could amplify the image of a beleaguered U.S. president.

"I imagine politics in the U.S. will be a subject of this trip," said Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs.

"We get that," noted the White House's Mr. Gibbs.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703805704575594540016000482.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Seems fair, he got a chilly reception tuesday from his own voters.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Nice--clobbering from US voters, followed by one from "queen Sonia", then collective one from ASEAN!