Photograph by Susan Walsh/AP Photo

First lady Michelle Obama signs copies of her book “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Garden Across America” at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, on May 7, 2013.

While the first lady was out in the rain today talking about healthy eating at a book-signing, the White House chief of staff was inside and dry sharing some doughnuts with the press.

Michelle Obama is using her book about the White House garden she developed, “American Grown,” “as a way to talk about one of the issues that is important to me and has been something that I’ve talked about a lot as first lady… ending the epidemic of childhood obesity,” she said at the book-signing at Washington’s Politics and Prose Bookstore.

“Because the garden was really a way to begin this conversation about how do we educate our children about the food they eat and how it impacts their body and how all of that affects their health, and encourage our children to eat healthy and eat more vegetables and to get more exercise,” she said.

Back at the West Wing, chief of staff Denis McDonough was risking a humorous take-off on his name with his hand-off of some good-will dunkers on this drizzly day.

With thanks to Mark Knoller, chronicler of all events White House related, at CBS News:

WH Chief of Staff Denis McDonough just came through the press room dispensing donuts. Said he just wanted to thank the press for all we do.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 7, 2013

Don’t tell Mrs Obama the Chief of Staff was dispensing donuts. Could be short-lived in the job.

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) May 7, 2013

Original post is White House: Gardening and Doughnuts by Political Capital.

That’s essentially what the U.S. has going now for an estimated 11.5 million undocumented immigrants already in the country, 8 million of them working, the way Rubio sees it.

And the plan he and other senators are proposing will install an arduous path to working permits and eventually citizenship for some that first demands a lot of the government: The implementation of an “E-verify” system that checks the legal status of all employees, and entry-exit visa system that tracks people in both directions — nearly half of those here illegally now over-stayed their visas rather than sneaking into the country — and “real border security.”

Their proposal demands that the Department of Homeland Security come up with a plan for all that within six months, and provides more than $3 billion for the effort, and if 100 percent of the nation’s borders aren’t 90-percent effective in preventing illegal crossings after five years a new commission takes over the work.

Only when that is in place, Rubio said several times today in a sweep of the Sunday talk shows, can the undocumented start applying for work permits. And, then, he said, they will have to undergo criminal background checks, pay back taxes and a fee to get a work permit. The path to actual citizenship is another decade down the road.

“If you are undocumented… you can’t even apply until after all this happens.,” Rubio said on CNN’s “State of the Union” today, in his response to those who will call his plan amnesty. “We’re not awarding anything. all we’re doing is eventually giving people access… to our modernized immigration system.”

Rubio voiced optimism about passage of this plan. “I’m optimistic about it,” he said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “This bill answers all of the questions that people raise. That’s why it’s taken so long, that’s why we spent so much time on it. “This bill does three things that are fundamentally important for our country. It modernizes our legal immigration system – something we need to do no matter what. It puts in place the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world. And it once and for all deals with the issue of those that are here illegally, but does so in a way that is fair and compassionate but does not encourage people to come illegally in the future, and isn’t unfair to the people that have done it the right way.”

On ABC News’ “This Week,” Rubio said: “After some period of time, over 10 years that’s elapsed, the only thing you will get — assuming that the border is secure, that E-Verify is in place, that an entry-exit system is in place for tracking visas — then the only thing you get is the chance to apply for a green card, like everybody else does. ”

At the same time, Rubio readily acknowledged that eight senators aren’t rewriting the nation’s immigration laws. “It is a starting point of reform,” he said. “There are 92 other senators who have ideas of their own. And I think that, from them, we are going to get ways to improve this. … Now, there are amendments designed to undermine this. There are amendments that will be designed to make this thing undoable. And obviously, I’ll oppose those.”

Finally, the political question, from CNN’s Candy Crowley: “You seem to be the go-to guy for this Gang of Eight. Do you think this would help or hurt Marco Rubio if he, perhaps, ran for president in 2016?”

“You know, I haven’t even thought about it in that way,” Rubio insisted. “I really haven’t. I have a job. My belief has always been that if I do my job and I do my job well, I’ll have options and opportunities in the future to do things — whether it’s run for reelection, run for something else or give someone else a chance at public service. And that’s how I view this issue.”

Original post is Rubio: The Selling of Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack close to one of the main gates to the heavily-fortified Green Zone, which houses major government offices and the embassies of several countries, including the United States and Britain in Baghdad, Iraq, on March 19, 2013.

Ten years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, there is a striking similarity in two polls asking the same question.

Was it a mistake?

Fifty-four percent of Americans think the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq, according to the results of a poll conducted by CBS News and reported today, while 38 percent said taking military action against Tehran was the right thing to do. Many Americans voice skepticism about whether the mission in Iraq was successful — “accomplished,” as then President George W. Bush put it after the initial capture of the capital. Four in 10 think the U.S. succeeded in accomplishing its objectives, but more, 50 percent, say it did not.

This survey of 861 adults was conducted March 1-3, with a possible 3 percentage point margin of error.

It shows a significant shift over time from the 69 percent who told CBS’s pollster in March of 2003 that the U.S. had done the right thing.  Public support waned early in the war, with the public divided by 2004.

Still, opinion has mellowed somewhat — criticism for the conflict peaked in March 2008, when CBS polling found that 62 percent called the war a mistake.

Gallup polling has found pretty much the same thing — the numbers impressively similar: Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their country “made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq” and 42 percent say it was not a mistake, Gallup found in its March 7-10 survey.

“Although majorities or near-majorities have viewed the conflict as a mistake continuously since August 2005, the current 53 percent is down from the high point of 63 percent in April 2008, Gallup reported this week.

Its latest survey of 1,022 adults had a possible 4 percentage point margin of error.

The U.S. lost 4,486 military members in the war, and another 32,000 were wounded. Iraq Body Count, a London-based nonprofit, estimates that between 111,762 and 122,224 Iraqi civilians died in the violence touched off by the U.S.-led invasion, as we noted at Bloomberg by the Numbers today.

President Barack Obama withdrew combat forces in December 2011.

And today, as noted earlier today, dozens more died in car bombings around Baghdad aimed at destabilizing the government that the U.S. spent the better part of a decade attempting to stabilize.

Original post is Iraq Ten Years After — ‘Mistake’ Registering Slim Majority in Polls by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

Jeb Bush appears “locked and loaded for bear,” fellow Republican and Floridian Joe Scarborough says.

The former Florida governor’s run of interviews with a new book on immigration is the clearest sign that another Bush is looking at a run for the White House in 2016, the MSNBC talk-show host and former congressman from Pensacola says.

The tip-off, he says, is Bush’s modified stance on what Congress should offer for the millions of undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. — long a supporter of a pathway to citizenship, Bush now says in his book, “Immigration Wars,” that the undocumented should be limited to a path to legal residency. Yet, he said in many interviews this week, he could support that citizenship path if done right — which is precisely what Sen. Marco Rubio, another Floridian viewed as a 2016 Republican prospect, is doing.

“This to me seems to be the greatest sign that Jeb Bush is looking to run in 2016,” Scarborough said.

Jeb Bush 2016? video.msnbc.msn.com/morning-joe/51…

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 6, 2013

Bush, addressing the question with us, maintained that he is trying to make immigration reform more appealing to conservatives, while open to compromise.

The reversal of course drew an onslaught of headlines and commentary about flip-flopping. Yet it was another comment Bush made at the start of his run through the media this week that drew as much attention.

He said he has not ruled out running for president in 2016.

Still, this wasn’t all that different from what he said last year, when he told Charlie Rose that 2012 probably was his “window of opportunity”  – while that didn’t mean it was the last window.

“This was probably my time,” Bush said in that interview in June on CBS News’ “This Morning.”

“There’s a window of opportunity, in life, and for all sorts of reasons,” said Bush,  former two-term Florida governor, brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush. This doesn’t mean there couldn’t be another window, he suggested.

“Have you made a decision that you don’t want to be president?” CBS host Rose asked Bush.

“I have not made that decision,”  Bush said.

Original post is Jeb Bush’s 2016 Window: Still Open by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeffrey Neira/CBS via Getty Images

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie laughs with David Letterman when the governor makes his first visit to CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman,” on Feb. 4.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has some advice for the long-distance doctor who advises him to lose weight:

“Shut up.”

The Republican governor, speaking in Sea Girt today, commented on a news report of Connie Mariano, a physician who worked for former President Bill Clinton, saying that she worries about Christie having a heart attack or stroke.

“I’m a Republican,” Mariano said in an interview with CNN. “I like Chris Christie. I want him to run. I just want him to lose weight. I’m a physician more than I’m a Democrat or Republican. And I’m worried about this man dying in office.”

Mariano is “just another hack who wants five minutes on TV,”  Christie said today.

“I find it fascinating that a doctor in Arizona — who’s never met me, never examined me, never reviewed my medical history or records and knows nothing about my family history — could make a diagnosis from 2,400 miles away,” he said. “She must be a genius,” he added. “She should probably be the surgeon general of the United States, I suspect.”

“I have four children between nine and 19,” the governor said. “My 12-year-old son come up to me last night and said `Dad, are you going to die?’… If she wants to get on a plane and come here to New Jersey and ask me if she can examine me or review my medical history, then I’ll have a conversation with her. Until that time, she should shut up.”

Mariano didn’t immediately respond to a message left at her office, the Center for Executive Medicine in Scottsdale, Arizona, whose Web-site bills its services as “modeled after the health care provided to America’s chief executive.”

Appearing on CBS’s “Late Show with David Letterman” this week, the governor said his cholesterol and blood-sugar levels were both within normal ranges during a physician’s exam ahead of his 50th birthday in September.

Christie also ate a doughnut on stage.

“I’m basically the healthiest fat guy you’ve ever seen in your life,” Christie told Letterman, who suggested that the governor make that the slogan for his re-election campaign.

And should he run for president in 2016, and win, he’ll get his own White House physician, and a surgeon general.

Original post is Christie to Doctor: ‘Shut Up’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner at the Capitol for meeting with Congressional leaders on Nov. 29, 2012.

Tim Geithner, secretary of the treasury, is performing a “Full Ginsburg” this weekend.

That’s the colloquial term for what the point-man in the Obama administration’s fiscal cliff talks will achieve Sunday morning, when he appears on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union,” FOX ‘s “News Sunday” and NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The moniker comes from the Monica era: William H. Ginsburg, attorney for former White House intern Monica Lewinsky during the “did not have sex” scandal involving President Bill Clinton, was the first person to accomplish the five broadcast-cable show sweep on Feb. 1, 1998.

Original post is Geithner’s `Full Ginsburg:’ Sunday by Political Capital.

In recent days, Norquist has wandered from The Nutcracker ballet to a crime scene investigation, to a Catholic schoolboy in the confessional, to a GOP lawmaker’s matrimonial vows — all in search of the right denunciatory images for the growing number of Republicans who say they’d consider raising taxes.

Those who would entertain a tax hikes have “sugar plum fairies dancing in their head,” Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform, told the Huffington Post Wednesday.

Backing a tax increase means Republicans would  “have their fingerprints on the murder weapon,” he said at a Politico breakfast on Wednesday.

Those talking about renouncing the anti-tax pledge are beset by “impure thoughts”, Norquist told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Monday.

In the same interview, Norquist said the idea that Democrats will agree to a fiscal-cliff forestalling package with enough entitlement cuts to offset a tax increase is like imagining “a pink unicorn.” He was talking about that unicorn on National Public Radio, too.

Also on Monday, Norquist took a swipe at Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, who said he’d consider repudiating the pledge he signed more than a decade ago because circumstances have changed.

“I hope his wife understands the commitments last a little longer than two years or something,” Norquist told CNN’s Piers Morgan.

Norquist is a “lowlife,” and his wife will “knock (Norquist’s) head off,” King subsequently fired back in Politico, proving, perhaps, that Norquist does not yet have the market on over-top-commentary cornered.

Norquist’s colorful defense of the pledge should not surprise anyone.

The vow itself is a yawner, but the animating statement underlying it is anything but.

“I don’t want to abolish government,” Norquist said on NPR in 2001. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

If enough Republicans stray from their vows and taxes are raised, it may be because lapsed pledgers agree with another recent much-publicized observation by Norquist, originally meant to apply to Mitt Romney.

They may decide, however, that it’s Norquist who is the “poopy head.”

Norquist’s facility with words does not extend to spelling them.

The ATR web page describing the pledge and how it has become mandatory for Republicans seeking office misspells “de rigueur” two different ways.

Original post is Norquist’s Brash Managerie: Pledge-Breakers Beware the `Sugar Plums’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Voters cast their ballots as they participate in early voting on Nov. 2, 2012 at the Silver Spring Civic Building in Silver Spring, Maryland.

“Tight as a tick” — President Barack Obama’s words for how close the vote is in some of the battleground states that matter most.

The latest national polling portrays a virtual tie among likely voters divided between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney — 50 percent Obama, 47 percent Romney in the Pew Poll; 48 Obama, 47 Romney, at NBC News and the Wall Street Journal; 48 Obama, 47 Romney, at CBS and the New York Times; 48-48 in the daily tracking poll at ABC News and the Washington Post; 46-46 at Fox News.

Yet it is those relative few swing states that will deliver the Electoral College victory of 270 votes. And, on the eve of Election Day 2012, there are more ticks than butterflies in the swing state surveys (and it’s worth noting that these are all states that Obama won in 2008):

OHIO: A must-win for any Republican who has ever won the White House. Without it, Romney would have to cobble another path to victory. It’s Obama 50, Romney 48, in the Columbus Dispatch poll run through Sunday. It was Obama 51, Romney 45, in the last NBC, Wall Street Journal poll through Nov. 1.

FLORIDA: One of the states Romney must win to make an Electoral College majority a reality, not so essential for Obama, who won it in 2008 by 2.8 percentage points. The NBC, Wall Street Journal survey run through Nov. 1 showed Obama at 49 percent, Romney 47. A Mason-Dixon poll run for the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald over the same time period: Romney 51, Obama 45.

VIRGINIA: Another state that Romney needs to overcome the Electoral College advantage Obama has in most pre-election surveys. It is 48 Obama percent, 47 Romney, in the NBC, Wall Street Journal poll out this morning, run through Nov. 2.

IOWA: Another state that Romney has hoped to capture. It is Obama 47 percent, 42 Romney, in the Des Moines Register poll released Saturday night. This is one of the most accurate state polls in the nation.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: This is where Romney’s roll begins on election night, if he rolls. The WMUR, University of New Hampshire poll showed Obama at 51 percent, Romney 48, in a survey run through Sunday. NBC and the Wall Street Journal, working with Marist College, found 49 for Obama, 47 Romney, through Oct. 29.

COLORADO: Another cornerstone of Romney’s formula for unseating Obama, particularly if the president holds Ohio. The Denver Post reports it’s Obama 47 percent, Romney 45, in a survey run through Halloween. CNN Opinion Research found Obama 50, Romney 48, through the same time frame.

If accurate, it all adds up to a potentially long election night.

Original post is `Tight’ Swing States, Long Night? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Vice President Joseph "Joe" Biden reacts during a debate with Representative Paul Ryan in Danville, Kentucky.

“Honestly, don’t you want this election over with already?”

That’s Joe Biden talking.

The vice president delivered the Top 10 Reasons for Voting Early on “Late Night with David Letterman.”

That was No. 1 — a sentiment with more than a small measure of truth to it.

No. 2?

“Early voters will receive a $5 million donation from Donald Trump” — a take-off on the real estate tycoon’s offer of $5 million for anyone who can deliver copies of President Barack Obama’s college records and birth certificate. Trump’s offer has largely been seen as a joke — with Biden offering the first official response.

The rest of Biden’s late-night CBS reasons, from the bottom-up:

No 10: “I’m not saying each early voter gets a free cheeseburger, but I’m not saying they don’t either.”

No. 9: “It’s vastly more effective than voting late.”

No. 8: “You know who votes early? People with a backbone like a ramrod.”

No. 7: “In a less crowded polling place, there’s plenty of room to stretch out, linger and relax.”

No. 6: “If you vote early, you don’t have to pay taxes. Errr, I’m sorry, I’m being told that’s not accurate.”

No. 5: “Single and looking to mingle? Find that special someone on the early voting line.”

No. 4: “Of course, there’s the open bar!”

No. 3: “Not exercising your right to vote is malarkey. It’s literally malarkey.”

Original post is Biden: Donald Trump Will Give You $5 Million for Voting Early by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Election cookies of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney at the Oakmont Bakery in Oakmont, Pennsylvania.

If Cincinnati cookie sales are any indication, the contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney does indeed remain close in Ohio.

Reporters traveling with Romney arrived in Dayton, Ohio, midday to be greeted with cookies with hand-decorated Romney faces painted onto a white fondant covering the top of each one, with a delightful almond aftertaste.

CBS’ pool reporter, Sarah Huisengas, looked into the cookie story and shared that the maker, Busken Bakery, has eight locations around Cincinnati and one in northern Kentucky.

They make Obama cookies too, and, in a presidential cookie-sales contest, Obama was leading as of yesterday — 10,857 to 8,794.

Original post is Obama: Ohio Cookie Contest Edge by Political Capital.