ROMNEY TRANSITION PLANS: early Dem outreach; pragmatism over ideology -- Obama, Bill Clinton to barnstorm together -- POTUS sees grand bargain by summer Presented by Facebook

FIRST LOOK – Rolling Stone cover, “Obama and the Road Ahead: The Rolling Stone Interview,” by Douglas Brinkley: “We arrived at the Oval Office for our 45-minute interview … on the morning of October 11 th. … As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him to say to the president. … [S]he said, ‘Tell him: You can do it.’ Obama grinned. … ‘You know, kids have good instincts,’ Obama offered. ‘They look at the other guy and say, “Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell.”’”

--Obama to Rolling Stone: “It’s important for people to understand how much we’ve gotten done, because sometimes folks obsess with gridlock and the ugliness of the process here in Washington. We passed health care – something that presidents have tried to do for 100 years, and we will implement it. We passed the toughest Wall Street reform since the 1930s, and we will implement it and continue to strengthen it. We have put in place a Consumer Finance Protection Agency …


“We have expanded access to college through the Pell Grant program and by keeping student loans low. The list of things that we’ve accomplished, even once the Republicans took over [the House], is significant. … We’re going to have a full agenda in the second four years, but people shouldn’t underestimate how much we can get done.”

--Obama to Douglas Brinkley, on historians using “Obamacare”: “I’ll be very proud. … Just like Medicare and Social Security, as time goes on, as people see what it does, as it gets refined and improved, people will say, ‘This was the last piece of our basic social compact’ – providing people with some core security from the financial burdens of an illness or bad luck.”

CROWD COUNT for Obama’s 9:10 p.m. PDT rally (before overnight Air Force One mission to Tampa): 13,000, per pool report by William Douglas of McClatchy Newspapers.

DES MOINES REGISTER 1A, after both candidates stopped in Iowa yesterday: “OBAMA SHARPENS CRITICISM … ROMNEY EXPRESSES OPTIMISM.” http://bit.ly/VHStXm

HOW ROMNEY WOULD GOVERN: Mitt Romney’s transition team -- which his campaign calls “The Readiness Project” – plans a series of modest but quick accomplishments if he were inaugurated, and is preparing for the likelihood that he will butt heads with the conservative wing of the House Republicans as he seeks a fiscal “grand bargain.” Romney’s transition has grown to more than 100 officials, preparing dossiers on potential nominees and gaming out legislative strategy. Only a few weeks ago, the exercise had an air of make-believe, even to some of the participants. “Now, we’re shooting with real bullets,” a Romney adviser said. One Republican official said Romney doesn’t plan “an ideological crusade — he wants to come across as a problem solver, primarily on the economic side”: “Everything Romney does is going to be focused on bringing down barriers to economic growth and providing certainty to businesses.”

Working with government-issued emails and office space on C Street Southwest, Romney’s team is calling its opening legislative agenda a “200-day plan,” rather than using the storied 100-day lingo of President John F. Kennedy -- the current toxic climate makes it too tough to promise much in only three months. Think of it as a new form of inflation. Each Monday, often on the road, Romney meets with the confidant who is heading his transition and is likely to be his White House chief of staff — Mike Leavitt, the former Utah governor and secretary of Health and Human Services. Romney advisers say that unlike the campaign headquarters in Boston, which has a variety of power centers, Leavitt would be given unquestioned authority.

Top Romney aides say they have studied the opening months and moves by President George W. Bush and President Obama, and are building a government designed to avoid their mistakes. Shortly after the Nov. 6 election, for instance, a President-elect Romney would begin reaching out to House and Senate DEMOCRATS for discussions about challenges facing the economy as the opening step in trying to figure out a grand bargain.” http://politi.co/WKWnOp

--“Hubbard Said to Prefer Treasury Secretary to Fed If Romney Wins,” by Bloomberg’s Peter Cook and Ian Katz: “Glenn Hubbard, the chief economic adviser to Mitt Romney, would rather be Treasury secretary than Federal Reserve chairman if the Republican candidate wins the presidential election, according to three people familiar with his thinking.”

BREAKING – AP’s Julie Pace: “President Obama and Bill Clinton will campaign together next week in three of the most competitive battleground states. Obama and the former president will hold rallies Monday in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Their appearances will kick off the final full week of campaigning before Election Day. … Monday's stops will be the first joint rallies the two presidents have held together during the 2012 campaign. They have previously attended joint fundraisers and appeared together briefly at the Democratic Party's convention.”

--Obama, in the Rolling Stone interview, on Bill Clinton: “Our relationship is terrific. He did a masterful job, obviously, at the convention. … I’m talking to him regularly, and he has given me good advice. … The biggest challenge we’ve always had is that unlike FDR – who came into office when the economy had already bottomed out, so people understood that everything done subsequently to his election was making things better – I came in just as we were sliding. Because of the actions we took, we averted a Great Depression – but in the process, we also muddied up the political narrative, because it allowed somebody like Romney to somehow blame my policies for the mess that the previous administration created. Bill Clinton can point that out in ways that are really helpful and really powerful.”

COLIN POWELL endorsed Obama for reelection on "CBS This Morning": “I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012.” --Kevin Robillard

TOP STORY – Obama says grand bargain possible in first six months of second term – From a 30-minute phone interview Tuesday in which he was seeking the endorsement of The Des Moines Register (decision will post Saturday at 8 p.m. ET): “In the short term, the good news is that there’s going to be a forcing mechanism to deal with what is the central ideological argument in Washington right now, and that is: How much government do we have and how do we pay for it? So when you combine the Bush tax cuts expiring, the sequester in place, the commitment of both myself and my opponent -- at least Governor Romney claims that he wants to reduce the deficit -- but we’re going to be in a position where I believe in the first six months we are going to solve that big piece of business.

“It will probably be messy. It won’t be pleasant. But I am absolutely confident that we can get what is the equivalent of the grand bargain that essentially I’ve been offering to the Republicans for a very long time, which is $2.50 worth of cuts for every dollar in spending, and work to reduce the costs of our health care programs. And we can easily meet – ‘easily’ is the wrong word -- we can credibly meet the target that the Bowles-Simpson Commission established of $4 trillion in deficit reduction, and even more in the out-years.” Transcript http://dmreg.co/SipLrO

POLL DU JOUR – “AP-GfK poll: Romney erases Obama lead among women,” by AP’s Jennifer Agiesta and Nancy Benac: “What gender gap? … The AP-GfK poll, taken Friday through Tuesday, shows Romney pulling even with Obama among women at 47-47 after lagging by 16 points a month earlier. … Obama's lead among women as the candidate who better understands the people's problems has narrowed considerably, from a 58-36 Obama advantage last month to a 50-43 Obama edge now.” http://yhoo.it/ThHRLb

STAT DU JOUR – Boston Globe A1: “As of Wednesday, at least 6.5 million Americans had voted.” (That’s 5 percent of the record 131.3 million votes cast in ’08.)

--TIME POLL finds huge Obama early-vote lead in Ohio: “Obama leads Mitt Romney [overall] by five points [49-44] … [A]mong Ohioans who have not yet voted but who say they intend to, [the split is 45-45] … Among respondents who say they have already voted, Obama holds a two-to-one lead over Romney, 60% to 30%.” http://ti.me/WKXMV9

--ROMNEY CAMPAIGN NOT WORRIED ABOUT EARLY-VOTE GAP – Political Director Rich Beeson tells Playbook: “Our voters [will be] voting on Election Day, for the most part. That's a lot of ducks on a pond, and I want to make sure that we keep the ducks there and that they're there when we need them, and then we go turn them out. We've been focusing on low-propensity [sporadic] voters, so the bulk of our votes sitting out there being high-propensity [reliable] voters. We're not going to have to worry about pushing them hard, but I just want to make sure that we can turn them out.”

Why are Republicans more likely to vote on Election Day than early? Many are rural. Also, Beeson says: “They don't want to put a ballot in the mail, especially as you skew older. They like to go down to their polling place. They've been going there for years. They see their friends. They like going to their polling place on Election Day.”

WHAT WE’RE DRINKING – A new Josh Deckard project: OneHope Wine, based in Newport Beach, gives half its profits to partner charities -- California Cabernet Sauvignon fights autism, Chardonnay fights breast cancer, etc. Share Our Strength, a D.C.-based nonprofit working to end childhood hunger in America, will get half the profits from OneHope’s California Brut Sparkling wine; each bottle sold will connect a child with 10 meals. Playbookers get 20% off through Nov. 21 by mentioning discount code Playbook20. www.onehopewine.com

OBAMA to Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show”: “There is not a gym on Air Force One. There is a treadmill that the previous president had. It’s down in the bowels of the ship. And they can bring it up, and you can jog at 30,000 feet.”

--POTUS, re gaffe by Richard Mourdock, GOP Senate candidate in Ohio: “Let me make a very simple proposition: Rape is rape. It is a crime.” (Applause) Video http://bit.ly/S7NH1R

** A message from NEI: 2¢. At about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, nuclear energy is the most affordable electricity that is available 24/7. Providing more low-carbon and affordable electricity cannot be achieved without nuclear energy playing a significant role. Nuclear: Clean Air Energy. Visit http://NEI.org/value to learn more. **

THE JUICE – WashPost col. 1, “Brennan reshaped anti-terror strategy: CIA veteran emerges at core of effort to cement process for lethal action,” by Karen DeYoung (second of three articles, “The Permanent War”): “In his windowless White House office, presidential counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling the rules for a war the Obama administration believes will far outlast its own time in office, whether that is just a few more months or four more years. The ‘playbook,’ as Brennan calls it, will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. … A burly 25-year CIA veteran with a stern public demeanor, Brennan is the principal architect of a policy that has transformed counterterrorism from a conventional fight centered in Afghanistan to a high-tech global effort to track down and eliminate perceived enemies one by one.

“What was once a disparate collection of tactics — drone strikes by the CIA and the military, overhead surveillance, deployment of small Special Forces ground units at far-flung bases, and distribution of military and economic aid to threatened governments — has become a White House-centered strategy with Brennan at its core. … [T]he concentration of power in one person, who is unelected and unconfirmed by Congress, does not sit well with critics. To many in the international legal community and among human rights and civil liberties activists, Brennan runs a policy so secret that it is impossible for outsiders to judge whether it complies with the laws of war or U.S. values — or even determine the total number of people killed.” http://wapo.st/XXAZ6v

THE BIG PICTURE – N.Y. Times A1 above fold, “Open U.S. Checkbook to Stem Terror May Soon Snap Shut,” by Scott Shane (part of “The Agenda” series): “The looming federal budget crunch, a sense that major attacks on the United States are unlikely and new bipartisan criticism of the sprawling counterterrorism bureaucracy may mean that the open checkbook era is nearing an end. … [T]he next administration may face a decision: Has the time come to scale back security spending, eliminating the least productive programs? … Many security experts believe that a retrenchment is inevitable and justified. … In the view of most specialists, the danger to United States territory from Al Qaeda and its allies is far less than it was in 2001. … Any move to trim the counterterrorism bureaucracy will face daunting opposition. … Members of Congress will fear being labeled soft on terrorism. Lobbyists will fight to protect the lucrative domestic security sector.” http://nyti.ms/PsyRnn

WASHINGTON, INC. –Tim Pawlenty on becoming a bank lobbyist, via Ben White’s “Morning Money”: “Tim Pawlenty sat down with Bloomberg Businessweek's Paul Barrett for his first extended interview since being named the CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable. … ‘Pawlenty might have had a shot at a second-tier Cabinet post in a Romney administration, or he could have gone home to run for the U.S. Senate. … His most recent salary as governor was $121,000. He and his wife, Mary, have a daughter in college, another in high school, and no family fortune. The Roundtable won't reveal his starting pay, but there's no reason to think it's less than the nearly $2 million [retiring CEO Steven] Bartlett collected.”

STAT DU JOUR – Boston Globe A1: “As of Wednesday, at least 6.5 million Americans had voted.” (That’s 5 percent of the record 131.3 million votes cast in ’08.)

TODAY’S ACTION, per AP (Eastern time): “Romney speaks in Cincinnati at 11 a.m., in Worthington, Ohio, at 3:10 p.m., in Defiance, Ohio, at 7:35 p.m. Ryan speaks in Bristol, Va., at 12:30 p.m., in Charlottesville, Va., at 6:45 p.m. Obama speaks in Tampa, Fla., at 8:45 a.m., in Richmond, Va., at 1:15 p.m.; votes early in-person in Chicago at 5:10 p.m.; speaks in Cleveland, Ohio, at 8:25 p.m. Biden attends a prayer service for George McGovern at 7:30 p.m. in Sioux Falls, S.D.”

MOOD MUSIC – USA Today 1A, below fold, “Economists see less pain in 2013: [USA TODAY's quarterly survey of economists] reveals hopes for modestly higher economic, job growth,” by Tim Mullaney and Barbara Hansen: “Almost two-thirds of the 48 economists surveyed predict the … fiscal cliff … will be resolved without significant damage to the economy. According to their median forecasts: The economy will grow 2.3% next year, up from an average of 1.65% in the first half of 2012 … Growth of 3% or more is considered a healthy rate. The unemployment rate, now 7.8%, will end next year at 7.6%.” http://usat.ly/QHvbLn

--London/AFP: “Britain officially exits recession after return to growth in Q3.”

TOP TALKER – USA Today “Money” cover, “Chick-fil-A thrives despite gay rights issue,” by Bruce Horovitz: “Consumer use, visits and ad awareness were all up measurably in the third quarter, at a time the chicken chain appeared to be taking a public relations drubbing, reports research specialist Sandelman & Associates. Intense national media and social media attention — much of it negative — was heaped on the chain three months ago, after President Dan Cathy told a religious publication that his company was ‘guilty as charged’ in supporting the biblical definition of the family unit. …

“Consumer use of the chain was up 2.2% in the third quarter compared with the same period in 2011, says the Sandelman survey of more than 30,000 fast-food consumers conducted in markets where Chick-fil-A is located. Market share was up 0.6%, and total ad awareness was up a hefty 6.5%. In a social-media-crazed world, any PR can be good PR — particularly if it has strong appeal to a group of ardent supporters. … Last month, the chain seemed to soften its tone. ‘Our intent is not to support political or social agendas,’ Steve Robinson, executive vice president for marketing for Chick-fil-A, said.” http://usat.ly/VHbUiO

SENATE SCRAMBLE – Chicago Tribune, top of p. 1, “Comment on rape roils race: Indiana Republican’s words seen as having national implications,” by Kim Geiger: “[T]he Obama campaign seized on a provocative claim about abortion and rape by a U.S. Senate candidate in Indiana, arguing that it shows Mitt Romney does not support women’s reproductive rights. Richard Mourdock’s comment that a pregnancy after rape is ‘something that God intended to happen’ created an unexpected opening Wednesday for Democrats … and an unwanted distraction for the GOP nominee, who had endorsed Mourdock and taped a TV ad for him. … Recent polls have found Mourdock and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly, locked in a tight battle for the seat long held by … Richard Lugar.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY: L.A. Times 1-col. lead, “USC DORNSIFE/TIMES POLL: Support falls for Brown’s tax hike proposal: Only 46% of registered voters now support Prop. 30, a decline of 9 points over the last month,” by Chris Megerian in Sacramento: “Support has plunged for Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to raise billions of dollars in taxes … a 9-point drop over the last month … The findings follow a lackluster month of campaigning by the governor, who had spent little time on the stump and found himself fighting off attacks from backers of a separate ballot measure that would raise taxes for schools.”

SPORTS BLINK – “Panda power gives Giants advantage … Sandoval's homer trifecta gives Giants Game 1 win,” by MLB.com’s Chris Haft in S.F.: “Pablo Sandoval [nickname: Kung Fu Panda] possesses Babe Ruth's build, Reggie Jackson's flair and Albert Pujols' formidable presence at the plate. Wednesday, Sandoval shared a characteristic with all three men: their swing. Sandoval joined Ruth, Jackson and Pujols in baseball lore by clobbering three home runs, matching a postseason record while launching the Giants to an 8-3 triumph over the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the World Series.” http://atmlb.com/TbRDu4

TRANSITIONS: Philip Marshall named principal of Webster Stanley Middle School in Oshkosh, Wis. Phil’s lengthy resume includes study at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. (hat tip: Julie Reichenberger)

BIRTHDAYS: Nate Hodson … Gordon Johndroe (hat tip: Ben Chang) … James Carville is 68 (hat tip: Teresa Vilmain) … CBS' Jan Crawford ... Qorvis' Chuck Conconi ... Louis “Sweet Lou” Burgdorf (h/ts Patrick Gavin) …

** A message from NEI: 2¢. At about 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, nuclear energy is the most affordable electricity that is available 24/7. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that America will need 22% more electricity by 2035. Nuclear energy already provides one-fifth of our electricity and new reactors are being built to power future generations. Providing more low-carbon, affordable electricity cannot be achieved without nuclear energy playing a significant role in America’s balanced energy portfolio. Nuclear: Clean Air Energy. Visit http://NEI.org/value to learn more. **

Follow us on Twitter Anna Palmer @apalmerdc



Jake Sherman @JakeSherman