Citizen Cartwright

Democrats' toughness at issue

Public concern is increasing about President Obama's handling of national security, according to a new poll by the Democratic group Democracy Corps and the progressive nonprofit Third Way.

Sixty percent of Americans believe the United States is on the wrong track, according to the poll. And people rate Democrats at about the same level as Republicans — an erosion of an advantage Democrats have had.

"We would not want the election to be held today, with this poll," says Democracy Corps' chief pollster Stan Greenberg. "If the election were held today, this would be a 'change' election."

New cyber czar

President Obama is expected to announce on Tuesday that he's chosen Howard Schmidt, who was a cyber-adviser to President George W. Bush, as the new cybersecurity coordinator. Before his stint at the Bush White House, Schmidt was chief security officer at Microsoft and eBay.

Obama said in May that protecting the country's digital networks would be a "national security priority." But naming a czar has been delayed as a number of people have declined the job, some of them saying it involved big responsibility but little authority.

The public's right to know

In the face of a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents, President Obama plans to create a National Declassification Center to review the documents before they're made public, The Associated Press says.

And Obama is expected to direct federal agencies to update their classification procedures.