A very busy day! • “11:00 CT: Obama Econ Adviser to hold Call on Obama Economic Speech” • “CONF. CALL: WOLFSON AND SINGER HOLD CONFERENCE CALL TODAY TO DISCUSS THE STATE OF THE RACE…1:00 p.m. EDT” And, clearly someone was feeling left out: • “TODAY 12:30pm: McCain campaign conf call on Obama remarks on housing [...]

1. McCain/ex-Bush advisor Mark McKinnon talks to ex-Bush advisor Matthew Dowd about the 2008 contest with fascinating results. For instance: McKinnon said McCain would be happy to have Bush campaign with him in the fall — that he had no intention of running from Bush, who, McKinnon pointed out, has a personal (as opposed to [...]

Here is my take on John McCain’s record with wealthy interests in the Senate, and the problem of “appearance” for a long-time campaign finance and ethics reformer. From the next issue of the magazine, the story includes this anecdote: In some cases, McCain’s intervention on causes that favored donors appeared to be exceptional. Consider the [...]

My email inbox yesterday contained a surprising — even ironic — twist to the narrative about John McCain’s press relations and how they form the foundation of his campaign. Sent from the Republican National Committee’s server, the email “From the Desk of John McCain” begins with a paragraph about the candidate’s upcoming “Service to America” [...]

Although I’ve disagreed with John McCain pretty vehemently about Iraq recently, this is a very good foreign policy speech, delivered today at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council–a quantum leap toward sanity and away from the prevailing idiocy of the Bush Administration. In fact, McCain’s distance from George W. Bush seems greater than from the [...]

Neal Gabler has a must-read op-ed in the New York Times today, and not least because he identifies me as “a blogger,” which I think should give me some long-denied cred next time I head to Yearly Kos. It is about McCain’s use of irony and self-deprecation to win over the political press. Seeming to [...]

Big trouble. The Maliki government appears to be moving against Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Basra, Baghdad and perhaps elsewhere. Heavy fighting is reported by the New York Times, which also reports: The operation, which senior Iraqi officials had been signaling for weeks, is considered so important by the Iraqi government that Prime Minister Nuri [...]