Class Act

Not one.

The “September 10th Mindset”

Like millions of Americans living in New York City at the time, I depended on Rudy Giuliani in the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001. With the city still smoldering, President Bush in an apparent state of shock, and Vice President Cheney absconded to an undisclosed location, Giuliani was the only leader who seemed able [...]

Stay the Course

“Change” doesn’t have quite the same resonance in Romania, where one village last weekend re-elected a dead man as mayor: “I know he died, but I don’t want change,” a pro-Ivascu villager told Romanian television.

The Tea Leaves: Solis-Doyle

Obama putting former Clinton campaign chief Patti Solis-Doyle in a leadership position is a significant move, and it is a message about Hillary Clinton’s role in Obama’s campaign. The message is this: “*&$@# you.” And Clinton supporters understand it that way. The Note rounded up a sampling of the bitter clinginess (clinging bitterness). The most [...]

McSame or McCain?

The New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller does the voting public a great service today by taking a shot at evaluating the similarities and differences between President Bush and John McCain on the major issues of the day. Her conclusions: They Mostly Agree On: Abortion and Judges, Education, Diplomacy with Iran and Syria, Immigration, Iraq (though [...]

Technically, I Guess, “Lying” Is a Form of Sensory Deprivation

I know you’re going to be shocked: A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain [...]

Southern Fried Obama

Obama’s biggest push in the South will be in Georgia, as I write today, North Carolina and Virginia. It’s interesting because according to the Joint Center — a non-partisan group that tracks black voters — his best shots are the states where Kerry won more than a quarter of the white vote and therefore the [...]

Independents’ Day

The horse race numbers in today’s Washington Post-ABC News poll are far less interesting, it seems to me, than what they say about the real 2008 battleground. The poll suggests that the election will be fought over independent voters–which is a decided contrast from 2004, when Karl Rove had all but declared the swing voter [...]