In the summer of 2008, John McCain unveiled a new slogan to use against Barack Obama: “Country First.” The phrase was meant to convey the former P.O.W.s’ patriotism and heroism. But it also sought to cast Obama as interested in personal advancement at the expense of America’s interests, especially when it came to “support[ing] the [...]
Things keep getting worse. Not just for the country, which has endured unrelenting cycles of bad news for a decade now, but for President Obama, whose entire presidency has been defined by negative forces, most of which are beyond his control. A look at the new polls that greet Obama Tuesday morning, and this is [...]
My favorite season, gone, gone, too soon, even if it was a summer of discontent in the land. I spent Labor Day Weekend doing some zeitgeist catchup, and now seems a good time to appreciate a summer’s worth of reading, listening and watching, as we head back to school and work. Books: Without question, the [...]
Labor day recap: Obama channeled Truman, Elizabeth Warren all but announced in Massachusetts, Andrew Cuomo defined the President’s “enemies,” Ohio kept its eye on collective bargaining, Hoffa got worked up and the GOP field worked to prove its conservative cred in South Carolina. Yet more polls find pessimism running high and disillusionment with Obama. Jon Chait charges [...]
Politically speaking, it’s been a relatively quiet August recess for members of Congress: no screaming health care town halls like the ones in 2009, no emergency sessions to approve aid to the states, which occupied time last August. Of course, those members representing the east coast have been busy with earthquakes and hurricanes. And for [...]
Republicans are already dancing on the grave of Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that received a $535 million federal loan in 2009 and collapsed on Wednesday. Here’s more music they can dance to: Sources tell me the Obama administration restructured the loan this winter, so taxpayers probably won’t even be the first creditors to get [...]
TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures of the past week, from the Beltway and beyond.
Speaking to a group of Penn State students, including members of the College Republicans, on Wednesday, the night before his interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan aired, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum boiled with outrage over Morgan’s assertion that his attitude on homosexuality was “bordering on bigotry.”
A few weeks ago, I opened up my Twitter feed early in the morning and immediately wondered if I was being punk’d. Instead of the usual horse race speculation, my colleagues in the political press corps were discussing the writings of evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer and debating the definition of Dominionism. The same week, a [...]
Today’s Washington Post notes the fixation of hard-core Republican activists with illegal immigration, a phenomenon that became clear to me this spring when I saw a Republican voter suggest to Tim Pawlenty that the government threaten to shoot immigrants crossing the southern border. That sort of anger could cause headaches for Rick Perry who, despite [...]
