Michael Scherer

Michael Scherer is the White House correspondent for TIME. He previously worked for Salon.com, Mother Jones, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. A native of San Francisco, he graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

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The Clinton Campaign’s Awkward Electoral College Argument

For those who decided to sleep through the time change, here is what Hillary Clinton Campaign surrogate Ed Rendell said this morning on Meet the Press: TIM RUSSERT: Governor Rendell, if, in fact, Barack Obama goes to the convention in Colorado in August with the most elected delegates, having won more contests and a higher [...]

What Huck-a-was

I didn’t mention the Huck-a-burger, or the terrifying Huck-a-flights, or the hard drinking ways of the Huck-a-staff, but here is my story looking back at the Mike Huckabee that was, and will no doubt be again.

The Lord of War Arrested

Victor Bout, one of the world’s most famous and wanted arms traffickers, was arrested Thursday in Thailand. The guy has been tied to efforts to fuel blood-soaked wars in Angola and Liberia, Afghanistan and Columbia, and many others. He has long been blacklisted by the United States Treasury Department and signaled out by the United [...]

Polling the Age of Hope

So much ink is spilled interpreting the race and sex dynamics of the Democratic Party: Hillary Clinton often wins women, Barack Obama inevitably wins blacks. Identity politics lives on. But my former boss, Salon.com’s Walter Shapiro, points to another demographic trend that came into striking relief in the Ohio exit polls: The age gap. The [...]

Get thee to Vegas, John McCain

I have a story up today about the remarkable two-month run of luck that made John McCain the Republican nominee. To wit: Almost everything broke his way: Mike Huckabee won Iowa, crippling the powerhouse campaign of Mitt Romney. Rudy Giuliani abandoned New Hampshire, allowing his moderate supporters to shift to McCain. Fred Thompson stayed in [...]

The McCain Campaign Stumbles Over Hagee

Note: As has happened before, Joe Klein posted on this as I was writing. Don’t miss his take below. In the course of 24-hours, the McCain campaign has gone from coasting towards the GOP nomination to readopting a defensive crouch. The reason: His endorsement yesterday by Texas pastor John Hagee, an influential televangelist with some [...]

Another From The will.i.am Obama Songbook

It’s a Hollywood maxim: If you’ve got a hit, do a sequel. So will.i.am, fresh off his blockbuster “Yes We Can” video for Barack Obama, is back with another. This time he calls it “We Are The Ones.” Like most sequels, it fails to capture the full magic of the original. It has more Hollywood [...]

NYT A1: Sesquipedalian!!!!

Back when I was a cub reporter at a newspaper bureau in Easthampton, Mass., my colleague and I would play this game: First, come up with an obscure 10-dollar word, then see which one of us could get it past our editors and into the paper. The planning was always more fun than the execution. [...]

The Rocket Continues To Descend

The House Oversight Committee has just asked the Justice Department to investigate Roger Clemens for perjury and making false statements. We believe that his testimony in a sworn deposition on February 5, 2008, and at a hearing on February 13, 2008, that he never used anabolic steroids or human growth hormone, warrants further investigation. That [...]

Lobbyists Here, Lobbyists There, Lobbyists Everywhere

Charlie Black is a lobbyist, and he’s kind of a big deal. He runs an entire firm, BKSH & Associates, that represents companies as varied as General Motors, AT&T and the steel industry. He is hard wired to the Republican power grid, the kind of guy who is on the short list people call when [...]