As I read, and then watched, Barack Obama’s powerful and well-turned speech in Berlin, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Senator and/or his speechwriter were consciously invoking John Lennon with the line (and title) “A World That Stands As One”. My guess is not. But this verse from Imagine was the first thing that came to my head (and …
Washington Bureau intern Will Schultz filed this quick report from the Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning with House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO):
– Energy, energy, energy. It looks like Republicans are going to be all about it this year. Blunt said opinion on drilling “has completely flipped,” and that the GOP
…
Dee Dee Myers, Bill Clinton’s first White House press secretary, sorts through the evidence of press bias in favor of Barack Obama in this fair-minded Vanity Fair blog post. Her verdict is that Obama has been getting both more, and more positive, attention from the press — for a variety of reasons, including ones that have nothing to do …
I have a story in the new print edition of Time on the rich history of John McCain’s relationship with George W. Bush.
Whatever was or was not discussed within the McCain campaign, or just between McCain and Mike Murphy, about the possibility of bringing Murphy on board, one thing strikes me as crystal clear: that possibility died the moment Bill Kristol filed his column for yesterday’s New York Times. The column, entiled “So Where’s Murphy?”, was so …
Is Charlie Crist on John McCain’s VP short list? In the past few weeks, the popular Florida governor has announced his change of heart on offshore oil drilling, thereby providing McCain cover in the Sunshine State to do the same; cut a deal widely hailed by environmentalists to buy up land from Big Sugar to help revive the Everglades; and …
Marc Thiessen was a long-time aide to Jesse Helms on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who is now chief White House speech writer. On this morning’s Washington Post Op-Ed page, he comes to the defense of his former boss, who passed away over the holiday weekend. Thiessen complains that in reporting on Helms’ death, “the media have …
Charlie Crist, governor of Florida, may have just done more to save the Everglades than anyone since Marjory Stoneman Douglas. On Time.com today, Michael Grunwald, a modern heir to Douglas in his knowlege of and passion for the Everlades, explains Crist’s agreement to have the state of Florida buy out U.S. Sugar’s lands in the Everglades …
In Michael Kinsley’s famous formulation, a gaffe is what happens when a politician says what he actually thinks is true. As the latest skirmish in the Outrage Wars shows, Kinsley’s formulation now applies to political strategists as well. When asked by Fortune Magazine how a terrorist attack on U.S. soil between now and the election …
In choosing to forgo public financing for the general election campaign, Barack Obama calculated that the upside of being able to vastly outspend John McCain would outweigh the downside of being hit with charges that he had broken his word and was behaving like a typical pol. He’s betting that most voters won’t pay attention to what is …
As several bloggers have rightly noted, I erred yesterday on MSNBC when discussing Karen Tumulty’s piece about the Obama campaign’s efforts to combat rumors and smears. I said the rumor about Michelle Obama making a derogatory comment about whites was started by conservative bloggers. That was a mistake. As Tumulty wrote in her piece, …
Michael Scherer has a must-read story on the gotcha game that got Jim Johnson today. So much righteous indignation to express, so little time before Election Day to express it all. The McCain camp’s statement reacting to Johnson’s resignation is a classic of the genre:
“Jim Johnson’s resignation raises serious questions about Barack
…
As a rule, political candidates have more success when they’re telling people what they’re for and who they are — rather than defensively explaining what, and who, they are not. Which is why you might have found the first two national salvos of the general election from the McCain campaign a bit puzzling. First, in his general election …
