Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Iowa’s gubernatorial race is shaping up to be one of the nation’s most competitive contests this year. With Patty Judge (D) dropping out, the Dem primary has narrowed to Iowa Secretary of […]
I appreciate the fact that novelist Michael Crichton is fairly popular, but the idea that his fiction is helping influence the president’s science policies is, as my friend Chris Mooney explained, rather disconcerting. The LA Times’ Ron Brownstein reviewed Fred Barnes’ oddly-sycophantic new book, “Rebel-in-Chief,” and highlighted an anecdote that suggests the president’s opposition to […]
The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan — who, it’s worth noting, went on a leave of absence in 2004 to help the Bush/Cheney campaign — wrote a provocative column today that may have been a bit of trial balloon for White House insiders. The headline read: “Hit Refresh? Why Bush may be thinking about replacing […]
Yesterday, in a speech that almost no one paid a moment’s attention to, the president visited Wendy’s headquarters in Ohio to talk about health care. He’s still on his Health Savings Account kick, but he’s still having trouble selling it. “It means most Americans have no idea what their actual cost of treatment is. You […]
The New York Times’ Bob Herbert hasn’t been pulling any punches when it comes to the Bush White House, but today, I’m fairly sure Herbert became the first writer for a major newspaper to call for Dick Cheney’s resignation. Herbert uses the shooting incident as a kick-off point, but his case has far more to […]
I was cautiously optimistic that Dick Cheney’s Fox News interview would begin to offer a coherent explanation for what happened during the hunting accident and what caused the lengthy delays after it. It wasn’t to be; aside from a few welcome words of contrition, Cheney’s account of recent events still doesn’t make a lot of […]
Going into his Fox News interview, Dick Cheney’s strategy had to be pretty simple: accept responsibility, show contrition and humility, and express concern for the friend he shot. The full interview won’t be aired for a couple of hours, but at first blush, it seems Cheney said the right things after days of doing the […]
There are plenty of interesting questions surrounding the Cheney shooting, but one over-arching question remains: what was Cheney thinking? ABC News’ Claire Shipman has some sources in the VP’s office who gave her a behind-the-scenes narrative. It’s an interesting take, if you believe it. Sources close to the Vice President say that there was actually […]
The possible role of alcohol in the Cheney shooting has been widely discussed — just below the surface. Media outlets have reported that the Texas sheriff’s office concluded that “there was no alcohol or misconduct involved in the incident,” which seemed to resolve the questions that many reporters had, but few were willing to touch. […]
It sounded sincere in December when a handful of Republican senators said they wanted an investigation into the president’s warrantless-search program. Senators of both parties on [12/20] demanded a congressional investigation into President Bush’s domestic-surveillance program, even as Vice President Dick Cheney warned that the president’s critics could face political repercussions. Five members of the […]