John McCain’s hurdles are obvious: he’s running as a conservative Republican at a time when most Americans are anxious to break with conservative Republicanism. He doesn’t know anything about economics; his foreign policy vision has been completely discredited; his campaign platform includes almost nothing in the way of new ideas; and he probably won’t have […]
A top advisor to John McCain recently described his sense of what the media’s role should be in the presidential campaign — the press, the advisor said, should “play referee on what is a bogus claim and what isn’t.” That sounds about right to me. Clearly, news outlets have broader responsibilities, but at a minimum, […]
Dear New York Times, Word has it that the Times’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., decided last fall that it was time to add another Republican columnist to the paper’s op-ed page, and the decision early on was to find a “lightning-rod conservative.” For reasons that I’ve never entirely understood, you picked the Weekly Standard’s Bill […]
A few days ago, I saw someone note that John McCain is so popular with television producers, he obviously prefers appearing on Sunday morning shows to going to church. The obvious joke, of course, is that for McCain, appearing on Sunday morning shows is going to church. McCain took his show to ABC’s “This Week […]
About a year ago, it became painfully obvious that the president started lying about al Qaeda in Iraq as part of a cynical approach to bolstering support for the war. While that was hardly unexpected, the more noticeable problem was that the media started playing along with the White House’s scheme, and began characterizing everyone […]
How stupid has the flag-pin nonsense become? Karl Rove told a national television audience that Barack Obama’s argument is that, “If you wear a flag lapel pin, you’re not a true patriot.” He did not appear to be kidding. We’re clearly well past the point at which Rove can jump the shark, but for goodness […]
I had thought there was something of a consensus in Democratic circles about Wednesday night’s ABC-sponsored debate in Philadelphia. Dems hated it because Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent most of the debate obsessing over trivia and process, and when they got around to substance, they framed the questions in conservative ways. Republicans loved the […]
A couple of months ago, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, one of John McCain’s conservative Republican colleagues and a man who’s worked with McCain for years, raised serious doubts about McCain’s temperament. “The thought of him being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Cochran said. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses […]
The Democratic National Committee launched its first television ad of the general election campaign today. (It first aired this morning on ABC’s “This Week,” where John McCain was the featured guest.) It’s a doozy. I like it. Coupled with the first ad from Progressive Media USA, it helps define McCain as someone who not only […]
It’s kind of the New York Times editorial board to notice. Ever since Americans learned that American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic morality? The answer, we have learned […]