On Friday afternoon, John McCain told a national television audience that he thought a 16-month withdrawal timetable for U.S. troops in Iraq, as embraced by Barack Obama and Nouri al-Maliki, sounds like “a pretty good timetable.” Yesterday, speaking to reporters in London, Obama mentioned how delighted he is to see the Republican establishment come around […]
It’s nothing short of breathtaking to watch a once honorable man want the presidency so desperately, he’s willing to flush his credibility and reputation down the toilet. John McCain’s new TV ad marks a turning point, not only in this presidential campaign, but as a measurement of McCain’s increasingly absent character. “Barack Obama never held […]
The conventional wisdom is that voters are still getting to know Barack Obama. John McCain is a known quantity, who’s been part of the political establishment for more than a quarter-century, but Obama is still fairly new to the political stage. There may be a discomfort/unfamiliarity factor for Obama to overcome. The NYT’s Bob Herbert […]
This report should have been fairly innocuous this week, but it touched off a flurry of far-right criticism. With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition. “Barack is well aware of the […]
For those keeping score at home, we’re up to 69. I just added these three: * McCain staunchly opposed Obama’s Iraq withdrawal timetable, and even blasted Mitt Romney for having referenced the word during the GOP primaries. In July, after Iraqi officials endorsed Obama’s policy, McCain said a 16-month calendar sounds like “a pretty good […]
Following up on the last item about John McCain’s speech in Denver yesterday, I was also struck by his interest in hindsight. “Sen. Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still — still — would have opposed the surge,” said McCain. As McCain arguments go, this one is relatively […]
Years ago, I was having a conversation with a jazz pianist who told me, “When I hit a wrong note, I keep hitting it — so the audience will think it’s intentional.” To move away from the wrong note would be a subtle admission of a mistake. John McCain seems to apply the same standard […]
There are a couple of reasons the McCain campaign’s new-found obsession with attacking the political media establishment as “biased” is annoying. The first, and most obvious, problem is that reporters covering the campaign adore McCain, and go to almost comical lengths to help him. (CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted this week, “[I]f there is […]
Following up on Adam’s reference from yesterday, Barack Obama raised the ire of the far-right a month ago when he described how he’d like to see Osama bin Laden brought to justice. As Obama explained it, if bin Laden were captured alive (an unlikely scenario in its own right), Obama would want a deliberate, transparent […]
I can appreciate the fact that Republicans aren’t quite sure how to criticize Barack Obama’s international travel over the last week. It has, after all, been an usually successful trip, which the McCain campaign practically goaded Obama into taking. They’ve tried out a few angles, but the attacks have either been foolish, contradictory, or both. […]