Today’s edition of quick hits. * Wall Street “abruptly ended an earnings-driven rally and closed sharply lower Thursday after a steeper-than-expected decline in existing home sales and worries about the financial sector chilled the market’s recent optimism. The major indexes fell about 2 percent, including the Dow Jones industrial average, which lost more than 275 […]
Conservatives, of course, were unlikely to praise Barack Obama’s speech before 200,000 in Berlin today. But I found some of the criticism to be more misguided than usual. Here’s Ross Douthat, for example: Yes, of course the Hitler comparisons are absurd, but I’d really like to know which genius on the Obama campaign thought it […]
It’s July. Neither candidate has picked a running mate. We’re more than a month away from either party’s convention. The Democratic candidate didn’t lock down the nomination until last month. Election Day is 102 days away. With that in mind, it just doesn’t make any sense to get too excited, in either direction, about what’s […]
Realistically, it’s not at all fair to keep expecting Barack Obama to deliver stirring, powerful addresses. And yet, he keeps managing to exceed expectations. It’s striking that there’s a universality to Obama’s message. He sees a nation at a crossroads here at home, but Obama also sees a world facing a turning point. When he […]
Chatting with reporters last night, Barack Obama was asked if he expected a million screaming Germans to greet him in Berlin today. “I doubt we are going to have a million screaming Germans,” Obama said. “Let’s tamp down expectations.” That’s probably a very good idea, but it’s hard to deny the international interest in the […]
Recognizing the interest in Barack Obama’s speech in Germany today, the McCain campaign came up with a photo-op that would have captured at least some attention — John McCain would hop on a helicopter and give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast. The campaign knows how […]
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: * Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) came pretty close to ruling himself out as John McCain’s running mate yesterday. “I’m not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president,” Jindal told […]
On the advice of more than 50 retired generals and admirals, the House Armed Services Committee agreed yesterday to revisit the utility of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. The discriminatory standard, which has led to the discharge of thousands of capable troops serving in the midst of two wars, has already been rejected by […]
At the risk of belaboring the point, one last thought on John McCain’s decision to redefine what the “surge” policy actually means. Up until yesterday afternoon, everyone, everywhere, knew exactly what the “surge” was. In fact, the White House communications office came up with the word in January 2007, because “troop escalation” didn’t poll well. […]
In June, the McCain campaign started running web ads with pictures of Barack Obama and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad side by side. Under the pictures, the ad’s caption read, “Is it OK to unconditionally meet with anti-American foreign leaders?” The point of connecting Obama to Ahmadinejad was a little ham-fisted, but it’s not as if the […]