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: * Despite the latest web video from his campaign, John McCain said yesterday he does not believe he’s been subjected to unfair media treatment. I guess it’s a good-cop/bad-cop routine. * There was […]
It may only be July, and Election Day may still be 104 days away, but we’ve reached the point at which the McCain campaign is even willing to attack Barack Obama’s remembrance of the Nazi Holocaust. Speaking today at Yad Vashem, Obama said, “Let our children come here and know this history so they can […]
Over the weekend, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, unprompted and by name, that he supports Barack Obama’s withdrawal timeline for U.S. troops in Iraq. The White House furiously sought to characterize this as a transcription error, while the McCain campaign insisted that Maliki’s words had been taken “out of context.” Now, we’ve […]
It’s a presidential campaign. The candidates have very different ideologies, strongly disagree with one another, and want to take the country in very different directions. It’s bound to lead to some sharp criticism, especially on issues as important as a war. But John McCain — you know, the one who vowed to the nation that […]
Following up on the last post, John McCain, in response to a question from CBS anchor Katie Couric, demonstrated bizarre confusion about the basics of the U.S. surge policy in Iraq. McCain got the basic timeline and history of the surge backwards, insisting that the surge prompted the Anbar Awakening, which is the opposite of […]
It doesn’t much matter what the root cause of John McCain’s confusion is. Maybe he’s confused because he’s old. Perhaps he’s pretending to be confused to impress the Republican base. It’s possible he’s confused because he just isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box. I don’t know, and frankly, don’t much care. Whatever the source, […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * Practitioners of genocide keep getting busted: “Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in Serbia that ended a 13-year hunt. Serge Brammertz, the […]
The Washington Post’s Dana Priest is a great reporter. Her work on the scandalous treatment of recovering veterans at Walter Reed earner her a well-deserved Pulitzer. But once in a while, a newspaper will ask a reporter to take on assignments that aren’t especially well suited to the journalist’s strengths. Last week, for example, the […]
For weeks, the line in Republican/media circles was that Barack Obama either has or will move towards John McCain’s position on Iraq policy. Time’s Mark Halperin called the shift, that never actually happened in reality, “one of the biggest things that’s happened so far in the general election.” Charles Krauthammer said Obama is “done” erasing […]
Matt Yglesias had a very good item this morning, noting the “debacle” for the Republican approach to foreign policy. [McCain had] spent, several weeks with the main theme of his campaign being, quite literally, to criticize Barack Obama for not having been physically present in Iraq recently. This (of course) got Obama to go to […]