A few weeks ago, it seemed that the national polls offered a little something for everyone on the Democratic side of the aisle. For those who wanted to see Hillary Clinton get the nomination, there were polls showing her beating John McCain by a bigger margin than Barack Obama. For Obama supporters, there were polls […]
Paul Krugman’s latest column is generating a lot of attention, and with good reason; it’s a provocative perspective on the topic d’jour. I’m generally an enthusiastic Krugman fan — though I’ve been a little troubled of late by his apparent pre-occupation with opposing Barack Obama — and today’s piece takes a few interesting twists and […]
Towards the end of 2003 about nine months after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Army commissioned the RAND Corporation, a federally financed research center, to conduct a detailed study of the planning for post-war Iraq. In the summer of 2005, after 18 months of careful research, RAND reported back, including an unclassified version that the […]
Matt Yglesias noted this morning that Barack Obama has been criticized, even by those sympathetic to him, for being somehow “insufficiently well-versed in policy matters.” Matt chalks this up to a lazy narrative: “Clinton is well-versed in policy but isn’t a charismatic figure, and Obama is charismatic so it ‘must’ be that he’s not well-versed […]
Following up on an earlier item, the president’s appearance on “Fox News Sunday” covered a fair amount of ground, but this exchange helped highlight so many of Bush’s flaws. WALLACE: [In November, the Republican nominee] would be weighed down by a faltering economy, an unpopular war, at least according to the polls, and — forgive […]
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: * It appears that John Edwards is poised to make an endorsement of one of his former rivals for the Democratic nomination. He quietly met with Hillary Clinton in North Carolina last Thursday […]
Most of the news coverage following the president’s lengthy appearance on “Fox News Sunday” yesterday dealt with Bush’s defense of John McCain’s conservative ideology. (The president said McCain is “absolutely” conservative, adding, “Look, he’s very strong on national defense. He’s tough fiscally. He believes that tax cuts ought to be permanent. He’s pro-life.”) But for […]
It’s probably a personal character flaw, but I try to make a good-faith effort to at least understand what the other side is thinking when it comes to policy debates. And when it comes to granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the administration’s warrantless-search program, I’ve looked long and hard for […]
By Saturday night, John McCain had already experienced a pretty rough day. He’d been trounced by Mike Huckabee in the Kansas caucuses, and then learned he’d been beaten handily in Louisiana GOP primary. In Washington state, which was supposed to be a far easier win for the Arizona senator, McCain was trailing Huckabee for part […]
There’s an obvious response to charges that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is in trouble, as evidenced by the decision to replace campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with another longtime aide, Maggie Williams — Clinton is hardly the first to make this kind of change. Last summer, with his campaign faltering badly, John McCain replaced more of […]