Over the last twenty years or so, you could talk with people about great political books, like Game Change or what have you, and then somebody would remember that Richard Ben Cramer had written What It Takes, and that ended the conversation. None was better, and none would ever be better. Working on a big …
Nobody does it better, as Joe Biden shows when swearing in new members of the Senate.
This year that is fast disappearing will not be remembered in these quarters with very much warmth. It was a fairly hideous, sickening year, the year that I felt I got old. But like all good things, the bad ones come to an end as well, and thanks to some much appreciated end of the …
Like a political Punxatawny Phil seeing his shadow, George Will has seen the president re-elected, Democrats returned to their majority in the Senate and Republicans to theirs in the House, and proclaimed four more years of winter, or at least gridlock. “A nation vocally disgusted with the status quo has reinforced it by ratifying existing …
Thank goodness this crap campaign is over. It turned out to be a bit of nail-biter, but it should never had been so close. Obama should have walloped Romney, who was a man with no rational to his candidacy other than that he wasn’t the incumbent. In some other era this might have been enough, …
What the hell happened to the levers?
Why isn’t President Obama running harder against Congress? The president was effective in Tuesday’s debate, but he won only narrowly, even though Mitt Romney revealed an ugly side of himself that fits all the stereotypes about bullying bosses. Everything about the way he handled himself underscored the old “I love firing people” image. When he …
In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, the paradigm of unintentional hilarity, writes a furrowed brow analysis of Mitt Romney‘s inadequacies. “Here’s one tough, cool-eyed report on what is happening in the presidential race,” Noonan writes. “It’s from veteran Republican pollster, now corporate strategist, Steve Lombardo of Edelman public relations in Washington. Mr. Lombardo worked …
As someone who spent a good part of the eighties arguing how such manifestly incomplete candidates like Carter, Mondale and Dukakis could–yes, truly, absolutely could–fill the inside straights that would take them to the White House, I sympathize with the excruciating efforts of those Republican loyalists who are trying to convince people, most importantly themselves, …
Was this best political convention of my lifetime? Almost certainly; not only was the roster of spectacular speakers unbelievably rich, bu whoever assembled the order respected the themes of the speech with a subtle and almost literary elegance. Invoking Ted Kennedy near the beginning of the proceedings Tuesday was a brilliant stroke. Summoning the ancients …