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Sarah Palin Was as Bad as We Thought
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2008 Comment (121)With the election a distant memory and the McCain and Palin teams publicly discussing their internal battles, we learn the following...
From Newsweek's Special Election Project comes the real Sarah Palin. She met staff members in a towel:
At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.
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My Favorite Rahm Emanuel Story
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2008 Comment (7)Barack Obama's first move was strong, tapping Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. Emanuel is smart, knows where the levers of power are on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and while GOPers might complain that he is a hardened partisan, it will be up to Obama to set his administration's tone and for Emanuel to follow.
There are many Rahm stories floating around D.C.—yes, he really did send a dead fish to a consultant once—and one of my favorites is recounted in my book White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. Emanuel was one of the key aides that speechwriters would go to when starting a speech for Bill Clinton—they knew that he was powerful enough to make their lives hell if they didn't find out what he thought should be in the talk.
On one occasion, a speechwriter was crafting a speech touting the president's "Millennium Program." Emanuel had one instruction for her: Don't use the word "millennium."
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Barack and Michelle Obama Sound Tone-Deaf on Women's Issues
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2008 Comment (23)While progressives slaver over President-elect Obama, methinks I'm seeing signs from the administration- and first lady-elect that speak volumes about their attitudes toward women's advancement.
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Barack Obama Needs to Cut Taxes as He Promised
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2008 Comment (1)Fired up! Ready to go! Cut taxes!
One would think that Barack Obama's vow to cut middle-class taxes is one of two inviolable promises he made in the campaign.
(The other being a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.)
But the ballots were not all counted before the big spenders in Washington—in temporary league with deficit hawks—have started grumbling about the wisdom and necessity of cutting taxes.
There are no signs of wavering in Obama HQ in Chicago. But should the members of the president-elect's economic policy team have any doubts that he needs to move quickly to fulfill his tax-cutting pledge, they should look to the Maryland suburbs, where liberal constituencies, with conviction, approved two antitax ballot questions Tuesday.
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Chris Matthews, Barack Obama Fan
Tweet Share on Facebook November 6, 2008 Comment (14)As I write this, just before 8 a.m., Chris Matthews is on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" saying that he is rooting for Barack Obama to succeed and that he sees it as his duty to help make that happen.
Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski reacted with horror: It's not your duty as a journalist to root for, aid, or abet the new administration!
It's a fine but not indistinct point, but Matthews is not being inappropriate here. He may be a journalist in that he is involved in the greater news business, but he is not a reporter—his job is not to gather the facts and present them in a dispassionate way. He is a political commentator whose livelihood is dependent not only on the keenness of his analysis but on the flair with which it is presented. (Which is why it was appropriate for MSNBC to relieve him and fellow commentator Keith Olbermann of anchoring duties during the campaign season.)
That's not to say that Matthews is incapable of dispassionate analysis (his is often quite good) or of breaking news, but that's not his role. And as such, rooting for Obama success is no more inappropriate than smart conservative commentators like Ross Douthat and the folks at places like NRO, Hot Air, to name a few, opposing Obama.
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Congressional Democrats Came Up Short
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2008 Comment (2)President-elect Obama's victory has overshadowed the fact congressional Democrats did not pick up anywhere near the number of seats some pundits and pollsters were predicting and hoping they might win.
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Barack Obama’s Election Headlines—Today’s Best
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2008 Comment (3)This is the sort of day of which headline writers dream, but the best, as a friend of mine (a self-described "aging southerner") pointed out to me, might be this from the Anniston (Alabama) Star:
That pretty well says it all, doesn't it?
(Thanks to the Newseum.)
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Barack Obama's Suburban Revolution
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2008 Comment (6)Several important milestones were reached with President-elect Obama's historic win. I mentioned earlier, but want to discuss in greater detail, Obama's Suburban Revolution. This revolution was in evidence not just in the South but also in the Southwest. It is driven by the politics of liberal northerners from outside such states as Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado, who flocked to new areas in great numbers—wooed by cheaper real estate and warmer climes.
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Barack Obama's Victory Was Not a Mandate for Liberalism
Tweet Share on Facebook November 5, 2008 Comment (52)So how should Democrats interpret last night's victories? Not as the broad mandate for liberalism that many of them would hope it to be.
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Sarah Palin's Progress
Tweet Share on Facebook November 4, 2008 Comment (149)Gov. Sarah Palin's god was apparently not listening when she voted in the pre-dawn hours in Alaska:
