“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” Caroline Kennedy wrote in January in her endorsement of Barack Obama. From the start of his campaign, Barack Obama has wrapped himself in the mantle, and the myth, of the Kennedy family. But by turning down … Read more
Republicans lately seem to be trying harder to be funny than ever before. And in many cases, they’re actually succeeding—albeit in a a “Charlie Cook thinks we’re screwed anyway, so we might as well stop pretending to take ourselves seriously” kind of way. First there was this web ad put out July 29 by … Read more
Just one week after endorsing the candidacy of Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico and himself a former candidate for president, visited the Institute of Politics at Harvard to speak with students. Richardson is a study in contrasts: There is the glad-handing chief executive who meets with constituents one day every month in … Read more
This past weekend I traveled back to Maine to participate in the Democratic caucuses. Maine doesn’t offer much in the way of delegates. Just 34 are sent to the National Convention. Yet with the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as tight as it is, even my tiny home state became vested this past weekend … Read more
Barack Obama gained two more interesting supporters this week, following Kathleen Sebelius’s endorsement last Wednesday. On January 31, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker announced he was backing the senator from Illinois. Volcker ran the Fed throughout most of the 1980s, and was widely praised for his work mopping up the economic mess of the … Read more
Last night, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democratic response to President Bush’s State of the Union Address. It was a sober, confident message, looking past the end of the Bush presidency and arguing for an Obama-style politics of national unity. The tonal similarity to Obama was no accident: Sebelius endorsed the Illinois senator today … Read more
The Democrats need to cool it. Neither Obama nor Clinton will win the general election if they continue to sap each other’s political capital at present rate. Both senators need to instill composure within their respective camps, because the mud the lower levels are slinging is reaching the top. Until recently, they seemingly agreed that … Read more
I was looking at the Times today and happened upon this article on the latest development in Turkey, a judge banned an openly Islamic candidate from running. Well, what really amused me and got me thinking was that Turkish news was obviously filed in the World section, and also, if you look at the top … Read more
I could not shake my feeling of profound sadness when I learned on Monday that David Halberstam had lost his life in a traffic accident. Older generations remember Halberstam as the bold and energetic foreign-affairs correspondent for the New York Times. His reporting from Vietnam would earn him, at age thirty, the Pulitzer Prize. But … Read more
I had a rare spot of leisure time today, and so I decided to drop by the library, have a cup of coffee, and try and catch up with what was going on in the world. I happened to pick up the New York Times Sunday Magazine and found myself totally absorbed in the cover … Read more