Joe Conason

Lacking McCain's own compelling personality and affecting presence, his convention speech would have been an utter disaster. His staff owed him a better text and a better stage.  Repeating the same old material that has been recycled so often this past week and over the past ten years does not create a convincing image of change. Or so I argue here.

Ad libbing as he warmed up the Republican convention crowd for their vice presidential nominee, Rudolph Giuliani quipped: “She got an 80 percent approval rating. You don’t get those kinds of numbers in New York!”

Of course, getting those numbers would be just as easy for a New York mayor or any other mayor or governor if they were able – like the charming hockey mom -- to send $1200 to every man, woman and child in their jurisdiction thanks to a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

But wait a second. Didn’t Rudy tell us that she had reduced taxes and cut government spending?

Actually, for all her boilerplate conservative rhetoric about the wonders of freedom and the evils of taxation and government, her career reflects a penchant for raising taxes and redistributing wealth.  read more »

Republicans hate nothing more than nosy, enterprising reporters who dismiss whatever piffle the party bosses hand out and insist on…well, reporting. Yesterday Steve Schmidt whined piteously to Howie Kurtz about the “frenzied” coverage of Sarah Palin, as journalists around the country attempt to discover who she is and what she has done (besides hunt and fish) before she gets any closer to running what is still the world’s most powerful government.

Having failed to vet her properly, Schmidt deeply resents the reporters who are now trying to perform the task that he and his posse punted. But somebody has to do it, and it does get messy – especially when the presidential nominee picks a politician whose brief resume features her service as mayor of a town with a population under 15,000.  read more »

Families deserve privacy about family matters, but families that want absolute privacy should probably stay out of politics. Sooner or later someone would have noticed the pregnancy of Bristol Palin, 17-year-old daughter of John McCain’s vice presidential pick, especially since everyone in her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, seemed to know already. The question that remains is what, if anything, her plight may portend for the rest of us.

With all due respect to this young woman, her future husband and the rest of the family—and best wishes to all of them for a successful birth—let us first stop pretending that this is good news.  read more »

My old friend Sidney Blumenthal, whose Republican friends sometimes tell him more than they should, has an intriguing
] post up at Arianna's place. Sid says Mc Cain's choice of Palin was motivated largely by continued feuding with Karl Rove. Which speaks well of McCain, I suppose, but is still a poor way to pick a vice president. McCain wanted Lieberman but Karl had hi own ideas. Read it.
Joe Conason

The strength of Barack Obama's acceptance speech lay not in its eloquence but in the candidate's determination to answer, methodically and clearly, the remaining doubts about him.

Woven into the theme of America's promise, Obama methodically answered the hard questions. Is he an exotic elitist, remote from the concerns and values of the sinking American middle class? No, he was raised by middle-class Americans who had their own ups and downs and taught him those same values. Is he too diffident to fight for victory in a harsh election? No, he told the Republicans to bring it. He directly confronted insinuations about his patriotism, then refuted their claims about John McCain's judgment, experience, and independence (and hung Bush around McCain's neck).  read more »

To follow Bill Clinton as a speaker is almost impossible on any occasion, let alone after a speech as strong and stunning as his endorsement of Barack Obama.

But the speech delivered so doggedly by John Kerry—as the cable anchors talked over him—was analytically sharp and politically compelling. He gave himself the satisfaction of denouncing Karl Rove by name for the Swiftboat smears. More important, however, was his enunciation of the failures of Republican foreign and security policies—and how the Bush administration has tardily come round to the use of diplomacy with North Korea and Iran. Which happens to be the same approach favored by Obama. That photo op of Michelle with Obama's World War II uncle, who looks like he came straight from the VFW hall, wasn't bad either. Nice of the Obama team to give Kerry that moment.

The cliché question of the day is whether Bill Clinton's speech this evening will somehow overshadow Hillary's uplifting call to unity last night.

But that question misunderstands the his-and-hers moment. Their speeches will follow a pattern, logical if not seamless.

She spoke about the imperative to elect a Democratic president; he will talk about what a Democratic president can do.

The latter is a topic that permits him to discuss the achievements of his eight years in office as well as the promise of an Obama administration. The idea is to lend sinew and substance to what many Clintonites worried—until Senator Clinton spoke—would be a wispy, issue-free convention.

What was missing from Hillary Clinton's otherwise boffo speech last night? She neglected to mention much of anything about the nominee, including why he is ready for the job and will do it well.

Her husband is even less likely to make the case for Obama because they scarcely know each other. And aside from a few perfunctory phone conversations, Obama has done little to improve their relationship.

Indeed, friends of the former president say that the Illinois Senator made matters worse when he rebuffed an invitation to visit Clinton in Chappaqua. It seems obvious that Obama will need his help, between now and November and even more if and when he wins.

Perhaps Obama has realized that pushing Clinton away is the same mistake Al Gore made, for very different reasons. The two sides are now discussing a visit to Clinton's Harlem office sometime soon.

''We're not going to take that crap!'' cried Susan Rice, the Obama foreign policy adviser and former Clinton White House national security staffer.

What they won't take are those Republican insinuations about Obama's fortitude and patriotism.

Instead, she vowed that the Democratic campaign will force the G.O.P. to answer for ''John McCain's bad judgment.''

Her promise drew an appreciative roar from a big, very patriotic crowd listening to Rice at the Vote Vets/National Security Network reception at the Denver Athletic Club this afternoon, which attracted former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.).

One of the very best political documentary films of the year -- and one that is terribly relevant to this election campaign -- is about a man who died in 1991. Here at the Impact Film Festival I just saw Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, a powerful and strangely moving account of how sewer tactics became business as usual in the modern Republican Party. Avoiding the didactic tone of too many political films, director Stefan Forbes has created a fascinating biopic about the charismatic, contradictory, deeply warped figure whose remorseless attitude toward truth and decency lives on (in the persons of Karl Rove and Steve Schmidt) long after his sad demise from brain cancer.  read more »

As the Democrats convene in Denver to celebrate Hillary Clinton and nominate Barack Obama, a minority of her supporters continues to behave petulantly. They whine, they bluster, they agitate themselves and each other. But what is it about Senator Clinton's repeated endorsements of her former opponent that they cannot understand? How do they honor her by undermining him?

No doubt many of her friends still feel robbed, months after her gracious concession. With considerable justification, they believe that their woman ought to be accepting the nomination of their party this week, rather than the man who took it from her. She certainly possesses the talent and experience to be a formidable national candidate, and during her life in politics she has worked very hard to earn that prize.  read more »

You don't have to believe that the weekly column is an obsolete form to feel the digital imperative—especially if, like me, you used to blog every day as I did five years ago for Salon.com, my other home.

So now I'm on the blog again, live from the Democratic National Convention, and I'll be posting regularly from today forward.

(Evidently I miss being flamed on a daily basis...)

The discovery that John McCain’s remarks on Georgia were derived from Wikipedia, to put it politely, is disturbing and even depressing—but not surprising. Under the tutelage of the neoconservatives, who revealed their superficial understanding of Iraq both before and after the invasion, he favors bellicose grandstanding over strategic thinking. So why delve deeper than a quick Google search?

Worse still, neither he nor his advisers yet grasp how our misadventure in Mesopotamia has diminished American power and prestige. In fact, the Wikipedia episode—an awful embarrassment that would have devastated the presidential campaign of Barack Obama or any other Democrat—revealed an underlying weakness in Senator McCain’s vaunted grasp of foreign policy.  read more »

Touring America’s oil rigs and nuclear plants, John McCain sometimes sounds as if he will produce enough wind to power the nation all by himself. So strongly does his current rhetoric smell of methane, the gas emanating from manure, that he might even qualify for a renewable energy tax incentive.

The former straight talker, who could not help telling the truth, has found the voice of the demagogue within him. As Senator McCain seeks to exploit public anger over the price of gasoline, first with his dubious “gas tax holiday” and now with his campaign for offshore oil drilling, the thoughtful legislator who defied his own party on issues such as global warming and Alaskan oil leasing has been replaced by that much more familiar Congressional figure—a rented mouthpiece for the energy industry.  read more »

Forced to cancel a planned visit to an oil platform off the Mississippi coast last week because of inclement weather—and the untimely leaking of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil by a shipwreck in the vicinity—John McCain finally got his photo op at a Bakersfield derrick on July 28. Speaking on site, the Arizona senator delivered extraordinarily good news to the beleaguered gasoline-consuming public as he explained why we must drill offshore.

Based on briefings that Senator McCain says he received from “the oil producers,” he said, “There are some instances [that] within a matter of months they could be getting additional oil.  read more »

Barack Obama knows which countries border Iraq; he understands the difference between Shia and Sunni; and he is probably aware that Czechoslovakia no longer exists—but as John McCain complains, the young senator has “no military experience whatsoever.” Indeed, like both of the last two presidents, Mr. Obama possesses scant credentials in national security and foreign policy.

Why, then, does he appear increasingly plausible as the next president? Assurance, grace, and mastery of the facts have helped to lift his stature, as did his daring decision to venture abroad, directly challenging his older opponent’s perceived strength. But granting his talent and initiative, the strongest argument for the Democrat is the weak performance of the Republican regime’s vaunted “grown-ups,” including Mr.  read more »

An expression of outrage is the highest compliment that politicians can bestow upon a satirist. So when spokesmen for Barack Obama and John McCain echo each other and many another stuffed shirt in complaining about the current cover of The New Yorker, the magazine’s editors and cartoonist Barry Blitt should accept such remarks in precisely that spirit.

From Mark Twain to Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor, there have always been people who didn’t get it—or worried about the damage that would ensue when other people didn’t get it. Today in America, despite the rising influence of The Daily Show and The Onion, it can be hazardous to be too hip for the room.  read more »

Despite all the feigned outrage fanned by the mainstream media and the right-wing noisemakers, Wesley Clark—retired four-star general, former Supreme Commander of NATO, wounded and highly decorated veteran of ground combat in Vietnam, and a military man to his core—assuredly did not denigrate the war record of John McCain when he talked about the Republican candidate on television last Sunday.

Instead, perhaps naïvely, General Clark stated a very simple fact. Mr. McCain’s service in Vietnam doesn’t prove his aptitude or competence to serve in the nation’s highest office. Or as he told Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer on CBS: “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.  read more »

Precisely on schedule, the usual assortment of right-wing operatives is preparing its expected assault on the Democratic presidential nominee. While this unwholesome phase of the election cycle is known universally as “Swift-boating”—named after the defamatory media blitz against John Kerry four years ago—the style and some of the personnel date back at least two decades. So does the winking charade of separation between the official Republican presidential campaign and the dirty business conducted on its behalf.

The only notable difference this year is that neither the money nor the message has crystallized yet behind any “independent” effort to destroy the candidacy of Barack Obama.  read more »

Once upon a time, there was a fiscally and socially responsible senator named John McCain. Despite his presidential ambitions, the Republican from Arizona spoke out against the economic royalism of his party’s leadership in the White House and Congress, and simply said no.

He rejected the Bush tax cuts in 2001 because they provided an unearned bonanza for America’s wealthiest citizens while giving a pittance to the middle class and nothing to the working poor. To him, as a long-standing enemy of waste and profligacy, these proposals were not only unfair but also unwise.

“I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief,” he said, joining courageously with Lincoln Chafee, then a senator from Rhode Island, as one of two Republicans who dared to cast such a crucial vote against president and party.  read more »

To his credit, John McCain has invited Barack Obama to join him in a national “town hall” tour over the coming months, without the unneeded intrusion of celebrity journalists, network extravaganzas and all of their irrelevant impertinence. The Arizona Republican insists that he wants a serious debate over the competing ideas and visions of the two parties, rather than the usual petty focus on process issues and gotcha questions.  read more »

The selection of a vice president is not only an exercise in political handicapping but a national rite of statecraft. Candidates, advisers, pundits and assorted experts try to calculate the ethnic, geographic, gender and ideological characteristics of potential running mates, but what this choice actually reveals is the character of a presidential nominee.

For Barack Obama, the choice of a vice president is a test of his self-confidence and his vaunted judgment.  read more »

When the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee meets on May 31 to determine the status of the votes cast in the Michigan and Florida primaries, its members should try to look past self-serving campaign arguments and silly attempts to save face by bumbling party leaders.

In the mind-numbing saga of the botched primary schedule, there is plenty of blame to be shared among all the participants, from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and their surrogates to Howard Dean and the party apparatus in Washington.  read more »

Disturbed by troubling connections and unflattering publicity, John McCain has just purged several prominent Washington lobbyists from his presidential campaign. Surely his intentions are laudable, but if Mr. McCain is consistent in ridding the campaign of such compromised people, he will find himself riding lonesome on the Straight Talk Express. That’s because nearly all of his advisers, fund-raisers and top staffers have worked on K Street, starting with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, and his senior adviser and spokesman, Charles Black.  read more »

Double standards are endemic in American journalism. But Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican presidential candidate, displayed poor taste in flaunting her family’s special immunity from press scrutiny. Declaring on NBC’s Today that she would “never” release her income tax returns even if she becomes first lady, the Arizona beer heiress showed no concern that she and her husband will have to meet the same tests as other would-be White House occupants—ever.

Unfortunately, the arrogance of Mrs. McCain is probably well founded.  read more »

In this protracted and often dispiriting prelude to the general election, few remarks have been as poorly chosen as Senator Hillary Clinton’s threat to “totally obliterate” Iran. What she obliterated with just those two words were her own boasts of superior diplomatic experience—and she managed at the same time to tar America’s international image with all the subtlety of the man she hopes to replace.  read more »

As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright gleefully tours the airwaves, inflicting severe political damage with almost every utterance, he is proving that racism isn’t the only obstacle to a black president. That historic prize is almost within the grasp of one of the most talented politicians America has ever seen. Yet what seems most likely to frustrate Senator Barack Obama now is not white prejudice but the frivolity, egotism and pettiness of those who should be his most serious and dedicated supporters.

To criticize Mr. Wright is not to reject the black church, the speaking styles of black preachers, the aspirations of black children or the rhythms and tonalities of black music, as he seemed to suggest in his address to the N.A.A.C.P. last weekend. To reject his ideas about the origins of AIDS or the causes of 9/11 is not, as he puts it, to confuse “different” with “deficient.”  read more »

Nobody with a functioning memory should be too quick to condemn Jimmy Carter for daring to speak with the leadership of Hamas, as nearly everyone along the American political spectrum suddenly has felt obliged to do. From Condoleezza Rice and John McCain to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, along with every Congressional backbencher in both parties, expressions of disapproval have rained down upon the former president, who is old enough and tough enough to pursue his own beliefs to their logical conclusion.

“The United States is not going to deal with Hamas,” said the secretary of state, “and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help.” The justification for that policy was explained helpfully by Senator Obama, whose willingness to meet with foreign adversaries does not extend to Hamas, at least not during the primary season. The Illinois senator “does not support negotiations with Hamas until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements,” according to a spokesman for his presidential campaign.  read more »

It is hard to blame John McCain for mocking Barack Obama as an “elitist” following that silly remark about bitter folks who cling to guns and religion. Rarely does the Arizona senator—one of the wealthiest members of Washington’s most exclusive club—encounter such a tempting chance to masquerade as a populist.

Making the most of that opportunity, Mr. McCain, the elder statesman, delivered a brief history lecture to the young upstart from Illinois. “During the Great Depression,” he said in a statement released by his campaign, “with many millions of Americans out of work and the country suffering the worst economic crisis in our history, there rose from small towns, rural communities, inner cities, a generation of Americans who fought to save the world from despotism and mass murder, and came home to build the wealthiest, strongest and most generous nation on earth.  read more »

Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, is more candid than his publicists in the media and on Capitol Hill. Unlike the senators and editorial writers who claim that the glorious “surge” should be hailed as one of the most successful military campaigns in history, he warns that the escalation’s achievements are mixed at best—or as he put it, progress on the ground is “uneven,” “fragile” and “reversible,” with “innumerable challenges” remaining to be addressed.

His caveats cannot dampen the enthusiasm of the politicians and pundits who would maintain the occupation of Iraq, and even expand our aggressive presence in the Mideast. Selling that policy requires propaganda proving that the surge is succeeding and that if we only stay long enough, spend enough money and sacrifice enough young men and women, then someday we will achieve a great victory. We’re “closer,” says the general, carefully.  read more »

The most puzzling aspect of John McCain’s political persona is his habitual attraction to George W. Bush’s bad ideas. Their shared enthusiasm for invading Iraq and then escalating the war is why “McSame” will soon become the new shorthand for the Arizona Republican, replacing “maverick”—but that isn’t the only reason. He doesn’t just endorse the disastrous foreign policy initiatives; he loves the failed domestic policy schemes, too.

Specifically Mr.  read more »

For many years, Robert Morgenthau has warned America that the nexus of capitalism and criminality poses a serious threat to our prosperity, security and growth. Now in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns, which pushed global markets still closer to the brink, perhaps the nation will listen to the Manhattan district attorney, whose scrutinizing gaze is fixed on targets well beyond New York.

As a legendary prosecutor of international financial crime, Mr. Morgenthau has long kept a watchful eye on the buccaneering crew at Bear, the firm that now symbolizes the worst in amoral capital. Its executives were notorious for testing the limits of the law, by sheltering shady stock promoters and bucket-shop brokerages and by swelling the assets of its hedge funds with dubious mortgage-backed assets.  read more »

“Well, that’s history. That’s the past. That’s talking about what happened before. What we should be talking about is what we’re going to do now.”

The man who spoke those words was Senator John McCain, and the subject was the Iraq war and its origins in official falsehood, strategic error and wishful thinking. Expect to hear him repeat those same dismissive phrases again and again as the presidential campaign unfolds.  read more »

When Eliot Spitzer stood before the stunned press corps on Monday to make a brief apology for his misconduct, he spoke of “real change,” of trying to “uphold a vision of progressive politics that would rebuild New York and create opportunity for all,” of “ideas and the public good.” If the governor actually believes in any of those things, he will be the former governor by the time these words appear in print (or as soon as he can exchange his resignation for a favorable plea bargain, whichever comes first).

It is painful to watch the fall of Mr. Spitzer because the potential he represented was once so inspiring. Blessed with a privileged upbringing, he seemed to feel a duty to serve. Armed with the confidence of the elite achiever, he dared to challenge the powerful, including major business interests and right-wing ideologues, in defense of the public interest. Lionized by voters who sent him to Albany with a mandate, he invited comparison with great New Yorkers who changed the nation during the past century, such as Louis D. Brandeis and the Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin.  read more »

Whatever their true private beliefs, presidential candidates in America are constantly required to provide proofs of their faith, often through their connections with various religious figures. Benedictions from the pulpit can bestow an aura of righteousness—except, of course, when the pastor or minister is a disreputable kook whose endorsement should be an embarrassment.

In recent weeks, both Barack Obama and John McCain have suffered exactly this kind of indignity, under very different circumstances.  read more »

Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady. It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Senator John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.

Anticipating that prospect must make Mr.  read more »

As a presidential candidate, John McCain stands out not only for his vocal endorsement of the unpopular war in Iraq but also because one of his own sons is a Marine Corps officer on active duty there. He supports the war even at the price of his own career or the life of a child he loves.

Yet although the senator from Arizona is obviously no chicken hawk, he carefully avoids “straight talk” about the real costs of this war in dollars and debt.  read more »

For the next month or so, the conservative valentines will arrive every day at the headquarters of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The Illinois senator’s image will be illuminated by the bipartisan aura of admiration from prominent Republican commentators and strategists, as they savor the promise of his victory over Hillary Clinton, long the object of their hatred. He may well imagine that they really like him—and surely some of them do, at least for now.

Such happy feelings are easily conjured these days, when William Kristol hopes Democratic superdelegates will do “the good deed” of pledging their ballots to him, and when George Will urges Democrats to choose him as “the party’s most potentially potent nominee,” and when Peggy Noonan promises that he will be “bulletproof” against Republican attack.  read more »

The revival of John McCain’s presidential candidacy, now expected to carry him through to his party’s nomination, can be interpreted as either proof of the judgment of Republican primary voters or evidence of the paucity of alternative choices. Certainly, it confirms the wisdom of betting against the predictions of the national press corps, which produced so many sorrowful postmortems on his campaign.

Very soon, if not instantly, the same pundits who wrote off Mr. McCain’s chances will be assuring us that the recent has-been is now an electoral juggernaut. They will describe him resplendent in political valor, reforming zeal and militant patriotism, and of course brimming with “straight talk.” Of such shiny publicity has the Arizona senator’s image been built over the past decade or so.  read more »

The most likely motive for Bill Clinton’s reckless political performance in recent weeks, ironically and sadly, is to redress the terrible humiliations he inflicted on his wife in years past. But unless he quickly regains control of himself, the most likely result will be to inflict irreparable damage on the presidential aspirations of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Whether he has done that much harm already remains to be determined in the primaries ahead. At the very least, however, the former president has begun to change the polarity of his own presence in her campaign from positive to negative—and to raise real questions about the meaning of his return to the White House.  read more »

Supporters of one Democratic candidate or another may insist that their man or woman won last Monday’s debate in South Carolina, but in their hearts most viewers could only have been disappointed by its childish tenor and puerile content. Unless those viewers happened to be Republicans, of course—in which case they could only have been delighted.

With a worried nation edging toward financial panic and dragging down the world economy—thanks to foolish ideas and bad management—the Democrats seem strangely preoccupied with petty snarking.

A debate is supposed to be a discussion of policy, but this last was nothing more than a blather of insults. It diminished both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while former Senator John Edwards only emphasized his irrelevance with glancing blows at both contenders.  read more »

As America marks the first anniversary of the troop escalation in Iraq, at least one thing has become clear. Although the “surge” is failing as policy, it seems to be succeeding as propaganda. Even as George W. Bush continues to bump and scrape along the bottom of public approval, significantly more people now believe that we are “winning” the war.

What winning really means and whether that vague impression can be sustained are questions that the war’s proponents would prefer not to answer for the moment. Their objective during this election year is simply to reduce public pressure for withdrawal, which is still the choice of an overwhelming majority of voters.  read more »

“They will try to Swift Boat me,” said Barack Obama in the days before the New Hampshire primary, looking forward to the Democratic nomination that he now believes will be his with a prediction that is both accurate and chilling.

Whether he can go on to claim the nomination is yet to be determined. Much more predictable is the nature of the campaign that will be waged against him—and the fickleness of the national press corps when that ugly process eventually reaches its nadir.  read more »

As political buzzwords, “bipartisan” and “non-partisan” and “independent” sound elevated and even virtuous, which must be why we so often hear them touted as remedies for our national ills. Every four years the promoters of these miracle cures seek a vessel for their illusions, preferably someone whose fortune is as limitless as his ego. This year’s model seems to be Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and billionaire owner of the national business news service.

The immediate charm of a Bloomberg candidacy—or the candidacy of any other such supposed savior—is that it serves as a blank screen suitable for the projection of whatever obsessions, beliefs, projects or personal qualities are desired.

He is not only independent but free-floating, at least in the imaginations of his would-be supporters; he is not only devoid of ideology but practically free of content altogether, like nonpartisanship itself.  read more »

Not so long ago, the conventional wisdom of Washington proclaimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton could not be stopped from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Today, the same wise men and women hint that she has forfeited the prize.

But she has never been unstoppable—and she has certainly not yet been stopped.

What must always be remembered when estimating the prospects of Senator Clinton is that the mainstream media amplifies her campaign’s errors and diminishes her strengths in ways that can be misleading. Foaming expressions of hostility to her are considered normal among the Beltway pundits, especially on cable television and talk radio. Such constant emotional outbursts tend to distort political news and analysis.  read more »

Having vaulted into the front ranks of the Republican presidential contenders, Mike Huckabee is now more than an amiable curiosity—and his decade as governor of Arkansas will be scrutinized carefully for clues to his character, temperament and beliefs. He has established an admirable persona as an evangelical conservative who displays none of the rancor that permeates the religious right. But when he says that his faith defines his life and that there can be no separation of religion from government, what does that mean in practice?

Although modern preachers seem to find scriptural justification for virtually any public policy they may prefer, it isn’t clear how Mr. Huckabee’s Baptist outlook influenced his decisions on taxes, education or transportation. But his record in granting clemency and pardons clearly demonstrates the dangers of religious zealotry in power.  read more »

Even when George W. Bush tells the truth, he cannot quite bring himself to tell the whole truth. Although the White House released a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, indicating that the Iranians shut down their program more than four years ago, the president treated those conclusions as a vindication more than an embarrassment.

With the usual propagandists at Fox News Channel and elsewhere filtering the N.I.E. to cover up their mistakes, it is worth reproducing a few of the new report’s most salient quotes. “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” said the N.I.E. text, reflecting a strong consensus among the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies. “Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005 [when the intelligence community prepared its last N.I.E. on this subject]. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.”  read more »

Tuesday’s meeting in Annapolis—not to be confused with a summit or conference—indicates once again that adult supervision never did gain control of the second Bush White House.  read more »