February 19, 2009 – 5:08 pm
Heart-tugging anecdotes are the mother’s milk of political speechwriting. If you’re a Democrat, you love talking about Susan, who can’t get health care and had to give up shoeing her children to buy groceries. (Preferably she lives in the Rust Belt and her husband, Jack, had an assembly-line job until an OSHA-worthy accident left him permanently […]
February 18, 2009 – 6:40 pm
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking today to Department of Justice employees, said, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” Score one for civility. Can Holder really be […]
February 18, 2009 – 1:43 pm
Does any federal government office produce less engaging rhetoric than that of Chairman of the Federal Reserve? Alan Greenspan was famous for his inscrutable public statements. Ben Bernanke, who comes across (to me) as much more personable than Greenspan, employs a workmanlike approach to his speeches that defies listeners to stay tuned for more than a couple of […]
February 18, 2009 – 12:56 pm
President Obama is unveiling his housing rescue plan at a high school in Mesa, Arizona. (Not sure about that venue. If you’re a high-school homeowner you are either very successful or very deceptive. But anyway…) The details of the plan are complicated and the impact likely won’t be known for some time. But the messages […]
February 17, 2009 – 3:45 pm
Over at NewMajority, my former (more senior) colleague David Frum explains why, despite the general glee on the right, Republicans likely fumbled a real opportunity on stimulus.
February 17, 2009 – 3:23 pm
In today’s Politico Playbook, Mike Allen mentions a new White House slideshow of behind-the-scenes photos from the stimulus negotiating process. The general theme of the pics is of a president vigorously doing the public’s work. Then there’s slide #4, which is a picture of the president meeting with Republican members of Congress. The caption notes this, then says: […]
February 17, 2009 – 10:53 am
Walter Berns — always thoughtful, eloquent, and worth the read — reflects in today’s Wall Street Journal on why Lincoln is our greatest public hero. He reminds us that history was not always (or even mostly) moving in Lincoln’s direction at the time he led the country, and that, time and again, Lincoln stood alone. […]
February 16, 2009 – 1:59 pm
What better family to hear from on Presidents Day than the Bushes? (OK, maybe the Roosevelts, but I don’t see any of them stepping up.) Fred Barnes’s interview with Jeb Bush in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal offers a glimpse of how Republicans could be packaging themselves as a novel-thinking, reform-minded, fully modern — dare […]
February 16, 2009 – 9:25 am
Happy Presidents Day to presidents old and new. It seems unfair that the president always ends up working on Presidents Day. You’d think he’d qualify for a day off if millions of people around America who have nothing to do with the presidency get to spend the day catching up on “Law and Order” reruns […]
February 12, 2009 – 3:15 pm
Apparently Senate Democrats are hearing Josh’s warning about the “socialist death spiral.” A well-sourced friend mentioned to me that Harry Reid has been trolling for a Republican – any Republican – to join Senators Specter, Collins, and Snowe in voting for the upcoming stimulus conference bill. Why? Because the original Senate vote scored 61 in […]
February 12, 2009 – 11:39 am
In today’s Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove – no slouch when it comes to Republican strategy – agrees with Josh and disagrees with me about whether stimulus opposition will be good for Republicans. I agree with Karl that Republicans successfully branded this particular stimulus package a bloated, ill-prioritized porker. But they overshot. They forgot to […]
February 11, 2009 – 4:57 pm
If you want to know everything – and I mean everything – that happened at today’s bank CEO hearing in the House, check out the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal, which live-blogged the entire event. You’ll notice that at 1:32 pm (seriously, they blogged everything), the CEOs were asked to raise their hands if their company […]
February 11, 2009 – 11:22 am
Major bank executives are appearing before Barney Frank’s House Financial Services Committee this morning. Major messages: We are lending more; we won’t be foolish with TARP money. Bonus points if you can say you didn’t get a bonus last year. Morgan Stanley’s John Mack gets double extra credit for not taking a bonus in 2007 […]
