Perhaps the only silver lining in this cloud is bipartisanship. Yesterday, Bill Kristol said McChrystal should go. John McCain pretty much said the same. I can’t imagine Petraeus really wants this job. It reminds of when Rumsfeld resigned and it seemed that no one in their right mind would want to become the next Secretary of Defense. (One attraction at the time was the low bar for improvement.) Petraeus doesn’t have that luxury. He has a sterling reputation to lose. Of course,...

When I agree with Kathy on a matter of substance, that matter almost always deserves a post. Rightly, I think Kathy challenges the conventional wisdom that yesterday’s primaries demonstrated the power of anti-incumbent passion. Example: the NY Times headline about Joe Sestak’s win read Specter Defeat Signals a Wave Against Incumbents. Nate Silver writes, Joe Sestak is a mainline, lunchpail Democrat who defeated a very unpopular Republican-turned-Democrat who ran an awful campaign and...

Embedded video is a great thing, but who wants to spend the time watch talking heads talk when you can just read the transcript. So for all of you following the Rand Paul tempest, here’s a link to the transcript of his interview with Rachel Maddow, courtesy of Dave Weigel. It’s absolutely worth reading the whole transcript, which can be seen from two very different but familiar perspectives. The first perspective concerns the often-heard protest of moderates and deep thinkers that modern...

My opinion of the Tea Partiers resembles my opinion of Sarah Palin. I’m not naturally attracted to either, but their critics seem so closed-minded that I’ve become deeply skeptical of any of the charges leveled against them. Case in point is the standard liberal assertion that the Tea Partiers are conspiracy theorists and crypto-racists. John Judis makes the case for that point of view in an essay in the current issue of The New Republic [subscription required]. However, one of Judis’...

What? Who dares mention W. in the same breath as the author of the Federalist Papers and framer of the Constitution? Well, as I mentioned before, I’ve been listening to Empire of Liberty, a history of the United States from 1789-1816. Although there are no references to W. in the book, the description of Madison’s conduct of the War of 1812 bears a striking resemblance to the criticism leveled more recently at Bush. First of all, the justification for the war was flimsy. Even now,...

It may be a pure myth that Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag at the request of George Washington. But it turns out that Ross was an actual flagmaker for the US military. Reviewing a new biography of Ross, the WSJ reports Ross’s reputation for producing American flags lasted well beyond the Revolutionary War; as the War of 1812 loomed, Betsy Ross was “the primary flag maker contracting with the U.S. Arsenal on the Schuylkill River.” But her flag-making was a modest sort...

Elijah has up a very interesting post about one nominee and four justices who were suspected of being gay. Yet while I agree that Kagan’s alleged preferences are hardly a first, she would, if gay, inevitably become the first openly gay justice on the Court. On a personal level, I don’t have any problem with that. Yet the White House is setting itself up for a fall if Kagan is gay, since it would seem like the President was hiding vital information from the American public. Yes, in...

Both parties know how to pack lots of spin into 140 characters. FactCheck.org exposes some impressive distortions from recent tweets. Here’s one example: DNC Mis-tweet: ‘GOP’s Wall St. Fundraiser’ DNC, April 22: While the President spoke today about Wall St reform, GOP senators took checks from Wall St lobbyists: http://j.mp/dn47vT The Democratic National Committee contrasts the president’s speech about the financial regulation bill with a fundraising event held by a Republican senator,...

The most important and unmitigated success of George W. Bush’s foreign policy was the forging of a new strategic relationship with India. Dan Twining, a former State Department planner and McCain adviser, warns that the Obama White House has made a habit of offending New Delhi because it is so troubled by Beijing. Why is India so important? The character of a country’s foreign policy cannot be separated from the nature of its internal rule. As one Asian statesman has asked, why does no...

Bad Romance, by Lady Gaga. It just passed 200 million views on You Tube. I guess I’m not the only one. FYI, this is the real video, not a parody put together by our troops in Afghanistan.

Cliches are dangerous, especially when they are built around the truth. Are human rights watchdogs biased against Israel? Probably, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to dismiss everything they say. Then again, what if the watchdogs are so biased that it may make sense to dismiss their work out of hand? Sadly, that may be the case with regard to Human Rights Watch (HRW). In the New Republic, Benjamin Birnbaum traces the evolution of a conflict within HRW that led one of its founders to denounce...

The current issue of the NY Times Magazine features a condescending cover story about Mike Allen and his colleagues from Politico. I’m guessing that Allen & Co. will like the story, since it can’t stop talking about how influential they are. But the story dismisses their success in the same way that the Times often dismisses the success of the blogosphere — it caters to kneejerk partisans with short attention spans who aren’t really interested in thinking about the issues. It...

How much polarization can American politics withstand before our government starts to break down? The following incidents tell us a lot about what can happen when partisanship and ideology replace civil discussion and pragmatism. Thousands of protesters gather outside the President’s home and hint that they will drag him out into the streets. When a member of the cabinet attempts to give a public speech, he is hit with rocks thrown by Republicans in the crowd. Critics of government power...

Yes, it sounds like the plot of second-rate comedy flick. Namely, this one. But Polish President Lech Kaczynski, tragically killed in plane crash, actually does have an identical twin brother Jaroslaw, who may run to replace him. Almost from the day of the crash, one question dominated political discussions and columns: Will Jaroslaw run? If he does, opinion polls and analysts suggest Mr. Kaczynski, a former prime minister, would lose… The Kaczynski brothers were close, colleagues say. Yet...

Although one would generally describe The New Yorker as a progressive publication, it seems to slip into a reactionary mindset when the interests of the literary establishment are on the line. In this week’s issue, Ken Auletta takes a look at the Kindle, the iPad and the threat that e-books present to old school publishing houses. The article presents Amazon as the ill-mannered bully that wants to drive publishers out of businesses by selling e-books at a price that is far too low: “Amazon...

I was listening to David Gregory interview Timothy Geithner. I always knew that I didn’t understand financial regulation. Then I began to sense that Gregory didn’t either. My purpose isn’t to single him out. When I listen to all the Sunday morning shows, I wonder if any of the hosts are capable of asking tough questions about financial regulation and reform, the way they are about healthcare or foreign policy. Gregory asked Geithner between 12 and 15 questions about financial...

Fox News Sunday: WALLACE: What a lot of people see in John McCain these days is a move to the right, a more aggressive posture towards President Obama, that they attribute to the fact that you face a tough challenge from former Congressman J.D. Hayworth in the GOP primary. Of course, you’re running for reelection in Arizona. And they point to a comment that you made to Newsweek recently. And let’s put it up on the screen. “I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself...

Bill Clinton on ABC: Half of the energy coming out of all this organization and money-raising for terror comes out of the allegations around the unresolved Palestinian issue. If there were a Palestinian state working in partnership, with the policies Mr. Fayyad’s following on the West Bank, it would be a whole different world. All the Arabs would identify with Israel. They’d have a political and economic partnership. The whole economic basis in the Middle East would shift from oil to...

When I browse the Public Editor’s column in the Sunday Times, I’m generally impressed with his ability to direct substantive criticism at his own employers. On Sunday, Mr. Hoyt observed, Despite written ground rules to the contrary and promises by top editors to do better, The Times continues to use anonymous sources for information available elsewhere on the record. It allows unnamed people to provide quotes of marginal news value and to remain hidden with little real explanation of...

In honor of my road trip to Philadelphia this weekend, I downloaded the audiobook version of Gordon S. Wood’s Empire of Liberty, a history of the United States from 1789 to 1816. Empire is the newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States and Wood has won both the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes for his earlier work. Incidentally, Wood’s son was one of my professors in college, although I didn’t make the connection until I saw it on Wikipedia. Now, I’m fairly new...