While tonight’s debate between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be an academic exercise, one that, besides, promises only a recitation of their by-now canned set-pieces in response to equally predictable questions, it would be helpful if it offered voters more than this. Here are twenty-three questions I’d like to be asked and answered tonight: 1. Senator Obama, you were opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning. What basic principles should inform Presidents and Congresses...

Next Tuesday will probably bring an end to Senator Hillary Clinton’s drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Barack Obama currently enjoys a double-digit lead over his opponent in Texas, the state where Clinton cut her political eye teeth, and is gaining on her here in my home state of Ohio, long thought by the Clinton camp to be a likely firewall for her candidacy. But there will be no Clinton firewalls. The end I thought inevitable on the day after the Iowa caucuses—an Obama...

[HT: Instapundit] See our earlier and longer debate analysis and roundup HERE.

Whoever the Democrats nominate for president this year–Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the initial excitement going into the fall campaign will be attached to that party’s candidate. That’s because, as everybody knows, either nomination will be historic, first woman nominated by a major party or first African-American. John McCain, straight-talking war hero though he is, will be hard-pressed to negate the Wow Factor the Dems will have going for them. And, as we have seen from the...

Barack Obama and John McCain were the winners of their respective parties’ presidential primaries in Wisconsin today. Obama appears ready to win the Democratic caucuses in Hawaii and McCain in the Republican caucuses in Washington, each candidate winning the sole contests happening in their respective party. The math is inexorable. Mike Huckabee cannot defeat McCain for the Republican nomination. And only a collective decision on the part of the Democrats’ superdelegates to ignore the...

According to NPR, this bit of kitsch wasn’t created by the Clinton campaign, but by an overzealous supporter with too much money and too much time. But, really, is it any worse than this production from an Obama fan? Can we make hokey videos with our laptops? Yes, we can. [This is being cross-posted at my personal blog.]

Do you want to know how desperate the Clinton campaign is to stop the gathering momentum of the Obama campaign on the eve of primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii? Consider the accusations being leveled by the Clinton camp that the Illinois senator is guilty of plagiarizing words of an Obama supporter, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. The similarities between Obama’s and Patrick’s rhetoric has long been noted. (See here. Thanks to Justin Webb.) James Fallows no doubt speaks for most...

Hillary Clinton has lost tonight to Barack Obama in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. I believe–and have for some time–that Clinton will lose the nomination fight to Obama. Why will she lose? Some will say that America was more ready for a black president than for a woman president. Some will say that people bought flash over substance. But to understand why Hillary Clinton is likely to lose her race for the Democratic nomination, you need look no further than to her speech in...

This article in the German publication Die Welt (The World), and cited in an interesting post by Robin Koerner, says that Europeans are getting a hazy picture of Barack Obama’s views on foreign policy and national security issues. I think that it also precisely identifies Obama’s area of greatest vulnerability with US voters once the fall campaign begins. (Should Obama be the Democratic nominee for president, which appears likely.) But in fairness to him, with rare exceptions, few new...

Mitt Romney is out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Romney looked like a president. He had seemingly demonstrated his electability by becoming a Republican governor in the most reliably liberal Democratic state, Massachusetts. So, what went wrong? Romney and his brain trust made a series of strategic errors that destroyed his viability as a presidential candidate, at least in 2008. Strategic Error #1: The Incredible Conservative Shift. Intent on running for president and...

Conventinal wisdom says that Mike Huckabee has hurt Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. The notion is that Huck denies Romney the votes of true conservatives. But tonight, MSNBC polling shows that among evangelical Protestants, a core constituent group among Republicans, the vote was roughly evenly split among Romney, Huckabee, and John McCain, each polling about 30%. One clear conclusion of these results is that evangelicals, though conservative, cannot be regarded as a monlith. And, more broadly,...

I watched a lot of today’s Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Like anyone who saw this game, I was impressed by the 80-yard-plus winning drive led by Giant quarterback Eli Manning in its final minutes. But as I watched the post-game presentation of the Lombardi Trophy to the Giants, I was more than a bit put-off. Fox analyst and former NFL great Terry Bradshaw interviewed Manning and announced that the Giant QB had won the Super Bowl MVP award. Then,...

I’ve been interested in politics since I was a little boy, at least since I was four years old. My love for politics, which is an extension of my love for people, continues unabated, as the pieces I write here and on my personal blog will attest. I think that it’s important who serves us in the White House and in the local court house. Yet, on days like the one I had on Friday, I realize that it’s not the most important thing in life. Meet Sarah. Sarah is a member of the parish...

“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” The writer was Abraham Lincoln, speaking of the catclysmic Civil War, initiated not by Lincoln or the government he headed, but by insurgent forces who attacked a United States military installation on US soil. Much of life is composed of our response to events. “If you want to make God laugh,” said Father Myke, a World Trade Center hero on September 11, 2001, “tell Him what...

On Tuesday, Florida clarified what was already apparent in the race for the Republican presidential nomination: The nominee will either be Senator John McCain or former Governor Mitt Romney. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, overplaying the evangelical hand in a bid to win the South Carolina primary, lost whatever chance he had of winning the nomination by suggesting that the Constitution should be amended to conform with “the Bible.” As Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund pointed...

With John McCain and Mitt Romney in a statistical tie there, Floridians are voting in their state’s presidential primary. Concerns about the national economy have increased in recent weeks. In the face of these concerns, Romney has been touting his supposed superior capacity to deal with economic issues because of his business background. So far as I can recall, only three US presidents have spent major portions of their adult lives in business: Herbert Hoover and the two Bushes. Hoover...

Unless Rudy Giuliani pulls off a Florida surprise in next Tuesday’s primary, there are now three Republicans with some chance of winning their party’s presidential nomination: John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. Recently, I speculated on who might be the vice presidential running mates of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the event that one of them becomes the Democratic nominee for president. But what about the remaining Republican contenders? Each would have their own particular...

Then, hey, what’s not to like? The difficulty of dealing with a candidate like Mitt Romney, who reminds me less of his laudable father, the late Michigan governor George Romney and more of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, is that he can baldly misrepresent the facts about himself and others, something he’s done repeatedly in this election cycle, and affect wounded rectitude when he gets called to the carpet for it. I don’t support any of the candidates now running for president...

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was scheduled to deliver one more speech during his tour of Texas. It was to have been given after he rode in the motorcade in which he ultimately died, felled by Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullets. In the speech, Kennedy was going to speak of the life and death struggle between the United States and the free world, on the one hand, and Soviet totalitarianism on the other. Kennedy, like his immediate predecessors Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and...

An irony of former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson’s now-defunct bid for the Republican presidential nomination is that it fell victim to packaging, both that practiced by rival campaigns and that not practiced by his own campaign. The phlegmatic Thompson was, prior to his entry into the Republican field late last year, cast by some Republicans as Ronald Reagan redux, a man with conservative views, the communication skills of a seasoned actor, and improbably, a sunny disposition. It turned out...

John Adams, the second president of the United States was, as far as I can determine, the first person to observe that “facts are stubborn things.” The observation may be true. But Adams’ insistence on looking only at the facts may partially explain why he was a one-term president denied re-election in 1800 and was, until David McCullough published a winsome biography of Adams several years ago, he was the most forgotten of the Founding Fathers. In politics, perceptions are even...

Should either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton secure the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, each would face an important challenge in the selection of a vice presidential running mate. The stakes would be high in either scenario. Clinton would need to make a choice that gains something like positive acclimation from the 45 to 48% of the electorate who say they will not vote for her under any circumstances. A few percentage points-worth of voters from this category might be all Clinton...

Going into the 1972 campaign to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, the acknowledged Dem frontrunner was Maine’s senator, Edmund Muskie. Muskie had wowed the country four years before as Hubert Humphrey’s vice presidential running mate with his soft-spoken eloquence. But it wasn’t to be. First, came defeat for Muskie in the Iowa caucuses. Anti-Vietnam War senator George McGovern, piggybacking off of his chairmanship of the Democratic party committee that had...

I thought that Barack Obama would beat Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire today…and handily. That wasn’t to be. Why? Apparently, female voters went for Clinton in a big way today. But the reason for that isn’t manifestly obvious to me. My wife went to dinner tonight with two other women, all college educated baby boomers. My wife, for one, is ready to vote for a Democratic candidate this year. But all three of the women, as well as all of the college-educated baby boomer women with...

New Hampshire’s Republican primary was always a must-win for Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Now that it’s clear that Romney is going to finish a distant second behind Arizona’s senator, John McCain, Romney’s campaign is all but over. But McCain’s win in the Granite State will say the same thing that Mike Huckabee’s win in Iowa four days ago said: Republican voters either want more choices (which they won’t get) or they want more chances to choose (which...