Times could not be tougher for the John McCain-Sarah Palin punditocracy. It’s bad enough that the approval rating of George W. Bush, their hero of the last eight years, has reached a historic low. And, inconveniently for these Bubba-Bashers, Bill Clinton ended his second term with a robust 70 percent rating despite lying about sex. Or that the revolution fostered by Ronald Reagan, their hero of the last century, has been sacrificed at the altar of greed through a deregulation movement nurtured...

The Bush administration’s refusal to follow the rule of law on a wide range of issues is by now monumental, but it nevertheless is shocking that despite three Supreme Court rulings striking down key aspects of its extralegal system for detainees at Guantánamo Bay, it continues to argue that it’s all a big misunderstanding. The push-back is part of a larger strategy for George Bush, a man equal parts arrogant and cowardly: Major decisions, whether they concern Iraq, Afghanistan or the...

And so in the first week of the last full month of the 2008 presidential campaign, a desperate John McCain has sent Sarah Paln back to the well to try to exploit the long-ago and passing relationship between Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground fugitive foot soldier, and Barack Obama. This unholy alliance is back in the news not because of new revelations. We’re still stuck where we were months ago. That is that Obama, in his rookie run for the Illinois Senate, attended a fundraiser...

I once had a dream in which two lions of classical music played the leading roles — pianist Martha Argerich and conductor Charles Dutoit. The dream was set in the kitchen of a Mediterranean villa. Dutoit was backing out of the room as Argerich threw china plates from a sideboard at him. They missed their mark and only feelings seem to have been hurt. I know not whether Argerich and Dutoit were married in my dream, but once upon a time they were in real life and so my nocturnal interlude involving...

My capacity for being surprised has somehow endured despite writing thousands of news stories, commentaries and blog posts about pretty much everything from the fact that pigs really can fly (in reserved USAir seats) to O.J. Simpson being acquitted for murder (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary). And so it is with signs that Barack Obama may be on the verge of blowing out John McCain. This outcome, which if it is sustained would easily rank atop a fairly hefty list of surprises in the...

Most of the attention is focused on tonight’s vice-presidential debate, which is shaping up to be the anticlimactic event of the campaign season. This is because it will take a performance even sorrier than those Sarah Palin already has delivered for her to “lose” to Joe Biden, while anything less than rampant incoherence will be spun as a “big win.” While I will have one eye on the debate and another on the National League Division Series, my heart will be with the...

Props to New York Times columnist David Brooks for the divine turn of phrase in the headline above. Props to House Republicans for not only confusing talk radio with reality, but being so maliciously partisan that they preferred to set up Democrats for being blamed for a Wall Street bailout gone awry than to reach across the aisle to help hammer out a deal, no matter how flawed, that might forestall a deepening financial crisis. The proof that these Republicans were much more interested in acting...

With Election Day five weeks away, here is the state of the game in the presidential race: * Saturday Night Live‘s Tina Fey is more qualified to face Joe Biden in Thursday’s vice-presidential debate than Sarah Palin is. * Some six percent of voters tell pollsters that they will not vote for Obama because of his skin color, but the number probably is higher. * John McCain needs a game-changer but has painted himself into a very tight corner because he continues to run a campaign that...

It comes as no surprise that there was a steady drumbeat of partisan politics in the drafting of the $700 billion financial bailout plan that was defeated this afternoon largely because of defiant House Republicans. But both parties turned up the vitriol in the wake of the stunning no-confidence vote in President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and global markets dutifully reacted. As one leading economic light wrote, “Yes, Virginia, this is a crash.” As the following summary...

The first of Paul Newman’s extraordinary 10 Academy Award nominations was for his superb portrayal of Brick Pollitt, the alcoholic former football star and under-performing husband, in the screen version of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I hadn’t realized until Newman‘s passing at age 83 on Friday that, of his many roles, this had become my favorite over the years, in part because of the powerful interplay between Brick and wife Maggie “The Cat” Pollitt,...

“This really is pathetic. . . . Anyone who has been to high school immediately recognizes the terror of facing a pop quiz or an oral exam when you just have no idea what you’re talking about.” — JAMES FALLOWS The estimable Mr. Fallows does not choose his words lightly and he may have spent more time in Alaska than I have. But being of proximate ages, we both surely have met our share of people who behind their attractive and earnest exteriors are lightweights. People who...

I had forgotten about how much I dislike campaign debates. Not because they aren’t important. Last night’s certainly was because it was a “crucial face off” minus only a drum-roll intro between an experienced political icon about whom we know so much and a relative newcomer about whom we know so little. (The same certainly will be true of the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate if Sarah Palin doesn’t announce that she is suspending campaigning to rush back to Juneau because...

UPDATE: Blaming Barack Obama and Congress, in other words everyone but himself for the failure of his latest and boldest attempt to game voters, John McCain has announced that he will be in Mississippi tonight for the first presidential debate. McCain reversed field after having declared that he couldn’t face off against Barack Obama unless a deal was reached on the Wall Street financial aid bailout. A campaign spokesman cited progress in bailout negotiations as the reason McCain relented, but...

The familiar frat boy smirk was absent when George Bush went before the nation last night to cry wolf. The man speaking from the White House had recently managed the feat of polling disapproval ratings lower than Richard Nixon during the week before he resigned, while the people objecting most vociferously to the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout plan being engineered by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the de facto president of the hour, were conservative Republicans. Representative Jeb Hensarling...

As noted here, last week was the game changer in the 2008 presidential campaign and that finally seems to have sunk in this afternoon as John McCain announced that he was suspending campaigning to help fix the economy, urged Barack Obama to do the same and, oh, wants to hold off on that first debate. The McCain-Sarah Palin campaign is imploding. After campaign spokesmouths criticized one national poll earlier in the day showing Obama and Joe Biden pulling away as an outlier, Fox News‘ own...

The murder of any police officer is an outrage, but when Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald yesterday became the fourth Philadelphia cop to be gunned down in 11 months, the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone the presidential campaign, seemed ever more like abstractions. McDonald, a star athlete in high school and eight-year veteran of the force, was widely-admired. The 30-year-old bachelor had bought and lived in the house in the Morrell Park neighborhood where...

I feel more than justified in having been harshly-critical of mainstream media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign from the jump because I know of what I speak: This is my ninth campaign as a reporter, editor and now blogger. But that does not explain, let alone forgive, John McCain’s war on the news media — from bristling about being called out on his serial lies to denying any and all access to Sarah Palin that is not carefully-scripted to the big guy’s own disappearing...

(1.) It’s no surprise that senior citizens are among the most vocal opponents of the $700 billion financial bailout plan. Only they can recall first hand the privations of the Great Depression, the last great systemic collapse of American financial institutions. (2.) Efforts by both Republicans and Democrats to the contrary, the meltdown does not have partisan roots. Both parties must share in the blame. (3.) Some shameless commentators are hinting that it’s all the fault of colored...

George has left the reservation and for good measure has slammed the door on the way out. But at least John will always have Rush.

As a very grown-up 18 year old (or so I thought), I traveled to New York City alone for the first time during my senior year in high school. Some 40 years later, I vaguely recall getting off a Trailways bus at the Port Authority and walking out into the teeming throngs on 42nd Street. I lunched on a freshly-sliced roast beef sandwich at an Irish pub near Madison Square Garden and washed it down with my inaugural English ale. I dropped some pocket change into the open guitar case of the first street...

John McCain’s last media availability was on August 13. Sarah Palin has not had a media availability in the 25 days since she burst on the national scene and has sat for only two interviews, one with ABC News at which she took offense because she was asked a few tough questions and one with the ever-indulgent Fox News that was a scripted love feast. The Palin Cone of Silence shtick got old after a couple of weeks because it made light of a situation that is decidedly unfunny: The Republican...

The more I try to digest the $700 billion taxpayer bailout of failing financial institutions proposed over the weekend by the Bush administration the greater my chest pains become. Other than its aim — to buy up distressed mortage-related assets — there is nothing to like about it and much to fear. The prescient Kevin Phillips, the former Republican strategist, explains to Bill Moyers why we should be frightened — very frightened. Hat tip to Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture

I’m not buying into rumors that Sarah Palin is on the way out. If John McCain can’t admit that he misheard an interviewer regarding Spain and its premier there is no way in Hell that he’s going to acknowledge that picking the vetting-free Alaska governor as a running mate is turning out to be a disaster of enormous magnitude. To wit: Palin has cancelled fundraisers in California and Washington state and canceled two rallies in Florida and one in Virginia. Meanwhile, Palin’s...

McCain came home a hero, but has made a mockery of those who didn’t. I have long been puzzled by the troubled relationship that John McCain, a war hero by virtue of his five-and-a-half year incarceration in a North Vietnamese POW camp, has had with veterans in general and Vietnam veterans in particular. The friction has typically been over medical benefits and expanding the GI Bill, but McCain also has a dirty little secret when it comes to his fellow Vietnam era POWs and MIAs. While he has...

We have lost control. We cannot stabilize the dollar. We cannot control commodity prices. — BEN BERNANKE While, as an American taxpayer, I am extremely proud to now own an insurance company and plan to lower everyone’s rates just as soon as I have a chance, the ongoing economic crisis has a different — and decidedly creepy — feel to it than those in the recent past. Perhaps the last eight years of deregulation, rampant greed and an epidemic of book-cooking has bludgeoned...