Barack Obama is increasingly embodying the “old politics” he says he will overturn. The most recent example is his campaign's effort to distance Obama from comments he made last July. When asked if he would be willing to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea “without precondition” during the first

Senator McCain's long-time adviser Mark Salter has penned an outstanding letter to Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, responding to that magazine's paean to Senator Obama. Few people are fortunate enough to receive the kind of love and tenderness we find in the Newsweek story. It is especially notable for two things. The first is that

Last week I was in London attending a Global Leadership Forum, sponsored by the Royal United Services Institute, the Princeton Project on National Security, Newsweek International, and Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP. The attendees–from both the United States and Europe–included academics, scholars, journalists, diplomatic advisers and others who inhabit the foreign policy world. The event was

The extraordinary public feud between Senator Barack Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. would be an enormous threat to any candidate running for president, but it is particularly dangerous to Obama. The reason is twofold. Sen. Obama, because he is such a new figure on the American political scene, is largely undefined. People certainly

In a recent article in the Financial Times, Clive Crook wrote about the fiscal consequences of the Bush administration. According to Crook, “With ill-designed tax cuts and reeling indiscipline on spending (partly, but not only, because of the war) the Bush Administration turned this [surplus] into a deficit.” He wrote about the “fiscal incontinence of

In his appearance on Meet the Press on Sunday E.J. Dionne, Jr. said this: Hillary Clinton is running as the tough fighter, and if Obama doesn't show Democrats that he can be a tough fighter against the Republican attack machine, so-called, but in fact it is, then, you know, Democrats are going to pull back

Senator Barack Obama finds himself in the midst of a controversy in the aftermath of comments that he made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6, during which he explained his difficulty appealing to working-class voters in Pennsylvania. He said, “It's not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or

In his latest column, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes about the testimonies of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker and Iraq more broadly. It's worth examining what Dionne said. According to Dionne, The bottom line of the testimony this week from Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is that even after the surge,

On Friday I wrote a response to Joe Klein's most recent Time column — and apparently Joe didn't like it very much. On Sunday he wrote not one but two responses to my posting. They are worth unpacking.   1. Klein refers to me as the “former chief White House propagandist for the Iraq war”

I still remember the call. My White House colleague Dan Bartlett called me on a Friday morning five years ago today to inform me that Michael Kelly, whom I had come to know over the years and who was embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, had died. I reacted with disbelief. I muttered