Jul 04 2008 - Town Hall
by Rich Tucker
Clichés are generally tiresome, but they only become clichés by first being true. Perhaps the best cliché to explain this year’s presidential election would be, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
“Change” has been the buzzword throughout the election process, which seems to have begun around Nov. 3, 2004. The sad fact is that this would be the perfect election to bring about change. For the first time in generations, there’s no incumbent on the ballot on either side. And neither of the major party candidates owes his support to his party’s machine, since they were both dark horses at this time last year.
Oct 12 2008 - GOPUSA
by Chuck Muth
* First, a “Where’s Waldo?” question: Where’s the fighting John McCain candidate from 2000 who said he was going to “beat Al Gore like a drum”?
* Tonight’s debate made my blood boil and I think it’s time the American public said, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” No, I’m not talking about either of the candidates. I’m talking about the debates themselves.
* Every election cycle we get these stale, scripted glorified press conferences where the “rules” are determined by the candidates’ campaigns, not the voters who want to hear what they have to say. And according to the “rules,” the one thing the candidates aren’t ever seemingly allowed to do is…DEBATE his or her opponent. Hello?
Oct 12 2008 - Town Hall
by Ken Blackwell
Dear Mr. Schieffer:
You have an extraordinary opportunity that is rare in presidential politics. While every presidential debate is potentially pivotal, only rarely has one carried the potential that yours does to change the race in its closing days.
Both of the previous debates have been flawed. The first debate was supposed to be about foreign policy, but recent events led to the first half of the debate discussing the economy instead. The second debate was supposed to be a freewheeling townhall, but your colleague Tom Brokaw made it a stifling, over–structured affair that was anything but a townhall.
Oct 12 2008 - The Weekly Standard
by WILLIAM KRISTOL
It's been a dopey campaign. But they usually are. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt ran on balancing the budget and cutting government spending. In 1940, it was preserving U.S. neutrality in the European war. In 1960, on the cusp of a decade of fundamental change in race relations and the size and scope of the government, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon spent a lot of time debating a nonexistent missile gap and Quemoy and Matsu. In 2000, the issue of Islamic terrorism was barely mentioned by George W. Bush or Al Gore.
This isn't a criticism of America or of its democracy. Other countries are no better. And it's not as if our elites are any more far–seeing than our politicians. Election campaigns––like intellectual debates––tend to be past– and present–oriented. But sometimes the past and present are of limited use as guides to the future.
Oct 12 2008 - Town Hall
by David R. Stokes
With just a little more than three weeks to go before America goes to the polls to elect the next president, Barack Obama maintains a lead in the polls. To use a Richard Nixon phrase from election night in 1960, “if the trend continues…” he will be our next president. And he will most likely be working with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress.
But will the trend really continue? Can the momentum in this roller coaster race shift back to McCain? Might Obama be peaking too early?
Oct 11 2008 - Town Hall
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
For McCain to win this election (which he still can) the furor over the stock market will have to calm down so that popular attention can focus on Barack Obama. For all of the deluge of media that has engulfed the American people, they can only keep one subject on their mind. All media has only one focus at a time. And, if you are in the spotlight, you are almost certain to self–destruct.
Oct 11 2008 - Seattle Times
by E.J. DIONNE JR
WASHINGTON — Hope versus fear, new versus old: Barack Obama and John McCain have placed their bets. These are the terms on which the 2008 presidential campaign will be decided.
That's why it's unfair for political bystanders to attack Obama and McCain for offering few specifics as to how they'd fix an ailing economy. And it's foolish to ask them to jettison their campaign promises in order to pay homage to the God of Balanced Budgets.
Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That's enough.
Editor's Comments:
"Yes, the federal government faces a huge deficit, bloated during eight years in which many now crying out for fiscal responsibility put up little resistance when the administration started two wars and cut taxes at the same time. Where were the deficit hawks then?" E. J. shows his ignorance about taxes. Cutting tax rates is not what caused the deficit. Cutting taxes usually increases tax receipts; it is the spending, stupid. And we didn't start the wars, the Muslim extremists did. bbm
Oct 11 2008 - Town Hall
by Hugh Hewitt
Yes, of course it is.
Three weeks ago John McCain was ahead, and a furious attack on Sarah Palin was underway.
And Americans were several trillion dollars richer.
Our stocks will recover if the American economy, powered by democratic capitalism's relentless innovation and productivity, is allowed to work its magic again.
That is the record of our often disparaged but inevitably triumphant attachment to economic liberty.
Oct 11 2008 - Seattle PI
by MARGARET CARLSON
In campaigns as in life, traits that are liabilities when you're young can turn into major assets later on.
The chess–club member who flunked gym or the girl who doesn't give a thought to her wardrobe come up winners as adults because of the very qualities that once caused them pain: The clumsy dweeb starts a high–tech company. Plain Jane becomes a federal judge.
Early in his campaign, Barack Obama's most discussed weakness was a detached, even aloof manner depicted as proof of elitism. When Hillary Clinton morphed into a fiery populist downing shots and beers and gobbling the local fare, I urged him to get with the people. Hoist a pint. Have a doughnut, at least. He didn't heed my advice.
As the 2008 campaign closes and the U.S. finds itself battered by an economic storm, Obama's unflappable demeanor has a new name. It's called a presidential temperament.
Oct 11 2008 - Seattle PI
by JOAN VENNOCHI
God bless America, where it's always the other guy's fault.
Plucked from their mansions to explain the demise of once–flush financial institutions, Wall Street executives chose to forget they flushed their respective companies down the toilet. Instead, they are blaming government, the media and each other for their downfall.
The finger pointing isn't much different on the presidential campaign trail.
During Tuesday's town hall debate, Democrat Barack Obama blamed John McCain, his Republican opponent, for embracing deregulation and "the failed economic policies of the last eight years." McCain blamed Obama for "his cronies and his friends in Washington that went out and made all these risky loans..."
Oct 11 2008 - Seattle PI
by SCOT LEHIGH
Here's a nation so heretical I hardly dare voice it.
What if Barack Obama turns out to be the Old Gipper?
The new Old Gipper, that is.
Many a stalwart Republican knight has tried to don Reagan's storied mantle, of course.
George H.W. Bush ran on Reagan's legacy. Bob Dole obligingly pledged to be "another Ronald Reagan if that's what you want." Spurning the presidential patrimony of preppy Poppy, George W. Bush made the Gipper his model.
Oct 11 2008 - Town Hall
by Rich Tucker
Debate night in America. In a format designed to eliminate spontaneity and mistakes (so the leader in the polls can “win” by “not losing”), we watch perfectly dressed candidates present perfectly coached answers to perfectly predictable questions delivered by a “perfectly neutral” moderator.
Oct 10 2008 - Town Hall
by Paul Weyrich
One radio listener dubbed the second Presidential debate as a contest between the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Fred Mertz. Talk about boring. I had a difficult time keeping awake. Most pundits claimed the win for Senator Barack Hussein Obama. But many focus groups thought Senator John Sidney McCain, III had the edge. It was clear it was not a game changer. Many undecided voters said they still were undecided after the debate. This townhall format was supposed to benefit McCain but Obama looked just as comfortable as McCain. In reality it was not really a townhall format because moderator Tom Brokaw not only selected all questioners but also selected six e–mail questions from among thousands submitted.
Oct 10 2008 - Town Hall
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Two weeks after the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., John McCain and Sarah Palin were striding forward toward victory.
They had erased the eight–point lead Barack Obama had opened up in Denver and watched as one blue state after another moved into the toss–up category.
That is ancient history now.
Oct 10 2008 - Investor's Business Daily
by E.J. DIONNE JR.
Hope vs. fear, new vs. old: Barack Obama and John McCain have placed their bets. These are the terms on which the 2008 presidential campaign will be decided.
That's why it's unfair for political bystanders to attack Obama and McCain for offering few specifics as to how they'd fix an ailing economy. And it's foolish to ask them to jettison their campaign promises in order to pay homage to the God of Balanced Budgets.
Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That's enough.
Piles of prescriptions would be useless because this crisis is moving so fast.
Oct 10 2008 - Town Hall
by John Hawkins
Conservatives, liberals, and independents tend to have a different view of the world and all too often, pundits on the right and left end up preaching to the choir instead of putting out columns that make good sense to people who don't necessarily share our political views.
So today, I'd like to do something a little differently: I'd like to explain to the independents out there why they should want John McCain in the White House next year instead of Barack Obama.
Oct 10 2008 - Seattle PI
by THE INDEPENDENT
In this most unconventional of U.S. elections, now overshadowed by a financial crisis for the ages, an ancient truism of presidential politics is being overturned. John McCain is finding out that negative campaigning, a guaranteed winner for Republicans in elections past, is simply not working as it should in 2008.
Editor's Comments:
Keep believing that, liberals. bbm
Oct 10 2008 - Town Hall
by Paul Greenberg
When is a debate not a debate? When it’s televised, media–umpired, poll–monitored, spun to death and endlessly second–guessed. Then it’s less a debate than a spectator sport.
The rules of formal debate, with its scorecard of categories to judge, don’t apply. This is a combination quiz show, beauty pageant and sparring match in which talking points are repeated as if they were actual thoughts.
The whole country looks on, waiting for the clouds of rhetoric to part and give us, as they inevitably and unfortunately say, A Defining Moment. It’s got to be there somewhere, we tell ourselves, like a needle in a cliche stack.
Oct 10 2008 - Seattle PI
by BONNIE ERBE
I've been doing internal 180's this whole election season, bouncing from poll to contradictory poll and changing my assessment of which candidate was going to win the White House.
While I make no predictions for public consumption, in my own mind I've believed at different points that Sen. Barack Obama was going to win the White House when he dominated the Electoral College polls. Conversely, when Sen. John McCain was ahead, as recently as several weeks ago, I thought he would be our next president. Never have I found myself swinging back and forth and back and forth with such alacrity during a presidential run. It is truly head spinning.
Oct 10 2008 - Times Union, Albany NY
by Ellen Goodman
Unless you stayed up to the bitter end, you missed the last question. It came over the Internet from Peggy in Amherst, N.H., and, as Tom Brokaw warned at Tuesday night's debate, it had a certain "Zen–like" quality: "What don't you know and how will you learn it?"
This wasn't a trick question hurled at the men who would be president. The subtext was the shared anxiety that we are picking a president who will be making decisions in that "unknown" zone called the future.
"It's the challenges that you don't (expect) that end up consuming most of your time," responded Obama.
Oct 10 2008 - Town Hall
by Oliver North
WASHINGTON –– We're now into the 10th month of an election year, and the so–called mainstream media are on the lookout for an "October surprise." For those too young to remember, the term was coined by the potentates of the press to describe a nonevent: the belief of conspiracy theorists that Ronald Reagan somehow thwarted President Jimmy Carter from achieving the release of 52 American hostages being held in Tehran, Iran, before the 1980 election. It didn't happen; but that hasn't slaked the thirst of print and broadcast "journalists" and "commentators" for a sensational event that will sway voters in the month before an election. What many in the media either don't know or choose not to remember is that October has produced a lot of surprises for Americans.
