Premature Adulation

I’m a big Obama fan.  In fact, I admire President Obama more after 10 months in office than I did when he was candidate Obama.  He has been the kind of president I think we need in this very, very difficult time and I am glad that he’s the one wrestling with how many troops [...]

The Bully Pulpit…

It’s good to be king.
One of the great advantages of being president is the ability to nudge the national discussion in whatever direction you choose.  As President Obama spoke to Wall Street today, that ability was on full display on every cable news feed except the Weather Channel.
John Boehner is probably speaking somewhere right now.  [...]

Dr. Spin

Just because you have the opportunity to get lots of media attention doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea to get lots of media attention.
Case in point: With the President coming to Minnesota tomorrow, Governor Pawlenty could lay low for one day, but that would leave him out of the limelight. Or [...]

Obama Not A Mama Last Night

In the past we’ve discussed linguist George Lakoff’s writings about Republicans being very disciplined about framing themselves as strict fathers of the national family and Democrats as overly permissive mommies. That daddy framing, the theory goes, is appealing to many voters who are looking for a leader to keep them secure and safe, like [...]

The Revised DIO Index

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.“
G.K. Chesterton

Count me among the Progressives, I guess.
A couple of weeks ago I unveiled the “Days In Office” or DIO Index as [...]

The DIO Index

Before the right gets a little too excited about declaring the Obama administration a failure, I’d like to introduce the “DIO Index” to remind all of us – left, right and center – that it might be just a little premature to call the game yet.
The DIO – Days in Office – is a simple [...]

Obama’s Inaugural Address Left Me In My Chair

How do you think President Obama (and ain’t that a kick to say?) did in his inaugural address?
I think it was too often too flat. Look, the guy could have read the DC phone book and I’d still be thrilled he’s president. His campaign, his victory, who he is, how he knows America is about [...]

44th president makes 1st mistake

Watching all the pomp and circumstance of a formal hand-over o power excites the political geek in me, but one bit of circumstance irked the journalistic fact-checker in me.
In his inaugural address, President Obama said, near the beginning, “Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.”
Yes, at the time, he had already taken the oath, [...]

Brand Management

If you are Barack Obama, surely nothing would feel better than to see Senator Joe Lieberman (?-CT) stripped of power by the Democratic Party. After all, the guy spoke against Obama at the other party’s convention, belittled him at every turn, called him a socialist, and served as the official on-stage McCain-Palin bobblehead at [...]

Barack, behind the scenes

You might as well get a divorce and disown the kids now. Newsweek’s “we promise not to report it until after the election” story is going to take a while to read, but if you’re like me, you probably won’t be able to help yourself.
I’m a sucker for the “inside baseball” stuff, and there’s a [...]