Roundup: Media's Take

Ronald Kessler: Obama's Mythology About Pastor Wright

[New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of www.Newsmax.com , from which this story was adapted.] In his speech on race, Barack Obama tried to explain away his longtime minister's denunciations of America by saying that for blacks of his generation, memories of"humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away." But an examination by Newsmax of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s background reveals that Obama's characterization of his upbringing

Tim Hames: Hillary as Lincoln? Barack as Lee?

The bloodiest and most significant battle of the American Civil War took place in Pennsylvania. At the outset of that conflict, the forces of the North - greater in number and better armed - were regarded as the overwhelming favourites to win the struggle. Yet they were outsmarted by the charismatic General Robert E. Lee, who proved to be more imaginative in the field, inspiring passionate loyalty in his Confederate soldiers. A bemused Abraham Lincoln was reduced to hiring and firin

Joan Vennochi: Obama's patriotism

[Joan Vennochi is a Globe columnist.] BARACK OBAMA believes his patriotism can't be challenged. Maybe he should talk to Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry. 'I am absolutely confident that during the general election that when I'm in a debate with John McCain, people are not going to be questioning my patriotism, they are going to be questioning how can you make people's lives a little better,' declared Obama during last week's contentious debate with Hillary Clint

David R. Stokes: When Kennedy debated Nixon in ... 1947!

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] Presidential debates, especially the intra-party variety we are witnessing these days, are frequent to the point of becoming common place, if not benign. They seem to prove what Marshall McLuhan said about medium equaling message. The recent gotcha-fest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could make even the wildest political animal long for the days when debates were fewer and farther between. O

John Taylor: “Hillary Milhous Clinton”

[Mr. Taylor is the executive director of the Nixon Library.] Andrew Sullivan writes that Sen. Clinton has become Richard Nixon in 1968. What prompted his comment was a Clinton campaign phone call in which aides stressed Sen. Obama’s connection with William Ay

Marc Cooper: Hillary And The Commies

During Wednesday night's Pennsylvania debate, George Stephanopoulos didn't flinch from trying to smear Barack Obama by association with former 60's radical Bill Ayers. Too bad George didn't ask Hillary about her own summer spent working for a law firm run by Communists. The facts: Obama met with former Weather Underground radical Ayers and his wife, former 60's SDS leader Bernardine Dohrn, at a 1995 Chicago meeting. From 1999-2002, Obama served on the board of a charity organization

Paul Rogat Loeb: Letter to Hillary ... Remember When John McCain Slimed Your Daughter

[Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, named the #3 political book of 2004 by the History Channel and the American Book Association. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.paulloeb.org To receive his articles directly email sympa@lists.onenw.org with the subject line: subscribe pa

Nikolas Gvosdev: Reagan Plagiarized

[Nikolas Gvosdev is editor of The National Interest.] With Senator Barack Obama’s pledge to conduct a foreign policy that would be “sometimes like Ronald Reagan’s,” and Senator John McCain’s description of himself as a “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution,” the iconic shadow of the fortieth president of the United States continues to fall on American politics, twenty years after he left office. Most Republicans—and many Democrats (some more reluctantly than others) pr

Humberto Fontova: Former JFK Speechwriter Joins Obama. Yeah?

[Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him." Visit www.hfontova.com.] JFK called Ted Sorensen his “intellectual blood-bank.” No presidential speechwriter has ever earned such a tribute. Now the 80-year-old Sorensen has jumped aboard the Obama campaign as an enthusiastic adviser. "Senator Obama is the one candidate who can restore America's moral authority a

E.J.Dionne: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, working hard to elect John McCain

[E.J. Dionne, Jr. is the author of the recently published Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right. He is a Washington Post columnist, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a professor at Georgetown University. ]The Democratic presidential candidates are doing a splendid job helping John McCain get to the White House. Barack Obama violated two elementary rules of political campaigning. A candidate should never play the role of a political sc

John B. Judis: Barack Obama's going to be the bitter one at the end of this

Some liberal commentators have downplayed the effect of Barack Obama's fundraising speech at a San Francisco fundraiser last week. But that's wishful thinking. Along with the revelations about Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright, his remarks in San Francisco will haunt him not only in the upcoming primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but also in the general election against John McCain, assuming he gets the Democratic nomination. To win in November, a Democrat

David Paul Kuhn: Obama as San Fran Liberal Elitist

[David Paul Kuhn, a Politico.com senior political writer, is author of the The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma.] It's difficult to underestimate the enduring impact of Barack Obama's "bitter" remark. The day after John Kerry blurted that he "actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" Vice President Dick Cheney ripped into the Democratic nominee and GOP strategists were already envisioning a new ad featuring the gaffe, i

Don Bohning & Jack Hawkins: Kennedy, Bush made similar mistakes in Cuba, Iraq

[Don Bohning is a former Miami Herald Latin America Editor and author of ''The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965.'' Jack Hawkins, USMC (Ret.), is a World War II prisoner of war. He is the author of ''Never Say Die,'' the story of his experiences as a POW, his escape from the Japanese camps and his eventual rescue by an American submarine.] Don Bohning: I met Jack Hawkins, now 91, for the first time in the fall of 1996 while researching my book, ''Th

Buzz Bissinger: Time to end the Olympics

[Buzz Bissinger is the author of “Friday Night Lights” and “Three Nights in August.”] IN 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, having refused the military and political careers typical of a French aristocrat, settled upon the revival of the Olympic Games as his life’s work. He saw sport as a higher calling, a religion. And he saw the Olympics as an event that would enhance and heighten moral virtue: “May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its

Sidney Blumenthal: Dick Cheney was never a "grown-up"

[Editor's note: This article is excerpted by permission from the 2008 edition of "The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power," published this month by Union Square Press, along with a new book, "The Strange Death of Republican America."]

Max Boot: The Secret History of Neoconservatism

The furor over the supposedly perfidious influence of “neocons” in the making of Bush foreign policy seems to have died down a bit. But it will nevertheless remain part of the lasting legend about this administration. Bob Kagan, one of our foremost foreign policy sages, has a must-read article on the subject in the latest issue of Lawrence Kaplan’s new foreign policy quarterly, World Affairs. Kagan makes many valuable points, but in essence his argument is that there is absolutely n

Patrick Cockburn: Petraeus's Ghost

[Patrick Cockburn is the Iraq correspondent for The Independent in London. He has visited Iraq countless times since 1977 and was recipient of the 2004 Martha Gellhorn Prize for war reporting as well as the 2006 James Cameron Memorial Award. His book The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq, was short-listed for a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007. This essay is the last chapter in his new book, M

R.H. Lossin: Iraq's Ruined Library Soldiers On

[R.H. Lossin is a librarian and writer in Brooklyn, New York.] The brutalities of the Iraq war accumulate so fast it is difficult to keep track. But in this season of fifth-year anniversaries, one largely forgotten crime demands to be recalled, in part because it relates directly to the politics of memory itself. Five years ago this week, US troops stood by as looters sacked the Iraq National Library and Archives (INLA)--one of the oldest and most used in the world. In Arab countrie

Robert Kagan: The End of the End of History

[Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund. His new book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, will be published by Knopf later this month.] In the early 1990s, optimism was understandable. The collapse of the communist empire and the apparent embrace of democracy by Russia seemed to augur a new era of global convergence. The great adversaries of the Cold War suddenly shared

John H. Taylor: Comparing Bush with Nixon

[John H. Taylor, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation, which opened the private Nixon Library in 1990.] In a recent survey, President Bush ’s negatives outnumbered RN’s. Time for some perspective on the underdogs. First, a list of GWB’s accomplishments from a friend who avoids public political commentary, then a list I compiled last year of RN’s:President Bush * Standing up to the right on th