Another Kennedy eulogy — this time by Andew Sullivan
He also worked across the aisle, helping George W Bush to pass his No Child Left Behind Act to improve school standards, joining with John McCain to forge a humane immigration reform. He was a senator able to be fiercely ideological and also fiercely pragmatic, able to develop friendships beyond politics – friendships that are the grease that makes the Senate work. He was a master of parliamentary procedures and the helm of a ship of highly skilled staffers. He was also, of course, a politician. Despite being a proponent of green energy, he single-handedly prevented the construction of a Read more…
Bill Clinton: The Survivor
The Survivor, by John Harris, has been one of the best of the presidential biographies I've read. I read recently that it was considered one of the most accurate books about what it felt like and what happened inside the Clinton White House by by some of his insiders. The book re-shaped many of my views of Clinton, with some wild swings in both directions. The Survivor is not like Woodward's "tick-tock" accounts (a phrase I learned in the book to describe the precisely chronological storytelling. Rather, it tackles topics by chapter, with the timeline roughly in place but with Read more…
Obama writes on health care in the NYT
Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick. via nytimes.com I am Read more…
Great Article on Obama’s Media Ubiquity
via nymag.com There’s an article in New York magazine about Obama’s media strategy of “ubiquity.” It mentions, among other things, that Obama’s given as many primetime press conferences as Bush did in his entire presidency, and that he’s also given more interviews already than any modern president. There’s a lot of interesting things in there about why he’s doing it, too. It’s a long 6 page article, but it’s a good one. It also has a very clever illustration (above). My favorite is the top left yellow image.
Bill O’Reilly Surprises
What he has achieved in his 48 years is simply astounding,” writes the Fox News host. “Consider the odds. The United States is a nation of more than 300 million citizens. Only one person is currently the Commander in Chief. That man had no fatherly guidance, is of mixed race, and had no family connections to guide him into the world of national politics. via cbsnews.com Bill O’Reilly, who gave a grudgingly good review of Obama after an interview last year, surprises again. I’m not saying the O’Reilly likes the guy. But still … surprising. (That seems to be the Read more…
The Getting-Things-Done President
it looks like Obama is having a checklist presidency. Yes, his agenda is being passed, but much of it feels compromised. The president appears to be delegating far too many details to Congress in order to keep Getting Things Done. via thebigmoney.com This article goes after Obama for being too focused on passing legislation than on passing “good” legislation. I think that that argument has some merit, so what I really want to say is that the article is a misreading of GTD. The goal of GTD is not to just cross things of the list. It’s to have something Read more…
Woodward’s Plan of Attack
I just finished Bob Woodward's in-depth chronology of the lead-up to the Iraq War, Plan of Attack. The book starts in 2001, shortly after a meeting on Afghanistan when Bush asks Rumsfeld to start looking at the current Iraq war plan, and ends on the first day of the war in March of 2003. It's based on documents, confidential sources, and interviews Woodward with Bush and Rumsfeld. Chronology really is the right word for it, too, as it's pretty matter-of-fact, with little embellishment. According to Wikipedia, in 2004 when the book came out, the Kerry campaign recommended the book as Read more…
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