Roger Ailes for President?!
Topping Memeorandum is Mike Allen's wild speculation for Politico about a presidential run by Roger Ailes. Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO. "Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that's what we need now," says one ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 23, 2009 17:25
A Case for Humility in Afghanistan?
Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan: To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 18, 2009 10:50
Biden Right on AfPak
Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan. The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas' Newsweek piece on "A Day in the Life of Joe Biden" (HTML title: "Joe Biden, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 15, 2009 16:24
77% Oklahoma High School Students Can’t Name 1st President?
A recent survey of Oklahoma public high school students found that the overwhelming majority can't answer even simple questions about U.S. government and history. A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens. About 92 percent of the people ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 18, 2009 07:19
Dick Cheney’s Tell-All Book
Dick Cheney is breaking the mold on how recently-departed vice presidents act. First, he immediately went into attack mode against President Obama. Now, he's going after President Bush, too. Bart Gelman for WaPo: Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 13, 2009 07:42
Bush on Nation Building
In a sidebar on the Iraq War casualty predictions post, regular commenter Odograph observes, "I think 'Bush was famously against nation-building' is a retroactive political claim." Not at all. While it's hard to imagine in hindsight, Candidate Bush ran against nation building and promised a "more humble foreign policy." Remember, Realist Condi Rice was his chief foreign policy advisor during the campaign ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 17, 2009 09:04
Cheney Ordered CIA Concealment
An amusing headline from NYT: "Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project." I mean, obviously, Cheney is going to be linked. He's everyone's favorite evil mastermind. The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 12, 2009 08:20
Sarah Palin’s Toenails
Huffington Post is catching some grief over a post by Anya Strzemien titled "Sarah Palin's Toenails: What's Painted On Them? (PHOTOS, POLL)." Apparently, the Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential nominee had some manner of decorative adornment on her nails which were in display in some orange strappy sandals: While some are taking HuffPo to task for journalistic silliness and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 9, 2009 14:30
Tom Ridge Maryland Resident, Pennsylvanian?
Taegan Goddard passes on word that Tom Ridge, once Pennsylvania's governor and putatively contemplating running for Arlen Specter's seat representing that state in the Senate, is a resident of Maryland for the purposes of federal tax and lobbying filings. Do these sort of things matter in statewide elections? Is anyone otherwise disposed to vote for Ridge going to be dissuaded by ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 5, 2009 14:51
Joe Biden: Avoid Airplanes!
Rebecca Frankel collects Joe Biden's Top Five Political Gaffes, which make for an amusing list. She rightly gives top honors to Biden's comments on swine flu. In case you missed it (I'm catching up a bit myself), Biden said this Thursday morning: Appearing on NBC's "Today Show," Biden said he has already advised his family to avoid traveling in small spaces. "I ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 2, 2009 08:00
Ending the Vice Presidency II
Jeremy Lott's attempted response to my response piece on "Ending the Vice Presidency" was, for some odd reason*, rejected altogether by my commenting system. Rather than pasting them into the comments of a post buried in the archives, I've done it below, with my original in blockquotes, followed by his retort in boldface, followed by my rejoinder, if any, in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 26, 2009 06:59
Ending the Vice Presidency
Sunday's WaPo put together a collection of half-baked ideas by smart folks, designed to generate controversy and discussion more so than shed serious light on policy ideas. Thomas Ricks' suggestion to close the service academies and war colleges got the most attention, overshadowing the abject silliness of Jeremy Lott's column advocating doing away with the vice presidency, an idea not ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 22, 2009 09:13
Lieberman as McCain’s Running Mate
Ben Smith quotes lawyer A.B. Culvahouse explaining legal obstacles to Joe Lieberman's having been John McCain's running mate. "Five states have sore loser statutes ... [making] it very difficult for someone who's not a member of the Republican Party to become the vice presidential nominee if they only switch parties to become a Republican shortly before the convention,' Culvahouse said in ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 18, 2009 06:27
Biden Dog Breeder: ‘It’s Been Horrific Since December’
Glenn Reynolds points to a story in a local Chester County, PA paper titled "Breeder Regrets Dog Sale to Biden." I clicked the link, expecting to find a story about Biden neglecting the pooch because he's too busy doing whatever it is that vice presidents do. Instead, it's a tale of what a royal pain in the ass it is to ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 11, 2009 07:25
Biden on ‘Global War on Terror’ – Video
Townhall's Greg Hengler seems pleased to have caught Vice President Biden in a contradiction of the Obama administration's new verbal policy eschewing the phrase "Global War on Terror." Hengler quips, "Maybe Biden just forgot the phrase 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'" Others reacting to this and aggregated at memeorandum seem to have watched said video and come away with the same conclusion. Ed ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 8, 2009 06:33
