When the Surge is all you got, as John McCain does, you stretch its time frame a bit to include as much good news as possible. (Next up: without the Surge, there would have been no polio vaccine!) That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
Fred Hiatt on Iraqis’ thorough opposition to Obama’s embrace of defeat.
In all candor, the Post’s news reporting is so good. It must be an embarrassment for the reporters to have such a dead-ender running the editorial page. The tendentiousness, special pleading and denial now transcend farce. It’s an embarrassment.
The reckless inexperience of Obama is now contained within the yawning gap between Obama’s plan for 16th months and the Iraqis’ plan for as long as 23 months.
Dean Baker is looking for legitimate reasons for the federal government to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders.
It’s lucky for McCain that Barack Obama is the one with a hubris problem. Otherwise, this McCain poster in support of his campaign to be elected God might raise some eyebrows …
TPMmuckraker has obtained written answers from Karl Rove to questions posed to him by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) about the suspected politically-motivated prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.
Says Rove repeatedly in response to a list of 14 questions from Smith, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee:
I have never communicated, either directly or indirectly, with Justice Department or Alabama officials about the investigation, indictment, potential prosecution, prosecution, conviction, or sentencing of Governor Siegelman, or about any other matter related to his case, nor have I asked any other individual to communicate about these matters on my behalf. I have never attempted, either directly or indirectly, to influence these matters.
M.J. Rosenberg: Turns out you’re a better politician when you know what you’re talking about.
In the past week John McCain and his surrogates have done their best to focus the entire McCain-Obama debate on the question of which candidate was right about the troop surge in Iraq. So it was a little surprising to see McCain on the CBS Evening News last night get a basic historical fact about the surge so plainly wrong …
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
Late Update: And if you do question McCain’s version of history, all you’re doing is trying to steal the credit the troops deserve, a McCain surrogate claims.
The whole thing is good. But this is my favorite graf from Fred Kaplan’s Slate article about McCain’s foreign policy ‘experience’ …
It may be time to reassess this narrative’s premise–or to abandon it altogether and simply examine the evidence before us. Quite apart from the gaffes, in formal prepared speeches, McCain has proposed certain actions and policies that raise serious questions about his suitability for the highest office. As president, he has said, he would boot Russia out of the G-8 on the grounds that its leaders don’t share the West’s values. He would form an international “League of Democracy” as a united front against the forces of autocracy and terror. And though it’s not exactly a stated policy, he continues to employ as his foreign-policy adviser an outspoken, second-tier neoconservative named Randy Scheunemann, who coined the term “rogue-state rollback” and still prescribes it as sound policy.
