Apropos of Josh’s post below, Richard Clarke discusses the series of recent foreign policy shifts from McCain and Bush — all toward the Obama position:

It’s that time of year.

TPM brings on a new class of interns each season. And we’re now taking applications for our Fall 2008 cycle. TPM interns are probably as intimately and rapidly involved in the preparation and production of news coverage as interns at any other news organization. And that ranges from work on the news section of the front page to research for our news blogs to video editing to bylined articles. Needless to say, this fall is going to have no shortage of political news. The application deadline is July 25th. To find out details for how to apply, click here.

Any thoughts on the reaction if Barack Obama had publicly broken the embargo on details and timing of Sen. McCain’s imminent visit to a war zone?

TPM’s David Kurtz and Ben Craw have done and are doing a string of great interviews from the Netroots Nation conference in Austin. And you can see all of them at the TPMtv website.

Just out from the McCain campaign …

ARLINGTON, VA — Today, former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm issued the following statement:

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country. That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country. To end this distraction and get on with the real debate, I hereby step down as Co-Chair of the McCain Campaign and join the growing number of rank-and-file McCain supporters.”

But is he still an advisor?

Late Update: It’s like parody. Seems he will still be advising McCain.

From Reuters:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months.

In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

You’ll recall that just a couple of weeks ago Maliki’s call for a withdrawal timetable was dismissed by the White House as a “transcription error.”

I guess McCain was indiscreet and misinformed.

The first leg of Obama’s world tour was to Afghanistan — not Iraq — although he stopped briefly in Kuwait on the way. He arrived in Kabul overnight U.S. time.

Late Update: The Obama campaign released an early pool report from the trip.

We’re watching Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Q&A right now with conference attendees. We’ll be interviewing Pelosi later this morning and hope to have the video of that interview posted this afternoon.

There’s also rumors of a surprise guest speaker here. Stay tuned.

Late Update: Al Gore will be appearing shortly.

Later Update: A stirring reception for Gore, as you might expect. We hope to snag him, too, for TPMtv.

It occurs to me watching Gore speak on global warming how stunted the political debate on climate change remains in this country. In less than six months, no matter who is elected, we’ll have a President who acknowledges the seriousness of the threat of climate change. We’ll finally have the opportunity — years if not decades overdue — to begin to piece together a legislative response to global warming. But think for a moment about how little discussion there is of what those legislative fixes ought to be.

Whoever is elected will not arrive in the Oval Office with a mandate on specific measures to take because there is no such public consensus or even emerging consensus. In fact, the debate on what to do and how to do it will only be then just beginning. That’s not to say that lobbyists for interested parties are not already well underway in preparing for that debate. They would not be very good at their jobs if they didn’t already have a pretty good idea of what legislation is likely to get passed on this issue in 2009.

When it comes right down to it, the campaign to deny the existence of global warming, to undermine the science, to slow-roll the political response has been wildly successful. Here is Gore, the world’s leading spokesperson on the issue, who began his speech here asking us to internalize the idea that the Arctic icecap is disappearing (rapidly), still being forced to be a clarion on the very existence of the problem. It’s sad.

As you know, David Kurtz and Ben Craw are doing a slew of interviews this weekend at the Netroots Nation conference in Austin. We’ve got a bunch of headliner interviews lined-up. But for my part I’m just as interested in the interviewers we’re doing with candidates from around the country. By and large these interviews aren’t going to generate big headlines. But they’re candidates who’s names you may have heard but who you likely don’t know too much about.

So in many ways these are the interviews I’m most interested in seeing. It’s a good opportunity to get a sense of who they are and take their measure. .

Here’s an interview we did with Jeff Merkley, who’s running for senate this year out in Oregon against Gordon Smith (R). So far it’s looking like a tight race …

See the rest of our interviews at TPMtv.com.

Ouch. This should sure make the next round of negotiations between Bush and Maliki a lot of fun. The German magazine Spiegel interviewed Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki who said that he supports Obama’s 16 month timetable approach.

“US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” said al Maliki “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

The Obama campaign’s Susan Rice just put out this statement crowing thanking Maliki for his support of the plan …

“Senator Obama welcomes Prime Minister Maliki’s support for a 16 month timeline for the redeployment of U.S combat brigades. This presents an important opportunity to transition to Iraqi responsibility, while restoring our military and increasing our commitment to finish the fight in Afghanistan.”

Maliki went on to say:

“Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business,” he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

Do keep an eye out for some ‘clarifications’ of Maliki’s stance. But as much as I suspect that this is a genuine characterization of Maliki’s views, we should not discount that his willingness to say this is also a recognition of the way the winds are blowing.