I knew I was losing it when I turned on the TV at 6:30 pm for the final roundup last night. That was way too early for anyone with a real life. Obama, McCain and Clinton wouldn’t speak for eons. Polls in Montana and South Dakota wouldn’t close for hours and here I was, with [...]

All the media hoopla over Scott McClellan’s book would lead someone to think that he had uncovered secret Bush-Cheney-Rove plans to nuke Iran. The most succinct comment on the tube came from Watergate specialist John Dean who said that the book corroborated what anyone but a Rip Van Winkle has known lo these years—the staging [...]

Of course Hillary Clinton won big in West Virginia. She was the only one who campaigned there. I waited and waited for somebody in television-land to take note of that fact, to put it in context, but waited in vain. The victory was reported as a triumph, although it was also indicated that according to [...]

“In American politics today, there is almost no serious discussion of how to reconcile the goals of expanded cross-border commerce and Third World development with that of maintaining high and egalitarian living standards in the United States and the other countries with decent social compacts,” Robert Kuttner wrote in The Squandering of America. “The official [...]

In the much-criticized Pennsylvania debate, a voter challenged Barack Obama in a videotaped comment: “I want to know if you believe in the American flag.” He doesn’t wear a flag pin, you know. His former minister takes America to task for its racist past. His wife says she’s never been so proud of America. They [...]

Where is Larry Spivak now that we need him? Alas, Lawrence E. Spivak, creator and founder of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and its best panelist, died in 1994 at the age of 93. As The New York Times said, Spivak was one of the first broadcasters to use panels of reporters (imagine!) to interview national [...]

Watching the candidates for the Democratic nomination at their debate the other night, I caught myself lapsing into the old adversarial journalistic habit of mind. When the ABC interlocutors jabbed at Obama and Senator Clinton then unsheathed her shiv, I wanted Obama to return the favor. He mentioned Clinton’s much-criticized 1992 remark that she preferred [...]

Dear Senator Clinton, I guess it’s natural for you to expect that women will support you out of loyalty to our gender and because we have long harbored the dream of seeing a woman president. If so, I assure you that you’re mistaken. Like other voters, we are inclined to choose a candidate we perceive [...]

While a rather ordinary day for campaign coverage, yesterday was a good one in which to examine the New York Times. Once one got over the whopper of a front page headline typo in some editions—“When Foreigners by (should be “buy”) the Factory”—there was an arresting lead story that shouted: “Top Clinton Aide Leaving His [...]

Today is the 40th anniversary of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In January, to mark his birthday, this country celebrates a day off and snippets of racial reconciliation in “I Have a Dream.” It would be fitting that on the day of his violent death, the country look to the pain in [...]