"Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again."Eric FehrnstromMarch 21, 2012It isn't too surprising, really, that Mitt Romney's rivals for the Republican nomination — and his other critics — have been getting some mileage out of Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom's unfortunate Etch A Sketch analogy.That analogy plays on what has been possibly the greatest concern conservatives have had about this particular candidate — that he isn't genuine.And it might have worked in Obama's favor, too...
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
America has made some pretty shrewd land acquisitions over the years — Manhattan, the Louisiana Purchase and so on.One of the best may have been the one that took place on this date in 1867 — when William Seward, secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, purchased Alaska from Russia for about 2 cents an acre.That doesn't sound like much — and, in 2012 dollars, it isn't — but it was the equivalent of $95 million in 2005 dollars. Clearly, it was a considerable sum in 1867, nothing to sneeze at — especially the bottom line, which...
Friday, March 23, 2012
Thirty–five years ago today, journalist David Frost and former President Richard Nixon sat down for the first of the Frost–Nixon interviews in Monarch Bay, Calif.The interviews were edited into four 90–minute programs that were broadcast in May 1977.After Nixon's resignation in August 1974, he more or less disappeared from public view for the next couple of years. His presidency was the subject of many books and articles in that time. His successor,...
Saturday, March 17, 2012
"Demjanjuk is essentially on trial not for anything he did, but simply for being at Sobibor. No specific criminal acts need be alleged, much less proved. Page through transcripts of previous Nazi trials and you'll find a rigorous focus on particulars, because that is what should be required to convict a defendant. No one in any such trial ever was convicted simply on the basis of being present at the scene."Scott RaabEsquire magazineAug. 11, 2010In...
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Nearly 3½ years ago, the Montgomery County, Maryland, government officials observed the fifth anniversary of a policy banning smoking in the county's restaurants and bars.It's been a long time since I was in Maryland, but I'd like to have that banner today. I'd hang it from my balcony, where it would be clearly visible to the cars that pass by.You see, I smoked my last cigarette five years ago today.I must say that I am proud of that achievement...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
"Wallace was getting 50 percent in the first scattered returns; the lead shrank in the first half–hour to 47 percent, then to the low 40s, and then stabilized at 42 percent. But the 42 percent had a profile — it was not simply the north and the piney woods rednecks that were voting for George Wallace."Theodore H. White"The Making of the President 1972"The history books tell us that George McGovern was nominated by the Democrats to run against Richard...
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Four years ago, I remember Mitt Romney taking a lot of grief from Southern journalists, both broadcast and print, over his efforts to appear to be one of us.I always felt that was a mistake on Romney's part. I didn't think it cost him the Republican nomination because I never really felt he was in the running for the nomination, anyway. But I felt it was a mistake that cost him some votes in the South.Folks from outside the South often make fun of...
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Republicans in one–fifth of the 50 states voted in primaries or caucuses yesterday.Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times insists that no "knockout punch" was delivered — and that may be so, but it is hardly surprising that someone at the Times, given the overwhelming advantage that left–leaning columnists enjoy there (and the fact that the Times' general editorial policies have favored the left for a long time), should feel that way.The Wall Street Journal, which is not a left–leaning publication, also is not convinced that Super Tuesday has given...
Monday, March 5, 2012
There's always a Super Tuesday in America's presidential politics — at least in modern times.Presidential primaries are, as I have mentioned here before, relatively new phenomena in American politics — historically speaking.Before Jimmy Carter made a point of entering every primary that was being held in 1976 (which caused a bit of a fuss back then), candidates would choose to enter some primaries and not to enter others.After Carter was elected...
Sunday, March 4, 2012
"It changed people's minds about me, of what kind of a guy I was. They were looking for a strong, steady man and here I was weak. I doubt whether I'm a candidate who could ever have won in this country this year. I'm a man for a country looking for a healer, not a country in protest."Ed MuskieAs quoted by Theodore H. White in "The Making of the President 1972"Accounts of the Watergate scandal and the Nixon presidency provide ample evidence of how the most prominent candidates for the Democrats' presidential nomination self–destructed, one by one,...
Saturday, March 3, 2012
That is what Sigmund Freud allegedly wrote or said to explain that not everything has a deeper meaning behind it.I haven't studied psychiatry in depth — just what I studied in college — but I know enough about it to know that an article of faith among practicing psychiatrists is the belief that there are no accidents in life, that there is always a profound reason for anything that happens, no matter how innocuous it may appear on the surface.I haven't...
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