Roundup: Media's Take

Uri Avnery: Hottentot Morality

[Avnery is an Israeli-- historian, onetime Knesset member, dove, journalist, soldier.] "If he steals my cow, that is bad. If I steal his cow, that is good" - this moral rule was attributed by European racists to the Hottentots, an ancient tribe in Southern Africa. It's hard not to be reminded of this when the United States and the European countries cry out against Russia's recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two provinces which

George F. Will: Heepism vs. Elitism

... Now Americans are about to choose a president who—judging by political rhetoric, which responds to voters' expectations—is supposed to be an economic wizard, a national pastor, a Florence Nightingale in providing health care and a diplomat of Metternichian guile and Franciscan goodness. But Americans also are being plied and belabored with dueling warnings that the two presidential candidates from whom they must choose, both of them U.S. senators, are—Heaven forfend!—not common men.

Richard Reeves: Who is Prepared to be President? Nobody

Is Barack Obama prepared to be president? No. Neither is John McCain. I have written about 12 pounds of books on the presidency over the past 22 years, three long studies that focused on the day-to-day work of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. This is the most important thing I learned in doing that, a paragraph at the end of the introduction to "President Kennedy: Profile of Power": "John F. Kennedy was one of only 42 men who truly knew

Fareed Zakaria: The Georgia attack will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder

... The attack on Georgia will go down not as the dawn of a new era of Russian power but as a major strategic blunder. Look at what has happened. Russia has scared its neighboring states witless, driving them firmly into the arms of the West. For almost two years, Poland had been dragging its feet on the American proposal to deploy missile interceptors in that country as part of a continent wide shield (a few months ago public support for the shield varied between 15 and 25 percent). Within days

John Fund: Obama Should Come Clean On Ayers, Rezko And the Iraqi Billionaire

... Walking the rows of media outlets at the Denver convention, I had no trouble finding reporters who complained the campaign was secretive and evasive. Ben Smith of Politico.com has written about Team Obama's "pattern of rarely volunteering information or documents, even when relatively innocuous." Politico asked months ago if Mr. Obama had ever written anything for the Harvard Law Review as a student. The Obama campaign responded narrowly, with a Clintonesque statement that "as

Tom Baldwin: History? It’s enough to make you cry your eyelashes off

[Tom Baldwin is a Times journalist.] Whenever the Denver Broncos get a touchdown, a blonde woman dressed as a cowgirl charges across the pitch astride a white horse waving her arms furiously in celebration. It is doubtful, however, that their mile-high Invesco Field stadium has ever witnessed a spectacle or sent such a roar into the Rocky Mountain night sky as that which greeted Barack Obama. It was a pulsing, flag-waving, screaming, weeping, beachball-tossing, camera-

Daniel Finkelstein: Ten great Republican convention moments

[Daniel Finkelstein is Chief Leader Writer of The Times and writes a weekly column.] Ten great Republican convention moments Now that the Democrats are done, the Republicans are gearing up for their Minnesota moment. Here are ten of the most memorable Republican conventions. 1992 Republican Convention, Houston This convention kicked off a war, the culture war to be precise. Pat Buchanan's doctrinaire keynote address reverberated a

Dan Senor: Biden Wanted to Break Up Iraq

[Mr. Senor is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a founder of Rosemont Capital. He served as a senior adviser to the Coalition in Iraq and was based in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004.] At the Democratic convention, Joe Biden had the opportunity to showcase his foreign policy experience. Yet his principal and most recent foreign policy initiative -- his plan for the soft partition of Iraq -- was glaringly absent from his acceptance speech. When Barack Obama na

Dick Morris: A strategic opening for McCain

Many political campaigns run against the wrong candidate. The opportunity to pick on a vulnerable target is so tempting that they are lured into attacking someone who isn’t running. In 1992, the Republicans unleashed their convention barrage at Hillary and left Bill unscathed. In 1996, Dole still ran against Clinton the liberal and ignored the changes in his political positioning. Campaigns go after the flaming red cape, so glittering a target, and leave the matador alone. That’s wh

John B. Judis: Avoiding A Long, Disappointing Fall

The Barack Obama campaign has been floundering. If he had a lead in the polls in late June--and the summer polls are notoriously fickly--he clearly lost it by the convention's beginning. And so far, the convention--dominated, ironically, by the Clintons--has not particularly helped. Bill Clinton and Joe Biden performed quite well last night, but if Obama fails to deliver a spellbinding oration tonight, the Democrats could be in for a long and disappointing fall. Why is Obama in trou

Michael Nelson: If Obama loses, is racism to blame?

[Michael Nelson, a former editor of The Washington Monthly, is a professor of political science at Rhodes College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.] A conventional wisdom is forming to the effect that if Barack Obama loses the presidential election in November, white racism will be the cause. The reasoning runs as follows: The combination of economic anxiety, the unpopular war in Iraq, George W. Bush’s low approval

Victor Navasky: Making History at the Convention

[Victor Navasky was the magazine's editor from 1978 to 1995 and publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005.] Yesterday, last night and this morning it was all about Hillary, and she didn't let her supporters or her party down. Go (or, depending on where you stand, Welcome Back) Hillary! But while all eyes are on the podium, the election and the direction (of the country) may be determined by events and ideas under consideration outside the formal arena.

David R. Stokes: Obama’s Very Un-JFK Moment

[Mr. Stokes is the senior pastor of Fair Oaks Church in Fairfax, VA.] If Barack Obama winds up losing the election this November, most likely a significant portion of the blame will affix to his selection of a running mate. The issue will not have much of anything to do with Senator Joe Biden’s personality or performance. It will simply be a case of “what might have been” if Hillary Rodham Clinton had been placed on the ticket. In fact, the man who would be John F. Kennedy, who h

Ben Macintyre: Assassination ... the most grimly familiar tale in US history

[Ben Macintyre is a columnist writing for The Times newspaper.] A few months ago Doris Lessing, the novelist and Nobel laureate, was discussing the life-expectancy of Barack Obama, should he win the race to the White House: “He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president,” she mused. “They would kill him.” Lessing was roundly criticised for insensitivity, but in the light of the arrests in Colorado yesterday, her remarks now seem grimly presci

Scott McLemee: The End of the End of the End of History?

[Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.] One minor casualty of the recent conflict in Georgia was the doctrine of peace through McGlobalization — a belief first elaborated by Thomas Friedman in 1999, and left in ruins on August 8, when Russian troops moved into South Ossetia. “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s,” wrote Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Farrar,

Jeffrey Rosen: The Myth of Biden v. Bork

[Jeffrey Rosen is the author, most recently, of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”] WHEN Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands on the podium in Denver tonight as Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, conservatives of a certain age will see a bogeyman who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presided over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Those hearings are to conservatives what the Cli

Juan Williams: Uncles to the New China ... George Herbert Walker Bush and Henry Kissinger

Beijing, August 9 – Henry Kissinger is standing in the entry to the newly rebuilt Jianfu Palace inside the Forbidden City, once home to the Chinese emperor. The 85-year-old gets a greeting worthy of an emperor from Chinese political and business leaders. To Kissinger's right is another American imperial presence during these Olympics: 84-year-old former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. The senior Bush was the first U.S. liaison to China after Kissinger and President Nixon opened th

Jonathan Freedland: What Ted can teach Hillary

[Jonathan Freedland has been a columnist for the Guardian since 1997.] Every politician begins a speech with the words "It's wonderful to be here" – but it's rare for that sentence to be freighted with as much poignant meaning as it carried when uttered by Senator Teddy Kennedy at the Democratic convention in Denver on Monday. The mere fact of his presence on stage, just three months after his diagnosis of brain cancer, delighted and relieved the crowd at the

Susan Faludi: Second-Place Citizens (Re: Hillary's women supporters)

[Susan Faludi is the author, most recently, of “The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America.”] ... The despondency of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters — or their “vitriolic” and “rabid” wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it — has been the subject of perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don’t these dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right? Shouldn’t they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made

Ian Breen: Notes on Past Conventions

Since their inception in 1832, national political conventions have played an important but ever-evolving role in presidential elections. Over the years, changes in nominating procedures have lessened the political power of conventions, even as new broadcast technologies have increased their impact on voters. Four Atlantic articles spanning nearly one hundred years examine this changing role and lend perspective to the conventions taking place this election cycle. In"Presidential Nominatio