It was a spontaneous eruption of civic joy, an unrehearsed decision by more than 1,000 to gather in front of the White House last night to celebrate the historic election of Barack Obama, the nation's first black president.
Young people made up the majority of the crowd and there were lots of parents pushing strollers. One woman came from Virginia with her husband and three children, to share a rare moment of history. She told Voice of America:
I came to the White House because there was nowhere else I could be to celebrate this moment. We live 20 miles from here and we jumped in the car when [Obama clinched]. I just couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
Car horns blared. Secret Service agents, who in the last eight years have had to hold off crowds protesting the war in Iraq or the $700-billion bailout package, simply opened their cellphones and took photos. All the while, the crowd shouted, "Obama! Obama!" and "Yes we can! Yes we can!"
Inside, President Bush, who famously likes to be in bed by 10 p.m. (Oops...an earlier post said 10 a.m. Thanks to our readers for catching!) and whose own popularity rating is at historic lows, must have marveled.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo credits: Lawrence Jackson / Associated Press
Chuck Todd, at the white electronic board on MSNBC's campaign set, recalled NBC's beloved and much-missed colleague Tim Russert, the host of "Meet the Press" who died earlier this year.
Todd said he had been musing about Russert's prescient calls on election nights past — Tim's prediction in 2000 that the election would come down to "Florida, Florida, Florida" and his call in 2004 that the presidential race would be decided in "Ohio, Ohio, Ohio."
Russert's whiteboard has long been replaced by fancy high-tech gear. But Todd, saying he had tried to think of what the respected NBC newsman would do at the board in 2008, said he didn't think Russert would write down a state's name.
Instead, said Todd, he would write ...
"Bush, Bush, Bush."
His explanation: The size of the Republican losses — Liddy Dole loses her race decisively in North Carolina, Jeanne Shaheen defeats Republican moderate John Sununu handily, Barack Obama bests John McCain in a landslide — just doesn't happen if President Bush had been more popular.
There is likely to be much second-guessing in the morning, a whole TV cast of pundits to weigh the factors that led to the 2008 dramatic victory for Democrats. Some will say that Obama, with his massive get-out-the-vote effort and his prowess at harnessing a youth-powered social network, won the election. Others will say that it was more that McCain lost the election with his lurching from issue to issue, and with his pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.
But Todd is not likely to be alone in judging that Bush, whose popularity rating according to CBS News is at an all-time presidential low of 20%, hurt the Republican brand.
In his triumphant, hour-long acceptance speech from Denver in late August (the one with the fake Greek columns), Democrat Barack Obama mentioned his opponent John McCain 22 times. George W. Bush only got eight mentions.
But ever since the economic meltdown that sent Wall Street cratering and Main Street shivering, Bush has become the target of Obama's oratory, his economic policies the bogeyman for what polls suggest could be a historic landslide.
As the clock ticks down on the longest-running, most expensive and potentially most groundbreaking election in U.S. history, the senator from Illinois is wowing crowds with a stump speech that ties McCain ever tighter to the unpopular incumbent in the White House.
At his first rally in Jacksonville, Fla., this morning, Obama said:
The last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess.
Obama said McCain "has stood with this president every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debate. Calling for less regulation 21 times just this year." After 21 months of campaigning and three debates, Obama said, "Sen. McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy."
He added, "George Bush dug us into a ditch. Now he's trying to give the shovel to John McCain."
For his part, McCain tells voters at almost every stop that he both he and Obama "have differences with how President Bush has handled the economy." Then he pivots, arguing that Obama "thinks taxes are too low, and I think spending is too high." Then he reprises a line from their last debate, saying:
Sen. Obama; I'm not President Bush...if you wanted to run against President Bush you should have ran four years ago.
The White House has noticed that both campaigns seem fixated on the president. First Lady Laura Bush, campaigning today in Shepherdsville, Ky., put it this way:
After months of primary elections, campaign ads and debates, tomorrow is finally Election Day. I'm really looking forward to Election Day, partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year.
With an open that notes Obama's recent endorsements from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and fabled investor Warren Buffet, the ad then cuts to Cheney at a campaign event Saturday in Wyoming, his home state, one of the dwindling number in the safely Republican column. In the footage, Cheney says:
I'm delighted to support John McCain. I'm pleased that he's chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president Sarah Palin.
It's kind of unusual for a presidential campaign to target the other side for having the support of its team. But Cheney and President Bush both are down in public opinion polls so the Obama campaign elected to use the footage to underscore its theme that McCain's policies would result in a third Bush term.
Noting McCain's support for the White House "90% of the time," the ad concludes, "That's not the change we need."
It was billed as a major policy speech on energy policy, a way for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a novice on the national stage, to showcase her expertise.
And there was a lot of that. Speaking at a solar energy company in Toledo, Ohio, Republican vice presidential candidate Palin talked about her fight against the big oil company monopoly in Alaska and her progress on a nearly $40-billion natural gas pipeline that she said would help nurture U.S. energy independence.
We've shaken things up in Juneau. Whatever the good ol' boys are running these days, it's not the state of Alaska. And that's the kind of serious reform that we need in Washington, because the stakes for our country could not be higher.
But then she pivoted, and blamed the Bush administration in part for the oil crisis, saying that "Americans blame Washington for doing next to nothing about our energy problems, and they are right."
Arguing that "three decades of partisan paralysis on energy is enough," she made no mention of the Bush family connections to Saudi Arabia. But she sure took aim at the results, saying:
By relying upon oil from the Middle East, we not only provide wealth to the sponsors of terror, we provide high-value targets to the terrorists themselves. Across the world are pipelines, refineries, transit routes and terminals for oil we rely on. And Al Qaeda terrorists know where they are.
Palin also took a shot at her counterpart, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. Noting his opposition to coal mining, she parodied the McCain campaign's signature "Joe the Plumber" line. "With or without the green light from Joe the Six-Term Senator," she said, "we will make clean coal a reality."
In recent days, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has compared George W. Bush and Republican John McCain to the Lone Ranger and Tonto, or to Batman and Robin.
But today, Obama said that comparing McCain to Bush wasn't really fair to Bush. In a rain-drenched speech in Chester, Pa., Obama said that McCain would be worse for the economy than Bush.
John McCain has ridden shotgun as George Bush has driven our economy toward a cliff, and now he wants to take the wheel and step on the gas. When it comes to the issue of taxes, saying that John McCain is running for a third Bush term isn’t being fair to George Bush.
Obama said McCain is proposing $300 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and $700,000 in tax cuts for the average Fortune 500 CEO, while providing no tax relief for 100 million middle-class families. “That’s not something even George Bush proposed,” he said. He added:
The fact is, there's only one candidate with a plan that could eventually raise taxes on millions of middle-class families, and it isn't me. It's my opponent, who'd make you pay taxes on your healthcare benefits for the first time ever.
The weather that halted Game 5 of the World Series Monday night continued to bear down on the region, so supporters were buffeted with pouring rain, whipping winds and near-freezing conditions. But Obama told the cheering crowd that "this is an unbelievable crowd for this kind of weather, thank you so much. I just want all of you to know, if we see this kind of dedication on election day, there is no way were not going to bring change to America.”
-- Seema Mehta (in Chester, Pa.) and Johanna Neuman (in Washington)
Election day is still one week away, but already the Bush Justice Department is looking into allegations of voter fraud. In Ohio. That's the same state where supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry charged foul in the 2004 election.
Responding to a request from Ohio Republican John Boehner, who happens to be the House minority leader, President Bush on Friday asked Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to investigate the status of 200,000 Ohio voters. If those voters remain on the rolls without added checks, Boehner said, "there is a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."
But critics argue that an inquiry by a Justice Department that is already tainted by allegations that it fired eight U.S. attorneys for not being Republican enough in their prosecutions looks fishy. As voters in Ohio go to the polls to cast early ballots, as seen in the photo above, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and five other lawmakers, in a letter, urged Mukasey not to intervene in Ohio.
The eyes of the nation are once again on Ohio in this critical election. We have confidence in the work that is being done by Ohio’s bipartisan group of election officials. ... We respectfully request that you refrain from taking any action absent more compelling evidence than partisan political requests. ... We are concerned that complaints ... are designed to reduce the number of legitimate votes that are cast and counted in our state.
A similar legal drama could play out in Colorado. Republicans there are charging that the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is loading up the voter rolls with unqualified people. Democrats are asking a federal court to reinstate approximately 30,000 Colorado voters purged from registration lists by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican.
He's not running for election anymore, no longer what he dubbed the pundit in chief. Even his prowess as a Republican fund-raiser had ebbed. Acording to the Washington Post's Dan Eggen, it took President Bush two years to raise $150 million for Republican candidates during this election cycle. Heck, Democrat Barack Obama raised that in one month.
But George W. Bush is still a presence on the presidential campaign trail.
Republican John McCain said the country needs "a new direction" on the economy and that he wants to hold down spending, while his opponent wants to raise taxes. But there was one thing, McCain said, that he and his rival agree on: "We both disagree with President Bush on economic policy."
As for Barack Obama, he credited McCain with parting company from Bush on some policies, such as the use of torture on suspected terrorists. But on the economy, he added, McCain stood with the president "every step of the way." What's more, said Obama in what his campaign dubbed the "closing argument":
After 21 months and three debates, Sen. McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy. Sen. McCain says that we can't spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.
Democrat Barack Obama sharpened his criticism of rival John McCain today, comparing him to George W. Bush nearly two dozen times during a half-hour rally at Peccole Stadium at the University of Nevada's Reno campus.
Noting that McCain is trying to distance himself from the president, Obama said: “Well, let’s be clear: John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy. … It’s like Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger.”
-- Seema Mehta (in Reno, Nev.) and Johanna Neuman (in Washington, D.C.)
Photo: Reuters. Actor Clayton Moore as "The Lone Ranger" in the popular 1950s television series shown in a publicity photo with his co-star, Jay Silverheels, who portrayed "Tonto."
For weeks now, global markets have been plummeting. Major governments have pumped big bucks into the banking sector, seemingly to little effect. Even Alan Greenspan, the former Fed chairman and so-called "oracle of Wall Street," told Congress last week that the dysfunctional economy had left him in "a state of shocked disbelief."
So today in his weekly radio address, President Bush tried to calm fears about a global recession by defending the federal government's "bold action to stabilize our economy" with a $700-billion bailout. He cautioned against abandoning capitalism or experimenting with socialism.
Open market policies have lifted standards of living and helped millions of people around the world escape the grip of poverty. These policies have shown themselves time and time again to be the surest path to creating jobs, increasing commerce and fostering progress. And this moment of global economic uncertainty would be precisely the wrong time to reject such proven methods for creating prosperity and hope.
Mostly, he urged patience. With world leaders meeting in Washington for an economic summit hosted by Bush on Nov. 15, the president said the government's muscular steps to buttress the market "are beginning to show results, but it will take time for their full impact to be felt."
The president-elect -- whoever he is -- will also be invited to attend the summit, scheduled less than two weeks after the election. Bill Burton, spokesman for Democrat Barack Obama, ahead in national polls, said Bush's words and actions make the case for his candidate. In a statement, Burton said:
After casting his ballot for John McCain, George Bush took to the airwaves and eloquently endorsed his economic plan that represents four more years of policies that give billions in tax breaks to CEOs and big corporations but does nothing to create jobs or provide relief to more than 100 million middle class Americans.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
In his triumphant, hour-long acceptance speech from Denver in late August (the one with the fake Greek columns), Democrat 
