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On the Fourth of July, our thoughts naturally turn to those words penned by Thomas Jefferson and first read aloud on the square behind Independence Hall in Philadelphia 232 years ago today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So what would Jefferson, a noted slave-owner, have thought about the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama?
For that answer ....
Read more What would the Founding Fathers think of Barack Obama? »
Talk about being ahead of the curve...
Photographer Pete Souza began making Barack Obama the focus of his work back in early January 2005 -- on the day Obama was sworn in as a U.S. senator from Illinois, in fact.
Obama already was identified as a comer in Democratic politics but at that point, few anticipated how far and how quickly he would ascend. So Souza -- who takes a bipartisan approach to his craft; he served as the official White House photographer for Ronald Reagan-- was able to document much of Obama's path to the precipice of the Democratic presidential nomination without the impediments that now surround the candidate.
The result is a just-published photo-book, "The Rise of Barack Obama." More can be read about it and Souza in this post on The Swamp.
-- Don Frederick
This is the eighth and final episode of our new video chat with Matt Welch, author of a new book exploring the personal and political personas of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
This discussion focuses on McCain's thinking and the possible choices for vice presidential running mate. And a couple of the names Welch mentions may surprise you.
Here are the other video chat chapters: Part I of our conversation with Welch is available here, Part II is available here, Part III is here, Part IV is here, Part V is here, Part VI is here, Part VII is here.
And samples of Welch's past writings as a Times staffer are available here.
Thanks to our top-notch videographer Jeff Amlotte and director Michael McGehee for lending their skills. And thank you all for watching these videos over recent days.
Let us know below what you think of this occasional feature. Should we do more? Whom would you like to see chatting here on The Ticket?
--Andrew Malcolm
This is the seventh and second to last chapter in our video conversation with former Times writer, Matt Welch, who's written a new examination of the personal and political personnas of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
In this episode Welch discusses what he calls "McCain's Ron Paul problem," a smallish but very dedicated splinter group of libertarian Republicans who back the 10-term congressman from Texas. Paul captured about 1.1 million GOP primary votes this season while collecting nearly $35 million, more than McCain had for a while.
Welch sees McCain's policies of a strong federal government, though with curbed spending, combined with McCain's enduring support for the Iraq war and Paul's antipathy to what he sees as empire-building as prohibiting any kind of real rapprochement between the two camps for the Nov. 4 election.
Also McCain could risk loss of support among independents and moderates if he was to taxi too far to the right to accommodate Paulites. In a close election the Paul group's votes or their absence could make the difference between a McCain or Barack Obama presidency, as some of them are likely to drift over to Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party, although that too is split.
Part I of our conversation with Welch is available here, Part II is available here, Part III is here, Part IV is here, Part V is here, Part VI is here. Part VIII will be published on The Ticket Wednesday.
Samples of Welch's writing as a Times staffer are available here.
--Andrew Malcolm
In this episode of our ongoing conversation with author Matt Welch, he discusses the role of religion in Sen. John McCain's life and politics.
McCain's regrets about going too far in his 2000 remarks about the religious right, his courting of the religious right within the Republican Party this election season and the stark differences between the roles of Rev. Wright in Barack Obama's life and Rev. Hagee in the McCain campaign.
Previous chapters in our Welch chat about his book, "McCain: The Myth of a Maverick," are here for Part I, here for Part II, here for Part III, here for Part IV and here for Part V. Samples of Welch's print writing in his former Times career are available here.
The remaining two episodes of our conversation will be published on The Ticket in the next day or so.
--Andrew Malcolm
This is Chapter V of VIII in our conversation with Matt Welch, the debonair author of a new book on Sen. John McCain that explores the man's persona through his own writings and friends.
This is a particularly interesting segment because Welch describes the unexpected. But when you think about it, a logical aspect of McCain's character is that he is always much more comfortable as an underdog, a counterpuncher who overcomes adversity and fights back from behind, even when seemingly doomed. McCain's favorite literary character? Robert Jordan from "For Whom the Bell Tolls."
There must be some explanation for how someone could endure six months, let alone nearly six years, as a tortured POW. In fact, McCain would recite that Ernest Hemingway novel to himself for strength.
Sound familiar? About this time last summer, we were all pretty much writing McCain's campaign off as hopelessly broke, disorganized and lacking support.
And when McCain promised he would come back because he would "out-campaign" all the others, Welch believed him. Because he had come to know him too well not to.
Now, the Arizona senator has, in effect, won the Republican Party's nomination for president as the polls and political outlook today look rather bleak for the GOP this fall. Happily confident fans of Barack Obama and discouraged Republicans may want to listen closely to this segment, at least once, maybe twice.
Previous chapters of our conversation are available here for I, here for II, here for III and here for IV. Examples of Welch's written work as a former Times reporter are here.
The remaining three segments will be published in the Ticket over the next couple of days. This fine video work, by the way, is by latimes.com's Jeff Amlotte.
-- Andrew Malcolm
In this episode, Part IV of our conversation with former Times writer Matt Welch on his new book on Sen. John McCain, we asked Matt what was the biggest surprise he came across in the course of his lengthy book research on the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Hint: His answer had something to do with McCain's Vietnam War experiences or, rather, getting past them and helping some countrymen do the same.
Part I of our video chat is available here. Part II is available here. And Part III is available here. To read some of Matt's previous written work for The Times, click here.
The remaining four videotaped episodes of our Welch conversation will be published in coming days exclusively here on The Ticket.
-- Andrew Malcolm
This is Part III of The Ticket's new series of video chats with people in or around politics. We're talking with Matt Welch, a former Times writer whose previous Times work can be read here.
His new book is on Sen. John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party. It's not a biography so much as an exploration of the independent persona we've all come to know.
Today, Welch describes how he discovered the inner McCain and his almost imperialistic views of American foreign policy, which grew from his family's long involvement in the Navy and his own world view, once it had taken many years to heal from the trauma of the Vietnam War and McCain's nearly six-year incarceration and torture.
Part I of our conversation is available here. Part II is available here. The other five remaining segments will appear on The Ticket in coming days.
--Andrew Malcolm
Last summer at a labor forum in Chicago, Sen. Barack Obama, going after the anti-free-trade union vote, promised that as president he would take up numerous serious treaty issues with the president of Canada.
Alas for the freshman senator, as much as many Americans think that Canada is so much like the United States (and feel that's a compliment to say), Canada does not have a president. It has a prime minister. (By the way, what's his name?*)
President. Prime minister. What's the difference, right, in the world's largest bilateral trading relationship? A little more than a billion dollars a day going back and forth.
This morning the Republican Party's presidential nominee-to-be, Sen. John McCain, travels to the capital of Canada (no, it's not Toronto).
So The Ticket decided to explore a number of other things that Americans don't know about Canada, like so many of these familiar faces on TV, the big screen, the radio.
Thanks to our industrious colleague Patrick Day, we've assembled a photo gallery here of a few folks you probably didn't know were Canadian -- and some secrets about their politics. (Even though they're not U.S. citizens, it's really illegal for them to donate to American politicians.)
So many people in American society, especially around Los Angeles, are famous but not as being Canadian. Many of them are pretty funny folks. (They also spell and talk funny, like humour and rumour, and people being in hospital. Their Thanksgiving is in October, if you can believe that. They can only afford three downs in football up there. And how long has it been since a Canadian NHL team won the Stanley Cup?)
OK, here's a few northern names for breakfast: Michael J. Fox, Matthew Perry, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Leslie Nielsen, Mike Myers, Lorne Michaels -- who invented and still runs "Saturday Night Live" -- that bald weird guy Paul Shaffer ,who leads Letterman's band, and that other bald guy who gives away millions in briefcases, Howie Mandel. Speaking of giving stuff away, Alex Trebek on "Jeopardy!" and Monty Hall from "Let's Make a Deal." All Canucks.
Keifer Sutherland (Dad Donald too), Keanu Reeves, John Candy, Peter Jennings, Christopher Plummer, Paul Anka, Norman Jewison, Ivan Reitman. Brendan Fraser and Margaret Atwood. For old-timers, Raymond Burr, Walter Pidgeon, Raymond Massey, Lorne Greene, Rod Cameron, Mack Sennett, Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, Jay Silverheels and Chief Dan George. Canadians all.
The original America's Sweetheart, Gloria Pickford, was actually Canadian, as was Superman's girlfriend (Margot Kidder), the original King Kong's love (Fay Wray) and James Bond's forever-thwarted love, Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell).
So the countries have been bound closely together by culture as well as geography and history. (Americans remember the British burning Washington and the White House in the War of 1812, but they forget that was in retaliation for the Americans sacking Toronto, then called York.)
Since 9/11, Canadians have quietly paid a dear price in terms of lives lost for fighting next to their next-door neighbors -- or neighbours -- in Afghanistan, something few Americans realize and McCain, the former POW, must surely appreciate in his speech today. Outside of the grand old Chateau Laurier hotel in downtown Ottawa, McCain won't see much of Canada, which is 10% larger than the United States with but 10% of the population.
But what likely matters invisibly in the Canadian mind today will be the nonpolitical fact that while the younger U.S. presidential candidate who perhaps most Canadians would intuitively favor for president considers visiting a faraway place like Iraq for the first time in a few years, the older would-be president from Arizona pays at least a day's worth of attention and respect to the nation that has and will continue to play a far larger role in American life. Even if like so many of its famous citizens, it's not all that famous as Canadian, eh?
Allright now, click on the photo of who-is-that-anyway and take The Ticket's little photo tour of the politics of some other famous unknown Canadians.
--Andrew Malcolm
(* Canada's prime minister is Stephen Harper.)
This is Part II of The Ticket's first video chat series, an eight-part conversation with author Matt Welch on his new book, "John McCain: The Myth of a Maverick."
The book is not a biography but an exploration of the McCain persona, an intriguing combination of independence, military discipline and rebellion, with a strong whiff of bad boy. In this video episode Welch, a former L.A. Times writer, describes how he came to discover much about McCain through the serial confessions the senator makes about himself throughout his own books. And what that revealed about the Republican nominee's personal way of thinking.
Part I of this conversation with Welch can be seen by clicking here. Other parts will be published on The Ticket in coming days.
-- Andrew Malcolm
This is the first in a series of series of conversations with people in politics. We'll be chatting on camera with politicians, staffers, strategists, people formerly in politics, writers of politics, all in our continuing effort to get inside politics for Ticket readers.
This video segment is the first of eight with Matt Welch, the author of "John McCain: The Myth of a Maverick," not a biography but a sort of how-to guide to understanding this intriguing, independent, straight-talking, blunt-talking former fighter pilot who will later this summer be handed the presidential nomination for the Republican Party.
Is he what he seems?
In this segment we talk with Matt, a former Times writer, about the origins of the book and the, shall we say, lack of cooperation he encountered from the Arizona senator's camp.
The Ticket will publish other segments in coming days, eight altogether, exploring what Welch discovered about the man from his life, his writings and his friends.
If you have any questions for the author after viewing the segments, leave them in the comments section and we'll get answers from him for another item later.
--Andrew Malcolm
On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.
Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.
Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.
In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.
His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.
His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.
Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."
Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.
The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.
Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...
Read more Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two »
Scott McClellan, the president's former chief spokesman who wrote a tell-all book about the White House's "culture of deception" and how it hung him out to dry, will testify next week before a House committee about the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.
McClellan will testify under oath about what happened during the Plame affair and whether Vice President Dick Cheney told him to mislead the public about how Plame's identity was leaked to several journalists.
The hearing is scheduled for June 20 before the House Judiciary Committee.
"I'll tell them what I know," McClellan said Monday night on MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann, as they discussed McClellan's book, "What Happened."
For more on the story, click here. And watch the MSNBC video below.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Photo: Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will testify next week before a House committee about the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. Credit: Associated Press
The political world has been all abuzz in recent days, as reported in The Ticket here, over a devastating Vanity Fair article profiling someone named Bill Clinton.
He once was president of these United States but has spent recent months as chief surrogate campaigner and sometime political hitman for his wife, Hillary, who not so long ago thought she wo uld be the Democratic presidential nominee. And probably still thinks she should be.
Monday, campaigning in South Dakota for that primary, the ex-president unloaded on Todd Purdum, a former New York Times reporter who relies on numerous anonymous sources throughout his magazine piece. Clinton called Purdum "sleazy," "dishonest," "slimy" and a "scumbag." Other than that, Clinton didn't really seem to notice the article much.
Here's how Purdum's Vanity Fair article begins:
"It was a wedding straight out of 'Sex and the City': a rehearsal dinner looking out over the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero, a garden ceremony and dancing reception in a grand château outside Paris, topped off by a private fireworks display. The groom was a thirtysomething American lawyer with friends in high places, the bride a dark-eyed designer with social sheen, and the guest list a mix of family and what Noël Coward once called Nescafé Society.
"But the real cynosure of the occasion last August was the smiling, snowy-haired man who is the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral he attends, the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton."
Now here, thanks to the razor-sharp memory of a loyal Ticket reader named James is a passage from a 5-year-old book, "The Presidential Companion: Readings on the First Ladies" by Robert P. Watson and Anthony J. Eksterowicz:
"At their 17 March 1905 wedding President Theodore Roosevelt gave away his orphaned niece (Eleanor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt), congratulated the young couple on 'keeping the name in the family,' and then proceeded to draw the assembled crowd after him into the next room, leaving the bride and groom momentarily alone and forgotten.
"As Alice Roosevelt Longworth explained years later, this behavior was Teddy Roosevelt's way of being 'the bride at every wedding, the baby at every christening, and the corpse at every funeral.'"
Funny how the same old quote by the eldest child of the 26th president, a man who fundamentally changed the concept of the office of the president, ends up being used again, not as a quote, but as an unattributed way to describe the 42d president, a man whose campaign activities during the last several months have fundamentally changed the concept of what's proper behavior for an ex-president.
Maybe it's just a coincidence.
(UPDATE: Tuesday R. Emmett Tyrell Jr., author of "The Clinton Crack-Up: The Boy President's Life After the White House" and editor of the American Spectator, issued a news release charging Purdum with plagiarizing parts of his book for the magazine article.)
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo Credit: AP
Given that we live out here within smelling distance of the smoke from Universal Studios, we open this with the caveat that agents are always talking with someone about movie rights. That's what they do. Usually over lunch. A long lunch.
Still, given the reception for HBO's recent "Recount," about the Florida leg of the 2000 election, and the other projects already in the works on the Bush years (and there's still seven months to go), why not a film version of Scott McClellan's "What Happened" memoir of the George Bush White House?
Politico suggests Jonah Hill to play McClellan, which gets our speculation gene fired up. Who to play Bush? Who to play Dick Cheney?
That's why we have a comments section -- to let you answer such burning questions (hey, this is politics; it can't all be strategy and policy-wonk talk). Who would you cast?
-- Scott Martelle
On accepting Scott McClellan's resignation as his press secretary two years ago, President Bush predicted that he and the outgoing aide some day would be "rocking in chairs in Texas and talkin g about the good old days."
But maybe their days in the White House together weren't so happy after all.
Next week will bring the publication of McClellan's 341-page tome, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." It is described by Politico's Mike Allen as "surprisingly scathing."
He quotes McClellan as saying....
Read more Former press secretary Scott McClellan turns against President Bush »
Rep. Ron Paul, the rebel Republican who's defying his party, its nominee and common political sense, is still campaigning, not so much for his party's nomination, which Sen. John McCain has locked up, but to change the direc tion of the party from within and to organize for future reform of the GOP, which has gone soft on him.
According to new campaign finance reports filed Tuesday by Paul forces and pored over by Times campaign finance expert Dan Morain, the strict constitutionalist Paul continues to campaign and spend. He spent $406,836 last month, about half of it ($207,000) on radio advertisements.
Tapping his loyalists for another $70,293 in contributions, Paul ended April with $4.71 million in the bank, his filed campaign finance report shows.
He has raised about $34.9 million during his 14-month presidential quest. The 72-year-old Texas representative, who's even older than McCain, spent $30.2 million on his GOP presidential effort. And, true to conservative form, he maintains absolutely zero campaign debt. Contrast that with Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton who, The Ticket misreported earlier today, raised $21 million last month and now still has almost $31 million in debt. (Her debt is actually closer to $21 million.)
CNN pegs Paul’s delegate count at 26.
One-time Republican presidential front-runner Rudolph Giuliani spent $65.3 million on his campaign and won only one single delegate, who has since been released.
Giuliani tapped himself last month, using $500,000 of his own money to help pay off his presidential campaign bills. He still owes $3.628 million. Among Giuliani’s lingering debts is $118,744 to AT&T; $295,093 to Verizon Wireless; and $451,736 to a New York charter air carrier. He continues to owe two of his companies a combined $217,000 for rent and security services.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Rep. Ron Paul is a presidential candidate who supports a return to the gold standard, among many other things. Although he's got no sympathy for Burma's cyclone victims.
Now, we know that Paul puts his personal money where his personal mouth, and public policy, are -- in precious metals.
Paul complied with federal law by filing his personal public financial disclosure statement with the Federal Election Commission by the deadline the other day. The Times' conscientious Dan Morain pored over it.
Turns out, the old doctor (he's even older than Sen. John McCain) is a millionaire, a few times over.
An Air Force veteran and ob-gyn who often champions the cause of the little guy, Paul disclosed 41 separate financial holdings that have a combined value of between $2.29 million and $5.3 million. The disclosure statements require officeholders and candidates to disclose a range of values for their holdings.
The 72-year-old Texas Republican, who leans libertarian, wants to abolish the Federal Reserve and issues warnings about....
Read more Ron Paul, the little guy's champion, turns out to be a millionaire »
To be sure, the ultimate purpose of the new website is ultimately to sell a book that won't be published for a few months -- "Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle."
But for a few months we can overlook the upcoming commercial aspect. And go here for dozens upon dozens of sayings about your guy, Sen. Barack Obama.
Yes, many of them are quizzical -- "Barack Obama parsed your error," "Barack Obama warmed up your car for you," "Barack Obama followed you on Twitter."
But that's what makes it mild fun to browse through by just clicking on the screen.
Or, if you're a fan of Sen. Hillary Clinton, and sneaked into this item despite the warning at the top, you cannot do it. Just click here or on her name here and see a whole bunch of other articles about her.
-- Andrew Malcolm
The day Barack Obama first appeared in the church office of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., more than 20 years ago, the pastor warned him that getting involved with Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ might not be "a feather in your cap."
Obama was a community organizer then trying to build support for his group on the South Side of Chicago, and a friendly minister at another church had suggested that he'd have more luck with black clergy support if he actually joined a congregation himself.
"Some of my fellow clergy don't appreciate what we're about," Wright told him that day, as Obama would later recount it. "They feel like we're too radical. Others [think] we ain't radical enough."
Obama ended up joining, a story he tells in his memoirs, and later was influenced enough by Wright to derive the title of a subsequent book, "The Audacity of Hope," from one of the pastor's sermons.
Some have speculated that Wright became a father figure for Obama, whose father had left the family and returned to Africa. As The Ticket noted the other day, others believe Obama was attracted by Wright's cerebral nature, as opposed to other less-educated black ministers on Chicago's South Side.
But despite the warning, the association did not seem to be a terribly risky one for Obama, given the arc of the career he was beginning to craft even then.
He was carefully constructing his resume as a street-savvy community organizer while also applying for admission to law school. Within the walls of Trinity, he found a connection to the African American community he'd lacked as a child raised by his white mother and grandparents, an important cultural marker for a biracial candidate who later would try to appeal to black and white voters alike.
He'd share church membership with some of Chicago's influential thinkers and leaders, among them lawmakers, judges and Oprah Winfrey. And in Wright he would find ...
Read more Ticket Special Report: How and why Barack Obama allied himself with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. »
As far as Sen. John McCain is concerned, the Republican presidential nomination is a done deal and he's working on uniting the party behind him. But thousands of Republicans -- particularly supporters of Texas Rep. Ron Paul -- aren't buying that.
In the Pennsylvania primary, more than 215,000 Republicans cast ballots for Paul or former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabe e, who quit campaigning weeks ago. Together, they captured 27% of the Republican vote.
That was tame compared with the uproar last weekend at Nevada's Republican Party Convention. Or before that in Missouri.
About 600 well-organized Paul supporters overwhelmed McCain's forces, as The Ticket reported earlier this week, and engineered a rule change that permitted national convention delegates to be nominated from the floor, wresting the task from party establishment leaders.
That evening, party leaders unexpectedly adjourned the session, saying the proceedings would take too long to finish that night.
But tongues were set wagging about whether the adjournment was a maneuver to save McCain from the embarrassment of being swamped by Paul delegates.
Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Reno, said the disruption reflected, among other things, that McCain had "yet to capture the hearts and minds of Nevada Republicans." Previously, Paul forces had elected about one-third of the delegates to the Missouri state Republcan convention.
As the 72-year-old Paul, who is unopposed in the November election for his 11th House term, suggested to his dedicated troops earlier this year in a video, they should prepare for for the long haul.
And buy his new book, which has promptly soared to the top of Amazon.com's bestseller list.
All of which suggests there might be some drama or at least confrontations in St. Paul at the GOP's national convention in September after all.
-- Maeve Reston
Photo Credit: AP
"Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices," Texas Rep. Ron Paul writes in his new book. "And so every four years we are treated to the same tired predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government."
If you agree with that summary, you may want to consider joining the Ron Paul Revolutionaries, several hundred thousand highly motivated political partisans, many new to politics, who despite their more than $34 million in donations over the last year have seen their 72-year-old candidate distinctly not catch fire with the broader electorate.
He took 16% of the vote in Pennsylvania's GOP primary, but Sen. John McCain got 73%, which he doesn't really need because he already has sufficient delegates to win the party's nomination in St. Paul come September. Second place or worse is a familiar spot for Paul, a former ob-gyn who'll be entering his 11th House term next January.
But no longer. At least in terms of his book, Paul is Numero Uno. Paul's Paulunteers have driven his brand-new book -- 'The Revolution: A Manifesto' -- to No. 1 on the amazon.com bestseller list. They're also packing the reader reviews with five-star evaluations, as they've been packing the comment columns of blogs like this for many months.
Paul's call to conservative, libertarian-like action is even selling better than Oprah's latest book recommendation. According to Lew Rockwell's blog, Paul's book will rocket into seventh spot on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list later this month.
The book is designed to be both a call to arms for his would-be followers and a....
Read more Ron Paul, political loser, now best-selling author »
So let's say you decide to run for president and you surprise some people and win in one place. Call it Iowa. But in a bunch of other places you don't win. And then you win a few more. And you don't have that much money. And you only have a fraction of the necessary delegates to earn your party's nomination. Let's call it  the Republican Party.
But every other candidate drops out, except for the candidate who's clearly gonna win, and one other loopy old guy with a dozen delegates. So you keep at it, building national name recognition for the future. Then, you have to give up. And like a loyal soldier you endorse the winner.
How do you make a winning lemonade out of those losing apples?
Write a book. And so former radio host-preacher-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has signed to write a book about his experiences as a loser and his views of the GOP's future, of which he'd like to be a leading part, say, maybe in 2012.
Huckabee spent today toodling around parts of Arkansas on the Straight Talk Express, getting a few hours of facetime with the guy Huckabee wouldn't mind running with as vice president, Sen. John McCain.
McCain was already finishing up his second national campaign tour for the November election, the go-places-that-wealthy-guys-in-suits-don't-usually-go swing, while his two possible Democratic opponents keep going after each other with millions of primary dollars.
Riding along the highways that his state administration helped rebuild, Huckabee said an unusual thing. He....
Read more Mike Huckabee, writing a new book, gets bus time with John McCain »
There was a time when their father, George W. Bush, first entered public office, that his twin daughters -- Jenna and Barbara -- were so totally embarrassed by the spotlight. Totally.
They had seen the price their grandfather had paid as vic e president and president and unsuccessful second-term-seeker, plus their father's two campaigns for Texas governor. And they don't like politics.
Despite his fond hopes entering the first presidential race in 1999, both girls said they wanted no part of the public attention. And their parents protected that desire ferociously. Just ask any reporter who sought interviews with the teens in those days.
During the primary contests, they would wait inside the small chartered plane while all the media attention surrounded one or both parents outside. And then slip into separate cars with protective Texas Rangers. They were there at many....
Read more Larry King surprises nearly-wed Jenna Bush with a political question »
We thought at first there was a very interesting opinion piece elsewhere on this website today by Susan Jacoby, the author of "The Age of American Unreason."
The headline -- "Talking to ourselves" -- was intriguing because that's what bloggers do in the darkened early hours of the day as this is written. It's hard for political bloggers to get in a word edgewise during daylight because of all the posters leaving comments -- more than 31,000 here in recent times -- about politics and some other things.
Of course, as recent days have shown, virtually all Ticket commentors love The Ticket writers, think they're well-meaning, from legitimate families, hardworking humans whose perspectives they value and probably even treasure.
And even if on the odd occasion a reader arrives at The Ticket with his/her own personal perspective because of some stupid education or bizarre outside influence, after reading a few Ticket items virtually everyone leaves agreeing with almost every word published here. You can see that uniform unanimity reflected in recent comments.
So we were struck by the first 44 words of Jacoby's treatise:
"As dumbness has been defined downward in American public life during the last two decades, one of the most important and frequently overlooked culprits is the public's increasing reluctance to give a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all -- to opposing points of view."
Her article is only two paragraphs long, albeit probably the two longest paragraphs in the history of LATimes.com. (UPDATE: Because of the vast power and influence of The Ticket, as soon as this was posted, our efficient web colleagues fixed that typographical problem and ruined the joke.)
But in those 50,000 or whatever words she says a whole bunch of what initially seemed like good stuff.
She argues basically that as the sources of information and methods of distributing it have expanded exponentially in recent years -- cable channels, websites, blogs and the rechargeable gizmos to receive them -- Americans, ironically, have closed themselves off more from info diversity. Avoided places and people that disagree with them. And gravitated almost exclusively to information sources that agree with them.
She calls it a "militant parochialism."
That's total rubbish! Couldn't disagree more. She probably lives in her car. So we stopped reading that stupid article. Came back home here where we agree with virtually everything we write.
--Andrew Malcolm
Wow, now we know why some of these folks are perennial candidates for president!
Campaigning for president has been very good in the money department for the 46-year-old Illinois senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama.
With most of the media and public attention focused on Philadelphia on Wednesday and the last nationally-televised debate between Obama and his rival, New York | |
