Maybe the move by a company that's worked closely with the former first lady is just what it seems: yet another step by Hillary Rodham Clinton to prepare for another run for the Senate from New York in four years. Or another run for the White House. We won't know, of course, for some time.
But that comes with the news, as reported in The Ticket early the other morning, that Clinton has urgently requested her 2008 general election supporters to approve transfer of their unusable donations for this year's presidential race over to her 2012 Senate campaign.
(And then, potentially, into a new presidential campaign fund, as she did with $10 million of her surplus 2006 Senate campaign funds).
If this year's donors don't approve that transfer soon, Clinton must return the '08 money by Aug. 28.
The respected blogger Marc Ambinder of TheAtlantic.com is reporting tonight that a company associated with Clinton's top advance team leaders, the Markham Group, purchased that domain name on June 8.
June 8th? Why does that ring a bell? Why, that's the very next day after her "I-give-up-and-heartily-support Obama" speech where her family was dressed for a funeral.
Clinton sources told Ambinder the New York senator was committed to helping elect Obama on Nov. 4, but she wanted to keep her options open for later. Imagine that in a seasoned politician.
Come 2012 Clinton would have to choose which race she'd enter. Two years ago in her first Senate reelection bid, her main website was HillaryClinton.com, which she still has. Plus HillPac.com for her political action committee and another one for her '08 campaign debt donations.
So why would she need another website with 2012 in it, unless.... Her disappointed presidential campaign supporters may take heart. But will they still help elect another Democrat this November? Or sit it out and let '12 fall to her?
We are just six weeks out from Clinton's '08 surrender to Barack Obama. And, surely, everyone knows exactly what that means: only 223 weeks left until the 2012 election.
The other day here we noted that Republican nominee-to-be John McCainkeeps referring to the country of Czechoslovakia, which hasn't existed since 1993.
Now, Sam Nunn, a veteran retired senator and an oft-mentioned Democratic vice presidential running mate with Barack Obama, is doing the same thing.
His reference to the former country, which split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was the third mention of Czechoslovakia during campaigning this week. A former chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee who could know better, Nunn was on the campaign trail in Indiana with Obama.
"We in this country are about to, under this government, under the Bush administration, deploy [a] missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia," Nunn said. For more details and a pretty funny video, check out our colleague Katie Fretland's item over on the Swamp.
If you had three choices regarding the laws governing same-sex marriage, what would you choose?
1. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to marry.
2. Same-sex couples should be allowed legally to form civil unions but not marry.
3. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to obtain legal recognition of their relationships.
Well, the pollsters at Quinnipiac University posed that question, which is certain to become more prominent as the presidential general election campaign unfolds, to 1,783 Americans across the country.
And they found that:
1. 32% support same-sex marriage.
2. 33% support civil unions.
3. And 29% said no legal recognition should exist for same-sex couples.
Can't get much closer than that. But wait, there's more to this poll, and our colleague Katie Fretland over at the Swamp has the details here.
Recently, it seems, voter referendums are used increasingly not so much to put in the hands of citizens crucial decisions on important issues of public policy. But they're being used as a more compelling excuse to get certain voter groups out to the polls on election day than simply electing candidates.
Think marriage amendment and the 2004 presidential election in such places as Ohio.
Well, a new measure has now qualified for the November ballot in San Francisco. And it'll likely help draw out city voters from the Democratic and from the Republican party, all three of them there.
It's the measure to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant, which treats waste water from San Francisco's west side, the George W. Bush Sewage Plant in an effort to embarrass the president for actions such as the Iraq war.
When the president becomes the former president in January, he'll be returning to his isolated Texas ranch near Crawford, which likely has a septic tank. So he won't notice the change if it passes.
Al Gore is challenging the next president of the United States, whomever that may be, to embrace an ambitious energy plan that would make the country’s electricity carbon-free within 10 years.
But while he outlined the steps he thinks the future president should take, he says he won’t be beside him as vice president, even if the Democrats win.
Gore dashed the hopes of those pining for an Obama-Gore dream team ticket in an interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News Thursday. The interview was conducted after Gore gave a speech on alternative energy in Washington.
“I have a personal term limit,” said Gore, who served for eight years as Bill Clinton’s vice president. “Only two terms as VP.”
Couric then wondered what Gore would do if Barack Obama came to him and begged, “Al, buddy, listen. I really, really, really need you."
Gore said the answer would still be no.
Speculation about a possible Obama-Gore ticket has bubbled in the blogosphere since last month, when Gore gave Obama a hearty endorsement after the primary struggle with Hillary Clinton had already been settled.
Gore, who won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to draw the world’s attention to global warming, even used his website to solicit donations for Obama.
But when Couric suggested that Gore was playing coy in denying an interest in the VP spot, Gore shook his head and vowed, “This interview will not come back to haunt me. You can believe me.”
Campaigning for the U.S. presidency has its really unpleasant personal aspects. Criticism of the candidate is hard for family members to take. And criticism of the family is hard for the candidate to take.
That's why, for instance, in 1999-2000 at their request, George W. Bush kept his teenage daughters out of the spotlight. Until their recent "Access Hollywood" interview, the Obamas did the same with their younger daughters and later said they regretted that exposure.
But now Sen. Barack Obama says he wishes what he calls the conservative press would lay off his wife, Michelle, because she's a civilian who "didn't sign up for this."
Today, she campaigned in Washington state where the state Republican Party welcomed here with an ad (see video below the Read more line, with a hat tip to WakeUpAmerica).
Obama says he finds criticism of his spouse "infuriating." And he adds: "If they have a difference with me on policy, they should debate me. Not her."
In an interview this week with Glamour magazine, Obama complained that “the conservative press -– Fox News and the National Review and columnists of every ilk” had been too critical in its coverage of her.
He said he thinks reporters from those organizations “went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way” and, he asserted, “treated her as the candidate in a way that you just rarely see the Democrats try to do against Republicans.”
Obama would get a real argument about that from some....
Sen. Barack Obama tapped two potential vice presidential nominees for a serious panel discussion about 21st century national security threats.
With a battery of cameras trained on the stage, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and former Sen. Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, spoke about threats from loose nuclear weapons, cyberterrorism and bioterrorism. But amid all the sober talk Wednesday during the discussion at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., the campaign event at times resembled an audition for the No. 2 job.
Bayh continually referred to Obama as "Barack,'' suggesting an easy familiarity with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Nunn predicted -- surprise! -- that Obama would win the November election. Both had plenty of nice things to say about Obama. As it turned out, their views on national security threats pretty much squared with his.
During the session, Nunn told Obama: "You have recognized better than anybody that is speaking out on this issue in America today the complexity of it and the importance of it. Securing nuclear weapons material is the No. 1 challenge we face."
Bayh at one point echoed an Obama campaign talking point –- that the Iraq War has proved an expensive distraction from more pressing national security priorities. "So much has been sacrificed on the altar of Iraq,'' Bayh said.
In a news conference afterward, both Nunn and Bayh downplayed any interest in the vice presidency. Bayh said questions about the vice presidency are "understandable'' and "good for my ego,'' though he added, "I love serving the people of Indiana.'' Nunn, for his part, said he thought the chances he would be offered the job are "pretty slim.'' "I never aspired to that office,'' he said.
He added, however, that if Obama wanted to talk to him about the appointment, he would not object.
A couple of seemingly unrelated political developments struck the Ticket early this morning.
First of all, it was unusually thoughtful of Sen. Barack Obama to give his big foreign policy speech before his big foreign policy trip and announce the results of his findings in advance of the actual fact-finding junket to the Middle East and Europe.
There are a lot of things for average Americans to be doing in mid-summer in the United States. And worrying over exactly what the freshman senator heard from U.S., military commanders in Iraq about the actual situation on the ground should not be high on the list.
So now that we know he's going to stick to his 16-month end-the-war-no-matter-what pullout, not just the MoveOn.org crowd but all of us can put on our own flip-flops and start focusing on the upcoming NFL roster cuts.
No, he's never been to Afghanistan, but Obama already knows it is the true central front in the war on al-Qaeda. Which is equally good.
And because the results of Obama's trip are already known and because Obama's staff has been practically begging them, all three network anchors are going to traipse along and seek three non-exclusive exclusive interviews along the route, as will top reporters for print media.
A whole planeload apparently. In marked contrast to the limited press coverage afforded the three foreign trips of Republican Sen. John McCain this year. But that probably has to do with something.
Without worrying over content, Obama's five-nation, 12,000-mile "tour" can be the rock star event Chicago HQ wants. Of course, if he does another one of those "Thank you, Sioux City" things and it gets reported, that might be another thing.
Speaking of change to believe in, ABC's Jake Tapper is reporting that Hillary Clinton has changed her hair and is now parting it on the right, which as believers in the actual little-known hair-part theory understand, is the more feminine side.
We'll leave it to Jake to explain all the details, but right hair parts are believed to connote strength, leadership and masculinity, which explains Jimmy Carter's troubled presidency and Margaret Thatcher's success but not Ronald Reagan's.
The other good news is that -- finally -- after nearly six weeks of not campaigning for a presidency somewhere Clinton has launched her fund-raising for the 2012 election. She says the money drive is for a New York senate reelection effort that year.
But someone just pointed out that 2012 also happens to be the same year as the next U.S. presidential election. What a coincidence, eh?
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign raised $52 million in June, his campaign manager said this morning -- not quite a campaign record. The Illinois Democrat's White House bid raised $55 million in February, during the party primaries.
But it's still more than twice the $22 million that Republican rival Sen. John McCain raised during June.
However, the Republican National Committee, which is backing the party's presidential candidate with its own resources, also had nearly $68 million in the bank -- a combined treasury that the Obama campaign was mindful about today in reporting its own June haul -- and immediately asking for more from its 1.5 million-plus donors.
This space is supposed to be reserved for serious political material like foot-tapping senators, planted public forum questions, broken candidates' buses -- or make that candidates' broken buses -- satirical magazine covers that most people don't get and Rep. Ron Paul's chances of stealing the Republican nomination from John McCain.
We're going to make an exception under popular demand and publish late the latest JibJab cartoon video. It's just great. Wonderful. Don't miss it if you can.
The best part is what Hillary does toBill when he says a certain word.
We hope you die laughing. If you need more information on this stuff, our colleague Mark Milian over at Web Scout has more than you need. Go there. But do come back; they don't know anything about the electoral college over there.
You don't have to be a history buff -- although it probably would help -- to get a charge out of the photos our brother blogger Larry Harnisch has assembled over on The Daily Mirror.
They're from The Times' coverage 70 years ago today of the visit to Los Angeles of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Note the president's own rail car, Railroad One, the 1930s equivalent of Air Force One.
The crowd members in their straw hats. The president driving past Broadway and 7th. Protesters demanding the end to an embargo on trade with Spain.
And the president waving his hat -- wait a minute, a president wearing a hat? -- as he prepared to deliver a speech from the back of his Baltimore & Ohio train.
There, standing forlornly next to him is L.A. Mayor Frank Shaw, who was supposed to introduce FDR. But the president ignored him and just started the speech without introduction, according to The Times account the next day.
That's something The Ticket would have definitely blogged about back then, had there been such a thing as an Internet, a blog and ourself.
No presidential campaign -- not even Barack Obama's, which seems able to print its own money -- can afford all the publicity to get its message out and, more important, planted in the minds of sufficient voters to ensure victory.
So they use surrogates -- famous people, usually fellow politicians -- who are trotted out to meet with news-hungry media with four or five specific positive talking points to make about the candidate in a kind of created news scenario.
Sometimes the media representatives buy the points. Sometimes, like today, they don't. Here comes Democratic dignitaries like Sen. Evan Bayh and ex-Sen. Sam Nunn today to talk up the military and security credentials of the freshman senator from Illinois.
But the media wanted to talk about the vice presidential running mate possibilities for each man. So with reluctance they did.
"I have never aspired to that office," said Nunn, who served in the Senate from Georgia for 25 years. "It is always nice to have your name mentioned -- it is an honor -- but I have no expectation of being offered any office, and I am not in any way sitting on the edge of a chair ready to go back into government."
Nunn is a perennial VP prospect because of his strong national security credentials -- not all that common in his party -- and his Southernness. But at 69, he's only 23 months younger than McCain, which might detract from Democrats' ability to drive that issue.
Bayh, whose father, Birch, ran unsuccessfully for the White House 32 years ago, is younger at 52 and supported Hillary Clinton. So adding him might reach out to some of her supporters.
"I love serving the people of Indiana," Bayh said. "And I think any questions about the vice presidential thing are understandable, and it’s good for my ego. But I should probably let Sen. Obama and his campaign address those kind of questions."
Still, typically, he didn't want to totally quash such an opportunity. As CNN's Alexander Mooney points out, Bayh was then asked if he was taking his name off the VP list like Sen. Jim Webb and Gov. Ted Strickland have done.
Bayh's coy answer: "I've got a plane to catch."
-- Andrew Malcolm
Photo credits: Diet Nagl / AFP-Getty Images (top); Office of Sen. Evan Bayh (bottom)
Next month, more than 50,000 politicos, protesters, journalists and security types will invade downtown Denver for the Democratic National Convention.
Good news for local businesses. Bad news for the city’s large homeless population, which has long claimed the Mile High City's downtown as its turf.
So while the delegates are reveling and the protesters are rabble-rousing, what will the nearly 4,000 homeless be doing?
Well, according to the Rocky Mountain News, some will be kicking back in a local movie theater to take in the latest Hollywood blockbuster.
Others will be strolling around the Denver Zoo or the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. And others will be playing bingo.
All the events will be free to them, funded by Denver Road Home, a branch of the mayor’s office dedicated to ending homelessness in the city. The organization got the money for the convention events from the United Way.
So is this a Democratic Party ploy to sanitize the streets during the quadrennial political pep rally and nomination of....
The mystery has been cleared up about what else Jesse Jackson said last week when he made his crude remarks about Barack Obama.
The previously unreported comment, disclosed Wednesday morning by the TVNewser blog, was:
“Barack ... he’s talking down to black people ... telling [black people] how to behave.” Only Jackson used the plural form of the “n-word,” not “black people,” in the second part of his comment.
Initially, the firestorm was over comments Jackson made to a guest before a July 6 interview on "Fox & Friends."
The civil rights leader whispered that Obama was "talking down to black people" and that Jackson wanted to "cut his nuts off."
The comments went unnoticed in the control room, Fox News said. But, as reported by The Times’ Matea Gold in a story published Friday, an employee working the overnight shift transcribed the tape, and the remarks that first caused the stir were reported several days later on Fox’s "The O’Reilly Factor." Then, as The Ticket reported, there was a controversy over exactly what Jackson said he wanted to do.
At the time, host Bill O’Reilly told viewers the network had decided to air only portions of what Jackson had said, adding there was "more damaging" material, too. That gave rise to rumors that Jackson had used the “n word” –- and aimed it directly at Obama.
In a Wednesday afternoon interview with fellow Fox host Shepard Smith, O’Reilly said he had withheld the “n-word” remark because, “I’m not in the business of creating some kind of controversy that’s not relevant to the general subject -- one civil rights leader disparaging another over policy.”
But why did O’Reilly mention in the first place that he had “more damaging” material?
In a one-sentence statement offered as a reply, O’Reilly said Wednesday: “We tell the audience the full breadth of everything we report on.” There was no elaboration on why the “full breadth” didn’t include the actual comment.
As for how the “n-word” comment eventually got out, O’Reilly told Smith that “some weasel leaked it to the Internet.”
For those still harboring hopes that California will be hotly contested in the November presidential election, it’s time for a pity party.
The latest statewide poll, conducted by the Field organization, shows Democrat Barack Obama extending his lead in the state and now trouncing Republican John McCain by 24 points, 54% to 30%. In May, Obama’s lead was a smaller 17 points, and in January, an even slighter 7 points.
The Field poll, conducted July 8-14, also demonstrated an enthusiasm gap in California: 51% of Obama’s supporters said they were very enthusiastic about him, whereas only 17% of McCain’s made the same claim.
Obama led strongly among Democrats, and McCain held a less-dominant lead among Republicans. But among the nonpartisan voters highly coveted by candidates, Obama led 64% to 18%.
McCain has repeatedly stated that he will contest the state in the general election. But most political observers believe that vow reflects a desire to keep voters and donors happy rather than any serious intention to compete in California, where running statewide ads costs millions of dollars per week that can be more optimistically spent elsewhere. Only 32.5% of the state’s voters are registered as Republicans, according to the most recent voter statistics.
Until 1992, California was reliably Republican in presidential contests. Bill Clinton that year became the first Democrat to win the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. But changes in the state’s voting pool, including a rise in moderate voters that coincided with a conservative streak in GOP nominees, turned the state toward the Democrats.
The state is hardly homogeneous, however, as the Field poll showed again. Coastal voters, for example, favored Obama 62% to 24%, whereas inland residents backed McCain by a 44%-35% margin. Unfortunately for McCain, inland voters make up less than one-third of the electorate.
Still, Obama won almost all demographic groups, including 51% of men to McCain’s 35%, and 56% of women to McCain’s 27%. He won overwhelming margins among Asian, black and Latino voters, and won white voters by 47% to 37%. Women and Latinos had powered Hillary Clinton's victory over Obama in the February California presidential primary.
He's been a quick learner. But it's too late this time for the Democrat who wants to move into the White House next January. And then get his kids a dog.
As our Swamp colleagues report,Barack Obama finally commented last night on the highly controversial cover of this week's New Yorker magazine. And he said all the right things. But he was about 54 hours tardy.
Sunday, as soon as the elitist magazine released its provocative cartoon cover, Obama declined to comment, not wanting to elevate it to something important enough for a candidate to speak about. Fine. But, as The Ticket promptly reported here, advisors still sent out his communications director, Bill Burton, to denounce it:
"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
The McCain campaign immediately (and ultimately self-servingly) issued a similar statement quoting Tucker Bounds as saying: "We completely agree with the Obama campaign. It's tasteless and offensive."
The cover of this week's New Yorker magazine depicts Obama in one-piece Muslim garb and headdress fist-bumping his booted, Afro-wearing wife Michelle in camo clothes with an AK-47 and ammo-belt slung over her shoulder beneath a portrait of Osama bin Laden while the American flag burns in the fireplace -- in the presidential Oval Office. Other than that, nothing particularly ...
Just six weeks after reluctantly surrendering to Barack Obama in the brutal 2008 Democratic primary race, Sen. Hillary Clinton has begun raising money for what she says is her 2012 New York Senate reelection campaign.
Clinton still faces about $20 million in debts from her unsuccessful presidential effort this year. As part of a so-called "unity drive," Obama has appealed to his supporters in recent weeks to give to Clinton to cover the costs that she incurred while raking him over the coals in a bare-knuckled bid to return to the White House. Some Obama backers have balked.
Clinton has also asked her donors to contribute to the massive general election fundraising effort of Obama, who changed his mind and has rejected federal funding. Some Clinton backers have balked.
Now, the New York Observer is reporting early this morning that the former first lady has sent out a special message to supporters who donated up to $2,300 to her anticipated 2008 general election campaign. Since there won't be one, she must return that money to the donors by Aug. 28, unless she gets their permission not to.
Her new appeal includes a photocopy of a handwritten note from Clinton that says: "Dear friend, your commitment has meant so much to me over the course of my presidential campaign. You were there for me when I needed you the most and I'll never forget it. I hope you'll help me continue to fight for the issues and causes we believe in by filling out the enclosed form in support of Friends of Hillary."
The form, once signed, allows Clinton staff to transfer the money from the 2008 general election fund into the 2012 senate reelection treasury, where it can earn four years' of interest. The report comes from Jason Horowitz of the Observer's Politiker blog.
If successful, this early fundraising, while unusual, can have the effect of scaring off any serious Republican challengers in New York. And help keep Clinton supporters in her camp and full of hope after the close call this primary season.
And, if memory serves, when Clinton had about $10 million left over from her successful 2006 Senate reelection campaign, she shifted those funds as starter cash over to her nascent presidential effort last year.
Hmmm. Not that any ambitious politician would think this far ahead. But if Obama was to, say, lose a close election in November to Clinton's close friend, John McCain, the new president would be 72 on Inauguration Day next Jan. 20.
That would make him really pretty old for anything other than maybe perhaps one term, which would leave things wide open in 2012 for, say, a former Arkansas first lady who happens to be only 60 right now. And might have an ample senate campaign fund suitable for transferring into a presidential fund.
But that's absolutely ridiculous to think about now. As is, of course, having three major Democratic fundraising campaigns underway at the same time.
A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days.
The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge.
The Arizona senator, who advocated the surge for years before the Bush administration employed it, says the resulting reduction in violence is proof it worked with progress on 15 of 18 political benchmarks and Obama's plan to withdraw troops by now would have resulted in surrender.
When President Bush ordered the surge in January 2007, Obama said: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse," a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he acknowledged progress, but maintained his position that political progress was lacking.
Tuesday, while Obama gave a speech on foreign policy, the New York Daily News was the first to notice the removal of parts of Obama's campaign site listing the Iraq troop surge as part of "The Problem." An Obama spokeswoman said it was just part of an "update" to "reflect changes in current events," as our colleague Frank James notes in the Swamp. The update includes a new section on the rise of Al Qaeda violence in Afghanistan.
But some might see the updating as part of Obama's skip to the political center now that he's secured the Democratic nomination. "Today," McCain said Tuesday, "we know Sen. Obama was wrong" to oppose the troop surge.
An old quote of Obama's criticizing the "rash war," which helped him with the left wing of his party and helped differentiate his stand from that of Sen. Hillary Clinton, a primary opponent who voted for the use of force in Iraq, has been replaced on his site by one saying that ending the Iraq war will make America safer. That's more of a general election message.
And hat tip to the folks over at the Wake Up America blog for their continuing trenchant analyses of the summer campaigns in general and, specifically, for highlighting the video below that contrasts Obama's pre-surge position with a more recent interview of David Axelrod, his chief campaign strategist, denying Obama's statements. A reminder of how carefully voters must listen during these last four campaign months.
This week's provocative New Yorker magazine cover featuring Barack and Michelle Obama as armed and Muslim calls attention to a variety of myths floating around the country these days, mainly online, but also openly voiced.
To check on what you hear, the website snopes.com is valuable. It tracks and debunks urban legends of the e-mail variety. It could be the first place you go when that unexpected message pings into your inbox from another e-mail chain.
You can also search Snopes for more myths or alleged truths about others such as Sens. John McCain (he did tell a story once about a fellow POW in Hanoi who got beaten for sewing a U.S. flag on his prison shirt) or John Kerry (his photo does hang in a Vietnamese Peace Museum for being a war protester).
According to the site, here are the top myths about Barack Obama:
He is a "radical Muslim" who will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
He was sworn into office on the Koran.
Obama's church has a "nonnegotiable commitment to Africa" that is covertly Muslim and excludes non-blacks.
Obama has been endorsed for president of the U.S. by the Ku Klux Klan.
Obama's presidential campaign is being funded by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez.
For the rest of the mythical Obama list, check out our colleague James Oliphant's intriguing story over at the Swamp.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Photo: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Credit: Associated Press
Necks craned at a town hall meeting in Albuquerque on Tuesday morning when in the middle of talking to voters, Sen. John McCain said he'd take a question from a reporter.
“When do you plan to announce the selection of your running mate?" asked the scribe, Jacob Schroeder.
McCain played it cool. “As soon as we can,” he replied.
Schroeder persisted: “What qualities are you looking for in a vice presidential running mate?”
“Someone exactly like you: vigorous, talented,” said McCain in a shocking display of pandering to the press.
“That person has to share not only my principles and my values, but also my priorities… Could I also remind you, and I am sure you know this because you study hard, the vice president of the United States has only two duties. One is to cast a tie vote in the Senate. The other duty is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and I am sure that is a big job for whoever the vice president will be.”
Schroeder seemed satisfied. He works for Scholastic Kids News service, and his web page says he is 8 years old.
The last time a Scholastic reporter made news was back in December, when Chelsea Clinton, campaigning for her mother Hillary, took a different approach to a young questioner. She snubbed the Iowa fourth-grader, Sydney Rieckhoff, who wanted to ask her about her dad.
"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press," said Clinton. "Even though I think you're cute."
(Chealsea's mother finished third in the Iowa Democratic caucus the next month.)
Harvey Weinstein has announced that he'll publish next summer a book called "What Am I Doing Here?" by a former Brooklyn delivery boy named Lawrence Harvey Ziegler.
Should be a great read on the subway. All right, we're messing with ya. Lawrence Ziegler was the street name of someone now known as Larry King, a former radio and now TV talk-show host who has interviewed pretty much everybody in the entire world, except a couple of taxi drivers in India and the Emperor of Japan.
Larry's going to reveal in his book what he thinks of every president since Lincoln. Just kidding. Since Nixon. And which ones he voted for.
Larry, a must-stop for presidential candidates, has left a mark on politics. Everyone who is anyone or wants to be in the world of politics comes through his studio because Larry's got no gotcha. He just wants to talk, actually listen. Lar's got no agenda. Just endless questions like regular people, only triter.
"I remind myself every morning," Larry has said. "Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening."
Larry is an incredible listener, leaning on that shiny desk, sleeves ...
Yet another prominent Democrat has taken himself out of the vice presidential derby.
Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point grad set to accompany Barack Obama on a tour of Iraq and Afghanistan, called the VP slot a “position which I have no interest in.”
Not that he was actually in the running. Reed told the Associated Press he wasn't asked for any inside information that the Obama camp could use to vet him for the job.
Reed joins a growing list of prominent Democrats to say "No, thank you" to the No. 2 job even before it was offered. Maybe Clinton will be the only one left?
First, as The Ticket reported, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Clinton supporter, was an adamant no. Then, Virginia, it was Sen. Jim Webb, a former Republican.
Our friends over or up or wherever they are on the Entertainment section of LATimes.com took one look at today's new New Yorker magazine cover and plunged into researching nine other outrageous magazine covers that are rather eye-popping.
Thousands have read The Ticket's report from yesterday on the either incendiary or satirical cover of the Obamas -- Barack and Michelle-- in Muslim/freedom fighter gear, armed to the teeth, in the Oval office beneath an Osama bin Laden portrait while they burn the American flag. Other than that, what's to get excited about? That Ticket item is right here.
The new cover story photo gallery is also a hoot -- many political, some not. Remember the Yoko Ono/naked John Lennon cover that made you want to take a shower? Is peace political? Or the Time magazine cover story about Bill Clinton's extra-curricular troubles that perhaps accidentally had a pair of devil's horns coming out of his head?
There's Entertainment Weekly's nude Dixie Chicks cover after they said those naughty things overseas about President Bush and lost so much of their music sales in Tennessee and Texas.
Our personal favorite is the cover story in Vanity Fair titled "Is Barbara Bush as Tough as They Say?" that had a nicely-dressed photo of Demi Moore on the cover instead of the former first lady. Demi, Barbara, hey, it probably made sense at the design meeting. Except when you look closely at the photo, that's really not much of a suit on the Demster.
We actually recommend two places to check out. One is our blogging colleague Elizabeth Snead, over at Dish Rag, who's a lovely lady unless you're a celebrity and since we're not, she's good and has an alternative New Yorker cover some might like better.
And the other spot is the aforementioned, semi-political photo gallery, which you can access by clicking on the also aforementioned New Yorker cover below.
An interesting and surprising little thing happened Sunday while Barack Obama was speaking (in English) to the National Council of La Raza in San Diego.
It was, according to The Times' Louise Roug, a fairly standard Obama stump speech before the crowd of more than 2,000 members in the Convention Center, where the Republican Party nominated Sen. Bob Dole 12 years ago.
Obama said the gorgeous weather reminded him of his native Hawaii. He criticized the current stand on immigration reform of his Republican opponent, John McCain, who gets his chance to address the group Monday morning when he will stress his economic growth proposals, especially for small businesses, and criticize Obama's plans to raise taxes.
The crowd was very respectful of the Democratic nominee-to-be, who easily leads among Latinos, according to polls. And Obama also talked about giving tax credits to small businesses that provide health insurance for employees.
It was then that the crowd erupted in enthusiastic applause and warm cheers. But not over Obama's policy proposal.
What ignited that outburst was the mere mention by Obama of the name Hillary Clinton, his vanquished party opponent.
She wasn't there, of course. But in absentia the Democratic Party's loser got a noticeably warmer response than the winner, perhaps a reflection of that lingering party unity thing that was taken care of up in Unity.
Or maybe they were just being spontaneously friendly.
As if he's not got enough to worry about with helpers like Phil Gramm,John McCain is learning the hard way that having the Gubernator on the stump for you can be a gamble.
The California governor appeared by tape on ABC’s "This Week" today intended, everybody thought, to give a boost to the Arizona senator's Republican candidacy for the White House.
But instead, when asked, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggerseemed to suggest he would have no qualms about joining an administration run by someone called Barack Obama -- who, if memory serves, is the Democrat actually opposing the Republican man the Republican Schwarzenegger endorsed for president.
The show's host, George Stephanopoulos, questioned the governor about a report in Newsweek that the Democratic senator, if elected president, might ask the Republican governor to serve in an Obama Cabinet post, as something like an energy czar. Which is Russian for big kahuna, but you get the point.
The immediate answer from most any other McCain surrogate would be: "Are you serious?" "What are you drinking from that cup, George?" "Of course not." "Absolutely not." "No." An outburst of laughter combined with a shaking head. Or perhaps a cackle.
Everyone understands Schwarzenegger's got to live with his wife, Maria Shriver, who's a Democrat. And she's endorsed the other guy. Fine.
But instead of full support, what the McCain camp got was their surrogate nibbling at the Democratic bait.
Stephanopoulos: “If he were president and he called, you would at least take that call?”
Schwarzenegger: “I would take his call now, I will take his call when he's President. Any time. Remember, no matter who is president, I don't see this as a political thing, I see this as we always have to help no matter what the administration is.”
"When" Obama's president?
The governor might try to "clarify" Monday. But with friends like these ...
(UPDATE: Sure enough, as predicted the Governor made a clarifying statement Monday saying, among other things, "I have no interest in leaving the state of California until my mission is finished.")
In politics, "flip-flop" is considered the equivalent of two four-letter words -- but not by Arnold Schwarzenegger. If anything, the California governor says, politicians should flip-flop more frequently.
"Flip-flopping is getting a bad rap, because I think it is great," he said during an interview taped last week and broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "Someone has made a mistake. I mean, someone has, for 20 or 30 years, been in the wrong place with his idea and with his ideology and says, 'You know something? I changed my mind. I am now for this.'
"As long as he's honest or she's honest, I think that is a wonderful thing. You can change your mind," he said. "I have changed my mind on things, and there is nothing wrong with it."
As a politician, Schwarzenegger has tried to avoid hard-line positions on the right or the left, but he noted that winning presidential primaries -- appealing to a party's core voters, in other words -- may require candidates to veer to the extreme.
But now that he has enough delegates to become the GOP nominee, John McCain "hopefully" will "wander a little more to the left," Schwarzenegger said. As for McCain's Democratic counterpart, Barack Obama, "what he has done consistently has been very much to the left, and he's now more and more going to the right."
"You think that's smart," said host George Stephanopoulos.
"That's what they have to do," Schwarzenegger replied.
Recently, regular Ticket readers will recall, we celebrated the good news for politics junkies that PBS was going to have gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions.
The networks and even some print media have cut back their coverage drastically.
Well, here's some even better news. Those politics junkies aware of XM Satellite Radio's all-politics POTUS 08 Channel 130 have for 10 months now been getting round-the-clock expert reporting on the presidential election races, now focusing on Republican nominee-to-be John McCain and the Democrats' choice, Barack Obama.
This weekend XM announced that the channel will cover both parties' national conventions 24 hours a day, commercial-free, with all-day and evening live coverage and overnight reruns of highlights.
This coverage has long been available to millions of XM subscribers in homes, in cars and online. But, XM also announced, during the conventions the satellite radio operation will offer free 14-day trials to online users at www.xmradio.com/potus.
Timed right, those free 14 days will perfectly overlap both the Democrats' convention in Denver at the end of August and the Republicans' meeting in St. Paul, Minn., in early September.
XM will have its broadcast booth overlooking both convention floors, with the usual array of anchors on hand, including Joe Mathieu (pictured), Tim Farley, Rebecca Roberts and Scott Walterman. During each week's session, Adrienne Mitchell will report on the other party from Washington.
The channel is already broadcasting weekly sessions with each convention's organizers. And it plans to interview speakers, reporters, strategists, delegates and -- who knows -- maybe even some convention attendees wearing funny hats, which won't look so bad on radio.
By the way, The Ticket will be blogging both conventions in its usual unpredictable way.
Perhaps inadvertently, Sen. Barack Obama tonight lifted a bit of the secrecy surrounding his upcoming trip overseas, telling reporters aboard his campaign plane that Sen. Jack Reed might accompany him to Iraq along with sometimes Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel.
When a reporter asked what might make Sen. Joe Biden and Hagel good traveling companions to Iraq, Obama made a very revealing correction:“It’s actually Sen. Hagel and Sen. Reed who may be coming with us.”
Well, now! So Biden, who says he doesn't work for anybody else, is not going with Obama? What's that do to the guessing game about the freshman Illinois senator's vice presidential pick, which had previously focused on Biden's foreign policy experience and his reported upcoming travels with Obama?
And does this put Reed of Rhode Island, a three-term ex-House member, two-term senator and ex-Army Ranger, into the VP mix?
Obama's comments came during an infrequent 20-minute exchange with reporters at the back of his plane en route from Chicago to San Diego, a late-night media availability which will help keep him in the news on an otherwise quiet news weekend when his opponent, Republican John McCain, is inactive.
Obama is scheduled to speak to Latino voters in San Diego on Sunday. He also was asked about recent fundraising figures and a crude comment made about him.
Obama went on to say that both Reed and Hagel are foreign affairs experts who “reflect a traditional bipartisan wisdom when it comes to foreign policy.”
“Neither are ideologues," he added, "but try to get the facts right and make a determination of what is best for U.S. interests.”
Then he added: “And they are good guys.”
Obama didn’t want to confirm a trip to Afghanistan, where....
Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated a double-homecoming of sorts in Chicago today, visiting the city where she was born and paying homage to the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed her unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination way back in October of last year.
Was it only 2007?
"I'm here to say thank you for the privilege of working with you in this presidential campaign," she told an enthusiastic crowd of more than 3,000 delegates at the union's convention on Chicago's waterfront Navy Pier.
"It was a remarkable journey, one that I would not have wanted to make without you, and I feel very privileged that you went with me as we crisscrossed America."
But more than just offering her appreciation, Clinton received a standing ovation as she played the role of campaign surrogate for the man who defeated her for the presidential nomination, presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, more specifically now of the city's South Side.
"I bear such a sense of debt to those who gave me so much," Clinton told the crowd, discussing the teachers she had while growing up in suburban Park Ridge. Our blogging colleague David Pearson has the rest of the story on the New York senator's campaign day in Illinois.
ABC's "This Week": California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the presidential campaign, wildfires and gasoline prices (taped Friday); round table with Richard Stengel (Time magazine) and Donna Brazile, Cokie Roberts and George Will (ABC News).
CBS' "Face the Nation": (UPDATE: CBS has added Ed Gillespie, counselor to President Bush, to the guest list talk about former press secretary Tony Sunday, who died Saturday of cancer.) Sallai Meridor (Israeli ambassador to the U.S.); Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Roger Simon, chief political columnist, Politico. Topics are Iran, Iraq and the presidential campaign.
CNN's "Late Edition": The presidential campaign: Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Govs. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Janet Napolitano (D-Ariz.) and Nancy Pfotenhauer (McCain economic advisor) and Jason Furman (Obama economic advisor). Iraq: Iraqi national security advisor Mowaffak Rubaie.
"Fox News Sunday": T. Boone Pickens, on his energy plan.
NBC's "Meet the Press": Carly Fiorina (McCain Victory 2008 chairwoman) and Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), national co-chair of Obama campaign, on the presidential campaign. Round table with former Rep. Harold Ford Jr., GOP strategist Mike Murphy and Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.
Remember that Newsweek magazine poll a few weeks back that portrayed a big advantage for Democrat Barack Obama in his contest with Republican John McCainfor the White House?
Well, forget it.
The newest Newsweek poll shows pretty much what the daily tracking poll of the Gallup organization has been recording for some time now: a virtual tie between the two major-party candidates for president among voters surveyed nationally.
Newsweek says the virtual tie portrayed in its latest poll, as compared with the 15-point lead that Obama enjoyed in a poll reported June 20, is "hard to explain."
"A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama's glow may be fading," Newsweek now reports. "In the latest Newsweek Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44% to 41%.
"The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month's Newsweek Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51% to 36%.
"Obama's rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate," Newsweek adds. "Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience -- an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who'd slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June.
"More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics."
There's more to this surprising statistical midsummer turn of events, and our colleague Mark Silva has the full details in the Swamp.
Ticket readers no doubt remember our item the other day about German Chancellor Angela Merkel sending out a spokesman to express "great skepticism as to whether it is appropriate to bring an election campaign being fought not in Germany but in the United States to the Brandenburg Gate."
It's a really nice-looking gate all right, not in the Wyoming sense, but in that monolithic, stone European horses-and-chariots sense. In fact, the Brandenburg has horses on top.
It would make a terrific backdrop for some freshman senator from Illinois with not that much foreign affairs experience to be seen giving a speech on, say, foreign affairs.
Ronald Reagan, who was also from Illinois, spoke there as a sitting president, not someone running for it. And when he went against his advisors' urgings and called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, the gate was a symbol of the Cold War.
Today, it's a symbol of German unity. But to Americans, it just looks really foreign -- in large part because nothing in the United States would be allowed to stand like that for 219 years.
Not without being rezoned for lofts.
Foreign-looking is all an American candidate really needs anyway.
Friday, just two days after the Germans seemed to ...
Barack Obama's presidential campaign hasn't said much about it, but this whole unity thing with the die-hard supporters of Hillary Clinton is proving more difficult to accomplish than envisioned.
She's urged her donors to support Obama and he's urged his supporters to help erase her campaign debt, except when he forgets.
But in between public engagements Obama is apparently reaching out to some recalcitrant Clinton backers with sympathetic phone calls during which he at least mentions that the New York senator he defeated is actually on his list of running mates.
This is one of those political claims that really can't be
