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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....
Read more Barack Obama's infuriated by all this criticism of Michelle »
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.)
-– Robin Abcarian
One of the most important issues to any presidential campaign is controlling the message transmitted to the voting public through the media covering each day's events.
One of the biggest threats to controlling that message is the media itself, especially the national media that pays a fortune to travel with the candidates on their chartered planes, buses and vans. And watches and listens and questions intensely for any change or even apparent change in the campaign, as is its perceived duty.
Another threat to controlling that message is the candidate himself -- or as Hillary Clinton learned last fall and winter, the candidate's spouse himself. They get off course talking or scrapping about something else and the day's carefully crafted message on, say, creating jobs gets completely lost.
As an obvious part of the campaign discipline newly imposed on Sen. John McCain by his newly imposed campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, the senator kept bringing the conversation back to economics in virtually every discussion Wednesday. Give the political freewheeler one day's gold star for good behavior.
Another favorite way to control the message is to separate the candidate from the often-bored national press, which has heard the same themes, details and jokes over and over again. And expose him/her instead to the local media, where a presidential candidate is by definition much bigger news. Even Jim Gilmore or Chris Dodd can get them excited.
Although it was a local reporter who caught an embarrassed (and privately angered) candidate ...
Read more A new tactic for straight-talking McCain? Dump the traveling press »
OK, now that you've finished poring over the dueling economic plans of John McCain and Barack Obama and how the funding for the freshman senator's package may not equal the costs.
And gone to each of their websites to study the proposals even more thoroughly and learned how Obama is gonna open up next month's Democratic National Convention to 76,000 of his closest friends in a football stadium because that's more personable.
You have done that, haven't you? Because every concerned voter says they want more information on the candidates, at least until they get it. And then maybe it's a little too deep for summer reading.
This is July, after all. A perfect time for lighter fare when the two major candidates, under the direction of their professionally plotting campaign staffs, try to slip in some more easily digestible personal info on themselves and their families. And if voters come to Labor Day finding a candidate a tad more likable, well, the campaigns will just have to live with that.
It's a very interesting competition this time, the likability contest. Because each candidate has the mirror problem of the....
Read more It's July, and John McCain, Barack Obama seek to be seen as regular folks »
Federal prosecutors planning their case against Illinois political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko intended to invoke the name of his onetime associate, Sen. Barack Obama, often during the recently concluded two-month prosecution in Chicago.
Rezko was convicte d on federal corruption charges.
The onetime political mentor and fundraiser for Obama, especially in the early days of his Illinois political career, arranged for a series of so-called straw political contributions to Obama, money from Rezko channeled through other people's names. Obama has since donated an equal sum to charities.
According to published reports in the Chicago Sun-Times, recently unsealed documents show prosecutors intended to call several witnesses who would tie Rezko to Obama. The federal judge ruled that they could.
"Witnesses will testify that Rezko was a long-standing supporter and fund-raiser of Barack Obama," one prosecutor wrote in their planning notes. But for unexplained reasons, they ended up not calling those witnesses.
--Andrew Malcolm
Photo credit: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press
Bob Zaltsberg is the editor of the Bloomington Herald-Times and back in April he got the idea to send one of his 12 reporters out on a big story, the passing through southern Indiana of the Barack Obama whirlwind.
They routinely cover campaigns when they're local, but this assignment involved traveling an hour away to Columbus, Ind.
James Boyd was the lucky fellow assigned to get himself over to Columbus, where he boarded the Obama campaign bus on April 11 for the 39-mile ride across to Bloomington and Obama's two quick stops there before Boyd jumped off the campaign to write his story.
The other day a bill arrived from the Obama campaign. It was expected. "We didn't want or expect a free ride," says the good-natured Zaltsberg.
What wasn't expected was the amount -- $438.74, which is about $11.25 a mile. No small sum for a smaller newspaper. (Or a larger one either these days!) For instance, Boyd had a turkey sandwich and cup of soup; cost for that $116.62. (He must have used the pepper to account for the extra 62 cents.)
The bus transportation -- $226.17 -- seemed a little large for less than an hour but it was chartered. Then, the paper got nailed for another $91.41 for something labeled "Files."
The facts are that the increasing costs of covering political campaigns in recent years and declining revenues for many news operations have seen the traveling news media contingents dwindle considerably, even from 2000. This, of course, reduces the independent coverage of candidates seeking the nation's highest elected office and the means of spreading the candidate's message.
With prorated airfares added in, it can cost thousands of dollars a day to maintain a full-time reporter with a major political campaign.
"This was a rare primary," says Zaltsberg, "and thus a rare opportunity for an H-T reporter to travel with a campaign, even for such a short distance."
The editor, who provides an itemized copy of the campaign's bill here, notes that Obama claims he will make Indiana a battleground state come fall.
But if that traveling circus does come back through his newspaper's area, Zaltsberg says, "We'll probably skip the all-inclusive bus package and drive along behind."
-- Andrew Malcolm
Ralph Nader isn't backing down.
Gee, what a surprise.
Controversial comments he made about Barack Obama in a newspaper interview garnered more coverage for him today than his little-noticed presidential campaign has received all year, including extended discussions on various cable news shows.
It also prompted Obama, when asked about the matter at a news conference, to dispute Nader's contention that he has been ignoring a range of issues.
Tonight, Nader responded with a statement that begins: "Sen. Obama said earlier today that I haven't been paying attention to his campaign.
"Actually, I have.
"And it's clear from Sen. Obama's campaign that he is not willing to tackle the white power structure -- whether in the form of the corporate power structure or many of the super-rich -- who are taking advantage of 100 million low-income Americans who are suffering in poverty or near poverty."
The rest of the statement can be read here.
--Don Frederick
Some writers aspire to snarky. Maureen Dowd is already there and not looking back.
At least until this week.
Reading Dowd is reminiscent of watching a Don Rickles' nightclub act, only with a lot more hair. You never know what outrageous thing is going to come out next. 
That, frankly, is why so many people read her regularly. She sounds spontaneous, producing the unexpected reading experience, not preformed and formulaic like so much modern newspaper writing.
She's a buzzmaker at a publication that has, until her, always wanted the institution to be the star, not the individual.
Which is why over the years so many gifted writers like Gay Talese, David Halberstam, David Broder, E.J. Dionne, Hedrick Smith and others left the well-paid but cloisterly confines of that paper.
Dowd showed early snarkiness and a keen eye for the scalpeled phrase while writing about George H.W. Bush. The borderline inappropriateness of some of her writing in the news columns and the fear of losing her....
Read more Maureen Dowd, N.Y. Times' snark-in-chief, gets a public scolding »
Enjoy it. Talk up a storm on the road. You've got only a few days left to use cellphones in your hand while driving.
Then, ring-a-ding, the new California law takes effect requiring that you shut the heck up or use a hands-free phone thingy. The cops don't need any other excuse to stop you, no cocaine blowing out the back window, nothing but holding that hand suspiciously up by your ear. (So no ear-picking -- too risky.)
And there are no warnings for first-time offenders. Just tickets.
Politicians in Sacramento, who live by the cellphone themselves, realized they could get a lot of publicity by championing this restriction, claiming that thousands, probably millions, maybe even billions of drivers were driving on California's crumbling highways distracted by conversations on cellphones and causing a gazillion accidents.
Who hasn't seen an accident or near-accident with (always) a woman talking on her cellphone?
So no doubt, starting July 2 the number of traffic accidents in California will plummet to near-zero and our collision insurance premiums will too.
Or not.
That's because these same underemployed lawmakers did not ban such things as cup holders, Big Macs on your thigh, dripping mustard, too many radio commercials on one station, nagging spouses, CD players, children squabbling in the backseat or dogs sitting in drivers' laps to enjoy the breezes.
That's still all A-OK. So The Times' famed videographer Jeff Amlotte and Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive writer Dan Neil creatively collaborated on this hilarious video to instruct California drivers on exactly what is still legal for them to do while driving after June 30.
Be sure to watch this video while driving. That's still legal too. Oh, and e-mail this link to everyone on your contact list, one by one. That's legal too.
Just don't phone them about it.
--Andrew Malcolm
Sure, there's world wars and toxic pollution and corruption and Social Security reform and a few other things like trillions of dollars in debt to worry about.
But before getting to those easy issues, politicians who want to be chief executives must first get elected. And to do that they must decide if they're going to wear funny hats.
It's the bane of most big-time campaigns. And why you don't see candidates so often visiting construction sites; hard-hat zones, where they must don those funny-looking helmets that sit so high on their head. They may save lives, but they scare image-conscious campaigns.
Remember in 1988 Gov. Mike Dukakis driving that tank? It's a lot of fun. Looked good on paper to associate him with defense issues, a traditional Democratic weak spot. But you gotta wear the XL helmet. So he did. He looked like a pretender. And the rest is doofus history.
Long before him, there was the classic headgear disaster, Calvin Coolidge in the Indian headdress. Scroll down for that baby.
So, even though he's a freshman senator and a rookie national campaigner, Sen. Barack Obama faced a quandary last weekend.
Should he wear one of those stupid-looking bicycle helmets that legislators say we must wear but only look good on Tour de France racers? And get mocked? Or should he go without the hapless headgear and get criticized for defying the law? Who does he think he is? Above the rules that apply to everyone else?
These are everyday decisions now. Obama opted for the hat. At one of two lucrative campaign fund-raisers in Chicago Thursday night, at the home of a businessman who donates bicycles to charities, Obama couldn't resist a little boasting. He explained that he faced a tossup: Risking ridicule or sending children the right message about bike gear.
"I had an internal debate," Obama admitted when a supporter thanked him for wearing a helmet. "Because I knew that the AP was going to take a pictur e, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet.
"But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking," he said to applause.
"Now, obviously the rest of my apparel was apparently not up to snuff, because I got a hard time from all sorts of blogs ... who said I looked like Urkel."
There's more on this story here.
--Andrew Malcolm
Frame grab from 1988 Bush "Tank Ride" commercial. Image courtesy of the American Museum of the Moving Image.
Photo Credit: Associated Press
And now the classic of classic politician headgear photos, Calvin Coolidge becomes an honorary Sioux chief. 
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 »
Potential vice presidential nominees routinely stress that they are happy with the jobs they have, scoff at the mention of their names as possible running mates and insist they have no strong interest in the second spot on their party's national ticket.
Almost always, such comments are accepted for what they are: required social niceties from ambitious politicians who are quietly angling for the nod and, understandably, would accept the invite in an  instant.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, however, is breaking the rules. Widely considered a prime contender for a running-mate offer from Barack Obama, Strickland issued a blunt, unequivocal rejection of such a prospect.
In an interview airing this evening on NPR's "All Things Considered," journalist Michele Norris asks Strickland -- a staunch Hillary Clinton ally during the Democratic primary -- if the energetic campaigning he has promised on Obama's behalf would serve as a veep audition for him.
"Absolutely not," Strickland replies. "If drafted, I will not run; nominated, I will not accept; and if elected, I will not serve. So, I don’t know how more crystal clear I can be."
Indeed, to drive his position home, Strickland was "Shermanesque" -- parroting the phrasing coined by Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman when he was in the mix as a Republican presidential candidate in 1884.
Turns out, it's an old tune for Strickland. A story in the Columbus Dispatch last November on Strickland's official endorsement of Clinton reported that he repeatedly had said he was not interested ...
Read more Ted Strickland rules himself out as an Obama veep pick »
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 Washington Times on Sunday teased a recent interview some of its staff had with Tom DeLay with a short story reporting that the conservative firebrand is having no success persuading his wife to back presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.
Christine DeLay, the once all-powerful House majority leader from Texas told the newspaper, is planning to vote for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr.
Today, the Times gets to the guts of DeLay's comments: His dire view of what looms for the GOP, at least in the near term.
The core problem, in DeLay's view, is that in the age of the Internet, Democrats have adapted more adroitly than Republicans to tapping into the power of independent groups who share their philosophy but don't want to be part of a traditional party structure (think MoveOn.org).
"People out there that are making decisions are not focusing, in my opinion, on what it's going to take to rebuild the conservative movement and rebuild the Republican Party. They're living with 10-, 15-year-old technology. They still believe if you raise enough money, go on television enough, you're going to win. Those days are over," DeLay says in the story (which can be read in full here.)
-- Don Frederick
OK, give yourself a little treat for making it through to Friday afternoon and in a couple of minutes go read the revealing and entertaining interview by our colleague, James Rainey, of one of the neatest bylines going these days in online or print journalism -- Mayhill Fowler.
Sound familiar?
She just happens to be the Huffington Post media writer who revealed that "inartful" bitter small-town guns and religion crack of Barack Obama's some weeks back at an allegedly private fund-raiser in a San Francisco mansion that got the Ivy League-educated lawyer in so much trouble for an elitist streak that didn't go over too well with central Pennsylvania's small-town voters.
Imagine politicians saying one thing in San Francisco and another in a Keystone State bowling alley. And while the professional ...
Read more Exposing Mayhill Fowler, citizen journalist, who scoops the pros »
Have you heard the one about the powerful vice president who got up in front of a bunch of people that he probably dislikes the most of any, other than maybe special prosecutors? And he told the most hilarious joke about incest in West Virginia.
Which couldn't possibly have been funnier unless it was about incest in Mississippi.
But this being an election year, even though not for this vice president, and West Virginians being as totally humorless as everyone knows they are, Dick Cheney had to quickly issue a statement apologizing to the people of the little state without whose five electoral votes in 2000 he would long since be a full-time fly-fisherman or dove killer.
Widely considered the most powerful No. 2 in the country's history, Cheney also absolutely loves the media. Can't get enough of them. Us. Which is why he agreed to present a bunch of awards at a Monday lunch at the National Press Club, the same institution where....
Read more Dick Cheney, the constant comedian, lets some good ones fly »
ABC's "This Week": Former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan (pictured) and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe. Round-table with Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, the New York Times' David Brooks, Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum and commentator George Will.
Bloomberg's "Political Capital with Al Hunt": Ralph Reed, Republican strategist and former director of the  Christian Coalition.
CBS' "Face the Nation": Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
CNN's "Late Edition": Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons, Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez and Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen. Round-table discussion with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, Fareed Zakaria and Jeffrey Toobin.
CNN's "Reliable Sources": National Review's David Frum, ABC's Martha Raddatz, former President Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, Hollywood Reporter's Ray Richmond, former New York Times Hollywood correspondent Sharon Waxman and CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
C-SPAN's "Newsmakers": Freddie Mac CEO Richard Syron, interviewed by AP's Alan Zibel and Congressional Quarterly's Benton Ives.
"FOX News Sunday": Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's communication director, and David Bonior, spokesman for Barack Obama and former Michigan congressman. Power Player of the Week is Brendan Sullivan, executive director of Headfirst. Panel discussion with Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, Nina Easton of Fortune Magazine, Byron York of the National Review and Juan Williams of National Public Radio.
MSNBC's "Chris Matthews Show": Richard Stengel, editor of Time magazine; Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Howard Fineman of Newsweek; Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News.
MSNBC's Tim Russert: Charles Osgood, author of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House: Humor, Blunders, and Other Oddities from the Presidential Campaign Trail," and presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
NBC's "Meet the Press": McClellan.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Associated Press
The Bush White House wasn't the only crew stung by Scott McClellan's scorching new memoir about his experiences as the president's press secretary.
McClellan also lashed out at the Fourth Estate, saying the n ational press corps "was probably too deferential to the White House" when it came to questioning whether going to war in Iraq was justified.
An unscientific sampling of Washington journalists expressed puzzlement about McClellan's criticism -- or dissed it as downright hooey.
"It's a stunning and unsupportable statement," pronounced Mark Knoller, CBS Radio correspondent. "Transcripts of McClellan's press briefings provide more than ample evidence of the intense scrutiny imposed on the White House and its policies by members of the press. Most days, McClellan left the briefing room lectern positively spent by the pounding he faced from reporters."
ABC's Ann Compton was perplexed: "Is Scott suggesting the White House press corps can stop, or start wars?"
David Gregory, NBC News' chief White House correspondent, opined: "I think he's wrong." He added: "I think we pushed, I think we prodded. ...The right questions were asked."
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank resorted to a press secretary (McClellanesque?) sort of dodge: "I defer to Scott on this point," he said in an e-mail.
— Stuart Silverstein
Photo Credit: AP
George McGovern's call for an end to the Vietnam War propelled him to the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Now, he's asking the two rivals for this year's nod to give peace a chance -- or, at the least, take concrete steps toward presenting a unified front.
As part of the walk-up to Tuesday's primary in his home state of South Dakota, McGovern has proposed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign together. There would be one precondition, he told the Sioux Falls-based Argus Leader newspaper: "No attacks on each other. We've had enough of that."
According to the story, Clinton is willing to give it a go. The Obama camp has been more equivocal; McGovern said it did not rule out a joint appearance, but warned that the candidate's schedule already is jampacked.
McGovern, running on his anti-war platform, got crushed by then-President Richard Nixon in the general election 36 years ago. We doubt the prospects for his Clinton-Obama detente plan, at this point, are much better.
-- Don Frederick
Hillary Clinton's campaign is in full damage-control mode after her remarks on Friday that referenced the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in a way that some perceived as offensive to Barack Obama.
Sunday's New York Daily News has a two-page "exclusive" from the candidate herself "to set the record straight" about her comments, which she said were taken "entirely out of context and interpreted ... to mean something completely different -- and completely unthinkable."
And her communications director, Howard Wolfson, and campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, used their appearances on the Sunday talk shows to blame Obama's campaign (along with the media) for the resulting firestorm.
Clinton says that in her appearance ...
Read more Hillary Clinton explains -- again -- about her RFK assassination remark »
Largely obscured in the understandable uproar over Hillary Clinton's Friday reference to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy has been the fallacy of the basic point she sought to convey -- that there is nothing all that unusual about the trajectory of her battle with Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nod.
Before invoking the Kennedy killing in comments to a South Dakota newspaper that she quickly rued, Clinton said, "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary, somewhere in the middle of June, right?"
Actually, wrong in all but the most technical sense.
Bill Clinton became the hands-down front-runner in his party's contest 16 years ago in mid-March, when his main competitor, Paul Tsongas, exited the race. There was an outbreak of buyer's remorse a few weeks later ...
Read more Hillary Clinton as historian: a bad match »
As promised, here's The Ticket's Sunday morning TV guest list, posted every Saturday at noon Pacific time (3 p.m. EDT).
ABC's "This Week": Karl Rove and Barack Obama senior advisor David Axelrod; round table with Vanity Fair's Dee Dee Myers, Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, ABC News' Matthew Dowd and George Will.
 Bloomberg's Political Capital with Al Hunt: Mitt Romney and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.).
CBS' "Face the Nation": Hillary Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson, John McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Obama supporter Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
CNN's "Late Edition": Major Gen. Mark Hertling, Commander, Multi-National Division-North; Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice); Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas); Obama supporter Robert Reich; Clinton economic advisor Gene Sperling; McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin; Mary Tillman, mother of Pat Tillman and author of a book about her son; CNN's Bill Schneider, Suzanne Malveaux and Gloria Borger.
C-SPAN's "Newsmakers": Major Gen. William Etter, National Guard Bureau, Acting Director of Joint Staff.
"Fox News Sunday": Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe; Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee; Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of Democratic National Campaign Committee; Col. Michael Colburn, director of the U.S. Marine Band; panel with Fox's Brit Hume, Nina Easton, William Kristol and Juan Williams.
NBC's "Chris Matthews Show": David Brooks of the New York Times, Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and Katty Kay of the BBC.
NBC's Meet the Press: CBN's David Brody, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus, Newsweek's Jon Meacham and NPR's Michele Norris.
-- Don Frederick
Photo: Sen. Lindsey Graham; Credit: EPA
No one was surprised by Hillary Clinton's absolute dominance in the hills, hollows and other rural stretches of Kentucky in the state's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday. But as she rolled up an overall victory margin of 35 percentage points over Barack Obama in the state, one local result stands out.
Magoffin County -- which according to the Lexington Herald-Leader has been identified by the Census Bureau as "the least diverse place in the nation" -- delivered Clinton her largest share of the vote among Kentucky's 120 counties.
She racked up 93% of the vote in Magoffin (named for a former governor and located in the state's eastern half). In raw votes, the totals were Clinton, 2,714; Obama, 146.
How homogenous is the county? According to the 2000 census, 99.29% of its population of 13,332 was white.
[UPDATE: For information on the primary result in the U.S. county with the largest concentration of black residents, go here.]
-- Don Frederick
Hillary Clinton stalwart Geraldine Ferraro got the week off to a rousing start by declaring to the New York Times that Barack Obama is "terribly sexist."
She elaborated this morning on the "Today" show, describing as "dismissive" Obama's crack, during the heat of the Pennsylvania primary campaign, that Clinton was "talking like Annie Oakley" as she sought the support of hunters.
Clinton herself did not mention Obama in a story in today's Washington Post based on an interview during which, the paper says, she "for the first time addressed what women have been talking about for months, what she refers to as the 'sexist' treatment she has endured at the hands of the pundits, media and others."
That would include, reporter Lois Romano writes, "The lewd T-shirts. The man who shouted 'Iron my shirt' at a campaign event. The references to her cleavage and her cackle."
All of this, Clinton says, has been "deeply offensive to millions of women."
(The piece does not note that the brief cleavage controversy of last summer was ignited by the paper's own fashion writer, Robin Givhan. The Clinton camp made its outrage known at the time; in fact, Givhan's article became the basis of a fundraising appeal.)
The Clinton comment gaining the most attention came when, Romero writes, she was asked "if she thinks this campaign has been racist [and] she says she does not."
Instead, Clinton said: "The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head. It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists."
The entire Post story can be read here.
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 »
One of the primary season's most publicized votes won't count.
As Hillary Clinton basked in her West Virginia romp Tuesday night -- and sought to inspire her supporters not to lose heart despite the long odds against her in the Democratic presidential race -- she invoked, literally, the spirit of Florence Steen.
Clinton told her cheering crowd that the South Dakotan, "88 years old and in failing health," had "asked that her daughter bring an absentee ballot to her hospice bedside. Florence was born before women had the right to vote, and she was determined to exercise that right, to cast a ballot for her candidate, who just happened to be a woman running for president.
"Florence passed on a few days ago, but I am eternally grateful to her and her family for making this such an important and incredible milestone in her life that means so much to me."
South Dakota's Rapid City Journal had written a feature piece about Steen's vote last weekend and in its Wednesday edition took note of Clinton's mention of the woman in her speech.
On Wednesday, however, Chris Wilson posted an item on Slate.com pointing out that under South Dakota law, absentee ballots cast by voters who die before an election are not to be opened. Thus, Steen's vote won't get tallied for ...
Read more Dying woman's vote for Hillary Clinton is for naught »
Below is a passage from a major speech given today in Columbus, Ohio by Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. It's a fairly trenchant, and many would say accurate, description of the sometimes socially destructive synergy between politicians making charges and the media reporting on them.
The Ticket covered the rest of the senator's speech in a Breaking News item available here.
"In his/her own words" is a regular feature of The Ticket in which we print some public remarks in total without interruption or comment.
"The hectic but repetitive routine of presidential campaigns often seems to consist entirely of back-and-forth charges between candidates, punctuated by photo ops, debates and the occasional policy speech, followed by another barrage of accusations and counter-accusations, formulated into the soundbites preferred by cable news producers.
"It is a little hypocritical for candidates or reporters to criticize these deficiencies. They are our creation. Campaigns and the media collaborated as architects of the modern presidential campaign, and we deserve equal blame for the regret we feel from time to time over its less than inspirational features.
"Voters, however, even in this revolutionary communications age, with its 24-hour news cycle, can be forgiven their uncertainty about what the candidates actually hope to achieve if they have the extraordinary privilege of being elected president of the United States. We spend too little time and offer too few specifics on that most important of questions.
"We make promises, of course, about what kind of policies we would pursue in office. But they often are obscured, mischaracterized and forgotten in the heat and fog of political battle."
-- Andrew Malcolm
Photo Credit: NBC
The media blitz that Cindy McCain recently conducted -- co-hosting "The View," appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," sitting down for a "Today" show interview -- did nothing to lessen the lambasting she took Wednesday from a source that might surprise some: an editorial in the  Washington Times.
The missive in the conservative-oriented newspaper sternly took her to task for steadfastly refusing, in the face of increasing requests, to release her income tax returns (she files separately from her husband, John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee).
The editorial notes that "Mrs. McCain is an heiress whose income and assets will directly benefit from the tax policies espoused by her husband. ... Taxpayers and voters are entitled to know how much these benefits will be."
Also criticized is her spouse. Noting that McCain "rightly fancies himself the king of transparency on Capitol Hill," the piece terms it "unimaginable" that he and his staff "can permit this open sore to fester."
The entire editorial -- headlined "Cindy McCain's 'privacy' charade" and complete with an accompanying, and caustic, cartoon -- can be read here.
With the McCains giving no sign of yielding on this point, it no doubt will continue to provide fodder for editorialists. What will be worth watching is whether this noise grows into the type of public clamor that causes political headaches.
-- Don Frederick
Photo credit: Bloomberg News
The Rapid City Journal in South Dakota today carries a reminder of the advantages that Bill Clinton -- for all the debate over whether he has lost his political touch at times -- still brings with him as the chief surrogate for his wife's White House campaign.
The ex-president campaigns this afternoon in South Dakota (site of one of the final two primaries on June 3), appearing at Pine Ridge High School. He's been there before -- in July 1999, while he was still in office. And, the Journal reports: "Many members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who greeted Clinton nine years ago will be in the crowd today.
"They will include Leatrice “Chick” Big Crow, the director of a boys and girls club dedicated to the memory of her daughter, SuAnne, a star athlete and honor student who died in an automobile accident in 1992.
"The new SuAnne Big Crow Boys and Girls Club at Pine Ridge was built because of Clinton’s 1999 visit and the subsequent federal grants that he directed to the project. The center opened in June of 2001.
Not surprisingly, Big Crow ...
Read more Bill Clinton's legacy aids his wife in South Dakota »
Barack Obama today launched -- and ended -- what has been a cursory campaign effort on his part in West Virginia, where it appears he's headed for a shellacking in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary.
Obama headlined a rally early this afternoon in Charleston, joined by his prime supporter in the state, Sen. Jay Rockefeller. As is typical for an Obama appearance, it proved to be a hot ticket -- the Charleston Gazette reported that passes for the event were scarfed up quickly Sunday. 
According to the Gazette, Obama's volunteers in the Mountain State were thrilled by the response. But it's doubtful either he or they will have much to be excited about when the primary votes are counted.
A poll released today by Suffolk University in Boston showed Hillary Clinton (pictured here at Tudor's Biscuit World in Charleston) absolutely waxing Obama in West Virginia, 60% to 24%.
Perhaps the only solace for the Obama camp is that that's a slight improvement over the results of a survey in the state earlier this month by the American Research Group, which showed him down by 43 percentage points.
Clinton has campaigned extensively in West Virginia since last Tuesday's results in North Carolina and Indiana gave Obama ...
Read more Barack Obama's West Virginia blues »
Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?
It is all about context. The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago. Yet he is present ed to the nation as not truly being of this place, as if he floats just above the political corruption here, uninfected, untouched by the stain of it or by any sin of commission or omission. It is all so very mystical.
Perhaps viewing Obama as a Chicago political creature would conflict with the established national media narrative of Obama as a reformer. Actually, there's no "perhaps" about it.
"I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics," Obama told reporters and editors at a Chicago Tribune editorial board meeting several weeks ago.
Yes, an excellent job. Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley's spider. Almost, but not quite.
"I know there are those like John Kass who would like me to decry Chicago politics more frequently, and I'll leave that to his editorial commentary," Obama said.
Not the politics, just the corruption, I said then, wishing....
Read more Column: Obama's mystical (national media) disconnect from sleazy Chicago politics »
The debate rages, both within the chattering class and among folks in general, about whether Hillary Clinton was out of bounds in remarks this week on her appeal to white, working-class voters (see the comments generated by this posting).
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has his mind made up, and the result today was an Op-Ed piece that eviscerates not only Hillary but Bill Clinton as well.
Herbert pulls no punches, especially in his last paragraph: "The Clintons should be ashamed of themselves. But they long ago proved to the world that they have no shame."
The entire commentary can be read here.
A news article in the N.Y. Times, meanwhile, reports that aides say Hillary Clinton "regrets the comments" that have sparked the controversy.
-- Don Frederick
Did she, or did she not, play the "race card?"
That's the question being hashed over in much of political Washington concerning comments Hillary Clinton made to USA Today in making her case for soldiering on in her bid to draw to an inside straight and overtake Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race.
Here's the passage swirling the discussion: " 'I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,' she said in an interview with USA Today. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article 'that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states (those voting in Tuesday's Indiana and North Carolina primaries) who had not completed college were supporting me.' "
"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
Her defenders scoffed at the notion that she was sowing divisiveness, saying she was merely stating the obvious and that she resisted any mention of the almost monolithic support from blacks that has been central to Obama's successes.
Clinton herself, the article says later, "rejected any idea ...
Read more Hillary Clinton and the race card »
Columnist George Will channeled his inner William Faulkner in reflecting on the dire straits Hillary Clinton faces in her pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. 
Pundits galore wrote words aplenty today on the same topic, but no others did so in a sentence (yes, a la Faulkner, a single twisting sentence) as audicious as the one produced by the erudite Will. We commend it to your attention, forthwith: After Tuesday's split decisions in Indiana and North Carolina, Clinton, the Yankee Clipperette, can, and hence eventually will, creatively argue that she is really ahead of Barack Obama, or at any rate she is sort of tied, mathematically or morally or something, in popular votes, or delegates, or some combination of the two, as determined by Fermat's Last Theorem,** or something, in states whose names begin with vowels, or maybe consonants, or perhaps some mixture of the two as determined by listening to a recording of the Beach Boys' "Help Me, Rhonda" played backward, or whatever other formula is most helpful to her, and counting the votes she received in Michigan, where hers was the only contending name on the ballot (her chief rivals, quaintly obeying their party's rules, boycotted the state, which had violated the party's rules for scheduling primaries), and counting the votes she received in Florida, which, like Michigan, was a scofflaw and where no one campaigned, and dividing Obama's delegate advantage in caucus states by pi multiplied by the square root of Yankee Stadium's Zip code.
The rest of the piece can be read here.
-- Don Frederick
** A theorem stating that the equation an + bn = cn has no solution if a, b, and c are positive integers and if n is an integer greater than 2.
Photo credit: ABC
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their recent "Access Hollywood" interview, the Obamas did the same with their younger daughters and later said they regretted that exposure.
