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.
The Sunday talk-show hosts paid tribute this morning to one of their own: Tony Snow, the first moderator of "Fox News Sunday," who died of colon cancer on Saturday.
Snow hosted the program -- the first news show on the Fox television network -- for seven years, from 1996 to 2003. He then turned his attention to "Weekend Live with Tony Snow" on Fox News Channel and "Tony Snow Live" on Fox News Radio before being named White House press secretary in April 2006.
He served President Bush until stepping down in September 2007, citing his desire to ensure that his family was financially secure. Most recently, he was a commentator on CNN.
On CBS' "Face the Nation," former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie recalled Snow as "one of the good guys." ...
After a long, candid and public battle with colon cancer, former White House press secretary and television-radio host Tony Snow died early this morning.
Snow died about 2 a.m. EDT in Georgetown University Hospital. He was 53 and is survived by his wife, Jill Ellen Walker, and their three children: Kendall, Robbie and Kristi.
A video segment about his death is available by clicking the Read more line below.
Snow previously served as chief speechwriter for President George H.W. Bushand as a frequent host on Fox News Channel's "Fox News Sunday," "Weekend Live" and "The O'Reilly Factor."
He also guest-hosted for Rush Limbaugh and had his own radio talk show.
In September, after 17 months in the White House job, Snow retired as President George W. Bush's third press secretary, typically not blaming his disease but saying with his cancer he needed to ...
Jesse Jackson should have long ago learned the dangers of speaking too bluntly with the media anywhere in sight (or, in the controversy that erupted today, a microphone anywhere near).
Jackson, before this year, laid claim to running the most noteworthy campaigns an African American had waged for the White House. In the 1988, in fact, he was a major factor in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination -- he won 11 primaries and caucuses, briefly led in the delegate count in the early spring and was the last challenger standing against the eventual nominee, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.
The groundwork for this strong showing had been laid by his candidacy four years earlier. But his 1984 campaign remains best remembered for the flap over disparaging comments he made about Jews and New York City.
As recounted in this post on Washingtonpost.com, Jackson "referred to Jews as 'Hymies' and to New York City as 'Hymietown' in January 1984 during a conversation with a black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman.
Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman. But several weeks later Coleman permitted the slurs to be included far down in an article by another Post reporter on Jackson's rocky relations with American Jews. A storm of protest erupted ..."
A "storm" of protest hasn't yet greeted the revelation that Jackson -- ostensibly a Barack Obama supporter -- used crude language a few days ago as he waited to appear on Fox News Channel and, in a whispered aside to another guest, expressed his view that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has been "talking down to black people."
One very strong protest, however, was issued this evening by Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois. The congressman's office e-mailed this statement (complete with three sentences boldfaced):
"I'm deeply outraged and disappointed in Reverend Jackson's reckless statements about Senator Barack Obama. His divisive and demeaning comments about the presumptive Democratic nominee -- and I believe the next president of the United States -- contradict his inspiring and courageous career.
"Instead of tearing others down, Barack Obama wants to build the country up and bring people together so that we can move forward, together -- as one nation. The remarks like those uttered on Fox by Revered [sic] Jackson do not advance the campaign's cause of building a more perfect Union.
"Revered [sic] Jackson is my dad and I'll always love him. He should know how hard that I've worked for the last year and a half as a national co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. So, I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric. He should keep hope alive and any personal attacks and insults to himself."
On a lighter note, to check out what our friends at The Swamp aptly refer to as a "now-prescient Saturday Night Live cartoon" on an imagined Obama-Jackson-Al Sharpton dynamic, go here.
Yesterday, we noted the suggestion, by the Baltimore Sun's Paul West, that Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island would be a strong vice presidential pick for Sen. Barack Obama.
Today, perhaps coincidentally (and perhaps not), Reed -- whose national profile until now has been equal to the position of his home state as the smallest in the U.S. -- appeared on ABC's "This Week" as a surrogate for the Democrats' presumptive nominee.
Political -- and Batman -- junkies probably already know about Sen. Patrick Leahy's little infatuation with Bruce Wayne's alter ego, Batman. He loves the character, and all those colorful evil incarnates, like the Riddler, the Penguin and the Joker. Leahy has even talked his way into cameo roles in Batman movies, and in "The Dark Knight," which opens July 18, Leahy gets himself roughed up by the Joker's goons. Bam! Pow! Ooof!
So strong is the Democratic Vermont senator's infatuation that he wrote the introduction for a 1992 book collecting some of the Batman comics, "The Dark Knight Archive," and has done voice-overs for childrens' Batman cartoons. And on July 12, Leahy will play host to a special premiere of "The Dark Knight" in that hot spot of Hollywood's elite, Montpelier, Vt. The proceeds will go to a local library that has named a wing after him. Leahy, that is, not Batman.
So as we head into the long Fourth of July weekend (that phrase is a journalism cue that it's a slow news day, at least at the moment), we wonder what other politicians might harbor secret infatuations with fictional crusaders, caped and otherwise? Or even better, what superhero might actually dwell beneath those dark (pant)suits?
Maybe John McCain in his, shall we say, crankier moments, as The Hulk? Barack Obama channeling The Flash? Hillary Clinton as Wonder Woman -- the first major female superhero? John Edwards as Batman's sidekick, Robin?
And they don't have to be the heroes. Go ahead and link politicians up with your favorite bad guys, too.
With friends like these, why do rivals bother with opposition researchers? Rudy Giuliani was on CNN Tuesday talking about John McCain and the presidential campaign, and said that he still thinks he was the best choice to be president. Giuliani was there to buff up McCain and his foreign policy credentials in the wake of the rock Wesley Clarktossed the other day.
When asked by interviewer John Roberts whether he thought he was better qualified than McCain to run the country, Giuliani said, "I thought I was best-qualified to be president." (The video is here, and this exchange comes around the 3:12 mark).
Now not many politicians would leave a race as Giuliani did and say later, "You know, the voters were right, I wasn't the best choice." Political egos don't cut that way. But the McCain camp had to wince, assuming they're getting CNN down there in Colombia. The idea behind sending surrogates out is to have them make you look good, not make you look like a consolation prize.
Throughout the interview, Giuliani sounded as much like a candidate as a surrogate, talking up his own political resume in a session that had a peculiar deja vu feeling to it. But Giuliani assured Roberts, "I'm not a candidate. I'm not a choice." Not at the moment, no, but ...
We all remember John McCain's "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" mini-aria, and many of us have caught McCain during his late-night talk show appearances. He can be funny (though the laughs at his reworking the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann" were far fewer than he may have anticipated). But can comedy kill the campaign?
Gawker has a piece (which includes some language inappropriate for this blog and which we want to warn readers about) on McCain's sense of humor and parallels to Ronald Reagan. It concludes McCain is no Gipper.
What strikes us as interesting is the issue of timing the piece raises. McCain made his "bomb Iran" joke more than a year ago -- before before his spectacular political collapse and resurrection. In many ways, McCain got a pass then. There was some backlash from people who likely wouldn't support McCain anyway, but the feeling was his campaign was moribund anyway, and the mini-flap quickly faded.
But what would happen if McCain cracked that joke now? Would that kind of stumble derail him? Or would it just further separate the pro-war from the antiwar votes?
David Plouffe is no household name, which is fine with him.
He is, in fact, Barack Obama's campaign manager. You won't see him on the news talk shows. He is, by his own design, a back-room manager.
But with a new e-mailed video for supporters of the Democratic presidential candidate -- and, of course, that always comes with a fundraising appeal -- Plouffe is walking people through the outlines of an Electoral College strategy for an Obama victory in November.
A couple of weeks ago we pointed out the 15-minute PowerPoint demonstration of Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, on their website. Now, Obama's crowd has its own version and you can compare the two.
Neither contains trade secrets. Obama's starts with the states which Sen. John Kerry claimed in 2004, and it adds some -- including some unlikely candidates such as Montana and Alaska. And it looks with some confidence toward Iowa, which gave Obama his launch in the Democratic primaries so long ago last winter. And even Georgia.
The McCain video is slick with moving screens. Obama's video is filmed without lights or staging at the Chicago desk of the campaign manager to give it that, you know, laptop look.
It also has some Perot-like charts, maps of the perceived path to victory. It's worth a watch -- you know McCain's campaign is -- and a listen. It's viewable at the campaign website.
You can read the whole story on the Obama tape by our colleague Mark Silva over at the Swamp with a link to the website video. There's a link to the McCain video here.
The national polls taking the temperature of the presidential race will ebb and flow (much as they have during the last week). The two candidates will be on their game and off. Attention will be lavished on Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Colorado and the other states deemed critical to the contest's outcome.
It all matters for naught. John McCain peered down the road Friday while speaking to reporters, including The Times' Bob Drogin, at an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and laid out the following scenario:
"I’m the underdog in this race. ... I’m behind. I’ve got to catch up and get ahead. And I expect to do that about 48 hours before the general election."
That view is totally in character for McCain. As The Ticket noted earlier this week, the former fighter pilot "is right where he wants to be, behind his opponent. You can't shoot someone down from in front."
Indeed, McCain's embrace of the underdog role was the topic of one of the video chats that Matt Welch, author of "McCain: Myth of a Maverick," recently had with The Ticket's Andrew Malcolm (see below).
You kind of remember the long Democratic primary campaign as, first of all, long. Even at times bitter.
Hillary Clinton, speaking today with the Democratic winner, Barack Obama, in New Hampshire, said, "It was spirited because we both care so much." Watching this video no one would doubt the caring, but it sure wasn't about each other.
"Spirited" would not quite describe some of the exchanges by Democratic candidates discussing Obama, which in the interests of the opposite of unity, the Republican National Committee has generously assembled and is suppressing widely around the country today as an antidote to the Democrats' "Kumbaya" spirit.
This is the eighth and final episode of our new video chat with Matt Welch, author of a new book exploring the personal and political personas of Sen. John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party.
This discussion focuses on McCain's thinking and the possible choices for vice presidential running mate. And a couple of the names Welch mentions may surprise you.
And samples of Welch's past writings as a Times staffer are available here.
Thanks to our top-notch videographer Jeff Amlotte and director Michael McGehee for lending their skills. And thank you all for watching these videos over recent days.
Let us know below what you think of this occasional feature. Should we do more? Whom would you like to see chatting here on The Ticket?
This is the seventh and second to last chapter in our video conversation with former Times writer, Matt Welch, who's written a new examination of the personal and political personnas of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
In this episode Welch discusses what he calls "McCain's Ron Paul problem," a smallish but very dedicated splinter group of libertarian Republicans who back the 10-term congressman from Texas. Paul captured about 1.1 million GOP primary votes this season while collecting nearly $35 million, more than McCain had for a while.
Welch sees McCain's policies of a strong federal government, though with curbed spending, combined with McCain's enduring support for the Iraq war and Paul's antipathy to what he sees as empire-building as prohibiting any kind of real rapprochement between the two camps for the Nov. 4 election.
Also McCain could risk loss of support among independents and moderates if he was to taxi too far to the right to accommodate Paulites. In a close election the Paul group's votes or their absence could make the difference between a McCain or Barack Obama presidency, as some of them are likely to drift over to Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party, although that too is split.
Hillary Clinton refocused on her day job today, after lying low for more than two weeks since her widely acclaimed speech ceding the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama and, more to the point, after almost 18 months of being preoccupied with her White House quest.
The senator from New York arrived at the Capitol via an SUV shortly after 1 p.m. EDT and, perhaps to help her adjust to the culture shock on having left the campaign trail, a crowd was on hand for the occasion. See video below.
It wasn't a large one -- perhaps 100 or so, according to The Times' Noam Levey, who was on the scene. And although some were supporters, a few were interns who had been told by supervisors to line the Capitol's steps to greet her. And others were simply a clutch of Washington's ubiquitous tourists.
They combined to give the defeated candidate a warm welcome, cheering and waving as she made her way into her workplace. "We missed you," shouted one woman.
And Clinton -- dressed in a bright turquoise suit much like the one she wore on the last day of the primary season on June 3 -- looked upbeat as she paused to shake hands. She made a point of asking some of the younger onlookers where they were from and thanking them for coming out to see her. She then disappeared inside the edifice, where she joined her Democratic colleagues for their weekly policy lunch in the Lyndon Baines Johnson room outside the Senate chamber.
Standing at the edge of the crowd before Clinton arrived, Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana --an early and staunch backer of Clinton's presidential bid -- said he expected she now would move toward a leadership role in the Senate.
"I don't think she'll enter the witness protection program. ... She's not going to be an anonymous figure," Bayh said. "She has so much to contribute. ... I hope she'll embrace this opportunity, and I think she will. ... You can make a heck of a difference in the United States Senate."
Clinton probably can count on an extra dose of empathy from Bayh -- he briefly stuck his toe in the 2008 presidential waters before quickly withdrawing and casting his lot with her.
Indeed, the chamber is full of lawmakers with whom she can commiserate. Among the 99 other senators, 15 have run for president, to greater or lesser extents. **
That includes the two who are still at it, Obama and John McCain (one of whom, barring an unforeseen circumstance, will become the first sitting senator since John Kennedy in 1960 to win the office).
-- Don Frederick
Photo: Associated Press
** For true political junkies, the current senators -- aside from Clinton, Obama, McCain and Bayh -- who have sought the presidency are Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Joe Biden of Delaware, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Orrin Hatch of Utah, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania.
In this episode of our ongoing conversation with author Matt Welch, he discusses the role of religion in Sen. John McCain's life and politics.
McCain's regrets about going too far in his 2000 remarks about the religious right, his courting of the religious right within the Republican Party this election season and the stark differences between the roles of Rev. Wright in Barack Obama's life and Rev. Hagee in the McCain campaign.
In this episode, Part IV of our conversation with former Times writer Matt Welch on his new book on Sen. John McCain, we asked Matt what was the biggest surprise he came across in the course of his lengthy book research on the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
Hint: His answer had something to do with McCain's Vietnam War experiences or, rather, getting past them and helping some countrymen do the same.
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.
This is Part II of The Ticket's first video chat series, an eight-part conversation with author Matt Welch on his new book, "John McCain: The Myth of a Maverick."
The book is not a biography but an exploration of the McCain persona, an intriguing combination of independence, military discipline and rebellion, with a strong whiff of bad boy. In this video episode Welch, a former L.A. Times writer, describes how he came to discover much about McCain through the serial confessions the senator makes about himself throughout his own books. And what that revealed about the Republican nominee's personal way of thinking.
Part I of this conversation with Welch can be seen by clicking here. Other parts will be published on The Ticket in coming days.
Tony Schwartz, who made the famous Elect Lyndon Johnson "daisy ad" among many other political statements, died over the weekend at the age of 84.
The controversial ad -- which did not name, but was aimed at feeding war fears and uncertainty about, Johnson's opponent, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona -- was, like the 1988 Willie Horton TV commercial for George H. W. Bush, only broadcast one time: during NBC's Monday Night Movies in 1964.
But that was enough to send shock waves through the election's politics at the time. Ironically, Johnson's alleged anti-war ad helped create a resounding election victory that led him to escalate the Vietnam War. The resulting social and political turmoil of the late '60s and a re-energizing of conservatives went on to produce seven Republican White House wins, to three for the Democrats.
A recluse in Manhattan, Schwartz produced thousands of commercials over the years with clients such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, Coca-Cola and Chrysler as well as anti-smoking ads.
As the little girl counted daisy petals, the ominous loudspeaker voice of someone counting down to zero led to the terrifying blast sound of the nuclear bomb.
As the menacing sound rumbled through TV sets across the nation, the voice of President Johnson could be heard intoning, "These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."
Obviously, everyone didn't die. And everything worked out just swell after this ad. In 1968 internal Democratic Party strife forced Johnson to give up any hope of a second elected term. His vice president, Hubert Humphrey, lost to Richard Nixon, who had no political problems except maybe becoming the first president ever forced to resign.
Goldwater never did reach the White House, but his political disciples reorganized around someone named Ronald Reagan, who had some electoral success.
And it took 44 more years for another Arizonan to make a serious bid to become president.
As consumers of politics, Americans watch these campaign events unfold before their eyes on TV or in person and they can only imagine the countless hours of planning behind each one. They probably don't even think about that part.
Right on the redesigned website's homepage in the middle upper right is a tab called "Strategy." Click on that and watch a 15-minute PowerPoint demonstration led by Campaign Manager Rick Davis.
It fits in with the McCain Straight Talk image because campaigns are not normally comfortable laying out such detailed presentations for just anyone to see. These are the kinds of demonstrations that go on daily inside campaign conference rooms -- and they're stopped if anyone other than the invited walks in.
Whether or not you like McCain as a candidate, the fast-moving video is....
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.
This is getting pretty pathetic. First, this Illinois yahoo Barack Obama, who beat Alan Keyes of all people for the Senate job, waltzes into that chamber and usurps the Democratic presidential nomination that was to be Hillary Clinton's by rights.
Then he raises all this money, nearly a quarter-billion or something.
And now? Now, he's got Scarlett Johansson whipped over him. Give us a break here. Like, where's the fairness in any of this?
The guy rides a bicycle around in public in one of those goofy-looking but really, really safe helmets that legislators who don't ride bikes have declared that everyone must wear. Next thing you know they'll say we can't talk on cellphones while driving.
And Obama bowls like a Martian. And golfs like he's weed-whacking. And Scarlett falls for him.
Unbelievable. Anyway, here's Scarlett talking over on our sister blog The Dish Rag, which she isn't:
"I am engaged to Barack Obama. My heart belongs to Barack." Doesn't that make you sick? She's doing a lot of campaigning for him and everything.
We're tired of that politician's mug for a while. Seems like we use it every day. So we're gonna take this opportunity to publish Scarlett's photo instead. Nice and big too.
In fact, we may publish her photo in several unrelated items. Because bloggers are really powerful people.
In their own minds.
The Dish Rag, by the way, is written by Elizabeth Snead. Here's her photograph. Obviously, not a politician. Now, you'll really want to bookmark her blog and go there and read more on Scarlett and this topic. And all the other pretty people stuff they have over there.
Ah, we must be thankful today to politics for exposing us to what is to many a new English word: "boo." Not as in scary gremlins at Halloween. But as in "She's my boo" (girlfriend) or "He's my boo" (boyfriend).
Thanks to a tip from loyal Ticket reader Brady and a tip of the hat to this site, we saw that word quickly became one of Wednesday's most-searched items on Google News. And why do you suppose that was?
Because CNN's Anderson Cooper didn't know what it was either and walked right into an embarrassing expression in a back-and-forth during Tuesday night's election coverage with Donna Brazile, a network commentator and a Democratic superdelegate, allegedly uncommitted.
She had said that Barack Obama, who had just clinched his party's presidential nomination, had called her not to seek her support but to discuss his proposed ways of ensuring party unity for the fall election after the sometimes-bitter primary campaigns against Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Cooper was pressing Brazile on what Obama actually said. "He's told everyone," she replied, "that he plans to sit down with Sen. Clinton at the right time."
Cooper replied: "I'm looking for something he hasn't told anyone else -- just you."
"Anderson," Brazile replied with cocked head, "you're not my boo."
The panel laughed. And Cooper walked right into it. "I wanna be your boo," he said, pausing as the panel broke out laughing. "I don't really even know what that means."
At that, Brazile, who was Al Gore's presidential campaign manager in 2000, looked at her watch and asked, "Anderson, are we still on TV?"
"Yes, we are, Donna Brazile."
"Well, I think I better watch my words."
"Someone can explain it to me later," said Cooper.
