A Soldier’s Unnecessary Retreat

BIRMINGHAM, Mich.– Battleground no more.

For the past several months, the Republican and Democratic nominees for president have targeted this fading center of the Rust Belt, with its 17 electoral votes, as a winnable state — part of each party’s electoral strategy to take the White House.

Now, that plan More…

Presidential Debate Preview

For a man who had pressed for a series of town hall debates across the country in which he, the Republican nominee for president and his Democratic rival would travel the country like Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Sen. John McCain enters tonight’s debate as a battered candidate whose campaign More…

Quien es mas macho: George W or Larry the Cable Guy?

This morning as I sat trying to cope with the sudden collapse of the Chicago White Sox, I was quickly alerted to an urgent message by President George W. Bush. Walking out into the rain-soaked Rose Garden, our commander in chief said the following:

Letterman’s Cronkite Turn

Forty years ago, in September 1968, the North Vietnamese launched the Tet offensive — which changed mainstream America’s view of the Vietnam War. In living rooms across the nation, Americans saw a gruesome display of how powerless the United States forces looked as they struggled to gain control over a More…

McCain Strives to Win on Failing Economy

Tuesday in Michigan, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, stood before the nation wanting to present himself as a soldier in a new kind of war. Speaking to reporters for the first time since Aug. 13, he seemed legitimately pained when he talked about the dire economic More…

Spitzer’s Lost Moment

It seems fitting now that the nation’s financial landscape resembles Berlin circa 1945 that we ask what could have happened if Eliot Spitzer, a man whom I spent a considerable amount of time around during his time as New York’s attorney general, had not fallen from public grace for his More…

The Playbook

He was a golden boy who seemed to have so many advantages. He attended Ivy League schools, studied abroad, married a bright, assured woman. In office was a president named Bush, dealing with an economy that had plunged, and the American public was hostile and ready to take chances. This More…

McCain’s Dishonesty Tactic Tough to Beat

For a man who once considered the press his “base,” and the truth a trusted ally, part of a package of integrity and “Straight Talk,” Arizona Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, finds himself on unfamiliar terrain these days. Now, on the verge of the apex of his More…

The Field & Stream Vote

This morning as I tried to draw up plays for the anemic Bengals offense — the worst since Coach Marvin Lewis offered a glimmer of hope when he took over six seasons ago — I was greeted with a press release from the hunting and fishing stalwart, Field & Stream, More…

“A leash around women’s necks…”

Late in the morning on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I sat down with Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

In addition to sitting on the Democratic Party’s Platform Committee, de Rothschild was an ardent supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s run for the More…