Obama and Congress: Up Close and Personal

As President-elect Barack Obama assembles his administration, the final scenes of the 2008 campaign shift to Capitol Hill, where a lame-duck session shadowboxes over economic recovery measures. At the same time, the unresolved races in Georgia and Minnesota, the fate of renegade Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and the Democrats’ More…

Obama Fends Off Bush’s Embrace

And now comes the transition. After winning his historic victory last Tuesday, the nation’s first African-American president –and the first non-white chief executive elected in a white majority nation — President-elect Barack Obama has earned an interlude for celebration and relaxation.

But he has barely paused to breathe. Having reconceived More…

Skirting the Specifics

In the wake of the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have scrambled to develop effective responses. Even as they take pot shots at each other, both nominees have weathered criticism from the punditocracy for not advancing specific blueprints for stabilizing Wall More…

A Personal Primary

In her concession speech Saturday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton appealed for party unity. But did Clinton’s endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama come too late? Has the bruising primary battle so divided the party and so weakened its presumptive nominee that Obama is vulnerable to defeat despite an unpopular war and More…

When Elite Get Tough

Sen. Barack Obama’s opponents are still working to exploit the flap over his remarks in San Francisco, gleefully labeling him an “elitist.”

“I don’t think it helps to divide our country into one America that is enlightened and one that is not,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) charged. “If you More…

Clinton Running Like Old Guard Humphrey

As Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) girds for the March 4 Ohio and Texas primaries — races that could mark her last stand in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination — her candidacy represents a surprising turnaround. As an operative in George S. McGovern’s 1972 insurgent campaign, Clinton embodied More…

How The West Could Be Won

“I guess this was how the West was won,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (d-N.Y.) told cheering supporters in Las Vegas after the Nevada caucuses last month.

Clinton’s proclamation was premature — she has not yet won the West — but savvy, for the West is likely to determine the victor More…

A Different Kind of Insurgent

On the heels of a decisive victory in South Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama heads into Super-duper Tuesday as a surprisingly strong challenger to the presumptive favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. With much of the party leadership against him, Obama seeks to accomplish what More…