presidential campaign
Short shrift in a long campaign
The presidential campaign has been an exhausting marathon. Yet it's hardly touched on some major issues facing the nation.
Racial politics
Race lies behind the widespread belief that Obama is a Muslim, was born outside the U.S. and is something other than a genuine American.
Post-factual politics
James Bennet's post from earlier this week made an important and timely point. First he observes that a lot of political reporting has taken a turn from the destructive banality of he-said-she-said false equivalency stuff and toward playing an explicit fact-checking role. (I'm among those who welcome this enthusiastically.)
Then he poses this somewhat chilling question: "What if it turns out that when the press calls a lie a lie, nobody cares?"
Bennet was talking about the Romney campaign's ads misrepresenting the Obama administration's policy on welfare-to-work. But his post seems all the more relevant today, in the wake of Congressman Ryan's speech at the RNC last night.
This just in: Romney paid the taxes he owed, not the taxes some of us think he should have owed!
It's not what the headlines are highlighting, but Mitt Romney's 2010 tax return
includes one impressive fact: his charitable contributions amounted to
$7 million. I know, this hardly put him at risk of losing one of his houses
and ending up out on the street till his driver could pick him up and
take him to one of his other houses. Still, giving away almost a third
of your income is nothing to sneeze at.
Campaign couples
John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book about the 2008 presidential campaign has people talking about the private lives of the politicians and all the scenes we didn't see during the campaign.