Steve Kornacki

When John McCain’s campaign made it clear over the weekend that their stretch-run strategy would lean heavily on raising questions about Barack Obama’s personal history and past “associations,” Obama’s communications director provided a simple, almost indifferent reaction to The Washington Post: “This isn’t 1988.”

Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee whose campaign was eviscerated that year by tactics ripped from the same playbook from which Mr. McCain now seems intent on borrowing, tends to agree.

“Well, it happens every time,” the former Massachusetts governor said in an interview on the afternoon of Oct. 6 in his college office. “They’re desperate, they’re slipping, and all of that stuff.  read more »

Less than a month before Election Day, John McCain’s position is increasingly desperate. Barack Obama has built (or rather, regained) a mid- to high-single-digit lead in national polling over the last two weeks and has significantly improved his standing in most swing states. McCain is more likely to lose on Nov. 4 than to win, and given the enormous built-in advantages that his opponent enjoys—the economy, most importantly—there may not be anything he can do to engineer a victory.

But he’s not doomed in the way that others have been at this same point in recent campaigns. In 1996, for instance, Bob Dole was running about 15 points behind Bill Clinton in early October.  read more »

It's been fashionable to call Joe Biden a "gaffe machine," especially in the run-up to last night's debate, which featured endless suggestions that the Delaware senator would be incapable of restraining himself. But those critics had either ignored Biden's debating history or were oblivious to it, because he has actually been one of the instinctively strongest, most versatile and – yes – self-controlled debaters in politics.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, one parallel between an earlier Biden debate and the challenge he faced against Sarah Palin stood out.  The year was 1972, and Biden was a 29-year-old first-time candidate for the U.S. Senate, challenging 63-year-old Cale Boggs, an institution in Delaware politics. When they debated, Boggs was asked a question about an obscure international treaty. As he fumbled and stammered to produce a coherent response, it became obvious he'd never heard of it. Biden, though, did know about the treaty, and could have jumped in to show it. But he also knew how that would look – the know-it-all-up-start rubbing it in the old man's face. So when it was his turn to speak, all he said was, "Aw, I don't know that one either."  read more »

The ingredient that turned the confident, authoritative Sarah Palin that Americans met at the Republican convention into the alarmingly shaky and ill-informed Miss Teen South Carolina clone they saw in her recent television interviews isn’t exactly a secret: follow-up questions.

At the convention, the Alaska governor (and former television anchor) read from a text, threw in a well-timed ad lib and delivered a mesmerizing performance that she’d had a week to rehearse.  read more »

It’s obvious now that Sarah Palin’s performance in Thursday’s vice presidential debate is crucial to the G.O.P.’s chances of prevailing in November.

If she lives up the ditzy Tiny Fey caricature that has come to define her, Palin will complete a five-week transformation from political sensation to liability, severely complicating John McCain’s effort to win over swing voters and erase Barack Obama’s slight but steady lead.  read more »

It’s a truism that no one votes for president based on the vice-presidential candidates, so it should follow that a debate between V.P. nominees is about as meaningless as a pre-season football game.

But that’s not quite true. Yes, few (if any) voters actually stare at their ballots weighing the pros and cons of each vice-presidential hopeful. But that kind of analysis is too literal. The performance of V.P. nominees affects the evolution of swing voters’ attitudes toward the presidential nominees during the campaign – and, by far, the debate marks the highest visibility moment for any V.P. candidate. Sometimes, this still doesn’t matter; when there is a mismatch at the top of the ticket, even an awful V.  read more »

This is what can happen when you gamble in politics. Last Wednesday, John McCain “suspended” his campaign – an action that sounded a lot more substantial than it actually was – to return to Washington and insert himself into the Congressional debate over a financial rescue package.

The results, for Mr. McCain and (if most financial experts are to be believed) for the economy, have been ghastly, culminating in the House’s stunning rejection of a compromise plan on Monday, which sent the Dow plummeting and Mr. McCain scrambling to save face.

It’s not that Mr. McCain’s impulse to do something “dramatic” was necessarily wrong.  read more »

John McCain just appeared before reporters to read a brief statement on the financial rescue package's failure in the House earlier today. The G.O.P. nominee "suspended" his campaign late last week in order to take part in the negotiations and attempted to portray his involvement as productive.

"I worked hard to play a constructive role in bring everyone to the table," he said. "The plan is now significantly improved."

"I was hopeful that the improved recovery plan would have had the votes needed to pass," he added.

Then, echoing Republican House leaders who earlier said that a partisan speech by Speaker Nancy Pelosi had prevented more Republicans from backing the plan, McCain said: "Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process."

Contrary to the expectations of the White House, Congressional leaders from both parties and the media, a $700 billion financial rescue package plan, which was agreed to by Democratic and Republican leaders in the House (and Senate) over the weekend, has failed on a 228-205 vote. (Even after the vote was held open after time had expired for about 20 minutes while Speaker Nancy Pelosi, G.O.P. Leader John Boehner and others huddled with each other and tried – in vain – to twist enough arms to reverse the result.)

So what now?

For now, the plan still isn't dead. There is talk of another vote (later in the week – maybe Thursday) under the theory that leaders were caught off-guard by this initial failure and might be more aggressive in seeking votes the second time around.  read more »

It’s not too surprising that the financial crisis has triggered a timely political windfall for Barack Obama, whose poll numbers have steadily climbed since the magnitude of Wall Street’s collapse became clear just over a week ago. When campaigns are defined by economic unease, Democrats tend to benefit – especially when it’s the Republicans who’ve run the White House for the eight previous years.

But the crisis has been timely in another way for Obama, because it has drowned out what otherwise might have been an unhelpful development: The re-emergence of Bill Clinton.

Officially, the former president has been making the media rounds for the same reason he always does every September, to promote his annual Clinton Global Initiative conference, which is held in conjunction with U.  read more »

Twenty-eight years ago, Ronald Reagan patiently waited his turn while Jimmy Carter verbally attacked him for about the 47th time and then, with a grin and a slight shake of his head, turned the 1980 election into a blowout with four simple words: “There you go again.”

Maybe Reagan would have won anyway without that immortal retort, but it stands as proof of how just the right delivery of just the right words at just the right time in a presidential debate can radically alter public opinion. Before the Carter-Reagan debate, the race was dead even. A week after it, Reagan won 44 states.  read more »

Maybe you can appreciate the pickle John McCain had gotten himself into. Early on Wednesday afternoon, he dramatically announced the “suspension” of his candidacy so that he could return to Washington and play the hero role in the Congressional negotiations over a bailout of the financial system.

But by the time he finally made his way to nation’s capital a full day later – after first staying in New York for an interview with Katie Couric on Wednesday night in which he solemnly intoned that he didn’t “think in this time that we can worry much about politics, Katie,” and to deliver a speech on Thursday morning in which he declared that he “cannot carry on a campaign as though this dangerous situation had not occurred, or as though a solution were at hand, which it clearly is not” – a deal between some of the top Democrats and Republicans from the House and the Senate had been struck.  read more »

A bipartisan group of Senate and House leaders just held a press conference to announce that they have reached agreement on bailout legislation. Democrats Chris Dodd (the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) and Barney Frank (the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee) and Republicans Bob Bennett (the ranking member on Dodd's committee) and Spencer Bachus (the ranking member on Frank's committee) said that they their compromise plan should easily clear the House and Senate.

This would seem to signal an end to John McCain's headline-grabbing suspension of his candidacy. McCain had been absent as congressional leaders worked on a compromise plan all week and—as of Tuesday—  read more »

It’s funny how a few minutes can change so much in politics. Initially, John McCain’s surprise announcement on Wednesday afternoon that he’s “suspending” his campaign and wants Friday’s debate postponed so that he can focus on the Wall Street bailout looked like a bold and perhaps brilliant move. But by the end of the day, once the Obama campaign sorted out what was, in retrospect, the only sensible response, it looked like the McCain campaign had reached way too far.

McCain’s intent was to steal the spotlight for a few days and to turn the Congressional bailout debate into a showcase of his own leadership style.  read more »

Since last weekend, it's been clear that John McCain was itching to use the congressional negotiations over the Bush administration's Wall Street bailout plan to create a dramatic, headline-grabbing moment that would prompt swing voters – many of whom have tuned McCain and the Republican Party out on the economy – to give him a second look. Now, with his announcement that he will "suspend" his campaign (and wants Friday night's debate postponed) so that he can return to Washington to join the bailout deliberations, McCain has gone and created his moment. The question is whether it will resonate – or reek of transparent phoniness.  read more »

Especially in the era of the 24-hour news cycle, it’s easy to overstate the significance of any given event on the presidential campaign trail—except when it comes to televised debates.  read more »

Right now, about all we know about the federal government’s response to the Wall Street meltdown is that the Bush administration wants to spend at least $700 billion to buy up spoiled assets from financial institutions ravaged by the burst of the housing market bubble – and that the administration wants this bailout to be “clean,” as in free of whatever strings Congress might be tempted to attach.

The rest is up in the air. Criticism is flying from all directions. Such a massive federal intervention in the private sector is anathema to much of the right. And to the left, the notion of a strings-free bailout smells like a giveaway to the Wall Street fat cats whose recklessness led directly to this crisis.  read more »

When Michael Bloomberg sat down with Tom Brokaw to discuss the Wall Street crisis on Sunday’s Meet the Press, he did so as a lame duck, a 66-year-old politician not running for office this year and barred from seeking a third mayoral term next year. At least he’s supposed to be a lame duck.

Even though there’s little more than a year left in his mayoral tenure, Bloomberg is only becoming more vital to the political scene, as opposed to polishing his legacy and slowly fading from relevance like most lame ducks do. Officially, he was on Meet the Press to offer his perspective as a titan of the financial world and as the leader of the city most acutely affected by the current economic chaos.  read more »

There’s a cliché that can aptly be applied to the Republicans and their unexpectedly decent odds for winning the presidential race: Be careful what you wish for.

Since World War II, a basic pattern has prevailed, with one party controlling the White House for two terms, followed by the other. In the modern era, eight years seems to be about all the patience voters have with one party calling the shots. This is one of the many reasons why 2008 set up so poorly for the G.O.P., and why it’s been something of a revelation that John McCain has kept the polls close with Barack Obama.  read more »

All spring and summer gas prices soared and the debate over energy policy played out on the front pages of newspapers across the country, with the Republicans unquestionably getting the better of it.

They deserve some credit for their strategic craftiness, but they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful in reducing so complicated an issue to the catchy slogan “Drill, baby, drill!” had it not been for the ample cooperation they received from tone-deaf and incoherent Democrats, who first failed to recognize the power of the G.O.P.’s message and then, upon realizing their error, disastrously overcompensated with a slogan of their own – one that they still can’t seem to believe never caught on.  read more »

It wasn’t long ago that all sorts of voices on the right, not to mention from John McCain’s campaign itself, were shrieking about the media’s disproportionate coverage of the two major presidential candidates.

It was an utterly disingenuous ploy. Yes, the press was devoting vastly more ink and airtime to Barack Obama than John McCain, but they were merely feeding the public’s appetite: The guy with the fresh face attracts curiosity, which translates into big audiences and newsstand sales. Some of the coverage was fawning, but much of it was critical and not at all welcomed by the Obama campaign.

And the McCain campaign, for all its outward bluster, was actually quite happy to have such an intense spotlight on Obama, since it offered an opportunity to make the election a referendum on the “risky” Democratic nominee – and not on the last eight years of Republican rule.  read more »

The chaos on Wall Street that exploded over the weekend – and caused to Dow to drop by more than 500 points on Monday alone – is, obviously, bad news for just about everyone. But strictly in terms of the looming election, now fewer than 50 days away, the timing may be something of a gift to Barack Obama and the Democrats, who have watched in bafflement since late August as their once-dominant political position has eroded.

Long before this week, the economy had already emerged as the top issue – by far – on the minds of voters. Now, Americans will be inundated with stories about the potentially devastating fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and the perilous footing of A.  read more »

Sarah Palin, past proponent of the Bridge to Nowhere, in Golden, Colorado (at her first solo rally) moments ago:

"And that infamous Bridge to Nowhere – I did tell Congress 'thanks, but no thanks,' and that if we wanted a bridge up there, we'd build it ourselves."

One of the consequences of John McCain’s move into a tie, or even into a slight lead, in post-convention polling is the shrinking of the electoral battleground. Gone, probably for good, is the left’s haughty talk about a radical realignment of the electoral map that prevailed in the last two presidential elections. Instead, the same basic red-blue scheme and the same swing states (with perhaps one or two new additions) now seem destined to define a third consecutive election night.

For John McCain, this creates a seemingly simple formula for victory: Hold the Bush states and win. George W. Bush won 271 electoral votes in 2000, a combination of states that would now be worth 277 electoral votes thanks to the reapportionment that followed the 2000 election.  read more »

The first time he ran for president, John McCain basked in the adoration of the reporters covering his campaign, the opinion-shaping pundit class and editorial boards across the country. It won him hordes of independent and Democratic fans, a handful of early primaries and practical banishment from the Republican Party. In other words, the media’s affection made him a beloved and admired loser – but a loser nonetheless.

This time around, mostly because of his hawkish foreign policy and his opportunistic flip-flops (like his decision to kiss “agent of intolerance” Jerry Falwell’s ring back in 2006), McCain has been treated far less reverently by the press – except in one critical way: The portrayal of McCain as unusually honest and principled at his core has persisted.  read more »

Eight years ago, Al Gore, the presidential nominee of the incumbent party, arrived at the Democratic convention a battered candidate, faced with a sizable and stubborn polling gap that had endured for months. He delivered an acceptance speech that was panned for its brevity, hurried pacing and reliance on populist themes strikingly at odds with the moderate image he had spent decades crafting. To political observers, it had been a wasted opportunity.

But the public didn’t see it that way. Almost instantly, George W. Bush’s double-digit advantage was washed away, and for the first time in months, Gore actually tasted the lead. Nor was it some fleeting bounce.  read more »

When Joe Biden and Sarah Palin meet in St. Louis in just over three weeks, it will mark the eighth vice presidential debate in history—and easily the most anticipated since 1984, when Vice President George H. W. Bush squared off with Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman before Palin ever nominated by a major party for national office.

And it is Bush’s conduct immediately before, during and after that Philadelphia debate that ought to provide Biden with a useful tutorial in some very basic don’ts when it comes to competing so publicly with a female opponent.

For instance, do not allow your spouse to tell reporters that your opponent is “a four-million dollar—I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.  read more »

In theory, Charlie Gibson has the power to expose Sarah Palin as the fantastically uninformed foreign policy thinker that most Democrats—and, if primed with a healthy dose of truth serum, probably more than a few Republicans—believe her to be.

The ABC newsman, who scored the first of what will surely be scant few major media sit-downs with John McCain’s running mate, could very easily do what a mischievous Boston television reporter did to George W. Bush in 1999 and spring a pop quiz on the unseasoned politician, measuring her knowledge (or lack thereof) of some elementary facts about global hotspots.

There’s no shortage of possible questions that could be asked, and while the ethics and relevancy of playing gotcha would be debated endlessly after the fact, the sight of Mrs.  read more »

Eight years ago, when he first sought the presidency, John McCain presented himself to the country much the way he is presenting himself now—as a battle-scarred American hero who had endured unspeakable physical and mental abuse for his country and who had emerged from it to pursue a life of courageous and principled public service.

Only back then, the Republican establishment, which just spent the last three nights in St. Paul feting him as living shrine to all that is righteous and noble about this country, didn't see him in such glowing terms. They called him a Democratic plant, challenged his heroism narrative, and rallied around—like their lives depended on it—a well-connected son of privilege who had shown exactly zero interest in serving his country in Vietnam, preferring the comparative light-lift of the Texas National Guard.  read more »

One constituency in particular has proven especially fruitful for the Republican Party through the years: Prominent football coaches. For whatever reason - a natural sympathy for autocratic leadership, perhaps? - the G.O.P. has had no shortage of sideline generals to showcase through the years, a tradition that the party will renew tonight when former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs addresses the convention just before 9:00.

Other well-known coaches who have assumed prominent roles in Republican Party politics through the years include:

* Bud Wilkinson - Led the Oklahoma Sooners to three national titles and 145 victories - including a 47-game winning streak between 1953 and 1957 - before seeking to parlay his in-state popularity into a 1964 U.  read more »

Republicans have spent much of the past week scoffing at claims that Sarah Palin's political experience—which includes six years as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, and 20 months as the governor of the 47th largest state in the union—raises questions about her preparation to lead the United States of America.

In particular, they have played up Palin's "executive experience," calculating that the repetition of this term will lead voters to ignore or overlook the fact that 87 percent of this experience was in a town with a population roughly three times larger than that of a large college dormitory.

"I find it reminiscent when I hear Democrat party leaders and their surrogates questioning Sarah's experience," Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle said at the G.  read more »

Before tonight's proceedings in St. Paul, the venerable National Journal released its latest poll of Republican "insiders," in which several dozen party establishment figures were asked -- with a guarantee of anonymity -- to handicap the 2012 G.O.P. presidential field (contingent on a John McCain defeat this fall).

Their consensus: Mitt Romney is the runaway front-runner, favored by 55 percent, with "nobody" finishing a distant second, at 15 percent. For a party that is fond of anointing an heir apparent years in advance of its nominating contests -- and then ratifying that selection through the primary process -- Romney seemed to be in a commanding situation, roughly where Ronald Reagan was in 1976, George H.  read more »

In the first speech of the 2012 presidential campaign that he's been running since exiting this year's race, Mitt Romney used his convention address to castigate Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as a band of out-of-touch leftists -- part of Romney's ongoing effort to corner the market on the conservative establishment. "Is it liberal or conservative?" he asked over and over near the top of his speech, as he reeled off a list of government failures (at least as perceived by the right), from the lack of off-shore oil-drilling to overly-powerful teachers' unions. After each item, Romney led the crowd in shouting: "It's liberal!"

Which raises the question: Is it liberal or conservative when a Massachusetts politician.  read more »

The main strategic knock on the last night's primetime G.O.P. convention session was its decided lack of red meat-attacks on Barack Obama. Instead, the evening was given over to building John McCain's biography and to framing his campaign as a principled crusade that rises above partisan politics.

Good enough, but with Sarah Palin slated to speak tonight and John McCain on tap for tomorrow night, when will the Republicans showcase the kind of bare-knuckled (and highly effective) attacks on Obama that they directed at John Kerry in New York four years ago?

A look at tonight's schedule and the some of the speech excerpts pre-released this afternoon suggests they will try to kill two birds with one stone this evening.  read more »

Since her selection as John McCain's running-mate was announced last Friday, the media has been "on a mission to destroy" Sarah Palin. That's the charge from McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, at least, and it's just one of countless over-the-top characterizations from the McCain campaign and its surrogates of the scrutiny Palin has encountered.

On one level, this is standard fare for a Republican nominee. Ever since Richard Nixon framed his candidacy and his presidency as havens for a "silent majority" of Americans who felt condescended to by media elites, press-bashing has been a staple of the G.O.P. playbook, a way to rally the party base against a common enemy and to convince G.  read more »

Sarah Palin may or may not have been the right choice for him, but at least John McCain must be feeling good today about his decision to pass on Mitt Romney as his running-mate.

Romney badly wanted the spot and devoted the last six months—after dropping out of the presidential race in February—to pursuing it, using countless television and radio appearances to trash Barack Obama and herald McCain as an unusually capable, qualified and principled leader.

This posture marked an abrupt shift from his G.O.P. primary strategy (in which he positioned himself as the true conservative and attacked McCain—relentlessly—as a heretic whose nomination would destroy the soul of the party) so much that it prompted a reasonable question: Was Romney interested in helping McCain win in 2008, or just in positioning himself to run again in 2012?

The  read more »

ST. PAUL--Last night, George W. Bush spoke via satellite to the Republican convention for eight and a half minutes—with his speech timed to finish just before the broadcast networks began their blanket coverage of the ten o'clock prime-time hour.

This doesn't compare favorably with the treatment that the other two-term presidents of the television age received at their final conventions.

For comparison's sake, eight and a half minutes also happens to be the length of the above video, which was merely the introduction for Bill Clinton's speech at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. When the Clinton video finished, delegates and television viewers (his tribute was carried in the ten o'clock hour) watched footage of the outgoing president making his way through a long hallway to the convention stage, while his various accomplishments scrolled across the bottom of the screen (this particular effect was only for those in convention hall, not on TV).  read more »

Since John McCain sewed up the Republican nomination, it's been obvious that Joe Lieberman - his constant campaign traveling companion and one of his closest personal friends and political allies - would address the G.O.P. convention. What wasn't so obvious was which Joe would show up.

The answer hinged on the outcome of McCain's vice-presidential search. Probably from the beginning, McCain was inclined to tap Lieberman - and as the end of the process approached, it became clear that that's where his heart was.

If McCain had followed through on that instinct, then Lieberman would have shown up in St. Paul ready to spew red meat.  read more »

Jo Ann Davidson, an R.N.C. co-chairwoman and the head of the G.O.P. convention's Committee on Arrangements, offered her perfunctory
welcoming remarks to delegates, in which she praised the ticket of John McCain and "Governor Sarah Pawlenty….Palin."

The first evening session of the Republican convention opened with an invocation from a minister who prayed that America's leaders would put "country first" – which, completely coincidentally, just so happens to be John McCain's campaign slogan and a phrase that is plastered all over the Xcel Energy Center.

After he finished, John Boehner, the House Majority Leader, introduced a tribute to Republican office-holders who have died since the last convention, in 2004. (The Democrats did the same thing at their convention, with a tribute that mistakenly identified the late Eugene McCarthy as Joseph McCarthy.)

The G.O.P. video was appropriately respectful, but the crowd's reaction to the names that flashed on the screen varied widely.  read more »

Why on earth is George W. Bush speaking to the Republican convention tonight? When Hurricane Gustav prompted John McCain to cancel the opening night festivities in St. Paul, it seemed that he’d engineered an enviable political maneuver: coming up with a justifiable excuse to keep the deeply unpopular president – to whom Democrats are frantically trying to link McCain – away from his convention.