Wise Guys | The New York Observer

Who Can Resist the Cuomo Slate?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:00:17 -0500

Eliot Spitzer infamously dubbed himself "a f------ steamroller" in his early days in office - a description that didn't exactly hold up as the legislature stared him down and his popularity waned in the ensuing months.

But as a candidate for governor in 2006, Mr. Spitzer absolutely was a steamroller, powered by untouchable, sky-high-popularity that forced his fellow Democrats to give him wide latitude.

And with each day, it's more likely that there'll be...

Racing From Bloomberg

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:14:37 -0500

Michael Bloomberg's embarrassingly narrow victory margin last week may embolden Democrats to do in his third term something they largely refused to do this year: attack him.

With all the world assuming that the mayor was coasting toward a re-election landslide - and with polls showing him running even with (or even slightly ahead of) Bill Thompson among registered Democrats - most big-name Democrats, in New York and nationally, calculated that there was more to...

How Will Bloomberg Remain Relevant?

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:13:03 -0500

When he won what was supposed to be his final term as mayor four years ago, Michael Bloomberg quickly found himself - or made himself, really - the subject of presidential speculation.

The mayor never formally expressed interest in a 2008 White House campaign, but he managed to keep the talk alive for more than two years. Remember his dramatic exit from the Republican Party in the summer of 2007? And almost as soon...

How NY-23 Can Change the Obama Narrative

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 21:12:05 -0400

It's become something of a tradition in modern American politics: Every four years around this time, the press declares the new (or newly re-elected) president humbled by the off-year election results.

Sometimes, the verdict is spot on. We knew, for instance, that the bottom had fallen out for George W. Bush when he paid an election eve visit to (then) red-state Virginia in 2005-only to see the candidate he campaigned with, Jerry Kilgore, soundly...

Running From the Embrace of America's Mayor

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:50:21 -0400

Eight years ago at this time, after he'd thrown more than $50 million at the mayoral race but still found himself trailing Mark Green by 16 points, Michael Bloomberg bet the farm on Rudy Giuliani, scoring a last-minute endorsement from the outgoing mayor and blanketing the airwaves with a 60-second testimonial from him.

It was all upside: 9/11 had transformed Mr. Giuliani into an exalted figure in New York, where voters, longing for a...

Mike Bloomberg: Independent, Except for All the Party Labels

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:47:00 -0400

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Who Keeps Inviting the Bush-bots?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:50:00 -0400

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The Obama Bloc

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:03:00 -0400

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Candidate Obama Versus President Obama

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:40:00 -0400

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The Martyring of Timothy Geithner

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:03:41 -0400

In the run-up to his January 20 inauguration and in the days that immediately followed it, Barack Obama essentially farmed out the public-relations component of his first major initiative.

Instead of assuming the role as salesman-in-chief for an economic stimulus package that he considered vital to his presidency, Mr. Obama remained above the fray while more polarizing Democratic congressional figures like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank pleaded its case and...

Dolan Can Do What Egan Didn't

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 12:20:31 -0500

After presiding over the New York Archdiocese’s bicentennial last year, Cardinal Edward Egan now becomes the first New York archbishop to retire. The prelates who preceded him all died on the job, which was the norm before the church implemented mandatory retirements. So the new archbishop, Timothy Dolan, faces an unprecedented dilemma: He will take over the nation’s second-largest Roman Catholic archdiocese while his predecessor still breathes.

That might have...

What Republican Rift?

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:51:39 -0500

The G.O.P. is at war with itself. Or so we're told.

Unaccustomed to their new minority status and unsure how to handle a Democratic president with enormous popularity and considerable legislative momentum, Republicans are dividing themselves into opposing camps, each convinced that a different formula will return them to glory.

This, at least, is the narrative you might embrace if you consider the nation's 22 Republican governors a representative cross-section of their party's base.

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Obama's Flack Isn't Just Spinning

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:43:52 -0500

Press secretaries tend to be like broken clocks: They're always going to say the same thing, and every once in a while, it happens to be the right thing. Case in point: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who early last week accused the D.C.-based media of being out of touch with the concerns and opinions of the rest of the country.

"You know," Gibbs said, "there's a conventional wisdom to what's going on...

The Beginning of the End for Senator Burris

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:07:26 -0500

Roland Burris insists that he wasn't "trying to slip something by anybody" last month, even though that's precisely what he did.

In early January, Mr. Burris appeared before the Illinois state legislative committee that was looking into impeaching then-Governor Rod Blagojevich. It was a critical moment in his suddenly revived political career. Despite initial resistance, Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate - spurred by surprising public support for Mr. Burris -...

Did Obama Really Give Away the Store?

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 20:13:54 -0500

Anyone with a grasp of modern domestic political history should have seen last week's stimulus package impasse in the Senate coming.

It was not at all surprising that Republicans loudly demagogued the package as a massive dose of pork, even as their examples of "pork" accounted for a tiny fraction of the overall bill. Nor was it surprising that the G.O.P.—the same party that added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt between...

Now, It's Palin's Party

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:29:45 -0500

Shortly after the November election, Newt Gingrich disputed the notion that Sarah Palin had emerged from her losing campaign as the new face of the Republican Party, declaring that "she's going to be one of 20 or 30 significant players. She's not going to be the de facto leader."

A few months later, the former House Speaker seems to have had a change of heart. Discussing the 2012 G.O.P. race at breakfast meeting...

Stop the Presses: Republican Lawmakers Oppose Democratic President

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:10:08 -0500

With apologies to all of the important and influential news outlets that are playing it up, there is absolutely nothing newsworthy about John Boehner's apparent declaration of war on Barack Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus package.

You didn't actually think the top Republican in the U.S. House was going to support the new Democratic president's first major legislative initiative, did you? This is what opposition leaders in Congress do. When Ronald Reagan took...

Obama's Chance to Do What Lincoln Couldn't

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:12:39 -0500

Measured by the impact of the language and imagery employed, Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural speech in 1865—"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right …"—stands as the most powerful of the 55 delivered between the founding of the republic and the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration. (Here's the text of the speech.)

Of course, the resonance of Lincoln's words came from the...

Barack Obama and the Path of Reagan

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:57:06 -0500

Against the backdrop of something approaching national panic and with his looming push for a massive infusion of public money into the economy, Barack Obama's inauguration next week is drawing understandable comparisons to Franklin Roosevelt's at the height of the Depression.

But from a political standpoint, a more meaningful parallel can be drawn between the president-elect and Ronald Reagan as he prepared to assume the presidency 28 years ago. Although they are ideological...

Rod Blagojevich, Accidental Civil Rights Champion

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:38:15 -0500

Roland Burris, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s choice to replace Barack Obama in the Senate, was on his way to Washington late on Monday, intent on participating in the ceremonial swearing in of new members in the Senate chamber the next day.

But the Democratic senators he aims to join, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, don’t want him. To add Mr. Burris and his Blagojevich taint to their ranks, they believe, would be to imperil...

For Democratic Aspirants, 2010 Might Be a Year to Miss

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:08:13 -0500

In a way they haven't been in at least three decades, Democrats are ascendant in Washington and in state capitols across the country.

For two consecutive elections, the party has claimed dozens of new House and Senate seats, building muscular majorities in both chambers—this after being locked out of power in both for virtually the entire period between 1994 and 2006. In '06, not a single incumbent Democratic senator, congressman or...

Who's Going to Lick a Kennedy?

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:33:18 -0500

Whenever a Kennedy decides that it's time to use the family name to claim a political office for which there are numerous better-prepared aspirants, a taunt aimed at Ted Kennedy back in 1962, when the 30-year-old presidential brother ran with absolutely no qualifications for the U.S. Senate, comes to mind.

"Teddy," Massachusetts Attorney General Eddie McCormack, Mr. Kennedy's opponent in that year's Democratic primary, said, "if your name was Edward Moore instead of...

A False Alarm on the Obama Appointments

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 21:57:31 -0500

Barack Obama’s selection of Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, a position that has only been Cabinet-level for 20 years, is receiving an unusual level of attention. This is understandable, given the celebrity that Mr. Shinseki has accrued these past five years, as his pre-invasion estimate that the U.S. had sent hundreds of thousands too few troops to Iraq has been sadly validated.

But it actually underscores an ironic trend in Mr....

Obama and the Bush Realists

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:19:56 -0500

Just over six years ago, as legend has it, George H. W. Bush weighed in on the invasion of Iraq that his son seemed hell-bent on pursuing, deputizing his old confidante Brent Scowcroft to deliver a very public warning to the president.

Mr. Scowcroft’s resulting op-ed, published in The Wall Street Journal and titled “Don’t Attack Saddam,” presciently decreed that any invasion “is certain to divert us for some indefinite...

Secretary of State: A Prize, but Rarely a Steppingstone

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:02:36 -0500

All indications are that Barack Obama wants Hillary Clinton to serve as his secretary of state and that, pending some touchy but not overly problematic haggling over the finances of her husband’s foundation, he will soon formally offer her the job – which she will accept. After all, word of the prospective move broke last week and neither of the principals has sought to squelch the speculation.

But there have also been reports that Mrs....

Democrats Still Can't Win the South, But It Doesn't Matter

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:04:26 -0500

After affixing his signature to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Lyndon Johnson famously quipped that he’d just signed away the South, a prophecy that was affirmed in that year’s election – when Republican Barry Goldwater won five historically Democratic states in the deep South while suffering blowout losses everywhere else – and in elections for decades to come.

In the post-Civil Rights era, Democrats were told over and over that their path to the...

The New Question: Can President Obama Avoid President Clinton's Early Mistakes?

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:03:16 -0500

There was plenty of chatter this fall about the role (or lack thereof) of Bill Clinton in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Why, many observers wondered, wasn’t the Democratic presidential nominee more interested in taking pointers from the only Democratic nominee since Jimmy Carter to win a national election?

In the end, of course, Mr. Obama’s refusal to go to Clinton School didn’t hurt him on Election Day. But now, as he transitions from campaigning to...

McCain-Palin: A Ticket for Yesterday's Electorate

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:51:43 -0400

Right up until the very end of the 1980 campaign, when polls still showed Jimmy Carter running even with Ronald Reagan despite high unemployment and inflation and fading national confidence, it was taken as an article of faith among Democrats – and more than a few establishment Republicans – that the country would never turn to a candidate as “extreme” as Reagan. Election Day disabused them of this notion: Reagan won 44 states and...

What You Have to Believe If You Still Believe McCain Will Win

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:26:36 -0400

Polls showed him trailing by anywhere between five and twelve points, but on the eve of the 1988 presidential election Michael Dukakis nonetheless predicted to cheering supporters that "Tomorrow, we're going to have a November surprise!"

Less than 24 hours later, he had officially lost 40 states - and the election. It just goes to show you: Among true believers, optimism lingers until the very end.

That same spirit is evident these...

McCain, Back From the Precipice

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:48:26 -0400

A week ago, John McCain seemed poised to devote the final weeks of what could be the final campaign he ever runs to slash-and-burn politics.

His running-mate, Sarah Palin, was deputized to accuse Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” Speakers at McCain-Palin events took to invoking Barack Obama’s middle name as if it were an epithet, and the Republican campaign cut an ad that played up Mr. Obama’s tenuous association with Bill Ayers, an aging...

A Drubbing the G.O.P. Could Use

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 18:36:53 -0400

As of this moment, this election is shaping up as a thorough beating for the G.O.P. at the presidential and Congressional levels.

The good news for the Republicans, if they are defeated comprehensively this year, is that it will lead to a much-needed overhaul of the party.

The bad news: They could be out in the wilderness for a while. When the G.O.P. lost the House...

All the Wrong Moves: How McCain Blew It on the Bailout

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:18:05 -0400

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...

Why the Debates Matter So Much

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:00:59 -0400

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.

John McCain and Barack Obama will face off in Oxford, Miss., on Sept. 26, in the first of three scheduled encounters. Nine previous campaigns have featured televised presidential debates, and history is clear on their unique importance....

Wall Street Disaster Is an Opportunity for Obama

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:26:52 -0400

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...

Palin and the Charlie Gibson Strategy

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:54:08 -0400

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....

No Way to Pick a Running Mate: From Lieberman to Romney to Palin

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:45:15 -0400

ST. PAUL—Word that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant was easily the biggest bit of non-Gustav-related news to emerge from the opening day of the Republican convention.

It’s doubtful that this revelation will end up hurting the G.O.P. ticket in the fall—Ms. Palin’s statement made it clear that her daughter plans to keep the child and marry the father, the least politically explosive denouement for such a dicey...

Democratic Conventions, From Bouncy to Flat

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:44:38 -0400

Ideally, a political convention serves to introduce or reintroduce the public to a party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees in a way that produces a meaningful “bounce” in the polls. It doesn’t always work. Here’s a brief summary of the Democratic nominations of the modern era, ranked (from best to worst) in terms of how effective they were in positioning the party for victory in the fall.

McCain, Obama and the Caucasus Test

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:56:25 -0400

The satirist Ambrose Bierce memorably described war as God’s way of teaching geography. And so when Russian tanks rolled first into the disputed territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia over the weekend and then into Georgia proper, it marked the first time many Americans had heard anything at all about the people, places and politics of this particular corner of the Caucasus.

For now, the conflict between Russia and Georgia, a country with five million...

What's Bill Clinton So Mad About?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:02:50 -0400

It’s long been obvious that Bill Clinton believes he was wronged in this year’s Democratic primary campaign, his words and actions deliberately twisted and distorted by his enemies and their accomplices in the press to turn him into someone and something he is not.

Two months after his wife formally conceded to Barack Obama, the former president is still pouting in full public view. In an interview with ABC News last weekend, he was noticeably...

Obama's Mass Addresses Are Great Theater, So-So Politics

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:57:13 -0400

Shortly after ten o’clock on the night of Thursday, August 28, tens of millions of Americans will be seated in front of their television screens, victims of the broadcast networks’ blanket coverage of the final hour of the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

And the Obama campaign, which has moved that evening’s proceedings from a cozy N.B.A. arena to a giant N.F.L. stadium, thinks it knows how every broadcast outlet will cover the...

Nuri al-Maliki and the Death of McCain's Iraq Argument

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:00:15 -0400

Nuri al-Maliki was once dismissed as a powerless politician with a fleeting grip on his office. Now, though, the Iraqi prime minister is apparently strong enough to change the fundamental terms of the war debate in the U.S. presidential election in a way that dramatically improves Barack Obama’s standing on the issue.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Maliki began hinting publicly that he’d favor some kind of timeline for the departure of American troops in...

Obama Can't Go to China

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:01:47 -0400

Barack Obama is like any candidate for president in that he’s opted for the politically expedient at the expense of a higher principle – most notably when he thumbed his nose at the same public financing system that he’d long championed. Not surprisingly, his supporters shrugged that one off and echoed their candidate’s rationalizations. Better to implement real reform as president than to stand on principle and lose an election, he and they both...

What Would an Obama Presidency Do to the Democratic Party?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:32:41 -0400

If Barack Obama does defeat John McCain this fall, Democrats – who are all but certain to bolster their narrow House and Senate majorities no matter who wins the presidential race – will experience a type of euphoria they haven’t felt in 16 years, when Bill Clinton’s election last gave their party simultaneous control of the White House and Congress.

And surely you remember how that worked out for them. Yes, Mr. Clinton won broad...

Obama and the Cheney Option

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:24:11 -0400

Many of the candidates most frequently linked to Barack Obama’s running-mate search are presumably interested in the vice presidency for the leg up it provides for a future White House campaign. But some of the other names making the rounds suggest something quite different: the Dick Cheney model.

Mr. Cheney is only the second elected vice president since the end of World War II to pass on waging a campaign of his own for the...

The Year of the Celtics and Obama

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:09:52 -0400

On a Sunday afternoon 21 Junes ago, James Worthy dove for an impossible loose ball and somehow swatted it to a streaking Magic Johnson, whose early third quarter lay-up ignited the crowd and signaled a decisive shift in momentum. From there, the home-standing Lakers, who had trailed the Celtics by five at halftime, breezed to a 106-93 victory that sealed their 10th N.B.A. championship.

In Los Angeles, there was celebration, and three thousand miles east...

An Imaginary Glass Ceiling

Tue, 20 May 2008 15:07:12 -0400

It was probably inevitable that the first national campaign featuring a black man and a white woman as its main combatants would produce this kind of fault line.

From one side come the impassioned contentions of Hillary Clinton’s supporters that their candidate has been thwarted by sexism, their ardor only intensifying as Mrs. Clinton’s hopes flicker out. On the other side, Barack Obama’s partisans sniff at this: The real scandal of this...

Obama Flawed Like Bill Was

Tue, 13 May 2008 17:52:47 -0400

If anyone ought to be skeptical about the notion that Barack Obama’s fall prospects have been damaged by the primary process, it’s the Clintons.

With Mr. Obama in mathematical control of the Democratic race (despite West Virginia), Hillary Clinton’s supporters have fallen back on the argument that Mr. Obama’s chances have been harmed, especially among those much-discussed “white working-class voters,” for the coming contest against John McCain.

It’s worth...

Still a Problem Year for G.O.P and McCain

Tue, 06 May 2008 15:16:55 -0400

With John McCain as their candidate, Republicans are making the best of a bad political situation. But even with his considerable personal appeal and maverick image, there are fresh signs that the country’s fatigue with the G.O.P. label will be too much even for Mr. McCain to overcome this fall.

The latest evidence is a special election last Saturday for a House seat in the Baton Rouge area in which, for the...

Obama and the Benefit of the Doubt

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:55:46 -0400

There is, obviously, no exact precedent at the presidential level for the nightmare Barack Obama is now living thanks to his former minister’s all-too-eager embrace of the spotlight.

At a basic level, Mr. Obama’s opponents can and will note that the inflammatory rhetoric that has come to define the Rev. Jeremiah Wright—a caricature that the preacher rather willingly reinforced during his smugly defiant National Press Club appearance on Monday—raises questions about Mr....

The G.O.P. Just Doesn't Get Obama

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:47:46 -0400

It’s apparently a revelation to David Brooks, among other prominent pundits, that the dreaded Republican attack machine plans to reduce Barack Obama to an ugly caricature. It shouldn’t be, of course.

Certainly, Mr. Obama, in the past few weeks, has provided his probable autumn opponents with ample raw material to portray him as only the latest in a long line of culturally out-of-step Democratic presidential nominees. Since this tactic worked so...