Playing her designated role as oracle of the nonconservative wing of the Republican Party, Meghan McCain joined the chorus of critics this week dismissing Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union. McCain’s take wasn’t as harsh as Esquire’s assessment that Bachmann is a “howling loon,” but it was right…

After his inaugural address; his first State of the Union; his speeches in Philadelphia, Denver, Springfield and Oslo; and the 2004 Democratic convention speech, during which he proclaimed “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America,” everybody knows that President Barack Obama can give a great speech. If…

If you need proof that President Barack Obama got what he absolutely had to out of the tax-cut deal he made with congressional Republicans, listen to the sound of silence coming out of Sarah Palin’s Twitter feed. That she and Republicans couldn’t find anything to immediately blast Obama for explains why he took the ass…

Nowadays it’s popular to apply the “bad poker player” analogy to President Barack Obama and Democrats when it comes to their failure to match wits with Republicans on expiring tax cuts. The New York Times’ David Leonhardt has a “Kenny Rogers Theory“: Democrats can’t figure out when it’s time to hold ’em or fold ’em.…

On their way to wresting control of the House of Representatives and consolidating their ranks in the U.S. Senate in Tuesday’s midterm elections, conservative Republicans managed to turn a self-described former witch into a “constitutional conservative” while calling Barack Obama — a former constitutional lawyer — an enemy of the Constitution. They got indignant when…

Is Juan Williams a bigot? Probably not. Should National Public Radio have fired him for his anti-Muslim comments on Fox News? Not this time. No doubt Williams’ bosses at NPR hated it when he was introduced several times each week on Fox News as “NPR’s Juan Williams” — last year they asked him to stop…

By David Swerdlick Sometimes President Barack Obama gets it right. He was all over Chile’s February earthquake. When the news broke, he was on the White House lawn pledging support for the recovery. He was there for miners killed in a West Virginia coal mine collapse. He recruited former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W.…

When former Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder first pitched the idea of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden swapping jobs in 2012, it sounded like a ridiculous stunt. It still sounds like a stunt, but it’s starting to sound a bit less ridiculous. The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward upped the ante this…

Looking back on the campaign slogan — “Change You Can Believe In” — it’s pretty easy to imagine President Barack Obama sitting alone after hours in the Oval Office like a would-be Jerry Maguire, thinking: “It was only a mission statement.” When he said “change,” he was probably thinking about a more robust kind of…