Politics

Now that we’re in the home stretch of an unexpectedly competitive presidential race, it’s easy to get caught in the weeds of poll numbers and day-to-day horserace analysis. Who’s ahead today? Was that an exploitable gaffe? Was that advertisement a lie? These are the questions dominating news rooms, chat rooms and many living rooms across…

Unless you’ve been under a rock (or a hurricane) the last three days, you know about Wall Street’s meltdown. What many people don’t get is exactly what impact it might have on their personal finances. That’s understandable since it’s easier to believe that what happens to rich investment bankers is unrelated to our own efforts…

I’m an Alaskan. I grew up in Wasilla. Sarah Palin was my mayor. She explored the idea of banning books at the library where my parents taught me how to read. There have been many interesting pieces of journalism introducing my gun-toting, moose burger-eating former neighbors to the rest of the country, and most have…

It’s difficult to remember just how ho-hum the political stakes felt in the 1990s, a time when our country’s prosperity and stability made leadership seem secondary to things like ideology, faith and personality. People who came of age in that era could still debate deep, academic questions like whether history is shaped by the person…

Every hurricane season, Haitians at home and abroad gird themselves for the inevitable loss of life that comes with the torrential rains and winds. But this season has been especially hard, as one storm after another has battered the island, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Tropical Storm Fay struck in mid-August. Hurricane Gustav…

“He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it—my Harvard tie? Like, ‘Oh, sure,’ he went to Harvard.” —Winthorpe (Dan Aykroyd) from Trading Places (1983) All summer long, John McCain has been selling the idea that a guy who graduated at the top of his Harvard Law class, who went from living on food…

So we wake up this morning to a Web ad from the McCain-Palin campaign accusing Barack Obama of sexism. It is a swift and superb effort and, from what we know about these things and the political climate in which we live, likely to be effective. It is a quick and dirty piece of television…

Here is the nightmare scenario: Nov. 1, 2008, Barack Obama is leading in the national polls by a comfortable margin. Nov. 4, 2008, he loses the election, either by a whisker or by a margin large enough to suggest that it was never really close. All indications are that the loss will be blamed on…

During his first term, his nicknames in the local media ran the gamut: “Big Diamond,” “thug,” “pimp,” “player,” “Kwame Soprano,” “Swami,” “his thugness,” “ghetto,” “gangsta,” “inept club crawler,” “hustler,” “Puffy Kilpatrick.” Often it was just plain ole Kwame—the reverent title of “Mayor,” “Mr. Mayor” or “Mr. Kilpatrick” chucked aside. Back then, stereotypical characterizations like that…

Fundamental to the marketing of any brand is the establishment of trust: A brand builds trust when promises are met and destroys that trust when promises are broken. It’s a fact of life in retail and true in the world of retail politics. Barack Obama has been busy trying to improve the Democratic Party brand.…