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Measure the Drapes
Bob Schieffer opened last night’s debate with a wistful plea. “By now we’ve heard all the talking points,” he said. “So let’s try to tell the people something they don’t know.” Good luck with that. The problem John McCain faced going into the campaign’s final debate is that Americans fully understood the contours of this…
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The Root's Fall Book List
I hear it all the time. In coffee shops. On panels lamenting the decline in reading. In educational centers. On the street. While out with friends. There aren’t any good books published anymore. While there may be slight truths in this rather sweeping generalization, I think the problem lies more in the fact that great…
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Over Before it Began?
Historians may look back at this election and decide that the outcome was never really in doubt. The political fundamentals were so clear and so unchanging long before the real contest began, throughout nearly the entire second-half of the Bush presidency. The war, the economy and the GOP mismanagement of their congressional powers and an…
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A Bucket of Chicken and No Clue
A lot of people say they don’t understand undecided voters. But perhaps undecideds view politics the way I view football. Every year, I show up at a Super Bowl party with a bucket of chicken and no one to root for. I like football, love going to games, but I don’t have a “team.” People…
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The Hitler Comparison
Comparing politicians to Adolf Hitler is a tired, cheap trick that has been used to demonize George W. Bush, John McCain and even Barack Obama. The problem with the comparison is that it makes blanket generalizations of who is good and who is evil, while overlooking the historical conditions that allowed a nation to be…
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Cut From the Same Cloth?
Are you an Obama supporter who feels a certain amount of unease with your candidate’s occasional bouts of schlockiness? This is not to say you don’t appreciate his speaking skills. You cheered at the Philadelphia race speech, but had to dredge up the patience to get through some of his others. At times, Obama can…
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Iyanla's House
Thanks to Iyanla Vanzant, many black women spent the late 1990s talking about houses. Not physical ones, but houses as metaphors. In her book about love and relationships, In the Meantime (1998), Iyanla Vanzant began her trademark sister-girl explanation of romantic relationships like this: “We all start out in the basement of life. This is…
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Ready to Rumble
Does anyone else think Sarah Palin deserves a smackdown? She has lately boasted that the “heels are on and the gloves are off,” but she knows that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would look less than gentleman-like and risk offending women voters, if they took her on using some of the tough talk and loaded…
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Poll-arized Mistrust
Recently, at a forum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one participant directed a query at me: “Did you read the article on The Rootthat talks about how the Republicans are planning to steal the election? How do you feel about that?” the young woman asked. My response was that I found…
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Letter From North Carolina
On a recent Saturday morning in the heart of North Carolina, it was threatening rain, and I was standing in line with thousands of others in downtown Greensboro to do something I’d never done before—be part of the cheering crowd at a Barack Obama rally. Until just weeks ago, my engagement with politics had always…