George H.W. Bush

A handful of polls this week have found John McCain in a surprisingly close race in his home state. One survey in Arizona puts McCain ahead by just two points, 46 to 44 percent. Another has him ahead by five, 51 to 46, and a third gives him a four-point edge, 48 to 44. Others show McCain with a little more breathing room, but still leading by only single digits.

Obviously, McCain should be faring better in a state that has elected him to the Senate four times, although it is worth noting that had McCain not been the G.O.P. nominee, Arizona would have been vigorously contested by Barack Obama this fall.  read more »

Steve Kornacki's column today pointedly recalls the nasty Republican memes of the 1992 campaign, which sought to instill doubt about Bill Clinton's patriotism because he had protested the Vietnam War. So desperate were they to retain power that employees of the first Bush administration rifled illegally through Clinton's passport files.

(That scandal concluded with an ineffectual special-counsel investigation by a highly partisan G.O.P. lawyer.) Flash forward to the affecting moment two weeks ago, when that same George H.W. Bush, now quite old and frail, showed up as an honored guest of his successor at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.

There was real emotion in the elder Bush's voice when he talked about his friendship with Clinton, which began in earnest with their fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Katrina and tsunami victims.  read more »

On the morning of September 24, George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, waited patiently in the lobby outside a ballroom at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in the Sheraton New York, wearing a wool pinstriped suit and aggressively biting a red apple.

On a stage inside the ballroom, Bill Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States, talked about the progress his foundation had made in making the world a better place. Bush’s entrance and their announcement of a plan to visit hurricane-ravaged states together again was meant to be a surprise. So he stayed out of sight behind the ballroom doors, chatting with aides, amiably posing for pictures, looking over his speech and then tossing the apple core at a trash can.  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 »

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 »

When it comes to Barack Obama’s running-mate search, the question of “when?” is now being asked just as often as “who?”

The Politico is reporting that Obama’s decision is expected this week – but that it also might come “as late as this weekend,” or even “the beginning of next week” at the Democratic convention. Which doesn’t really narrow it down at all. Marc Ambinder, meanwhile, notes that Obama is scheduled for a down day in Chicago this Friday and that “Democratic advance folks are being called to Chicago,” suggesting an end-of-week announcement could be in the works. Or maybe not.

It’s worth noting that the last time a VP choice was announced during a convention was in 1988, when George H.  read more »

There’s plenty of of noise coming from the right these days, dire warnings to John McCain about the terrible consequences that will befall him if he fails to appease the Republican Party’s base with his VP selection. These voices come in response to McCain’s apparent openness to choosing a pro-choice running mate – possibly Tom Ridge, but more likely Joe Lieberman.

His dilemma calls to mind the one faced by George H. W. Bush 20 years ago. Bush, much like McCain now, was not particularly liked or trusted by the right (although, unlike McCain, he had spent the previous eight years bending over backward to alter this reputation).  read more »

I’m noticing a pattern here: Some outfit conducts a poll, throws Bob Barr’s name into the mix, and reports back that the former Georgia congressman and current Libertarian presidential nominee is scoring somewhere in the mid-single-digits. Then, a bunch of news outlets run the same basic story about how Barr is poised to play the spoiler this year. Here are three such stories just from the past few days. Believe me, there are – and will be – plenty of others.

Maybe we need some perspective here.

Yes, it is theoretically possible that this election will come down to a handful of votes in one state, in which case the support that Barr receives – or that any other third-party candidate receives, for that matter – could theoretically swing the election.  read more »

The debate over debates – or more precisely, the debate over joint appearances – has begun this year earlier than ever.

Both John McCain and Barack Obama are months away from formally cementing their respective parties’ nominations, but that didn’t stop McCain from proposing a series of 10 town hall-style forums featuring both candidates over the summer months. Not surprisingly, Obama’s campaign didn’t exactly embrace the challenge, and now McCain seems to believe he has an issue with which to score political points.

He’s been highlighting Obama’s reluctance at campaign stops and showed up in New York last week at the site he’d proposed for the first forum.

“This would have been a little more interesting tonight if Senator Obama had accepted my request,” McCain told the crowd.  read more »

Obviously, Democrats want voters to be thinking about John McCain’s age and fretting over whether it might be eating away at his mental faculties. There’s no other reason why party’s anti-McCain talking points would call for surrogates to so prominently slip forms of the word “confused” into attacks on the soon-to-be 72-year-old Republican candidate.

In a Wednesday conference call that received much attention, Susan Rice, one of Obama’s national security advisors, talked about McCain’s “disturbing, even disconcerting, pattern of confusing the basic facts and reality that pertain to Iraq,” while John Kerry called his Senate colleague “confused” – a word he repeated several times in an MSNBC interview later in the day. It’s not the first time Democrats have played this card this year, and it surely won’t be the last.  read more »

The April 22 Pennsylvania primary breathed new life into an underdog presidential campaign that had been on the ropes, ensuring that the race would continue at least through the Indiana primary in two weeks and raising new concerns within the party about the front-runner’s ability to close the deal.

Yes, this is old news—28 years old, to be exact.  read more »

Steve Kornacki thinks the strategy behind Mitt Romney's religion speech owes more to George H.W. Bush than to John F. Kennedy.

Also from the Observer, Jason Horowitz reports on the reaction to the speech from two prominent Catholic commentators.

Upon tuning in for Mitt Romney’s much-hyped speech on religion Thursday morning, many viewers probably asked the same first question: What’s George Bush doing there?

The former President invited Mr. Romney to deliver the address at his presidential library in College Station, joined him on stage and even offered a personal introduction.  read more »

Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, conducted a lengthy, exclusive interview with the former President that left every relevant question unasked.  read more »

The tantalizing illusions of war opponents about two Republican Party elders have this week been shattered.  read more »

Supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis thinks he’s figured out how to make himself Mayor in 200  read more »

In this week's paper, I wrote about the efforts of supermarket magnate and Clinton bundler John Catsimatidis to ingratiate himself with local Republicans in advance of his prospective bid for mayor.

The fact that he's a Democrat, he stressed, shouldn't be a big deal.

"I was a Republican in the 1980's--a Ronald Reagan Republican," he said. "I donated to the Republican library. I supported George H.W. Bush. I helped build the chapel at Camp David under George H.W. Bush, and then I was chairman of the New York County dinner two years out of five under Roy Goodman. I've done a lot of Republican things. "And I'm baaaack."

-- Azi Paybarah

“Hello, I’m Ashley Bush,” said a fresh-faced brunette, extending an arm sheathed i  read more »

The idea that former President George H.W. Bush cracked up in front of the Florida legislature today because he still grieves his son Jeb's loss of the '94 governor's race is preposterous. Yes, that's what Bush was talking about when he started crying, but the idea is nuts. What does your father even remember about a not-tragic career setback that happened to you 12 years ago and was subsequently overcome? Zero.

His feelings were displaced.

So why was Bush upset? Well, it's obvious. The talk of his son's misfortune touched on the real misfortune, his son George's. The father unconsciously fears that he is responsible for George W. stepping in deep do-do, forever and ever in the history books, because the father failed to remove Saddam in '91and the son wanted to set things right. So the father's fears of oedipal parricide have in this case been inverted, and the father feels he has murdered his own son. Thus: the crying jag. (That was free, next time it will cost you $225).

The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and Fox News Sunday  read more »

Two newly-published reports suggest that the first President Bush, George H.W. Bush, lost his bid for a second term in the 1992 general election because of the Israel lobby.

First there's yesterday's Washington Post Magazine piece on the lobby. It explored the standoff between Bush and Yitzhak Shamir in 1992, when Bush tried to stop Israel from building more settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Bush paid a price... He got crushed in a small group of heavily Jewish precincts in states such as New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Florida in his November 1992 election loss to Bill Clinton.

The argument is made more emphatically in the Summer 2006 issue of Security Studies, in an important article on the effect of the Holocaust on our foreign policy titled: "The Myth of Abandonment: The Use and Abuse of the Holocaust Analogy," by Michael Desch, a professor at Texas A&M.  read more »

Henry Paulson Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, likes snakes.    read more »

I wanted to buy How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life by Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswa  read more »

Early on in Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward’s surprisingly useful if analytically inane account of th  read more »

Early on in Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward’s surprisingly useful if analytically inane account o  read more »

In the first wartime election in a generation, President George W.  read more »

"Awake?""Mmm …. "

"Is he going to win?"

"I already told you."

"I know, but …. Promise?"  read more »

On Aug.  read more »

The attack on John Kerry's war record is a standard Republican "gray propaganda operation," created  read more »

Call it a coming-out party for young Republicans.On the final evening of the Republican National Con  read more »

Martha Stewart is convicted and sentenced to five months in jail; Ken Lay, the former chairman of En  read more »

President George W.  read more »

At the nexus of diplomacy and secret intelligence, governments almost never speak forthrightly about  read more »

People who never wondered about the "relevance" of the Whitewater story now claim to be puzzled by j  read more »

On Sept. 14, President George W. Bush finally came to Wall Street.  read more »

One of these days, the country will turn away from theenervating pardon affair, having reached a fin  read more »

A valuable quality in a leader is having the right enemies.If George W.  read more »

Where is the all-girl break-in team now that we need them?  read more »

According to Scripture, it would be unseemly to visit the past alleged sins of George Bush the fathe  read more »

First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty , by Bill Minutaglio.  read more »

Among the monuments on the lawn behind the Texas Capitol building is a pair of big, shiny marble tab  read more »

Gov. George Pataki prefaced his endorsement of unannounced Presidential candidate George W.  read more »