P.M. Carpenter
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Sat, 09/06/2008 - 6:43am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Question of the day -- Who knows the least about the national campaign strategy of John McCain and his advisers? Is it members of the press corps covering John McCain, or people like me who frequently write about members of the press corps covering John McCain, or is it, maybe, both of us? And then there is yet a fourth but much more intriguing option: Is it John McCain himself who knows the least about his campaign strategy? "Know," that is, in the epistemological sense of knowing -- a sense that suggests a knowledge surpassing more than just, Oh yeah, I know this is what we're doing today, but as for tomorrow I haven't a clue. What propelled my moment of searching doubt was the one-two punch of McCain's rambling Thursday ni
 Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter mccain palin republican convention republican strategy
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Fri, 09/05/2008 - 5:50am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Sometimes there's just no better way to describe bullshit, such as the species of oratorical bowel movement that John McCain heaved last night, than by calling it what it is, and that would be, bullshit -- and in McCain's case, exceptionally stunning, vastly insulting bullshit, and, because of its setting, even historic bullshit. South Carolina senator and McCain-sidekick Lindsey Graham, in a previewing memo to Republican colleagues yesterday, described the coming bullshit as a partisan call to arms: "Wake up! We're a party in retreat. We need to regroup, change the way we are doing business." By that, Sen. Graham only meant, of course, crank up the bullshit. And as I listened to Sen. McCain last night, it kept occurring to me that the business
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter mccain palin republican national convention
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Thu, 09/04/2008 - 5:48am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
And thereupon graced the stage a woman whose very name 99 out of 100 delegates would not have known just one week ago, yet she was greeted by thunderously supportive hoots, hollers and hosannas as if she was the Resurrection, the Light and the Way; perhaps Ronald Reagan, Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, all in one. There is -- no kidding -- a metaphysical and in this case eponymous term, palingenesis, meaning, literally, from the Greek, another beginning, one in which one's soul slips right into another's physical form. Last night I think we witnessed just that. It must be feeling pretty crowded in there for Sarah Palin right now, given that Spiro Agnew -- and not, as so many on the convention floor thought, Reagan or Roosevelt or Lincoln -
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Submitted by pmcarpenter on Sun, 06/22/2008 - 7:43am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
It is journalistically axiomatic that ideological readers both left and right prefer bad news over good, the sensational over the quotidian, and in general a fright-filled carnival over a pleasant walk in the park. Which is to say, by and large they enjoy having their hair straightened by familiar bugaboos and foreboding tales of dark conspiracies underway by the omnipotent opposition, rather than stumbling on the auspicious and hopeful. Woe to the journalist, editorialist or columnist who writes of the latter. It is with this axiom -- caveat, really -- in mind that nevertheless I present the second of back-to-back pieces with a positive bent. Yesterday I noted "Yet More Evidence of an Obama Blowout," and
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter 527s mccain rnc obama
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Wed, 09/03/2008 - 5:48am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Last night, career-challenged Fred Thompson returned to his thespian ways and roared to the assembled right-winging junkies that Alaska governor Sarah Palin has the opposition "in a state of panic," because she's almost too darned good to be true. No kidding. She's too "courageous," said Fred, and too -- brace here for coming guffaw -- "successful," meaning perfectly qualified as POTUS. No, really, Fred actually said that, in what I guess was a tribute to method acting. That over-the-top endorsement prompted me to wonder if Fred had just read Richard Cohen's take on the increasingly amusing Palin cont
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter mccain palin fred thompson richard cohen
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 5:57am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
In 'A Fish Called Wanda,' it is the Nietzsche-devoted Otto who tauntingly berates the stuttering K-K-K-Ken because he "k-k-k-keeps k-k-k-killing the wrong people." Well, Otto, I have a similar problem with God. He just c-c-c-can't seem to get it right. It's rumored He possesses all this power, all this righteous, omnipotent Wrath through which He can naturally or supernaturally correct the course of wayward human history, or at least tweak the damn pathetic thing from time to time. Last week, my confidence level in His immortal might and seemingly obvious intentions hit a high factor of 95, as He ordered an ass-kicking storm to scurry across the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf to ultimately disrupt in indirect but definite ways mankind's lat
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter mccain bush gustav republican national convention
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 7:22am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
I looked it up. As a refresher. The word has become so overused -- like 'awesome' -- and unanchored from its original meaning -- like 'conservative' -- I finally sought the assistance of my tattered Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition: "An independent individual who does not go along with a group or party." (Incidentally, the word is an eponym, coming from a certain Samuel A. Maverick, d.1870, "Am. pioneer who did not brand his calves.") So for a politician to qualify as one there's a fairly steep threshold to cross; he can't really cross it by just wearing yellow ties when all the other boys are wearing red this year, or by pandering to the same avatars of honest graft, or by voting -- and thi
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter mccain palin maverick balz
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Sat, 08/30/2008 - 7:38am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Every four years we suffer this joke -- the one about some presidential candidate's yet-announced choice of a running mate, which is, to abuse Churchill a bit, little more than an easily guessable riddle wrapped in a largely empty mystery inside a who-gives-a-crap enigma. And every fours years the media treat these announcements and all their accompanying "suspense" as the Second Coming of a second something or other, events worthy of fevered speculation and total journalistic immersion. But this time -- yesterday -- it was worth the wait, the hoopla, the overkill, and in retrospect the suspense was stunningly real and I loved the joke of the outcome. Because John McCain's running-mate decision was just about as un-guessably dumb as a runni
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter john mccain sarah palin vice president christian conservatives
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Fri, 08/29/2008 - 6:57am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
One can almost hear John Kerry's innermost thoughts in regretful overdrive this morning: "Gee, why didn't I think of that?" The that would be the shish-kebabing and outdoor barbecuing and general flaming by which Barack Obama marinated and then cooked his Republican opponent's rather tough hide last night. Well done, I'd say, in both senses of the words. It was, as Dan Balz of the Washington Post reviewed it with exquisite economy this morning, precisely "what many nervous Democrats were hoping for." It was the cannon fire of the '1812 Overture,' church bells and fully charged batteries included. It was the emotional mobilization of John Philip Sousa with partisan attitude. It was Obama's fa
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter obama mccain democratic national convention
Submitted by pmcarpenter on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 7:19am.
P.M. Carpenter
THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter
Whatever reservations and resentments Bill Clinton still harbors from the long and difficult primary season, they were admirably suppressed in his stem-winder of a speech last night on behalf of his party's new leader. Naturally we'll have to wait and see how it plays out, but the former president's full-throated endorsement of Barack Obama may even have been full enough to suppress this week's principal story line of Obama vs. the Clintons, rather than Obama vs. McCain. True, some of cable television's pundits and quasi-anchors and correspondents were still mumbling their own reservations after the speech -- more than one ventured that it seemed like, ho-hum, standard Clintonian fare -- but this morning the New York Times' chief polit
Technorati Tags: P.M. Carpenter clinton obama mccain democratic convention
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