The McCain difference

With General Petraeus testifying before Congress this week, Iraq returns to the centre of the political stage. McCain, Clinton and Obama will all have a chance to question him and you can expect the Democrats to once more try and make capital out of McCain’s comment that he would be relaxed about US troops being in Iraq for 100 years. But McCain’s own personal history and the fact that one of his sons has already served in Iraq, and another might, is going to make it hard for the Democrats to portray...

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Nice work if you can get it

The Clintons have finally released their tax returns and it is clear that they have earned an absolute fortune since leaving office, pulling down around $110 million in the last eight years. At the moment, it appears that the details of their tax affairs are more titillating than scandalous—the Clintons spent a small fortune on cleaning their home office, I’ll spare you any of the obvious gags. Although, the extent to which Bill has cashed in during his post presidency is illustrated by the fact that the Clintons’ income is...

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Who said Obama can't win?

Drudge is going crazy over a report that Hillary Clinton told Bill Richardson that Barack Obama “cannot win” when Richardson called to tell her that he was endorsing Obama. However, others are saying that it was Richardson who told the Clintons that Obama couldn’t win when he was reassuring them that he was not going to throw his weight behind the Illinois Senator.

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Will Obama have a credibility problem by November?

Karl Rove’s interview with GQ is well worth reading to get an insight into where Republicans think Obama is vulnerable. But what struck me was this section where Rove talks about challenging Obama about an inaccuracy in Obama’s book: 

“I'm actually in his book. He wrote that "people like Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Ralph Reed, and Karl Rove say we are a Christian nation." And I did not say that. I confronted him about it. At the White House.

And what did he say?

Well, first he denied that

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Hillary's no April fool

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Clinton's Rocky road

It was Eddie Murphy who pointed out, brilliantly, that white people make the terrible mistake of thinking that Rocky is true. His stand-up riff on the subject involved an Italian who had just seen one of Sylvester Stallone’s boxing epics picking a fight with a much taller black man - and ending up in hospital.

Hillary Clinton, I fear, is making the same error. “Let me tell you something,” she said, “when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit.” No...

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Obama-Hagel '08?

A key part of Barack Obama’s appeal is the idea that he can bring the country together, healing the partisan wounds of the past 14 years. Obama’s plan to do this is more stylistic than anything else; policy-wise he has never veered that far from liberal orthodoxy.

There would be no more dramatic way of showing voters that he is genuine about his desire to unite the country than picking a Republican as his VP. So, it is significant that this morning, Chuck Hagel, a Republican Senator from Nebraska who...

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