Politics

Ewen MacAskill reports that Hillary is indeed going to be Obama’s Secretary of State. His report in the Guardian is entirely unsourced however – which is interesting because MacAskill is not a reckless reporter by any means. Even so, Josh Marshall says he doesn’t believe anything any British paper publishes about American politics. My old friend Toby Harnden has a theory explaining what could have happened: Maybe the almost complete lack of sourcing is a clue. When that happens, what’s usually going on is that a very senior person on the paper has been told something, is certain it’s true and directs that the story be written, without furnishing many

My friend James Forsyth asks a daring question: “Will Peter Mandelson end up a National Treasure?” A crazy notion, you may feel, but not an impossible one! Now, of course, in many respects Mandeslon is a dreadful character, but whereas, say, Alastair Campbell is a mere thuggish bully, Mandelson is a subtler operator who enlivens, rather than demeans, the political game. I suspect the lobby is delighted that he’s back. Who could fail to be amused by the manner in which he smoked George Osbourne this summer, as though the Shadow Chancellor was but a kipper? This was Mandelson as his slimy, effortlessly loathsome best. There was something brilliant in

The day after the Presidential election Matt Yglesias spotted this map that shows the counties across the country which swung towards John McCain this year. As you can see, there aren’t that many of them. But what’s interesting is where they are: Matt quipped that, “You can see why John McCain’s principled stand against higher taxes on the wealthy would have a special resonance in this region. Liberals who thought race had something to do with those appeals should be ashamed of themselves.”  Andrew Sullivan agreed with Matt: “Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose.” Now, clearly,

Peter Suderman endorses the idea that life in Washington would be considerably improved if the American president were subjected to some kind of equivalent of Prime Ministers’ Question in the House of Commons. By life, I mean, of course, the quality of political entertainment. And given the dreary nature of most of what happens on the Hill – or in the White House Rose Garden for that matter – one can see why many Americans find the idea appealing. And yet, it’s hard to see quite how any American equivalent would work. PMQs is not, it should be said, quite what many Americans think it is. That is to say,