Our Boy, Mike Allen

http://www.newsweek.com/id/166849

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Morning Reading 10.13.08 : On (government-observed) Columbus Day

ESSENTIAL READING - From the cover of Newsweek - There Is A Silver Lining

All the more reason to pick up The Snowball

Playbook Monday : 22 Days

DRIVING THE DAY – John McCain will unveil a new, Salteresque stump speech today designed to get voters and reporters to give him one more look. The campaign provided this excerpt: 'Let me give you the state of the race today. We have 22 days to go. We're six points down. The national media has written us off. Senator Obama is measuring the drapes, and planning with Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid to raise taxes, increase spending, take away your right to vote by secret ballot in labor elections, and concede defeat in Iraq. But they forgot to let you decide. My friends, we've got them just where we want them.

'What America needs in this hour is a fighter; someone who puts all his cards on the table and trusts the judgment of the American people. I come from a long line of McCains who believed that to love America is to fight for her. I have fought for you most of my life. There are other ways to love this country, but I've never been the kind to do it from the sidelines.'

Maybe 3 weeks too late...

Kristol in yesterday's NY Times with what might be the best advice for John McCain: be yourself...again.

Freidman on A Post-Binge World:

“I have no idea what the stock market is going to do next month or six months from now,” Warren Buffett told CNBC on Friday. “I do know that the American economy, over a period of time, will do very well, and people who own a piece of it will do well.”

And another recommendation for David Smick's The World is Curved.

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Morning Reading 10.07.08

Playbook Tuesday : 28 Days

The Testing Time by David Brooks

This is the test. This is the problem that will consume the next president. Meanwhile, the two candidates for that office are talking about Bill Ayers and Charles Keating.

He also has a book recommendation: The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy by David M. Smick

Swedish Spoken Here by Thomas Freidman

Making history is not simply about the will to do so. It’s also about the way — the resources you have to achieve your ends. Whatever wills the next American president comes to office with, he is going to find that his ways have been diminished and restricted — until we roll up our sleeves and work our way out of this mess.

In the category of random, useless information: The Measure of a President. The crazy thing is that on a number of these, you might actually be able to guess who they are without seeing their names - just the recognition of stature. Be sure to see Teddy's glowing eyes, Carter's smile, and then length of Dukakis' pants.

An initial review of "W."

If you haven't seen this, you should:

Politico Playback:

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Morning Reading

"After a liberal era and then a conservative era, we’re getting a glimpse of what comes next." -- David Brooks

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/opinion/23brooks.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1222178398-Z22/4AHrze+niCJhMqpyrA

Mike Allen - at his best

http://www.politico.com/playbook/

Rove - Obama about to take the electoral lead

http://www.rove.com/uploads/0000/0034/McCain-Obama_09_21_08.pdf

It's hard to actively acknowledge the NYTimes as the paper of record (it operates at the "center") and then denounce it as a liberal rag.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13761.html

And it happens on both sides...we like this Joe Biden (start at 4:00):

But then the "handlers/strategists" get involved:

"Having now reviewed the ad, it is even more clear to me that given the disgraceful tenor of Senator McCain's ads and their persistent falsehoods, his campaign is in no position to criticize." -- Senator Joe Biden

The high road is no longer.

Michael Gerson, via Politico Playbook nails it:

THE BIG IDEA -- Michael GERSON on “the death of policy in this election”: “[I]t is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt's more timid, forgotten foils, ‘Martin, Barton and Fish.’ Having last week criticized the role of the Federal Reserve in bailouts -- demonstrating a tin ear of elephantine proportions -- McCain now calls for a bipartisan oversight board to review the government's rescue attempt. Mankind perishes. The world grows dark. McCain calls for a review board.

“Obama has been no better, responding with his usual mix of caution and blame. … The 2008 presidential campaign has become notable for its vacuity … It did not begin this way. Early in the campaign, McCain talked about his un-Republican environmental views and undertook a national poverty tour that brought him to places such as Gee's Bend, Ala., and Inez, Ky. Obama endorsed the outlines of Bush's faith-based agenda and stated in a Father's Day speech at an African-American church: ‘We need (fathers) to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child -- it's the courage to raise one.’ But those sparks of originality and outreach have been doused.”