Archive for 2009
Joe Hackney One Ups Tony Rand
There’s an apocryphal story about the penultimate political Insider, Tony Rand, debating Jim Gardner during the Lt. Governor’s race in 1988;–in the middle of the debate Gardner was giving Rand (and the other Democratic insiders in Raleigh) the blazes for negotiating secret budget deals behind closed doors, saying, The whole state budget was written in…
Read MoreRechanneling 1994
Back when Casey Stengel was managing the woeful New York Mets in their first year, he looked down the bench one day and moaned: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” You might ask the same question in Washington today. About both the Democrats and the Republicans. Both parties are still hung up on…
Read MoreThe Meltdown
Governor Perdue’s is having the political equivalent of a meltdown;—yesterday a liberal pollster wrote that she is now more unpopular than any Governor he’s polled in the country. Her job approval is lower than Congress’s; in six months her popularity’s fallen further than President Bush’s did in seven years. The meltdown is so complete she’s…
Read MoreDome Going Under?
When Pat Stith left the N&O, John Drescher promised that the paper’s investigative role would not lesson. He kept that promise. Now, with Ryan Teague Beckwith gone, can the N&O maintain the momentum he gave Under the Dome? So far, the answer is no. Dome lacks the speed and bite Beckwith had. …
Read MorePayback
Sarah Palin and her amen chorus are an endless source of free entertainment. In the increasingly incomprehensible interviews she has given since her incomprehensible announcement that she would resign as Alaska’s governor, she has loudly complained – and her acolytes on the right and on Fox News have loudly echoed – about how badly…
Read MorePerdue So Far
Cullen Browder at WRAL asked me to rate Governor Perdue’s first six months in office. I think she’s doing pretty well. Give her a B. An A if she would take a stronger role in resolving the budget. She took over the ship of state in a hurricane: a bad economy and the…
Read MoreSenator Doug Berger’s World
Senator Doug Berger probably never dreamed anyone would run TV ads in his district telling his constituents how he voted to cut 20,000 elderly Medicaid patientsâ home care then, eight days later, turned around and voted to build a $25 million fishing pier at the beach — with a sixteen thousand square foot clubhouse and…
Read MoreBig Spenders
Polls suggest that President Obama is losing independents who are concerned about federal spending and rising debt. In North Carolina, Governor Perdue and Democratic legislators fear the political consequences of the coming combination of budget cuts and tax increases. Democrats don’t need to panic yet. The honeymoon had to end, and Obama had to…
Read MoreStrange
Ironic news juxtaposition: Monday was the deadliest day in a year for America military forces in Afghanistan. Seven dead. And Robert Strange McNamara died. When McNamara became president of Ford and then JFK’s Secretary of Defense in rapid succession, all Washington marveled at the power of his intellect. Lyndon Johnson thought McNamara was so…
Read MoreCrab Pots
This afternoon an email flies in over the transom: The states broke and Governor Perdue’s been forced to call for a $1.6 billion tax increase. An hour later another email flies in over the transom: The Department and Health and Human Services has just had to make an emergency appropriation for ‘items needed by…
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