Reagan and Obama

Here’s why, in political campaigns, Dick Morris was fun to work with. Dick could look at a poll and within ten seconds get ten ideas. I’ve only met three people like that: Tom Ellis, Arthur Finkelstein, and Dick Morris. Once, sitting in a meeting, Dick was arguing for one of his ideas with a New…

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What Would Martin Luther King Make of This?

While Kay Hagan’s singing Kumbaya with Republicans, I must be getting more partisan. Because I’m having trouble seeing the Democrats’ side of things. Senator Richard Burr recently sponsored a bill saying the Veterans Administration can’t declare a veteran ‘nuts’ (actually the politically correct term is ‘mentally deficient’) – unless a judge agrees. Burr’s bill sounds…

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Obama in Berlin

I’ve decided to strike another blow for partisanship. Because Barack Obama’s really beginning to trouble me. Not content running for President of the United States, he’s now running for President or Prime Minister or whatever it is in Europe too. And his appeal seems to be intercontinental. Two hundred thousand Germans poured into a Berlin…

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You Can’t Have It Both Ways, Bev

So much for Bev Perdue’s no more negative attacks pledge. She just called Richard Moore, Jesse Helms – which is about as mean a charge as you can lay on a fellow in a Democratic Primary. Then, in case anyone missed her point, she added Moore (who attacked for her for voting, twenty-years ago, against…

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Two Democratic Parties

Just like John Edwards’s “two Americas,” today we have two Democratic parties: the Obama party and the Clinton party. If you want to know where this kind of split leads, read about Kennedy v Carter in 1980, Ford v Reagan in 1976 and McCarthy v Humphrey in 1968. This is a formula for defeat in…

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Start and Stop on School Reform

Just before he left office, former Governor Jim Hunt wrote (with a little bit of help from me, I’m proud to say) a book about education. He said in it that North Carolina’s education-reform efforts had been hampered for decades by a start-and-stop approach. The state would start a good initiative, then lose interest and…

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The Monster is Back

After the federal Department of Transportation killed Mayor Meeker’s Triangle Transit Authority’s plan to spend a billion dollars to build lite-rail (because too few people would ride it) taxpayers heaved a sigh of relief. But the TTA didn’t fade quietly into the sunset. The monster is back. Leaders of a new Special Transit Advisory Commission…

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Governor Easley

When Jim Hunt was Governor no one could open a Seven-Eleven without Hunt adding a new page to his new job recruitment statistics. By the time Governor Hunt left office he’d announced so many new jobs – some promised, some real – the unemployed were in a state of shock. He also made “Smart Start”…

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Risky Business for Raleigh Progressives

This was the headline in The News & Observer Monday: “Taxes, fees on the rise in Triangle.” This is why progressive Democrats need to look before they leap. The story added: “Raleigh gets a double whammy from the city and Wake County.” This is where polls can fool you. A quick-and-dirty poll could lead you…

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The Lottery’s Hot Air Balloon

Here’s a wise use of our education lottery money. The Executive Director of the State Lottery is going to climb into a hot air balloon and sail it over the Raleigh beltline with two banners flapping in the wind promoting ‘Powerball.’ The cost of this PR stunt is $6,200. In the meantime, while the lottery…

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