Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Barack Obama is being hailed as a combination of Lincoln and FDR. The economic crisis is likened to secession and Depression. There seems to be a consensus on what he should do – among Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, Washington and Wall Street: Spend money! Spend billions of dollars! Trillions, even! Damn the deficit!…
Read MoreWhen the heads of the Big Three went to Washington to ask Congress for $25 billion to save their companies, one congressman asked, What will you do, personally, to make a bailout a success? The president of Chrysler said he would work for a dollar a year. The congressman looked at the presidents of GM…
Read MoreTalk about Old White Guys (OWGs) – when I read Gary’s blog yesterday I had to look up what a Prius was, which I guess is emblematic of a problem for a lot of us OWGs – the rules have changed and we can’t learn the new language. Here’s an example: The other night driving…
Read MoreI was on a panel last week for the Women’s Networking Forum sponsored by Hunton & Williams law firm. The subject was “Lipstick, Pantsuits and Politics.” When I told my wife I would be talking about women and politics, she shot back: “Two of your favorite subjects.” And I actually know something about one of…
Read MoreWell, now, I’ve taken to reading the Life section of the newspaper to continue to monitor the pulse beat of culture. Thursday there was an Ann Landers-type self-help column about religion written by a Methodist minister. The question she was asked by one of her readers was: “What’s the difference between a cult and a…
Read MoreTwo pairs of stories in today’s N&O capture the shifting state of politics nationally and in North Carolina. First, North Carolina. The front page spotlights $270 million going to the highway loop in Fayetteville, home of Secretary Lyndo Tippett and Senator Tony Rand. Then Under the Dome says Marc Basnight wants Governor-elect Perdue to name…
Read MoreTo most people – like Bill Clinton losing his party’s control of Congress in 1994 – one election is usually enough of a wake-up message. But Republicans are hard-headed – if madness is repeating the same mistake over and over with the same result we qualify. We shrugged off 2006, so history repeated itself in…
Read MoreWhen folks lose elections they go into paroxysms of contrition – usually confessing to the wrong sins. And when they win, there’s a parallel temptation – they attribute victory to virtues that had little to do with their success. Now, mi amigo Gary surely has a point when he says Republicans are in danger of…
Read MoreHere’s one way to look at the 2008 election: The Old White Guys who were running things got fired. There’s George Bush, the MBA Presidency and all his OWGs running the war and the economy. There’s Mike Easley. Bev Perdue spent the final weeks of her campaign promising “change orders” on day one to put…
Read More
Does a message about “workers,” “working families” and “working-class voters” really work for Democrats? Or does…
Read More
I’ve resisted the temptation to rail every day about Trump’s cruelty, corruption and incompetence – and…
Read More
Jeanette Hyde went from Miss Yadkin County to Madam Ambassador. Hyde, who died Monday at age…
Read More