Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
When you start a campaign 25 points behind but have a lot of money you start running ads early and we did – 20 months before the election. Now the folks who worked at the Congressional Club were ideologues. True believers. We saw the world in black and white. Us versus Them. Light versus Darkness.…
Jim Hunt raised eyebrows during the campaign when he said Bev Perdue would be better at being governor than she was at being a candidate. It sounded like faint praise at the time. Now it seems prescient. Raleigh is amazed by Perdue’s deft performance since taking office. She is poised and comfortable in public appearances.…
Everybody agrees that North Carolina’s educational-governance system is dysfunctional. June Atkinson wants the legislature to give her real power. Some legislators want to do away with her job. Governor Perdue bypassed the whole byzantine system by creating her own schools CEO. You can’t blame Atkinson. She has been elected superintendent of public instruction twice.…
Nobody ever accused Jesse Helms of being naïve but he made a pretty serious misjudgment when it came to running against Jim Hunt â Jesse didnât think running against Hunt would be a cakewalk but he had the idea he was as popular (or more popular) than the governor and on top of that he…
Like Billy Flynn in a Chicago courtroom Obama’s speech to Congress was all razzle-dazzle. It takes a silver tongue to spend a trillion dollars then say you’re against big government and get away with it. I don’t know who else could have done it. Surely not Bobby Jindal. Politics is pretty discouraging these days –…
Once upon a time North Carolina was considered the most anti-union state in the country; back then, nobody ever heard of a Democrat like Jim Hunt or Bob Scott supporting legislation to create more unions – but that’s exactly what Senator Kay Hagan is doing. So, what changed? It’s simple: Today Democratic voters see corporations…
It’s time to round up the usual suspects. Because Washington is headed into the same old battle over raising taxes. But this time the stakes are bigger, the faces are different and the outcome may be surprising. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican formula has been a simple one. As Mary Matalin put it on MSNBC…
President Obama made a crucial strategic, rhetorical and political pivot in his speech to Congress last night. He shifted from warnings of “catastrophe” to an assertion of confidence: “We will rebuild, we will recover.” More than with most politicians, Obama’s words are worth paying attention to. Because, as a writer, he pays attention to words.…
Here is, perhaps, the ultimate irony: Former KGB head and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is warning the United States against socialism. Quote: The U.S. should take a lesson from Russian history and not put its faith in “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence because socialism doesn’t work.” “In…
The political sniping began even as chaos still reigned at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My…
A new nationwide poll shows that, if they could run against each other in 2028, Barack…
Senator Phil Berger was out of touch with voters in his district – and suffered the…