Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Last week President Obama’s ‘favorable’ rating was an eye-popping 70% and after the last week of canonization it may now be 90% and rising. But there are shoals in the waters. Tuesday, during his inaugural, the president proclaimed, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,”…
I’d like to know if one day last week President Obama woke up and said, The day before I’m inaugurated I’m going to paint the walls in a homeless shelter to encourage public service. Or if, instead, someone in his campaign said, We’ve got a great idea for a photo-op – then invited the press…
When John Edwards was running for Senate in 1998, the N&O did a story about how little money he had raised from the state’s business community – and how much then-Senator Lauch Faircloth had raised there. Sam Hunt, ex-DOT Secretary to Governor Hunt, was quoted as saying the road to the Senate ran through the…
Let’s extend the Obama-Lincoln comparison. Carter finds it troubling. But it’s legitimate given their roots, their inexperience and their unlikely rise to the White House. Of course, we can’t know now whether Obama will be remembered as a great President – or an awful one. Certainly, expectations are higher for him today than they were…
Of course I give President Obama (I love the sound of that) an A+ for his speech. As Carter said in his post, Obama may not match Lincoln as a President (who did?), but he comes close as a writer. Obama’s rhetorical skill is more than an exceptional way with words and a sensitive ear…
All this talk about Obama being Lincoln is getting downright troubling – either our new president’s contracted a bad case of idol worship, or this is a ploy to wrap himself in the cloak of Lincoln because he’s gotten into the business of presidential myth-making even before he’s taken the oath of office. I don’t…
Throughout the transition, I would catch a glimpse of Obama on TV with a graphic reminding me he is President-elect. Every time, I was surprised again. And I am still amazed he carried North Carolina. But I wonder how long the racial honeymoon will last. How long before bigotry reenters the political debate, at least…
At first glance it looks like Barack Obama’s sitting on top of the world, but this poor fellow’s actually sitting on a dozen time bombs. Running the American Empire these days is first cousin to being assigned hazardous duty in the bomb squad. The war we were winning, Afghanistan, is going downhill – so the…
Her fourth day in office Madame Governor trooped up to Washington, held out her hand, and asked Congress to give her $18 billion – plus, another billion or so she needs to balance the state budget. She sat down with North Carolina’s Congressional Delegation, then with Obama’s transition team, handed them a list of things…
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…
A reassuring lesson from our trip to Germany and Czechia is that dictators, despots and tyrants…