Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
The topic at breakfast downtown this morning was the cutbacks at the N&O – and consolidation with The Charlotte Observer. “Society and democracy took a hit this week,” one friend said. He believes the cuts mean less competition among the papers, less news coverage and less scrutiny of government. “But the papers have to face…
The only thing worse than the cuts at The News & Observer was the way N&O executives handled the announcement. They sounded like the stonewalling government bureaucrats the N&O excoriates during Open Government Week. Jonathan B. Cox, who wrote the story, had the hardest job in North Carolina. Imagine writing about your employers while they’re…
Yesterday was a red-letter day for enlightened modernists and a black day for the old-fashioned. Duke University hired its first Muslim chaplain, keeping pace with Princeton and Yale in the Ivy League. Gay couples were flocking to chapels and marrying in droves in California and a scientist in Sweden has discovered gay men’s brains resemble…
The Obama campaign may be serious about targeting North Carolina. I heard last week they are sending 280 field organizers into the state. The Rasmussen poll on WRAL showed Obama behind McCain by only 45-43. Obama’s 43 percent is almost exactly what every Democratic presidential candidate going back to Dukakis in 1988 received here. Big…
One reason Tim Russert was good at political journalism was that he started in politics. So he had an understanding and a love of the game that animated his interviews, reporting and analysis. Most political reporters I know are excellent. They work hard to understand politics. But there is nothing like having been in the…
Albert the pollster’s just gotten back a national poll and he’s in a funk. Albert, as he says, has three levels of warnings when he’s advising a campaign. The first example is when the campaign wants to make a silly mistake, but one that won’t do a great deal of harm. When that happens Albert…
I had dinner last night with my old friend Will, the lawyer, and, right off, after the first beer he said, President Bush is as dumb as a post. Now, Will is an old Reagan man. He remembers seeing Reagan’s speech for Goldwater on TV in 1964 and he’s a purist. He still thinks of…
If one of my Reliable Sources is right, Bev Perdue’s partisans have much to worry about now that she has agreed to five debates with Pat McCrory. The Source reports that McCrory outshone Perdue at the N.C. Chamber’s Manufacturing Summit in Greensboro this week. The Source acknowledges that it was a Republican crowd. But added…
The nomination is settled, the race is over, and the loser has conceded. Now the political world waits to see whether the loser will get fully behind the winner. Not Hillary Clinton. Richard Moore. For more than a month since the gubernatorial primary, Moore has avoided a full-bore endorsement of Bev Perdue. Interviewed after Obama’s…
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…