Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
Raleigh hasn’t seen a good fight between an editor and a Governor in 20 years. John Drescher, Executive Editor of the N&O, has a good one going now with Governor Easley. Witness these zingers from Drescher’s Sunday column: “He’s a big-picture guy detached from his own government.” “It’s not that we don’t like Easley and…
I’m back from a week in California (Big Sur and San Francisco), where I soaked up good food, good wine and Nancy Pelosi values. Deprived of my usual North Carolina political diet, I indulged in HBO’s “Recount” about the 2000 Florida election theft. On the flight back Sunday, I read The New Yorker profile of…
Barack Obama needs a Manhattan Project. No, not a bomb. But an intensive strategic and research project like the one the Clinton campaign undertook in 1992, when they figured out why Clinton was running third (behind Bush and Perot) – and how to fix the problem. The ’92 Clinton campaign is more famous for its…
It seems to me, over the years, I’ve witnessed two political earthquakes that changed the ground rules in American politics and gave birth to new political movements. The pictures on TV of American soldiers and refugees fleeing Saigon on the skids of helicopters said to the generation of men and women who’d fought in and…
Toe-sucking transpartisan consultant-turned-pundit Dick Morris, the only man alive who advised both Bill Clinton and Jesse Helms, is right about one thing: Politics in America is headed left. Race may keep Barack Obama from becoming President. But otherwise 2008 looks like 2006 continued. That could mean more Democrats in the Senate and House. It could…
Some members of Governor Easley’s email study commission are privately critical of the news media – like the N&O – for both covering the story and being part of the story. The commission members believe the dual role has led to slanted coverage. They think media representatives have been unreasonable and inconsistent in their appearances…
John McCain’s Straight Talk Express has become the Double Talk Detour. First the scourge of lobbyists and special interests had to purge his campaign of some, but certainly not all, of the teeming special-interest lobbyists on board. Then Mister Integrity dumped his medical records and wife’s income taxes on the Friday before Memorial Day in…
The world up and moved on its axis yesterday morning while I was listening to National Public Radio. It started innocently enough. Cokie Roberts was talking about her two books, Ladies of Liberty and Founding Mothers, when a lady called in to thank her for recognizing the ignored Female Founders of our nation – then…
Here are some numbers worth pondering as you ponder this year’s elections in North Carolina. On May 6, 1.58 million people voted in the Democratic presidential primary. That’s more than the 1.52 million who voted for John Kerry and John Edwards here in November 2004. Thanks to this year’s registration surge, there are now 2.6…
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…