The House Republicans' "Pledge To America" document, released last week with much ballyhoo, appears to not be quite the rallying cry they had hoped for. It seems that very few Republican candidates for office are embracing the Pledge as a ready-made campaign platform, or as some sort of blunt instrument to wield against Democrats. But none of this may matter, depending on how the media eventually decides to tell this story. Because the myth is always stronger than the reality, and the media simply loves simplistic storylines. Meaning the Pledge may indeed eventually be seen as the second coming of the "Contract With America." Which is, ultimately, even more ironic.

Read Complete Article »

President Obama got a bit of a bounce in his monthly poll average in September, but the news is of a decidedly mixed variety. There is good news and bad in the numbers from last month for Obama, and it's looking like there won't be much of a pre-election change in his numbers which could help congressional Democrats out on the midterm campaign trail.

Read Complete Article »

I will begin today's column by drying a tear as we all wish Rahm Emanuel a fond farewell. Actually, I am lying. I am drying no tears for Rahm because I am crying no tears at his leaving. Chicago's loss is the White House's gain, as far as I'm concerned.

Read Complete Article »

But all of that is neither here nor there. The style of journalism known as "three-dot" was pioneered and perfected by the late great Herb Caen of San Francisco newspaper fame, and consists of stringing together many disparate items conjoined with a liberal usage of ellipses, or those three little dots which indicate "sentence trails off here" or, in journalism, sometimes "there's a bunch of stuff I cut out from this excerpt here." Three-dot journalism relies on the first, and more common, usage... to trail off... into vagueness... or even innuendo....

Read Complete Article »

The White House has been in the news this past week, mostly for who will be leaving it soon. One is tempted to insert the old "will the last to leave please turn out the lights" joke here; but one will not, because one holds oneself to a higher standard than that. Ahem.

Read Complete Article »

American schoolchildren are not the best in the world when it comes to doing math. This is a fact which is proven over and over again by comparing test scores here with those achieved in other countries. The long-term problem with this, though, is one few people ever think about -- those kids grow up to be American adults, who still apparently can't do basic math. And, not to put too fine a point on it, this includes politicians. Either politicians can't do math themselves, or they cynically know that their constituents can't do math and exploit this when making promises to the public.

Read Complete Article »

But, as Howard Dean points out, healthcare reform can succeed without it. Which means there shouldn't be anything standing in the way of throwing the whole idea of the mandate under the political bus, so to speak. Or, since the Tea Partiers hate it too, perhaps "throw it overboard" would be a better metaphor.

Read Complete Article »

First, though, we simply must wish ourselves a happy third anniversary. Woo hoo! Three years of FTP columns!

Read Complete Article »

And the Left really shouldn't complain, either. On many other issues, they've been begging Obama to flex his Executive muscle much stronger than he has (on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," for instance). So why should anyone be upset now that he's doing exactly that?

Read Complete Article »

There's an upcoming debate on taxes and tax cuts which is likely going to define the rest of the 2010 midterm election season. This will be reported on and commented on by a wide array of people in the media, from all sides of the political landscape. But why is it that media "full disclosure" rules seem to be completely ignored during such debate by the punditry? Because by all rights, anyone in the media talking about raising income tax rates on the top two income brackets should have to disclose their possible conflict of interest in the debate. It wouldn't take much, just a simple declaration: "Full disclosure, I fall into the top tax bracket myself, so I would personally be affected by changing this rate."

Read Complete Article »