Mike Lupica on the weekend in Iowa

One of my favorite columnists, Mike Lupica (in today's 8/15/11 Daily News), sums up the weekend in Iowa:

Whether [Rick] Dubya Perry is holier than Michele Bachmann, the new President of Ames, Iowa, remains to be seen. For now, though, Perry and Bachmann are the headliners of the moment in the Republican Party. Barack Obama must be rooting like crazy for both of them, at the beginning of a campaign where fringe Republicans might do a better job of saving Obama than he can of saving himself.

Here's one of Bachmann's latest thoughts: "The Don't Ask Don't Tell' policy has worked very well", she told CNN's State of the Union. "I would be in consultation with our commanders, but yes, I probably will" reinstate the ban. (also in today's Daily News)

Scott McClellan's everyone but Mea Culpa

I realize that essentially there is nothing new in Scott Mclleland's new book and that it will probably end up as a footnote to the eventual histories of the Bush/Cheney years. From everything I've gleaned about the book, from news reports, it's all been said before. We know about the selling of the war from frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold and much else about the administration's "war on Terror" from among others Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies. I have a shelf of books on the inadequacies and the impeachable offenses of the Bush/Cheney administration.

But I've been thinking about whether Scott McClellan needs to go into the witness protection program. After all, as my favorite political columnist Mike Lupica says,

You are inclined to say that Scott McClellan is like the first one out of The Bada Bing Club, scurrying into the light and looking for redemption, except that it has become clear by now that even the hoods from "The Sopranos" would be out of their weight class with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

And you know what the mob does with turncoats. So we should probably protect McClellan before the Bush, Cheney, Rove mob gets to him. Don't forget the war crimes indictments have not come down yet.

Well anyway when you finish reading Mike Lupica's excellent take on the Bush mob, here's the first part of Keith Olbermenn's interview with McClellan:

Obama is today's story, Clinton is yesterday's

Ever since Tuesday's (May 6) primary results may have changed the U.S. political playing field forever most of the corporate-owned media commentators have focused on Hillary Clinton's loss. Will she or won't she? What will it take to get her out of the race? All this is important but it's not the story. The real story is much more important. It's about the first person of color to very likely become one of the two mainstream parties' presidential candidates. Now that's a hell of a story. How did a virtually unknown (outside Illinois) one-term Senator beat today's (or I guess yesterday's) most powerful political machine. But the trials and tribulations of Hillary Clinton ("The Perils of Hillary") have been getting all the press attention.

But in the middle of all this one of the two best political commentators Mike Lupica (the other is Keith Olbermann, both interestingly enough with backgrounds in sports journalism) has written something that captures an aspect of the 2008 campaign that everyone else has missed. In today's New York Daily News (May 8), he writes:

.... and it all goes on while Obama runs the closest possible thing we have seen in 40 years to the campaign Robert F. Kennedy was never allowed to finish in 1968.

Of course, before this amazing insight, he does talk about Clinton, but even then with greater truth than most of his colleagues:

She stays in the race now for the worst possible reasons, hoping that there is some new bogeyman like Wright around the corner and Obama will somehow break down in the stretch like a fragile racehorse.

It is the Clinton version of the politics of hope....

I don't think that's the person we want answering the mythical 3AM phone calls, or at any other time for that matter. All the stories about Obama not being able to win the match fell by the wayside last Tuesday night.

(Also see the Kos on the Lupica piece)