White House race stays nice and polite-for now
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The 2008 White House race has  groundbreaking candidates, record-shattering spending and  crowded debates, but so far it lacks a more common feature of  recent campaigns -- negative and sometimes personal attacks.
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Two old sayings are colliding in the presidential campaign, and there's some truth to both of them. Politics is dirty. Midwesterners are nice.
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New national polls continued to show the race between Sen. John Kerry and President Bush to be very close, although Bush appears to have an edge among likely voters.
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It was an interesting election until the Clintons started calling Obama the nice young African-American candidate. Yeah, I lived in the south long enough to understand what that means. When I went to Tulane I was often explained as soandso's Jewish friend Dave. It meant that I could come over for dinner, but there would never be a marriage. I should say The Old South. The problem for the Clintons is that the country has changed, as recently as the generation that's now in its early 20s. Because of my experience at Harvard, I know quite a few of them, and I promise you, race doesn't mean to them what it meant when I was their age. To them, this country is a melting pot where we've not only accepted blacks and Hispanics, but people from incredibly far away with incredible complexions, hair, clothes, traditions and names. Amazingly, it's still America.  Once again we are the melting pot. And this time around a young African-American with a funny name is very mainstream, so much so that the blatant appeal racism of the white-haired old man is as ridiculous as the praise Trent Lott gave to the almost-dead holdover from the Old South, Strom Thurmond.  Problem for Clinton is actually much worse, we now saw how she'd govern. Let's say a young African-American Senator from Illiinois got in the way. Would she argue the issues with him in a respectful way? Why bother when you can smear him into silence. Now she spins around like her husband oblivious to what the rest of us suspected, and now knows for sure. If there isn't now a landslide of support for Obama, from all segments of the Democratic Party and from many Republicans, then our country truly is without hope. I suspect that's not what will happen, and we'll see the same kind of weak attempt at redemption that Trent Lott tried after his fiasco. It won't work, because, as with Lott, we've seen too much. Now do we know that Obama would be any different? We don't. My cynical side says of course he's just like the Clintons say. "Give me a break" -- it's a "fairy tale." (BTW, I'm quoting Bill Clinton accurately, a form of respect they don't practice.) Maybe they're right. Maybe this is the last gasp of hope in America for America. Okay, maybe so. But I'm willing to give it one more try. I think it would say to the rest of the world that America has caught up with reality. Look at how we've changed. Maybe they'll put pictures of Obama in their public buildings as they did with JFK. I could think of worse things. (Carolyn Kennedy thinks it's possible.) What a fantastic way to recover from Bush, who so completely represented the greed and arrogance and uglyness of America, to reinvent ourselves in the image of our best, in the image of hope.  Hope, that's the difference, and it's not just a word. We've all been disempowered during the Clinton and Bush years, sidelined. I remember when I gave up on Clinton, it was during the brightest period of hope for the web, when they passed a compromise that said that the First Amendment didn't apply here.  There are some things that are so important that you can't compromise on them. It was then that I knew that Clinton (and Gore) were phonies. Maybe Obama isn't. I never thought I'd get another chance to use my vote to say, along with so many other Americans, that we still believe the bullshit they taught us in school and that our grandparents taught us, and that the flag says to us every time we think of what it means. There's a reason this country is so great. We forgot it. Let's remember. Bill Clinton wanted us to think well of him when he spoke at Davos in 2000. I choose to remember what he said then, Find A Shared Vision. If by any chance he should read this, I'd say it's time for you to not just say those words but to live them.
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - President Bush and Sen. John Kerry stayed on the offensive in swing states Sunday as the presidential race entered its final full week.
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Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards has sharpened his criticism of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the past week, but his style has remained the same. He couches his criticism with charm.
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MANCHESTER, New Hampshire  - When you are a candidate for U.S. president only drawing about 2 percent support in opinion polls, you have to keep telling yourself that the race is still wide open and there is plenty of time to catch up.
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Democrats need to get a grip on themselves. John Kerry is not down for the count. He still has a good chance to capture the presidency on Nov. 2, even though the
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Just 11 weeks remain in the race for the White House. Getting into the campaign spirit, National Geographic News reviews presidential trivia.
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With most of the states having made up their mind on the presidential race in February, less than a quarter of them can truly be regarded as still in play.
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President Bush likes a serene White House most Sundays. Every now and then, though, he is ready for rumble.
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Comment is free: Stryker McGuire: So far, relations with America have been stable since Gordon Brown came to power. But all that is set to change.
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Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and President George W. Bush are neck-and-neck in their race for the White House, but Kerry is seen as a bit more likeable according to a new poll out just ahead of the second presidential debate.
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President Bush maintains a slight lead over Democratic nominee John Kerry in an ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll released on Monday, with voter preferences essentially unchanged from a poll published a week earlier.
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Not that they're worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn't want any.
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Comment is free: Jonathan Freedland: The lessons of successive US elections are clear: voters want their leaders to appeal to the heart, not just the intellect.
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Sen. John Kerry is working, but not too hard, to keep Washington state in the Democratic column.