via. H/T Catia Cecilia Confortini. With apologies to Ryan Gosling and Danielle Henderson.
via. H/T Catia Cecilia Confortini. With apologies to Ryan Gosling and Danielle Henderson.
By now you've probably seen the news of Sarah Palin resigning as governor of Alaska. My first reaction was Whaaa?????? Since I too am aware of all internet traditions, my second reaction was to...
This week, in my International Security class, we discussed energy and environmental issues like climate change. One of my students asked about President-elect Barack Obama's plan to "bankrupt the...
Obama's losing streak is over, he won the Guam caucuses this weekend.Guam only has 9 delegates (8 half-votes plus 5 super delegates). Obama won the caucuses by 7 votes, Hillary and Obama split the 4 delegates, but it looks like Obama will come out 1 up with the super delegates.Now, no one is really talking about Guam. You could write it off as another small-state/territory caucus win for Obama, and its not even a state, really just a huge military base. But, with the Puerto Rico primary looming in June as the last major contest in this race, it might be important to pay attention to those...
Pundits have frequently compared the 2008 election to 1980. In both elections, the opposition party fielded strong candidates in the face of an unpopular president brought down by economic insecurity and foreign policy disaster. For his part, Senator Barack Obama has openly compared himself to Ronald Reagan -- not in substance, of course, but in transformational style.Reagan won the 1980 Republican nomination for President, but his main opponent became his Vice President and was later elected for the top job. I was a freshman in college during spring 1980 and was taking a course on campaigns...
A focus on foreign policy has returned to the campaign, and the Washington Post had an telling series of articles yesterday and today on what the next President might do in the Foreign Policy arena. A column in Sunday’s Outlook section speculated on what lies ahead:The next president will inherit a turbulent, intractable world that sharply constrains the room for creative new U.S. initiatives, according to many foreign policy experts of varying ideological persuasions. Despite the sharp campaign jousting, it's not hard to imagine the next president – even a Democrat – pursuing basically the...
I don't typically blog about domestic elections at the Duck, preferring to save my analysis and preferences for my personal blog.However, Super Tuesday was a unique political event. No primary election ever had so much at stake -- at least in terms of the number of states and delegates to the national convention.Hillary Clinton was once the odds-on favorite to win the 2008 Democratic nomination. She secured backing from much of the Party establishment, raised tons of money and led in the polls throughout 2007.Now, she's the former frontrunner -- managing to earn only about 50,000 more votes...
I have a longstanding apathy towards State of the Union addresses. If a President says anything important (like declaring states part of an "axis of evil"), then I figure that the text serves just as well. My actions are bipartisan -- I don't watch anyone named Bush give these addresses and I didn't watch Bill Clinton either. And I generally didn't watch Ronald Reagan's efforts. However, there's a case to be made that I should have watched the address this year -- not because of what Bush said, but because of how specific members of the audience reacted.After all, both of the remaining...
I was planning to blog on the Ukrainian elections today (exit polls show a very slim lead for Yulia Timoshenko's party, but both sides claim victory), but, well, things get in the way. Like these headlines:"Putin eyes prime minister's job""Putin Says He Will Run For Parliament"United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya)--the Kremlin-approved dominant political party in Russia--kicked off its election campaign this morning with a party conference. It was widely announced that Putin would attend this meeting, which is not unusual--he has attended past United Russia conferences, though he is not...