Notes on Politics -- Obama Goes Dog-Heavy, Scott Brown's Lucky Shot, 'Scandal' & 'West Wing' Quasi-Reunion

Obama Goes Dog-Heavy at D.C. Dinner

This is how presidential humor is supposed to be done, at venues like the White House Correspondents' Dinner. And while President Obama was very funny delivering his litany of jokes -- my favorite was his "What a snob" Santorum reference -- the dog stuff ... really?

Apparently the Obama people believe that the way to short-circuit the Obama-ate-dog story is to drive hard into the belly of the beast like a linebacker. While I can respect the attempt, several of Obama's "I ate dog" lines were disconcerting, like that joke about the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull (stealing from Palin, obviously). Punchline: A pitbull is delicious. What's that now? Comparing the taste of dogs and moms? Bad taste.

Mr. Brown from Downtown

U.S. Senator Scott Brown, who's in a tough race against Elizabeth Warren in my home state of Massachusetts, visited the youth center on Cape Cod recently and, just for fun, tried a half-court shot. And made it.

 Despite the hullabaloo over the fact that his adult eldest daughter is on his Congressional health insurance plan, courtesy of the Obama health care law which he vigorously opposed, he's having a better week than Warren who's doing battle with her Native American ancestry flap. Perhaps she should brush up on her outside shot. Couldn't hurt.

Have You Seen Scandal Yet? Give It a Spin.

It's no West Wing. It doesn't pretend to be. But the new Thursday night ABC drama Scandal, the latest product from Grey's Anatomy guru Shonda Rhimes, is one fun ride.

The lead character, Olivia Pope -- played with intelligent, fierce luminescence by Kerry Washington -- is a powerful D.C. "fixer" who tries to help clients deal with, well, scandals. A former White House aide, Pope had an affair with the married president and, although she projects a ferocious I-don't-need-anyone aura, can project vulnerability, but only in private. She's recently taken on the underdog case of a young White House aide who not only said she too had an affair with the president -- which the president confirmed -- but that she's pregnant with a presidential love child, an interesting amalgam of the Monica Lewinsky and John Edwards scandals.

Sure, the show is larger than life in the way it shows Pope and her loyal collection of "gladiators in suits" prevailing more often than not, always happening to uncover the truth and ultimately doing the right thing. It wildly exaggerates. But given the crop of recent real life political scandals -- Weiner, Edwards, Sanford, Spitzer, Clinton, etc. -- it's not entirely off the mark.

I'm covering the show for CliqueClack TV and am having a blast doing so. If you're looking for dramatic escapism, Scandal's been fun thus fun.

Walk & Talk - The West Wing Reunion from Martin Sheen

West Wing 'Reunion'

Speaking of dramas about the president and the White House, several members of the cast of The West Wing -- including Josh Malina (Will Bailey) who's also on Scandal -- came out with a Funny or Die video promoting, hold onto your hats . . . walking. It's mildly amusing, and also makes me hanker to watch some West Wing repeats.

Image credit: Danny Feld/ABC.

Notes from the Political Middle: Demonizing ‘Moderates’

Image credit: CNN

Winning the presidential nomination of one’s chosen political party is certainly no easy feat. It takes a whole host of things – money, smarts, charisma, organization and sheer dumb luck – to emerge from the primary process as a Republican or Democratic nominee for president.
One of the toughest feats that successful nominees have to master is being an exceedingly limber political gymnast. They have to win over their party’s stalwarts – which comprise roughly a third of the electorate – that they’re the best person to represent them as the party’s standard bearer. Then, in short order, the nominees must transform and twist themselves into a candidate who will appeal to the voters in the political middle – also about a third of the electorate – because you can’t win the U.S. presidency by only garnering the support of those who share your party affiliation.

This is why it’s puzzling to me to see Newt Gingrich calling GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney a “Massachusetts moderate” as though a “moderate” is akin to a socialist hell-bent on transforming America into something more resembling France. After taking out a full-page ad in a New Hampshire newspaper attacking Romney as a “timid Massachusetts moderate,” Gingrich has made the rounds on TV and during voter meet-and-greets warning Republicans that Romney’s really a moderate type of guy, because, you know, them moderates, they’ve been known to take the reins of the nation and sink it like the Titanic. All the political and financial challenges facing America have occurred because of the scourge of“moderates,” right?

Gingrich, who seemed stunned that he came in fourth behind Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul in Iowa, has said that if “Massachusetts moderate” Romney were selected as the GOP nominee, he thinks Romney would “be pretty good at managing the decay” and wouldn’t change the political climate.

This isn’t to say that I’m endorsing Romney, mind you, it’s just that this new trend of attacking people by hurling the word “moderate” at them as though it’s Kryptonite is abundantly silly. Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Amanda Paulson pointed out that Romney is also guilty of using “moderate” as a “dirty word” suggesting that Gingrich is moderate because he’d cooperated with Nancy Pelosi on environmental issues and has made *shudder* compromises.

U.S. Senator Scott Brown, another Republican from Massachusetts where Republicans are about as abundant as four-leaf clovers, gets flak for his moderate tendencies and because he is willing to work with the people who he thinks have the best ideas, regardless of their party affiliation. He’s not following the party leadership and walking in lock-step with his GOP brethren, which is a wise thing given that the Bay State is very blue. If Brown voted straight party line, he’d be shown the door.

Even Rick Santorum, who was only eight votes behind Romney in Iowa and is well known for his social conservatism, was assailed by the son of fellow Republican presidential candidate, the pro-pot Ron Paul, as being a “moderate.” Rand Paul, a senator from Kentucky, told an Iowan talk show host that Santorum is “a big government moderate and I think conservatives need to be wary before thinking Santorum can be their champion.” Seriously?

The editor-in-chief of the web site The Moderate Voice has had enough of this idiotic, short-sighted nonsense. “Warning to the GOP: The way rhetoric is being used in the Republican primary campaign, there may come a point where moderates may simply decide they cannot vote for a Republican candidate,” Joe Gandelman wrote on The Moderate Voice. “No, this isn’t just a personal reaction. You can bank on this being a problem if trending continues.”

Alluding to the fact that whoever eventually gets the GOP presidential nomination will have to appeal to independent and moderate voters in the general election in order to win, Gandelman questioned this new anti-moderate trend: “Why would moderates vote for a political party that has increasingly used the word ‘moderate’ as a filthy political word? We’ve now seen a parade of candidates use it. And the phrase ‘going moderate’ has now become a major attack phrase by conservative talkers, some columnists and politicians.”

Why indeed.

Image credit: CNN.

Notes on Politics: Putting Olbermann in His Place with Mockery

Two Jon Stewart videos in one week . . . unheard of for this web site. But when there's so much news, particularly of the political type, Stewart generally comes through. I can only hope Saturday Night Live is half as good this weekend. This week has been so packed with great political material, SNL HAS to be good, right?

Anyway, back to Stewart . . . earlier this week, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann launched a vicious verbal attack against GOP U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown. When people complained, he came back the next night and added more fuel to the fire. Last night, Stewart ripped into Olbermann:



While I liked Stewart's bit, I still think that Ben Affleck's SNL parody was better:

Notes on Politics: Mass. Senate Election Ends Obama's Freshman Year with a Whimper

I don't totally buy into the notion that a major reason Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race was because Bay State voters are ticked off at President Barack Obama. Other than Brown's declaration that he doesn't like the current health care reform legislation -- being negotiated in secret as pricey goodies are doled out -- and wants to start fresh with a new reform bill, I think this Senate race was about Massachusetts politics more than it was about the president, but the president's going to pay the price, perception-wise.

With a state mired in political scandal after political scandal, Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi said if Coakley lost, Democrats could point fingers at their own performance in the State House. Look at what's happened in Massachusetts state government in the past few years: Democratic House speakers have resigned their post in disgrace including one who's facing federal corruption charges and another who was stripped of his law license last week after he'd pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges, a Democratic state legislator is awaiting trial on charges that she allegedly stuffed bribe money into a bra and the first-term Democratic governor has an anemic 39 percent approval rating. Vennochi wrote:

"The epic battle between Republican Scott Brown and Democrat Martha Coakley is drawing national attention as a referendum on President Obama. But Brown is also tapping into that special brand of anger that helps Republicans beat Democrats in otherwise solidly blue Massachusetts.

When the party in power gets too arrogant -- as often, it does -- the people get mad. Over the past two decades, they sent their message by electing three successive Republican governors."

However when President Obama made a last-minute trip to Boston on Sunday to try to revive the Coakley campaign, he unwisely injected himself into the Senate race. The Brown victory will now add to the perception that Obama is not only weakening, as he suffers from plunging approval numbers nationwide -- went from a high of 61 percent to the current 47, according to the Chicago Tribune -- but is also being dissed by one of the bluest state's in the country, one that gave him a 26-point margin of victory in 2008.

While watching MSNBC's review of Obama's freshman year on Morning Joe, it's clear that what started off on such a triumphant and positive note on a cold inauguration day in Washington, D.C. in 2009 has gone downhill quickly for the president. Hopefully year two will prove to be a better one.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

CBS has a comprehensive, number-crunching summary of Obama's first year including how many foreign trips he made, how many bills signed, pardons issued and rounds of golf.

Notes on Politics: 'Game Change' Caricatures the Women in the 2008 Presidential Election

While the nation's political chattering classes are busy buzzing about Republican Scott Brown's "epic upset" (I've seen this phrase in many news stories) over Democrat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race to fill the remaining term of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, it's worth taking a step back from the day's news (and the woefully inept Coakley campaign which blew a substantial lead and had once been considered a lock) and looking at how women in and around national politics are treated by the media.

I spent the bulk of last week plowing through the lengthy and riveting expose of the 2008 presidential election, the best selling Game Change, written by two journalists who declined to reveal who they interviewed for their book and who gave them what pieces of information. (That, to me, is problematic from a journalism ethics point of view, but that's grist for another rant on another day.) When I was done reading the book, I was so steamed about how the women were treated that I dedicated my Pop Culture and Politics column to it. With the exception of Michelle Obama, the female spouses of the candidates and the two female candidates -- Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin -- were described in an abysmal, sexist fashion. One had her reactions to bad news stories about her family labeled "hysterical" and another was dismissed as being a "beauty queen" who "flounced" back home after a disagreement with her husband, that's when she wasn't said to be weeping. One woman was depicted as having "hissy fits" and "conniptions," while another was maligned (guess which woman) as "Napoleon in a navy pantsuit and gumball-sized fake pearls."

Adding to my irritation were the cartoonish illustrations which accompanied a Game Change excerpt published in New York Magazine which portrayed Elizabeth Edwards as a monster (in one image, one of her hands was curled up so that her fingers looked like claws as spit came out her mouth), John Edwards' mistress was a smitten flirt and John Edwards himself was shown shouting and then sweating as news of his affair broke. Elizabeth Edwards, by far, came out looking the worst.

After taking this all in, I had to wonder: Were the authors simply relating the viewpoints of the blabber-mouth, disloyal former campaign aides who dished about these women, or were these words selected independently by the reporters and reflect their own opinions? Or, frighteningly, both?

Image credit: Nathan Fox/New York Magazine.

Jon Stewart Skewers Democrats, Mass. Senate Race

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is ticked . . . totally ticked, angry, really, with the Democrats for bungling the Massachusetts race for U.S. Senate, a race that was, just a month ago, purported to be a lock for the Democratic candidate.

Noting that the president on Sunday injected himself (and by extension the fate of the health care bill) into the race which is perceived to be going down in flames for the Democrats, the left-leaning Stewart went ballistic last night and asked how "a naked guy who drives a truck" could be poised to win the seat formerly held by Senator Ted Kennedy, adding, "It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess, it's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs."

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Notes on Politics: In Snow & Sleet, Mass. Senate Race is Scalding Hot

With the exception of a few years of living in the Washington, D.C. area in the 1990s, I've lived in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the rest of the time. In all that time, I cannot recall a general election for the U.S. Senate or Congress being this close. It's Massachusetts for God's sake, one of the bluest states in the union. Sure, there was a lot of national attention paid to GOP Gov. Bill Weld's 1996 attempt to unseat U.S. Senator John Kerry (Kerry prevailed with 52 percent), as there was when Republican Mitt Romney took on Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994 (Kennedy won 58 percent of the vote). But those races weren't nearly as close as is this current contest between Democrat Martha Coakley, the state's attorney general, and Republican Scott Brown, a state senator.

Amid all manner of nasty political ads which air once every five seconds on radio and TV (I adore politics and even I'm sick of them, never want to hear the word "lockstep" again) and the tongue-clucking about Coakley's assertion that Brown supporter Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan (in Red Sox Nation of all places!), this once sleepy campaign where the Democrat (any Democrat, didn't matter who) was considered a shoe-in, so much so that Coakley didn't really campaign much last month, is now too close to call. And it's serving as a proxy for all things Obama and is considered to hold the key to the health care vote. If Coakley, once the presumptive favorite, doesn't prevail, pundits everywhere are saying this is bad news for the president who visited Boston yesterday to try to help boost the campaign.

I still can't believe it. Take a gander at the political reporters from all the big media outlets on TV who have to do live stand-ups outside in this New England January chill, in front of cars coated in salt and sand. They seem surprised and almost giddy, to have something this volatile to report. I was astounded to see the front page of the New York Times today feature a woman who'd been holding a Brown sign in Marlborough, MA who I drove by twice on Saturday while driving my youngest kid to hockey.

Here are the covers of the two biggest papers in Massachusetts, indicating that the stakes are indeed high for tomorrow's vote from the Boston Herald (where I used to work and for whom I used to blog) and the Boston Globe.