Mike Allen reports that Obama’s tapped Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. I’m skeptical of the pick, and I think she’d make a better Secretary of Defense. The military loves her, and it would allow Obama to name the first female SecDef.
Hillary is a fighter. She’s cold, calculating, and remorseless — [...]

I’m having a hard time understanding why Andrew Sullivan still thinks Hillary Clinton should be Secretary of State. CNN has it right, I think, that Bill Clinton’s international business dealings in the past 8 years would compromise her independence.  Obama, you’ll recall, ran on a (now rapidly disintegrating) promise that he wouldn’t have lobbyists in his administration. [...]

At least, that’s what Salon’s teaser link to Camille Paglia’s column of September 10 told me. The second half of Paglia’s latest features a bit more praise for the governor but mostly scorn for those who participated in or stood around awkwardly at the “sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy”:
How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate [...]

Via Ross Douthat, Dan Kois at Daily Intel is moved to kinda, sorta defend Sarah Palin against the shellacking she’s still taking in the media, even though the campaign’s over and she’s no longer a threat to world order. But what’s telling about the post is less that New York magazine has come to her [...]

The notion of Obama as the physician who could lance the wound of anti-Americanism in the world began to gain traction during the election cycle, and now with his victory it is really in motion.
Let me be blunt: I think this idea wrong-headed, and possibly even dangerous, in the way that all things that raise [...]

Every time I hear that former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig is being considered for Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration, I can’t help but think of this:

I thought Barry O was supposed to be the candidate of change!

Let it never be said that our newspapers have become frivolous.

As pleased as I am about Obama’s election, I am forced to confront what it means for the next four years of Roger Cohen columns. Roger Cohen writing under an Obama presidency is like Nicholas Cage hitting the liquor store in Leaving Las Vegas.
Less than 48 hours since the election and already he drops a [...]

Belatedly, I think Barack Obama’s speech on election night was one of the finest pieces of American political oration in years, and maybe in decades:
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in [...]

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates stays on. I think this is where Obama keeps a Republican in the administration. Gates is a reassuring presence to both allies and adversaries, who see him as a professional, a steady hand and a straight talker. He could provide an important sense of continuity for countries that like the [...]

Here we are thinking, ah, sweet relief, the election is over, and then something like this comes out:
The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.
At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts [...]

Our new executive inherits a heavy burden. I wish him more than luck in carrying it.

There are times when the good folks at the American Conservative act as useful reminders to heed the wisdom contained in Washington’s farewell address:
The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of [...]

Roger Cohen is to the English language what Thomas Kinkade is to art or Kenny G is to jazz. Here’s the proof:
So it is important to step back, from the last machinations of this endless campaign, and think again about what America is.
It is renewal, the place where impossible stories get written.
And
He is the providential [...]

Nicholas Kristof makes light of an al-Qaeda supporter’s endorsement of John McCain in the U.S. presidential election:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
There are two ways to read this: [...]

Donadio’s fine post on the madness of Mr. Krauthammer put me in mind of the wonderful poem by Constantine Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians”:
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What [...]

Ordinarily, the experience of reading Leon Wieseltier’s turgid prose is akin to masturbating in warm bathwater. Today, however, I came upon a surprisingly on-the-nose expression of his political preferences, which included this jaw-dropping (for me) line:
I want universal health care and I want an interventionist foreign policy.
Stunning! It’s so rare that I see everything I [...]

Biden makes one of the stranger cases for a presidential candidate in recent memory:
It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy… Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
Two things occur to me here. One is Ramesh [...]

I like Daniel Larison’s comparison of the present-day Republican party to the Tories since Tony Blair’s first victory, because they seem similarly out of touch with what’s going on in their country. However, I would say that Republican congressmen, whatever their foibles, are less likely to end up like this guy (link not for the [...]

I really do love Esquire magazine, as I’ve noted at this website before. I love Chuck Klosterman’s column, I love the fashion advice regarding clothes I’ll never be able to afford, and I love their monthly spotlight on different boozes. It’s good stuff.
But I hate their political coverage. Not necessarily because it’s liberal–I love the [...]