Category Archives: Electoral Politics

State of the Race

9/11/2008 – 12:06 pm

The front page of today’s New York Times says George W. Bush in July gave orders for American forces in Pakistan to carry out operations without notifying the Pakistani government. Nearly a year ago, in a Democratic debate, Sen. Barack Obama said that if he is elected president and has a chance to capture or […]

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Off Limits

9/4/2008 – 6:46 am

One of the classiest moments of Bill Clinton’s political career occurred in the middle of the 1992 general election. After weeks of battling “bimbo eruptions,” the press was starting to pick up on rumors about George H. W. Bush’s mistress. In response, Mr. Clinton said, “I didn’t like it when people said it about me […]

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In the Good (?) New Summertime

7/10/2008 – 9:29 am

It’s hot in Vermont. It’s been in the 90s and humid for weeks. This is great for cherries and plums, grapes and apples. My neighbor’s been making cherry jam for days (add a hot stove to the equation) and she’s had to prop up the boughs of her plum tree, so heavy are they with […]

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Learning to Pay Attention

6/19/2008 – 4:17 pm

The walls are closing in or, if not the walls, then the groundwood sheets of newsprint, the pixilated screens of the news that never stops. Maybe this is the way we should feel at the end of eight years of presidency/puberty. It’s bad enough having teenagers in the house, but when the house is the […]

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Things I Never Learned in School

5/15/2008 – 11:41 am

History question: In what year did an American woman first cast a vote for president? The standard answer is 1920, after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution granted suffrage to American women. But it’s wrong. The first presidential ballot was cast by a woman in the election of 1872. The woman, unsurprisingly, […]

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Follow-Up Questions

4/10/2008 – 9:00 am

Before the New Hampshire primary, John McCain had his now-famous colloquy with a voter in which he said he doesn’t care if American troops are in Iraq for 100 years, provided those troops are not getting killed or wounded. There are a number of Republicans running around now, saying Mr. McCain never said that, but […]

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The Toilet Brush

3/13/2008 – 11:13 am

To Eliot Spitzer, the soon to be ex-governor of New York, I offer this thought: Consider the toilet brush. Mr. Spitzer, a millionaire and a millionaire’s son, may be unfamiliar with this useful tool. Contemporary toilet brushes are usually made of plastic, but I’m sure some high-end and eco-friendly hardware stores carry models with wooden […]

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