Richard Holbrooke triggers incredible passion, some of it negative, among foreign policy professionals. He’s a Democrat, but many don’t understand why he’s not a Republican. Dems, some argue, are supposed to be about achieving moral goods in the world along purist pathways of good behavior and enlightened intentions.
Life long Republican and granddaughter of Ike, Susan Eisenhower, said today on an Obama campaign conference call featuring campaign manager David Plouffe and herself that while she truly regrets it, the direction John McCain has been pressured to go is showing that “the Republican Party is running out of ideas.
Recently, I hosted Grover Norquist speaking about the Republican party and conservative movement, and indirectly what he saw as the continued constraints on Democrats.
Richard Vague is a conservative businessman disgusted with the party he has belonged to for a very long time. He was the Founding CEO of the former First USA Bank which ran at the time the largest credit card operation in the United States. He later started a group called AmericanRespect.
Last night, Turkey’s staunchly secular Constitutional Court decided against throwing out the ruling, moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). The decision, which cut Prime Minister Erdogan’s party’s public financing in half and warned it to abide by Turkey’s strictly secular constitution, averted a potential political crisis.
After watching the video interview I did with Palestinian Initiative leader and former Palestinian Authority presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti on Obama’s “World Without Walls” speech, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote me a note. He said: steve — that discussion with [Barghouti] is humiliating for any decent American who values human rights….
“Hi, I’m Mike Bloomberg” said Mike Bloomberg as I stood next to him and another chap at the Lincoln Center’s “Mostly Mozart” fundraising benefit last night. The Mozart performance was accompanied by some ‘melancholy Mahler’, and the evening was terrific.
I just read what I think is the single worst op-ed I have ever read in my life — not at all because I disagree with the substance (which I do) but because it is convoluted beyond anything I’ve seen in policy commentary before.
Almost a year ago, my colleague Steve Clemons wrote a controversial piece titled “Why Bush Won’t Attack Iran” citing the internal political and bureaucratic constraints that held at bay a deliberate attack on Iranian nuclear facilities (but not an “accidental” provocation and ramp-up of tensions).
On Wednesday at 4:15 pm EST until about 5:30 pm, I will be chairing a meeting at the New America Foundation featuring former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former AT&T Broadband CEO and Obama economic advisor Leo Hindery.
