(link to AP photo) At the Democratic National Convention, I was on the floor at the Pepsi Center when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was giving his speech.
I’m an imperfect typist, to play on Senator McCain’s self-description as an “imperfect servant” of the American people. I make mistakes in spelling and grammar on an embarrassingly frequent basis, but have some great eagle eye readers who are good at alerts.
John McCain said tonight: “America doesn’t hide from history. America makes its history.” This perhaps is the truest statement in McCain’s genteel, polite, and fairly unambitious speech tonight. America has in its past focused on major problems and figured out strategies to overcome them.
The question of whether to integrate Turkey into the European Union requires a balancing of costs and benefits across Europe’s entire portfolio of political, economic, and security interests. Expanding the Union to include a state that would be among its largest, poorest, and furthest to the East would clearly have a wide range of consequences….
Here is an interview I did with Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief and political columnist Edward Luce about both the Republican and Democratic conventions and how foreign policy and other issues played. More later.
Dividing a presidential convention between two cities — Minneapolis and Saint Paul — that are a half hour cab ride apart is a very good way to deflate enthusiasm and raw political energy, but tonight. . .finally. . .
Politico‘s Ben Smith has posted a hot mic clip of Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy trashing the McCain selection of Sarah Palin. I’ve been having chats with quite a few hard core Republicans about this and that, including the Sarah Palin choice.
Free video streaming by Ustream Last night, I had the privilege of hanging out with Rosario Dawson and some great folks from Voto Latino — but more on them later. This morning at the St. Paul Hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota I will be speaking at and chairing a session on U.S.
Tomorrow morning at the St. Paul Hotel in St. Paul, Minnesota right in the middle of things at the Republican National Convention, the New America Foundation will be hosting a discussion of U.S. foreign policy with a significant focus on the Middle East.
Author’s note: some of the links in this article are in French, apologies. This is the view out my window in Paris of the Hotel des Invalides, where French President Nicholas Sarkozy gave a moving tribute to the 10 French soldiers killed in Afghanistan on August 18th.
