Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

Worth Clicking: Blasts from the past wound Romney


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January 20, 2006

Fear of Spying

Walter Shapiro says Democratic strategists worry that opposing Bush's domestic eavesdropping program makes the party look weak. It's the same line of thinking that led many Democrats to back the Iraq war.

"The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on illegal eavesdropping, scheduled to begin Feb. 6, come at a time of intense soul-searching by the lost-in-the-wilderness Democrats. Having failed to mount a coherent and consistent opposition to Samuel Alito -- the long-feared judicial nominee who would destroy the balance on the Supreme Court -- the party's leadership may be tempted to drop the wiretap issue if the first few days of hearings do not deliver any vote-getting revelations. But politics sooner or later becomes a test of character and not merely a paint-by-numbers exercise in low-risk electioneering. These are key weeks for the Democrats to decide whether they believe in anything other than polls and the frail hope that the Republicans will self-destruct."

Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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