“And all of a sudden, if there’s advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world’s pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together.”
— California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), quoted by Huffington Post, on why he opposes legalizing marijuana.
“As Russia dispatched more forces and tightened its grip on the Crimean Peninsula on Sunday, President Obama embarked on a strategy intended to isolate Moscow and prevent it from seizing more Ukrainian territory even as he was pressured at home to respond more forcefully,” the New York Times reports.
“Working the telephone from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama rallied allies, agreed to send Secretary of State John Kerry to Kiev and approved a series of diplomatic and economic moves intended to ‘make it hurt,’ as one administration official put it. But the president found himself besieged by advice to take more assertive action.”
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports Putin “has agreed to a German proposal for international observers to review the tense standoff in Ukraine’s Crimea area.”
In an unusually emotional interview with the Washington Post, departing Afghan president Hamid Karzai “sought to explain why he has been such a harsh critic of the 12-year-old U.S. war effort here.”
“He said he’s deeply troubled by all the casualties he has seen, including those in U.S. military operations. He feels betrayed by what he calls an insufficient U.S. focus on targeting Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. And he insists that public criticism was the only way to guarantee an American response to his concerns. ”
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The Hill: “The 2016 presidential election is Jeb Bush’s now-or-never-moment. As other potential GOP standard-bearers have been hit by scandal or seen their luster fade, many Republicans desperately want the former Florida governor to get in the race.”
“They believe he could be their Goldilocks candidate: Not too conservative, not too centrist; not too dull, not too unpredictable; not too inexperienced, and not too marred by scandal. In fact, just right.”
The New York Times looks at how the Democratic party is working to “win over white men, especially working-class men without college degrees, at a time when Democrats are gaining support from growing numbers of female and minority voters.”
“It is a challenge that runs throughout the nation’s industrial heartland, in farm states and across the South, after a half-century of economic, demographic and cultural shifts that have reshaped the electorate. Even in places like Michigan, where it has been decades since union membership lists readily predicted Democratic votes, many in the party pay so little attention to white working-class men that it suggests they have effectively given up on converting them.”
David Hawkings looks at five reasons why the supposedly boring budget year could be anything but.
Election law expert Rick Hasen joined us for a discussion on how an upcoming Supreme Court decision may soon shake the political world.
Tom Jensen from Public Policy Polling gave us an in depth look at the latest polling in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate.
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The Fix: “Simply put, Paul is more likely to emerge victorious from the movement conservative primary than any of the potential candidates seeking the establishment conservative banner. At the start of the year, we would have said Christie would have had a leg up in that establishment primary — and hence an edge to be the nominee since the party’s pick traditionally comes from the establishment wing. But Christie’s struggles to get out from under the lane closures scandal that reaches high into his administration has reduced him to just another member of the pack. Walker and Kasich both have the potential to break out but first need to get by real reelection races this fall. Jeb Bush would quite clearly be the establishment frontrunner if he ran but no one has any idea if he wants to or will. Ditto Paul Ryan. And, while Jindal seems to be gaining a bit of steam, he remains second tier in this group.”
“Add it all up and you get this: Rand Paul is, as of right now, the likeliest Republican nominee.”
“Every time the president goes on national television and threatens Putin or anyone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll, including mine. We have a weak and indecisive president that invites aggression.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on CNN.
David Remnick: “Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and autocrat, had a plan for the winter of 2014: to reassert his country’s power a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He thought that he would achieve this by building an Olympic wonderland on the Black Sea for fifty-one billion dollars and putting on a dazzling television show. It turns out that he will finish the season in a more ruthless fashion, by invading a peninsula on the Black Sea and putting on quite a different show–a demonstration war that could splinter a sovereign country and turn very bloody, very quickly.”
“The Republican donors who have financed the party’s vast outside-spending machine are turning against the consultants and political strategists they once lavished with hundreds of millions of dollars,” the New York Times reports.
“The quiet revolt signals a broader shift in the world of big money. Clubs of elite donors in both parties are taking a more central role in shaping policy and campaigns, displacing party leaders and the outside-spending organizations they helped create after the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. And the sheer scale of their spending is almost certain to rewrite the playbook for political campaigns this year, as candidates reckon with the strongly held views of some of the world’s wealthiest people.”
“Yes, I could see this one from Alaska.”
— Sarah Palin, on Facebook, in a reference to her assertion during the 2008 campaign that Alaska’s proximity to Russia afforded her unique insight into U.S.-Russian relations.
“As Russian armed forces effectively seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula on Saturday, the Russian Parliament granted President Vladimir V. Putin the authority he sought to use military force in response to the deepening instability in Ukraine,” the New York Times reports.
“The authorization cited a threat to the lives of Russian citizens and soldiers stationed in Crimea and other parts of Ukraine, and provided a blunt answer to President Obama, who on Friday pointedly warned Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty.”
Washington Post: “After approving the troop request, the Federation Council said it planned to ask Putin to consider recalling Russia’s ambassador to the United States, to show displeasure over what it described as threats by President Obama over Ukraine.”
Politico: “Obama’s handling of the Western response to the Ukraine crisis is now arguably the biggest test of his presidency. It is a crisis that no one anticipated and that the West has been frustratingly divided over since the European Union’s original, misguided attempt to force Ukraine to make an either-or choice about going east or west.”
Maine State Rep. Lawrence Lockman (R) told the Portland Press Herald that he apologizes for past statements he made about rape.
Wrote Lockman in 1995: “If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.”
In the mail: The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert.
“Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.”
Former Washington Post managing editor Robert Kaiser writes that he isn’t going to miss Washington.
“Why? Because for me, the fun has drained out of the game. So has the substance. I used to get excited about the big issues we covered — civil rights, women’s liberation, the fate of the country’s great cities, the end of the Cold War. I loved the politicians who brought those issues to life, from Everett McKinley Dirksen and Howard Baker (Dirksen’s son-in-law, curiously) to Russell B. Long and Edmund Muskie, from Bob Dole to George Mitchell — all people who knew and cared a great deal about governing. Watching them at work was exhilarating. Watching their successors, today’s senators and representatives, is just depressing.”
The Washington Post reports on the “cache of confidential communications” between Hillary Clinton and her political image-makers “detailing the strategic machinations behind her evolution from a political spouse to a political leader in her own right. The secret memos open a rare window into the meticulous and intense efforts to manage Clinton’s public image during her and President Bill Clinton’s tumultuous eight years in office.”
“They describe attempts to cultivate influential journalists who could become ‘fans’ or ‘Clinton surrogates.’ They also detail a push to leverage the first lady’s official travel and agenda to generate positive news media coverage, softening her image in the run-up to Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign.”
Politico: “Yet anyone hoping to divine insight into the true Hillary Clinton from the latest cache of documents is bound to be disappointed yet again.”
The New York Times looks at Gov. Chris Christie’s in the wake of scandal, “singed by an unyielding controversy and adapting to a seemingly indefinite state of political purgatory. As he teeters on the edge of damning revelation or exculpatory relief, Mr. Christie is forging his own playbook for slogging through a slow-moving scandal.”
Said Christie: “Let’s be myself and see what happens.”
“But this version is not exactly improvised: It is put on display in carefully chosen venues, showcasing deliberate messages and revealing the determination of a gifted politician to regain control of his battered image after 53 days of limbo.”
Huffington Post: New Christie scandal tapes released
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
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.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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