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Coming this summer: The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign by Brendan J. Doherty.
Toby Harnden gets an early look: “Barack Obama has already held more re-election fundraising events than every elected president since Richard Nixon combined… Obama is also the only president in the past 35 years to visit every electoral battleground state in his first year of office.”
President Obama’s re-election campaign “has put Bill Clinton on notice that he will be used as a top surrogate, further evidence of how far the two camps have come since the bitter days of the 2008 Democratic primary between Obama and Hillary Clinton, now his secretary of state, the AP reports.
Tonight, the current and former president “planned to make the first of three joint appearances at fundraisers for Obama’s campaign.”
“The president is getting…some bad advice. Somebody needed to help him out, so I thought I would.
— House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), in an interview on CNN, explaining his “amped-up rhetoric” toward President Obama in recent days.
President Obama was very funny at the White House Correspondents Associates dinner last night.
On Mitt Romney: “He and I actually have a lot in common. We both have degrees from Harvard. I have one. He has two. What a snob.”
On Hillary Clinton: “Four years ago I was locked in a brutal primary battle with Hillary Clinton. Four years later she won’t stop drunk-texting me from Cartagena.”
The president ended his speech saying, “I have to get the Secret Service home in time for their new curfew.”
Steve Kraske: “Maybe I’m showing my age. Maybe I’m showing the effects of too many years covering politicians. But these days, I’m deep into the fourth volume of an ongoing series of books on the 36th president, a man who died back in 1973. The really scary thing: I’m relishing every minute of it.”
“Robert Caro’s new book on LBJ — The Passage of Power — shares a trait with the first three. It is simply a stunning achievement. Enduringly fascinating, probing and popping with surprising insights, the book is a breeze of a read… Magisterial. Foundational. Groundbreaking. Pick your adjective for Caro’s Lyndon Johnson. For now, I’ll go with another one: simply amazing.”
The book is officially out on Tuesday.
Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein: “We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.”
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
“When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
In just 16 months in office, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has claimed to do something “historic” more than 80 times, the New York Times reports.
“His frequent citation of his place in history, according to rhetoricians, provides a frame for how he hopes the public in New York and across the country will view him — as someone who turned a dysfunctional state capital from a place of corruption to competence.”
Out next week: Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden — from 9/11 to Abbottabad by Peter L. Bergen.
“The only politics we understand is scandal, and the only scandal we understand is sex.”
— Bill Maher, quoted by Gawker, on his HBO show last night.
New York Times: “Presidents running for re-election typically boast of programs they created, people they helped or laws they signed. They talk about rising test scores or falling deficits or expanding job rolls. President Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man.”
“To be sure, that man was Osama bin Laden, and he is not mourned among either the president’s supporters or detractors. But in the days leading up to the first anniversary of the raid that finally caught up to the Qaeda mastermind, Mr. Obama has made a concerted, if to some indecorous, effort to trumpet the killing as perhaps the central accomplishment of his presidency.”
Mitt Romney had some advice for students at Ohio’s Otterbein University, telling them that if they want to start a business or pay for their education, they should just borrow from their parents.
Said Romney: “Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business.”
“The dullest audience I have ever spoken to. Just sitting there, staring at me. Pretend you like me!”
— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by NBC News, speaking to a crowd at a fundraiser.
The U.S. Secret Service imposed new rules “aimed at tightening oversight of its employees on international trips in the wake of the Colombia prostitution scandal — banning staff members from bringing foreigners into their hotel rooms, drinking alcohol within 10 hours of duty and visiting “non-reputable establishments,” the Washington Post reports.
Meanwhile, CBS News reports the agency is now looking into reports “that Secret Service personnel traveling in 2009 with former President Clinton partied at strip clubs on a visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and that agents and White House staffers went to a Moscow night club known for its sexually charged atmosphere prior to Mr. Clinton’s trip to Russia in 2000.”
Sarah Palin endorsed Richard Mourdock (R) in his GOP primary challenge of Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN):
“Senator Lugar’s 36 years of service as a Senator are appreciated, but it’s time for the torch to pass to conservative leadership in Washington that promises to rein in government spending now.”
The Indiana primary is on May 8.
Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads is up with a video which strings together clips of President Obama dancing, singing, drinking a beer and “slow-jamming” the news.
The tagline: “After 4 years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?”
First Read: “The ad picks up where John McCain left off with his Biggest Celebrity in the World ad, a narrative that was starting to take hold… until McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate.”
The drama of John Edwards’s trial “took a few more twists” as former staffer Andrew Young “admitted submitting misleading financial statements to a wealthy benefactor who thought he was helping the senator hide a mistress,” thew New York Times reports.
Young admitted asking Fred Baron, a wealthy Texas trial lawyer who was a fervent supporter of Edwards, to pay $28,261 for a BMW that had been bought for Rielle Hunter. However, the car had actually already been paid for with money from the heiress Rachel Mellon.
The economic output of the United States grew at an annual rate of 2.2% in the first quarter of the year, easing from the prior quarter’s growth rate of 3%, the New York Times reports.
Reuters: “Although the details were mixed, the GDP
report offered a somewhat better picture of growth compared with the
fourth quarter, when inventory building accounted for nearly two thirds
of the economy’s growth. In the first quarter, demand from consumers
took up the slack.”
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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