HOWARD FINEMAN

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

Re-election campaigns of sitting presidents are always about the sitting president.

Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force.

A political party is dying before our eyes-and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the mainstream media, which is being destroyed by the opposition.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

If we are lucky, and George W. Bush is right, we are about to witness the War of the Happy Iraqis.

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.

There's a very healthy tradition in America of skepticism of centralized power. If we ever lose the skepticism of centralized power, we'll lose the essence of the country.

It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the media has any credibility.

I've always thought of him [Barack Obama] and from conversations know him to be a guy who takes the long view, who doesn't get too high, doesn't get too low and seizes the opportunities when they're there and knows how to ride the wave. I ascribe that to Hawaii. He's a body surfer, so he knows how to get on the wave. He knows just the right time.

I know that from the days of Watergate... the notion of two sources on a story has become the popular dogma about how you confirm something. And there is a lot of truth to that, but there are all kinds of ways to check to the extent that you can, a story that you get.

A political party is dying before our eyes-and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the mainstream media, which is being destroyed by the opposition.

If we are lucky, and George W. Bush is right, we are about to witness the War of the Happy Iraqis.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

When Americans invade Iraq, Bush says, we will be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people, proving that taking out Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.

As Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is.

It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the media has any credibility.

Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.

The notion of a neutral, mainstream national media gained dominance only in World War II and in its aftermath, when what turned out to be a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country.

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.

Leadership and strength are the key phrases of presidential politics.

Pete Wilson was never more than the sum total of his focus groups.

Re-election campaigns of sitting presidents are always about the sitting president.

Tea party members of Congress do not want to legislate. They want to remonstrate.

To get elected as a Democrat, it's hard to be from the city. It's hard to be a graduate of Duke University.

I've always thought of him [Barack Obama] and from conversations know him to be a guy who takes the long view, who doesn't get too high, doesn't get too low and seizes the opportunities when they're there and knows how to ride the wave. I ascribe that to Hawaii. He's a body surfer, so he knows how to get on the wave. He knows just the right time.

There's a very healthy tradition in America of skepticism of centralized power. If we ever lose the skepticism of centralized power, we'll lose the essence of the country.

If you look at the top ten most reliable cars, as reported by thousands of people in all kinds of independent testing, there's only one American car in the top ten. It's the Buick.

We have had too much of the Clintons, too much of the establishment, too much of Bushes. We have had too much of the old names and the old theories. It's time for a new theory.

Gov. Scott Walker, a Tea Party-tinged Republican, is the advance guard of a new GOP push to dismantle public-sector unions as an electoral force.

In the ever accelerating world of the Internet, e-campaigning has gone from a novelty to a necessity in less than a year. With increasing sophistication and urgency, campaigns are using the Web as a bulletin board, advertising medium and organizing tool.

If Rand Paul is going to go anywhere, he is going to have to expand it beyond merely this argument about where we put troops and don't put troops and make it both a generational argument and a change argument. And he's got a chance to do that.

Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?