The New Republic

On the morning after Sarah Palin's announcement that we have to make do without her this time around, a brief recollection from three years ago, just before her stock began to fall: READ MORE >>

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Ezra Klein (and pretty much anyone else who's watched the Palin-Couric interviews) asks, "What's happened to Sarah Palin?" The fact that Palin's responses to questions are becoming increasingly incoherent rather than rapidly more polished is interesting. Rote memorization should have all but eliminated the overlay of nonsense in her answers by now. READ MORE >>

... began just now, on ABC. To me, she looked tightly wound and sounded talking-point-programmed, but as a Beltway pinot grigio-sipping elitist, what do I know? Maybe she came off "fierce." Charlie Gibson treated her with an air of bemused skepticism -- "I got lost in a blizzard of words there," he said, as he quizzed her on what the Bush Doctrine was. READ MORE >>

At the risk of prejudging it before it's even happened, Sarah Palin's first interview--with ABC's Charlie Gibson--looks as if it will be more Barbara Walters's 10 Most Fascinating People than This Week with George Stephanopoulos. From Politico: READ MORE >>

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times... Or maybe it was just the worst of times.Two debates took place in Philadelphia tonight. And, conveniently enough, they took place one after another, divided cleanly by a commercial break. READ MORE >>

Charlie Gibson really hammered the candidates--both candidates--over their proposals to raise the capital gains tax. Why woudl they do that, he asked, when lowering the cap gains tax during the 1990s raised revenue?  My recollection was that Gibson's premise was wrong, but I couldn't remember the details of why. Fortunately, I know a few economists. Here's one of them--Jason Furman of the Brookings Institute--with the story:  READ MORE >>