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The presidential election was getting ugly. In recent weeks, John McCain depicted Barack Obama as an airheaded celebrity. Obama painted McCain as a forgetful fuddy-duddy. McCain called Obama a hypocritical opportunist. Obama went after McCain for his half-dozen houses.
After all that, the moral high ground was looking like a wasteland. But tonight, both candidates scampered back up from their respective ravines.
McCain had everyone expecting a mortar when he announced that he would be airing an ad during Obama’s speech. But the spot was respectful, if a little stilted: “Too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I wanted to stop and say congratulations. How perfect that your nomination would come on this historic day.” There’s a cynical reading, certainly—McCain wants to crash Obama’s party under the guise of congrats. But to viewers at home, I’m guessing it read as classy.
Obama, meanwhile, attacked McCain with gusto—he accused him of letting Bin Laden go, hyper-aggression against Russia, and general out-of-touchness. But he drew the line at hypocrisy. “What I will not do,” he said, “is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes.” He also turned next week's RNC theme, “Putting Country First,” on its head. Obama didn’t just say that he prioritizes the nation’s interests before his own. He gave McCain the same benefit of the doubt. “I’ve got news for you, John McCain,” he said. “We all put our country first.”
Sure, both candidates left openings for more pyrotechnics. McCain promised that “tomorrow, we'll be back at it.” Obama promised to set aside personal attacks but still said that McCain “doesn’t get it”—a phrase McCain fans might interpret as a veiled age reference. These lines preview the war to come. But at the very least, both candidates agree on one thing: They want to press the reset button. That is, as long as they come out looking like the magnanimous one.
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While the rest of the media obsess over the fragile diplomacy between the Clinton and Obama camps, Slate V's Andy Bouvé and I uncovered another rivalry here in Denver: Super Delegate vs. Pick Boy. While we found the hapless Super Delegate to be pleasant enough, Pick Boy—a refugee from Nickelodeon’s erstwhile show U-Pick Live—immediately went negative against the competition. These are their stories.
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John McCain’s decision to air an ad tonight during Barack Obama’s speech in which McCain speaks “directly to Obama” is eliciting a combination of indignation, dismissal, accusations of racism, and dismissals of accusations of racism. (He’s also rumored to be leaking his vice presidential announcement at the same time.)
All's fair in love and presidential campaigns, of course, but McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker’s description of the ad almost sounds like parody: “This is an historic ad. I think this is the first of its kind,” she told Mika Brzezinski.
Yes. Tonight will go down in history as the night John McCain aired an ad attacking Obama. Presidential scholars will speak of it for years to come. Because it’s not like there’s anything else of historic note going. (On second thought, I did hear something about a Dairy Queen closing in Spokane.)
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Next week, the Republican Party will rally around the theme “Putting Country First.”
Pundits have railed against the theme’s implicit suggestion—and other more explicit ones—that Barack Obama is a selfish elitist. But tonight, John Kerry was the first surrogate to address it head-on to a national audience.
“How desperate to tell the son of a single mother who chose community service over money and privilege that he doesn’t put America first,” Kerry said. “No one can question Barack Obama’s patriotism.”
Convention themes set up the message and tone for the rest of the campaign. But the Dems have yet to sync theirs up. Mark Warner sang vague praises of innovation and future vs. past. Joe Biden talked about his working-class upbringing. One of tonight’s speakers actually used the O-word to describe McCain and the Republicans. (They put the “old” in “GOP.”) We’ve heard the refrain “Barack Obama is right, and John McCain is wrong” a few times now. Maybe they’ll pull all these ideas together with Obama’s speech tomorrow night. But if they want to deliver a pre-emptive strike against the RNC theme—an attack in itself—they’ll have to address the patriotism charges head-on.
Michelle Obama, whose past comments have been construed as unpatriotic, cut right to the chase last night: “I love my country.” If he's going to pre-empt McCain's message, Barack Obama may have to do the same. In his surprise appearance tonight, he took the first step: "President Bill Clinton reminded us of what it’s like when you’ve got a president who actually puts people first." Expect more to come.
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Click on the links below to see the sources from which Joe Biden lifted his DNC speech!
“Beau, I love you. I am so proud of you. Proud of the son you are. Proud of the father you’ve become. …
“It is an honor to share this stage tonight with President Clinton. And last night, it was moving to watch Hillary, one of the great leaders of our party, a woman who has made history and will continue to make history: my colleague and my friend, Senator Hillary Clinton. …”
And that's just the beginning. Start Googling!
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Sen. Hillary Clinton stepped to the microphone during the roll-call vote at the Democratic Convention and made a motion that Sen. Barack Obama be selected by acclamation as the party's presidential nominee. Watch what happened next.
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From where the press sits inside the Pepsi Center, here at the Democratic Convention, reporters have a clear view of a teleprompter facing the speaker from across the hall. Watching it gets addictive, keeping track of when the speaker wanders off-script, misses a word, or gets thrown off by applause not accounted for in the text.
Following the teleprompter also makes the speech itself sound tinny and disjointed. The smaller screen only carries a couple of lines, making speeches seem like an endless series of Twitter posts by Democratic speechwriters—crowd pleasers strung together by hurried points on policy.
To simulate that effect, here is Hillary Clinton’s speech from last night, chopped down to just the major applause lines. Judge for yourself: Is the final effect all that different?
"Thank you all very much. I am so honored to be here tonight. I'm here tonight as a proud supporter of Barack Obama.
"And whether you voted for me or you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. [Y]ou haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months or endured the last eight years to suffer through more failed leadership. No way, no how, no McCain. Barack Obama is my candidate, and he must be our president.
"You taught me so much, and you made me laugh, and, yes, you even made me cry. To my supporters, to my champions, to my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
"I ran to stand up for all those who have been invisible to their government for eight long years. Those are the reasons I ran for president, and those are the reasons I support Barack Obama for president.
"[Obama] built his campaign on a fundamental belief that change in this country must start from the ground up, not the top down. Democrats know how to do this. As I recall, we did it before with President Clinton and the Democrats. And Barack will have with him a terrific partner in Michelle Obama. And Americans are fortunate that Joe Biden will be at Barack Obama's side.
"[I]t makes perfect sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart.
"And after so many decades, 88 years ago on this very day, the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, became enshrined in our Constitution. And, remember, before we can keep going, we've got to get going by electing Barack Obama the next president of the United States. Thank you. God bless you, and Godspeed."
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Tim Wu sends this dispatch from the Democratic National Convention:
Think yoga and you imagine limber, young people breathing softly. Politics, meanwhile, conjures up the exact opposite image: unhealthy old stiff people screaming at each other.
That's why it might be a surprise to find that yoga has a presence at the Democratic National Convention. "Yoga," said one of Google's political advisers, "is everywhere." Every day in the Big Tent—a sort of holding tank for bloggers—yoga practice is on the morning schedule. But the true epicenter of convention yoga is the Oasis, a lounge that is the brainchild of yogi Seanne Corn, a 41-year-old who looks 26, and one of her students, Arianna Huffington.
The convention itself is a microcosm of the human struggle with desire: Most spend their days in an endless pursuit of the best credentials, party tickets, and celebrity encounters. But Huffington says she is looking for something more transcendent: "inter-connectedness," or so she told me, a little before taking a break to have a feet rubbed while she poked at her BlackBerry.
Can politics learn anything from yoga? "That we are all one," said Corn, and that "everything that is happening to us is a manifestation of our collective thoughts." A bit like democracy, except you just have to think instead of voting. Can yoga help the Obama/Clinton divide? "Individual healing," says Corn, "is necessary to heal the collective."
Unfortunately for Corn, her efforts to create an alternative vibe in the center of American political culture was, on Tuesday afternoon, running into a few problems. Crowds of men clad in blue blazers, shoulders bent from too much BlackBerry use, began to take over. The number of guests actually choosing to practice yoga was few, with the exception of one online magazine editor being gently pulled apart in a side room. Given a choice, most preferred the hobnob over the downward dog.
And despite its transcendent aspirations, the Oasis does seem to have something of a nonkarmic obsession with reporting on the celebrities who visit the place via the Huffington Post. It would seem that at least one of Buddhism's eight worldly concerns—the desire for fame—remains unconquered.
Yet to their credit, the volunteer yoga teachers and masseuses fought back and re-established a less striving vibe. There were headstands. A man clad in monk's robes conducted a meditation. Someone began to play a guitar. I asked Meaghan deRoos, a yoga teacher who helped me with my headstand practice, whether there was one thing she'd hope the center could accomplish. "Yes," she said. "Getting people to breathe."
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In the last minute of his keynote address tonight, Mark Warner drew on a favorite ploy of Virginia politicians since time immemorial: He invoked a hackneyed Thomas Jefferson quote. Tonight, Warner chose this one: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
It’s an odd choice for a man whose keynote address was a glorified résumé of his victories as governor of Virginia, a term that has been on the books now for almost three years. If you chanced upon this keynote address in a vacuum, you could be forgiven for missing the fact that Warner is now running for the U.S. Senate. Maybe it’s because he’s expected to wallop his opponent, Jim Gilmore. But one can’t help get the feeling that Warner is lukewarm on his personal future in politics.
During his four years in Richmond, Warner fancied himself the CEO governor, forged by a career in business that made him fabulously rich and adept at running a government efficiently. This image worked well for him as governor. But it will make the transition to senator—a famously punishing one for people who like to be the boss—even more difficult than usual.
Warner has joked—painfully—about how Barack Obama stepped seamlessly into the role that Warner carved out for himself in the party. Now he faces, in the next six years, the infinite tedium of being a freshman senator among a crowded field of rising stars in the Democratic party. For someone with such high ambitions, we can only imagine that he indulges occasionally in a little history of the past.
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During Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic Convention, she tried to reintroduce herself to America. How well did she do? It depends on whether you watched MSNBC or Fox News Channel.
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DENVER—Native Denverites here are all too eager to offer tips to us flatlanders on how to survive on 17 percent less oxygen to the brain. "[M]any conventioneers are likely to notice a shortness of breath," cautions the Denver Post. "A few may suffer, for reasons researchers still don't quite understand, throbbing headaches. A fraction might get hit with what can feel like a no-booze hangover—headaches along with nausea and lethargy." (Others warn that the some-booze hangover is even worse; supposedly, rarefied air does a real number on one’s alcohol tolerance.)
The medical term for this is called cerebral hypoxia, and NIH advises us that "symptoms can include inattentiveness, poor judgment, and uncoordinated movement." So one can’t help but wonder: Will the mile-high altitudes of Denver make Obama supporters even crazier than usual?
Literature and psychology are of some guide here. In Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, protagonist Hans Castorp experiences some of this emotional bewilderment while holed up in a sanitorium high in the Alps. As quoted in this 1994 study on emotional contagion, Castorp thinks: "But when the heart palpitates by itself, without any reason, senselessly, of its own accord, so to speak, I feel that’s uncanny. … You keep trying to find an explanation for them, an emotion to account for them, a feeling of joy or pain, which would, so to speak, justify them."
Four decades later, psychologists Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer studied the conflux of physical arousal and emotions experimentally by injecting subjects with adrenaline. They found that those subjects who received the adrenaline were highly emotionally suggestible and would often interpret the physical arousal of the drug as a symptom of a heightened emotional state.
Subsequent studies have qualified and questioned Schachter and Singer’s results. More direct attempts to measure the effect of altitude on emotions have not found strong correlations; a 2005 study found that small groups of men exposed to simulated altitudes of up to 4,500 meters did not exhibit significantly different mental capacities compared with the control group. The FAA’s brochure on hypoxia (PDF), on the other hand, tells us that "some people in an oxygen deficient environment actually experience a sense of euphoria—a feeling of increased well-being." And a series of letters in the Financial Times recently pondered the possibility that flying at high altitudes makes one more likely to cry at cheesy movies. (This guy cried during The Game Plan, featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.)
Obamamania resists quantification, so it’s a bit hard to experimentally determine the effects of the thin air here. (Though my colleague Jim Ledbetter suggests a massive data-mining project to measure voting patterns as a function of altitude.) But in an election that could be decided by a hair, I don’t think John McCain should cede this advantage. It’s not too late for the RNC to relocate their convention to Albuquerque, N.M., elevation 5,300 feet. Plus, New Mexico’s a swing state.
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If Washington D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people, the DNC is where it gets to meet its better looking half. A few of us (of the former type of Hollywood) were walking down Denver's 16th Street Mall when I spotted a familiar face. "That's Obama girl," I said. She looked the part, with black leather pants and a yellow top. But she wasn't dancing or lip syncing or flying or doing anything Obama girl is supposed to do. She was getting on the bus. As a murmur spread, she looked embarrassed and hid her face. Something tells me this is the one city right now where Obama girl can't go outside without someone asking for an autograph.
How funny that people who spend all day coolly passing Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, and Al Franken in the halls can suddenly melt at the sight of Obama Girl. Others seen mingling: Wendell Pierce, Zooey Deschanel, Harry Shearer, Spike Lee, and Toby Ziegler. They're easy to miss. Late Monday night, a Slatester rode in a cab with Rosario Dawson -- without even noticing it.
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At first I thought it was a body double, like Saddam Hussein’s
decoys. I saw him giving an interview to a local TV station. If you squinted, he
looked exactly like Barack Obama. Same ears, same hairline, same skin, same
smile -- same tight jeans, even. But different voice. The man, identified to me as Eduardo, is
actually Cuban, and speaks little English. He’s here to shoot a special for a Miami-based
TV variety show, which presumably uses his likeness as a gag.
If he could just nail the baritone, Fred Armisen might be
out of a job.
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Early Saturday morning, the 3 a.m. phone call finally came. But it wasn’t a phone call. It was a text message.
It’s hard to imagine that the method and timing of Barack Obama’s vice presidential announcement wasn’t, in some small way, a reference to Hillary Clinton’s famous “3 a.m.” ad. Of the 24 hours they had to choose from, they had to pick 3 a.m. Eastern Time, the most famous hour of this presidential cycle?
Maybe it’s just a coincidence. The message blasted out soon after word leaked via the AP that Joe Biden was Obama’s vice presidential pick. Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Obama, denied any connection with the Clinton ad. “No—that’s an absurd assumption,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Still, the 3 a.m. connection is too good to ignore. Maybe it’s trying to suggest Joe Biden is prepared for that 3 a.m. call, should the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accidentally dial the wrong extension. Maybe it’s meant to remind everyone that the Obama campaign never sleeps. Or maybe the campaign wanted to help simulate the presidential experience for supporters. So this is what it’s like to be president!
Either way, somewhere Mark Penn is smiling.
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The Associated Press is reporting that Joe Biden is Barack Obama's running mate, ending weeks of frenzied speculation. This passage is my favorite:
The official who spoke did so on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt a text-message announcement the Obama campaign promised for Saturday morning.
And yet ... he did just that. All those times David Plouffe said I would "be the first to know" -- just words?
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Or do they?
A Kansas City TV station is reporting that a local printing company has produced bumper stickers that say "Obama/Bayh ’08." And they have the photo to prove it.
No guarantees, obviously. But in the past, campaign merchandise has been an accurate indicator—more accurate than tips, at least. In 2004, word of John Edwards’ nomination first leaked on an aviation blog when someone saw new decals being applied to the Kerry airplane. Meanwhile, a source told the New York Post that Kerry had picked Dick Gephardt, resulting in this embarrassing cover.
If true, this confirms a few other big hints. A few days back, the Nashville Post reported that Obama had a "major event" planned for Saturday in Indiana, Bayh’s home state. (The event is actually in Springfield, Ill.) Thursday night, asked if he had any news, Bayh replied, "Not tonight." He was coy again today: "It's not mine to report," he said.
Who knows, maybe the Obama campaign is printing Obama/Bayh bumper stickers just to throw everyone off the scent. But that hardly seems worth the cost. Marc Ambinder thinks the sticker is "too ugly to be official." (It’s true: Compare it to this specimen.) But maybe they had to rush the design. Or maybe campaign stickers are now like Super Bowl jerseys—they print a set for every victory scenario. If so, look forward to seeing "Obama/Sebelius '08" T-shirts cropping up in Haiti this winter.
Update 12:49 a.m.: You thought we were joking -- apparently the Obama campaign does print stickers with the names of other potential running mates. (It's not clear if they produced these stickers.) Maybe they'll send the counterfactual memorabilia to Haiti after all. Or better yet, to all the small donors who paid for them ...
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When the Obama campaign attacked John McCain for owning seven houses—or was it eight? or 12?—a McCain spokesman hit back, calling Obama "an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type." Such a vicious attack must not go unsanswered. How dare he insult arugula like that?
Thanks to Barack Obama’s complaint last year about arugula prices at Whole Foods, the leafy green (Eruca sativa, aka rugola, rucola, roquette, ruchetta, or garden rocket) has become synonymous with elitism. Part of it is the price—at the local supermarket, a 5-ounce bag of arugula costs twice as much as a head of iceberg lettuce. It’s also the foreign-sounding name, which betrays the herb’s European ancestry. But stereotyping arugula as an upscale import ignores its many virtues. Lettuce review:
It’s tasty. Let me rephrase that: It has a taste—as opposed to regular lettuce, which often seems chemically engineered to have all the properties of air, plus texture. (Hydrogen actually has four states: solid, liquid, gas and lettuce.) One salad seller described arugula’s flavor to me as "nutty and peppery." Others call it "peppery-mustardy." The disagreement makes it versatile as a salad base, one flavor in a mix, or as a garnish. (Just ask Olive Garden.)
It’s healthy. On the nutrition spectrum, arugula falls somewhere between iceberg lettuce and spinach. It’s rich in vitamins A and C, with even more calcium than spinach. It also packs nearly twice the calories of iceberg lettuce—after eating arugula, you actually feel like you’ve eaten. (Plus, if you look at cost per calorie instead of per ounce, their costs are much closer.)
It’s popular. Haters tend to lump arugula in with caviar, filet mignon, and Grey Goose as if it’s rare delicacy only swells can afford. Indeed, arugula itself makes up only 1 percent of pre-washed salad sales, according to AC Nielsen. But "tender leaf salads," those mixes that tend to include arugula, represent 25 percent of salad sales—more than iceberg lettuce’s 22 percent market share. So even if arugula alone isn’t sinking the iceberg, all those other fancy salads are.
It’s American. Arugula originated in the Mediterranean and came to America via Italy. But when it became popular in the 1970s, American salad entrepreneurs started growing it in the United States along with other non-domestic greens. "We smuggled in some radicchio seeds from Italy and gave ‘em to this farmer in Pennsylvania," Joel Dean of Dean & DeLuca told author David Kamp. "And it all came up green." Nowadays, most of the arugula you see in the supermarket comes from California.
It’s an aphrodisiac. OK, so that might be hearsay. But you hear it said a lot. "I once got a call on our consumer line from some 18 year old boys trying to verify that," says Samantha Cabaluna of Earthbound Farm. There’s a reason they call it "rocket."
It’s too early to tell if anti-arugula sentiment has hurt sales. (Remember what happened to merlot after Sideways?) But if so, it’s through no fault of the leaf. Food prices in general are soaring, which may push people to buy cheaper (and local) greens. And there’s no doubt that if you’re tightening your belt—in more ways than one—iceberg is the way to go. Still, there is no shame in arugula.
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 Stand outside any campaign event and you'll see profiteers hocking their wares. Bumper stickers, playing cards, pins, posters, T-shirts, even pet-wear—if it's got Obama's face on it, chances are someone will pay for it. But will this merchandise be worth anything after Election Day?
If the recent past is any indication, no. Representatives from Sotheby's and Christie's I spoke with couldn't recall auctioning off contemporary campaign memorabilia recently. In 1991, Sotheby's did offer up a collection of 20,000 election mementos that had been estimated to sell for $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Nobody made a single bid.
But this election could be different. Daryle Lambert of Illinois, an antiques and collectibles dealer for the past 45 years and author of the book 31 Steps to your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles, believes items collected during this campaign season will yield sky-high returns because of the historic significance of the candidates. "This election by far has more appeal to the collector than any in my lifetime," said the 67-year-old collector, who offers advice on collecting items on his blog. Lambert said that if he were attending the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, he would take home memorabilia by the truckload. But if space is limited, the savvy collector should look for the following items.
1. Autographs: Anything signed by the candidates will start to appreciate immediately, Lambert says. He just bought a signed photo of Ronald Reagan for $300 and estimates its worth to be closer to $800; and his company is currently selling a land grant signed by Patrick Henry in the 18th century for an asking price of $4,850. So if you find a cancelled check signed by Obama or McCain's high-school yearbook, hold on to it.
2. Artwork: A standard-issue campaign button doesn't command much in the current marketplace. (Bids on eBay start at 99 cents.) But a hand-crafted pin could be valuable. Massachusetts-based artist Brian Campbell paints campaign pins with pop-culture allusions to the candidates and their spouses, such as a Beatles-themed Michelle Obama pin, an Indiana Jones-themed McCain one titled "Arizona John," and the Barack Obama one shown above. Some of these sell on eBay with starting bids around $60. A Hillary Clinton pin based on Eugène Delacroix's 19th-century painting Liberty Leading the People sold at auction for $1,149 through political memorabilia dealer Anderson Auction.
3. Personal items: If you see McCain drop a handkerchief or Obama lose a flag lapel pin, snag it like it's a home-run ball at the World Series. "The closer it is to the source, the quicker the value will appreciate," said Lambert.
4. Scandal souvenirs: "The things that become collectible are the things that destroy campaigns," Lambert said, citing as examples anything connected to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who threw a wrench in John Kerry's 2004 campaign; or former candidate John Edwards, in light of the recent revelation of his affair with Rielle Hunter. So if something goes horribly wrong in Denver or St. Paul, Minn., try to get some physical remembrance of the wreckage.
Keep in mind, though, that the majority of campaign memorabilia on eBay starts at $20 or less. So collecting election merchandise for the purpose of reselling it might not be the best use of your time. Those willing to pay large sums of money for presidential memorabilia tend to prefer that of presidents like Lincoln, Jefferson, and Washington, according to Christie's. Plus, there's no telling how much something will be worth. Sure, this fall's campaign junk could eventually sell for thousands at an auction—or for pennies at your next yard sale.
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Back in June 2007, the three leading Democratic candidates participated in a CNN forum on faith. It wasn’t a debate—the candidates appeared onstage separately, and each one answered a different set of questions. Things felt more relaxed than usual. At the time, John Edwards’ answer to a question about sin sounded refreshingly candid. In retrospect, not so much. From the transcript:
O'BRIEN: Senator, I'm going to have you sit while I ask you another question, if you don't mind. Thank you. And while this is not exactly a confessional, there are a whole bunch of people out there—we certainly have enough clergy here—so I'll ask you this. What is the biggest sin ...
EDWARDS: I don't like the way this has started.
O'BRIEN: I know, sorry.
(LAUGHTER)
What is the biggest sin you've ever committed? Are you willing—are you willing to say? You can take a pass, sir, as you know.
EDWARDS: Just between you and me?
(LAUGHTER)
O'BRIEN: Just between you and me and the 1,300 people in the crowd.
EDWARDS: I'd have a very hard time telling you one thing, one specific sin.
(APPLAUSE)
If I've had a day—I turn 54 years old this Sunday—and if I've had a day in my 54 years where I haven't sinned multiple times, I would be amazed. I believe I have. I sin every single day. We are all sinners. We all fall short, which is why we have to ask for forgiveness from the Lord. I can't—to try to identify one particular sin that was worse or more extreme than the others, the list is too long.
O'BRIEN: I was going to say, it sounds like you're saying it's a long list. Senator John Edwards, it's nice to have you talk to us today. Our 15 minutes is up. Thank you so much.
Looking back, his answer sounds shifty. How, as his mind raced, could he not have thought of Rielle Hunter? But it also highlights a paradox of all this humble talk among politicians about their "imperfections." It's okay for a candidate to admit he sins multiple times a day in the abstract. But the moment the sins become concrete, he's pummeled for it. "Sin" covers everything from eating too many fries to murder. That's why it's such an easy question to ask and to answer. It sets up the faux-humble "forgive me, I'm human" rhetoric we hear on the campaign trail. But when things get specific—think Jimmy Carter admitting "I have lusted in my heart"—people get squeamish. When things get too specific—I have lusted in a Radisson hotel—that's when the punishment begins.
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How does former Clinton spokesman Phil "psychotic fireman" Singer kill time while waiting for Josh Green's blockbuster Atlantic piece to hit newsstands?
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