Dylan Matthews

Over at Politico, one of Ben Smith‘s readers is skeptical of recent VP boomlets: Obama‘s campaign is doing a hell of a job setting expectations of an imminent veep pick in different swing states. He got three huge days of stories in VA, and now three huge days of stories in IN. If Schweitzer or […]

Politico‘s Avi Zenilman has an excellent article examining the dearth of policy details coming out of the McCain campaign. Despite Republican attempts to paint him as all style and no substance, Zenilman reports that Barack Obama has been releasing many more, and much more specific, policy white papers than McCain. One of the more striking […]

As you can probably imagine, Ezra and I emailed a lot of Iraq and foreign policy experts for our piece on the significance of the surge. Not all got back to us, and one, Princeton professor and Woodrow Wilson School dean Anne-Marie Slaughter, just got back to me last night. But her comments are really […]

“Who do you think would make a good VP?” It’s a common question for me these days. With four posts bashing potential picks under my belt (Chet Edwards, Nunn, Bayh, Kaine), it’s reasonable to assume I’m just a nattering nabob of negativism, all too willing to dismiss suggestions while offering none of my own. But […]

I just wanted to follow up on Dana‘s point below about the tenure offer the University of Chicago Law School made to Obama. Paul Campos objected to someone with “only” a bachelor’s and a JD getting tenure. This struck me as odd, as I was under the impression that a JD was a sufficient credential […]

Given my role as TAPPED’s resident VP Hater (witness my posts hating on Chet Edwards, Sam Nunn, and Evan Bayh), I feel obliged to pour cold water on the flavor of the day: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. As with most potential VPs, Kaine has a great resumé. He’s a successful Democratic governor of a traditionally […]

Barack Obama just gave his speech in Berlin, watched by a massive crowd that stretched beyond the reach of CNN’s cameras. The address was called “A World that Stands as One” and it showed: In his second paragraph he proclaimed himself a “citizen of the world” and he continued throughout the speech to emphasize themes […]

Few phrases promise as much concentrated hilarity as “John McCain poster contest.” Indeed, the results are as, ahem, brilliant as one would expect. The first submission, with its “God-in-the-Heavens” imagery and “Peace Is Born of Wisdom” mantra, has already been roundly mocked, but let’s not forget the other gems here. This one looks like the […]