Phoebe Connelly

If you live in a Super Tuesday state, and you happen to be one of the unfortunately deprived Americans yet to be blessed with the most extraordinary invention of the last quarter-century – Tivo – you have already probably seen some of the presidential candidates’ latest television ads. While there were some last-minute ad buys […]

Politicians always say they don’t pay attention to polls, but wouldn’t you know it, now that the economy shows up as the number one issue concerning voters, all the presidential candidates have come out with ads stressing their concern about the economy. As usual, it’s a collection of hits, near misses, and comical whiffs. Let’s […]

This has got to be embarrassing for the Washington Post. Or it would be, if their editorial board had the capacity for shame. Three days ago, WaPo ran a big Sunday op-ed on Iraq by three of the biggest supporters — Michael O’Hanlon, Fred Kagan, and Gen. Jack Keane — of the “surge,” a piece […]

This week’s ad analysis comes at a time when both the Republican and Democratic races are tighter than anyone thought they would be. By now it was supposed to be all but decided, the fields whittled down and one candidate poised to put his or her opponents away for good. But much to the pleasure […]

This doesn’t happen very often, but I think Ezra seriously misreads this WSJ article on the process behind the Iran NIE, from which he extrapolates that “the career intelligence experts in the government recaptured some degree of autonomy and insulation in recent years.” The victory of reality-based analysis over blind ideological interpretation with the NIE […]

Depending on how you’re scoring at home, we’ve entered either Phase II, Phase III, or Phase IV of the presidential campaign, the post-Iowa-and-New Hampshire race to Michigan, for the Republicans, and South Carolina, for the Democrats. Since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have come out with fairly predictable here’s-the-candidate-giving-their-best-speech ads, for this week’s ad analysis […]

With the New Hampshire primary tomorrow, our weekly ad analysis examines the TV spots being offered by the two men poised to win this critical contest: Barack Obama and John McCain. McCain seems to have found himself here almost by accident, while Obama’s campaign is here because it’s doing almost everything right. The ads are […]

Ouch, baby, very ouch. —Tom Schaller

As we continue with these weekly ad analyses, I suspect one of the main themes will be how amateurish and off-the mark so many of the ads are. So this week, I thought we’d look at one candidate’s ads, a selection that on first glance seems to be pretty good. They have reasonable production values […]

Are Democrats to blame for how little of their legislative agenda they’ve passed this year? Terence Samuel isn’t so sure, but whether voters can be convinced is another issue: Congress, particularly the Senate, was designed to frustrate quick or easy maneuvers; the power is with the dissenters, and Republican senators have used it to full […]