Below The Beltway

Focusing on the past — whether it’s the crappy intelligence that got us into war, the bad planning that preceded March 2003, or who was right or wrong about the Surge — isn’t what matters.
As Senator Chuck Hagel notes, it’s where we go from here that matters:
OMAHA, Neb. — Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, fresh from [...]

The Daily Show did a great bit the other night contrasting the coverage of Barack Obama’s overseas trip with, well, John McCain’s more modest efforts:

Apparently, not everyone in Europe is taking the Obama visit as seriously as the American media:
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that [...]

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House contends in a post earlier this week that, in the end, John McCain’s age will prove to be a fatal problem for his campaign:
I believe McCain is too old to be president. Not in years – 72 is not too old for some. For him, it is. Time [...]

While Barack Obama was in the Middle East this week, John McCain accused his opponent of preferring an election victory to a victory on the battlefield, however that might be defined:
John McCain returned to his second home of New Hampshire today, holding his trademark campaign event, a town hall. The crowd was very enthusiastic breaking [...]

It may be  another head fake like the one they gave Bob Novak earlier this week, but the Washington Post reports today that the McCain campaign may move to name a Vice-Presidential nominee sometime in the next two weeks:
 Anxious to counter the blanket media coverage that has followed Sen. Barack Obama on his overseas journey, [...]

Barack Obama goes to Germany, John McCain goes to a German restaurant:
Sen. Barack Obama was in Berlin today, for a lofty speech to throngs of people about the roots of American-German cooperation and the development of freedom in the world.
Sen. John McCain went to Schmidt’s Restaurant und Sausage Haus.
Located in the German Village section of [...]

A great new video from the Bob Barr campaign:

Okay Bob, you’ve got me. I’m in.

Matthew Yglesias encapsulates this week in a nutshell:
[Remember when] John McCain’s big criticism of Barack Obama was that he didn’t take enough foreign trips — especially to Iraq — and how he hadn’t been adequately tested on this big stage of CODELing. What happened to that? Now the critique is that too many Germans are [...]

If you follow the Presidential Polls on a daily or even weekly basis it seems as though the race between Barack Obama and John McCain is fairly close.
But is that really the case ?
Larry Sabato for one doesn’t think so:
Except for a few days when the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls showed a tie, Barack [...]