As the clock winds down on what may well be the worst presidency in American history, the Bush administration spin has taken one more surreal twist as Vice President Dick Cheney's aggressively unapologetic stance regarding the administrations policies and actions over the last eight years is tempered by President Bush...

Managing expectations, as we saw again in 2008, is a key part of presidential campaigns. If a candidate is unable to meet expectations, a minor defeat, or even a narrow victory can be a serious setback. The most historic example of this was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson dropped out...

Although I live in New York and used to be reasonably involved in politics here, the question of who David Paterson will appoint to the Senate is not one about which I have a strong opinion. I am confident that almost all the candidates who Paterson is seriously considering would...

The 2008 presidential election may have been the beginning of a new era in presidential politics where assumptions and ground rules which we have known for decades will have to be revisited but, in at least some respects, the 2008 election looked quite similar to other recent elections. At least...

Now that the presidential campaign of 2008 has been over for more than a month, it is possible to begin to get some perspective on that extraordinary election. All presidential elections are different and, almost by definition, historic, but this one was particularly groundbreaking, not just because of Obama's victory...

In recent weeks, as part of an uncanny attempt to behave as generals fighting the last war, many in the Republican leadership have been floating Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, as the next Republican hope, or even the Republican Obama. The thinking behind this, while not particularly sophisticated, is,...

Thanksgiving of 1978 came and went like most of the other Thanksgivings of my childhood in the 1970s. My mother, brother and I had spent the holiday with a group of my mother's friends either at our house or somewhere in the Bay Area. Other than my mother's pies, the...

As the 2008 election recedes into history it is clear that it will be remembered as no ordinary presidential campaign, and not just because of the eventual winner. This campaign, which really began when George W. Bush was sworn in for his second term in January of 2005, or perhaps...

Barack Obama ran for president on, among other things, a promise to move the country beyond the partisan rancor of the Bush and Clinton years. Already observers are watching his every move to see if he will deliver on this promise. Obama has a difficult needle to thread because he...

Yes We Did! Forget about the Bradley effect, Republican voter suppression tactics and October surprises. Obama won a clear and resounding victory last night, one that will be etched into the consciousness of our country for generations. Even though we have all seen the polls for months and this has...

Read more Election Day Liveblogs, Reaction and Analysis from HuffPost Bloggers

Sarah Palin and John McCain are beginning to remind me of an old, and dumb joke, that I remember from my childhood which goes something like "What does Smokey the Bear and Alexander the Great have in common?" The answer is, of course, their middle names. It seems like everybody...

It has become a cliché to call this election the most important election of our lives. As anybody with a decent memory can attest, this cliché is invoked every four years, but while ultimately history will show how important this election is, it has become clear that few American elections...

We are on the cusp of a very special moment in the US. Barring extremely unusual or dramatically unforeseen circumstances, we are less than two weeks away from a great day for the United States as we definitively close the book on the dishonesty, incompetence, belligerence and ignorance which has...

I hope John McCain brings up Bill Ayers every chance he gets in the debate tonight. McCain is trying to make the absurd and implausible argument that Barack Obama is somehow a terrorist or a threat to the US because he served on a board and knew Bill Ayers years...

Political slogans are usually vague and devoid of any real meaning. Neither Obama's nor McCain's slogan are any real exception to this. However, there is something particularly disturbing about the slogan "putting country first." When I first saw it I winced, but attributed that to the slogan being so embarrassingly...

I don't like to talk about no-hitters in the 8th inning, but with less than four weeks until Election Day, it certainly looks like, barring any dramatic turnarounds, Barack Obama will win this election. While that news should not surprise anybody, it is worth beginning to think about how to...

Thursday night's debate between the two vice-presidential candidates, Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin, was the most eagerly awaited vice presidential debate ever, and certainly one of the strangest. One of the most interesting aspects of the debate was the difference between how the viewers and the pundits evaluated it. During...

These are the words I kept waiting for Barack Obama to say while I listened to Friday night's debate. I lost track of how many times John McCain called Obama naïve, but it seemed like at least a dozen. You can be certain that some Frank Luntz type within the...

It has now been a month since the Democratic Convention began. During that month a lot has happened in the presidential race. Both parties have had their conventions; Hillary Clinton made her convention speech urging her supporters to support the party's nominee; the war in Georgia entered and exited the...