Straight Talk Express

Do reporters like John McCain better? Can Captain Straight Talk Express even complain? And should Obama sidestep his rep as the Anointed One?

Despite John McCain's maladroit campaign, his association with an unpopular president, and his general ineptness as a candidate, the race will be disturbingly close.

At the end of another adventuresome week on the trail, full of ups and downs and awkward developments, John McCain talked about campaigning without a ...

John McCain has historically courted and cultivated relationships with reporters of the traveling press corps. That may be changing.

The gall of McCain's 'straight talk' is breathtaking and the flip-flops here ought to finally put the myth of McCain's maverick moderate image to rest.

Keith Olbermann provided Countdown viewers with a segment on John McCain's flip-flopping called "Double Talk Express." Watch the four-minute package ...

By running to the middle in an attempt to attract undecided swing voters, the Obama campaign is making a very serious mistake. It didn't work for Al Gore in 2000. It didn't work for John Kerry in 2004. And it didn't work when Mark Penn convinced Hillary Clinton to do it in 2008. READ MORE Seven Things Barack Obama Should Do to Keep from Blowing It To counter the conventional wisdom pundits, the cautious campaign advisers, and his own inner cautiousness, I'm offering Obama seven suggestions for staying true to the vision that took him from longshot "unlikely candidate" to presidential frontrunner. READ MORE Watch Arianna Discussing Secretary Rice's "Proud" Comment on CNN's The Situation Room

While we should all honor McCain's service, that doesn't mean we should necessarily honor it by putting him in the White House to take up George W. Bush's third term.

We once again have a Republican nominee who is a war hero, personable and engaging, with a long Senate career, who is so out of sync with the times that his campaign feels stillborn. It's Doleja vu all over again.

McCain's speech was pure, unadulterated fantasy. The political equivalent of the trippy tour the Beatles gave us in Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds -- only instead of rocking horse people eating marshmallow pies, we get "a functioning democracy" in Iraq.

McCain has a credible brand with the public, who see him as a maverick and a reformer. He may be able to use his own popularity to infuse the Republicans with new life and a new narrative -- the "Change Republican."

At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, John McCain admitted to me that he hadn't voted for George Bush.

It only makes sense that the media have focused non-stop on the looming threat of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago while paying scant attention to the fact that the presumptive Republican nominee for president apparently doesn't have a clue about what's going on in the Middle East. And with the U.S. death toll hitting 4,000, John McCain's tenuous grasp on what is happening in the region becomes all the more worthy of attention. READ MORE John McCain, Iraq, and the Eyewitness Fallacy: John McCain's glowing post-visit assessment of conditions in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton's hyperbolically harrowing recollections of her 1996 trip to Bosnia both stand as shining examples of what the British writer Malcolm Muggeridge dubbed "the eyewitness fallacy." In a brilliant essay, Muggeridge described public figures of strong conviction throughout history -- many of them greatly admired and well-meaning -- who, in eyewitness accounts, saw what they wanted to see, and became what they wanted to be. READ MORE

If you continue to hit back, you're sacrificing what makes you distinct from most politicians -- that refusal to turn politics into a brutal zero sum game.

What are Americans going to have to sacrifice if he has his way on Iraq? Health care? Decent jobs? We can't do it all, but John McCain seems to pretend that we can.

John McCain's unconscionable capitulation on torture -- a desperate attempt to win over the lunatic fringe that is running the GOP -- should drive a stake through the heart of the McCain-as-straight-talker meme once and for all. Read More End of a Romance: Why the Media and Independent Voters Need to Break Up with John McCain McCain is essentially running to give America a third Bush term -- and, indeed, will even out-Bush Bush when it comes to staying the disastrous course we're on in Iraq. If you think the problem with the United States is that we haven't given Bush enough time to finish his agenda, then John McCain is your man. Read More Who Is Maggie Williams?