Carl Cannon is a veteran political journalist who has served as Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. He contributed to The Weekly Standard from 1995 to 2002, writing frequently about the Clinton White House, its political messaging, and the personalities surrounding the administration.
LEGAL SCHOLARS, political commentators, and American elected officials have never reached a consensus on the precise meaning of the Constitution's requirement that presidents appoint cabinet officers and federal judges "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate." The very ambiguity of the…
When Hillary Rodham Clinton went on the Today show last month to charge that a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" was behind the many allegations against her husband, it had to be a moment of triumph for Sidney Blumenthal. A long- time journalist turned senior White House staffer, Blumenthal has been…
President Clinton and the Democrats have responded to the burgeoning scandal surrounding their fund-raising methods with a symphony of defenses that sound plausible. At least at first.
FOUR YEARS AGO, IN THE FIRST FEW weeks of the Clinton presidency, a three- star general attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was at the White House on official business when he said good morning to a young, female Clintonista. Instead of answering in kind, she scowled and replied: "We really don't…
At the start of his most recent bus trip -- this one down the Washington and Oregon coast -- President Clinton stood in a steady Northwest rain giving his standard stump speech to a few thousand hardy Democrats assembled at Seattle's Pike Place fishmarket.
Near the end of the 1992 campaign, Paul Begala, a Clinton adviser, said that Marlin Fitzwater was the most political White House press secretary in American history. Four years later, Republicans have decided that line has a nice ring to it.
On a recent evening, a colleague of mine at the Baltimore Sun arrived back at the office, her face aglow, from a ceremony on Capitol Hill where the evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth were given the Congressional Gold Medal. She was impressed by Graham's noble presence, and surprised to be…
On a recent evening, a colleague of mine at the Baltimore Sun arrived back at the office, her face aglow, from a ceremony on Capitol Hill where the evangelist Billy Graham and his wife Ruth were given the Congressional Gold Medal. She was impressed by Graham's noble presence, and surprised to be…
THE DAY AFTER his State of the Union address, President Clinton rose early to attend a memorial service at St. John's Church across Lafayette Square from the White House. Clinton gave one of the eulogies to a loyal friend, former House member Mike Synar of Oklahoma. Cancer -- the same kind that…
President Clinton ended 1995 on a high note. He was up in the polls. Republicans couldn't shake him loose on the budget, and, for once, official Washington was fixated on the ethics probes of Newt Gingrich. Then in the first two weeks of the new year, the president and his wife hit a series of…
NO EQUESTRIAN STATUE of James H. Lake will ever adorn a city square. He is a Washington lobbyist, not a war hero. Still, now that Lake has fallen into the hellish clutches of a special prosecutor, here's an idea for how his fellow Republicans could honor his long service to Ronald Reagan and their…
Even for a politician, the story Bill Clinton spun this spring when he visited Des Moines to shore up support in the Farm Belt was a lulu. "I am the only president," he said, "who knew something about agriculture when I got there?