Chicago Daily Observer

This morning I was a guest at 10 am (by telephone from my home office) on Jerry Agar’s WLS-AM show. (On with us was Pat Cassidy who recently made the move to the talk radio station from anchoring at WBBM-AM.)

I took my dog out and then sat down at the kitchen table with the four newspapers—Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal—that are delivered every morning to my doorstep. I spent maybe an hour with them, clipped a few articles to read later, and then went to my office to take the producer’s call.

Things were going along just fine until Agar played a clip of Joe Biden; I expected that it would be Biden saying something outlandish because he so often does, but I had no idea how outlandish. I could not hear the tape; it wasn’t clear to me what Biden was ... Read More...

It’s been a bit less than two years since I interviewed George McGovern for my book, Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, on Bill Clinton’s post presidency. McGovern and Clinton are good friends—in 1972 while a Yale law student, Clinton worked for McGovern organizing the state of Texas—although the friendship was frayed by McGovern’s switching his endorsement last May from Hillary to Obama.

McGovern, who lost every state but Massachusetts (and the District of Columbia), in what has to count as the biggest debacle in presidential contest history, was one of several who recently offered “My Convention Memory” on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Except for Kennedy speechwriter Ted Sorensen’s experience with another colossal loser, Michael Dukakis, none but McGovern’s are worth the time. McGovern’s, in fact, is downright jaw dropping.

In 458 words he describes a sea change over 38 years in ... Read More...

I wonder whether Barack Obma’s vetters, Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder, knew what they were doing when they settled on Joe Biden. Journalists and McCain opposition researchers must be logging on to Nexis and searching 1987–1988 using the key words “Biden and plagiarism. “ There is a feast of material—I have culled examples from various print and electronic sources—that would make even the most partisan Obama backer question the wisdom of this choice.

Biden, then 44, was forced out of the 1988 presidential race-—he officially dropped out on September 23, 1987—just when his candidacy seemed to be taking off in Iowa, the all important first caucus, and just as he seemed to be gaining on Michael Dukakis, the eventual nominee.

(Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 from Delaware. He was only 29, and was one of the two youngest men ever elected to the Senate.)

A Dukakis ... Read More...

“Clinton Embraces Return to Ambassador Role” is the dull headline of a revealing Washington Post article—reporter Anne Kornblut was the first print reporter to interview the former president (in his hotel room in Kigali Rwanda, one stop on his annual African tour) since Hillary’s defeat. Having spent two years, 16 hours a day, seven days a week as I interviewed, researched and wrote Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House, this window into the former president’s current state of mind got me thinking again about Bill.

Only the second American president to be impeached—the other was Andrew Johnson, and both escaped conviction by the Senate—Bill Clinton has had an exceedingly bad year since he joined his wife on the campaign trail in July, 2007.
Before he started to campaign for Hillary, you might have thought that the former first lady and senator from New York ... Read More...

NOTE: Today we welcome a new columnist to our Observer fold—Carol Felsenthal, author of the best-seller “Clinton in Exile” available at your local booksellers. Carol is a resident of Old Town and a blogging contributor to The Huffington Post.com. She is a contributing editor of “Chicago” magazine and has written book and magazine profiles of such people as Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Daley, Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Katharine Graham. Her Katharine Graham piece is being adapted to cable TV by HBO. She has been a guest on my WLS-AM program and frequently appears on “Beyond the Beltway with Bruce DuMont.” We welcome her to our growing list of columnists. –Tom Roeser.

How must Jesse Jackson have felt last January when political pundits and Barack Obama aides erupted in outrage after Bill Clinton dismissed Obama’s big win in the South Carolina primary as nothing more than Jackson’s wins there in ... Read More...