Eric Cantor

Conventional wisdom holds that members of the House of Representatives, many of them elected by just a sliver of their home state's electorate, are too anonymous, too untested, and just too risky to warrant serious vice-presidential consideration. A running mate, especially with the suffocating media scrutiny that defines politics these days, needs to bring a higher profile and deeper resume to the table.

In many ways, this is true. As anyone who's spent more than a few minutes in the Speaker's Lobby of the U.S. House can attest, the average House backbencher is less suited to and equipped for the national stage than even Dan Quayle was in 1988.  read more »

Barack Obama the naïve sapling is out, replaced – for the time being at least – by a different caricature: the cunning opportunist, wrapping himself in the mantle of reform in ruthless and amoral pursuit of the White House.

The image began taking hold in the media last week, when Obama rationalized his way out of a previous commitment to make a good-faith effort at participating in the public financing system for the general election.

Given his earlier cutesiness on Nafta, his now infamous 130 “present” votes in the Illinois legislature and his penchant for blaming his staff for his own mistakes, the campaign funding flap could serve as a tipping point in the media’s portrayal of Obama.  read more »