Gwen's Take

Why We Love It When the President Goes Away

Posted: August 26, 2010 at 5:11 pm

The President of the United States is on vacation. I am not. It rained for his first three days in Martha’s Vineyard. The sun was shining here. (Tee hee.)

Forgive my enjoyment. But it’s nice to take a break from news of floods, imminent hurricanes, mosque debates and the impending spectacle of Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton facing off on the National Mall this weekend, to meditate on something lighter for a change – time off.

An Unplanned Aberration: A peek behind the curtain at the PBS NewsHour

Posted: August 19, 2010 at 4:54 pm

If the camera had continued rolling Monday night at the NewsHour after I completed a segment on the debate over the so-called “ground zero mosque,” you would have seen me beating my head against the anchor desk.

Leaning Left and Right: Why Labels Won't Help This Year

Posted: August 12, 2010 at 3:13 pm

OK, folks, it’s time for another of my periodic forays into definitional politics.

To accomplish this, I have to take my own profession to task – and then rise to its defense. The problem: we reach too easily for shorthand. The defense: we live for shorthand.

This run-up to this week’s elections gave us a rich trove of gaffes to choose from to help me make my point, but I’ll settle on two events that lend themselves to two key questions.

Retiring "Mission Accomplished" & The Long Hot Summer

Posted: August 5, 2010 at 8:47 pm

Perhaps Oprah brought the President a cake when she joined his tight circle of Chicago friends for a birthday dinner this week. That’s more of a celebration than he has been able to have for any of his other landmark dates this year.

Consider the options.

Toxic Conversations

Posted: July 29, 2010 at 6:22 pm

A few years ago, my friends Mark Halperin, now of Time Magazine, and John Harris, now of Politico, coined the term “freak show” as a catchall for the fever that overtakes those of us in the information gathering business from time to time.  “Toxicity,” they wrote in their 2006 political book, “The Way to Win,” “is the new defining trait of modern American politics.”