The fallback defense.

Sharyl Attkisson hinted last night on Twitter that she would have something “interesting” on Benghazi today.  The CBS reporter didn’t disappoint.  Although it’s not exactly a blockbuster revelation, the change in tone in White House trial balloons in its defense of the Benghazi debacle is stunning: Obama administration officials who were in key positions on Sept. [...]

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"I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, 'Oh, let's not tell this, let's not show this.'"

We heard from one half of the Watergate-exposing journalistic duo this week on the AP scandal, and now the other half weighs in on the supposedly waning Benghazi debate.  The White House released 100 pages of e-mails that went around the administration on 9/14 — but oddly not on 9/12 or 9/13 — less than [...]

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"I couldn’t imagine why this call was made."

If Bob Woodward’s experience wasn’t quite as harrowing as he first let on, Lanny Davis’ anecdote sounds more like the real deal.  Bill Clinton’s former special counsel told Larry O’Connor and Brian Wilson on WMAL that his columns at The Washington Times got the Obama administration so angry, they threatened Davis’ editor with removing the [...]

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Wonk wars.

… Gene Sperling, at least according to BuzzFeed’s source with access to the e-mail conversation between Bob Woodward and whoever “threatened” him.  As hatchet men go, a director of the White House Economic Council is an odd choice.  Isn’t this the kind of thing Rahm Emanuel used to handle? The White House official whom Bob Woodward [...]

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Politburo?

It’s been a tough week in public relations for Karl Rove. First, the Tea Party Patriots objected to Rove’s criticism of extreme rhetoric from grassroots organizations by, er, putting him in a Nazi uniform in an e-mail — for which they apologized, but not before making Rove’s case.  At nearly the same time, Bob Woodward [...]

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I got this.

Karl Rove has been taking a lot of heat over the past few weeks for his new I-swear-this-isn’t-about-smothering-the-Tea-Party PAC-extension, whose mission is to help nominate what they deem to be the most ‘electable’ candidates ahead of the 2014 midterms. Rove again appeared on Fox News on Sunday to defend his new operation’s agenda and try [...]

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The fundamental question.

The answer, for the moment, is “an emphatic no,” Bob Woodward tells the Fox News panel today, but the problem for Hagel is the other question that they’re asking (via Daniel Halper): “I think there is another dimension here and that is, what are Democratic senators really thinking about the Hagel nomination? I understand some [...]

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Plus, Woodward on "showmanship."

There haven’t been many points of bipartisanship in this general-election season, so perhaps we should celebrate Mark Halperin’s report at Time of one rare instance — no matter how meaningless it is.  The next debate moderator, CNN’s Candy Crowley, offered her perspective on her role last week in tomorrow’s townhall-style debate, and both presidential candidates [...]

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Untenable.

Team Obama has attacked Mitt Romney over Medicare cuts even before Romney added Paul Ryan to the ticket, and certainly that’s been a major campaign theme for Democrats ever since.  Romney has responded by pointing out that Obama cut more than $700 billion from Medicare not to strengthen the program, but to expand Medicaid at [...]

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"No one was running Washington."

Barack Obama wants a second term as President, but was he up for even the one term he’s already had? Bob Woodward tells ABC News that significant “gaps” still exist in Obama’s leadership skills, and that he’s primarily the one to blame for the exacerbated partisanship that exists in Washington. Even Democrats admit that at [...]

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