McCain's Convention Chair Worked for Burma's Junta | Newsweek Periscope

Mapping a Win
Eleanor Clift 6/27/2008 12:00:00 AM
Legend has it that Democratic strategist James Carville didn't change his underwear the few days before the '92 election for fear of jinxing the returns. Bob Shrum, a key adviser to both Al Gore and John Kerry, treasures a brightly colored scarf he only wears on election nights. He calls it his lucky scarf even though it failed him in 2000 and 2004. I thought of these two characters as I watched David Plouffe, Barack Obama's no-nonsense campaign manager, give a Power Point presentation to a roomful of reporters at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington on Wednesday afternoon. Maybe Plouffe has all sorts of quirks and superstitions he has yet to reveal, but for now he epitomizes the "no-drama Obama" candidate and his campaign.
Poll Position
Howard Fineman 6/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
June polls of a horserace that ends in November aren't "reliably predictive," as the survey experts say. So why are Republicans so ballistic about new surveys, including Newsweek's, that show Sen. Barack Obama with a big lead?
Campaign 2008
Are You Experienced?
6/23/2008 12:00:00 AM
We are in the opening days of a presidential campaign that pits youth against age, the virtues of experience against the freshness and riskiness of the new arrival.
POLITICS | TRUE OR FALSE
Candidates Think Flip-Flopping is the Only Way to Win Elections
Evan Thomas
The fund-raiser was unremarkable, by L.A. standards. Under enormous chandeliers at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, wealthy donors mingled with showbiz types (Dennis Quaid, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Beals) and ate endive spears stuffed with brie. Couples willing to donate $28,500 got to dine beforehand with the candidate, Barack Obama, who gave his usual stump speech and mocked his opponent, John McCain, for believing "that a bunch of oil rigs along the California coast was a good idea." (McCain had just recommended that states be allowed to opt out of the federal ban on offshore drilling.) This last zinger got a roar from the crowd, not a few of whom own shorefront properties in places like Malibu and Santa Barbara.
THE SENATE
Mr. Obama’s Washington
Jonathan Darman
The life of a young senator in Washington can be lonely. After winning a Senate seat from Illinois in 2004, Barack Obama became a part-time bachelor. He lived three or four days a week in a one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the Capitol. He worked all day, and at night he missed his daughters and his wife, Michelle, left behind in Chicago. "I have chosen a life … that requires me to be gone from Michelle and the girls for long stretches of time and exposes Michelle to all sorts of stress," Obama wrote in "The Audacity of Hope." "Rationalizations seem feeble and painfully abstract when I'm missing one of the girls' school potlucks because of a vote, or calling Michelle to tell her that session's been extended and we need to postpone our vacation."
CAMPAIGN 2008
In Search of Cindy McCain
Holly Bailey
Ambitious naval officers who hope to make admiral know they must put in years of sea time, long deployments aboard ship where they prove themselves as sailors and earn the respect of their superiors. Back home, their wives work, chase after the kids and take care of the house, building lives of their own while their husbands build their careers. Cindy McCain knows what that's like. Over the 28 years of her often long-distance marriage to Capt. John McCain, USN (Ret.), she says she thought of herself as a Navy wife whose husband was off on tour—albeit on Capitol Hill instead of somewhere in the North Atlantic. "It was almost like a deployment," Cindy told NEWSWEEK. "What I told the kids from the time they were little is that their dad was deployed and serving our country in Washington."