Obama Media

Bill Richardson: Iraq’s “Three Religious Entities”

Gov. Bill Richardson may have more foreign policy experience than anyone on the stage, so was his call to convene “Iraq’s three religious entities” an error or an insight? Did he mean Sunni, Shiite and Kurd– the latter of which is not a religion?

Dems Debate: Brian Williams, First Sentence, First Error

Right out of the box, NBC Williams says that it “has to be the earliest campaign season in modern American history.” That’s not what Georgetown history professor Michael Kazin says (via WNYC’s On the Media):

The nearly permanent campaign has been a feature of American politics since before the Civil War, when mass parties first emerged to contend for the votes of a mass electorate, albeit one then composed almost exclusively of white men. In a nation of ambitious entrepreneurs and furious battles for market share, the race for the presidency — as with most sales efforts — has rarely taken a break…A year before the 1960 Democratic convention, Joe Kennedy had already spent a million dollars on his son’s campaign — including a nine-room office near the Capitol where staffers called potential delegates and party bosses and entered the results on oversized wall maps.For the past half-century, nearly every serious candidate has followed the Kennedys’ lead.