Bachmann is a doctrinaire politician who lacks the 40th president’s pragmatism, says Jack W. Germond.
Jack Germond has been covering national politics and Washington since 1960. He spent 20 years with the Gannett papers, then eight with the still-lamented Washington Star and more than 20 with the Baltimore Sun. He and his partner, Jules Witcover, wrote a syndicated column five days a week from 1977 through 2000, and four books about the 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992 presidential campaigns. Germond's memoir is called Fat Man in a Middle Seat—Forty Years of Covering Politics; he has just completed his first novel. He and his wife, Alice, live on the Shenandoah River in West Virginia, where he enjoys watching the birds and playing the horses.
He thinks voters are ready for grownup talk on entitlements, but others have made that bet and lost.
Wives like Callista Gingrich and Cheri Daniels often wield strong influence over their spouses’ careers.
The president should be vulnerable, but Republicans seem cowed by the Tea Party.
In deciding not to run in 2012, Mitch Daniels took the sane route when confronted with a crazy presidential campaign process. Jack Germond on why candidates no longer are willing to subject their families to sometimes vicious intrusions by political enemies and the media.
The president has shot up in the polls after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Jack Germond explains why it won’t last until 2012.
The budget-slashing congressman seems to think he's beyond the normal rules of politics. Jack Germond on why he's crazy to take on Medicare.
Another poll seems to confirm it: Donald Trump is the GOP's 2012 frontrunner. But Jack Germond says it doesn't mean much—the people surveyed don't know the issues.
Why do pols like Rick Santorum with no real shot at the White House keep running? The lure of TV celebrity makes even the most unlikely prospect press ahead for a while, writes Jack W. Germond.