First thing in the morning (heh), and let's see what the pundits are up to.
David Brooks: if you take education seriously, you have to measure progress.
As Education Secretary Arne Duncan told me, “We’ve seen a race to the bottom. States are lying to children. They are lying to parents. They’re ignoring failure, and that’s unacceptable. We have to be fierce.”
Nicholas Kristof:
The larger question is whether we as a nation have moved to a model of agriculture that produces cheap bacon but risks the health of all of us. And the evidence, while far from conclusive, is growing that the answer is yes.
Steven Stark: Yale vs Harvard, and it's for real.
Charlie Cook: Want to predict the political future? You tell me what the economy is doing and I'll tell you who wins.
William Schneider: Obama's travel schelule is campaigning, and vice versa.
Roger Cohen:
That, I think, was the real story [Jon] Stewart had intuited. As he noted, how desperate must things be “when Britain is trying to cheer us up?”
Twofer on Ross Douthat's ascension to the NY Times (which I approve of - excellent choice):
Yglesias:
I’d say congratulations are in order to Ross Douthat, the new hire at The New York Times. Dumping Bill Kristol in favor of Ross is a very smart move—probably the smartest one (Virginia Postrel?) the Times could have made—and will generate a conservative column that progressives will have reason to read and take seriously.
Campusprogress.org:
Ross Douthat: the College Years
A look at the newest New York Times columnist’s undergrad writing.
Marc Ambinder:
So what can [Michael] Steele do in the near-term?
His advisers say he's going to shut up for a while. (They note that the GQ interview took place two weeks ago.) Steele is very confident, and he treats on-the-record interviews as if he were speaking off the record... or as if he were speaking as a Fox News commentator. The truth is that the only relevant people listening to Steele's GQ-type interviews are pro-life activists who want to find something to object to. I am told that Steele understands this now.
Whatever Steele understands may well be too little, too late.
Michael Hirsh: FDR? He had it easy.
Still, many of these criticisms will fade into irrelevance—along with the grim jokes about Geithner's imminent dismissal—if the banking problem starts to come around. We've got 50 more days to go—time enough for Obama to come out looking Rooseveltian yet.