Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Your one stop pundit shop.

Eugene Robinson doesn't have any use for John Edwards:

Pretty much by definition, a man who can be described as a cad is not a wholly admirable human being. There are, however, cads whose behavior shows a certain panache, an undeniable flair, a sense of humor and a genuine, if deeply flawed, humanity. Former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, I would argue, is one of these "lovable rogue" cads.

John Edwards is not. His caddishness, it appears, has no redeeming social or political value. He's just a bad cad.

David Broder gained insight into Obama's governing style by reading William Schambra, director of the Hudson Institute's Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal.

Harold Meyerson extols the accomplishments and the work of ACORN and asks:

Now, how much of this would you know from following the stories about ACORN that have been running in even the best of the media? Little to nothing, as Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, and Christopher R. Martin, a professor of journalism at University of Northern Iowa, just concluded in an exhaustive study of news coverage of ACORN. Looking at the 647 stories on the group that ran in leading newspapers and broadcast networks in 2007 and 2008, they found that not only did a majority of such stories focus on allegations of voter fraud but also that 83 percent of the stories that linked ACORN to those allegations failed to mention that actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent.

Karl Rove is concerned that President Obama is on T.V. too much -- and he needs to stop being mean to Fox News! The only conclusion one can draw is for Obama to appear on T.V. more and the hell with Fixed News.

Daniel Henninger tosses out a few insults, implies that people really don't want health care reform, and fears that President Obama will make partisanship worse. Funny.

Gail Collins on life changes, Tom DeLay and Sarah Palin:

His performance did create the kind of uncomfortable feeling you experienced when your crusty Uncle Fred got drunk at your graduation party and tried to sing “My Way.” But I bet not a single person watching DeLay slide across the floor on his rhinestone-encrusted knees with that manic grin on his face was thinking: “Gee, I wonder how that money-laundering indictment is working out for him?”

And look at Sarah Palin. Everybody thought that she was a desperately uninformed goofball whom the Republican Party might, nevertheless, someday nominate for president in an effort to cement its reputation as worst major American political organization since the Know-Nothings. Then this week she went off to Hong Kong and gave an 80-minute, closed-door speech to financial fund managers, for which she was paid an undisclosed but indisputably vast sum of money. The early reviews from people exiting the ballroom ranged from “well prepared” to “boring.”

Given that she started the day as a celebrity whose deepest recorded thought was how only dead fish go with the flow, this was quite a triumph. If Palin can arrange to make all her future speeches in Asia, with no reporters present and tons of money falling out of the ceiling at every stop, I think she has a real shot at rehabilitation.

Joan Vennochi has a snide and snotty take on the bid to fill Ted Kennedy's senate seat until the special election is held in January.

Suzanne Fields is astonished that President Obama is abandoning a plan that George W. Bush worked so hard on.