Countdown Wednesday: The Middle Man?
Posted: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 8:59 PM by Countdown
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Blogging the Countdown
Rachel Maddow in for Keith tonight...
Can the Center Hold?: In outlining his plan to boost national service today, Senator Barack Obama was no doubt aiming for John F. Kennedy's "Ask not, what your country can do for you... Ask what you can do for your country." He was perhaps reaching for Franklin D. Roosevelt's "I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people." But instead, in our fifth story on the Countdown, in a week of campaigning on expanding faith-based federal programs and the size of the military, Obama's political message today may sound to his left-wing base a lot like the "Compassionate Conservatism" of George W. Bush. For a candidate running on change, defining the alternative to the Bush years -- what gives?
Economy of Words: What did John McCain know about the economy and when did he know it? Our number-four story tonight... as record numbers of Americans face foreclosure... paying four dollars a gallon to drive to their bankruptcy hearings... Senator McCain today denied ever saying he's not an expert on the economy... something he has denied, and been corrected-on before. Here was his latest attempt to rewrite a history that he himself wrote.
ODDBALL: A flag house, some fat monkeys and a new escalator trick.
The War and Terror: It's no surprise that Iraq is going the way of Afghanistan. That is, we've lost control, and lost the point. Like a nanny-cam trained on the untrusted babysitter, the military is now using our spy satellites to conduct surveillance on our own allied army -- the very force we helped create, and to this day, alongside whom our troops fight. In our third story on the Countdown, an Iraqi army displaying an unprecedented level of autonomy and aggression, the Taliban reasserting itself in Afghanistan -- causing the highest number of coalition troop deaths since the start of the invasion... And an American public less spooked by terrorism and more fed up with war. Why shouldn't we be?
Tabby Time: Breaking 90210 news and Jolie's twins on hold.
Playing Politics:Would a presidential candidate rather have the endorsement of a police officer... or a President? What about the endorsement of an actor who played a police-officer, versus an actor who played a President? And -- wait -- what if the fictional Commander-in-Chief thinks that his portrayal may have paved the way for the real-life candidate? In our number one story on the Countdown... it's Dennis -- "I'm not a president, but I played one on TV" -- Haysbert. Versus Eric -- Ponch -- Estrada.
