Monica Crowley

And Now For the Good News

The U.S. economy is not in recession.

Despite what the left-wing press has been telling us for months---and what they have been trying to make true simply by saying it---there has not been an economic contraction.

In fact, the opposite has been true: According to the latest numbers from the Commerce Department, the nation's economy GREW at a slow but better-than-expected rate: a .6 percent increase in gross domestic product.

There are, of course, some significant problems: the housing and credit crunches, consumer spending down, a weak U.S. dollar, and ever-higher food and gas prices. But unemployment remains at historic lows: 5.1 percent. And businesses actually increased their investment in building up stocks of supplies, and U.S. exports are up.

This good economic news doesn't mean there aren't real problems effecting real people. This is why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are focusing on the bad news. For them, trolling for votes means pounding the message of "economic crises" and offering themselves as miracle workers who will solve them. (Of course, we know that when liberals are allowed anywhere near the economy, they wreak socialist disaster.)

We also know that presidents get the credit when the economy is good and the blame when it's bad, and neither is really fair. President Bush has been lambasted for the state of the economy for months on end. Now we know that not only is the economy not in recession, it's growing.

The American economy is a sprawling, complex organism with billions of moving parts. Does it have some significant problems? You bet. It always does. But those problems should not be highlighted to the exclusion of the bigger picture, which shows growth and innovation and above all, resilience.

A Change We Can't Believe In

Today we witnessed a turning point in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination. In a campaign that has seen many seminal moments (the Hope Guy upsetting the Hereditary Monarch in Iowa; the Hereditary Monarch's tears pre-New Hampshire; the Wallflower 42nd president chuckling over comparisons between Jesse Jackson and the Hope Guy; sniper fire; the rantings of a neo-segregationist preacher), this seminal moment may be the most important of all.

Barack Obama went before the cameras today to do something just a few weeks ago he said he wouldn't do. He "denounced" his longtime pastor, confidante, and close friend, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for Wright's incendiary comments about America and certain groups of Americans.

On March 18th in Philadelphia, he said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community....These people are a part of me."

That, of course, was the truth. The truth is that Obama cares deeply for Wright, the man who counseled him, married him to Michelle, baptized his daughters. The truth is Obama appreciated and respected Wright and his message enough to sit in his pews for 20 years. The truth is that he didn't want to disown or disavow him, because he believes in him. The truth is he wanted political distance from Wright without having to throw his friend completely under the bus.

All of that changed over the past five days, when Wright embarked on his "Pastor Ambition Tour" and reiterated---this time, in "context"---his most inflammatory comments: that the U.S. government created the HIV virus to decimate the black community, that we deserved the attacks of September 11, that Louis Farrakhan is someone to admire greatly, and that God does, in fact, damn America.

After five days of having those comments sit out there, festering and metastasizing, Obama had to do what he didn't want to do. And say what he didn't---doesn't---want to say.

Reverend Wright's comments were "offensive," he said, and "they should be denounced, and that's what I'm doing here today."

He also proclaimed himself "outraged."

"Outrage" of this kind, however, doesn't develop days, weeks, months, years after the fact. If Obama had been genuinely outraged, we would have heard about that outrage a lot sooner than today.

He referred to Wright's Monday morning speech and Q and A session, where many of these comments were reiterated and detailed, a "spectacle."

Did Obama not think Wright's ranting and raving from the pulpit was also not a "spectacle?" How many of those sermons did Obama sit through without thinking any of them were "spectacles?"

He said that the Wright he has seen over the past few days "was not the person I met 20 years ago," and "I may not know him as well as I thought."

By all accounts, Wright has been speaking this way, preaching this way, and believing this way since Obama began attending his church. Where was Obama? Where was he in the church, and where was he in the friendship?

The answer, of course, is that Obama was intimately present in both. He wants us to believe he's breaking with Wright because he's suddenly "outraged" by his comments. The truth is he's "outraged" by the fact that Hillary is now gaining on him. He hasn't won a primary since February 22. She just picked up the endorsement of the governor of North Carolina, which will host another big primary next week. Obama is looking at internal polls that show Wright is a bigger drag on him than Bill is on her.

This is the only reason we heard this statement from Obama today. Not because he wanted to give it; not because he believes what he said. He had to do it, or watch the Hereditary Monarch and her Certifiable Husband walk away with the nomination. (Mighty telling that we've heard nary a peep from either of them in the last 48 hours.)

This may very well be the end of the Hope Guy. It is certainly the end of his "different kind of politics." He polled and tested and focus-grouped, saw the need for damage control, made a statement he doesn't believe, and cut his friend loose. He is no longer Barack Obama, Transcendent Messiah, but Barack Obama, Regular Pol.

Ciao for now, Pastor. (But just for now.)

Loose "Change"

"A change is comin." So says the Reverend Jeremiah Wright over and over again. During his incendiary but brutally honest "Pastor Ambition Tour," he has proclaimed that "a change is comin'. I can feel it." I say "brutally honest" because despite what you may think of Reverend Wright, he tells you exactly what he thinks, and he means what he says. Sure, he changes his tone based on his audience: to white audiences (Bill Moyers, the National Press Club), he's softer-spoken, and he doesn't drop his "g's." To black audiences, he's a podium-slamming, fist-pounding, neo-segregationist with a penchant for mocking white people. But regardless of how it's delivered, the message is the same: black liberation theology, which demands an "apology" for slavery from the current generation, formal U.S. government prostration, and ultimately, reparations. And that, of course, is just be the beginning. The list of grievances to be redressed is lengthy, with new insults added all the time.

Wright doesn't profess to believe in anything else. In that sense, he's much less a dissembler than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

This brings us to the Reverend's longtime spiritual and intellectual student. There is Obama, campaigning in Indiana and North Carolina, gymnasiums and podiums festooned with HIS central theme: "Change We Can Believe In."

After hearing Wright define exactly what he means and what he thinks, it is now impossible for Obama to dodge telling us exactly what HE means and what HE thinks. Wright's speeches are now a call for specificity from Barack Obama. The days of allowing Obama to leave himself as an undefined, vague, "Hope, Unity, and Change Guy" must end.

It is now incumbent on Obama to tell us what HE means by "change." Is his use of "change" the same as Wright's? Senator: you sat at his feet, absorbing his teachings like a sponge for 20 years. How does Wright's version of "change" agree with yours? Or differ from yours?

By the way, Senator, what IS your version of "change?"

How can we vote for "Change We Can Believe In" when you won't even tell us what, exactly, we are "believing in?"

Bill's Disappearing Act

Wild Bill tries to take the spotlight on primary night, until someone gives him the hook:

The McLaughlin Group

Please join us for The McLaughlin Group, this weekend and every weekend. Check your local listings for time and channel, or visit www.mclaughlin.com for more information.

Every Family Has One

Black sheeps.

What would families be without them?

This week, one of President Bush's twin daughters, Jenna, was asked by Larry King if she were going to support John McCain to succeed her father. "I don't know," she replied, then added that she's "open to learning about the candidates."

Also this week, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of President Nixon and granddaughter-in-law of President Eisenhower, came out in support of Barack Obama.

You'll recall that two of President Reagan's children, Patti Davis and my former MSNBC co-host Ron Reagan, often proclaimed themselves liberals diametrically opposed to their father's policies.

My own sister is a Democrat who married Alan Colmes.

Presidents Nixon and Reagan are rolling in their graves, and President Bush is probably just rolling his eyes at the idealistic rebellion of their offspring. I suppose it's inevitable that powerful, famously partisan fathers would give rise to children who have an intellectual and individual need to think differently.

Memo to Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton: it's cool for you to be for McCain.

Yo, O! Maybe YOU Should Go!

An Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama:

What's all this ludicrous talk that Hillary Clinton should drop out of the Democratic race? We all know she's not going anywhere. She just won the Pennsylvania primary (clobbering you, I might add). She's got some momentum now, has won the big, industrial states, and has new life to her fundraising.

Of the two candidates in this race, it is YOU, Senator Obama, who should voluntarily drop out.

You say you are a man of "unity." And yet, your continued struggle with Mrs. Clinton has rent deep and profound and possibly irreparable divisions within the Democratic party. Nothing would show "unity" better right now than your stepping aside. A true gentleman, which you also claim to be, would toss his coat on the ground and allow the lady to pass. (Or "lady," as it were.)

You also claim to hold dear your Christian faith. As you therefore know, Christians are supposed to model their lives after Christ's example of selflessness and sacrifice, to supercede your own ego, and to show you live your life according to you word.

Senator Obama: put on hold your political ambitions for the sake of your party. That would be a pure "class move"---but then again, "class warfare" seems to be your stock-in-trade. You can "change" all that with one deft exit.

Think of all you'll do for Hillary, too. She'll be less "bitter," so she can stop "clinging" to those Crown Royal shots and made-up fantasies of sniper fire. Your withdrawal will get Bill off her back too, for which she will owe you a huge debt of gratitude (the Secretary of State job? Or perhaps you'd prefer a lifetime Supreme Court appointment?).

You talk incessantly about "bringing people together," but your record shows a complete inability and/or unwillingness to bridge gaps or work across party lines. What would signal your capacity to do that better than bowing out so your party can "come together? What would be a greater example of "change" than you pulling a complete 180 and withdrawing from the race?

If you really want to show "unity," then go, O. This is your moment.

Yes, you can.

Politics of Reality

President Bush is constantly criticized for playing "the politics of fear" whenever he refers to the Islamic terror threat.  When Rudy Giuliani was running for president, his campaign produced an ad that featured footage of the burning, smoking mass that used to be the World Trade Center.  He too was accused of "playing the fear card." 

Now Hillary Clinton is being attacked for "playing to our fears" by airing an ad in Pennsylvania that shows Osama bin Laden.  Barack Obama jumped all over her for it, saying we need to move on from "fear tactics" and that her ad was all about "scoring political points."

What does he think he's doing out there?  Running for dogcatcher?  Of course she's trying to score political points, as is he, by pointing out that she's trying to score political points.

Here's the bigger political point:  Hillary made the decision 15 months ago to run on her so-called "experience."  She hopes that flashing the image of bin Laden will reinforce the idea that she's better prepared than her opponent, Senator Deer-in-the-Headlights, to deal with the real threats coming at us.

We SHOULD be afraid.  Despite significant progress in killing and capturing top and mid-level al Qaeda and other terrorists, Islamic radicalism is still the most dangerous enemy we face.  Jimmy Carter, Obama's "mentor" of sorts, thinks we can just hug it out with Hamas and other terrorists.  Obama believes in "talking" to them.  (By the way, Carter talked and hugged and hugged and talked and Hamas still blew off his request that they renounce terror.)

A few years ago, Hillary criticized Giuliani and other Republicans who aired ads featuring footage from September 11, but now she's doing the same thing, because she knows they were right to do it.

We don't live in a fantasy world, filled with rainbows and puppies.  We live in a country that remains the number one target of Islamic terrorists.  We should feel fear.  We should be wary.  We should be dealing in reality about the threat, rather than anesthetizing ourselves with wishful thinking that if only we had Obama, all of our enemies would go away. (In fact, Obama is so weak and sympathetic to some of their causes that the enemy is rooting for him.)

There ARE threats facing us.  They are real, and they are powerful, and they are deadly.  If Obama wants to pretend the threats aren't there, or that he'll be able to work his charismatic magic on our enemies and make them disappear, he is certainly free to indulge that fantasy.

Hillary, for all her faults, knows better.  And so do we.

Begetting and Begatting

Democratic spinners say that once the primaries end in early June, the superdelegates need to make a choice between Hillary and Obama in order to "avoid an intra-party civil war."

Here's news: the civil war is already going on. And it's hardly "civil."

The Democratic primary contest begat Hillary vs. Obama. Hillary vs. Obama begat women vs. blacks. It also begat Hillary vs. MoveOn.org vs. Michael Moore vs. blue-collar white voters vs. Hispanics vs. Jewish voters vs. young voters vs. older voters vs. poorer voters vs. more highly educated voters vs. liberals vs. moderates.

The Democratic race has more begetting going on than Genesis.

The divisions are deep and real and serious. The core constituencies of the Democratic party are at each other's throats, with no sign of retreat or surrender anywhere.

Despite the candidates' campaign themes of "unity," they're not doing a lot of it in practice.

Hillary vs. Obama may, in fact, beget President McCain. Who will, in turn, beget real unity.

The McLaughlin Group

Please tune in to "The McLaughlin Group" this weekend and every weekend. Check your local listings for time and channel or visit www.mclaughlin.com for more information.