NYTimes.com

Recently, I wrote here that the fundamentals of the 2008 race decisively favor Barack Obama. As is often the case, however, my words were met with a familiar riposte: What about the race factor? Are white Americans really ready to elect a black man as president? It's a recurrent refrain among Democrats and even some hopeful Republicans. As Andrew Kohut wrote here, "56 percent of Democrats believe that many people will not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black."

With the first ever African-American… more

Any analysis of the first presidential debate in Oxford, Miss,. must begin with a simple question: What was each candidate trying to achieve?

For Barack Obama it was all about the half of all Americans who still think he lacks the requisite qualifications to be president. Would he seem knowledgeable and effective in talking about serious foreign policy issues? Would he be able to reassure them that they can trust him with the nation’s most powerful job? Would he be able to go toe-to-toe with… more

Barack Obama continues to hold a 4- to 5-point national lead over John McCain in a race where the economy and change are the two dominant issues for the electorate. Questions about Mr. Obama’s experience continue to hold back the Illinois senator and have kept the race relatively close in an election where Democrats have the clear political advantage. These words could have been used to describe the presidential campaign back in June as well. Despite all the back-and-forth of the last month on the campaign trail,… more

The past two weeks have been among the most exciting and extraordinary in recent American political history. We’ve heard a lot of speeches in the last 14 or so days; and they provide stark contrasts into the strategies that the two parties will be adopting between now and Election Day.

While traditionally in a change election one side plays the change card and the other plays the “risky change” card, 2008 appears to be taking on a different veneer. In this election, both the 47-year-old… more

Last night at the Republican National Convention was “John McCain biography night” as speaker after speaker extolled the virtues of their party’s nominee. President George Bush praised Mr. McCain’s courage and vision and his appreciation of the grave threats facing America in an age of terror; Fred Thompson, the former senator and presidential candidate, laid out the riveting story of Mr. McCain’s personal courage, which has come to define the candidate’s public image; and Senator Joseph Lieberman told delegates of Mr. McCain’s bipartisan bona fides and his… more

In his brief political career, Barack Obama has gained renown as possibly the greatest and most eloquent political orator of his generation -- a master of metaphor, a repository of rhetorical flourishes and a spellbinding speaker. But last night in Denver, Mr. Obama showed the political world another side to his speech-making skills: that he can do more than campaign in verse, he can campaign in prose as well.

Contrary to expectations, Mr. Obama did not deliver the greatest piece of oratory in American history. He… more