Bob Shrum Shows Bill Kristol How It’s DoneHey guys! Did you see Bill Kristol’s first column appeared in the Times today? Boy, was it a doozy. Kristol took his classic conservative bluster and put it front and center on his first day:
Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you. But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat.
Blah, blah, blah, Hillary is a national nightmare, liberal Democrats will doom us all. Pretty standard boilerplate, most likely selected to startle the tepidly Democratic readership of the Times opinion pages. But Kristol doesn’t teach us anything we don’t know (“some Democrats are licking their chops at the prospect of a Huckabee nomination”), and he doesn’t question anything we take for granted (“Voters seem to be enjoying making up their own minds this year. And Huckabee is a talented politician.”). So it’s not really that startling at all. But over in the Daily News, we get the same sort of indictment of Hillary Clinton and her campaign machine — only more surprising, this time it’s from former Clintonite and Democratic mastermind Bob Shrum.
in other news
Anna Wintour’s Lips, Still Plump and JuicyWe’re so glad that “Page Six” ran an item today about Anna Wintour’s lips, because it allows us to run one of our favorite photo comparisons that we’ve ever done: La Anna before and during Milan Fashion Week this fall. It was during this most recent fashion-show season that fashionistas began sniping to us that there was something different about the iconic Vogue editor. Even though we still can’t really tell if anything’s changed, there’s something about her exposed face that’s just mesmerizing, huh? Anyway, if “Page Six” says there’s a story, it must be so. (You know, it’s polite to laugh when people make a joke ) Of course, today the Post also picked up on our October item about Gordon Brown and Bob Shrum, but those pictures aren’t nearly as fun to look at.
Airbrush Anna [NYP]
Earlier: Anna Wintour Has Lips Flapping in Milan
Bob Shrum Be-Labours Politics Once Again
intel
NYU’s Bob Shrum Be-Labours Politics Once AgainBritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown has sacrificed the popularity with which he arrived in office by choosing not to hold a fall election, writes London political strategist Rupert Darwall in today’s Wall Street Journal. Darwall can’t figure out quite why the confident and methodical Labour leader would skip this obvious and inevitable next step. It seems like it might be part of a new tack for Brown, which to our minds, actually makes sense. Of late, Brown has been advised by New York’s very own Bob Shrum, the legendary speechwriter and campaign manager most recently famous for advising John Kerry and Al Gore on their logic-defying losing presidential runs against George Bush.
