Kagan

Scott Hardie | May 11, 2010
Elena Kagan has never been a judge, worked with Obama years ago in Chicago, and is the Obama administration's solicitor general at the time of her nomination.

Harriet Miers had never been a judge, worked with Bush years ago in Texas, and was the Bush administration's counsel at the time of her nomination.

Why is there not more opposition to Kagan already?

Samir Mehta | May 11, 2010
[hidden by request]

Tony Peters | May 11, 2010
my problem with Kagen is her decision to ban military recruited from the campus over DADT....it was a flawed decision on her part if she apologizes for that I have no issues. As for the Kagen vs Miers comparison, Miers was more published which in theory would mean that she should have had an advantage but as we saw she wasn't very politically savvy. it remains to be seen how savvy Kagen is

Steve Dunn | May 11, 2010
I usually don't spend my time worrying about how some politicians are demonized while others get a free pass in the media, for the same reason I don't spend much time worrying about the weather. I have to say, though, we should all be grateful we do not live in a world in which the BP oil spill occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush. As insane as people went over Katrina, that would have been far worse.

Kris Weberg | May 27, 2010
I dunno...Katrina ended up with Bush accused of tacit racism, which tends to damage a politician a lot more than you'd think. And the immediate *human* cost of Katrina was much more apparent to observers, meaning that whoever was blamed was blamed for a lot of actual, right-there-and-then deaths. The BP spill is an ecological catastrophe and a disaster for the fishing industry, but it isn't producing images of a flooded city and piles of corpses. As a political spectacle, it's far less damaging, and I fear that spectacle is what matters most often.

Perversely, I'd argue that Bush would have been able to make *more* political capital out of the BP spill; had he reacted at all, he'd have gotten lots of credit for defying the perception that he's a former oilman with poor environmental credentials. Obama loses with his base if he doesn't outright commandeer BP's efforts and cripple the corporation in response, because Obama's base cares a lot more about the issues involved. Obama would have to do a lot more than W. to get the same level of praise for it because of where Obama is perceived to stand on the issues involved.