A State of the Union address is often difficult to fact-check, no matter who is president. The speech is a product of many hands and is carefully vetted, so major errors of fact are so relatively rare that they sometimes can become big news (think of George W. Bush’s “sixteen little words” about Iraq seeking uranium in Niger). At the same time, State of the Union addresses are very political speeches, an argument for the president’s policies, so context (or the perspective of opponents) is often missing. Read full article > >

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Fact-checking the 2012 State of the Union speech

Don't get too riled up over tonight's results. Since 1976, only three people who won the Iowa caucuses ended up winning the nomination: Gerald Ford, Bob Dole, and George W. Bush.

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Notes on Iowa Caucuses Past

If you thought all the political action is in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, think again: The race is heating up here in Washington social circles. No drama for Democrats officially rallying together to re-elect President Obama . More interesting to watch: D.C.’s prominent Republicans who are trying to cozy up to the party’s nominee. Back the right horse early enough and you get four years hanging out with the winner. Pick the loser and . . .well, you picked the loser: After George W. Bush prevailed in the 2000 GOP primaries, early backers of John McCain were quietly snubbed by Bush insiders. Read full article > >

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GOP primary divides Washington socialites

MITT ROMNEY is zero for two when it comes to transparency in campaigning. First, Mr. Romney — breaking with the practice of previous Republican presidential candidates, including George W. Bush and John McCain — has refused to release the identities of his bundlers , the well-connected fundraisers who help the campaign haul in stacks of checks adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Romney is under no legal obligation to reveal his bundlers, other than the relative handful who are also registered lobbyists. Read full article > >

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Mitt Romney’s secret money

Here is a surefire way to cut $7.1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Do nothing. That’s right. If Congress simply fails to act between now and Jan. 1, 2013, the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush expire, $1.2 trillion in additional budget cuts go through under the terms of last summer’s debt-ceiling deal, and a variety of other tax cuts also go away. Read full article > >

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How we can succeed through supercommittee’s ‘failure’

There’s another level to Gov. Rick Perry’s self-inflicted wound, and it has to do with the most powerful commodity in American politics: authenticity.

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The Caucus: The Other Problem With Perry’s ‘Oops’ Moment

What is it about the immigration issue that brings out the worst in politicians? Neither Mitt Romney nor Rick Perry has a history of being an immigration hard-liner. Romney supported George W. Bush ’s attempt at comprehensive immigration reform in 2005, which included a (difficult) path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. When I attended a dinner with Perry during his 2010 campaign for reelection as Texas governor, he was particularly passionate about the need for Republican outreach to Hispanics. Read full article > >

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Accommodation of anger

Something they couldn’t get from George W. Bush.

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Obama Sold Special Bombs to Israel

DALLAS — George W. Bush has already surpassed his goal of raising more than $300 million to support his presidential library. The Dallas Morning News reports that financial statements the Bush Foundation filed with the federal government show that the former president collected $313 million in donations in 2009 and 2010 (http://dallasne.ws/r8e1OM). Read full article > >

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George W. Bush has surpassed fundraising goal of $300M for presidential library

Barack Obama was always vulnerable to charges that he would be weak on national security. He was a relative political newcomer with no history of military service. He opposed the war in Iraq and pledged to roll back many of the George W. Bush administration’s toughest anti-terrorism policies. At one politically perilous moment just months into Obama’s presidency, the young commander in chief appeared at the National Archives to declare a “new direction” in fighting terrorism, only to be scolded as “naive” by former vice president Dick Cheney, the graying architect of aggressive post-9/11 policies. Read full article > >

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National security emerges as Obama strong point

The trove of emails from Sarah Palin’s time as governor reveals she had a habit of forwarding messages to her staff from people supportive of her vice-presidential bid. On such message came from George W. Bush. “The [president] and I spoke about…

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Emails Show Palin Joked With Bush

It struck some visitors to the Houston office of ConocoPhillips chief executive Jim Mulva as peculiar that he displayed a photograph of himself and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. They were an odd couple: a veteran of corporate politics at a U.S. oil company and the colonel who had survived four decades of confrontation with the West while maintaining repressive rule over his North African nation. But the relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. Gaddafi, who had been sanctioned for Libya’s role in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland , also looked forward to U.S. help in reviving his flagging oil production. Read full article > >

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Conflict in Libya: U.S. oil companies sit on sidelines as Gaddafi maintains hold

As I sat watching the hysterical and apocalyptic reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech addressing the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, in which he endorsed a position that was previously advocated by George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, opposition leader Tzipi Livni and even Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, it got me thinking about the other vicious attacks on the president’s previous policies.

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Carville: Obama looks like ’08 Republican

In the aftermath of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ’ decision not to run for president in 2012 over the weekend, one name is drawing lots of attention as a possible late entrant who could fundamentally re-shape the Republican race: Texas Gov. Rick Perry . “Daniels’ decision, coupled with [Mike] Huckabee’s and Newt’s [Gingrich] implosion, will create a tornado-size draft for Rick Perry,” predicted Mark McKinnon, a GOP media consultant who worked with President George W. Bush . “He’s tanned, rested and got nothing else to do for the next two years.” Read full article > >

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Will Rick Perry run for president in 2012?

LAS VEGAS — George W. Bush says he was “not overjoyed” when President Barack Obama told him Osama bin Laden was dead because the campaign to track down the al-Qaida leader was done not “out of hatred, but to exact judgment.” The former president who initiated the hunt for bin Laden after 9/11 made his first candid public comments on bin Laden’s killing Wednesday at a conference of hedge fund managers in Las Vegas, ABC News reported Friday. Bush said he was eating souffle at a restaurant when he received the call from Obama, according to an ABC News contributor at the conference. Bush said he went home to take the call and, “Obama simply said, ‘Osama Bin Laden is dead.’” Read full article > >

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Bush says he wasn’t overjoyed by bin Laden news