It took a few choice words and an Air Force One ride to melt Dennis Kucinich's adamant opposition into reluctant support. The reactions to Barack Obama's successful political courtship were predictably mixed. While some decided to underplay the relevance of a fringe congressman's opinion and others took the opportunity to praise the president's patience, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank saw Kucinich's flip-flop as a holiday miracle. (more...)

The Washington Post seems to be under the impression that they are being attacked for some sort of editorial conspiracy involving Rahm Emanuel and his competence as White House Chief of Staff. After a week where Emanuel became the subject of three of the paper’s major stories—two opinion pieces with opposing views and a front-page news item suggesting anonymous Washington insiders were upset Emanuel’s advice was not being taken—the Post has been taking fire from both sides for alternately undermining the President and attacking one of his top advisers. The confusion has brought about one of the more bizarre columns by ombudsman Andrew Alexander defending his paper: the Post is too disorganized and littered with unreliable quotes to have an agenda, so please drop the conspiracy theories. (more...)

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has officially become the Washington Post's Apple of Discord, tossed into the op-ed section and starting a civil war. After running a piece by Dana Milbank suggesting that most of the current problems facing the Obama Administration were a product of the president not listening to his Chief of Staff, it published a counterpoint by David Broder suggesting that the piece and rumors that begot it are a product of some social maneuvering on the part of Emanuel-- who "likes to win"-- and his friends in Congress, and suggesting Obama could have avoided his problems by listening to his adviser is directly undermining his authority. Matt Yglesias chimes in with a column of his own at the American Prospect proposing a novel approach to the debate: what problems, exactly, are the Democrats trying to blame on each other at all? (more...)

video Turns out we are not the only ones paying attention to Glenn Beck's immediate influence on the world of book sales. Glenn Beck apparently also has an eye on the rocketing Amazon rankings of the books he recommends (even the evil ones!). During a segment on yesterday's Presidents Day show that focused on Lincoln and promoted the book 'Lincoln at Peoria' penned by his guest Lewis Lehrman, Beck boasted that every book he mentioned skyrocketed right up the sales charts proving, among other things, that his viewers were the smartest ever. (Video below.) (more...)

"He's the same old Joe who has been sticking it to Democrats on high-profile issues for two decades. What's changed is everybody else. In our increasingly tribal politics, both sides are more demanding of ideological purity than they were when Lieberman came to the Senate in 1988." --Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, explaining the Democratic aversion to what he calls "the Liebermonster" (more...)

Get it? Because her name is Blanche. Washington Post columnist and Power Grid #3 Dana Milbank delivers an impassioned Sunday column today, using a literary allusion and extended metaphor to describe the dealmaking that occurred yesterday in the Senate. It's all very Southern -- straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, he contends in "Sweeteners for the South." And it may sound like your typical gimmicky op-ed fare, but it works this time. I mean, her name is Blanche. (more...)

Though the Power Grid is often a lesson in maintaining influence over time (see: Anna Wintour), due to its automated algorithm, movement in the ranks can often be traced directly to a piece of news or media event. In this sense, it serves as a barometer for any given category, and it's not the movement that is interesting in and of itself, but the reasons behind it. (more...)

It's no secret that we're obsessed with competition and we get our kicks from big movement on the Power Grid. Recently sickness has been responsible for much of the movement in the rankings, as Dr. Sanjay Gupta -- who recently announced he had swine flu -- jumped from #12 to #4 in the rankings among TV pundits, with his Google buzz peaking at #1. The third search result? "I went to Afghanistan and all I got was H1N1." (more...)

Seriously? Sometimes, no comment is needed. This from our inbox this morning:

WashPost Launches America's Next Great Pundit Competition Aspiring pundits across the country have the chance to be "America's Next Great Pundit" by entering The Washington Post's political columnist competition.

Starting today The Washington Post opinions section is asking people around the country to tell us why they deserve to publish their opinions in The Washington Post and be the next Dana Milbank or Eugene Robinson. (more...)

Where were you a year ago today? If you are a political journalist — or media hanger-on — chances are you were living out of a suitcase at the 2008 Presidential Conventions, with the Dems nominating Barack Obama in Denver and the GOP nominating John McCain in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Remember those heady days? (more...)

WaPo executive editor Marcus Brauchli has put an end to Mouthpiece Theater, the satirical web series of Post staffers Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza, Howard Kurtz reported this afternoon. The straw that broke the camel's back was a joke in the latest episode of Mouthpiece at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's expense "that went too far." Brauchli was under pressure from groups such as Women, Action and the Media, that took offense at Milbank's none-too-subtle allusion that, if Clinton had been at the Beer Summit, her beer of choice would have been "Mad Bitch" (video here). (more...)

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank brewed up a mess of trouble for himself, yesterday, when a satirical video he appeared in stepped way over the line. The subject of the video was President Obama's Thursday "Beer Summit" with Professor Henry Gates, Sgt. James Crowley, and Vice President Joe Biden. (more...)

The recent kerfuffle between Nico Pitney (Huffington Post) and Dana Milbank (Washington Post) over a clumsy exchange in a White House press conference brings to mind two media mavens rarely mentioned in the same sentence: Marshall McLuhan and Thomas Jefferson. Seen in the context of their ideas about media and government, a tiff between a blogger and a journalist raises ethical issues about the role of the press in our democracy and about the need for ethical leadership in an environment where government, blogs, and traditional journalism are increasingly interlaced. (more...)

Nico Pitney won the clash with Dana Milbank today on "Reliable Sources," but not on the merits - through classic tactics of going on the offensive, changing the subject, and comparing apples to oranges. I'm really surprised that Milbank wasn't ready for it. But though they both scored a few points, I actually feel like this has served to obscure the issue more than clarify it. (more...)