Tom Brokaw, like virtually everyone on television, went on the air Tuesday night expecting Hillary Clinton to get whipped in New Hampshire.

"I was buying into all the conventional wisdom as well," says the former NBC anchor, who was struck by how quickly his colleagues backed off their bombast about Barack Obama's imminent triumph.

"The pirouettes are amazing," says Brokaw, who was analyzing the campaign on MSNBC. "The utter confidence with which everyone had been wrong 20 minutes earlier, they have the same utter confidence about what produced this surprise. It's intellectually dishonest."

The series of blown calls amount to the shakiest campaign performance yet by a profession seemingly addicted to snap judgments and crystal-ball pronouncements. Not since the networks awarded Florida to Al Gore on Election Night 2000 has the collective media establishment so blatantly missed the boat.

The media, of course, have to reduce everything to one thing, one event, one incident we can all argue about. Preferably with video. Gore sighing. The Dean scream. The macaca moment. So now, the entire New Hampshire primary comes down to Hillary's choked up moment in a coffee shop.

The unexpected female support in turn can be attributed to the Clinton style, which may not be pretty but is effective. Hillary Clinton's tears evoked sympathy for her, and Bill Clinton's sneers generated contempt for Obama.

That is a good lesson for Republican strategists fretting about the difficulty of running against a fresh face such as Obama and hoping for Clinton instead. It strengthens the case for Sen. John McCain, who after New Hampshire is the Republican front-runner. The man who spent six years in a communist prison and has been abused and reviled by Washington's K Street power brokers may be the only Republican who can cope with what the Clintons would throw at him.

... Sen. Clinton's lachrymose complaint in New Hampshire on Monday that "this is very personal for me" was widely compared to Muskie's crying jag in Manchester 36 years ago, which began his downfall. But whereas Muskie's tears were involuntary, only the naive can believe Clinton was not artfully playing for sympathy from her sisters. It worked.

Bill Clinton's accompanying belittling of Obama as unqualified ("the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen") was similarly regarded within the party as a serious blunder. That indeed was the reaction from the Obama camp. Obama himself was condescending about his powerful detractor: "I understand he's feeling a little frustrated right now." In fact, an attack by so powerful and popular a Democratic icon should have been taken seriously by the neophyte candidate.  ...

The lesson of New Hampshire for Obama's campaign should be that rock-star popularity is not sufficient to take on the Clintons, who for a decade have given no quarter to their political foes. When it seemed that Obama would win in New Hampshire, the Clinton camp prepared an attack strategy against him. Since Obama is favored in the next big primary test, in South Carolina on Jan. 26, he can expect more of the same ahead.

If McCain, who in 2000 won Michigan after winning New Hampshire, takes it again on Tuesday, Romney will be, in E.E. Cummings's words, "a recent footprint in the sand of was."

Where would McCain be if the schedule had not offered him an early chance to romance New Hampshire again? Giuliani, supposedly able to compete in the Northeast, spent $3 million on advertising without elevating his New Hampshire numbers, but he waits down the road, where 97.2 percent of the convention delegates -- the currency by which the prize will be purchased -- remain unallocated.

Bush Predicts Mideast Peace Treaty

President Bush arrived in Israel yesterday to an enthusiastic welcome and said he was optimistic that a peace agreement could be reached this year.

The Clintons are onto something in an election year when even antiwar Democrats understand they will be electing a President in wartime. Mr. Obama is a neophyte on national security, and it often shows. That's a better explanation for the gaping generation gap in Tuesday's vote: The two candidates broke even among voters age 18-64, but Mrs. Clinton won among seniors 48% to 32%, according to the exit polls. It also better explains the gender gap. Women and seniors tend to care more about security and seasoning than do the young.

Now the Democratic contest will go on through at least "Super Tuesday" -- Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton is likely to win the Democratic beauty contest in Michigan on Jan. 15. But with no delegates at stake, it will have little impact.

Despite Sen. Harry Reid's son serving as her Nevada chairman, she's likely to lose that state's caucuses on Jan. 19. Then comes South Carolina on Jan. 26, where half the Democratic voters are likely to be African-American and Mr. Obama the probable victor. That means Florida on the 29th looms very large. The outcome of the contest in the Sunshine State is likely to have a disproportionate impact on the 23 contests on Super Tuesday.

With so many states voting on Super Tuesday, no candidate will have enough money, time or energy to cover all the contests. Burning in a single television ad in every Super Tuesday state will cost nearly $16 million.

Instead, candidates will pick states where they have a better chance to win and, by doing so, lock down more delegates. They will spend their time in cities with local TV and print coverage that reaches the biggest number of targeted voters possible. And they will spend their limited dollars on TV stations that deliver the largest number of likely supporters at the least cost. Memphis, for example, may be a smart buy, with its stations reaching western Tennessee and eastern Arkansas, both Feb. 5 states. Fargo, which reaches North Dakota and Minnesota, may be another effective buy.

At the end of Super Tuesday, it won't be just who won the most states, but who has the most delegates. In both parties, party elders and voters in later contests across the country will want to start consolidating behind a candidate.

It was exactly one year ago tonight, in a televised address to the nation, that President George W. Bush announced his fateful decision to change course in Iraq, and to send five additional U.S. combat brigades there as part of a new counterinsurgency strategy and under the command of a new general, David Petraeus.

At the time of its announcement, the so-called surge was met with deep skepticism by many Americans -- and understandably so.

After years of mismanagement of the war, many people had grave doubts about whether success in Iraq was possible. In Congress, opposition to the surge from antiwar members was swift and severe. They insisted that Iraq was already "lost," and that there was nothing left to do but accept our defeat and retreat.

President George W. Bush is considering a "stimulus package" to ward off a recession. He seems to be looking in the wrong places. The problem we face is less fiscal than it is monetary. But his administration and the Federal Reserve have bollixed up monetary management so far, and seem intent on continuing to do so.

News reports say that Bush is considering a set of targeted tax cuts. What that appears to amount to is to find more special interests to stimulate. More use of the tax code to assist favored industries or to somehow try to massage the economy. Perhaps even some targeted spending hikes.

This is madness. The Bush administration already has presided over astronomical, record deficits.

...a presidential candidate who starts publicly banging the drums for a strong-dollar policy probably would get a big political boost. Most of the public won't really understand the monetary policy involved; but if you ask ten people on the street whether or not they support a strong dollar, I would bet that at least eight would provide not just an assent, but an almost visceral reaction in favor.

Obama represents a clean break with a troubled and mediocre past. As Hillary leaves New Hampshire, she challenges Obama on the question of experience. The junior senator from Illinois should take up her challenge. Hillary can chide him for his lack of experience, and he can remind us all of Hillary's unique experiences, beginning with the Clintons' "holiday from history," and Travelgate, Filegate, missing billing records, lying under oath, her cattle-futures bonanza, the Riady family, Johnny Chung, John Huang, Charlie Trie -- and suddenly you see it too, the large hairy monster that is the Clinton legacy.

On the night of her primary victory, Senator Clinton credited the people of New Hampshire with helping her find her own voice. To judge by the rest of her remarks, it is the voice of an angry, divisive class-warrior, more like Senator Edwards than Senator Obama. "The oil companies, the drug companies, the health insurance companies, the predatory student loan companies have had seven years of a president who stands up for them. It's time we had a president who stands up for all of you," Mrs. Edwa… sorry, Clinton told her audience. She said she would deliver on the promise that "the government will be of the people, by the people and for the people, not just the privileged few."  ...

The upside is that Mrs. Clinton is raising money from the very industries she is bashing, making her sincerity open to question. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Mrs. Clinton has raised $269,436 from the pharmaceutical industry, more than any other candidate, including Republicans, and $220,550 from the oil and gas industry, more than double what her closest Democratic rivals raised from the industry.  ...

Americans anxious about the economy want a president who will help our corporations prosper, not one who will depict vast risk-taking, innovative, and dynamic sectors of American business as public enemies. If this is the voice Mrs. Clinton has found, it will either be bad news for America or good news for Republicans.

Sen. Barack Obama today declined the endorsement of Sen. John Kerry, saying his presidential campaign is about “hope and change”, and he doesn’t want to “send mixed messages.”

Sticking with his new stump speech refrain, Sen. Obama said, “They told us you can’t run a presidential campaign without kissing up to every Democrat who ever rode this donkey to defeat. But I say, yes…yes we can.”

“They told us you can’t diss a former presidential candidate who’s a professional Vietnam war veteran,” he added, “But I say yes…yes we can.”

An unnamed spokesman for the Obama campaign said the endorsement rejection is not necessarily permanent.

“If we get to the convention and our campaign needs a little extra shove to put us over the top,” the Obama aide said, “then we might ask Sen. Kerry to…you know…do it.”

With the latest polls showing Democrat Sen. Barack Obama with a commanding lead in New Hampshire just hours before the state’s presidential primary, the Republican National Committee (RNC) today launched an effort to salvage the candidacy of presumed senator-for-life Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Clinton doesn’t need money, so the RNC announced a three-pronged strategy to help her:

1) Packing Clinton campaign events with enthusiastic crowds of cheering Republicans, “wearing silly hats and hemp-based fashions to conceal their identity”

2) Urging conservative independents to vote for Sen. Clinton on Tuesday, and providing grief counselors and paramedical care at poll exits for those who comply

3) Luring former President Bill Clinton into campaigning for Sen. Obama instead, by offering him $10 million and a “hip posse of Hollywood A-listers”

“There’s no difference in ideology or policies between Clinton and Obama,” said an unnamed RNC source, “But the last thing we want to face in November is a hopeful, inspiring, genuinely-likable adversary with no major ethical baggage. That’s just un-Democratic. We don’t really have a viable strategy for that, since we’ve never had to run against such a person.”

Azzam maintains that the Coalition has been beaten militarily and on the battlefield of ideas. He notes the “unmistakable defeat of America's crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the crushing blows being taken by its allies, proxies, and puppets around the world.” A recent Rasmussen poll indicates that many Americans may agree with him. A quarter of the poll’s respondents believe that the terrorists are winning the war on terror, and 27 percent believe that neither side is winning. Only 43 percent believe that the U.S. and its allies are prevailing.

Azzam’s appeal for attacks on President Bush points to what has always struck me as a good metric for determining which side is winning the war. Our president, and Western leaders generally, can travel openly to the part of the world the terrorists consider their heartland, but their leaders, and Osama bin Laden in particular, cannot travel to our part of the world. In fact they cannot show their faces in public anywhere at any time, nor have they for over six years. Explain to me again why they are winning?

And borrow we have, to the point where our current national debt is a whopping $9.2 trillion dollars — or more accurately $9,193,315,468, 899.43 as of December 21, 2007. That translates to $30,323.94 of debt for every man, woman, and child in America.

Who, exactly, is lending us all this money? Well, Japan has lent us $586 billion. We owe Communist China $400 billion. Our “friends” in Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations have lent us $123 billion.  And here is the really bad news: they expect us to pay them back — with interest. In fact, we paid $430 billion in interest on our debt last year alone.

'We're going to make sure this state gets on the move again,' Mr. Romney said. 'I care about Michigan. For me, it's personal. It's personal for me because it's where I was born and raised.'

Earlier in the day, after hearing from a voter who recalled his father, Mr. Romney choked up momentarily, according to a pool reporter who was present. 'He was a great man, and I miss him dearly,' Mr. Romney said.