Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnon
Mark McKinnonis an American political advisor, reform advocate, media columnist and television producer. He was the chief media advisor to five successful presidential primary and general election campaigns, and is a co-founder of No Labels, an organization dedicated to bipartisanship and political problem solving. He served as vice chairman of Public Strategies, Inc., which was acquired by the international communications consultancy Hill & Knowlton Strategies, and was president of Maverick Media. McKinnon is the co-creator, co-executive producer, and co-host of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
CountryUnited States of America
What strikes me when I leave Washington is the extent to which there's a huge disconnect between Washington and the rest of the country. The rest of the country is not hyper partisan.
I think that the press has a duty and an obligation to report on local government, state government, federal government - to be aggressive, to do its job. And its job is to report on whatever it's covering.
The problem with State of the Union speeches is that they are, by their nature and design, alphabet soup. It's hard to know what a president really cares about when they run down a laundry list and check every issue box under the sun for fear they will offend some constituency if they don't.
Advocacy groups and voters are not wrong to push candidates to declare their position clearly on policy issues. That is good citizenship. Hard questions should be asked of every candidate, every politician. And those public servants should be prepared to answer, but in their own words.
Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights.
Obama killed Osama. Yes, President Barack Obama gets to crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Ronald Reagan was long thought to be the most conservative of Republicans. And by any standard today he is the most popular Republican in modern history. Yet he raised taxes 11 times, supported a ban on assault rifles and the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks, and established amnesty for 3 million undocumented workers.
This President is acutely aware of the impact of the economy, both on regular Americans and on Presidents. Americans fundamentally understand a President can't move the markets, but they want to be assured that he cares about it and is doing all he can.
This president has a real pattern of defying conventional wisdom.
As history has repeatedly proven, one trade tariff begets another, then another - until you've got a full-blown trade war. No one ever wins, and consumers always get screwed.
People are really hungry for change, and we need to give them something to hang that change on. The picture of what they don't like is in their minds; what they want to see is the alternative.
I get zero sense of that. This is an administration and a president that are like the Marines -- they're used to taking the beach, they're used to getting shelled. But they dig in and they do their jobs.
I'm from Chicago. I'm a little more biased. I like the United Center. I like the convenience of the downtown area.
Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.