Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
My print-free experiment with The News & Observer is clicking along well. Still, like any loyal reader, I’ve got some bones to pick. First the good news. Even though I don’t get the paper in my driveway anymore, I still read it most mornings. I click on the website’s E-edition, then flip through the pages…
Read MoreIn the middle of Donald Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, a Playboy model sold the rights to her story about her affair with Trump to the National Enquirer for $150,000 – and when Trump learned what happened he sat down with his lawyer, Michael Cohen, to discuss buying those rights from the Enquirer so the…
Read MoreA reader offers this suggestion: If I were a Democratic pundit I would, henceforth, refer to our President as “Putin’s Poodle.” In the first place, it’s true. He respects and trusts Dictator Putin more than he respects and trusts American intelligence services. In the second place, Trump can sure dish it out. You remember —…
Read MoreIn his terse, clipped way, Bert Bennett once summed up perfectly why we’re Democrats and why he helped elect Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt: “Sanford and Hunt had the right attitude: human dignity, based on ethics and work and not color or background or money.” Rob Christensen’s N&O profile today caught the essence of Bert,…
Read MoreBack when Jim Hunt was Governor (the good old days) he routinely had job approval ratings in the mid to high 60s. He was one of the most popular governors in America, until Carter & Co. spent two years and $20 million knocking him down in 1984. Even then, Hunt bounced back into the 60s…
Read MoreElections are usually about issues. But sometimes character overwhelms issues. Like with Trump. The Gallup Poll asked: “Thinking about Donald Trump as a person, do you have a positive or negative opinion of him?” Only 36 percent of voters – just over one in three – said positive; 55 percent said negative. Among Independents, only…
Read MoreThe ABC News reporter asked Steve Bannon if Trump ever lied and Bannon said ‘never’ then the reporter asked, Never? and Bannon quipped, “Except when he called me Sloppy Steve.” Politicians telling tall-tales is an old story but, like insults and boasting, in days past lying was a taboo – Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives all…
Read MoreSometimes Carter and I get asked to speak about the 1984 Hunt-Helms Senate race. Some of the people we see weren’t born then. For them, it’s like going to the Dinosaur Museum – and the dinosaurs come out and talk. Because we lost, I’m often asked what was the biggest lesson I learned. That’s easy,…
Read MoreThe same way people once frowned on insults and name calling, there was a time in our country when people frowned on bragging. Ronald Reagan never bragged about winning the Cold War and Obama didn’t boast about how many times he’d been on the cover of Time magazine. But those days are past. A reporter…
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