The one time O.J. Simpson really intersected with DC politics came in February 1997 when the jury in his civil trial ruled against him the same night that Clinton delivered his State of the Union address. TV showed the two events in split screen. John F. Harris and I covered the…

Great fun at Axel HQ launching BERLIN PLAYBOOK last night. It's already essential reading for those interested in European politics
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Sign up here: politico.eu/berlin-playboo…

Genetic variation on display ⁦with albino squirrel out and about on campus ⁦Carleton College⁩👇

Have lost track of how many Democrats have privately said: Biden has gotta go to the border

Isn’t obvious play to have him go down to split-screen House Repubs the day they impeach Mayorkas, bring some news w him ? (an EO, a new task force, ASA as border czar ?)

“There is a decline, ask any doctor”

-Nikki Haley in Peterborough on Trump (and any folks nearing 80)

.John F. Harris speaks truth to power:

you’re banal and sound like the guy at the local tavern (how about this AI stuff, huh?)

'The youthful tendency is to believe these people have access to hidden pathways of information and world-shaping insight.' But then you realize... politico.com/news/magazine/…

>> John F. Harris nails it. This is exactly what I took away when I attended Davos last year. 'Emphatically commonplace' conversations. 'Familiar themes.' 'Elite banality.' 'Everyone is winging it.'

'That may be the real lesson of Davos: *Everyone* is winging it, experts and schlubs alike, muddling through with at best fragmentary understandings of a fast-moving world and its inscrutable future.'

John F. Harris with a smart dispatch from Davos.
politico.com/news/magazine/…

Why the Davos Smart Set Sounds Dumb politi.co/48WNx7b via John F. Harris

When officials learned of Austin's Jan. 1 hospitalization:

Tues:
- CJCS Gen. Brown

Thurs:
- POTUS
- The national security adviser
- The WH chief of staff
- Other senior WH officials
- DepSecDef

Fri:
- Multiple senior DOD officials
- Lawmakers

Puzzling behavior by the Pentagon here. I mean, it's not the Supreme Court politico.com/news/2024/01/0… #SCOTUS

UPDATE: The Pentagon did not inform Biden for 3 days that SecDef Austin was hospitalized.

POTUS found out when Jake Sullivan briefed him on Thursday, shortly after DOD sent word over to the White House. politico.com/news/2024/01/0…

w/ Lara Seligman

From my Nov Dem advice column:

'Jennifer O’Malley Dillon should either leave the WH & formally manage the campaign or be given the role Plouffe had in '12 and oversee the reelection from the WH

Now, per Tyler Pager , Obama telling Biden version of same

politico.com/news/magazine/…