I appeared on Channel 10 this morning (Thursday) to analyze the President's press conference yesterday (Wednesday).

The gist of my comments:

On the political impact of the Rose Garden press conference:

The President needed to come out and address the very serious situation in North Korea. We expect the president of the United States to come before us in these moments. Moreover, I am not a big fan of viewing all events through the prism of politics. I reject the premise that politics drives all policy. [In fact, I am convinced that this President more often uses elections to leverage policy than he employs policy debates to influence elections.]

On the other hand, having said that, the President, as leader of the Republican Party, desperately needed to drive the discussion back toward issues that are more favorable to Republicans. The President made an aggressive attempt to seize the agenda and the initiative. As the President said time and again on Wednesday, he wants this election to be about the economy and security.

Iraq:

But the undercurrent in this election (in this presidency) is always Iraq. Are we so dissatisfied with Iraq that we turn out the Republican Congress to voice our displeasure with the war? Will we stay the course? Or will we cut our losses and come home? In many ways, this election is another referendum on our policy in Iraq and our vision for the post-911 world.

The Polls:

There is a great paradox in public opinion polling. On one hand, scientifically, the polls are very effective measurements of public sentiment; they can be very accurate in determining what people feel at any given minute. On the other hand, the polls are merely a snapshot. They tell us what people were thinking a few days ago. But that does not really tell us what is going to happen on November 7. This is a fluid election, and momentum is likely to go back and forth several times before Election Day.

[Last week Republicans were convinced that the Foley abomination was having little effect on the election. They were completely wrong and silly to listen to polling data that confirmed what they wanted to believe. This week the Democrats (and the MSM) are convinced that the Republicans are finished; they too are probably much too sanguine about what this week's polling data really means.]

Moreover, much more so than election results, polling tends to register emotion. Americans generally take voting very seriously. The weight of Election Day tends to sober American voters. Polling on any given day one-month out from an election is often wildly inaccurate in terms of predicting winners on the first Tuesday in November.