Garance Franke-Ruta

As reported by the Boston Globe:

"When I went up, she said, 'Joe," Biden recalled of his meeting with Giffords. "I said, 'Now we're both members of the Cracked Head Club.' You know, I had two craniotomies. For real. They literally took the top of my head off. Twice. Now, the wags in Delaware, when the second operation occurred, wrote and said, 'Well, it's because they couldn't find a brain the first time!'"

"She and I just commiserated about the steps to recovery," he added. "Hers, much more consequential. But it scares the living devil out of you when you're recovering from a serious operation or injury to your head. But it comes back. And knowing people who've been through it and came back was helpful, for me anyway. You know what I mean?"

"The debt limit vote sucks."
--House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to the GOP Caucus today, sources told CNN

"I will tell you my favorite food of all time is celery. Honest to God my favorite food is celery. Straight up celery. I will personally consume the entire stalk of celery. At the Thanksgiving table I have the plate of celery in front of me. I know it's strange. It's my favorite food."

--Michele Bachmann to The Brody File

Should he run, it would be his third presidential bid

White supremacist and former Louisiana state representative David Duke confirms he's mulling tossing his hat into the 2012 presidential contest.

"Yes, I am considering it," the former high-ranking Klansman, who has been doing a YouTube video series with a Danish attorney of late, said in an email.

Earlier today, The Daily Beast's Eve Conant reported that "former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, member of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Republican executive-committee chairman in his district until 2000" would this month be "launching a tour of 25 states to explore how much support he can garner for a potential presidential bid."

Duke's public flirtation with a presidential bid comes against a background of growing interest in elective office from white supremacists, the Beast reports, and also an unusual amount of carnival-like publicity-seeking this election cycle by those purporting to be considering Republican presidential primary bids.

Duke, who has been living in Europe of late, would seem to be ill-positioned to be more than another sideshow in the contest, given his beliefs and the fact that he has only won office once before -- a state-level special election in 1989 that resulted in him serving two years as the representative of Metairie, Louisiana.

Should he run, presumably as a Republican, it would be Duke's third presidential bid, following runs as a Democrat and then Populist Party candidate in 1988, and as a Republican in 1992. He won 119,115 (0.94 percent) GOP presidential primary votes that year, to incumbent President George H.W. Bush's 9,199,463 (72.84 percent).

Image credit: Hart Matthews/Reuters

Updated 5:10 p.m. --

This photo, via celebrity news site TMZ, was taken on June 2 and purported to show the 68-year-old former speaker of the House "chilled out on Paradise Beach on the island of Mykonos." His staffers quit en masse just days later.

But Joe DeSantis, who works for Gingrich and has co-authored a book with him, says that it is not in fact the presidential candidate. "Just asked Newt...the picture on TMZ is not him...remarkable resemblance though," he tweeted.

That led Washington Post reporter Rachel Weiner to quip, "Anticipating a tearful Newt press conference later this week where he admits the photo is of him after all."

Photos of presidential candidates in bathing trunks are pretty commonly snapped by the celebrity press these days (Obama underwent a round of beach scrutiny in early 2007) and there also are a fair number of pictures of the later 20th century presidents in the historical archives in which they wear nothing but swimming shorts.

Add this latest twist to the events of the past two weeks though -- a period in which Rep. Anthony Weiner baldly lied about sending a lewd picture and said he did not know if it was a picture of himself; two straight American men were uncovered falsely posing online as lesbian bloggers, one Syrian and allegedly kidnapped; and it was reported that the man riding the motorcycle in the latest Jon Hunstman ad is not the candidate -- and it seems clear that we've gone back to the future on questions about what is and is not real online.

The gossip website took the picture down some time Wednesday. "They took it down when they realized it wasn't Newt," Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond told Hotline On Call.

Image via TMZ

10:17 p.m. Final thoughts: Michele Bachmann was impressive in her first presidential primary debate, giving an assured performance and making sure to layer her answers with personal and professional introductory details. Mitt Romney didn't hurt himself, which about as good a job as a front-runner can do in a debate of this sort. Tim Pawlenty did hurt himself by failing to defend what had seemed strong criticisms of Romney. Herman Cain's inexperience and idiosyncratic positions started to show tonight; while he was the break-out star at the South Carolina debate, his performance tonight suggests he may not wear well over the months head. Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich appeared more talking heads than candidates, and unlikely to stretch easily into new roles. That gives the wins of the evening to Romney and Bachmann.

10 p.m. The last five minutes are a love fest. The field thinks very well of itself, and the candidates of each other. Kind of a nice touch, and one that's sure to vanish if and when the contest really heats up.

9:56 p.m. Palin or Biden? Pawlenty goes with Palin, criticizes Biden for having wanted to partition Iraq.

9:53 p.m. Not trending, but fun: #thisorthat.

9:46 p.m. Michele Bachmann is gaining stature just by being on the stage tonight. Very tough on Obama for decision to go into Libya.

9:44 p.m. #cnndebate is the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter worldwide right now.

9:42 p.m. Is it time for us to leave Afghanistan? Romney, "It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we can," based on the conditions on the ground as determined by the generals. Ron Paul: As commander in chief, I'd tell the generals what to do, not wait for them to tell me what to do.

9:38 p.m. Coke or Pepsi? Pawlenty, "Coke."

9:34 p.m. Newt Gingrich defends nuance in the immigration debate, a middle ground between kicking 20 million people out and not protecting America's borders.

9:26 p.m. "Not only have I taken the pledge, I've taken the bullets..." Rick Santorum lays out his anti-abortion position. Kathryn Jean Lopez points out this is not the first time he's used that formulation in recent weeks.

9:25 p.m. Bachmann says she's opposed to same sex marriage, but doesn't see it as the role of the president to go into states and tell them how to legislate. She also gave a heartfelt answer about the problem of difficult homes, her own imperfect home, and why she was a foster parent. I think this is what's going to make her so interesting in the months ahead: She's a 1970s-generation conservative, a conservative by choice in response to the excesses of that historical moment, even though she's only emerged nationally during the tea party era.

9:17 p.m. Spicy or mild? Romney, surprisingly, says spicy.

9:14 p.m. Romney and Pawlenty are really playing a different game than everyone else on stage, and I'm not sure it's good for them to be so surrounded by the more vehement partisans. Yes, it makes them look reasonable. But it also makes them look, well, pained.

9:09 p.m. Cain defends his lack of comfort with the idea of appointing Muslims to a hypothetical Cain administration, then quickly pivots to attack sharia law. Nice split screen on CNN as Romney gives Cain a very skeptical look as the pizza magnate defends asking Muslims extra questions before hiring them. "Of course we are not going to have sharia law," says Romney taking the question as well, and emphasizing that anyone hired in his administration would be someone he knew. Gingrich says he'd back a loyalty oath for government service, as was done in the Nazi and, controversially, communist eras.

9:02 p.m. A question from the audience: Do you support raising the debt ceiling? Romney: We won't raise the debt ceiling unless Obama lays out plans for reining in government excesses, and spending. And if we don't raise it? Romney doesn't answer. Or rather, he answers with another question -- what if we keep spending?

9 p.m. Cain supports the Ryan plan wholeheartedly. Gingrich says his statements on the Ryan plan were taken out of context.

8:56 p.m. Pawlenty addresses the questioner with a promise to keep faith with promises made to him on Medicare, a serious and personal response that really serves as a reminder how few candidates on the stage are actually acting like politicians campaigning for an office, as opposed to politicians arguing with each other on TV.

8:54 p.m. And here we go with Medicare. "It's not solvent...it can't be made solvent, it has to change," says Ron Paul in response to a question about how he'll keep the program strong. "You talk about opting out of Obamacare? Why can't we opt out of the whole system?" he asks.

8:53 p.m. BackBerry or iPhone? Ron Paul goes with the BB.

8:51 p.m. Gingrich has the first strong preference on a this or that question/ Dancing with the Stars or American Idol? "American Idol," he says, without missing a beat.

8:49 p.m. This debate is feeling a little ADHD, zipping along so quickly from topic to topic and candidate to candidate it's hard to get a sense of them all on key questions. But good for CNN for at least trying to shake up the format.

8:48 p.m. Should the federal government be doing food safety regulation? "Yes," says former pizza company CEO Cain.

8:45 p.m. "We're not a developed country," says Gingrich in an answer to a question about the space industry, saying the U.S. has yet new frontiers to explore. "I didn't say end the space program," Gingrich emphasizes, after ripping into NASA. "You can get into space better...if you decentralized it" and cut out the middleman and the bureaucracy.

8:42 p.m. "I fought behind closed doors against my own party on TARP," Bachmann says. She's doing a really good job of introducing herself and presenting herself as a leader within the Republican Party.

8:41 p.m. Romney says he wasn't wrong about the auto industry in opposing bailouts, saying that what helped them most was bankruptcy reorganization, not the federal government dollars.

8:39 p.m. Some goofball questions, to mix it up, asked of just one person each. Leno or Conan? Santorum says he doesn't watch either. Elvis or Johnny Cash? Bachmann again goes for both, noting she's got Christmas with Elvis on her iPod.

8:36 p.m. Meanwhile, an Iowa political blogger reports:

8:30 p.m. Pawlenty backs right to work, strongly, to applause. We don't have the government tell us what organizations we can be part of, we tell the government what to do. Gingrich, asked a similar but not identical question -- as he was quick to point out -- brings up the National Labor Relations Board, which he said should be defunded. Herman Cain also believes in right to work, "and I hope New Hampshire is able to get it passed." (N.H. Gov. John Lynch this spring vetoed a right to work law passed by the state legislature, but efforts are ongoing to change the laws governing unionization in the state.)

8:30 p.m. Pawlenty on trade, new challenges to manufacturing: "I'm for fair and open trade but I'm not for being stupid and I'm not for being a chump." Wounded look.

Bachmann just talked about an "omnibus bill" -- that's House insider talk! -- and called the EPA the "job killing organization of America."

8:20 p.m. Romney rebuts charges of Obamaneycare from Pawlenty, but given the opportunity to reiterate the criticism he made over the weekend, Pawlenty takes his time getting there. "We took a different approach in Minnesota," he said. Using the term Obamaneycare is a reflection of the president's assertion that he looked to Romney's Massachusetts health-care overhaul to design the federal program, says Pawlenty, again declining to sharply go after Romney.

Romney's response is a direct question for the president, "Why didn't you give me a call and ask what worked" if you were going to base a plan on the Mass. experience? (Apparently he first tried that line out in April in Las Vegas. Points for consistency.)

8:12 p.m. Michele Bachmann: "I filed today my paperwork to seek the office of the presidency." ... Later, asked about "Obamacare," she says she will not rest until it is repealed: "It's a promise, take it to the bank."

8:10 p.m. The first question is on jobs. What are the jobs plans? Rick Santorum won't criticize Tim Pawlenty's projection of 5 percent growth in a followup from debate moderator John King. Santorum says natural gas drilling in Pa. is lowering gas costs there. Pawlenty, "This idea we can't have 5 percent growth in America is defeatist." "It's hogwash," he says, pointing out that other countries have high growth, like China. Romney chimes in to turn the question around to go after Obama, instead of Pawlenty, hammering in on his message of jobs, jobs, jobs, despite King's efforts to interrupt him. Gingrich calls the Obama administration "a destructive force" -- and calls for the repeal of Dodd-Frank. Bachmann takes pride in her role in introducing the bill to repeal Dodd-Frank.

8:03 p.m. Strong applause for all in the audience on the intros. Everybody has lots of kids! Except for Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain. And Ron Paul has chosen to emphasize those he's delivered, not sired.

8 p.m. This thing is going to be 2 hours long. I'll be compiling thoughts and highlights here on the CNN GOP presidential primary debate in New Hampshire tonight.

Four conditions that would make it easier for the New York Democrat to retain his House seat

NEW YORK -- Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday evening called for a House ethics investigation into the actions of Queens, N.Y., Rep. Anthony Weiner, the gravest threat yet to his continued tenure in office after a remarkable afternoon confession to sending inappropriate online messages to at least six women over a period of three years. But I think even with a congressional investigation afoot he will not need to resign from office so long as the following four things obtain:

1. None of the six women in question are minors.

2. None of the six women in question are in the sex industry.

3. No congressional resources were inappropriately used.

4. He confessed everything. There's no other shoe to drop.

Why could he stay in office? Because he is from New York. I'd wager some percentage of men here looked at Anthony Weiner's sext pictures and wondered not about his marriage, but where he gets waxed. Others envy him. At the PDF conference Monday in lower Manhattan, one married man was impressed by Weiner's ability to seduce women. "Good for him," he said to me as we discussed the situation, and the six women who, in addition to the congressman's gorgeous wife, were willing to indulge him. "So he likes beautiful ladies! So what, who doesn't?" one New Yorker told the Daily Beast as it surveyed opinions in the city. Heck, after Weiner, I'll bet more men take up the practice of sending photos to women than are scared off by his example.

People are prurient. Weiner has afforded them the gift (or curse, depending on your view) of a break from social norms that frown on having pornographic conversations at the office, over dinner, or while swirling a drink and wearing a half-embarrassed, half-titillated smile. Of course they want to keep talking about him, because that means they get to indulge in something verboten, too.

And so they will talk about him. And people will surely dig into the question of the women's ages. One is 26; another is 40 and one (perhaps the same one?) was earlier reported to be "middle-aged" -- which is to say, from the 46-year-old Weiner's age cohort. If there is any lesson to be drawn from all of this, it is that men who do not marry until their mid-40s may have a deeply held ambivalence about the contemporary American vision of marriage. News to no one! Heck, many married men (and women) that age are ambivalent about it, too, if our national divorce rate is any indication.

(And note that I am not saying "traditional marriage," because traditional marriage has historically often made room for male infidelity, and still does today in quite a large number of nations.)

But one never knows how an individual marriage is constructed by the people in it. And in any event, such matters, while of cultural and sociological interest, do not tell us much about someone's capacity as a legislator. Weiner did, as he said, repeatedly, a stupid, dumb thing in sending naked pictures of himself to women who were virtual strangers, and behaved in ways that were deeply unkind to his wife. He has admitted it, and corrected his lies pretty rapidly as these things go (look how long it took John Edwards to come clean). Also, I think we can all acknowledge after the events of the past week that Weiner is a terrible liar.

His political survival going forward will depend in part on the four criteria outlined above. Of them, charges of misuse of congressional resources would be perhaps the easiest problem to fight, because they're the most boring. Sextual involvement with a porn star will be bigger hurdle, because it will prolong the story and add a fresh element of intrigue. But even as new details trickle out over the next few days, it is likely that the Weiner story reached its narrative climax yesterday. Could anything top that news conference?

Whether Weiner can be reelected or seek new office is a whole 'nother question, but as the cases of Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank and Bill Clinton and David Vitter have shown, voters can be much more forgiving than television pundits or newspaper editorial boards. It can be difficult to assess the actual impact of a scandal on a politician's career during the first week of the controversy. And given that adultery remains a major cause of divorce in this country, and that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that we routinely elect divorced people (some of whom were doubtless unfaithful), we seem as a nation to have settled the debate over whether marital problems should be a de facto disqualifier for public service.

Image credit: Richard Drew/Associated Press

Drop-down image credit: Reuters

What would Freud say?

During a tour of Westminster Abbey in central London Tuesday, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama left a message in the guest book, signing the volume with their signatures and a date that was off by three years.

In reality, on May 24, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama was campaigning at an event with veterans at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. The financial crisis portrayed in last night's HBO movie "Too Big to Fail" had yet to take place, the unemployment rate was just 5.5 percent, and Obama was on the rise as the global superstar promising to bring Hope and Change to America.

He was also locked in the protracted primary battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, and on that day three years ago, forgave her comment that she was staying in the race in part because of her memory of the Robert Kennedy assassination, and how things can change even late in a contest.

"I have learned that when you are campaigning for as many months as Senator Clinton and I have been campaigning, sometimes you get careless in terms of the statements that you make, and I think that is what happened here," Obama said in an interview with Radio ISLA at the time.

That seems to go for dates, too.

"A Westminster Abbey spokeswoman confirmed it was the president who had written the wrong date," The Telegraph reports.

Via New York magazine.

Image credit: John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images

Reading recently that former Utah governor Jon Hunstman Jr., 51, has seven children really made it hit home -- this year's crop of potential GOP presidential candidates has been unusually fruitful, resulting in families twice the size of the American average.

Just how many kids do the GOP contenders -- and possible contenders -- have? Let's go to the chart:

That's an average of four kids each for those with kids, compared to an of average 1.86 for U.S. families with children, according to 2004 Census data.

As you might expect, a Mormon leads the pack with seven children, followed by a traditionalist Catholic, another Mormon, and the other more religiously conservative Christians.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty on Sunday released a video pre-announcing his midday speech in Des Moines Monday, in which he will formally launch his presidential campaign.

Along with an op-ed in USA Today and the speech itself, advance excerpts of which were provided by the campaign, it amounts to perhaps the most thorough and orderly roll-out we've yet seen in the GOP presidential primary field. From the speech:

"I'm Tim Pawlenty, and I'm running for President of the United States. We live in the greatest country the world has ever known. But, as we all know, America is in big trouble, and it won't get fixed if we keep going down the same path. If we want a new and better direction, we need a new and better President."

"President Obama's policies have failed. But more than that, he won't even tell us the truth about what it's really going to take to get out of the mess we're in. ... I'm going to take a different approach. I am going to tell you the truth."

"We've tried Barack Obama's way -- and his way has failed. Three years into his term, we're no longer just running out of money. We're running out of time. It's time for new leadership. It's time for a new approach. And, it's time for America's president - and anyone who wants to be president - to look you in the eye and tell you the truth."

"The changes history is calling on America to make today cannot be shouldered only by people richer than us, or poorer than us - but by us, too. Politicians are often afraid that if they're too honest, they might lose an election. I'm afraid that in 2012, if we're not honest enough, we may lose our country. If we want to grow our economy, we need to shrink our government. If we want to create jobs, we need to encourage job creators. If we want our children to be free to pursue their dreams, we can't shackle them with our debts. This is a time for truth."

"No president deserves to win an election by dividing the American people - picking winners and losers, protecting his own party's spending and cutting only the other guys'; pitting classes, and ethnicities, and generations against each other. The truth is, we're all in this together. So we need to work to get out of this mess together. I'll unite our party and unite our nation, because to solve a fourteen-trillion-dollar problem, we're going to need three hundred million people."

"In Minnesota and in Washington, the issues were the same: taxes, spending, health care, unions, and the courts. But in Washington, Barack Obama has consistently stood for higher taxes, more spending, more government, more powerful special interests, and less individual freedom. In Minnesota, I cut taxes, cut spending, instituted health care choice and performance pay for teachers, reformed our union benefits, and appointed constitutional conservatives to the Supreme Court. That is how you lead a liberal state in a conservative direction."

Drop-down image credit: Reuters

The Republican presidential primary field looks to consist almost entirely of people who have been out of office for years

Republican politicians who are on the rise are sitting out the contest to challenge incumbent President Obama, by and large leaving it to those who've not successfully fought political battles in years.

Current office-holders and rising stars such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan have said they will not run. And with early possible contenders Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and Sen. John Thune (S.D.) all now having bowed out of the running, that could leave an eventual GOP field that contains only one person who currently holds elected office -- Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the anti-war libertarian who wants to eliminate the Federal Reserve -- as well as only one serious contender who has run a successful race in the social media era, former Utah governor Jon Huntsman.

Why does this matter? Because to win the presidency it helps to have the well-known launching pad of a job as an elected official -- or, barring that, the support of a strong and growing political movement -- and be in tune with how contemporary campaigns are run.

The last time a candidate who was not an elected official at the time he ran for office won the presidency was when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in 1980. Reagan was the GOP's next-in-line figure to seize the nomination that year, having run and lost the 1976 GOP primaries after the end of his second term as governor of California, and having built a power base as a leader of the ascendent conservative movement within the GOP. He was an early favorite in a way no GOP contender is today, according to polling data, when Republicans are facing a rare front-runnerless race, and the only intraparty movement of note, the tea party, appears to be flagging.

So far the field of Republicans vying to win the party's crown and challenge the incumbent president in 2012 has failed to excite the party's base -- perhaps because its entire top tier is made up of people who will have last held office between 2 and 14 years from the date of the next presidential inauguration.

That field includes: former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who left office under a cloud after the '98 election; former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, last in office in January, 2007; and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who just stepped down this past January and is formally launching his presidential campaign today in Iowa.

Also in the running are former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, who lost reelection in 2006; former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, out of office as of early 2003; and two men who have never held elected office, former pizza magnate Herman Cain and political consultant Fred Karger. Former Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer, who last held office in 1992, also joined the pack in March, announcing a presidential exploratory committee in Baton Rouge. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman has formed an exploratory committee but not formally launched a presidential campaign; he left office in mid-2009, abandoning the governor's chair early in his second term to become ambassador to China.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who stepped down in the middle of her first term, leaving office in 2009, might conceivably also join the field, as might Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann. Bachmann, like Paul, won reelection in 2010.

These two members of Congress aside, the 2012 GOP presidential primary field is dominated by people who have stepped off their political stepping stones and lack the day-to-day governing responsibilities that might keep them in touch with the problems of the present -- not to mention any kind of geographic connection to voters who might hold them accountable in the near-term for shifting policy views or the adoption of radical stances. With the exceptions of Bachmann, Paul, and Hunstman they also, to a one, have not run successful political campaigns during the social media era.

Below, the declared and possible 2012 GOP presidential primary contenders and the year each last won a general election contest:

Paul: 2010
Bachmann: 2010
Hunstman: 2008 (resigned in office)
Pawlenty: 2006
Palin: 2006 (resigned in office)
Romney: 2002
Santorum: 2000
Gingrich: 1998 (resigned in office)
Johnson: 1998
Roemer: 1987
Cain: never
Karger: never