Campaign Trail

WASHINGTON -- Murray Kempton, who died the other day at 79, graced the New York newspaper scene for half a century with his elegantly written column, and for nearly as long informed and beguiled generations of reporters on the national political campaign trail.In a world of grubby little men (and only later women) chasing political candidates around the country scribbling in their notebooks while puffing on dangling cigarettes, the sartorially proper Mr. Kempton more often than not hovered above, taking in the panorama.

In his letter, William Smith writes that Rep. Paul Ryan lied in his convention speech regarding the GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin ("No denying Ryan's lying," Sept. 5). The facts are that Mr. Ryan categorized the plant in these exact words, that it was a plant "we were about to lose. " By saying they were about to lose the plant, Mr. Ryan acknowledged that the plant was already scheduled to be shut down when candidate Barack Obama visited it in 2008. Therefore, it is ridiculous to claim that he was making the charge that the plant was closed because of something President Obama didn't do. No, the point of the statement was that candidate Obama visited the plant and said, "I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.

It all seemed so easy out there on the old campaign trail. Candidate Bill Clinton went to Portland, Ore., last September and effusively declared: "I know you can be both pro-growth and pro-environment" in sorting out a controversy that had shut down logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest to safeguard the endangered spotted owl. He got the endorsement of both the Sierra Club and unions representing 125,000 lumber workers, the political equivalent of...

DENVER - Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination last night with a scathing assessment of John McCain and a searing indictment of the Bush administration, promising to repair "the broken politics of Washington" and preside over a more prosperous and equitable America. Speaking to a rapturous audience of more than 80,000, the largest U.S. political convention crowd ever assembled, Obama delivered an address that was alternately outraged and uplifting, personal and political.

With only three hours of sleep after a dizzying victory celebration the night before, Janet S. Owens held a news conference yesterday to announce that building a "first-class educational system" will be among her top priorities as Anne Arundel county executive.Owens, 54, a former director of services for the elderly in the county, overcame opposition from her fellow Democrats in the primary and a 5-to-1 disadvantage in fund raising Tuesday to beat incumbent Republican John G. Gary."The voters said, 'Let's take back our county,' " Owens said to applause at her campaign headquarters on West Street in Annapolis.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, announced yesterday that he will shelve his presidential ambitions and spend his time working to force the White House to set a date for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. "As someone who made the mistake of voting for the resolution that gave the president the authority to go to war, I feel the weight of a personal responsibility to act, to devote time and energy to the national dialogue in an effort to limit this war and bring our participation to a conclusion," Kerry said during a lengthy speech on the Senate floor.

KNOXVILLE, IOWA -- Spending a day following Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the campaign trail, I was not surprised to hear her quote Franklin D. Roosevelt, any more than I've been surprised when she has invoked other Democrats like Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. But when she began talking about the importance of electing a president with experience, she brought to mind a very different president. In her speech here this week, Mrs. Clinton said that "there is one job we can't afford on-the-job training for: That is the job of our next president.

ANNAPOLIS -- U.S. Senate candidate Alan L. Keyes has defended his decision to draw an $8,500-a-month salary from campaign contributions, calling himself a workingman trying to make ends meet."

ANNAPOLIS -- U.S. Senate candidate Alan L. Keyes yesterday defended his decision to draw an $8,500-a-month salary from campaign contributions, calling himself a workingman trying to make ends meet."

WASHINGTON - From the moment I first met my friend Hunter Thompson 33 years ago - or, as he preferred, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson of the National Affairs Desk of Rolling Stone magazine - I always felt he would come to a violent end, as he did the other day in Aspen, Colo. But I never thought he would shoot himself in the fashion of that other famous Rocky Mountain writer, Ernest Hemingway. Considering his freewheeling lifestyle, I thought he more likely would wind up in a bad car accident.