Donald Rumsfeld, the two-time former Defense secretary, has a well-chronicled penchant for posing his own questions and then answering them.

So does someone working in the Obama administration.

The New York Times reported this weekend that President Obama had send an emissary to New York Gov. David A. Paterson to ask him not to run in the 2010 election. Paterson, the former lieutenant governor who took over from resigned Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer in March 2008, has approval ratings that are near rock bottom.

And the story included this trip-down-memory-lane nugget:

"Is there concern about the situation in New York? Absolutely," the second administration official said Saturday evening. "Has that concern been conveyed to the governor? Yes.

The faces and issues change, but media strategies are timeless.

In the moments after she announced she would resign the governorship of Alaska, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan compared Sarah Palin to Richard Nixon in 1966.

Nixon returned from exile following his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial election -- "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" -- to win the presidency in 1968. "We traveled all over the country on behalf of Republican candidates, built up this enormous good will," Buchanan said of a 1966 Nixon barnstorming tour that helped lay the groundwork for his bid two years later.

Buchanan, an aide to Nixon at the time and in the White House, knows better. Palin is no Nixon.

The timing could be better for Repbulicans eager to keep driving home the idea that Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine's dual-hatting as Democratic National Committee chairman has cost Virginia voters Kaine's time and their money.

With the next gubernatorial election less than five months away, the RNC's research department circulated a Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial to Republicans Thursday morning that chastised Kaine. He won't be on the ballot, but he's popular -- and pointing out the incumbent's flaws might make him a less effective advocate from Democratic nominee Creigh Deeds in his race against Attorney General Bob McDonnell.

On any normal day, that wouldn't raise eyebrows.