Reagan Revisionism

This Sunday will be Super Bowl Sunday, and the upcoming clash between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will be getting most of the media's attention the closer we get to it.But this Sunday will also be the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. So far, it hasn't been causing the kind of fuss that Abe Lincoln's 200th birthday produced a couple of years ago. That may be because Reagan has only been dead for a few years. His memory...

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The Leadership Gap

Over at the Washington Post, they describe Ruth Marcus as "[a] boots–on–the–ground columnist who reports first and opines later."Thus, when she writes that "[t]he state of the union is ... leaderless," I feel compelled to listen to what she has to say.She isn't really saying anything that I haven't been saying for quite awhile, but I find it refreshing when I see things like that written in papers like the Post by people like Marcus because I know their histories.Marcus, the Post admits, leans to the left, which suggests that she supports many...

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Reagan's Finest Hour

I was never even close to being an admirer of Ronald Reagan when he was president.But I give him credit for what he did on this day 25 years ago when the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after takeoff, and all seven members of the crew were killed.Others have been doing the same today.Carl Cannon of Politics Daily writes that Reagan's speech to the nation late that afternoon was "perhaps the most inspiring of his presidency."I always...

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Hitler's House of Horrors

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.It is the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz in January 1945.It was actually a system — a network, if you will — of camps in parts of Poland. It was the largest of the German concentration camps and arguably the most notorious.The Nazis, history tells us, committed all kinds of atrocities.Not every atrocity for which they were responsible was committed in every place...

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State of Obama

The 2012 presidential campaign will begin tomorrow during the State of the Union speech.It isn't being advertised that way, of course, perhaps because the politicos think most Americans, regardless of their leanings, are just burned out on politics right now. But Barack Obama will be laying out his blueprint for the next couple of years when he speaks tomorrow night — and the voters are likely to judge him on how it works out.It's a little late to be offering Obama advice on what he should say. Besides, no one ever really knows how these things...

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The Exception to the Rule

Today is January 20, the midway point of the presidential term.Barack Obama took the oath of office on this day two years ago, and two years from today, either Obama will take the oath again or his successor will take it for the first time.(Technically speaking, I suppose, it is possible that a former one–term president could be elected in 2012, but there are only two of those who are living and they are both in their 80s, which makes the election...

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It Oughta Be Obvious

So far, those of us who live in north Texas have been spared the brunt of the winter weather this year.If you don't live in this part of the country, your reaction may be to shrug your shoulders at that little tidbit of news. Most people seem to think that Texas is a hot, sweltering place all year round.Well, it is a hot, sweltering place for much of the year. But it can get cold here in the winter. Last year, we set a local record for the most snowfalls in a single winter season.Nothing even remotely like that has happened so far this year. Sure,...

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Sargent Shriver Dies

Sargent Shriver died today, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention it.When I think of Sarge Shriver, I remember the summer of 1972, when Tom Eagleton was forced from the Democratic ticket because he had been treated for depression.I wasn't very old that summer, and many of the details were really over my head. But I remember how star–crossed George McGovern's presidential campaign seemed. We later learned that much of that was the work of Richard...

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Thoughts on King's Day

"If only we would see and respect our shared humanity, so much of what ails America could be healed."That was the essence of the message of Martin Luther King Jr. It was the underlying theme of President Obama's speech last week in Tucson."It was, as well, the heart of a lovely letter first lady Michelle Obama wrote last week to the parents of America's children about the tragedy in Tucson."If only we would acknowledge our shared humanity, our common...

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Mourning in America

"We leave people alone in America, to a fault. We walk past rambling, dazed homeless people every day, if we live in big cities, avoiding their gaze rather than seeking to intervene. And even when we try to stop people whose behavior seems to pose a danger to themselves or others, it's hard to do anything about it, as Loughner's professors at Pima Community College discovered."Look at the moon–faced grin of the alleged shooter as he appeared in court...

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The Mourner in Chief

With Barack Obama, what you see isn't always what you get.That's the thought that went through my mind as the president neared the end of his speech at tonight's memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shooting on Saturday.His performance reinforced the impression I have long had of him. This guy knows how to give a speech. Sometimes I think that's the kind of thing someone is born with. You can't teach it.You can trust me on that, by the way. I took public speaking courses when I was younger, but, despite my best efforts, I don't think...

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No Easy Answers

It is only natural, I guess, that a lot of people — whether they are qualified to do so — are trying to pinpoint a reason for Saturday's shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a judge and more than a dozen other people in Tucson, Ariz.Because the congresswoman is a Democrat — and because her assailant apparently holds some extremist views — it is being assumed by many on the left that this is the inevitable product of the rhetoric of Sarah Palin and...

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Words Fail Me

I guess it is the kind of thing that you never get used to — and maybe it's a healthy sign that I am not.I mean, I really would have expected someone like myself, someone who grew up with this kind of thing happening a lot more frequently in this country than it does today, to be better prepared for it than I was.Even so, I was shocked when I heard today that Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head, the target of an apparently crazed...

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Word Games

When you've been out of work for awhile, you really start to notice the word games that politicians play with job numbers.Take today's jobs report, for example. It kind of reminded me of the reaction in June 2009 to the news that fewer jobs had been lost in the previous month than expected. The losses were still in double digits and the unemployment rate climbed to 9.4% when economists had predicted it would go up to 9.2%.But the focus was on the fact that the pace of job losses was slowing. Things were getting better, we were told. Folks in the...

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Experience Is Good

More than two years ago, as Barack Obama was preparing to become president, there was, shall we say, a certain amount of resistance to the idea of bringing people with Washington experience into the incoming administration.At the time, I wrote that that was absurd. "In order to get people with experience in a Democratic administration that was not led by Bill Clinton," I wrote, "Obama would need to dip into the pool of veterans from the Carter administration. They left office almost 28 years ago."Now, as Obama nears the midpoint of his term in...

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The New World Order

Well, it isn't a new world order, I guess. More like a new American order.But it figures to affect what happens in next year's presidential race.And that is as worldly as most presidential aspirants probably care to be — at least until they can rightfully claim president–elect as their title.But that new world order — if it is to come — is still in the future. I'm thinking about something much more immediate.The new order of which I speak is the new Congress, in which Republicans control the House (by a pretty significant margin, too) and Democrats...

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