Sometimes a Kiss is Not Just a Kiss

"You must remember this,A kiss is still a kiss,A sigh is just a sigh,The fundamental things apply As time goes by."Herman Hupfeld"As Time Goes By"The royal newlyweds are off on their honeymoon today, and, to be perfectly honest, I'll be just fine if I don't see or hear anything more about this royal wedding for awhile.But I realize that some people are really into this.It does appear to have drawn a higher audience (in England, at least) than Charles...

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Pain at the Pump

Economists believe the recovery slowed as gas prices jumped in the first quarter of the year, writes Timothy Horman for Bloomberg.com.I'm no economist, but I could have told you that. I've seen it before. The most extreme example, I suppose, was about three years ago, which was the last time gas prices were this high.Barack Obama, as focused as he is these days on his re–election campaign, is clearly influenced by what is happening at the pump. His predecessor's approval numbers in his final year in office were never impressive, but they were at...

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The Royal Wedding

Tomorrow, England's Prince William will marry his fiancee, Kate Middleton.The wedding will take place in Westminster Abbey, the same place where his grandparents (Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip) exchanged vows in 1947.There is nothing special to be taken from that observation, I suppose. Westminster Abbey has been the traditional site for coronations, funerals and weddings for centuries, but Prince William's wedding will be the first royal wedding...

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Stormy Monday

Perhaps I am too quick to see the ironies in things. Maybe that is a hazard when one has been a journalist and a student of history most of his life.Nevertheless, I do find it ironic that, two weeks ago, I wrote about my memories of the abduction, rape and murder of a sixth–grade girl in my home county 35 years ago — and, this week, the same small Arkansas town in which she lived was devastated by a tornado.At the latest count, there were four people dead in that small town — Vilonia. To me, that is staggering.Four fatalities in a given storm is...

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Obama Shrugged

"Prosperity is just around the corner."Herbert Hoover31st president of the United StatesSunny dispositions go a long way for a president, but they can't mask reality.It probably says a lot more than most Americans would care to know (or admit) about just how shallow many of them really are, but whoever said it first probably was on to something when he observed that George W. Bush was the kind of guy with whom more folks would like to share a beer...

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Presidential Mistakes

"There are only two mistakes one can make on the road to truth: not going all the way and not starting."BuddhaI thought I was the only one who noticed.Well, no, not really. I mean, I know there are always people out there who spend most, if not all, of their time waiting for the president — whoever he may be — to make a misstep.And some presidents make it all too easy.Seven years ago this month, in a nationally televised press conference, George...

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Those Prescient Polls

Public opinion polls aren't perfect. They never have been.They are, as the saying goes, works in progress. Polling organizations are constantly tinkering, making adjustments in how they do their work.When I was in college, I studied opinion polling, and one of the things we studied was the methodology being used by the earliest pollsters. In the dark days of the Depression, they did their polling based on automobile registration and residential telephone service records. At that time, many people owned neither — and thus were ignored by the pollsters.But...

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Trumping the Presidency

I've seen this before.Nearly 20 years ago, the economy was in a bad way. Not as bad as it is now, but still bad by contemporary standards, and many Americans were desperate for a president who could restore economic equilibrium.I don't know if many of the people who voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988 did so because they believed he could handle an economic downturn. In fact, my memory of the 1988 campaign is that the economy really wasn't discussed...

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Fifty Years After the Bay of Pigs

It was 50 years ago today that the ill–fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was launched.A bunch of Cuban exiles, who had been trained by the CIA, attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro in a plan that had been hatched in the last year of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency. In the spring and summer of 1960, while John F. Kennedy was wrapping up the Democratic presidential nomination and Richard Nixon was doing the same on the Republican side, the CIA recruited...

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Candor in Politics

Walter Mondale knows something about being candid with voters.For one thing, he knows it can backfire on you. In a piece in the Washington Post, Mondale recalled that, in his acceptance speech at the 1984 Democratic convention, "I told the truth" when he promised to raise taxes.He was ridiculed for that promise. Critics did, as Mondale writes, describe it as "exemplifying the folly of proposing tax hikes during an election" and not without justification, either. Ronald Reagan won the election, carrying every state except Mondale's home state of...

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Independents' Day

Barack Obama's job approval has matched his presidential low, according to Gallup's three–day tracking poll.As Michael Memoli and Peter Nicholas write in the Los Angeles Times, that could be attributed to "gas prices, the budget debate, or simply the usual ups and downs of public opinion polling."And it is true that some presidents receive something of a "bounce" in popularity after their parties experience a "shellacking" in the midterm elections. It is usually understood that the recipient of such a bounce will come back to earth.That bounce...

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The Real Domino Theory

When I was growing up, there was a lot of talk about the "domino theory."It was the justification that was most frequently given when someone wanted to defend American involvement in Vietnam.The belief was that, if one nation in that part of the world fell to communism, the others would follow in rapid succession, the same as what happens when one domino falls into another domino, which falls into the next domino, which falls into the next one ...And so on and so on.The domino theory is no longer used to justify American military activity. But,...

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The Death of Innocence

Today is an odd day for me, a day that brings back a mixture of memories.It was on this day 35 years ago that a sixth–grade girl from a small town in my home county vanished in broad daylight. Her body was found a few days later. She had been raped, murdered and left in a stock pond.Her name was Dana Mize. Few of the people I knew had any idea who she was — until she was abducted. And, initially, that was newsworthy because her father was a candidate for county office in the upcoming primary.I never met her. But I knew people who knew her fairly...

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The Sesquicentennial of the Civil War

It was 150 years ago today that the Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter.In hindsight, it was probably inevitable that a civil war would occur. There were simply too many issues that had to be resolved — and they had to be resolved before the young nation could begin its maturation process. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in November 1860 led to South Carolina's decision to secede on Christmas Eve, and half a dozen Southern...

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The Budget Deal

I really have to believe that news of the budget compromise that was reached late last night — and, presumably, prevented a government shutdown — is being welcomed enthusiastically by the members of the National Park Service.This would have been an astonishingly poor time for such an impasse to occur because it would have kept the employees of the National Park Service from observing an important date.Tuesday will be the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Fort Sumer, S.C. — the event that the history books tell us was the first clash of the Civil...

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Political Correctness

"Now the objections center on the language of another time, the context of another era, because the values of today are uncomfortable with the values of yesterday. Well, that isn't enough for me."Birth of a NotionJan. 7, 2011Sometimes I get really frustrated with political correctness.I mean, I understand the objective — which is to, ultimately, rid the culture and the language of things that are offensive to demographic groups that have faced discrimination...

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