It looks like I’m not the only one. The way I see it, on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton cannot win the nomination and is unelectable…too many negatives…and Barack Obama has been rendered equally toxic by the Jeremiah Wright debacle. But those uncommitted superdelegates just might save the day for Dems, after all. Here’s how: The superdelegates could remain uncommitted through the first ballot of the convention. Neither Obama or Clinton would then have enough votes to...

I’ve written before about my long-ago acquaintance with Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s junior US Senator. Brown was a very young member of the Ohio House of Representatives when, in 1979, I spent a year as Supervisor of Pages. He was always personable and without pretense, in spite of having won election to the House at a very young age and his obvious intelligence, two things that could have made one so young a bit full of himself. Yesterday, after not running into Brown in twenty-eight years,...

The Columbus Dispatch is today reporting on John Kasich’s preparations for a 2010 for the GOP nomination in the Ohio gubernatorial race. No surprises there. If Kasich, former Senator Mike DeWine, and former Congressman (and Bush functionary) Rob Portman all seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010, it will be an interesting, well-funded race. At this point, one can legitimately wonder whether it’ll be a race worth making. Democratic governor Ted Strickland enjoys high approval...

The speaker was British actor Paul Scofield, who died today. He posed the question in response to queries as to why he didn’t want to be knighted, gaining the privilege of being called, “Sir.” In spite of being in a very public profession, Scofield felt no need to be a public personality, a celebrity. Scofield’s decision for ordinariness, in spite of his extraordinary talent, is a bit damning, however unintentionally, of those marginally talented celebrities with which the...

Nearly twenty years ago, then-Ohio Governor Dick Celeste went to Iowa, exploring the possibility of making a run for the Democratic presidential nomination. One of Celeste’s hosts while there was a transplanted Ohioan, a Methodist pastor. During that stay, a wire reporter asked Celeste about reports that he’d stepped out on his wife. The pastor-host told the reporter that if he were Celeste, he’d simply say, “It’s none of your business.” I thought of that advice...

The Plain Dealer has a great obituary.

It’s been the subject of speculation for weeks. Some pundits call it “the dream team.” Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been asked about it. And Bill Clinton pushed one version of it while stumping for his wife this week. So, how likely is it that once one of them has the Democratic nomination for president, that Obama or Clinton will ask the other to become their running mate? There is a particular sense to it. Such marriages of convenience between the numbers two main...

Logan, county seat of Hocking County, Ohio, the rural wonderland that sits about fifty-minutes southeast of Columbus, wasn’t as hard-hit as the capital city has been by the snow storm of the past twenty-four hours. But we’ve been under a Level 3 alert, meaning that only emergency vehicles could be on the roads. In Columbus, over 20-inches of snow fell. Here, we got about half that. I spoke with my dad, who lives in Columbus, little more than an hour ago, and he says that, at this point,...

We’re snowed in here in southeastern Ohio. So, after I finished working on my sermon for tomorrow, we sat down to watch Amazing Grace. Have you seen it? It’s the second time for me. It tells the story of British politician William Wilberforce and his decades-long fight for two main life goals: the end of the slave trade in Britain and the reform of society. Three days before Wilberforce died, after years of struggle and personal pain, slavery was banished from the entire British Empire....

Ohio Senator George Voinovich has long been known as a deficit hawk. Whether as Commissioner of Cuyahoga County, Mayor of Cleveland, or Governor of Ohio, Voinovich has a strong reputation for insisting that government ought to live within its means. In recent years, that’s made him out-of-step with Republicans in Congress and the White House who have departed from traditional conservative Republican principles to engage in “drunken sailor” spending (to borrow a phrase from a Republican...

I wrote here last night about my perception that John McCain’s campaign as the presidential nominee of the Republican party was starting off on the wrong foot. Emblematic of that to me was McCain’s decision to tear to Washington to receive a personal endorsement from George W. Bush today. Mind you, I would expect nothing other than the sitting Republican president to

Throughout this presidential campaign, two words have been almost universally left unsaid by the Republican candidates for president. Two words have been avoided as though they were poison. What are those two words? George Bush. Even Mitt Romney, who on occasion stoutly defended the President when trying to woo Bush voters, was loathe to defend Mr. Bush when asked about the current president’s record during the Republicans’ most recent debate at the Reagan presidential library. The reason...

and other stuff, as discussed when Rick Moore interviewed me on his Internet radio show on Monday night. Go here to listen to this scintillating radio. Here are links to posts mentioned during the interview: Tears in New Hampshire Fearless Predictions How Christians Might Think About the 2008 Presidential Election As Ohio Goes See here and here on public school funding

Here in Logan, Ohio, where I’ve served as pastor of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church for four months, concerns about the economy run high. That’s because this town of 6000, nestled in the beautiful Hocking Hills and county seat Hocking County, has been hard hit by a number of plant closings over the past decade. People who once worked decent-paying factory jobs are, in many cases, unemployed or underemployed. A small contingent of the county’s population are transplants or college-educated...

Conservative blogger Rick Moore has asked me to appear on his Internet radio show, Holy Coast on the Air this coming Monday night. I’ll be discussing the upcoming Ohio primary with him, as well as my 2007 blog series on how Christians might think about the 2008 presidential election. (Note: I don’t believe that God is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative.) The whole thing happens at 10:00pm Eastern, 7:00pm Pacific. If you go to the link, here, you’ll be able to...

While tonight’s debate between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be an academic exercise, one that, besides, promises only a recitation of their by-now canned set-pieces in response to equally predictable questions, it would be helpful if it offered voters more than this. Here are twenty-three questions I’d like to be asked and answered tonight: 1. Senator Obama, you were opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning. What basic principles should inform Presidents and Congresses...

Next Tuesday will probably bring an end to Senator Hillary Clinton’s drive for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Barack Obama currently enjoys a double-digit lead over his opponent in Texas, the state where Clinton cut her political eye teeth, and is gaining on her here in my home state of Ohio, long thought by the Clinton camp to be a likely firewall for her candidacy. But there will be no Clinton firewalls. The end I thought inevitable on the day after the Iowa caucuses—an Obama...

[HT: Instapundit] See our earlier and longer debate analysis and roundup HERE.

Whoever the Democrats nominate for president this year–Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the initial excitement going into the fall campaign will be attached to that party’s candidate. That’s because, as everybody knows, either nomination will be historic, first woman nominated by a major party or first African-American. John McCain, straight-talking war hero though he is, will be hard-pressed to negate the Wow Factor the Dems will have going for them. And, as we have seen from the...

Barack Obama and John McCain were the winners of their respective parties’ presidential primaries in Wisconsin today. Obama appears ready to win the Democratic caucuses in Hawaii and McCain in the Republican caucuses in Washington, each candidate winning the sole contests happening in their respective party. The math is inexorable. Mike Huckabee cannot defeat McCain for the Republican nomination. And only a collective decision on the part of the Democrats’ superdelegates to ignore the...