My TMV colleague, Tony Campbell, says that Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate is the death knell of the Democrats’ once-vaunted chances of taking the White House. Tony writes: If I were a Democrat, I would be really worried about this choice for two reasons: 1. Biden probably will not give up his bid to be re-elected to the United States Senate. The question, of course, is how committed are you to being the Vice-President if you are hedging your bets. 2. The Republicans...

One of the most important forces in Russian national history and one of the major keys to understanding Russia has been the country’s enormous collective inferiority complex relative to the West. It explains why, three hundred years ago, with Russia’s elite bent on mimicking Europe and being more engaged in the life of the West, Peter the Great moved his capital to Saint Petersburg. It also helps to explain some of the motivation behind the development of the Soviet “evil empire”...

…but former Cleveland Mayor Mike White says that he and the Congresswoman tragically felled by a brain aneurysm earlier this week remained friends. WKYC talked with White on his alpaca farm: EDITOR’s NOTE: Due to a technical problem we had to remove this video. It will be put back at a later date and this post will be moved up to the top of TMV when this is corrected. I had an acquaintance with White back when we were students at Ohio State, something I talk about here. Even as a twenty-one...

[These are just my thoughts. Please don't think that because I'm a pastor, I think that they're imbued with the truth of God. I'm just me and I could be wrong.] Columnist Trudy Rubin says that she’s gotten a lot of flak for her support of the US government’s condemnation of the Russian attack on neighboring Georgia. The objections have, she says, fallen into three main categories: Because of the US invasion of Iraq, the US has lost any moral authority in condemning Russia Because the...

Speculation that Senator Joe Biden of Delaware will be Senator Barack Obama’s choice for vice presidential running mate is heating up. For several reasons, Biden is a sensible choice. He fills several of the bottom-line needs Obama has from his number two. Maybe. First, Biden is a mature, experienced office holder. He can play Lyndon Johnson to Obama’s JFK. Second, Biden may be seen by many general election voters, by virtue of his long service on and chairmanship of the Senate Foreign...

Ben Stein, droll Renaissance man, said in a recent piece in the New York Times that he doesn’t like paying taxes. But the lawyer, actor, and one-time speech writer for two presidents (Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford) is unimpressed with the supply side economics of the two most recent two-term GOP presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. He’s also unimpressed that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain intends to continue supply side policies if elected president in November, stating...

Two Cuyahoga County mayors have been suspended from the Democratic Party executive committee there because they’ve joined other mayors in endorsing a Republican candidate for county commissioner. Is that right? The first two US presidents–George Washington and John Adams–fiercely resisted and condemned party spirit, something they saw as contrary to patriotism, loyalty to country. Because he was, as later eulogized, “first in…the hearts of his countrymen,” Washington...

There are different sorts of boldness in politics, as in life. Boldness can describe acts of folly. Selecting Senator Clinton as his vice presidential running mate would represent that kind of boldness on Senator Barack Obama’s part, for example. There are so many voters who regard Clinton negatively and many of the first-time voters who have been attracted to Obama would be so turned off, perceiving Clinton to represent “the politics of the past” they reject, that her appearance...

Barack Obama may become the next President. He may even be qualified for the job. I don’t do endorsements, as regular readers of my blogging will know. But the Obamamessiah stuff, well-documented here, is outrageous. He’s a politician, folks, not some special otherworldly life form. I don’t use the term “politician” disdainfully, either. I’m one who believes that politics can be and often is an honorable calling, a calling pursued as are all other callings by finite,...

John McCain’s abrupt decision to scrub events on Wednesday and Thursday and instead, fly to Columbus, has Taegan Goddard speculating that the presumptive GOP nominee is going to try upstaging Barack Obama’s Berlin speech to announce that an Ohioan will be his running mate. Goddard speculates that it could be Rob Portman or John Kasich. If McCain is coming to Columbus to announce a Veep, it’s likelier that the person will be John Kasich. Portman is from the Cincinnati area and, believe...

Ann Althouse asks: Does he think we won’t notice? That’s a good question, not only on this issue, but on a whole host of others where the Illinois senator appears to be tuning up for the fall campaign. How much of this pandering to the hard ideological bases of their parties do Obama or McCain think that they need to do at this point? Someone needs to take both of the presumptive nominees and point out that they each give cover to the other. In the end, 95% or more of the hard core base...

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer gleefully notes that Barack Obama is sporting a US flag lapel pin these days, just in time to appeal to more conservative voters in the general election. A Facebook friend, Amy Goldman, an embittered Hillary Clinton supporter who now is supporting John McCain, pointed earlier today to Krauthammer’s column on the subject and said simply, “the faces of obama. NO DEAL,” presumably meaning that Obama’s seeming lapel pin hypocrisy is one...

What if a thug government held an election and almost nobody voted? That appears to be what’s happening today in Zimbabwe. Violent intimidation by strongman president Robert Mugabe toward the supporters of Morgan Tsvangirai caused the insurgent candidate to withdraw from today’s runoff election several days ago. Besides wanting to protect his supporters from increasing violence, Tsvangirai’s motivation appeared to be force the international community, particularly leaders of other...

George Carlin, the undeniably clever comedian who, a decade into a career that was comprised of typical Borscht Belt schtick, took his comedy in a self-consciously countercultural direction, has died. It was probably inevitable that the decade that triggered Carlin’s comedic transformation would inspire some satirizing court jesters to express the antiestablishment feelings of millions toward the war in Vietnam, the struggle for civil rights, White House lies, and the everyday hypocrisies of...

With the probable continuation and escalation of violence and bloodshed in his country looming in the days ahead, it’s impossible to fault opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for withdrawing from the runoff election for president in Zimbabwe. The withdrawal is certainly not because, as a Mugabe henchman said, Tsvangarai is “chicken.” He has soldiered on in spite of numerous incarcerations and beatings. Rather, his withdrawal confirms the sad state of affairs in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s...

In the summer of 1968, at the Republican National Convention in Miami, having been governor of California, the only elected office he’d ever held, since January, 1967, Ronald Reagan announced that he was a candidate for his party’s presidential nomination. Although Richard Nixon won the nomination and the election, Reagan, who hadn’t entered a single one of the year’s thirteen primaries, performed respectably. What amazed me then and amazes me now is that Reagan, in spite...

First, there was the mountain. Hillary Clinton entered the race for the Democratic presidential nomination sixteen months ago with higher negative ratings and lower approval ratings than any major candidate in history. While hardcore Democrats liked the former First Lady, other Americans were more wary. Or even hostile. They were represented to me by the legion of progressive women anxious to vote for a Democratic nominee this year, who have told me, “I will never vote for Hillary Clinton....

Something of a media firestorm has greeted Senator Hillary Clinton mentioning the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy following his June, 1968 victory in the California primary. I, for one, don’t believe that Clinton meant to draw an analogy between Senator Barrack Obama and Bobby Kennedy, insinuating that because the Illinois senator evokes the same sort of passion as Kennedy, he may be an assassin’s target, thereby presumably giving the New York senator reason for staying in the race...

Senator Hillary Clinton has a point as it relates to the Michigan and Florida delegate-seating controversy. In fact, she has several points. Among them… Every vote should count. Michigan and Florida should be represented at the Democratic National Convention. Delegates ought to be seated by a formula reflective of the results in their states. These points reflect principles of the “Mom and apple pie” variety, ones to which most Americans would readily assent. If the senator were...

A politician lacking “vision” can be vulnerable. When Senator Ted Kennedy could give no succinct description of where he intended to lead the country if he were elected president, his 1980 bid to wrest the Democratic nomination from incumbent President Jimmy Carter was doomed. And George H.W. Bush, widely acknowledged as better prepared to be president than most previous chief executives was also seen as lacking in vision, even by his friends. As he prepared to run in 1988, hoping to...

Should Barack Obama choose Hillary Clinton to be his running mate? That’s no doubt a question the Obama campaign is asking right now. And clearly, the Clinton campaign wants the New York senator to be asked to serve as Obama’s veep. That’s part of why Clinton is continuing her campaign and why today she’s pressing fat cats and rainmakers for more money for pressing on. Even if the Clinton campaign can convince the Democratic National Committee to change the rules of the nomination...

Senator Hillary Clinton needed a decisive win in Indiana and a close run in North Carolina yesterday. That outcome wouldn’t have boosted her mathematical chances at the Democratic nomination for president. She still wouldn’t have been in a position to overtake Senator Barack Obama’s elected delegate lead prior to the Democratic convention. But such results would have bolstered the Clinton argument that superdelegates ought to ignore the verdict of voters in the preceding primary...

Last night, I met with a group of twenty adults from Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, the congregation I serve as pastor. We were discussing some of the common reasons people give for not associating with a local church. One of these objections was, “I once had a bad experience with a pastor (or a congregation).” I asked the class members to tell me how they might respond if a friend said this to them. Several answered and the gist of their responses was simple: “I...

Regular gas was $3.55 a gallon here in southeastern Ohio yesterday. Many people I know are curbing their summer travel plans. They’re even doing more planning when it comes to everyday errands, combining them so as not to waste gas. This, of course, as average fuel prices climb, is happening across the country and the three leading presidential candidates have noticed. They’ve also noticed that the big oil companies are reporting record profits. First, Senator John McCain and now, Senator...

Howard Kurtz writes: Barack Obama needed this like he needed a root canal. Just when the Jeremiah Wright furor seemed to be dying down, the ex-pastor is back and suddenly inescapable. On the tube with Bill Moyers. Speaking to the NAACP. Showing up Monday at the National Press Club. There it was yesterday, that endless loop of Wright shouting “God damn America” over and over. Yet another opportunity to talk about how he thinks the US of KKK-A created the AIDS virus to kill blacks. This...