No matter what your politics. Former President Bill Clinton was followed by Chris Rock on David Letterman’s show last night. [Here's the link to my personal blog.]

The death of a young person is a tragedy that freezes their image in time and subjects it to romantic embellishments. The deceased becomes a template. On the morning of November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy had served as President of the United States for two years and ten months. He was poised to be renominated by his party in 1964 and would have likely defeated the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, though not by the massive proportions that Kennedy’s successor...

My pension monies are split between five different funds, each comprising 20% of the total portfolio. On Tuesday night, I checked how the funds were going and found that I had lost a total of $19,000 since the start of the third quarter. When I logged back on today, I learned that because of the market’s response to the bailout initiative announced by Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, my pension had gained $6000 and I’m “only” down $13,000…for the quarter. At this rate,...

History repeated itself recently when John McCain suggested that his running mate, Sarah Palin, is an experienced hand when it comes to national security issues because the state she serves as governor, Alaska, is close to Russia and because she commands the state’s National Guard. It was reminiscent of a flashpoint in the 1992 presidential election. That year, attempting to respond to charges that he wasn’t prepared to lead the United States on national security, Bill Clinton pointed...

[This is a piece I just submitted to The Logan Daily News, the local paper in the community I serve as pastor. It's part of a continuing series to which local clergy are invited to contribute. It is overtly Christian, not, I hope, as a means of pushing my faith down people's throats, but to (a) let non-Christians see that many--I believe most--Christians do not believe that the Church should be a political institution and (b) assure other Christians, forced day after day to watch as some Christian...

It was one of the most memorable lines in Governor Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at last week’s Republican National Convention. Responding to accusations that her service as mayor of an Anchorage suburb doesn’t commend her for vice president, Palin referred to Senator Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” The crowd roared. But is it fair to...

David: Let me preface what I’m about to say by telling you that I am a fan. Your knowledge of public issues is encyclopedic and your insights into the major challenges facing the United States today are fascinating. Although partisan Republicans and Democrats may look askance at you for having served President Clinton after having served Presidents Reagan and Bush 1, I’ve always admired your willingness to use your considerable talents in service to country irrespective of an individual...

US News and World Report writer Paul Bedard quotes Baptist minister Richard Land as saying that Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee’s didn’t become Senator John McCain’s running mate, in part, because Huckabee is an ordained minister. Writes Bedard: With the mounting complications over John McCain‘s pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate, some conservatives have been asking why the expected Republican nominee didn’t choose former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who won eight...

The Columbus Dispatcharticle on John McCain’s announcement yesterday that he had selected Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his vice presidential running mate contained this about the reaction of a campaign spokesperson for the Democratic presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama: The Obama campaign criticized Palin as too conservative on issues such as abortion and argued that she would not be fit to assume the presidency. Obama spokesman Bill Burton said that McCain was willing to put “the...

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been on my radar screen since she won election in 2006. So, while her selection by Senator John McCain to be his running mate surprised me, I think it was also an inspired choice. Why? The woman appears to have guts and integrity, both rare assets in Alaska’s oil-saturated politics of corruption. If you watched a recent profile of Alaskan politics on ’60 Minutes,’ you know that Palin has stood out for several years as a pol who not only pushes for...

On the day after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, I wrote a piece in which I asserted that Senator Hillary Clinton’s post-election speech indicated that she knew her quest for the presidency was over for 2008. Near the end, I said: …for the first time in my recollection, Senator Clinton allowed for the possibility of defeat and, in a possible effort to assuage the concerns of superdelegates fearful of the bitterness aroused by the contest between Clinton and Obama, spoke more...

What was the most interesting speech of the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver? Well, the short, heroic address of Senator Edward M. Kennedy was certainly the most emotional, eliciting an enthusiastic response from the crowd in the hall. Michelle Obama, wife of the presumptive nominee, hit all the buttons she needed to hit in what has become a tiresome convention tradition in recent years: the spouse’s speech. But to me, the most interesting of the evening’s addresses...

Kenneth Anderson, professor at the Washington Law School of American University, knows a thing or two about Russia and Georgia. He makes four key points in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia for current and potential US foreign policy makers: First, I share unreservedly the belief that Russia is deliberately undertaking a dangerous, threatening, imperial expansion in the “near abroad” and that it must be opposed and rolled back… Second, NATO is going to undergo a reshaping in two...

According to Foreign Policy‘s Blake Hounshell over at FP Passport. A sampling: …Biden doesn’t bat 100 percent. He went ahead and supported the Iraq war despite warning that President Bush was underestimating the risks (he now says he didn’t realize Bush would be so incompetent and that he thought Saddam could be deposed by other means). He called the surge “a tragic mistake” in February 2007 while John McCain has backing it wholeheartedly. But he has gotten lots...

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...