In two days, President-elect Barack Obama is scheduled to participate in a public event in downtown Baltimore as part of his journey by train to Washington, D.C. and the Inaugural festivities beginning this Sunday. Ten months ago, before the Potomac Primaries (MD, VA, and DC), the political landscape of the Democratic Party of Maryland was split between Senators Clinton and Obama. One of the first supporters for Obama was Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. Obama went on to win Maryland and that sweep...

No one assumes that the dinner between President-elect Barack Obama and conservative columnists was a Kumbaya moment where they all held hands and swayed joyfully around the dinner table, but the dinner once again showed Obama in a familiar role, a leader who is going to try to bridge the partisan divide on issues where he and his opponents can find common ground. Obama, with the choice of evangelical pastor Rick Warren to give the prayer at his inaugural and his decision to forward a fiscal recovery...

My official countdown to the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency begins today. The 44th President definitely has his hands full. He has to figure how to spend the $350 Billion dollars on a bailout package that will revive our stagnate economy, close Gitmo quickly while securing the several hundred detainees in a manner that won’t cause future political or national security problems, AND balance the expectations of change that he has initiated with the practical realities of governing...

Revealing, Introspective, Gracious. Three attributes that are not usually attached to President George W. Bush were on display this morning at his final press conference. Bush showed a humble side of himself when talking about the Presidency, his love of the job, and sharing with the White House press corps the “disappointments” that he endured during his eight years at the helm of the country. There are three moments that resonated with me: 1) Bush, at one point, was asked by a Fox...

Change is coming! Change is coming! Change is the mantra that has been communicated to us over the last year or so during Barack Obama’s improbable rise to become President-elect. The question to ask, of course, is a play on those words – “Is change really coming?” Over the past five weeks, Obama has put together a team that is very close to being termed as “Clinton-lite” – all of the taste of the Clinton Administration but none of the Bill. All I need...

You knew the entire transition period couldn’t go smoothly for President-elect Obama, but over the past couple of days, the transition has gone from a placid lake to riding high seas on the North Atlantic. First, Bill Richardson turned down his appointment to be Commerce Secretary because of possible ethics violations concerning campaign funds given to him while he was Governor of New Mexico. As Commerce Secretary, Richardson would have been one of the crucial implementers of any economic...

Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently read my column of a few days ago that ended by imploring him to stop whining and just seat Roland Burris and Caroline Kennedy. The upside is having two junior members that the leadership can control; the downside is very, very problematic for two constituencies of the Democratic Party who may take the rejection(s) as a personal insult – African Americans and Women. In New York State, the gender connection is obvious; however, the Barack Obama...

Aren’t Roland Burris and Caroline Kennedy vying for the same type of job? How come the Democratic Party seems ready to embrace one and is ready to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at the other one? The Burris / Kennedy Senate picks (or soon to be picked) is an example of one of the problems of the political class: they like the rules just fine…if it works for people they want to help. Roland Burris has done nothing improper, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, Harry Reid and the...

Greetings! Over the weekend, I will put together a “best of” and “worst of” list of the presidential campaign season, but today, as the year comes to an end, I want to throw out three items to everyone. Resolution #1: I will write a post three times a week and most of these will be germane to the mission of TMV. Of course, from time to time, you readers may not agree with or even read my columns, but I am making a resolution to give you my thoughts on the 1st 100 days of...

First of all, let me apologize in advance for any misapplication of constitutional law that I may make over the next few paragraphs. I am not a constitutional scholar and cannot pretend to be one, however, I am somewhat familiar with the document… at least familiar enough to write a blog entry. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stated that Blagojevich’s pick of Roland Burris “unacceptable” and that Burris would not be seated by the Democratic caucus. While that may...

A bit about my history with the outgoing Bush Administration: I volunteered, worked as a paid advance staffer, and served in two transition teams for President George W. Bush from June of 1999 through the summer of 2002. I worked for him because I believed in his message of “Compassionate Conservatism” and I still think that he was the best candidate to become President of the United States in 2000. In 2002, I resigned from my presidential appointment because of White House’s...

There are days that I want to turn in my Republican voter registration card. Any thinking person with half a gram of decency understands that Chip Saltsman’s parody entitled “Barack the Magic Negro” is bad form, however, there is another problem with the song… it does not make any sense politically. Wasn’t it just last month that we Republicans got our heads handed to us? It wasn’t Negroes (magic or otherwise) that gave us our walking papers. An overwhelming...

What a piece of breaking news from The USA Today! President-elect Barack Obama is the most admired person selected by 1/3 of 1,008 American adults. This is about as earth shattering as finding out that there is no Santa Claus and the “Magic Bullet” really did not cause the death of President John F. Kennedy. The amazing stat is that only 32% of Americans admire Obama. Obama won 365 electoral votes and won states that have been traditionally Republican including Colorado and Virginia....

Merry Christmas to everyone! I am about ready to head to my parents for the annual feeding frenzy and gift exchange, but before I venture out in the heatwave (50 degrees in Baltimore), I wanted to share one Christmas wish with our readers. Faith and religion, are two of the most segregated items in our society. I can not count the number of denominations that exist within Christianity alone; much less attempt to list the non-Christian religions throughout the world. This day, above all others,...

In between meaningful football games yesterday, I saw clips of Vice President Cheney with Chris Wallace and read some comments on the interview. Frequent readers of my blog understands that I am far from a Bush / Cheney apologist. In fact, I am pretty close to a non-entity in conservative Republican circles because of my early public support for Obama last January. However, in this case, I have to agree with the Vice President (almost) in his opinion that the Congress is equally culpable in both...

From the “Are You Kidding Me File?” The left is taking offense that the appointment of Caroline Kennedy is being connected to the failed experiment of the Sarah Palin candidacy. To my friends on the left, I have to say… it really hurts when you are called out on the inexperienced candidacy card. Most of my readers know that I never swallowed the Hillary had more experience than Obama mantra because she was the First Lady of Arkansas and during Bill’s presidency. However,...

I like the choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama’s inauguration ceremony. Obama continues to impress me with the way he is navigating uncharted territory. First, he announces he will be sworn into office using his full middle name. Now, he taps an evangelical preacher, who asked him tough questions at Saddleback Church to give the invocation. In one stroke, Obama has given notice to both ends of the ideological spectrum; he is not going to pander to the anti-church left and...

As I read the Chicago Tribune article about possible fallout on Obama from the Blagojevich saga, I entered into dream-like state of presidential administration’s of the past. The question of the day is… How would Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman deal with this crisis? Haldeman, for the history challenged, was one of the key players in the Nixon White House. Haldeman eventually resigned and was not pardoned by his former boss. At this point, it seems that Emanuel is not connected...

It seems that the honeymoon period of President-elect Barack Obama is over. As I previously posted, Obama’s biggest critics are not going to come from conservatives but from within the liberal base of his own party. Simply put, as a Republican I was comfortable supporting him because I saw a pragmatic, capable leader instead of a candidate that was driven by progressive ideology. For those of you who missed it, the clue was Obama’s praise of the foreign policy decisions of Ronald...

I wrote the post below several months ago (July) and now it seems that it may be relevant again because of a piece today in The New York Times. If Obama really wants to give a major foreign policy speech in the first 100 days, the best location to do so in my opinion is Mecca. It is not the political divide that is the source of anxiety between the west and the Middle East, it is the cultural and theological differences of western secularized Christianity and Islam. Obama has the ability to reach...

President-elect Barack Obama may be the “biggest celebrity in the world” but even he still gets hung up on when he makes phone calls. Of course, you have probably read that Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) hung up on Obama, not one, but twice yesterday. We have already seen Obama’s infamous bowling (Johnstown, PA) and dancing (The Ellen Show) skills, perhaps the President-elect needs to sharpen his comedic chops. If delivering one-liners can help Obama connect...

We have known for weeks that President-elect Obama was going to offer the Secretary of State position to Senator Hillary Clinton. In the official announcement today, Obama has laid those rumors to rest, but has intensified another round of questioning; why would Obama offer this prime post to his formal rival? As I pondered this question, my thoughts became centered on “The Prince” by Niccolo Machiavelli, not on the overused phraseology of “the end justifies the means” but...

Congratulations, President-Elect Obama. As one of the early Republicans to come out for you in the media (Feb 2008), I want to say that I am glad that you won the election and so far, with your economic and national security picks, you are proving yourself to be the centrist, pragmatic leader I thought you would become in nominating your key advisers. Now that the positives are said, I have to remind you that I am a Republican, so you can stop sending me the nice informative e-mails that always...

THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL POST Dear Readers: I realize I may be breaking a few rules by doing this but I feel that us blog writers are as human as everyone else and that is part of the unique connection between blogger and reader. I have never professed to know anymore about politics that any other writer or reader of TMV, however, I feel free to give my take on a particular topic of interest and it doesn’t really matter if you agree or disagree on my point of view… if it starts a meaningful...

Over the last three weeks, I have come to a startling conclusion, the true believers in the Republican Party do not understand why they were showed the door on November 4th. As Roger Simon’s article points out, the power brokers of the party are still under the illusion that their message was correct, it was the fault of either the messenger (John McCain), the economy, or the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. As a voice crying out in the wilderness, whose calls to RNC-chair candidate...