The Man

Today, on the day set aside to remember the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. 80 years ago, I've been thinking about a book I read as a teenager.

It was called "The Man," and it was written by Irving Wallace in 1964. He wrote many remarkable novels — and a few works of nonfiction, like "The Book of Lists" and "The People's Almanac," as well.

"The Man" was written before the 25th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1967.

(The 25th, in case you aren't familiar with the amendments, provides the means for a president to nominate someone to be the next vice president when the duly elected vice president has died or resigned or cannot fulfill his responsibilities. It was first used when Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973 and Richard Nixon chose Gerald Ford to replace him. The following year, after Nixon himself resigned and Ford became president, Ford chose Nelson Rockefeller to be the next vice president.

(The 25th also provides a framework for the vice president to be the "acting president" when the president is unable to carry out his duties for any reason. Fans of the TV show "The West Wing" may remember that the president in that series invoked the 25th Amendment to temporarily hand over power to the speaker of the House when the president's daughter had been kidnapped. The move was hailed as patriotic in the show because it showed the president was putting the interests of the country ahead of his own and didn't want important decisions to be made by a distraught father.)

That's important to remember because, in the novel, the vice presidency is vacant; then, on a trip overseas, the president is killed in a bizarre accident and the speaker of the House (who was next in line to be president) dies during surgery. That makes the next person in line the president pro tempore of the Senate — who, in this case, happens to be a black man.

The novel then becomes an examination of the many problems faced by America's first black president. He has to deal with racists who aren't happy to have a black man in the Oval Office. At the other end of the political spectrum, he has to deal with black activists and their agenda. He is also the target of an assassination attempt, and he is impeached for firing the secretary of state — in proceedings that are remarkably similar to the ones surrounding Andrew Johnson's impeachment nearly 100 years earlier.

On a personal level, he has to contend with the racial issues faced by one of his children, who looks white and is harassed.

Eight years after the book was written, it was made into a movie. The film originally was intended to be a TV movie, but it was released theatrically instead because of its sponsors' concerns about racial backlash.

The black president was played by James Earl Jones, who may be best known for providing the voice of Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" movies, although he has had a long and distinguished career — which began with a part in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" in 1964.

Others in the cast included Georg Stanford Brown (who appeared with Jones in the TV blockbuster "Roots" a few years later), Burgess Meredith and Martin Balsam. Rod Serling (of "Twilight Zone" fame) was the screenwriter.

"The Man" was written more than 40 years ago. It was written, obviously, in a different time and in a country that was different from the one in which we live today. But Barack Obama, like James Earl Jones' character, will face many challenges in his presidency. He will not always be the popular figure he is on the eve of his presidency. And he will need everyone's support to succeed.

Last Call

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"Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next 10 words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next 10 words. How are we going to do it? Give me 10 after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while ... every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for 10 words."

Martin Sheen as President Jed Bartlet
"The West Wing" (Episode: "Game On")

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Tonight is the final presidential debate of 2008. The election itself is 20 days away.

This is the last chance for Barack Obama and John McCain to make their appeals to the electorate in this setting.

Briefly, let's review where things stand:

• The latest public opinion surveys, fueled by economic concerns, show Obama in front by varying margins.
  
  For example, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll says Obama leads, 50% to 41%. The Times also advises both candidates that whoever wins the election must "bridge partisan divides."
  
  That sounds vaguely reminiscent of Richard Nixon's 1968 post-election claim to have seen a young girl holding a sign that said "Bring us together" during the campaign — a declaration that could have been every bit as fictitious as Nixon's pledge to have a "secret plan" for ending the war in Vietnam.
  
  Of course, even if Nixon's claim was bogus, that didn't mean the sentiment wasn't valid. It is. Just as it is today.


• Since tonight's debate is scheduled to be about domestic matters, it would be nice to have in-depth discussions about issues that are important to the American people, like
  
  
  1. the economy and its myriad of sub-issues (Brent Budowsky writes, in The Hill, that "[w]e need sweeping reforms of Wall Street to protect the integrity of markets, restore the integrity of credit rating agencies and bring stability and fiduciary trust back to banking and investing.")
  
  
  2. health care,
  
  
  3. energy (the Los Angeles Times says it is "doubly disappointing" that neither candidate has a "responsible" energy plan),
  
  
  4. education,
  
  
  5. the environment
  
  
  6. and so many others.

But the Miami Herald warns against expecting depth in the debate.

An economics professor from Ole Miss (which hosted the first debate nearly three weeks ago) told the Herald, "I've been very disappointed in both of them for the lack of vision."

That, regretfully, reflects an idealistic approach to a modern political debate.

Realistically, however, the ultimate objective in a debate is to deliver at least one memorable "sound bite" — a "You're no Jack Kennedy" or "There you go again."

A mind-numbing litany of statistics isn't going to be played endlessly on the TV news.

A professor of governmental operations at New York University reminds USA Today that "[w]e tend to remember that first 100 days" of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency, when the Congress and the administration pushed through a flurry of economic legislation.

"But that transition went on for six or seven years — trying new things, trying to get the economy restarted, all sorts of maneuvering, and then finally things started to turn around. It was brutal."

No one is suggesting that it will take six or seven years to resolve this financial crisis, but no sound bite can adequately prepare voters for the experimentation they will have to endure while an answer is sought.

In a debate, viewers are looking for what Martin Sheen called, in his debate on "The West Wing," the "10-word answer." Unfortunately, the world is too complex to find solutions in 10 words.

There's not much reason that I can see for the candidates to change their approach in a single debate.

Obama believes he has the lead and, like a quarterback protecting a lead, he will be inclined to play it safe.

McCain, believing his team is trailing, may be more inclined to make bold moves to try to regain lost ground in a hurry.

I think he may be likely to repeatedly emphasize that he is not George W. Bush — without identifying the issues on which he and the president differ.

It's worth remembering that Hubert Humphrey began to make rapid gains on Nixon in the polls in 1968 when he finally began to distance himself from Lyndon Johnson.

But there is a crucial difference. As Johnson's vice president, Humphrey was intimately connected to the administration's policies. McCain, as a senator, is perceived as being more independent than that, even though he is the nominee of the president's party.

Don't expect McCain to connect the dots for you.


• However, I won't be surprised if McCain does connect the dots — and often — between Obama and Bill Ayers. The Boston Herald tells readers it is likely that McCain will bring up the subject. I agree.
  
  But that doesn't mean I believe it's a good idea — and neither, apparently, does Thomas Frank of the Wall Street Journal, who writes that the Republicans' use of the Ayers issue is their "vilest hour."
  
  (Personally, I don't think it's quite as vile as the Republicans' smear campaign against Georgia Sen. Max Cleland in 2002 — but it's close.)


• But McCain appears to disagree with his advisers, including his running mate, over whether he should bring up the subject of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to Mike Allen in Politico.
  
  To his credit, McCain has resisted inserting Wright into the dialogue, believing (correctly, in my opinion) he would be reintroducing racism.

Game on.

Race and Polls

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"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing."

Theodore Roosevelt

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We live in a culture that is obsessed with sports.

When we watch teams or individuals competing, we constantly want to know which team or individual is leading, and whether the other(s) can come from behind and win.

In a competition in which points are scored and running tallies are kept, it's easy to tell who is in front and by how much. Within the framework of the competition, it's also easy to tell when a winner can be declared.

In a political campaign, much attention is paid to gaffes on the campaign trail and the mud that inevitably is "slung" by both sides.

But there is no accurate way of keeping score, of being able to tell which candidate is really leading — or how secure that lead really is.

I mention this because we are entering the phase of the presidential campaign in which poll results are coming at us quickly. And, because that is the case, it is appropriate for Kate Zernike to wonder, in the New York Times, if there is a "Charlie Brown and Lucy" phenomenon at work here, in which Lucy (the electorate) yanks away the football before Charlie Brown (Barack Obama and the Democrats) can kick the game-winning field goal.

The sports analogy aside, Zernike wonders if there is something to the "Bradley effect," of which I have written in this blog before.

"In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome," Zernike writes.

Coincidentally, recent polls show Obama leading John McCain nationally by — on average — about six percentage points.

So it's a dead heat, right?

Actually, there's no way that I know of to tell — until the voters go to the polls on Nov. 4. But that doesn't stop political operatives from treating polls like actual vote results — and allowing them to influence their actions:

• The Miami Herald reports a lot of finger-pointing by Florida Republicans based on poll numbers — even though a McCain fundraiser says it's happening "a little bit too soon."


• McCain trails in Iowa polls by more than 10 percentage points, but the Los Angeles Times says he believes he has a chance to win that state.

National poll results can vary wildly.

• A Newsweek national poll, conducted Oct. 8-9, showed Obama with a 52-41 lead, but a Fox News poll conducted on the same days showed Obama's lead at 47-39.


• An NBC national poll, conducted Oct. 4-5, reported that Obama was in front, 49-43. CBS News conducted a poll from Oct. 3-5 that showed a narrower 47-43 lead, and CNN's poll from the same period revealed a 53-45 advantage.

The polls are reaching the same conclusion, but some are showing margins that fall within that six-point spread.

The only historical evidence we have that is relevant is in the form of previous election results. But those results really only reflect preferences by political party.

This is the first national election in which a black man is the nominee for president. And that makes the 2008 election a national lab experiment.

To use another sports analogy, Obama is trying to be the Jackie Robinson of American politics.

In 1947, no one knew if Robinson could break baseball's color barrier — until he had withstood the avalanche of racism that came his way every day of that season.

In 2008, we won't know until the votes are counted if Obama has broken the nation's political color barrier.

We know that barrier has been broken in some states — but being elected governor of Massachusetts or senator from Illinois is not the same thing as winning a national, 50-state election.

Would the nation have been spared this kind of discussion if Hillary Clinton had been the presidential nominee? I don't think so.

That certainly would have re-focused the discussion, but, as the first female presidential nominee, Clinton's general election candidacy would have provoked questions about misogyny, not racism.

We might have been spared the sports analogies, though.

There are so many variables when it comes to polling:

• Are the respondent's answers different if he/she shares the same race as the pollster?


• If Clinton had been nominated, would the responses have been affected by whether the pollster and the respondent shared the same gender?


• How are the questions phrased?


• Are the questions designed to promote specific responses (including those considered "politically correct")?

Zernike asserts that "the Bradley gap seems to be disappearing" and tries to provide some clarification by discussing polling results from the Democratic primaries.

That information can be useful, but it's not entirely practical in the current political context. Clinton and Obama are almost mirror images of each other in terms of political philosophy so the polls from their campaign for the nomination were not designed to assess support based on specific issues.

Democratic voters knew both candidates wanted to take the country in basically the same direction. Other factors (including race and gender) played key roles in the decisions those voters made.

The general election campaign matches two candidates with different political philosophies. The electorate in the general election campaign is more diverse than the electorate to which Clinton and Obama appealed in the primaries.

I'm always glad when I hear that more people are getting registered to vote. That means that, legally, they have the opportunity to participate in making important decisions.

But in the end, to win on Nov. 4, it comes down to that old bugaboo, turnout. I'm not talking about voter registration. I'm talking about actual turnout — getting as many of those new voters to the polls as possible.

Remember the old saying about how you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, the same thing applies to voting. Making sure that people are registered to vote is only the first step in the process.

What many political activists seem to forget (or overlook) is that, while the election may be at the center of their universe, it isn't necessarily that way for new voters. Those new voters are not in the habit of voting, and many of them need reminders — or even transportation to the polls.

That's not a very glamorous task. It can be a painstaking, incremental job — sometimes having to pick up elderly or handicapped people, perhaps one at a time, and take them to the polls.

It's fine to hear political parties talk about meeting or exceeding their registration goals, but if the new voters don't go to the polls in November, what have the parties gained?

Four years ago, both parties aggressively sought to sign up new voters and, for the most part, they met or exceeded their goals in many places. But the Republicans were more efficient in their efforts to get new voters to the polls, resulting in George W. Bush's 3 million-vote national margin.

One of the best lines Aaron Sorkin ever wrote for "The West Wing" is worth remembering:

"Decisions are made by those who show up."

Poll Positions

Politics is a rough-and-tumble game.

In a political campaign, it’s all about winning.

After all, what good is it to be a politician if you don’t win campaigns? A politician only gets into position to enact his/her policy ideas if he/she wins elections.

(Which reminds me of a flashback scene in an early episode of ”The West Wing.” Toby Ziegler, who was the White House communications director for most of the series, is discussing his background as a political operative with a woman in a tavern. The conversation is occurring just before Ziegler believes he will be fired from the staff of Martin Sheen’s fledgling presidential campaign.

(The woman asks Toby about his record in political campaigns. ”How many elections have you won?” she asks. ”Altogether?” he asks her. She nods. ”Including city council, two congressional elections, a Senate race, a gubernatorial campaign, and a national campaign?” he asks.

(There’s a long pause. Then Toby says, ”None.” The woman looks bewildered. ”None of them?” she asks. Toby replies, ”You gotta be impressed with my consistency.”)

As Vince Lombardi used to say, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.

Unlike a sports event, where you have a scoreboard to tell you who’s ahead and who’s behind and how much time is left before a winner will be declared, there are few ways to be certain who’s leading in a political campaign. The calendar gives us a deadline for the completion of the campaign; otherwise, there are few reliable indicators that can reveal the identity of the leader.

Some people will say that public opinion polls serve that purpose. But others will point out that polls can be manipulated, in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons.

My personal belief is that, like anything else, public opinion polls can be mishandled. Questions can be phrased in a way that tends to favor one candidate/issue or another.

At best, if a poll question is phrased and presented in as neutral a manner as possible, the results can serve only as a snapshot of the electorate at a particular time.

If such a poll/snapshot is taken on September 14, it can tell us how the voters feel generally on that date. But it can’t tell us how every voter feels because every voter won’t be included in the survey.

And it can’t assure us that the results will be duplicated precisely when the voters go to the polls in seven weeks.

Political campaigns will ebb and flow, especially when the incumbent is not on the ballot. In such a campaign, the nominee of the incumbent’s party has to act as the stand-in, taking the criticism (or praise) that rightfully belongs to the incumbent.

It’s not entirely fair that John McCain should be the fall guy for the many mistakes that have been made by George W. Bush and the Republican Party — even though it’s true that he has been supportive of much of Bush’s agenda for nearly eight years.

Nevertheless, first as the presumptive nominee and now as the actual nominee, McCain must carry the burden of the administration’s unpopular record — much as Adlai Stevenson had to do for President Truman in 1952.

(In Stevenson’s defense, he bore less culpability for Truman’s record, as a state governor, than McCain bears for Bush’s record, as a member of Congress.

(But Stevenson had the misfortune of running for president against a popular war hero, Dwight Eisenhower. And, even if you support Obama, you have to admit he’s no Ike.)

But now that McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has given his campaign a boost in the polls, some observers are looking at the election through new eyes — or, at least, new reading glasses.

In the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery refers to her colleague, TIME’s Joe Klein, and his ”anticipation” of the apology he will receive (but will not accept) from McCain ”for the unworthy, nasty, disreputable and really mean campaign he has run” (those are Emery’s words) — once the campaign is over.

Emery, acting on the assumption (apparently based on recent polls) that McCain will win the election, contends there is no reason McCain should offer such an apology — even though an apology should be issued by McCain for the distortion in a McCain commercial of a vote Barack Obama cast as an Illinois state senator for a bill designed to protect children from sexual predators.

”[C]omplaints by the press about ‘mean’ campaigning are a reliable sign to Republicans that their tactics are working,” Emery writes.

Emery also suggests that there are two reasons why the press ever liked McCain in 2000:

1. He ran against Bush.


2. He lost.

”The best Republican of all is one who nobly loses,” writes Emery, ”which is what McCain looked like doing until he picked Sarah Palin, at which point most of the media exploded in fury.”

Actually, this defiant, never-say-you’re-sorry stance is nothing new for Emery. Shortly before the 2004 election, she wrote a similar column for National Review urging Bush not to apologize for anything.

The prevailing attitude these days is that McCain has seized the momentum. As I say, it largely appears to be based on recent poll results, and the polls’ plausibility depends to a great extent upon how much faith one places in their methodology.

David Paul Kuhn writes, for Politico.com, that there are five ”trends” that may explain why McCain is perceived to have taken the lead:

1. ”McCain as a ‘change agent.’”


2. ”The center shifts: Independents move to McCain.”


3. ”The economic gap narrows.”


4. ”Palin narrows the enthusiasm gap.”


5. ”Democrats voter ID edge dulls.”

You can give whatever significance you wish to each — or all — of these trends, although all of the ”facts” to which Kuhn refers are poll results.

He makes no attempt to conceal that fact; indeed, his entire article is based on poll findings.

And that’s my point.

The fretting about the shift in momentum is based entirely on poll results. No one has voted yet — except, perhaps, in terms of financial contributions. In that area, Obama continues to enjoy a big lead — which is practically unheard-of for Democrats.

The candidates have seven weeks to make their cases to the American public. Be prepared: Polls may shift frequently during that time.

The Ides of September

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In the chronology leading up to the hijackings and terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, I don't think the date of August 31 has any significance.

By this time seven years ago, all the hijackers had purchased their airplane tickets.

It is my understanding that the hijackers sent back unused funds to al-Qaeda paymasters shortly before the date of the attacks.

At this point in 2001, some of the hijackers may have started moving into position, even though the hijackings were still nearly two weeks away.

So what is there to be said today as we approach the seventh anniversary of the hijackings of the airplanes that brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, penetrated the Pentagon and disintegrated in a field in Pennsylvania?

Those hijackings put the United States on the path it has followed ever since — a path of war (one was necessary, one was needless). The sand of the Middle East has been turned into quicksand that has greedily gobbled up American lives and treasure.

It is clear, I think, that Osama bin Laden won’t remain in the shadows. And the United States has mostly left him alone for the last seven years while it’s been busy settling old scores with a weakened Saddam Hussein — like the old general who insists on fighting the new war by focusing on correcting the mistakes and tactical errors from the last war.

(Which reminds me of a wonderful Dana Carvey ”Saturday Night Live” skit in which he portrayed President George H.W. Bush speaking about the Persian Gulf War from the Oval Office. ”This is not Vietnam,” Bush/Carvey says solemnly. ”For we have learned the lesson of Vietnam. And that lesson is — ‘Stay out of Vietnam!’”)

Saddam’s dead now, and the United States occupies Iraq, but we’re still having to spend billions of dollars to fight the insurgents.

If the terrorists were to pull off another attack on American soil today, frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me — although I suspect it would surprise a lot of people.

What would surprise me would be the form of the attack — because I have almost no idea what it will be.

The only idea I have on the subject is that it won’t involve hijacking airplanes.

That’s something the terrorists have already done.

And, because it is something they’ve already done, airline security has been under pretty intense public scrutiny for the last seven years.

Some screeners at airports have taken their lumps, at times, for permitting contraband to be carried on board by passengers who turned out to be investigators or reporters.

But the industry has made efforts to improve cockpit security as well as passenger security. It isn't perfect — it remains a work in progress — but it's better than it was.

So, while I have no doubt that the terrorists have not abandoned their plans to attack the United States, I don’t think airlines will be used as the weapons next time.

The next attack will exploit a different weakness.

When I was fresh out of college, I worked for a year and a half as a police reporter. And, as the police told me then (and I’m sure they would tell you today — since the fundamentals of criminal activity do not seem to change), a criminal needs to believe that a target isn’t being watched.

Criminals like to break into a car that’s parked in a dark corner of a parking lot or parking garage.

They prefer to pick a safe in a shadowy business office.

They want to climb in through a window of a home in which no lights are shining.

In the last seven years, the spotlight on air travel has been far too bright.

So, if you want to identify probable targets, look for something with little or no security — and the potential to undermine the U.S. economy.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the economy suffered for months before starting to turn around — but the recovery period was relatively short because the economy had been in pretty good shape prior to the attacks.

Given the state of the economy of 2008, a well-chosen target in another terrorist attack could cripple the economy for who knows how long.

I also believe the next ”teams” of terrorists — if the next plot involves teams — will not look like Arabs, the way the hijackers of 9/11 did.

The new generation of terrorist ”teams” will have a more Western look. They may be white or black — or Hispanic or Asian. I believe they will be chosen because they blend in.

For that reason, they might be Hispanic if the attack originates in a state that has a high percentage of Hispanic residents — like California or Texas. They might be black if the attack originates in the Deep South — someplace like Atlanta, perhaps — or a Northern city that drew large numbers of black migrants from the South — like Chicago or Detroit.

If there are multiple, simultaneous attacks, like there were in 2001, I believe the team members will have characteristics that won't raise any eyebrows in their locations.

They may be given clothing that will help them blend in. If the attack originates near a military installation, they may be given military uniforms. If it originates near a college campus, they may be given attire that is typical of today's college students.

They might even be women.

We’ve already seen cases of pregnant women serving as suicide bombers in the Middle East. It is indeed ironic that the desire to destroy others can be made to overrule the innate instinct in these young women to protect their children.

The point of how frustrating it can be to prevent that kind of enemy from attacking was driven home by the character of Admiral Fitzwallace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the ”West Wing” TV series:

”The laws of nature don't even apply here,” he complained bitterly near the end of the third season.

And how does one prepare for an attack when it is unknown (a) what form the attack will take, (b) where the attack will take place, (c) who the target(s) and attacker(s) will be, and (d) when the attack will commence?

As Joe Pesci's character said in the movie "JFK" ...

"It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma."

Walsh's Series Remains in the 19th Century ...

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... but the election of 1828 truly was unique.

In his latest article in U.S. News & World Report, Kenneth Walsh writes that the 1828 election, which installed Andrew Jackson into the White House, "changed the way Americans thought of the presidency."

In more ways than one.

For starters, the 1828 election was the 11th time that a president was elected. In each of the previous 10 elections, the winner came from Virginia or Massachusetts. And, frequently, one of those states provided the No. 2 vote-getter as well.

But Jackson was born in modern-day South Carolina and, in the eyes of the nation, he was the heroic leader (from his adopted home of Tennessee) who was responsible for the American victory in the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812.

He was the first president who was linked to the frontier.

Jackson also received the most popular votes in 1824 — the first time that popular votes were counted — but he lost the election to John Quincy Adams, the son of a former president, in the Electoral College. Does the scenario sound familiar?

"Jackson and his supporters simmered for four years," Walsh writes. "But in 1828, they pulled out all the stops in what became, for all sides, one of the toughest and dirtiest campaigns ever, setting the precedent for future negative campaigns."

(Walsh doesn't mention it, but the 1828 election may have been responsible for making the donkey the mascot for the Democratic Party.

(Jackson's foes called him a "jackass." Jackson liked the name and used the jackass as a symbol, but it apparently died out for awhile — until renowned cartoonist Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany 12 years after the 1828 election, revived it in 1870.)

Jackson won in 1828. And the man of the people opened the White House to his supporters on Inauguration Day.

"[H]undreds of them pushed and shouted their way through the building in search of conviviality as they celebrated their hero's victory," Walsh writes (I suspect that, if he were to teach a class on presidential elections, Walsh would enjoy the lecture on this campaign the most). "Many were rough men in muddy boots who climbed on the chairs and devoured the food and drink provided by uniformed waiters."

In the history books, Jackson's first term is noteworthy for several reasons.

He established the veto as a presidential weapon. He made unprecedented use of the "spoils system." He signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the infamous "Trail of Tears." A congressional compromise on tariffs enabled him to avoid being the first president to face the secession of one of the states.

(A personal postscript: For nearly 10 years now, whenever I think of the Jackson presidency, I am reminded of a first-season episode of "The West Wing," in which the chief of staff assigns each member of his staff to meet with a "crackpot" who normally wouldn't be given the opportunity to speak to someone from the White House about his or her special interest — as part of his "Big Block of Cheese Day."

(The name is derived from an actual event during the Jackson administration. Jackson received a 1,400-pound block of cheese as a gift and invited ordinary people to come to the White House to sample it. The event was heavily attended, and the cheese was consumed in about two hours.)

Andrew Jackson truly did change the relationship Americans have with their president.

The Relevance of Religion

When a voter is being asked to vote in a presidential primary, and one of the candidates doesn't have much experience and wants voters to assess his judgment as a yardstick for his potential, is it fair game to evaluate the organizations to which he has belonged (such as his church) and the people who have been in leadership roles in those organizations (such as his pastor)?

These are, after all, the organizations he has chosen to join and the people he has chosen to follow.

So I think the answer to that is yes -- to a certain extent.

Personally, I don't care where a candidate goes to church -- or if the candidate goes to church at all. I think that is the candidate's business, not mine.

I must admit, though, that I do like to know that a candidate for president is committed to something he/she believes in -- besides obtaining and holding on to power. But I don't want to be told that a candidate believes in something. I want to see evidence of it.

In matters of faith, it's easy for politicians to deceive the voters.

In the final two seasons of The West Wing, Alan Alda played a moderate Republican running for president. His character had been through a crisis of faith when his wife died, and he had not been to church since -- except for weddings and funerals.

Alda's character's church habits became an issue in the campaign, and he was finally forced to hold a press conference to defend his right not to attend church. In so doing, he spoke of how easy it is for a politician to lie about his faith. "It's the easiest lie they'll ever tell," he said. And he was right.

In this country, people like to talk about the separation of church and state, but as I've pointed out before, that has never really existed in the United States.

There is no state religion in this country, except to say that Christianity is the prevailing faith. That's just the way it is -- the same way that English is the primary language. It's not mandated by law. It's simply a fact. It has its roots in the settlers who came to the New World 400 years ago.

And, while Protestants and Catholics tend to live in harmony in this country, Catholics have only recently (in the last 50 years) been capable of receiving enough votes to win a national election.

And John F. Kennedy had to address the issue of his Catholicism head-on before being elected -- narrowly -- in 1960. No Catholic has been elected president since then -- unless you count Ronald Reagan, who had Catholic ancestry but wasn't a practicing Catholic.

Sometimes, the religion factor isn't what some voters would prefer. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had no formal affiliation with any church before he became president in 1953. He was baptized, confirmed, and became a communicant in the Presbyterian church less than two weeks after his first inauguration.

Some of our presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, had no religious affiliation. Does that mean they didn't believe in God? No. There seems to be some disagreement among scholars about Lincoln's faith in Christ, but he seems to have had a belief in God -- for most of his life, at least.

And religion continues to be a factor in national politics.

Jimmy Carter's "born again" religion was an issue -- for a time -- during the 1976 campaign.

Mitt Romney had to speak in defense of Mormonism a few months ago.

And today, Barack Obama is trying to deal with issues raised by his relationship with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In my "heart of hearts," as the saying goes, I don't think that what a minister (who isn't running for the presidency) says has very much to do with what someone who is running for president will do if elected.

In this case, Obama has been running for president with only a few years experience in national politics and policymaking. So he has been asking voters to assess him on the quality of his judgment.

Based on that, I think it is just as fair to question his relationship with his pastor as it was for reporters to accept Gary Hart's challenge to them to catch him in the act of being unfaithful to his wife 20 years ago.

You could argue -- as some people did -- that Hart's infidelity had no bearing on the kind of president he would be. Just as some people argue today that what Rev. Wright says doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the kind of president Obama would be.

In Hart's case, his infidelity went to (pardon the pun) the heart of his campaign. Questions had been raised about his honesty, integrity, trustworthiness. When reporters caught him in an extramarital affair (after they had been dared to follow Hart), it confirmed a lot of suspicions voters had about him. It reflected poorly on the argument he made for being nominated for president.

Obama is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. His relationship with Rev. Wright reflects on the quality of his judgment, the same as his remark about "bitter" voters clinging to guns and religion (two of the sacred cows -- so to speak -- of American politics) and his appearance at William Ayers' home in Obama's 1995 campaign for the state senate did.

When one enters the race for the presidency, one enters the "big time." If one is not prepared to be scrutinized, one does not need to enter the presidential arena.

Obama could run for the Senate and encounter far less scrutiny three years ago. The scrutiny level was even lower when his campaigns were for a seat in the Illinois state legislature. The typical voter does not feel it is necessary to know everything there is to know about the candidates for the state senate -- or even the U.S. Senate.

But voters feel they need to know everything there is to know about those candidates who seek to be president.

Voters get to evaluate candidates by any means they wish. Candidates do not get to choose how they are evaluated, but they certainly should know that voters tend to use a candidate's political record and political statements in making their decision.

And voters may focus on seemingly irrelevant factors because they want to know as much as possible about a candidate, about how he/she thinks, about what he/she believes, before trusting him/her with the most important office in the land.

One of the things voters want to know is whether they can believe what a candidate says. When that candidate is trying to sell his/her judgment as the reason for being elected, a candidate's truthfulness is particularly important. And voters are going to use all sorts of methods to evaluate the candidate's truthfulness.

In this campaign, Kennedy's name has been mentioned frequently. Kennedy also had to sell the public on his judgment -- his opponent, as vice president under a popular president, had the advantage of semi-incumbency, even though his tenure in Washington was no longer than Kennedy's. And, when things backfired on Kennedy, as they did during the Bay of Pigs invasion, he had to be candid with the public.

He had to admit that his judgment had been faulty.

These days, it's the judgment of Obama that is being questioned. And, whatever mental image one has of Obama, the reality is that he is a politician. And he hasn't shown much hesitation to throw his inconvenient associates -- William Ayers, Tony Resko, Jeremiah Wright -- under the bus in order to further his political goals.

A lot of people are writing about Obama and Wright these days. The longer the questions linger, the longer attention will remain focused on this instead of the economy, gas prices, the war, health care, etc.

(By the way, if you'd rather be reading about something more relevant to the economic problems we face, may I suggest Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times about our energy policy?)

In the meantime, we're getting a steady dose of writings about Obama and Rev. Wright. And we're going to continue to get that until all the questions are answered. When will that be? That depends on how candid Obama is -- or is perceived to be.

* Charlie Cook calls Rev. Wright "the Rev. Kamikaze" in the National Journal.

"Just days ago, it seemed that the only way that Barack Obama could fail to clinch his party's nod would be to leave his wife and move in with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright," writes Cook. "That is, until Wright took to the lectern at the National Press Club to launch what amounted to a kamikaze attack on Obama's candidacy, sputtering nonsense that must have left the senator's campaign operatives wondering whether they had accidentally tuned their TVs to the political horror channel."

* In the National Review, Byron York writes that the danger from this Wright affair isn't over for Obama. "The most damaging thing Rev. Jeremiah Wright said at the National Press Club on Monday had nothing to do with God damning America, or AIDS, or chickens coming home to roost," York says. "It had to do with whether Barack Obama is telling the American people the truth about himself."

* Peter Carnellos' piece in the Boston Globe carries the headline, "Candidate faces down his former pastor, but what took so long?"

Canellos raises a point that may be troubling many voters, even if they can't articulate it as well as he can.

"On Monday ... Wright took another shot: 'I said to Barack Obama last year, 'If you get elected, November the 5th, I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people,'" Canellos writes. "If Wright really had issued such a warning, Obama should have smelled trouble immediately. His failure to do so, and his decision to portray Wright as a distraction, inevitably raises the question of whether Obama is too naive to be president -- the very insinuation he ridicules on the campaign trail."

* Dick Morris writes in The Hill about "Obama's opportunity" to "define himself." He needs to seize that opportunity before others do.

* Richard Baehr writes, in American Thinker, about "Obama's Wright turn" at his Tuesday press conference -- in which Obama "condemned Wright and claimed that Wright had offended him."

* Mary Mitchell claims, in the Chicago Sun-Times, that "Obama opens a can of worms" and suggests, "This is a sad day for black America."

* In the Boston Globe, Scot Lehigh says, "What's really relevant here is not what Jeremiah Wright says but what Barack Obama believes. And in his remarks yesterday, Obama said unmistakably that Wright does not speak for him."

* Ralph Peters writes, in the New York Post, about "The Rev & The Global Victims' Club."

* Also in the New York Post, Michelle Malkin writes about the "Jive Talk Express." She casts doubts on Obama's judgment by raising a point that Republicans will be sure to bring up in the fall campaign.

"Who knew that the greatest threat to his presidential campaign would come from the preacher who married him, baptized him and prayed with him?" writes Malkin, a well-known conservative. "Obama should've known -- that's who. 'Yes, we can'? Try: Yes, you should have."

* John Nichols writes, in The Nation, that "[t]he problem is not Jeremiah Wright. The problem is a contemporary political culture that has come to rely on character assassination as an easy tool for reversing electoral misfortune -- and a media that willingly invites manipulation."

* Mark Brown writes, in the Chicago Sun-Times, that "it's gut check time for white Americans."

* In the New York Observer, Steve Kornacki writes about "Obama and the Benefit of the Doubt."

These are just the articles that have popped up in the last couple of days. There will be more articles written on this subject in the days and weeks ahead.

Obama has addressed this issue twice in the last six weeks. His original speech was hailed for its oratorical qualities, his press conference was hailed for other reasons.

But the questions persist.

It reminds me of something Dr. Samuel Johnson, the 18th century British author, said: "(The) manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

Life Imitates Art?

Well, maybe not exactly.

I was just thinking about "The West Wing" and the fictional presidential campaign that consumed most of the final two seasons of that program -- and its similarities to our current presidential campaign.

Devotees of the series already know how that campaign turned out -- while the first vote has yet to be cast in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Still, we can paint this one in fairly broad brushstrokes. We don't need to know how the story ends right now.

For starters, Rudy Giuliani may not be the only Republican candidate who is pro-choice, but he's really the only one who hasn't run away from that position. And he's been leading in most Republican polls for most of this year, although Christian conservatives have been looking elsewhere.

On "The West Wing," Alan Alda played a pro-choice Republican who won the nomination but struggled to get the support of Christian conservatives and even put one on his ticket to make his candidacy more palatable to Christian conservatives.

Now, on "The West Wing," Alda's character was from California. Giuliani, of course, is from the opposite coast, the former mayor of New York. But Giuliani's nomination would put a large Democratic state in play, much as Alda's character did.

On the Democratic side, it now appears that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will be nominated. If that happens, we will have the first woman or the first black at the top of a national ticket. On "The West Wing," the Democrats nominated the first Hispanic candidate -- played by Jimmy Smits.

The fly in the ointment looks like it could be Mike Huckabee, who is now leading in Iowa polls and has pulled into second place, behind Giuliani, in the latest national poll from CNN/Opinion Research Corporation.

Huckabee is a former Baptist minister. "The West Wing" had its Christian conservative making an unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination -- and then declining to be considered for the No. 2 spot. It's far from clear whether Huckabee would accept or reject the No. 2 spot if it is offered to him.

If the rest of the story follows the lead of "The West Wing," it will be a cliffhanger of an election. As divided as the country seems to be politically, it's not much of a stretch to predict that.

It could be a bumpy ride!