MONDAY,  FEBRUARY 4,  2008

•   It was a great Super Bowl game, but the timing was unfair.  It came just two days before Super Tuesday, and my calorie allotment for the week is already used up.  What's a night of election returns without ice cream and peanuts?  Right?  In the future, I hope this is taken into consideration when they schedule either the game or our democratic endeavors.  Let the bigwigs consider caloric content, not merely the whims of football players and presidents.

•   Adam Nagourney, reporting for The New York Times, wraps up the conventional wisdom that McCain is well ahead in Super Tuesday races, but that the Democratic contest is tight.  Other sources report some tightening on the Republican side.  Nagourney, though, also reports on the increasingly bizarre attempts by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to paint their opponent as pretty much the same as the guy in the other party.  Obama:

“If John McCain is the nominee, then the Democratic Party has to ask itself, Do you want a candidate who has similar policies to John McCain on the war in Iraq or somebody who can offer a stark contrast?” Mr. Obama said. “See, when I’m the nominee, John McCain won’t be able to say that “You were for this war in Iraq,’ because I wasn’t. He won’t be able to say I followed the Bush-Cheney doctrine of not talking to leaders we don’t like, because I don’t.”  

Yes, we've all confused John McCain with Hillary Clinton.  Not a dime's worth of difference.  Is that what Obama is implying?  Is the man serious?  Please note the tone of Obama's comment.  He's the man who's promising to be above politics, to bring us together.  Yeah, right.

And Romney:

“Yesterday, Barack Obama said there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between he and Senator McCain on illegal immigration,” Mr. Romney said at a rally outside Chicago. “I’m afraid it’s going to be real hard to win the White House if there’s not much difference between our nominee and theirs, and that’s why I’m going to make sure that we stand for Republican ideals and win the White House on that platform.”

Yeah, Obama and McCain, together again.  This stuff is so over the top, it wins the Pat Buchanan rhetoric award.  We'll see what happens Tuesday night.  I have no prediction, but I'm guessing that the Republican race will move heavily in McCain's direction, but that the Democrats will continue to fight.

By the way, should Obama do very well tomorrow, watch for a delegation of Democratic Party elders to visit Hillary Clinton and urge her to withdraw for the sake of party unity and "the future."  Would she do it?  I suspect her instinct would be to turn the request into a rallying cry for women, and that might work.  But the elders will have a good time.

•   There probably is a human right to be angry.  I haven't checked the UN on this, but I'm sure it's written in some document somewhere, stored in a museum near a Swiss watch factory.  But some people just abuse the privilege.  Consider these opening lines:

"Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women," said Bill Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday, one of the many "news" outlets to expose Kristol's reliable sexism. "The Democratic establishment would be crazy to follow an establishment that led it to defeat year after year," Kristol continued in his woolly, repetitive style. "White women are a problem, you know. We all live with that."

Bill Kristol has been much criticized for his war mongering, arrogance, poor writing and lack of fact checking. But at least the guy is honest. He considers women a problem -- especially white women. And he feels confident enough as an alpha male to be open about it. "I shouldn't have said that," he demurred. But he can say anything he likes and still fall eternally upward. He's a white man, lord of all he surveys -- including Hillary Rodham Clinton.

My, how I admire writers with a light touch.

The author of the above, from today's Washington Post, is Erica Jong, once a noted feminist, now an older feminist.  She writes, in her inimitable I-love-to-make-enemies style, to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.  I'm not sure her approach will start a groundswell, but I'm not that close to her audience.  She ends her piece:

I understand my hopeful friends who think an Obama button will change America. But I'm sticking with Hillary. I trust her because all her life, her pro bono work has been for mothers and children. And mothers and children -- of all colors -- are the most oppressed group in our country. I trust her to speak for our children and grandchildren -- and for us. She always has.

I'm ready to march.  Aren't you?  All those oppressed mothers and children.  Why, that's most of the country.  And here we are worried about Islamofascism.  Thank you, Erica, for setting us straight. 

And I'll watch my mail for ticking packages.

•   Fantasy is a wonderful thing in politics.  The American Spectator has a feature called Washington Prowler.  Today it reports on the deep thinking and political planning of one A Gore.  The quote:

Former Vice President Al Gore has asked his staff to begin laying out plans for an endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama if he performs well in the Super Tuesday primaries. "[Gore] doesn't see the utility of endorsing Obama until the endorsement would actually mean something and give Gore an opportunity to be the kingmaker," says a former aide with knowledge of Gore's thinking.

Gore is also being pressed by Clinton loyalists not to endorse anyone in the primary phase of the campaign but rather to serve as the one man who can "heal" the rift between Obama and Clinton loyalists leading on the convention in Colorado in August.

"Gore is beyond politics now, and to endorse would lower him to Clinton or Obama's level, I think," says another former adviser. "But he could take a real leadership role in the party if he wanted to, bridging the divide that we're beginning to see in the party. Bill Clinton can't do it. Really, only Gore can."

So Al Gore is beyond politics, tra-la, tra-la.  And only Al Gore can heal the rift in the party, tra-la, tra-la.  This is being said seriously by people who are paid for their work and will get Social Security.

Next up, Gore miraculously heals the party by the laying on of speeches, and starts a new religion.  He calls it coolism, and its followers drive little arks powered by apple juice.

•   It's hardly a secret that not everyone in the Republican Party sends regular love letters to John McCain.  In a fair-minded piece, Paul Kane of the Washington Post explains why.  Whether you like or dislike McCain, this side of him has to be explored.  The key point:

In a chamber once known for cordiality if not outright gentility, McCain has battled his fellow senators for more than two decades in a fashion that has been forceful and sometimes personal. Now, with the conservative maverick on the brink of securing his party's presidential nomination, McCain's Republican colleagues are grappling with the idea of him at the top of their ticket.

"There would be a lot of people who would have to recalibrate their attitudes toward John," said Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), a supporter of Mitt Romney's who has clashed with McCain.

Many Senate Republicans, even those who have jousted with McCain in the past, say their reassessment is underway. Sensing the increasing likelihood that he will be the nominee, GOP senators who have publicly fought with him are emphasizing his war-hero background and playing down past confrontations.

Okay.  Read it and make your own decision.

•   And there's the story of a high school dropout, Esther Reed, who stole someone's identity and used it to gain admission to two Ivy League schools.  She has finally been arrested after a year-long hunt.

Look, I know what she did was wrong, but consider the other side here, will you?  She struck a blow for diversity.  A great university could claim that it had a high-school dropout and an identity thief in the same package.  The key quote:

It's unclear how Reed obtained Henson's personal information, but Reed used Henson's identity to take the SAT and GED, and then applied to the schools, said Jon Campbell, a Travelers Rest Police Department investigator who spoke to CNN last year.

Officials at Harvard University and Columbia University have acknowledged that a Brooke Henson was enrolled at their schools, but said privacy laws prevent them from discussing details.

Yeah, those pesky privacy laws.  Can't discuss how the admissions offices messed up so badly.   And there's this:

An ex-boyfriend told CNN that Reed -- posing as Henson -- often bragged about being a world-class chess player who earned a living playing the game competitively.

The man told CNN that he believed her until he challenged her to a game and beat her.

Apparently, the professors were more easily fooled.  They were probably teaching Middle East studies.

•   Finally, a story that has special interest for me.  On April 18, 1945, Ernie Pyle was killed on the island of Ie Shima, just off Okinawa.  He was the most famous American war correspondent of World War II, and beloved by the G.I.s.  He told their story, rather than the stories of the generals and politicians.  A photographer took a picture of Pyle's body, lying peacefully on the ground, but the photograph was never made public.  Now it has surfaced.

The picture has meaning for me because I had a cousin who was killed in the same action in which Ernie Pyle died.  The letter home said that a Japanese sniper had gotten him, possibly the same sniper who killed Pyle.  He was a member of the 77th Infantry Division, and had fought through many Pacific battles.  I've always wondered about the details of his death, but members of that branch of the family are long gone, and I wouldn't even know who to call.  The picture of Ernie Pyle lying on a battlefield reminds us, though, that similar scenes are played out today in Iraq and in Afghanistan.  They may be played out in other places tomorrow.  The picture also reminds us that we once had reporters who knew what side they were on, had no problem being on that side, and who contributed to a victory, not just of arms, but of principle.

Be back tonight.

Posted on February 4, 2008.