One thing Mr. Obama has learned about being president is that nobody ever cuts you an inch of slack.

When he went to Denmark to argue Chicago's case for the Olympics, he was criticized for using up all that aviation fuel and coming home empty-handed. Had he not gone, he would have been accused of not doing all he could to help out a great American city.

Another example: Now the gay rights movement is upset at him for not going up to Maine and making the pitch against repeal of that state's gay marriage law. They feel that it's just one more in a long string of Obama disappointments related to their cause.

They might want to remember that Obama always said he was against gay marriage. He prefers civil unions with all the rights pertaining thereto, to use the dry legalistic phrase. Gays have plenty to be disgruntled about--it looks like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is still in place despite his assurances to the contrary--but Obama's silence on gay marriage should come as no surprise.

With so many other irons in the fire, Obama has had to perform some painful triage in order to get his top priorities accomplished. It's hard, understandably, for interest groups to accept that their top priorities may not be his. Maybe this is one of the reasons presidents serve four-year terms, to force a restless public to be patient.

If Obama still hasn't delivered by 2012, then those with a grievance have a remedy. I wish them the best of luck with the Republican To Be Named Later. So does Barack Obama, which is probably why he made the political calculation he did. It's cruel, but that's politics.

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This is one of those times when you wonder why anybody would want to be president, much less spend years of his or her life running for the job.

I remember the 2000 campaign, and drawing a cartoon commenting on how Al Gore had been preparing all his life to be president. He would probably not take a loss well.

Bush, on the other hand, looked like somebody who'd been drafted because his brother was defeated when running for governor of his state, which happened to be the case. After losing, he would probably shrug and say, "I tried, Daddy!" and happily go back to running his baseball team.

To him, being President was all about the cool plane and getting to wear that nifty windbreaker with the presidential seal on the chest. The rest--sadly--is history.

There is no upside to the Afghan war. We won't know when we've won, but we may well know if we've lost. Like Vietnam, it could go on and on, ensnared in the tentacles of geo- and domestic politics.

Not something you'd want to be commander-in-chief for in your worst nightmares.

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My guess is that the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Coulters and their fellow travelers in the entertainment biz are secretly hoping that despite their most ardent efforts, Barack Obama gets reelected to a second term.

Let's say, just for yuks, that the Mayan calendar is wrong and we don't all go up in a plume of fire in 2012.

Sarah Palin--through an electoral fluke (most likely another mechanical error in Florida)--succeeds Obama. Frankly (and I think I speak for those from all political spectra here), round-the-clock cheer leading is a lot less interesting than juicy, red-meat attack rhetoric.

When things start to go bad and the public realizes that she can't even figure out how to find her way down to the shooting range in the White House basement, a bored and cynical base will stop tuning in to the frantic yelping of ultra-conservative lapdogs locked in perpetual denial.

Let's remember: the talk show hosts aren't in it for the power, but the money. It would be delicious indeed to listen to Rush having to modify his spiel in order to attract a more moderate audience. Those Town of Palm Beach property taxes are, I hear, almost confiscatory.

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The Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that it's a whole lot easier to make rash promises as a candidate than it is to actually run a country.

When George W. Bush uttered the pathetic, plaintive statement in a 2004 campaign debate that
"It's HAAAARD!" being president, you could almost see his arms flailing.

Balancing the competing priorities of America's constituencies, especially if they number among one's supporters, has to be among the tougher tasks of any chief executive.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender groups, having campaigned their hearts out to get Barack Obama elected, are rightfully miffed that their man has relegated their issues to the back burner. Democrats seem to do this with the GLBT crowd, the same way Republicans pay lip service to social conservatives when they need to get elected.

From Obama's viewpoint, he's using every ounce of his capital to get health care reform passed, and while he is surely sympathetic to gays, he feels he would so squander his clout if he took a side foray into that minefield that in the end, he'd get nothing accomplished. Remember what happened to Bill Clinton and Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

Sure it makes political sense from a coldly analytical perspective, but cold analysis wasn't what Obama was delivering in those roof-raising speeches about "This Is Our Time!"

And, as every cynical White House has said since the dawn of the republic when the base feels dissed: "Where else are they gonna go?"

> Discuss this entry

Just a week or two ago, the Obama haters were crowing that Chicago's elimination as a summer Olympics site amounted to a personal loss of prestige for the president, when in fact the decision had very little--if anything--to do with him.

Had he not gone to Copenhagen, the same carpers would have attacked him for not doing all he could to bring the Olympics to the U.S.

How can you blame the International Olympic Committee? Given the choice, wouldn't you rather loll on Copacabana Beach in the shadows of Sugar Loaf than on the steamy shores of Lake Michigan beneath the hulking pile of the Sears Tower?

Anyway, that's old news. Last week, he won the Nobel Peace Prize--again an event he had little to do with--and they say he didn't deserve the accolade. So, which is it?

From the tepid response out of the White House, the prize was viewed as something of a mixed blessing for a president who is already perceived (and perception in politics is reality, as they say) as being all mouth and no follow-through.

Those crazy Europeans. Don't they remember that one of the reasons Sen. Kerry lost the election in 2004 was that he looked "too French?" They should keep their pompous little prizes to themselves, thank you very much.

> Discuss this entry

So much for engagement.

Engagement only works when the guy you're trying to engage is rational. Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? Both President Kennedy and Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev were veterans of WWII. Kennedy knew that his adversary had experienced what all-out war can do to a nation--in the USSR's case, wipe out nine million of its citizens.

He knew that behind all the saber-rattling, Khrushchev was worth engaging, because he understood the argument that mutual annihilation benefited no one.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not act like someone who is aware of the possible consequences of his actions. Either that, or he's performing one of the most daring high-wire acts of all time.

The Israelis are realists. After all, it's their country these missiles crazy Mahmoud is waving around are aimed at. They're not going to sit around forever while President Obama conducts a debating society, or relies on leaky "sanctions" that the Chinese have a vested, petroleum-based interest in sabotaging.

Proof once again that it's a whole lot easier to conduct a Foreign Policy of Change We Can Believe In from the campaign lectern than from the Oval Office.

> Discuss this entry

Americans have never been much for learning the lessons of history.

Part of it is that America is so different from other nations, founded on principle rather than ethnicity or geography.

A corollary to this is the myth of American exceptionalism, which, loosely translated, means: "Others failed in the past because they did it wrong. When we do things our way, we succeed. Plus, we've got God on our side."

When it comes to Afghanistan, a backwater that has been notoriously hostile to outsiders, "The Graveyard of Empires," we may learn that even our way won't win us the highway.

Take the Brits, for example. If you have any FAQ's about how to run an empire, they're the go-to folks. Anybody who can subjugate the entire Indian subcontinent--several hundred million people--for over a hundred years using nothing more than a few thousand civil servants and soldiers must know what they're doing.

Well, Afghanistan's inhospitable inhabitants and topography broke them, too. Even the Russian Bear lumbered off with a bruised backside.

Do we honestly think that we can cram our Age of Enlightenment ideals down the locals' throats and leave them with a functioning agrarian democracy in the Jeffersonian mold (well, growing opium poppies is a form of agriculture) through military might, just because we happen to be more charming than our predecessors?

It doesn't matter who's sitting in the Oval Office hot seat, be they Democrat or Republican. When it comes to Afghanistan, they're earning every penny of their salary.

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The White House handlers obviously believe that their strongest suit is the Pitchman-In-Chief, and they're playing their hand for all it's worth.

The Charismatic One, in an unprecedented tour de force, appeared on five morning yak shows on Sunday.

Then came the David Letterman appearance, another first for a sitting president.

While poll numbers show that the President himself remains personally popular, his programs continue to be decidedly less so, and there is a clear danger here that repeatedly putting him out there as the head shill is going to wear thin over time.

If there's one thing Americans hate, it's being exposed to the same old shtick over and over. This is why ads lose their effectiveness with overexposure.

For example, I'm sick of seeing that couple holding hands in those side-by-side bathtubs (obviously, I watch a lot of news programs), and wondering how on earth they managed to rig the plumbing for them when they're perched on some Grand Canyon pinnacle five thousand feet in the air, or why anybody would want to take a bath in separate tubs way up there in the first place.

I figure if they're going to insult my intelligence like that, then I'm not going to spend my hard-earned medical insurance dollars on their lousy pills.

See? This is the risk the White House runs.

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For sheer entertainment value, the idea of a couple of young people posing as a hooker and her pimp in order to run a sting on a major community organizing operation can't be beat.

The U.S. House of Representatives, in distancing itself from this little bit of theater, immediately voted to yank ACORN's federal support dollars. One has to ask why our tax money was being spent on this kind of thing in the first place. Rather, it sounds like the perfect opportunity for corporations to polish their public images by contributing to something civic-minded that would help turn out the vote. Oops...they'd be Democratic votes. Never mind.

Anyway, we all know that there's a secondary reason the Right is foaming at the mouth over ACORN. The tax issue is one thing, although I never hear them grousing about U.S. companies that headquarter themselves abroad in order to avoid paying federal taxes.

No, it's really because in the woolly public mind, ACORN is associated with Barack Obama, as if it were some wholly-owned subsidiary of the Obama campaign.

Well, that's how politics is played, although rarely in such a coherent, focused way.

It's a slippery slope, and the Progressives aren't exactly fools. I'm looking forward to some counterscams. It's all mother's milk to a cartoonist.

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The theme of the week appears to be presidential privacy, or the lack of it.

First comes some obscure lower-echelon speechwriter in the Bush administration who is earning his thirty pieces of silver by publishing a tell-all book.

In it, he quotes (or misquotes) his former employer uttering embarrassing comments that he thought were being made in confidence.

Remember those executive privilege arguments, cited by all administrations, about how a president must be able to depend on the confidentiality of his conversations if he is going to get honest advice? Now the wound comes from an inner, trusted member of the tribe. How crass.

Second, we have Barack Obama being twitted, or tweeted, or whatever, about by news personnel for an offhand remark he made--and which he thought was off the record--that Kanye West was "a jackass." Nobody seems to disagree with his assessment, but the controversy has something to do the fact that he said it.

In this high-tech world, with surreptitious cell phone video cameras, social media, instant Internet connectivity, and the promise of big payoffs for loose lips, no leader can be sure that everything he says or does--no matter how trivial or banal--won't be public knowledge within seconds.

I guess all we can do is be grateful that this stuff wasn't available during the Clinton years. The cocktail dress was bad enough.

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Nobody has a corner on anger. We’re all angry.

We’re angry that a lifetime of hard work leaves only the promise of more hard work (if we can hang onto it) until we drop, rather than the retirement our parents deserved and got.

We’re angry about the moral degradation of society. We’re angry about huge Wall Street bonuses for people who caused us to lose our homes, about loud hip-hop music and toenail fungus. A million affronts--some petty, some gross. All irritating.

Some say our anger stems from fear. Fear that “they” have taken away our country, and that we’ll lose what’s left of it if we don’t mobilize to snatch it back.

If they have, where have they taken it? If our guns can stop their act of larceny, what direction do we point them in? Who are “they?” If “they” are really Big Government, how do we contain it? Do we go down to the federal courthouse and shoot out the windows?

You know what we need? We need scapegoats. What’s more American than finding a scapegoat? That’s it—let’s focus on people who don’t talk like us, look like us, or think like us. Let’s start with that guy who wasn’t even born here, yet acts like he’s running the place.

Whew… That makes us feel better already.

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Things are starting to jell in Congress.

The final contours of health care reform are yet to be defined, but the fractious Democrats, possibly prodded by the President's speech, are beginning to see the advantages of passing some kind of bill, even if its contents don't completely mesh with their individual dreams.

Meanwhile, there are misgivings in Republican ranks. So far, just saying No has pleased the base, but while the base is well-organized, it's shrinking compared to the number of moderates who are being alienated by their behavior. The "You lie" comment didn't help make them look reasonable.

As I've said before, once a program is in place, people start to think of it as their birthright. Even if all the Democrats pass is a skeleton, it'll be enough to start hanging the Christmas ornaments on down the line. As Americans begin to enjoy (maybe) health care that for many was previously beyond their reach, and discover in the process that we haven't all started speaking Russian, they'll start looking at the GOP as the party that wanted to deny them the goodies.

Look at Social Security--which is certainly socialism--or Medicare, which is just what Obama wants for everybody, except limited to old people. Nobody dares even question those programs now.

The train's pulling out the station, and the Republicans are in danger of being left on the platform, looking in the wrong direction.

Can you hear that lonesome whistle blowin'?

> Discuss this entry

Some of the recent comments about Barack Obama by readers of this blog have bordered on the kind of talk that gets one a knock on the door from the Secret Service. One of my commenters even posted on our weather blog , fantasizing about the president’s helicopter getting caught in a hurricane.

I’ll paraphrase my response to someone who sneeringly referred to Obama as “your” president (meaning mine): Even though it was unseemly that the person who officially certified the Florida vote count in 2000 also happened to be chairwoman of the Bush Florida campaign, we accepted George W. Bush as president because the Supreme Court ultimately decided in his favor. Some had to swallow pretty hard, but it’s the law, and we are a nation of laws.

I was angry at Bush when we found out there were no WMDs in Iraq. I was ashamed of him in the aftermath of Katrina. I was disgusted by him when the news about the torture of prisoners came out. But I never once thought he wasn’t my president. We can disagree with him, we can try to influence his behavior through public involvement, but in the end, he’s the only leader we’ve got until his term is up. That’s why we have terms.

In the meantime, those who say of Obama that “he isn’t my president” for whatever reasons should buck up and face reality. He was elected fair and square by the majority. In this country, the majority rules.

As we approach the eighth anniversary of 9/11, it is instructive to remember that George W. Bush’s approval rating soared to ninety per cent afterward, which means even those who felt he stole the election rallied around him as our head of state—the embodiment, for better or worse, of the American people. They may not have liked him, but they accepted him.

I doubt the same would happen if, God forbid, another such tragedy befell us. Those who feel Barack Obama is not their president would be too busy blaming him for doing a lousy job protecting us as chief executive.

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It's hard for reasonable people to even wrap their minds around the ugliness of thought that would cause a parent to prevent his child from being exposed to the words of the President of the United States.

One should at least have enough respect for the office to listen to its occupant before disagreeing.

It would be an excellent civics lesson, it seems to me, to talk to one's child after hearing the president speak and explain to him that it is all right not to agree with everything--or anything--he says. But all this does is teach children to hate, rather than listen to, those with whom we disagree. A variation, I suppose, on the Bush "we don't talk to our enemies" doctrine.

The other stuff, that he's trying to poison young minds with his socialistic, communistic dogma--well, if you really believe what Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck et al feed you, then I'm not going to waste further keystrokes trying to talk you out of it.

Oh, and if you have a problem with my cartoon or anything I've said, don't bother to post your comment, because if you do, I will remove it in order not to expose my other readers to your thoughts. By not being in lockstep with mine, they are ipso facto unworthy for this blog.

I'm kidding. Go ahead and rant; just keep it clean.

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It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for meaningful health care reform to pass through this congress.

There are so many moving parts in this game of three-dimensional chess, so many special interests, so much money to be made and lost, that only someone with the legislative skills of a Ted Kennedy--or maybe a Tom Daschle--could have played it pitch-perfect.

Sadly, the American people seem to be forgotten in all the jockeying.

We have only our own ignorance to blame. If the majority of this country had any idea what the average citizen takes for granted in Europe, and for what cost, our members of congress would pass universal health care in a heartbeat, to the light of torches waving outside the U.S. Capitol windows.

But those of us who have some semblance of health care coverage desperately hang onto our miserable scraps, because it's all we know. Those who have nothing...hell, nobody listens to them, anyway.

> Discuss this entry

We were deep into 2002, probably five or six months after 9/11, before my editor would even entertain the idea of my drawing a cartoon that did not portray George W. Bush in anything but a favorable light.

"We're not ready for that yet," I remember him saying. He was probably right, as far as the sentiments of our readers were concerned.

The terror was still fresh, the country had rallied around its president, and unbeknownst to us, Dick Cheney was quietly machinating behind the scenes to exploit our national myopia and expand executive power to unheard-of levels.

It was a failure on the part of the media as much as anyone else, but consumers of news weren't ready yet for hard-nosed reporting, or commenting for that matter, about our leaders.

These are different times, and the man who used to condemn the Bush naysayers as unpatriotic didn't even wait for the inaugural platform to be disassembled before he began loudly trashing the new president. It's his right. Too bad he didn't see it that way when he was on the receiving end.

As for setting himself up as the world's authority on keeping us safe, let's remember that clever locution Cheney and his supporters like to use to justify their excesses: "The terrorists haven't hit us again since 9/11."

As I recall, Dick Cheney had been running this country for almost eight months when the terrorists did hit us on 9/11.

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You can “look forward, not back,” as President Obama says he is doing in distancing himself from his “rogue” attorney general, Eric Holder.

This, of course, is an adroit little sidestep. After all, Obama’s the one who nominated the guy. Holder, as a member of Obama’s cabinet, serves at his pleasure. I guess this kind of waffling is what they call “leadership.”

Anyway, an investigation of alleged illegal acts is probably a good thing for the republic. Obama has made it clear that those who were only following orders will not be prosecuted (that argument didn’t fly when it was made with a German accent, but this is the national security of the American homeland we’re talking about now, folks).

That leaves…whom? Probably nobody, because going after the principals of the Bush administration who set the policy would distract everyone from Obama’s priorities, not to mention possibly derail his presidency.

In any case, if we don’t at least examine the excesses of our behavior and do a little public self-reflection, then our already-battered worldwide reputation as a nation of laws will suffer even further.

And the terrorists—while not exactly winning—will have achieved a tactical victory in the battle for hearts and minds.

> Discuss this entry

There are several ways to look at this.

You could say--if you were a starry-eyed believer in the Obama campaign speeches of a year ago--that the so-called "public option" was already a compromise from a pure single-payer plan, which is the holy grail for the left. So this is a compromise of a compromise, or in other words, a sellout.

Or, you could say that Barack Obama is a pragmatist, and that by abandoning one of the cornerstones of his health care reform plan, he is merely acknowledging reality. A partial loaf is better than nothing at all.

I can appreciate Obama's realpolitik, particularly since health reform has been staked out by all sides as a make-or-break issue for his presidency. If your entire credibility depends on getting something--anything--passed, it's better to pass an empty shell so that everyone can declare victory and maybe flesh things out later.

As we all know, government programs are virtually impossible to kill. They develop constituencies that tend to vote as self-protective blocs. They are much easier to fatten over time, like a Christmas goose. If you want to be cynical about it--and there is always a large component of cynicism in any White House's strategy--just getting the framework in place is enough to ensure a thriving, growing bureaucracy as well as mission creep.

Give it a decade or two, and even conservatives will be fighting to protect the National Health Care we have come to accept as an American birthright. Have you ever seen one turn down Medicare?

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Fear has always been a potent motivator in American politics.

Fear of Communists lurking under the bed, fear of Liberals re-distributing our hard-earned money to welfare queens, fear of hippies undermining our kids' morals with their drugs and free love.

The Bush Administration was particularly adept at wielding the fear weapon: Remember how they used the climate after 9/11 to start wars and pass a raft of questionable legislation?

Fear of the unknown is a particularly useful tool. It’s what people can’t get their mind around that they find most terrifying, and what makes them most easily manipulated.

In the health care debate, the president and his people have fallen down on the job by failing to articulate what all Americans, the haves as well as the have-nots, have to gain from reform. By creating a vacuum of information, they’ve allowed special interests to define for the nation what change may mean in their own scary and self-serving way.

Like a herd of cattle, people can be spooked into stampeding if you manage to generate around them a fog of anxiety about an unknown peril; in this case, a fear of what they may lose, even though what they may now have is a lousy deal. The problem with a stampede is that once it begins, it’s difficult to control.

The stampede could go over a cliff, and then what would you have? Nobody left who can afford to buy your insurance, or your pharmaceuticals, or whatever else you may be peddling. Be very careful what you wish for.

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This whole little sideshow has the sickly air of a face-saving gesture about it.

We'll probably never know what happened inside Professor Gates' house that day he was arrested, but I'm sure he was tired and cranky after a long flight from China, and maybe Officer Crowley was still a little tense, not knowing what he might face when he answered the supposed burglary call.

President Obama, on the other hand, should have known better. He was right: he didn't have all the facts. We all are guilty of shooting our mouths off without knowing what we're talking about, but we're not all President of the United States, whose every word is parsed, weighed, and weighed again for symbolism and meta-meaning.

Only an African-American can truly know how intimidating it is to face a law-enforcement officer who may be harboring a presumption of guilt just because of his color. Hell, I'm afraid of them, and I'm white. Obama may have used the word "stupidly" because of his own experience, but it is prejudiced thinking also to assume that the white officer was automatically at fault, just because other white officers in the past have acted a certain way out of bigotry. As it turns out, Officer Crowley was exactly the wrong person to hang the bigot label upon.

Obama had the grace to admit to his poor choice of words. I'm sure he learned a valuable lesson from this. He's one of the fastest learners in public life.

Let's hope the "Beer Summit" works in that it gets Gates and Crowley to bury the hatchet without resorting to suing each other in civil court...the country really doesn't need that kind of a circus right now.

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There must be a great deal of consternation and disappointment among certain circles that Barack Obama has been in office for six months already, and to date has not placed a mark on the Oval Office wall indicating the correct direction of Mecca.

Since the Muslim rumor has proven to be unsubstantiated, one must resort to a backup line of attack, the notion that the Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth is a forgery, and that Obama, actually born in Kenya, is therefore not qualified to hold office.

One can only wonder whether the "Birthers," as they are called, would have been so zealous in their pursuit of truth and justice had John McCain been elected, considering that his claim to naturalized birth (Canal Zone) is much more tenuous.

Nor can we escape the irony that several of our very first presidents--among them the sainted George Washington and Thomas Jefferson--were born British subjects, since there was not even a United States at the time within whose borders they would have come into this world. But nobody is questioning their legitimacy.

This whole affair would be comical, except that it does play to the worst aspects of the American character. In stressful times like these, such messages of hate have a way of rapidly infecting a fearful and ignorant populace. And there are certain public figures, who, for their own selfish reasons, are pouring fuel on the flames.

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

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It's very easy to say all kinds of nutty stuff designed to please your base when you're (a) campaigning for something, (b) holding an elective office where what you say on a particular subject really doesn't matter to anybody, or (c) a non-elected political big shot standing on the sidelines.

Barack Obama is certainly guilty of transgression (a) regarding a raft of subjects, including gay rights, Guantanamo, and the Iraq War. The scales fell from his eyes when he got in the Oval Office and realized that to make good on all those reckless promises, he would basically torpedo his presidency before he even got out of the gate.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven," to quote Ecclesiastes.

Guilty of transgression (b) are those who, from the safety of their armchairs, would take a tougher line with Iraq in its electoral crisis, like members of Congress who have the luxury of not representing the official American line with every word they utter. Guilty of (c) are smart-mouthed ex-pols jockeying to be presidential nominees in 2012 and broadcast types seeking to boost ratings.

I think Obama is handling this one correctly. Rash statements now will only serve to unite the Iranians against the Great Satan. Don't confuse the protesters with Yankee-lovers. It has nothing to do with us. But it could if we muscled in there and tried to interfere.

Besides, what would we plan to do to back up the tough talk? Use Iraq and Afghanistan as staging grounds for Operation Iranian Freedom? The Pentagon would probably have something to say about that.

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In the end, it's all about respect.

His detractors will say that he didn't introduce any new ideas. While they'd like to think that's a criticism, it isn't. It's a fact. It also wasn't the point of the speech to throw new strategies or initiatives into the stew.

The point was to show people who think we hate them that we treat them as equals, that we value their contribution to civilization, that we appreciate and understand their grievances, and that they will find a new, welcoming attitude from us if they approach with outstretched hands and open hearts.

Regardless of what everybody may have been expecting in his own mind, that was President Obama's goal in Cairo, and he accomplished it with his customary eloquence and grace.

Some may say that that isn't the way to treat these people, that they only respect you when you slap 'em around a little, walk tall, strut your stuff, rattle the saber, let 'em know who's boss.

Well, that hasn't worked very well to date, so what's the harm in trying the human approach?

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This is going to be fun.

President Obama has his hands full trying to sell health care, save the economy, and conduct foreign wars, so the last thing he wants to get involved in right now is a mudslinging campaign over a Supreme Court opening.

As soon as the White House drew up its short list of prospective candidates, the opposition research started. As I've mentioned before, a Supreme Court opening is just about the most potent fund raising opportunity that exists in American politics, so even if Obama nominated Snow White, they'd come up with something about her highly unorthodox, and no doubt immoral, living arrangement with seven men.

But there's a fly in the Conservative ointment: Sonia Sotomayor is Hispanic, and stands an excellent chance of becoming the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice in American History.

It is a delicious dilemma: The Democrats have an overwhelming majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee, so it's a sure bet her confirmation will be passed to the main body of the Senate for a final vote. They also are just one short of the votes needed to prevent a filibuster. So you're a Conservative Republican, and you want to gin up some righteous anger about yet another radical activist judge, blah, blah, blah.

At the same time, Hispanics constitute a growing proportion of the vote, and alienating them could be tantamount to committing political suicide. These are people the Republican Party desperately wants to attract.

I had the pleasure of being the one to inform a Puerto Rican colleague about the Sotomayor nomination. "It's about time," she said, and grinned with pride.

Let's see now...who wants to be the pol who will be remembered for standing in the way of history?

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The health care industry is throwing words like "socialized" around to scare people into hanging onto the status quo, where there's money to be made.

There are two problems with this argument: First, the cold war ended twenty years ago, so "socialized" doesn't carry quite the menacing "Rooskies hiding under the bed" sting that it used to.

Second, we watch our Canadian and European friends make life decisions--like retirement--based on when it's best for them, rather than being forced to work until they can crawl across that bridge to Medicare.

Them ungodly socialistic types also rest easier when they lose their jobs, knowing that state benefits will kick in to protect them from starvation, and that their children can still see a doctor even if they're unemployed. Assuming that meeting these basic needs is what the state is primarily there for, then socialism doesn't look so bad, after all.

As for the "your taxes will skyrocket" argument, to me it's semantic. Taxes, health care premiums--either way, they get taken out of your paycheck. If, by calling them "taxes," they guarantee me and my family health care no matter what my employment status, then sign me up. Chances are they'll be less than the combination of premiums, co-pays, and "your provider charges more than the standard accepted rate for your region" dodges.

And finally, if single-payer "socialized" health care is so bad for us, why are the private insurers fighting hammer and tong to prevent that option from being passed into law? Could it be that we might get something closer to our money's worth?

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It just shows you that no matter who is in the White House, our republic--with all its awesome and high-priced might--remains at a disadvantage when it comes to asymmetrical warfare.

What do you do if you're the Taliban, you're armed with rocket-propelled grenades and maybe some old Enfield rifles the British left behind back in the Nineteenth Century, and you're fighting a foe who has precision missiles that can rain down destruction from the sky with no advance notice, obliterating an entire crowd?

You make sure the crowd he obliterates is the wrong one.

Remember, this battle is for hearts and minds, not body counts. You use jiujitsu, turning the aggressor's own bulk and momentum against him. Enough of these little mistakes, and pretty soon the whole country sees you as the heroic defender of innocent women and children.

What are a few thousand more deaths in a country that has suffered so much already, especially if they serve a strategic goal? The locals don't know the Twin Towers from the Doublemint Twins, and when you say "terrorism," they look at all the bodies of their friends and loved ones that need to be buried.

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There's a reason why nobody is interested in marking President Obama's first hundred days except the media.

The observance, or appraisal, or whatever, is entirely a media creation. It's as artificial as Four Corners, where four states meet because somebody decided that would be the place (turns out they were several miles off, anyway, due to surveying errors).

It all started with FDR, and ever since then, the pack journalism mentality has dictated that this so-called milestone must be the subject of innumerable news stories, analyses, and navel-gazing exercises.

Why? Because some assignment editor or news director, worried about his or her job, fears that some other news outlet will churn out a bucketload of pointless blather and that his or her boss will come in screaming, wondering why he or she didn't have the story. Hence, the pack.

All of us in the news business worry about our continuing relevance as the information superhighway becomes a light-speed torrent. One way might be to concentrate on things that really matter to people. We should be making these hundred-day appraisals every day, without ballyhoo, in such a way that they make clear how Obama's policies affect everyday lives. This other stuff is like screaming yourself hoarse in an echo chamber.

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What a feel-good moment. We certainly needed it. Reminds me of the "Miracle on Ice" during the Lake Placid Winter Olympics, and more recently, the Hudson River plane crash.

The first thing that struck me when I heard the news on Easter Sunday was how capricious fate can be. Barack Obama is being hailed as a man who, when tested, made the right decision under pressure.

What if, God forbid, a rogue wave had lapped against the side of the little lifeboat, throwing off the rhythm of one of our snipers just enough so that he hit the hostage, instead of his captor, in a horrible accident? The President would be condemned as a man whose intemperate rush to conclude the impasse cost an innocent man his life, when further negotiation might have yielded fruit.

I would have liked to be inside Jimmy Carter's head for a moment yesterday. Remember when he sent the task force into Iran to free the hostages, and the effort ended in tragedy? All because a few rotor blades got tangled up with each other, and some sand got in the engines. Had it succeeded, he might have been reelected.

Upon such discrete and seemingly trivial phenomena do the great wheels of History turn.

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There are people who will carp about how Barack Obama is spending too much time becoming a world celebrity, when he should be occupying himself with more mundane chores like fixing the economy.

What do they think he's doing over there? This is not a man whose ego needs a constant fix. He's already gotten enough accolades for a lifetime. He's using his and Michelle's star power as potent weapons in the service of American national interest.

Take the speech which he gave (not accidentally) at Strasbourg, the crossroads of Europe. By seducing the fawning crowds from Europe's two largest countries, he sent a signal to Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy that they cross the American wunderkind at their own peril. It's a strategy he has already used with some success to go over the heads of his own Congress.

And speaking a few words of Czech to the multitude in Prague--that took some guts. Nobody should ever dare to try speaking Czech before he's gotten a few liters of Pilsener under his belt. It was a gamble that paid off hugely.

A word about Strasbourg. It's too bad that, for security reasons, the President isn't allowed to eat anything local. They have this dish there called Choucroute a l' Alsacienne, which involves sauerkraut, goose fat, smoked, cured and fresh sausages and pork products with a hint of caraway that should only be eaten once in a lifetime, because of what it does to your circulatory system. I had it at the railroad station restaurant there in 1968, and I'm still working off the accumulated cholesterol.

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The arrogance is breathtaking, and not confined to Wall Street. The latest to surface with tax issues in her background is Gov. Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas, who is being confirmed for HHS secretary.

The way these people get snagged with such regularity (Timothy Geithner being the most egregious; I mean, Secretary of the Treasury, really) you wonder how many others in our government are getting away scot free simply because they're not being considered for cabinet positions.

Not paying social security for their servants? It would be nice to have servants. If I were wealthy enough to afford them, I would certainly feel it was my duty to pay their social security.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't. The above paragraph is only the journalist talking. Wealth and power work a transformation on people. It's easy to say they're rich because they know how to hang onto their money, and not spend it when they think they can get away with it, but there's that entitlement thing. They come to believe they have it because they deserve it.

Government of, for, and by the people. It looked good when Lincoln wrote it on the back of the envelope.

Well, from where I sit, an old envelope is good for just one thing: scratching out the address and reusing it to send a Letter to the Editor.

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They're calling it "tough love." President Obama has given General Motors sixty days to clean up its act and present a plan for the future, or we're cuttin' it off. He demanded the head of its CEO, Rick Wagoner, as part of the price of government aid.

Of course, Mr. Wagoner isn't the only one to blame. Sure, his company built big, fat profit-rich SUVs, but we--the American consumer--happily snapped them up. Then, being fickle, we abandoned them when the price of fuel rose. Now, nobody's buying anything, even small cars. Is that his fault?

Let's not forget the unions. I just heard that they get five weeks of vacation, 15 paid holidays a year, and Cadillac health insurance, for which they do not have to pay. Pretty hard to be competitive with the Japanese when so much fat is built into the cost of every car.

Why didn't Obama sack the big financial types? I heard it was because they're the only ones who know enough about the Byzantine system they created to unravel it. Wagoner's big weakness is that he runs a big industrial concern, and there are a lot of people who can do that, certainly as well or as poorly as he did.

It may or may not have been the best move, from a businees standpoint, for Obama to reach in and make breathtaking personnel decisions, but it was certainly politically astute. It looks dramatic, and in this climate, it gives people a warm feeling to see some bigwig's head rolling around on the assembly line floor.

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FDR had Fireside Chats, after all. If he'd had Jay Leno, he would have been on there, sure as God made dry martinis, pushing his alphabet soup legislation, or trying to pack the Supreme Court. Whatever.

When you have something to sell, it's all about getting past the media filter. You see, Obama can't get on a news program and say a word without their feeling the need to fulfill some journalistic requirement by trotting out John Boehner or Lindsey Graham to give the contrarian point of view.

The tobacco people and the climate change-deniers learned this lesson well. If all you can scrape up is one pseudo-scientist (who happens to be on your payroll) to say that smoking is good for you, or that whales breaking wind causes global warming, they'll give you equal time, even if ten thousand Nobel laureates say the opposite.

So if it means putting on a puce Harry Belafonte shirt and pirouetting on prime-time, our 21st-Century president will do what it takes to bring his message straight to the people.

That's what leaders do...LEAD! (One, two, cha-cha-cha...)

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You know you're in trouble when the head honcho expresses his unqualified confidence in your abilities.

Yes, there's no question that Tim Geithner has walked into the kind of hailstorm not faced by a Treasury Secretary in any living person's memory. All the same, his days are numbered. For one thing, he hasn't exactly covered himself with glory. For another, Washington is never happier than when there's blood in the water.

Some feel it's time to put a chink in the armor of the Victory Garden-cultivating, Jay Leno-schmoozing arriviste whose poll numbers remain annoyingly high. What better way than to pick off a Cabinet member?

Pack your bags, Timmy.

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First, as a U.S. Senator, he bellied up to the pork trough. Then, as President, he condemned it. Now, he's gotten religion again: letting Congress bring home the bacon is the cost of doing business.

The hypocrisy!

Actually, we're talking about less than 2% of the appropriations bill's total cost. Hardly worth getting exercised about, especially if earmarks greased the skids and got the thing passed.

Dare I ask why earmarks are such a terrible thing? It's how federal money gets to the localities. If the Florida delegation doesn't steer the money our way for Everglades restoration, do we think the Montana delegation is going to do it for us?

It's how hospitals get built in rural areas. It's how channels get dug for ports so that we can trade with the world. Sure, bridges to nowhere are egregious, but pork in and of itself benefits real Americans in real places. Maybe we just get upset when too much of it goes to one location because those folks happen to have a powerful congressman, or senator, or it looks through our distant eyes like it's being thrown away on something we never heard of.

I'm sure the locals, who also happen to donate to the IRS just like we do, have a different view.

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This must be what they mean when they say "leap of faith."

Imagine how worried you are about your job, your home, your health...you watched that speech, and you wish you could summon up the confidence that President Obama appeared to exude up there on the dais. You want to, but it's soooo hard.

Then, try to imagine how things would look to you if that were John "Don't Know Much About Economics" McCain standing up there, instead of Obama.

And count your blessings.

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It looks like Obama's already gotten lost in the "bubble." Sure, Denver has economic problems, but why did he have to fly a 50-ton airplane all the way out there and back to "emphasize" that the cavalry is coming to the rescue? Tone deafness has set in all too quickly.

What do we maintain a White House Rose Garden for? Sure, it's cold out there this time of year, but Denver isn't exactly balmy in February, either.

If Obama wanted to make a point about housing and jobs, he could just as easily have motorcaded over to one of the many neighborhoods in D.C. that are suffering. The visuals would have been just as compelling, and the government would be a few million dollars less in debt.

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Remember when President Bush said that if anybody were found to be involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame they would be fired? He said this, I suppose, knowing that he couldn't statutorily fire his Vice-President.

It was all supposed to be different with Obama. Accountability. Responsibility. One after the other, his nominees for cabinet seem to have tax problems that make it look as though Obama tacitly recognized one set of rules for big shots and one for ordinary working stiffs (despite his vehement denial).

The only thing different this time is that Obama trotted in a bunch of news anchors and did a mea culpa all over the airwaves. That's refreshing, but some important questions remain unanswered, at least in my mind: What kind of so-called "vetting" went on that Obama's people missed something so significant? Daschle's no fool. He knew, like every other Washington pooh-bah, that a car and driver are taxable income. If he was dishonest with his own potential boss, how could he be honest in his Cabinet post? If Obama knew about it, did he actually think he could finesse this through Congress? What about the fact that Daschle made millions from the very industry he was going to be regulating? What happened to those high standards?

If this is the New Politics we were promised, then why not bring back the best in the business? All he did was lie under oath to a grand jury, and as far as we know, he pays his taxes.

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It takes somebody who really knows what he's doing the better part of a minute to shoot and reload a musket. Longbows are faster, but they can still only launch one arrow at a time.

You have to wonder if the doctrine of habeas corpus, first developed in English Common Law and later enshrined in ours, would be as unconditional had bad guys in those days cared nothing for their own lives and could get their hands on weapons that were capable of annihilating large swaths of the population.

Much as we revere our rights, we live in a tricky new age. Would you want to be the one who stood on principle and sprang some nutball who later came back with a suitcase nuke and laid waste to one of our cities? All of our civil rights advocates would come down with a sudden case of laryngitis while everybody else screamed for your head.

There is one good thing about lawyers: if you pay a smart one enough, he'll figure out a legal path through any thorn bush. I understand they're hiring some pretty sharp ones right now in the Obama Justice Department.

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One school of thought holds that the Obama Administration should investigate the violations of America's moral code that occurred under President Bush's watch: the torturing, the extraordinary renditions, Abu Ghraib, the whole Guantanamo charade. It would be like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Punish those responsible (read here Cheney, Rummy, and lesser-known figures) so that those who might ponder these acts in the future would know that they couldn't get away with it. Also, prosecution would reaffirm to ourselves what we stand for as a nation.

Another school says let's move on, we have far more pressing problems to face down without getting mired in the sins of the past. Besides, it must have worked, because we didn't get hit again after 9/11.

President Obama, as is his wont, would like to split the difference: indulge in a little garbage-picking after we've addressed the immediate stuff. A pragmatic solution, although my gut says we should hold the malfeasance up to the light, and go wherever an investigation takes us. The national guilt we might feel for turning a blind eye to the dilution of our principles might inoculate us against falling prey to such apathy in the future.

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In his inauguration speech today, President Obama addressed the Islamic world directly, saying that those who were willing to work with us in building things, rather than destroying them, would receive the hand of friendship.

Here is one place where his heretofore burdensome middle name probably helps him. He has an enormous reservoir of political capital abroad as well as in this country. If he uses it more wisely than his predecessor, it could go a long way toward alleviating at least one of the many vexing problems that face us--that being our standing in the rest of the world.

I understand that one of Obama's first overseas trips will include Indonesia, the land where he spent a portion of his childhood. Can you imagine the reaction in the world's most populous Muslim nation when he makes a few remarks to them in their own language?

A far cry from a President who even had difficulty making a few remarks to the American people in their own language.

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Not to rain on President Obama's parade, but the American people (at least the current crop) do not weather hardship well. The difference between us and our forebears from the 1930's is that they never had it all that good to start with, so the Great Depression represented, for them, a more severe degree of personal restraint, not a quantum contraction of lifestyle as our current situation demands.

Our history of living high on the credit hog, those big fat cars and houses we really couldn't afford, the flat-screen TVs, the travel, the dining out, are all too vivid in our recent memory. We got used to the taste of prosperity, even if it was just a chimera. We want it back, pronto. A few more months of denial, and we're going to forget that the crash happened on George W. Bush's watch. All we'll think about is that Obama seems to be spinning his wheels at a furious pace, but we're no closer to moving back into our mcmansions.

That'll be right around when things start heating up for the off-year Congressional elections, and the Republicans will be more than happy to point out how little progress we will have made under an all-Democrat government.

How did it all begin? Heck, who will be able to remember that far back?

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One thing George W. Bush learned from Karl Rove is that all that high-minded stuff about brotherly love and the Great Melting Pot is dreck.

We're a nation of tribes, prejudices and special interests. If you can cobble together a big enough coalition of angry people by appealing to their basest hot-button phobias, you can get something done in this country, like passing tax cuts for the wealthiest five per cent of our population.

Now comes Barack Obama with an innovative concept: to be a true unifier (I refuse to use the Bushism "uniter"), why not tick everybody off by goring all the oxen at once? It's a little like the martyr who gathers all the spear points into his own body so that his army can break through the lines.

At least, in their mutual disappointment, the factions are talking to one another. This is a lot further than W. got in eight years, and Obama isn't even president yet.

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It's easy to scream about tolerance when you're the one on the outside being excluded. Now that the left thinks they've won the brass ring, they want the whole ride to themselves.

Listen to what one group said (I paraphrase): "Obama's choice of the Rev. Rick Warren means that he doesn't believe gays and lesbians have a place at the table."

Exactly wrong. What it means is that everybody, for a change, has a place at the table. You're never going to heal the divisions in this country by keeping any of the stakeholders out. And the stakeholders are all of us.

Grow up, for crying out loud. Getting even isn't getting ahead.

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First, he was a Muslim. Then, just a plain old garden-variety Pal of Terrorists. He wanted to teach kindergartners how to have sex. Next, there were lawsuits saying the authorities in Hawaii LIED and are part of a cover-up to obscure his true furrin origins.

Now, worst of all, he's going to take away our God-given right to own guns.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the paranoids is the sheer fecundity of their imaginations. I heard some folks, during the campaign, complain that if Obama won the presidency, they were going to move to Canada.

Why don't they hurry up and move, already, or are they afraid of living in a country where everybody has health insurance?

And let's not even discuss Canadian gun ownership laws.

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You can hardly blame Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of Miami's three anti-Castro amigos (along with the rabid Diaz-Balart brothers), for imagining herself to be yet another victim of a telephone prank.

After all, local Miami stations are past masters of the art form, having famously fooled Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez into thinking his pal Fidel Castro was on the horn, and then reversing the prank on Fidel, himself.

We all know about the French Canadian "President Sarkozy" who called Sarah Palin a couple of months ago.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Ileana hung up on President-elect Barack Obama when he called to congratulate her on her election victory and tell her how much he was looking forward to working together on common goals. Just to make sure she had dug her hole deep enough, she then slammed the receiver down on his future chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who had called to tell her that the Barack outreach was una llamada verdadera.

When the whole mess was finally ironed out, everybody had a good laugh, sort of. But Ileana is no fool, and in her embarrassment, she knows full well that Obama managed to carry Florida without the help of what is left of the anti-Castro Miami Cuban exile community. Which means that he's free to pursue any policy on Cuba that he chooses to, without fear of backlash from her or her constituents.

Not exactly the best way to play your hand with the new administration, particularly when you come to the table without so much as a pair of deuces.

As for the Miami radio pranksters, this must be the sweetest victory of all. They didn't even have to pick up the phone.

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One of the more rewarding aspects of editorial cartooning is that you are limited only by your imagination. Each day presents a new challenge. That doesn't just go for the subject matter, but for the way you choose to make your point.

This cartoon couldn't be more different from the previous one, where I drew a cartoony little boy wearing absurd-looking eighteenth-century dress.

In the one at the right, it made sense not to show the actual people doing the talking, but rather to highlight the building itself, which is a stand-in for the institution of the executive branch of government.

By necessity, the drawing ended up looking more like an architectural rendering than a typical cartoon, and I was hoping that its very dryness would help to accentuate the distinction between the tropes of the campaign and the new reality of the Obama White House.

I tried to stick to the "Keep It Simple, Stupid" rule. No unnecessary lines, no need for color.

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As America gets used to the words, "President-elect Barack Obama," it's both amusing and cringe-inducing to watch Barack Obama himself get comfortable with the concept.

What would have been nothing more than an inconsequential aside when he was a mere mortal, that being a reference to Nancy Reagan's seances, suddenly became a cause celebre in the Conservative blogosphere (which is not willing to give the man a nanosecond of honeymoon period) now that he's the leader of the free world.

It necessitated a personal call of apology to America's most revered widow, who probably wasn't all that offended, anyway, considering it was actually Hillary who held the seances and Nancy who brought in astrologers. But that's off the point.

From now on, he'll have to realize that every grunt and burp is going to be scrutinized, parsed, and mined for its subtext. It's a shame, for it may strip the man of his spontaneity and quick wit. Ronald Reagan, as we know, never learned to zip it. Remember the time he tested the microphone by announcing that we were going to begin bombing Moscow immediately? It almost started World War III.

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Talk about hitting the ground running. After a grueling two-year campaign wherein he slew not just John McCain but--lest we forget--the most well-oiled political operation until now, the Clintons--he barely gives the confetti time to hit the ground before he's choosing a cabinet and fielding snarky demands from Hamid Karzai, of all people.

My guess, as illustrated here, is that Inauguration Day is going to be pretty much a formality. The "Uniter" seems to have already packed up his comic books and checked out, so somebody is going to have to move in to fill the vacuum, especially at this time of crisis.

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Normally, I don't like to rely on so many words in cartoons, but I couldn't think of a more effective way to make the point about negative campaigning... without resorting to cliches (like avalanches of mud pouring out of the TV set).

Why not list, in simplistic terms, the way each side has tried to frame its opponent in our minds? When you lay it out this way, we really see how absurd this type of campaigning is when we're staring a possible depression in the face.

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Have you ever finished a project, and been so proud of it that you can't wait to show it to your friends, because you know it'll confirm to them, unequivocally, that you really are the genius your mother told you you were when you presented her with that first crayon drawing of a flower?

That was the case with this cartoon. It's also the curse of the cartoonist, who always gets the cartoon because he's the one who dreamed it up in the first place.

Imagine my dismay when I ran it past my distinguished colleagues, Antonio Fins and Nicole Brochu, and the sketch was greeted with no more than a yawn and a scratch of the head. Tony told me to go ahead and run it if I wanted to; it was my call. Maybe I wasn't as brilliant as I thought, after all.

Conversely, there are times when, pushing deadline, I pull an idea out of a dark place that, to me, is the most moronic, simplistic excuse for a cartoon--and for some reason, it hits everybody's funny bone.

If any of the readers of this blog care to weigh in on the topic, I'd be interested in hearing what you think. SPOILER ALERT!!! DON'T READ PAST THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THE EXPLANATION OF THIS CARTOON!!! I feel I owe it to you, though.

The point is that it is as absurd to question Barack Obama's patriotism because his middle name is Hussein, as to believe that John McCain is a closet Australian because his middle name is Sydney. Neither man had his choice of names. Sydney, by the way, is a large city in Australia. Which is a foreign country.

Okay, it's a stretch.

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Meet America's newest celebrity. I'm sure you'll be seeing him on Larry King and Katie Couric. Maybe the ladies of The View can get him to unclog the john in the dressing room. Never did Andy Warhol's dictum about fifteen minutes of fame ring more true.

I think Obama and McCain fully entered a bizarre parallel universe when they began addressing Joe directly, as a stand-in for the American people. Pick up the phone, I say. Don't waste my time with Joe's tax woes. He makes a lot more money than most of us do. Of course, Joe--being a plumber--would have started the meter running from the moment he answered the phone, so maybe McCain was just trying to save his campaign money by talking to him through the TV networks.

For those of us old enough to remember, I envision a sitcom involving Joe, his mother, Josephine the Lady Plumber, and his grandmother, Rosie the Riveter, who all share the same huge mcmansion. They sit around the proverbial kitchen table, scheming a way to hornswoggle the government into bailing out their toxic mortgage by rescheduling it at the house's new, depressed value.

With special guest appearances by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as Mr. Clean and Sarah Palin as Betty Crocker. It's a green-light project for sure.

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Crisis over. With the Dow surging an unprecedented 938 points today, we can, with our characteristically short national attention span, move on to the next topic.

That means, our candidates can once again spar over ephemera like lipstick on pigs or who went to a cocktail party at whose house or who flew on whose private plane way back when.

I propose (considering how stilted and boring the debates have been so far), that rather than listening to those two stiffs yak at each other about their past associations, we draft the actual principals to get up on stage and do battle as surrogates. Ayres can even wear a Che Guevara t-shirt if he wants to.

If this idea grabs high ratings, we could schedule as a bonus for the American people--who have had to endure so much for so long--a debate between the Rev. Wright and Sarah Palin's witch-hunting pastor from Wasilla. They could sell it on Pay-Per-View, foreign objects from outside the ring allowed.

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You don't have to be in the tank for one candidate or the other to be repulsed by what John McCain's vice-presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, has been doing on the stump lately.

According to news reports, she has incited her adoring crowds into yelling terms like "traitor," "terrorist," and "kill him" when she utters the name of her opponent at the top of the ticket, Barack Obama.

Nobody is against tough campaigning, but I think many would agree that this kind of rabble-rousing is beyond the pale. It is an attempt to awaken the ugliest side of the American character, and once one gets over the spine chills at the idea of what this kind of rhetoric could unleash in the body politic, one is overcome with sadness that a man as honorable as John McCain, who has given so much to his country, has stooped this low in his single-minded quest for the brass ring.

For, surely, it is John McCain who allows Sarah Palin to continue in this vein. His advisers may have seduced him with the siren song, "You can either be principled, or you can win," but had he not chosen to look the other way while she did his dirty work for him, it would surely not happen. He probably figures there is plenty of time to regain his integrity after he's elected, but we've now seen what he's capable of.

I liked the John McCain of 2000, along with many of my compatriots. I heard one wag on TV say, "Back in 2000, John McCain said there was a special place in hell for those Bush campaign operatives who smeared him. It seems that place is now in the McCain campaign, because they're all working for him."

Yes, it's all very sad.

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Let's face it: the Wall Street meltdown has been good for the Democrats and the Obama campaign. His poll numbers suddenly surged as the numbers in our 401K's diminished.

I doubt Obama has any better idea how to fix the problem than McCain, but campaigns have little to do with truth and everything to do with perception. The fact that the Illinois senator cautiously stood back while Sen. Can-do McCain charged into the fray like a runaway rhino now makes him look like a wise elder statesman.

You can't help but think that, way down in their guts, die-hard Dems are praying that we teeter on the edge of the Apocalypse until November 5, when the clouds miraculously part and the future once again beckons under a President-elect Obama.

And not a day sooner--we know that the American electorate has the attention span of a flea. They might get seduced by another come-hither wink from Sarah Palin.

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There’s something the Obama campaign knows, and the McCain people know it too. It’s that little secret many Americans don’t know about themselves: Way down deep in parts of their souls they never visit, they’re prejudiced.

They don’t know it because the prejudice, until now, has remained dormant, waiting to be triggered. Racism comes in many forms. It isn’t just the overt kind-- the bigoted redneck shouting slurs.

Once activated, it’s cunning, pernicious. It steals into our thinking, cloaked in euphemism and rationalization.

As long as Barack Obama stays cool, speaks like a Harvard graduate and wears nice, tailored clothing, he doesn’t present a threat to the average white American. If John McCain gets angry, he’s just a patriotic war hero expressing righteous indignation for the lamentable state into which his country has fallen.

If Barack Obama gets angry, suddenly he’s a Black Panther about to hurl a Molotov cocktail into our gated community. He’s Rev. Wright, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and Al Sharpton rolled into one. “Martha! I knew it all along! He’s that guy hanging out at the intersection that we roll up the windows and lock the doors against! And HE wants US to give him the keys to the CAR???”’

It’s Obama’s job not to be goaded into rising to the bait that the McCain camp is so generously scattering on the waters, and lose his temper. He’s hobbled in that he can’t really sling it back the same way it’s being shoveled at him. He’s a new kind of politician, remember?

At the same time, nobody wants a man for President who appears weak. If he can’t stand up to John McCain, how will he keep Vlad Putin from using him as a chew toy? Americans like to see a little fire in their Presidential candidates. Well, in some of them.

It’s an almost impossible act to finesse. The race issue, much as we’d like to deny it, is just sitting there, throbbing softly... the cobra in the corner. Whatever the outcome in November, it’s going to take some time and honest self-examination as a people before we realize how truly groundbreaking the Obama candidacy has been in our society.

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OK, politics had the day off yesterday. I'm back to bashing your favorite political icon.

Actually, this was a rare opportunity to hit both sides at once: first, Hillary for being so disloyal to her own party as to indicate she thought the Republican was more qualified than her Democratic opponent to be President. There's nothing wrong with ambition, but I think this was unprecedented in a primary campaign.

Second, John McCain for concentrating on the insults Hillary hurled months ago in the heat of a primary battle, when what the country desperately needs to know is how he plans to get us out of our mess.

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From a journalistic perspective, you have to be grateful to Hillary and her most ardent followers for at least creating some news at what is otherwise a very predictable coronation ceremony. I hope they scream, wave signs, try to drown out the presumptive nominee, and make a general spectacle of themselves.

There will likely be no such antics at the Republican convention, plus they're trotting out Dick Cheney to keep the disgruntled conservatives fat, happy and in line.

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First, the idea floated by Hillary herself that her supporters need some kind of "catharsis" before they can be convinced to vote for the presumptive Democratic candidate is patronizing (matronizing?) on its face. It's exactly the kind of notion that feeds prejudices about why a woman would make a lousy president: that a female is more likely than a male to sacrifice common sense and reason to the altar of emotion, and God help us if her finger is on the button when she's having one of her...days.

It's surprising that a woman as smart as Hillary would buy into that line. Or, maybe it isn't so surprising if you believe that she's really out for Hillary and that the whole "Joan of Arc of the Women's Movement" trope is just her vehicle for getting where she wants to be.

For those "dead-enders" (to quote Donald Rumsfeld, which I try not to do too often), who would rather vote for John McCain or sit on their hands than settle for half a loaf, I have three words: "Supreme Court nominee."

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You don't have to be a big Obama supporter to agree that McCain's current line casting doubt upon his opponent's patriotism is beneath the integrity of a war hero who served his country with distinction, and contrary to the "campaign of issues" he pledged to conduct what seems like eons ago.

There are two possible conclusions to draw here: the charitable one, which is that McCain is truly a man of honor and principle who listens to his advisers too much, which means he's a patsy. Or, that he's a charlatan who's sold his soul to fulfill his dream of becoming President.

So, this is what they call "experience."

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To paraphrase the Roman poet Juvenal (I think): an anxious populace, having long ago abdicated its duty to govern itself, awaits only bread and circuses.

Why Juvenal? Because I'd rather paraphrase him than Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.
Actually, he's proof that societies have been practicing avoidance techniques for thousands of years. Let's face it-- McCain and Obama are a couple of downers who spend all their time telling us what a mess we're in, and how the other guy will make things even worse. Who wants to listen to that day in and day out?

Light the torch, nuke the popcorn, and let the games begin! There's plenty of time for self-government later.

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It's called "The Trudeau Effect," for those old enough to remember. It's named after the late Canadian prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a hip and charismatic figure whose popularity increased in direct proportion with the square of his distance from Ottawa. In other words, the rest of the world loved him, while Canadians used a variety of epithets (and in the case of French Canadians--gestures) to describe him. Not that Obama has reached this extreme yet, but you can bet he eventually will if he becomes President.

So our Golden Boy has returned from abroad, and his feet must now, once again, touch the ground. No more soaring visions, no more paeans to the Unity of Man. He's gotta talk about national defense, pump prices, foreclosures, job outsourcing, education money, and all the other humdrum stuff that average Americans base their voting decisions upon. If you don't get mud on your boots, you can't reach for the stars.

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You have to feel for the McCain campaign. He visits a marketplace in Baghdad, and the only thing that gets mentioned is that he had to wear body armor and walk with a protective cover of helicopter gunships. Or, that he can't tell Shia from Sunni and has to be reminded of the difference by Joe Lieberman.

Obama, on the other hand, takes a little trip abroad and the media types start acting like teenyboppers at a rock concert who can't wait to throw their underwear onto the stage. No, it ain't fair, but unfortunately war heroes, while worthy of our respect, don't make for sexy TV ratings.

Our better angels tell us the media are supposed to be a public trust, but in the end, only the BBC can afford to be boring, because it's government subsidized. Obama, God bless him, moves car insurance, Boniva, retirement plans, erectile dysfunction meds, Activia, Touch of Gray, and all the other essential components of American life that undergird the First Amendment. McCain, unfortunately, only reminds people that they need them.

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Looking over my archives a while back, I realized I've been drawing Jesse Jackson for over thirty years. Like all of us, he's changed over time, and he has matured along with the civil rights movement he nurtured. My first drawing of him was as a young militant with an Afro, fist thrust in the air. Now, he has mellowed, and become one of the living monuments--some would say dinosaurs--of the struggle.

Again, like all of us, Jesse is a man with an abundance of flaws. But there is no denying that the ascent of a politician like Barack Obama (who was a small boy when Jesse was in the trenches) could not have been possible without the sharp elbows of men like Jackson who went before him, who never backed down when the odds seemed insurmountable. Whatever you think of Jesse Jackson or his methods, Obama's modern candidacy rests on the shoulders of people like him.

Now, it is Jackson's responsibility to himself, to his movement, and to his legacy to accept the gratitude and respect of those he has helped, and to pass the torch to the next generation with grace. It's just another challenge for a man who has faced many of them in a long and distinguished public life. I think he can handle it.

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Below is a column I wrote that will run on the Opinion Page of the Sun-Sentinel on Wednesday, July 16:

In keeping with the superheated rhetoric of the campaign season, an enormous brouhaha has erupted over the latest cover of the New Yorker magazine, which depicts a turbaned Barack Obama in the Oval Office fist-bumping his wife Michelle. Her hair is coiffed in an Afro, and she is toting an AK-47. There is an ornately framed portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall, and an American flag is burning in the fireplace. The cartoon has been described as inflammatory, and has been condemned by both the Obama and McCain campaigns as insulting and in poor taste.

Satire as a rhetorical device has been around since the ancient Greeks. Probably before that, even, when some Neanderthal stand-up comedian mimicked the effeminate spear-throwing style of his tribal chieftain and got bonked on the head with a club. Speaking as an editorial cartoonist, I have learned, painfully, that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who understand satire, and those who don’t. It would be easy to take the elitist route, and say that an understanding of satire comes as the result of education, but I remember that there were plenty of people in college who relentlessly took things they saw and heard at face value. They were a minority, to be sure, but I think the inability to read the intent of a message as being the opposite of what they are being presented with is a genetic thing. It should not be looked down upon any more than the inability to distinguish colors. You either have the gene, or you don’t.

I suspect that the Obama campaign understood the satire the way it was intended, as a device to showcase exactly how absurd are the many accusations being made about Barack Obama’s (and his wife’s) general suitability to be the President and First Lady. They are running a campaign, however, and they know that when the “satirically challenged” vote, their vote is worth just as much as those who “got” the cartoon. Hence, the show of huffiness. As for the McCain campaign, they’re just making some cheap points, pretending to be great humanitarians while knowing full well that the cartoon reinforces the subliminal and enduring message that opponents of Obama’s candidacy have been so effectively spreading.

As satire, I thought it was a good cartoon. It could have been drawn better, but that’s just a matter of personal taste. Whether it should have run at all is a more nuanced matter. If I were an editor of the New Yorker, I would be fully aware that my readership is a self-selecting group that would more than likely not only understand the satire of the cartoon, but get a hoot out of it. Being familiar with the editorial and visual content of the New Yorker, I am guessing that those who lack the satire gene are unlikely to spend their money on the magazine, so no harm done except when the cover is displayed in public, or becomes the property of the blogosphere and cable TV, as it now has.

From an editor’s point of view, the cover has pleased the magazine’s readership, become controversial, and as a result, sold more magazines—which is the goal of publishing a magazine. From the point of view of a concerned citizen who is interested in making sure the best man for our country is elected President, regardless of who he might be, anything that gets the less-capable person elected for the wrong reasons is to be avoided.

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The thing that makes Barack Obama such a brilliant politician is that he managed to fool so many people for so long into believing that he was more than just a brilliant politician.

You have to give Hillary credit--at least she made it clear that she was a cynical, pragmatic pol ready to do anything, including extolling the virtues of her would-be Republican opponent over those of her rival, to get nominated. So, yeah, now that he's got the liberal base eating crumbs out of his hand, Barack's heading for the Dark Side. It makes excellent political sense. Only--which Barack Obama is going to sit in the Oval Office, if elected? Does he really believe all that stuff he's been shoveling about a new kind of politics?

A note on this cartoon: some people saw the Bush eyebrows and ears, signifying Obama's transformation, and some didn't. One of my colleagues said, "Nobody can get into your (weird) world. Maybe ten people will catch that, and they'll all be other cartoonists."

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You know what that Obama fella's problem is? His message is too subtle, too nuanced. He's talking to an electorate that cares whether or not he wears a little enameled pin on his lapel, and he's trying to explain why they should get all misty-eyed over ten little chunks of dry eighteenth-century prose on a piece of parchment. Except for the second one, it's pretty hard stuff to get a lump in your throat over.

Wouldn't you, as a red-blooded American, rather see a platoon of cheerleaders in cowboy boots and fringe marching across the field carrying the red, white and blue? I know I would.

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You could say that this cartoon dances on the ragged edge of good taste, and you would be right. I was so cocksure that this baby would get spiked that I had already gotten on my high horse and crafted a sharp-as-a-tack comment in its defense for my Reject Corner.

Imagine my surprise when my editor looked at it and said, "I have no problem with it." After almost twenty-five years at this place, I thought I had him figured out. Pleasant little surprises like these are what keep the job interesting.

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A new kind of politics. Yes, we can. Change We Can Believe In. In the end, it's the same old story--it' all about the Benjamins. It was a smart move for the Obama campaign to renege on the pledge now. Considering the short memory span of the American people, this will all be obscured by the mists of history come November.

It's hardly a sexy enough topic for the Republicans to keep bringing up...they'd do the same if they thought it would benefit them. Still, it's time the Obamaphiles took off the rose-colored spectacles.

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I applaud the Obama campaign's new anti-smear website, but there are some people who will never be disabused. A friend of mine said she patiently explained to a co-worker that Obama was a member of the United Church of Christ, etc. She responded, "Well, he'll always be a Muslim to me." No need for supporting evidence.

Here's the side of this reasoning that perplexes me: if he really WERE a Muslim, how do they think he would have ever made it this far? Wouldn't some patriot have managed to blow his cover by now?

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When it comes to affecting economic cycles, there is very little a President can realistically do. Candidates for President can do even less, so they bloviate like whales spouting on a distant horizon.

The debate between McCain and Obama on this topic has an abstruse, how-many-angels-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin quality about it. We should move on to topics that matter to the American People, like whether Cindy McCain looks like a Stepford Wife, or whether Michelle Obama is too radical and edgy to be a First Lady.

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Hillary's concession speech over the weekend is sure to create further strife in already divided households. As if that weren't enough, there is that pernicious "secret Muslim" rumor, which is particularly rampant here in South Florida. Just thought I'd stir the soup a little.

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Talking about Hillary Clinton with someone is like talking to your friends about whether or not they want anchovies on their pizza. Everybody has a violent opinion, and nobody is indifferent. From what I can tell, Clinton supporters are well-meaning and honestly feel that a Clinton/Obama ticket would be greater than the sum of its parts.

In their zeal, however, they forget that there are others in the electorate who so viscerally detest her that it would drag people out of the woodwork who might otherwise not care that much whether Barack Obama or John McCain became President.

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We'll have to rewrite all the cliches... It's over and it STILL ain't over. Not only has the fat lady sung, but the audience and orchestra have packed up and gone home and they've shut down the opera house. Nothing succeeds like failure.

For people in my business, this is a godsend. It's the most exciting kind of sudden-death overtime, and if we're lucky, it won't end until the convention. I don't mean to imply it's the best thing for the country.

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There's no question that the almost-presumptive Democratic nominee has a lot of work to do in in the three South Florida counties to achieve a comfort level with the voters here. Without Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade, there's no chance he can win the state in November.

I intentionally left this drawing in black and white, the way it appears in the paper, because I thought it more effective than color. Sometimes, as Mies van der Rohe liked to say, "Less is more."

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I guess we're in for a long campaign. You'd think McCain would let independently funded groups do his Swiftboating for him so he can hang onto his fig leaf, but he just can't seem to wait. Let's play on the Muslim rumor to get that Straight Talk General Election Express rolling. If he's a Muslim, he MUST be a closet terrorist, right? After all, he's Hamas' poster boy.

I would imagine there are more than a few Klan members who plan to vote for McCain. That doesn't mean I'm going to be drawing him wearing a hood and burning crosses any time soon.

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After the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, we all watch in fascination, some of us in horror, as Hillary Clinton refuses to read the writing on the wall. Depending on your point of view, she is either to be admired for her toughness and resilience, or vilified for her selfishness and egotism.

I particularly enjoy this colorful image, which I snagged from the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza's blog, The Fix: "Nor are there many among unaffiliated Democratic consultants who believe she is ready to bail out. 'She is the Japanese soldier in the Pacific island that hasn't been told the war is over,' said Democratic pollster John Anzalone. 'Occasionally she picks off a few islanders and considers it a victory. Well, yesterday she found out the war was over.'"

I only disagree with the last sentence.

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Well, he's gone and done it. He definitively "divorced" himself from the Rev. Nutcase. If it were anybody else--say, a white person running for President-- that would probably be enough. But he isn't just anybody else. For many Americans, he brings with him the fear of the unknown, the strange.

Many in the chattering classes will continue asking the question, "Is it enough?" Since they're the ones who will decide if this story has legs, maybe they should be asking themselves that question, through the prism of their own prejudices. Speaking for the rest of us who put our pants on one leg at a time, I think there are more important things to worry about.

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So let's just assume, for the sake of the argument, that I'm way off-base in thinking that John McCain wants to have it both ways. He tells the North Carolina Republican Party not to run a particularly damaging anti-Obama ad featuring the rantings of Rev. Wright, so that he can take a bow for being a stand-up guy, while knowing they'll run it anyway.

If, in fact, he told them in all sincerity that he doesn't want them to run the ad, yet they ignore their so-called standard-bearer, then what kind of a leader is he? If he can't handle some two-bit state GOP organization, how is he going to handle Congress, or for that matter, a stubborn, unpredictable world?

Take your pick: Mr. Straight Talk is either disingenuous or ineffectual.

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This race is driving the Democratic Party bigwigs bonkers. The only Democrat who might have had the clout to step in and stop the carnage happens to be married to one of the candidates, and his stature is diminishing by the day, anyway.

Behind it all runs a leitmotif of Machiavellian psychobabble:

1: "She knows she'll lose, and she wants to make sure to destroy Obama on the way out. That way, McCain wins the general, and she comes back in four years as St. Hillary, the patron saint of I Told You So."

2: "Spite. If she's going to lose, she wants to take him and the party down with her as punishment for not picking her in the first place. How dare the vermin stand in her way?"

3: "She'll do anything to win, and worry about dealing with the hurt feelings later. The Clintons defined winning dirty. Her base, the shoulder-pad feminists of a certain age, see this as simply being tough in a tough world."

4: "The longer she manages to stay in, the higher the price she can exact for agreeing to get out. Governor of New York? Senate Majority Leader? Chief Justice Clinton?"

I believe all of it.

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This year, countries governed by all types of political systems are captivated by our electoral process. We stand before the world as a shining beacon of government of the people, for the...well, you know the script. Let's show them what REALLY matters, that is, when we're not thinking about American Idol.

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Last night, at what was luridly billed as the "Showdown in Philly," the subject of why Barack Obama doesn't wear an American flag lapel pin came up. The condensed version of his answer, which he also gave during the debate, was that a person's deeds and the content of his heart are what define a patriot, not what he wears on his lapel or his automobile bumper.

This is a difficult, subtle, and nuanced argument to make in a political atmosphere where oversimplification reigns. He'll catch some heat from the Republicans for it, assuming he makes it to the general election. A good counter to this attack is that a thousand lapel pins won't cover up for the sins of promoting a war while neglecting the care and welfare of the wounded soldiers who executed it.

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He ALMOST had it in the bag, and then the Fates played the hubris card, stepped in and handed Hillary a lifesaver. You'd think a guy as hip to modern technology as Obama would know that with all the personal gadgets people carry, there's no such thing as a closed-door fund raiser any more. Maybe he was lulled into complacency by the rivers of caviar and champagne at the Marin County Limousine Liberal get-together. As Ricky Ricardo might say, he's gotta lotta 'splainin' to do.

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Yesterday, I heard on National Socialist Radio (a.k.a. NPR), my broadcast news provider of choice, that one in 10 Americans still believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim, despite all the recent brouhaha in the news about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his inflammatory comments. I checked with our editorial assistant in charge of handling nutty calls from readers, and she said that there had, in fact, been a down-tick lately in the almost three per day she had been fielding, demanding to know why we didn't do an expose on Sheik B. Hussein Obama's "Secret plan to turn America into an Arab country." (That's a direct quote).

Anyway, this got me thinking about the continuing misapprehension on the part of many of our compatriots that the Saudi terrorists on the 9/11 planes were actually Iraqis. I suddenly realized that with a brain-trust like this, the Bush Administration must think we'll believe just about anything they feed us. Well, almost.

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No, I didn't draw this in response to angry Hillarylovers who ask why I'm always beating up on their warrior woman. I just call 'em as I see 'em, and right now I'm not seeing anything new or refreshing from anybody.

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You don't necessarily have to be an Obama fan to agree that it was a great American speech, without any hyphenated qualifiers in front of the word, "American." The question is whether Americans were ready to hear it.

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However you may feel about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's preachings, at least it may help to drive a stake through the heart of that asinine rumor about Obama being a secret Muslim.
I'm sure some people will still manage to figure out a way to attack him on both counts, though.

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I jump at any chance to do a cartoon about Bill Clinton. Whatever you think of him, his personality is larger than life, and his face is a caricature in itself. The best thing about Hillary's candidacy is that it's put him back on the political front burner, sucking all of the oxygen out of the room as usual. I think it was John Nance Garner who said the Vice-Presidency wasn't worth a bucket of warm...whatever. Whoever is crazy or desperate enough to accept the No.2 position on a Hillary Clinton ticket would probably be relegated to running the elevators in the Senate Office Building.

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Barack Obama isn't exactly the gift of caricature to editorial cartoonists that John Kerry was, but he is still interesting to draw. His face is angular, and he has those distinctive well-defined eyebrows that almost look like he uses eyebrow pencil on them.

I drew this before the losses in Texas and Ohio, and at the time, he still looked like he could take anything thrown at him and flip it to his advantage, like political jiujitsu.

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