Politics

“Because I do what the facts tell me, Captain…” – Capt. Richard Davenport from A Soldier’s Play (1981)   The true importance of any political endorsement is debatable. But this one is big, since it involves America’s most recognizable military hero declaring a preference that could help undecided centrist Republicans and independents make up their minds.…

I am glad there will be no debate this week. I skipped them all. Okay, I watched them in bits and pieces on YouTube after the fact. But I couldn’t take the intense emotion of the actual events. It’s not that I’m sitting on the sidelines. I am politically involved and well informed. But the…

Hollywood drove Dave Chappelle out of his gourd. He bounced on a multi-million-dollar contract, went to Africa, got his mind right and realized that at the end of the day, hamming it up for The Man wasn’t what he wanted to do. Here’s the problem: Although it was great for Dave’s state of mind, it…

Kendra Reddick lives in Ohio and can’t decide which presidential candidate deserves her vote. Like thousands of voters across the Buckeye State, Reddick is a values voter. She typically only backs politicians who share her conservative, fundamental Christian beliefs. So four and eight years ago, Reddick, a black 42-year-old, middle-school history teacher in Cleveland Heights,…

Bob Schieffer opened last night’s debate with a wistful plea. “By now we’ve heard all the talking points,” he said. “So let’s try to tell the people something they don’t know.” Good luck with that. The problem John McCain faced going into the campaign’s final debate is that Americans fully understood the contours of this…

Historians may look back at this election and decide that the outcome was never really in doubt. The political fundamentals were so clear and so unchanging long before the real contest began, throughout nearly the entire second-half of the Bush presidency. The war, the economy and the GOP mismanagement of their congressional powers and an…

Comparing politicians to Adolf Hitler is a tired, cheap trick that has been used to demonize George W. Bush, John McCain and even Barack Obama. The problem with the comparison is that it makes blanket generalizations of who is good and who is evil, while overlooking the historical conditions that allowed a nation to be…

A lot of people say they don’t understand undecided voters. But perhaps undecideds view politics the way I view football. Every year, I show up at a Super Bowl party with a bucket of chicken and no one to root for. I like football, love going to games, but I don’t have a “team.” People…

Are you an Obama supporter who feels a certain amount of unease with your candidate’s occasional bouts of schlockiness? This is not to say you don’t appreciate his speaking skills. You cheered at the Philadelphia race speech, but had to dredge up the patience to get through some of his others. At times, Obama can…

Does anyone else think Sarah Palin deserves a smackdown? She has lately boasted that the “heels are on and the gloves are off,” but she knows that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would look less than gentleman-like and risk offending women voters, if they took her on using some of the tough talk and loaded…