Category: National

It’s a political aphorism that Pennsylvania looks a lot like Alabama between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who’s backing Hillary Clinton, underscored that labeling recently.

“You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate,” Rendell told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette .

Hey Ed, even though Hillary, the faux feminist and risk-aversion candidate, is your choice, why not remind Keystoned Dems that this isn’t Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson or some other race-baiting, professional black opportunist running against her. This is a legitimate candidate – albeit one who is vulnerable to being hammered on specifics and experience. Call him a Template Candidate with soaring rhetoric. But don’t let this racial atavism fester under your watch – even if it helps your candidate.

And, lest we forget, the Pennsylvania primary, which is April 22, could be, alas, decisive this year.

On one hand, it’s understandable how the Democratic faithful still get rapturously nostalgic over the return of Bill Clinton to presidential politics. He is this generation’s most gifted retail politician, a wonkish sort who towers intellectually over his successor, and an avatar of better economic times.

But it’s that other hand.

The country was two quarters out of a recession when he took office. Neither the irrationally exuberant dotcom bubble nor the peace dividend from the demise of the Soviet Union were his doing.

Commander-in-chief was not his forte. Alas, he remained “unavailable” and missed a golden opportunity to take out Osama bin Laden long before Sept. 11, 2001.

And he was impeached. Not because of a peccadillo. Not because of right-wing conspirators. Not because he was a victim of high-handed, moral judgments.

But because he was a perjurer, a national security time bomb and an on-the-job philanderer who disgraced his office and country.

But then again, nostalgia isn’t supposed to be logical.

Anyone looking for irony in the Kennedy-Obama love-in, which has included direct comparisons of Barack Obama to John F. Kennedy, need not look very far.

Recall that when Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed Sen. Obama, he went out of his way to refute all that former President Bill Clinton had said or intimated about Obama. Including Obama’s relative inexperience.

Kennedy even underscored that Obama would be ready on “day one.”

Ironically, JFK wasn’t.

Anyone remember the Bay of Pigs? President Kennedy didn’t have the experience and gravitas to see through a fatally flawed Eisenhower plan and halt it. What he did was halt air cover – and any chance, even remote, that the ill-fated invasion of Cuba could have succeeded.

Kennedy would later prove his mettle by backing down the Joint Chiefs over the Cuban Missile Crisis. But, no, he wasn’t ready on “day one.”

If the Democratic presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards, the vice-presidential running mate ought to be Wesley Clark. Arguably, the former general would give the ticket its best chance of blunting the GOP’s national-security trump card.

Clark formerly commanded NATO; he was a Rhodes scholar; and he’s more than credible as a presidential successor. He even looks the part.

And it’s not as if there is no precedent for the vice presidential candidate being older and more experienced in matters of foreign policy and national defense than the presidential nominee.

The Mike Huckabee appeal is obvious. He comes across as a really nice guy. Not commander-in-chief nice or unpardonably nice, but the kind of guy you wouldn’t mind throwing back a couple of Yoo-Hoos with.

And he’s riding surprisingly high because the demographically-skewed, Silo Majority in Iowa wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of divine intervention. Caucus Christians love a good, theocratic candidate who has worked religiously on his bully pulpit skills.

But here’s what’s hard to get beyond. Should Huckabee actually get the nomination, he would face GOP attacks that won’t be limited to Willie Hortonesque ads that question his clemency judgments. Or references to ethical citations for accepting gifts as Arkansas governor. Or intimations that a 23% national sales tax in lieu of federal income and payroll taxes might be fiscally questionable. Or cheap shots at the “Hickabee” name and Gomer Pyle resemblance.

No, most prominent will be those video outtakes of Huckabee raising his hand when CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked if anyone didn’t believe in evolution.

Just when you think politics or politicians can’t devolve anymore, we get these sorts of questions – and that kind of answer.

If the Democratic presidential nominee is Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards, the vice presidential running-mate ought to be Wesley Clark. He formerly commanded NATO; he’s a Rhodes Scholar; and he’s more than credible as a presidential successor in an emergency.

And if it’s Hillary Clinton, such a selection might also give Bill Clinton something to ponder. Clark is as good-looking as Mitt Romney.

You wouldn’t know it by the constant drumbeat of negative news rippling from the sub-prime epicenter, but there’s been more than a spate of good news lately.

GDP grew nearly 5% last quarter, and the U.S. was recently rated the world’s most competitive economy by the World Economic Forum.

Hardly time to reprise “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but about time for more context in economics news.

Of course, the Supreme Court did the right thing when it said federal judges could take issue with sentencing guidelines that created a huge disparity between offenses involving crack and powdered cocaine. It also created a racial divide. Crack offenders were largely black; powder offenders, white.

Both fairness and common sense were winners.

But let’s not forget the context in which the crack-powder disparity arose. In the mid-1980s, communities were pleading to authorities to do something about the scourge that was crack cocaine and all the attendant crime directly associated with it.

Powder was more of a suburban party drug that didn’t exactly lend itself to home invasions, car jackings and generic assaults and murders.

The good news: Venezuelans voted down a referendum that would have made Hugo Chavez president for life. A hemispheric heavy and a blatant power-grabber goes down to defeat.

The bad news: More than 49% of the voters thought indefinite, one-person rule by the populist-pandering, malevolent Sgt. Garcia of Latin America was a pretty good idea.

You can’t make this stuff up. Gillian Gibbons is the British school teacher in Sudan who allowed her class of 6-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed. Oops. Ultra-strict Sharia law formally frowns on such disrespect. Gibbons was arrested and charged with offending religion and insulting Islam. Punishment could have been six months in jail and 40 lashes. Bottom line: A teddy bear is still an animal. Not acceptable. Mohammed Atta? Not a problem.