GOP and the Poor

Mitt Romney says the darnedest things.

Take, for example, when he said, “I like being able to fire people.” Well, what he actually said was, “I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.”

Now he says he doesn't care about the poor.



But one of government's chief responsibilities is to protect the poor. Government is to protect everyone, but especially the weak against the strong: the unborn, children (where their parents fail), widows (if they have no family), orphans, and the poor (if they are genuinely destitute). The Bible promises divine wrath for those who "devour" the poor (Prov. 30:14).

But the poor who really are poor are usually forgotten, powerless, easy prey, and exploited even by the governments that are supposed to protect them. We don't have as many of them as some would have us believe, as the Heritage Foundation points out. But that does not make those who are genuinely poor, especially for reasons other than vice, people to be ignored.

See my Worldmag.com column on this topic, "Romney and the Politics of the Poor." I also have an article coming up in Relevant magazine that speaks to this subject.

Let me add two points.

Romney distinguishes between “the very poor” and “the heart of America, the 95% of Americans who are right now struggling.” The Census Bureau is certainly using inflated figures when it claims that 1 in 7 of us is poor, but the figure is likely to be higher Romney's 5%. However many there are, they are a serious moral concern.

The governor is right to be concerned as he is with the middle class. One would think that they could take care of themselves. They have skills, education, and desire to provide for themselves. But they need protection precisely against the government which hampers the economy with one hand and with the other shreds the social fabric by neglect and meddling. If government would just restrict itself to its proper role, the middle class would spring back in fine shape.

Not Michele Bachmann...Not Now

The most recent Rasmussen poll has Rick Perry far ahead of the perennial campaigner, Mitt Romney, and Michele Bachmann.

Here is my quick take on the relatives strengths and weaknesses of the three candidates: "A Tonic for Campaign Fever." If you are a political type like me, you are looking for someone to believe in. But there's lots to keep me sober in this field. Besides, when Mitch Daniels declined to run, I swore myself to political chastity. I shall never love again...or at least not until 2016 or '20, depending on how things turn out.

I was easy on Michele Bachmann in the column. But here I can speak more fully. [Update: Sept.7 - Bachmann's campaign manager, Ed Rollins, has left the cause, conceding that it is a Perry-Romney race at this point. This seems to seal Bachmann's place as a footnote to the 2012 campaign.]

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It is interesting that in these times of high unemployment the Republican Party is having a hard time finding applicants for the President’s job. Consider Michele Bachmann, Congresswoman from Minnesota. She’s a fiscal and moral conservative. These are policy positions that are promising for anyone seeking the Republican nomination. She has cared for 23 foster children, something speaks highly of her personal character. But here is why she will not and should not get the Republican nomination.

First, she is only a Congresswoman. The only person ever to have gone straight from the House of Representatives to the White House was James Garfield in 1881. There is a reason the path to the presidency is either through a Governor's mansion or a Senate seat.

Unlike the office of Congressman, Senator is a statewide office. For this reason, Senators are more inclined to consider the broader interest of a wider constituency. By constitutional design, however, Senators take a broader view of public affairs because of their involvement in presidential decision-making. They confirm the President’s cabinet appointments. This draws them into considering what is required of people in those posts and weighing the wisdom of the President’s judgments.

The Senate also ratifies treaties, a responsibility that requires a detailed knowledge of matters like arms control and trade agreements. Thus, in 2008, Sen. John McCain who had been deeply involved in foreign policy oversight was fully prepared to assume the mantle of Commander-in-Chief.

One of a Senator’s most consequential decisions is whether to confirm a nominee to the Supreme Court. This calls a Senator to scrutinize a broad range of issues that fall within a President’s sphere of action. Thus, in this role, Senators must think of how they would behave in a Constitutional manner as President.

Because of their heightened responsibilities, Senators tend to be more judicious in their judgments and careful in their speech. Congressmen, by contrast, are more blustery, less researched, partly in their attempts to distinguish themselves from the pack (there are 435 seats in the House, but only 100 Senators), and partly to satisfy their narrow constituencies in their districts. Think Joe Wilson from South Carolina’s Second District shouting “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care speech to Congress in 2009.

Governors, for their part, have valuable executive experience. They have to balance a budget, as Indiana’s Mitch Daniels did and as John Kasich is struggling to do in Ohio. They have to negotiate with a possibly hostile legislature as Gov. Ronald Reagan did in California and Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. They may have to face a disaster as Haley Barbour did after Hurricane Katrina and as Bobby Jindal did during the BP oil spill. And rhetorically, they have honed the skill of addressing not a narrow, Gerrymandered Congressional district but a broad populace of diverse passions and interests.

But Michele Bachmann sits in the House of Representatives. She was first elected to a House seat in 2006, and before that she was a Minnesota State Senator. Attempting this sort of premature leap—from the lower house to the White House—bespeaks an impatience that does not serve the country well in the highest office. But our current President’s success encourages unseasonable ambition.

Romney Finds His Voice Upon Exiting

At this afternoon's CPAC convention in D.C., Mitt Romney will be announcing that he is suspending his campaign, effectively pulling out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

FOX News reports that he will read from this prepared statement:

If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator (Hillary) Clinton or (Barack) Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. ...If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country,” Romney continued. “I will continue to stand for conservative principles; I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism.

These are stirring and inspiring words. I have never had this response to anything that I have heard Mitt Romney say. He has never been a candidate known for speaking fiercely and from the heart about our nation's enemies. If he had been speaking this way for the last six weeks or more, it might have been John McCain pulling out today, and not Mitt Romney.

By the way, Michael Barone ("Open-Field Politics," Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2008) has an illuminating summary of the campaign strategies thus far, how they have failed, and why electorate is proving to be so unpredictable. "The fact that every campaign's experts came up with losing strategies suggests that, in this year's open-field politics, all the old rules may be broken. It's been a wild ride in the 35 days since the Iowa caucuses, and it may be even wilder in the 271 days until the polls open in November."

Money and Good Looks Don't Win the White House

It is offered as a truism that money buys office in America. Money is the determining factor in who gets elected, we are told.

Consider the counterfactuals that we have seen thus far in the primaries, especially on the Republican side. Mitt Romney had far more money than any of the other candidates. Yet he was trounced on Super Tuesday. Who trounced him? It was John McCain who at one point had almost no money left, and yet came back to bury Romney on February 5. Mike Huckabee is fond of saying that, having spent less than 10% of what Romney has spent, he has done comparably well at winning delegates. No one can dispute that money is handy, but at least in presidential campaigns it has to be matched by a marketable candidate, i.e. one who has the requisite substance and skill.

Speaking of the role of money, it is worth noting that the top Republican contenders have almost no money left. As of the end of the 2007 fourth quarter, CNN reports that Romney had just $2.5 million and McCain had almost $3 million on hand. (Ron Paul has almost $8 million, but his money is not matched by a credible candidacy so it is useless to him.) The Democrats, by striking contrast, are bathing in cash. CNN tells us that at the end of the fourth quarter of '07 Hillary had $38 million in the bank and Obama had $18.5 million. That could have consequences. In a curious development, it is reported that the Clintons recently infused $5 million of their personal fortune into their campaign. This apparent contradiction between bank statement and behavior is explained by a large sum of those reserves that is designated for the election campaign itself. But again, that points to a Republican funding problem in the fall.

Let me add this little addendum. People also flippantly remark that television favors the telegenic candidates. In the video age, everything has become style over substance, image over reality. Voters are presumably mesmerized by handsome features and charming ways. Ugly old Lincoln could never get elected in our post-Gutenberg world.

And yet, John Edwards, perhaps the most handsome man ever to run for the presidency, came a distant third among the Democrats and did not even make it to Super Tuesday. This poor showing was despite his indisputable substance and skill and $44 million. On the Republican side, the unsettlingly handsome Mitt Romney is running a seemingly hopeless second, having fallen from what was once a confident front-runner position before the Iowa caucuses.

Take that, you cynics!

Is Mitt Too Pretty to Lead?

Christine Randolph writes:

One thing I will never get used to is seeing a man who has obviously spent more time getting ready in the morning than I have. Former Massachusetts Governor and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is just such a man. I imagine he has an opinion on terrorism and the war in Iraq, yet I have never actually been able to listen long enough to find out. Instead, I find myself picturing him trying to give a rousing speech to a company of troops in the Middle East. His Ken-like hair is completely unaffected by the heat and dry of the desert air. While the soldiers are practically melting in the sun, there he stands, as flawless as ever.

I have a fairly typical morning schedule: make some coffee, take a shower, fix my hair and make-up, get dressed, and go. All in all, it takes me about an hour to get ready in the morning. I make myself look nice, but I am not particularly concerned with looking flawless each and every day. But, when I see a guy who looks better than I do on a daily basis, I get a little worried.

Has anyone else noticed how flawless and evenly tanned Romney’s skin is? After spending the last few years of his life in Massachusetts and Utah, lovely yet characteristically chilly states, can that really be natural? After a whole summer in the sun and a vacation to the beach in Florida, even I am unable to acquire the kind of color he has. He also possesses a pattern of hair color rarely found in nature: silky black save for the light peppering of grey just around his ears. I can not say that it looks bad; it just does not look quite real.

What really bothers me about his appearance is the style of his hair. This cannot be blamed on really great DNA. There is no possible way it could be so perfectly coiffed without some considerable work and an unnatural amount of hair gel. This is not just a great hair day. This is a constant and purposeful effort to have perfect hair. This is a ploy to rise above the competition, not in the usual political ways, but through appealing to the eyes.

It is possible that he has been trying to take a page out of President Kennedy’s book. Many have suggested that Kennedy ultimately won the 1960 election because he was just easier to look at than Richard Nixon. But being shockingly well composed may not be the best tactic to secure the presidency. Personally, I find it hard to pay attention when Mitt Romney is talking about his policies. I am just too distracted by his unusual and unnatural good looks.

During the recent Republican debates, I should have been able to acquire some knowledge of his politics. There he was in his crisp, outrageously expensive suit and shiny new shoes telling me how he feels on the important issues facing this election. But for some reason I found myself being strangely fascinated by the incredible height of the poof atop his head. How does he, or rather his hair dressers, make it so puffy? I wish I could make my hair that voluminous. I wonder what kind of shampoo he uses.

Even unremarkable occasions like a walk through the White House gardens with the First Dog would be grounds for curiosity. His gravity-defying hair is not moving. That is nothing out of the ordinary. But look… the tree branches around him are tossing around like a hurricane has just struck land.

Do we really want such an extensively groomed man as our President? Sure, he would look great sitting in the Oval Office or on a postage stamp. Perhaps he would even be okay giving presidential speeches and inspirational messages. Honestly, he might not be that bad with the whole leading the country business. But before I even consider voting for him, I must ask myself one question: Do I want a President who is prettier than me? I am not so sure.

-- Christine Randolph studies Politics, Philosophy and Economics at The King's College in New York City and is a guest writer today at Principalities and Powers.

Romney is Nice, But No President

Last night, at the final Republican debate before the Super Tuesday primaries, John McCain and Mitt Romney sparred over whether Gov. Romney advocated timetables for withdrawal from Iraq after the Republican Congressional defeat of 2006. Drunk with victory at the polls, the Democrats were speaking incessantly about bringing the troops home and establishing "timetables" for doing so. In that context, both ABC and CBS asked Mitt Romney for his views on withdrawing troops from Iraq. McCain rebuked his opponent for not giving the simple and decisive answer, "No!" Romney countered quite emphatically, and with visible irritation, indignation and even frustration as the charge kept returning, that he was speaking of various other timetables such as in fact we have.

The statements in question were these. From ABC News, "Romney Embraces Private Iraq 'Timetables'," whose Robin Roberts asked "if he believes there should be a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq"

Well, there's no question that the president and Prime Minister al Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn't be for public pronouncement. You don't want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you're going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

On CBS's "Early Show," Romney said:

Well, I wouldn't publish [a timetable] for my adversaries to see. [Instead he advocates] a series of milestones, timetables as well, to measure how well they're doing. But that's not something you publish for the enemy to understand, because of course they could just lay in the weeds until the time that you're gone. So these are the kinds of things you do privately, not necessarily publicly.

ABC then made this interesting observation: "While Romney's Tuesday call for 'milestones' is nothing new, he has mostly shied away in the past from employing the more politically charged terminology of 'timetables.'" They also included a statement from a Romney official explaining what the candidate meant. In other words, the controversy was immediate, not something John McCain has invented.

As head of the executive branch of government, the President's chief responsibility is to defend the lives and liberties of the people against enemies both foreign and domestic. The two chief threats to the lives of people in this country are Radical Islam (primarily al Qaeda) and abortion. All the remaining candidates are square on the abortion question. But this remark just over one year ago under the pressure of fashinable thinking and voter anxiety shows that Mitt Romney does not possess the mettle and judgment to be commander in chief of the armed forces which is fully one half of the job.

I have tried to see the merits of this fellow. He did a good job last night of defending his record as Governor of Massachusetts. He was almost Reaganesque in his warmth. My guard was coming down. But in his altercations with the smiling and self-possessed McCain, he showed none of Reagan's executive fierceness. At no point did his words, tone, or manner suggest, "Don't mess with me."

Of the four men, there was only one President among them, and that was John McCain. The questions for Republicans is: who do you want confronting the deadly international evil that threatens us in Iraq, Iran, North Korea and in sleeper cells here at home and who do you want making the next two appointments to the Supreme Court: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John McCain. The stakes are too high for a "sit this one out" strategy.

Perhaps McCain...but Not If Huck's Coming Too

Among my other reservations about John McCain as president (the McCain-Feingold assault not just on free speech, but on political speech at election time!; the Gang of Fourteen; etc.), there is also this fondness that he and Mike "Yet-Another-Man-From-Hope" Huckabee have for one another and the likelihood which that presents of a McCain-Huckabee ticket. Having the Huckster just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office (bullet, stroke, bout with cancer--McCain is 72) is off-putting, to say the least.

Peter Augustine Lawler (Berry College, author of American Political Rhetoric: A Reader as several other fine books) reports this sober defense of Mitt Romney over at No Left Turns.

Oh, and here's Ann Coulter speaking for Romney and flailing the darlings of the Democratic Party who are his closest rivals for the GOP nomination. Go on. You'll have fun.

After Iowa...What? (R)

So Iowa Republicans have given their blessing to a nice religious fellow who is so bipartisan and so hostile to the Republican establishment that he is almost indistinguishable from a moderate Democrat. I don't think that he will survive outside the sentimental religious atmosphere of that state, however. But should he win the nomination, it is certainly at least reasonable to advocate voting for Barack Obama on the understanding that if a clearly unqualified and incompetent President is going to screw up America and the world, it is better that it be a Democrat. Otherwise, who would step in to begin fixing the mess four years later?

Assuming that it does not come to that, whither do Republicans cast their eyes this side of the caucuses? Romney has suffered a body blow. He poured enormous time and money into this state. He goes into New Hampshire on January 8 a second place finisher nine points behind the Iowa winner having already spent 53 of his $62 million campaign fund (according to CNN).

That leaves the race open to (essentially) tied-for-third-place finishers Thompson and McCain, Mayor Giuliani, and of course Pastor Huckabee. It also leaves Republican voters almost as confused and undecided and somewhat disheartened as they were on January 2. Where is wisdom?

Start here. None of these men is Ronald Reagan. We are not entitled to a Reagan every time the top slot comes open. Reagan was rare. Accept that.

With that understanding, a voter's responsibility in a democracy is to exercise his franchise in such a way as to help elevate the best (most wise, virtuous, prudent) people into government.

Again, there is something to be said for helping to engineer a calculated loss for one's own party in certain circumstances. Mike Huckabee's nomination might be one such circumstance. Aside from that, however, after 9/11 the stakes are simply too high to play that game. You may have strong misgivings about one candidate or another, perhaps even deep hostilities, but he is safer than any three of the Democrats (with one exception).

Simply consider the most electable of the best candidates across the board. (It is not enough to be simply a good candidate. He must also be electable to merit your support. The candidate who has the best positions on what you think are the most important issues is not necessarily, on that basis alone, electable. There is more to becoming President and more to being President than policy positions.) The Democrats are so foolish in foreign policy, so depraved in social policy, and so destructive in economic policy that they disqualify themselves from consideration.

On Mike Huckabee, I have already said enough.

David Brooks has an insightful column on Mitt Romney entitled "Road to Nowhere." He puts his finger on why I find Mitt so dull. He's entirely market tested, "the party's fusion candidate." Having been nowhere in conservative politics, he emerges as the conservative candidate, a though a presidential contender can be restructured like a company and then re-marketed to consumers. The problem, says Brooks, is that, "In turning himself into an old-fashioned, orthodox Republican, he has made himself unelectable in the fall." He polls in the single digits among young people who are Barack Obama's strength. He does very poorly among people making less than $75,000. Obama did well in all income brackets in Iowa. Independents find him "inauthentic," whereas Barack Obama gives just the opposite impression. Brooks has more to say about a general "failure of imagination," but the bottom line is this: "His triumph this month would mean a Democratic victory in November." Romney is not a reasonable alternative.

Giuliani? I just shake my head. The word commonly employed at the end of the Clinton presidency was "tragedy." So much talent and so much opportunity squandered for such trivial and stupid gain. The same word, "tragedy," comes repeatedly to mind when considering all that Rudy Giuliani has to offer the nation alongside the mess that he has made of his life and that stands impenetrably between him and the Oval Office. For example, read "Old Habits: How the Giuliani Methods May Defeat Him" by Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker, January 7, 2008). As the Republican nominee, Rudy would have to fight a two front war: Obama on one side and his own past on the other. Fierce animals, both of them. Why would the party choose that unless it were absolutely necessary? It is not.

That leaves you with two candidates: Fred Thompson and John McCain. Neither one is Reagan. Neither one is the conservative dream. Both are eminently qualified. Either one would be better than any of the Democrats. Choose one.

In choosing, be mindful of the wise counsels of Peggy Noonan and Larry Lindsey.

Wise Words from Peggy Noonan

"This is my 2008 slogan: Reasonable Person for President. "

With these words, Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan begins her final assessment of the candidates and of our national leadership needs before the January 3 Iowa caucuses and the rapid movement of political developments from one tightly scheduled primary to another following that ("Be Reasonable: As Iowa sizes up the candidates, so do I," Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2007).

Peggy is a strikingly reasonable person. When you read her, you feel as though you are in conversation with a friend, regardless of your party affiliation. And whether or not you agree with her, you always find her conversation enjoyable, challenging, and profitable. I think that is why I feel inclined to call her "Peggy," rather than Noonan.

From an aerial, bipartisan perspective, she speaks for reasonable voters everywhere: "We just want a reasonable person. We would like a candidate who does not appear to be obviously insane. We'd like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it."

Among the Democrats, she respects Joe Biden and Chris Dodd for their many years of experience in the Senate dealing with serious national security concerns.

Mitt Romney gets her nod. "Characterological cheerfulness, personal stability and a good brain would be handy to have around. He hasn't made himself wealthy by seeing the world through a romantic mist."

In Peggy's judgment, McCain is also sane. "Mr. McCain is an experienced, personally heroic, seasoned, blunt-eyed, irascible American character. He makes me proud. He makes everyone proud."

"Mike Huckabee gets enough demerits to fall into my not-reasonable column."

Obama may possibly have the character it takes to lead the nation in times of national peril, but he is too young and inexperienced. Those are two separate considerations. "Men in their 40s love drama too much. Young politicians on fire over this issue or that tend to see politics as a stage on which they can act out their greatness. And we don't need more theatrics, more comedies or tragedies."

Hillary? No. The next American president must be someone who, for reasons of character or of circumstance, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have not been: someone the nation can trust in times of crisis. Hillary Clinton is obviously not that such a person.

...[T]he next American president will very likely face another big bad thing, a terrible day, or days, and in that time it will be crucial--crucial--that our nation be led by a man or woman who can be, at least for the moment and at least in general, trusted. Mrs. Clinton is the most dramatically polarizing, the most instinctively distrusted, political figure of my lifetime. Yes, I include Nixon. Would she be able to speak the nation through the trauma? I do not think so. And if I am right, that simple fact would do as much damage to America as the terrible thing itself.

Though she had some respectful words for HRC, John Edwards gets an unbroken drubbing. "John Edwards is not reasonable. All the Democrats would raise taxes as president, but Mr. Edwards's populism is the worst of both worlds, both intemperate and insincere." Yes, that sounds right.

Giuliani "is reasonable but not desirable." She doesn't waste time explaining. Perhaps later.

Republican YouTube Debate

In an earlier post, "Will the Republicans YouTube?," I predicted that, "Because this format lends itself too easily to politically awkward situations, and because it draws attention away from the candidates to the clever or shocking videos themselves, I do not expect that the Republicans will follow up with their own version of it." It seems, however, that either CNN learned a lesson from the absurdity of the first YouTube debate among the Democrats, or the Republicans successfully negotiated everything bizarre and disrespectful out of it before consenting.

I found the debate itself revealed a lot about the candidates. The minor candidates were self-consciously minor, except for Ron Paul who seems genuinely unaware that he is minor.

If the winner of this sort of event in the one who came across most consistently and convincingly as a president for our times, then John McCain was the clear winner. Since 2000, I have not trusted him, but last night he commanded my respect. On every question, he was tough, honest and seasoned with experience. Straight talk is what he gave us, and there was no sense at any point that he was posing, i.e. adopting a rehearsed posture. The contrast with the rest of the field was striking. Of course Ron Paul is also genuine, but McCain faced him down as well and put him in his place on the Iraq question. There no shortage of kowtowing on the stage to various video interrogators and invisible constituencies. But McCain was having none of it. Even on the question as to how many guns each candidate has and what what kind, he made it clear that boasting on this point was beneath him. On several occasions, the Arizona Senator spoke quietly and deliberately, but firmly and with "battered authority" to an opponent, and you knew who was the lion in the hall. He did not confront the only other lion, however: the prince of Gotham.

Mitt Romney gave some good conservative answers, but behind them displayed his reflexive big government approach to public affairs. In response to a question from a father and son regarding "black on black" crime, he first suggested strengthening the family (good answer) and then spoke of improving schools, which are not a federal responsibility, and then of putting more police on the streets, which again is none of the federal government's business. In another answer, he said he would sign a bill banning abortion nationwide, but again that is not a federal responsibility. Rudy and Fred got that one right.

Romney also revealed his liberal undergarments when, confronted with the words of a younger Mitt Romney that he looked forward to the day when gays could serve openly and honorably in the military, his line was that because we are at war, this is not the time for that to happen. Oh? Does he foresee a time when there will never be any more war? If we were to realize his beautiful vision during peacetime, we would have those homosexuals openly among the troops in the next war. So his point is that he doesn't want the Republican party to know how liberal he really is just yet.

Huckabee is no better, and perhaps worse. The Arkansas Baptist revealed his own statist instincts, but also a heart that may be too soft to be entrusted with the executive authority. I would feel safer placing the sword of state in the hands of an obviously unredeemed and unrepentant Rudy Giuliani than entrusting it to this jokester who, though he appears to be genuinely concerned to love his neighbor, does not exercise good judgment in how to apply that principle as defender of public peace and security.

As he made a point of mentioning a few times that he is a Baptist minister, it occurred to me that if he is going to take that calling and ordination seriously he should either take a church or comparable ministry or resign his ministerial office. There is no place for a clerical king in America (or anywhere for that matter).

Fred Thompson came a cross as a convincing president, but nothing to make you jump up and cheer. No fire. His negative ad went over like a lead balloon. It was inappropriate for the occasion.

Rudy Giuliani opened poorly by attacking Romney for his alleged "sanctuary mansion." He seemed petty and disingenuous. The mention of the Politico story on his misuse of public funds for his adulterous trysts with Judith Nathan was a nasty foretaste of what was all over the newspapers this morning, and may grow to larger proportions in the months to come. Why do they do these things?

Lastly, let me note that a very scary looking fellow confronted the candidates on whether the believed every word of the Bible to be the word of God, holding up a black leather Bible, presumably King James Version. Those who answered -- Romney, Giuliani and Huckabee -- did a pretty good job, though Romney seemed to choke on the phrase "every word" (my godly little 8 year old girl asked, "Why is that so hard to say?"). But they should have objected to the question itself, even to the manner in which it was asked. (There was similar moment in the Democrat debate. See "The Dignity Issue...and Courage.") There was a menacing tone to it. Do we require this of our nominee, not only that he support Christian moral positions, not only that he profess the Christian faith, not only still that he convince us that he is born again, but even that he believe that every word of the Bible is literally true? And if he asks what exactly that means, he clearly cannot be trusted with public authority. In a country where evangelical Christians are a minority, that is simply delusional. We should thank the Lord of mercy that we have as much influence as we do in one of the two parties, and work prudently and winsomely to secure liberty for godliness and to make the world as good as we can for ourselves and our neighbors.