For Christie , the cavalry is arriving...

Have you been following the anxiety attacks of  some Republicans who want to spin the bridge crises away from Gov. Christie's shadow?  Benghazi and Obama have fallen from the lips of the president's enemies. So have reprises of the IRS story. Anything to distract from the Fort Lee quake.

Some samples:

 Haley Barbour, the former GOP national chairman,  blamed Christie's woes on the "liberal media elite who continue to treat this like Lincoln's assassination."  (Shocking that right-wing Republicans from Mississippi even mention Lincoln these days.)

Reince Priebus, the current GOP chairman who is always good for a laugh, described Christie as a "smart person" and unlikely to know anything about his staff's involvement.  Not a "single link to Chris Christie  has been found," Reince protested.

But the runaway winner of the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award (GALL)  goes to Fox News panelist Brit Hume, who framed Christie's troubles as the consequence of a gender bias that denigrates macho men:

"I would have to say that in this sort of feminized   atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old fashion tough guys run some risk...This guy is very much an old fashioned masculine, muscular guy  and there are political risks associated with that.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's how it is."

Maybe?

The sad public meltdown of John McCain

From CNN comes this sign-of-the-times testy response by John McCain to a CNN reporter who asked him why he missed a briefing on Benghazi:

"I have no comment about my schedule and I'm not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media," McCain said.
Asked why he wouldn't  comment, McCain grew agitated:  "Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?"

Sadly for the old soldier who insists on making a fool of himself with his bitter post-election rants  against the President, his meltdown continues in full view of the public.  Maybe it would help if his friends removed the mood ring from around his brain.  After all, no one has appeared more on TV as a guest than...McCain.

                                                                     * * * * *

Why do we need   to know that Paula Broadwell, Gen. Petraeus' paramour, has only 13 pct. body fat?

                                                                       * * * * *

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican known for his colorful exercise of the English  language, insists the GOP ought to search seriously for answers to its defeat by beginning with a proctologist.  The party can use a few laughs these days in its darkest hour.

Barbour's final act of compassion

WHEN FORMER Mississippi Good 'Ol Boy governor Haley Barbour was asked to defend his pardon of 208 inmates before leaving office last week, he described his decision as an act of compassion to give the felons a "second chance."

"The pardons," the guv said, "were intended to allow them to find gainful employment or acquire professional licenses as well as hunt and vote." HUNT?

Barbour, once inserted on the A-list of possible Republican presidential candidates and a powerful force in the party, didn't anticipate the backlash from releasing eight inmates on the staff of the governor's mansion who were lifers for murder. The state's attorney general, Jim Hood, is considering a nationwide manhunt to retrieve the second-chance inmates who have vanished. Despite Barbour's best wishes, that may be the only hunting that will take place for awhile.

In politics, a belly ablaze replaces gravitas

AS WE STUMBLE to another presidential election in the hazy distance, this will be the moment when new criteria are accorded wannabe candidates. Unlike the sensible days when we judged the aspirants on whether they had "gravitas" or whether he or she was an alpha person, today's standard is whether any of them has "fire in the belly." Haley Barbour, you may recall, retired to the bleachers with the explanation that his settled tummy told him that he needn't bother. On the other hand, Sarah Palin took umbrage to reports that she had suspended her ballyhooed tour because she no long saw the oval office in her future. (Nor did the media that grew tired of her stunt and stopped covering it!) She reminded anyone who still cared that she was not a quitter and still had a blazing belly.

I spent my childhood around immigrants who kept Alka-Seltzer at their fingertips after a hell fire dinner that could have been serviceable to clean battery terminals. Their agony was never very easy to witness. On this topic, trust me. I know what I'm talking about.

I think we ought to find other ways for candidates to judge their personal ambitions. The level of gray matter in their skulls would be a valid indicator of whether to be or not to be. A maximum of three dumb statements would disqualify one faster than a fiery dyspeptic belly, don't you think? That would eliminate most of the Republican field, including the alphas. And one of the things I learned when candidates were being judged by the gravitas quotient was that most voters had no idea what the pundits meant. (I do recall being told by one astute observer that he was certain gravitas was a major league shortstop.)

Well, I'm digressing, I know. But it comes from paying too much attention to the oddest things that will determine the next GOP presidential nominee - if, as we are repeatedly being warned, the world doesn't end sooner.

GOP presidential: Three on base, two out

THE REPUBLICAN presidential field? Let me guess. The number running: 3. The number running away: 2. The number of mentionables: roughly 6. The number of unmentionables: How many bananas are there in a bunch?

So far, it hasn't been a good year for the political pundits trying to tout a mock draft. Two of the potential candidates have now explained their departures in biological terms. Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor, said he just didn't have fire in his belly. And now Mike Huckabee says it was his heart who told him not to run. In his heart he also knew he would have to give up his Fox TV show.

All this b0dy talk has become the new X-factor for the politicos trying to figure out one party's presidential race in which people are gasping, None of the Above. Will Sunday morning panelists begin to take a more serious look at Donald Trump's hair, not as a helicopter pad, but as a much more decisive element in his final decision? Peoria wants to know.

The official GOP field as we speak includes Rick Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania who was routed in this bid for reelection; Newt Gingrich, who said he has overcome his past sins with help from God; and Rep. Ron Paul, who has just likened Medicare and Social Security to slavery. Should we remind them that they might find their next line of work on craigslist?

Among the unmentionables that leaves us with Michelle Bachmann, who is already said to benefit from Huckabee's heart-felt decision since both are the sort of conservatives who function out of the same shell; Mitt Romney, who was boasting about his health care reforms as Governor of Massachusetts when it was still socially acceptable for Republicans to say so; Sarah Palin, who appears to have peaked in 2008; Tim Pawlenty, who doesn't make a shadow on the sunniest day, and Gov. Mitch Daniels, former director of George Bush's Office of Management and Budget.

Oh, and Herman Cain, too. He's the founder of Godfather's Pizza who will soon make his candidacy official. . There are others, but why bother? I think I'll just hang around until the helicopter lands safely on Trump's unique coiffure.

UPDATE: Saying that his business was his greatest passion in life, Trump today declared his un-candidacy. Fortunately he didn't mention his hair as a factor in his decision. That leaves three who are running and three who are running away.

The fiery Mississippi governor flames out

HALEY BARBOUR, the Mississippi governor, says he won't run for president because he doesn't have the necessary "fire" in his belly. (Besides his wife has said she would be "horrified" if he decided to seek the Republican nomination.)

Maybe no fire. But it appears to me that there's something going on inside his waistline. .

Let's see: His retreat has shrunk the Republican field to ---

But who's counting?

Des Moines: The fringe's giant leap for mankind

IN MY CONTINUING effort to monitor giant leaps for mankind, I think you should know about the latest gathering of GOP presidential hopefuls in Des Moines. That's the capital of Iowa and serves nicely in the heart of the state as a Sharia-free zone for another round of the show up-and-tell fringe politics of Michele, Newt, Haley, Herman et al. With the state's potential game-changing caucuses on the line next year, only Sarah Palin would get away with ignoring the ultra-conservative forum over the week end hosted by Iowa's thought-free congressman Steve King.

Some of the tone recalled the days when you could get a very nice bedside lamp with Top Value stamps; in the current version of Republican politics, the first test of any candidate is whether he or she subscribes to King's reliance on Judeo-Christian Family Values to pull a country of majority Christians out of its economic depths. Steve King says it better to his audience than I can:

"If we get the culture right, the economy will be right eventually.

Meantime, Newt Gingrich, who has been spreading like crabgrass these days , rose to the podium with more assaults on lefties and the president. Armed with his own mathematical proofs, Newt bellowed: "There is a huge difference between Obama and the left and 80 pct. of the American people." Of course, you never know what American people Newt is hanging out with. Some observers had hoped that he he would satsifactorily explain the huge difference between supporting a no-fly zone in Libya one day and rejecting it the next.

Haley Barbour joined others in promising that tax cuts would produce jobs (unfortunately not for the armies of workers laid off because of shrinking budgets). That audience-friendly proposal is much like the first line of a classic poem without a follow-up line.

But back to values. Michele Bachmann, whose head has become a revolving turret that nails every moving object in Lib-land, told her cheering crowd: "It is the character and the values of our people - that's why I am so confident in our people in 2012".

That is a summary of what we can expect for nearly two years. I confess that I'm never sure what values these people are talking about. But I promise to let you know after I turn on the Top Value bedside lamp and open a book. The lamp is now in the realm of heirlooms. Can't say that the giant leap for mankind in Des Moines produced anything of that lasting value

PS. Oops. Did I forget to mention prexy hopeful Herman Cain's economic dialectic? Or John Bolton's hawkish remedies for Iran? You didn't miss a thing.

Barbour's Mississippi: No picnic for newborns, either

DID YOU HAPPEN to see the hero's welcome that Gov. Haley Barbour received when he declared to the CPAC crowd that his state of Mississippi, by God, is "the safest state in America for an unborn child"? Social conservatives are in a gung-ho mood in attacking abortion these days and Barbour's pro-life boast to the Tea Partyers (who, by the way, want government off their backs) obviously was well considered for his potential presidential campaign.

But to be perfectly fair and balanced, shouldn't someone have mentioned to that same audience that Mississippi is also, um...the state with the worst record of childhood fatalities. It also has the highest percentage of people below the poverty level, and is tied (with West Virginia!) for the highest level of inhabitants with physical disabilities.

Ah, but that's a story for another time.

Hal(l)ey's comet takes a hit

HALEY BARBOUR comes across as the generic good ol' boy from yonder Mississippi. Radiating good humor and unthreatening southern charm, he's done quite well for himself as the former Republican national chairman and now the governor of Ole Miss. A couple of years ago, Summit County's Republicans hosted him with an outpouring of amity and praise when he spoke at the party's big finance dinner as the guest of chairman Alex Arshinkoff. Then, as now, there was talk that he was itching to run for president.

After this week's fallout from his rising political fortune, Barbour may want to reconsider. In an interview with the ultra-conservative Weekly Standard, Barbour defended the notorious White Citizens Council as peace-loving business folks who maintained law-and-order against the Ku Klux Klan during the Civil Rights movement of the '60s. Or as he put it:

"You heard of the Citizens Council? Up North they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you'd lose it. If you had a store, they'd see nobody shopped there. We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City."

Historians don't quite remember it as happening that way for the peace of mind of blacks. . Robert Mickey, a University of Michigan political scientist, told the Huffington Post that the Council's primary purpose was to oppose desegregation of schools by intimidating black parents who signed desegregation petitions. The Council even printed the names of signatories in the papers. You can guess what that was all about in the thriving plantation culture.

Time for damage control. Barbour issued a statement saying he didn't think the Councils were at all saintly and, in fact, asserted that their activities in the community were"totally indefensible, as is segregation."

But it was Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant with campaign experience in the south, who stepped forward to defend Barbour. With the usual political finesse, Ayres blithely assured us that Barbour's revisionist account of the White Citizens Council was a "tempest in a teapot."

Problem solved. Or maybe not.

She's not even stopping to take a breath

SARAH PALIN is America's leading growth industry. To those of you who have tired of hearing the name, she's only getting started. The New York Times, which is not usually given to superlatives to political pop stars, has already described her as a "booming...media empire." That seems a bit excessive. Media empires tend to boom anyway.

Still, Sarah is never content to rely only on a wink and a nod in her 24/7 quest for the presidency. She has her own TV series, sort of a travelogue on the wonders of Alaska, where she spends as little time as possible. She is on Rupert Murdock's payroll as a chirping insider on the Fox News of the day. She is a mainliner at right-wing rallies. And her daughter Bristol found her way onto "Dancing with the Stars" to finish a dubious third-place in the finals, outlasting purported better dancers for TV ratings-sake.

Oh, in her spare moments she writes books. For some reason, she is said to prefer California for her literary endeavors. She will begin a national tour, including a stop-off in a small town in politically-hot Iowa, for her latest tome, "America by Heart"" - a wispy title that is sure to become a best-seller among all of her heart-felt disciples. It didn't hurt that the advance notices from HarperCollins, her publisher, describes it as a "highly personal testament to her deep love of country, her strong roots in faith, and her profound appreciation of family." (She will doubtless leave her affection for Babe Ruth, Shirley Temple and the Durants' voluminous 10-part history of civilization for her next effort.)

Nevertheless, HarperCollins seems to have touched the traditional native emotions of Americans with its clever way of saying "God, mother and country." That squares nicely with her own boast that she is doing the work of God.

By now Palin, has surely moved ahead of some of the other presidential sketches such as impossible dreamer Newt Gingrich, deep south governor Haley Barbour and Mike Huckabee. Poor Mike has already warned the other so-called contenders for the crown that Sarah might "run away" with the nomination, and very well could be. I can't imagine Newt Gingrich tugging at a kayak in the Alaskan wilds and Barbour scaling a deadly cliff for a travelogue. For that matter it would be unseemly for Huckabee, a man of God, to beat a convulsing and bloodied fish in front of a movie camera.

What seemed impossible after she helped shatter John McCain's dream of the presidency, now seems quite doable for a tireless, self-absorbed, heavily-promoted agent of promise for a staggering nation - at least among her wing of the Republican Party. Her GOP opponents are taking notice. And some are already wincing, "It's scary....Very scary."

The Old South will rise again in Summit County

ONCE AGAIN Summit County Republican Chairman Alex Arshinkoff has plunged into the Deep South to recruit his celebrity speaker for the party's annual finance dinner. With customary political hyperbole, he's announced to his people that Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (nee:George Ervin Perdue III), not yet a household name in Northern Ohio, will to be at the podium for the August 18 event at the Hilton Akron/Fairlawn. Perdue will follow last year's main attraction, . Gov. Haley Barbour, the good 'ol boy who was assuring potential tourists that Mississippi's beaches were fine while BP-piles were heading for shore.

Up north, you don't hear much about Sonny Perdue these days. Unlike Barbour, the Georgian isn't talking about a possible presidency, although what Republican politician doesn't think a little about such promotions as they set out to assure President Obama's defeat so persistently early in their game. The only thing I vaguely remember about Sonny is that he once led a group of pols and preachers onto the Statehouse steps during a terrible drought to pray earnestly for rain. Don't know how that turned out.

The dinner invitation ($250 per) tells us that Perdue has done a masterful job of creating jobs although the state's unemployment rate has been higher than the national average for 33 consecutive months and is currently 10 pct. The Dept. of Labor also reports that Georgia has lost more jobs from June 2009 to June 201o than any other state but California.

The remainder of the invitation is the standard Republican boiler-plate of how Republicans are working to "reclaim our state and nation from far-left, socialist, tax-and-spend Democrats who have brought us massive debts at home and historic weakness abroad." Well, it's that time of year, I suppose, and you have to allow for such hysterical shopworn diatribes.

But I do believe Perdue might score more points if he told his audience how the Atlanta Braves managed get into first place.

Meantime, just across the border in Tennessee, Rep. Zach Wamp, another Republican, is running for governor this year and showing his hackles by insisting that unless Washington (i.e., Obama) shapes up, the state might have to secede. You'd think that by now someone would have reminded Zach that it has already been tried.

UPDATE: Wamp, who told the National Journal on Friday that secession might be considered, has now recanted under a wave of criticism, saying he opposes secession. Way to go, Zach!

Out of the oil spillage of the slippery apologists

NOW THAT WE are approaching the 8th week of the faux BP oil spill cleanup, it's interesting how its apologists have been caught as unprepared as BP to add their slippery words to the disastrous oil slick. Left with little more than absurdities to defend BP, the defense team has been as trapped as the pelicans sinking in the muck. Some extraordinary comments:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting in it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." - BP chief executive Tony Hayward, during the early days of the spill.

"We will get this done. We will make this right." - BP ad campaign, which is making it wrong even though the company just hired Anne Womack-Kolton, Dick Cheney's former press-secretary to get at least a little of it right as BP's spokesperson.

"The spill would never have happened if we would have drill-baby-drilled in the National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska." - Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri.

"Acts of God are acts of God." - Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a most ardent supporter of Big Oil.

"We don't wash our face in it but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski." - Mississippi Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, comparing the spill to a "harmless gasoline sheen found around ski boats." And this guy is considered to be a potential candidate for president in 2012!

"It may have been an act of God." - Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who couldn't find anybody else to blame at the moment.

"...the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It's natural. It's as natural as water is." - Who else but Rush Limbaugh, who never leaves alone any chance to blame environmentalists, liberals and oil company critics?

Barbour's defense: Strom couldn't have said it better

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi gets today's Strom Thurmond Award for his Old South defense of fellow Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia for failing to mention slavery in declaring Confederate History Month down yonder. Shucks, Barbour opined, the exclusion "doesn't amount to diddly." And he didn't mean the late Bo Diddley. When you

are running for president, as is Barbour, you can't think of everything.

Portman et al: Bush, the invisible ex-prez

AFTER FOUR recent visits to Akron stages by Republicans from hither and yon, may we now conclude that the story line is firmly in place for the November 2010 elections? Merge the speakers' texts, and there are no surprises:

• President Obama is making an outrageous mess of the economy.
• The nation's salvation lies in cutting taxes.
• Health care reforms will be ruinous to the greatest health care system in the world.
• George Bush doesn'texistdoesn'texistdoesn'texist, the ex-president who isn't there.

I refer to the three earlier speakers: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, U.S. Senate candidate Tom Ganley, one of the two Republicans with an eye on succeeding retiring Sen. George Voinovich, and, yesterday, the other GOP senatorial candidate, Rob Portman. From the standpoint of political harmony, it could qualify as a barbershop quartet.

Portman, former Ohio congressman and Bush's budget director who was regarded as a cabinet member with close ties to the Oval Office, reiterated much of the GOP message on how to influence people and win elections. Ohio, he said, needs a path to prosperity now that Gov. Strickland had overseen the loss of 336,000 jobs; too many Ohioans are running out of money; we've got to stop the hemorrhaging; the death tax has got to be eliminated.

Allow me to stop right there. The death tax (DT) used to be called the estate tax until the GOPers in Washington decided to change its name into something funereal to encourage us to hide our piggy banks from the IRS until long after Judgment Day. Today the DT's do not apply to 99.75 pct. of the people and allow a $3.5 million exemption - double that for a couple. Just thought I would throw that in inasmuch as I doubt there was more than one person in the audience who would be affected by a DT. On the other hand, there was a time when Bernie Madoff would have to be concerned about it. Many Wall Streeters still worry about it. Do the math, all of you exempt middle classers.

But Portman's biggest problem at his coming-out visit to he Akron Press Club in the Martin Center was not his ideology but his surprisingly flat delivery that lost the attention of some of the 90 or so guests. The largely Republican audience stocked by Summit County Chairman Alex Arshinkoff was quite subdued as he looked downward to his text and read as though he were giving a 30-minute invocation with an unbroken tone and cadence. Ok, he droned.

That's not what I've come to expect after attending two trillion political speeches over the years. Steele and Barbour, for example, appealed to the crowd to go out and help them win elections for their party. Ganley demanded a chance to sock-it-to the Democrats, Tea Party style. A couple of Republicans told me afterward that they were disappointed by Portman's delivery.

For all of the Republican condemnation of the Obama Adminstration's economic policies, there's a dynamite gamble by their candidates that the economy won't be moving upward by the next election. In short, Democrats need the economy to brighten; Republicans need it to fail. At this point, who can predict?

The Beacon Journal reported Portman's dismissive response to a question about his former Bush connection. "I'm talking about the future - how can we get out of this mess.?"

But when the campaign goes head to head next year, I would be surprised if the subject doesn't come up once or twice again.

Is the Summit County GOP calming down?

ANOTHER YEAR, another Summit County Republican Finance Dinner, another event in which the accolades for the home team ranged from great to greatest. Nothing new there. Political parties, Republican and Democratic but no socialists that I'm aware of - yet) get high on promoting their versions of Academy Awards night.

So it was at the Hilton West Hotel Monday evening with County GOP Chairman Alex Arshinkoff presiding over the throng whose number was described to me to be "500 plus change"). These opportunities are always Arshinkoff's high points of his long political life ( he's been at it for 32 years) , allowing him to announce that the dinner of chicken and Duchess potatoes raised between $675,000 and $700,000. Evidence enough that some of the diners paid a tad more than the going bleachers price.

For all that, the fund-raiser was tamer than some of the past adventures into stagecraft. It lacked the harshness of the past, with those earlier assaults on the Beacon Journal from the podium. (The BJ's business manager was in the crowd.) Mayor Don Plusquellic wasn't scorched. And even George Bush wasn't mentioned - by anyone!

Instead, Arshinkoff exclaimed that University Akron President Luis Proenza, who was seated in the audience, was the "greatest president in the history of the University of Akron". He also described the economy as "Obama's depression." That is pretty harmless partisan stuff on occasions such as these. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, followed up on lofty praise for him by others on the dais by calling Arshinkoff "one of the greatest chairmen Ohio had ever had." Kasich thought the way to a bright future for the country was to resurrect Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Oh?

Still, the litany was directly from the essentials of the GOP playbook: cut taxes, stress individualism, don't screw around and ruin the health care system, create jobs. You will continue to hear a lot of that.

The guest speaker was Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi, whose thick southern accent was reminiscent of LBJ's Texas patois, and his rambling good ol' boy humor was remarkably close to that of the late Jim Rhodes. He, too, declared it was time for a change, accusing the Obama Administration of "deindustrializing" America. Much of his rhetoric was a traditional locker-room pep talk to a team behind at half-time. For all of the glittering comments, it was a sign of the times that Dubya was never mentioned once. A Republican officeholder who pased by me in the back of the room whispered satirically "They left out eight years."

Barbour was a long way from home, where he has been sharply criticized for converting $600 million in federal Katrina flood relief money (tax dollars!) intended for rehabbing a lot of middle-income flood victims. The money was used instead for other projects as tens of thousands of Mississippians remain in desperate need of housing. The Bloomberg News Report also told of Barbour's family-related lobbyists who have prospered from the Katrina contracts.

Yet the nagging problem of the Republican Party is less about Barbour's possible mischief at home than it was in the sea of faces at the Monday night event. There were fewer than five African-Americans in the crowd - give or take a few - and there's not much the party has been able to do about it, even if it tried beyond its showpieces of Justice Clarence Thomas, who is more royalist than the king, and Michael Steele, the conservative head of the Republican National Committee. As I mentioned in an earlier blog about minorities and Steele, the party elders have have talked about the problem for more than a generation with promises to do better. Trouble is, the GOPers in Congress then vote the other way while many southern venues hiss, "don't bother".

The dinner also reflected the continuing disappearance of the media - print, radio and TV. Fewer and fewer keep night hours these days. As I stood alone at the rear, one gentleman rushed up to damn the Beacon Journal. I tried to explain that I hadn't worked there in 18 years. Unconvinced, he wanted to tell me he had canceled his subscription to the paper. Again, I reminded him I'm no longer on the payroll. He apologized. Later a woman rushed by, asking me, "Are you a spy?" On the other hand a Greek Republican friend fetched a program for me and invited me to lunch at his church. He said he would call. It made for a better-than-usual evening.

GOP Deep Southerner coming to Akron

NEWS FLASH: Summit County Republicans will get an ample supply of Deep South politics at their annual finance dinner on Oct. 19. The featured speaker, says County Party Chairman Alex Arshinkoff, will be Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Barbour is the former GOP national chairman and I would be surprised if he didn't have something to say about all of those "socialists" across the aisle.

Haley Barbour: Another door left open

A WASHINGTON source is reporting that Haley Barbour, the Republican Mississippi governor, has "left the door open" to a candidacy for president in 2012.  In political jargon, Barbour, once the Republican national chairman, is sending a coy signal that he may very well run if the planets line up in his favor.    It's smart politics.  He'll keep everybody guessing that he might be the 25th or 50th potential Republican candidate in the race and lobbyists and donors will tread carefully around him the next year or so  in the outside chance that the will be in the presidential pack. 

The former New York Times columnist Russell Baker once called it the great mentioning game.  And you have little chance of winning a free lunch at McDonald's if you are not at least mentioned on all of the Sunday morning talk shows, particularly by George Will on a good day. Newt Gingrich also says he might run if things don't change.    He had better hope that they do inasmuch as President Obama's latest  ABC News poll numbers gives Barack a startling 72 pct. "favorability" rating with Americans.  Against  congressional Republicans, he leads 61-24.

 But the mere fact that Gingrich is now leaving the door open means he will be a regular guest on conservative talk shows to revive his failed "contract with America."  Right now, there are doubtless 20 others leaving the door open with a promise of letting in some fresh air.  It works wonders with political egos. So if any of them is invited to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game, the announcer is bound to say, "Congressman Smiley is from Arkansas and has left the door open to run for president.

One, however, must be careful not to get too far ahead of the curve.  Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, made quite a spectacle of himself at a photo-op to declare that Texas might secede if the Feds don't leave him alone with stimulus money and other Big Brotherly incursions.  How silly he must look today after he asked the very same Feds for help in combatting the swine flu epidemic. (Sorry, Texas politicians never think they look silly about anything.)

I never left the door open for myself.  Happily for me, when I came home from grade school with a report card with two c's on it, my mother sensed my gloom, but came though with a consoling remark by a dear mother who preferred bingo to books.    "Don't worry," she said. "You're never gonna be president anyway."

She was right.  Mothers usually are.  

  

.