Walter Shapiro, who has covered the last eight presidential campaigns, is a columnist for Politics Daily.
Scandal stories about our leaders are embarrassing, but do they also make the voters (or to be blunt, you and me) complicit in the apparent collapse of political mores? And are our leaders in Congress today really as bad as critics claim?
continue readingDuring the mercifully brief Boy Inventor phase of my childhood, I became enthralled with the inspirational lessons embedded in the life of Thomas Edison. Even at nine years old, I got a whiff of the tedium that Edison endured as he tested six thousand different vegetable materials to find the perfect slow-burning ingredient for the filament in the incandescent lightbulb. This long, hard slog was the essence of what my elementary school teachers called “stick-to-it-iveness” — their made-up synonym for that hard word perseverance.
continue readingThe other morning, thanks to a maladroitly tuned clock radio, I awoke to the coffee-grinder tones of Don Imus, a talk-show host best understood as the shock jock for the C-Span set. The guest on the segment that jolted me to consciousness was Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, one of a bipartisan group of senators who regularly get to demonstrate their cool-kid street cred by bantering with Imus, whose morning show is simulcast on MSNBC and a national hookup of radio stations. Lieberman, acknowledging the price of admission to this rarified circle, was lavishly praising an Imus-sponsored charity. This one is a privately funded effort by the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund to build a $35-million rehabilitation facility for recent military amputees. As the host brooded on the fund’s $5-million shortfall, Lieberman eagerly volunteered to introduce an appropriations bill to make up the difference, aided by the support of the Imus Caucus in the Senate.
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