Sen. Kamala Harris, seen here in 2010 in her official portrait as California attorney general, will have to bring all her prosecutorial gifts to bear on the presidential campaign as Joe Biden’s running mate.

All the president's women

August 12, 2020

So Joe Biden has picked California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate and the plumbing of why he did so has commenced. Biden picked her because she possesses a prosecutorial mind and temperament — she couldn’t have done the jobs of San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general without them — which enables her to give and take a punch. This ability to serve and volley should also make her formidable in any vice presidential debate.. (See her questioning of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General William Barr.)

My uncle, a conservative, likes to point out that a vice president isn’t a prosecutor. That may be, but this one may have to be.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren stumping for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2016. Photograph by Tim Pierce.

A country for old (white) men

March 8, 2020

Remember that film “No Country for Old Men”? Well, this isn’t that.

Just when you thought Bernie Sanders was the second coming of, well, Bernie Sanders, “Uncle Joe” — as one of my sisters calls former Vice President Joe Biden — came roaring back. Now no matter who gets the Democratic presidential nomination, the presidential contest will be between two old white guys and, if it’s between Sanders and President Donald J. Trump, two grumpy old men with an enormous sense of grievance and my-way-or-the-highway entitlement. (They’re like the relatives you have to tolerate on holidays and then pray they don’t say anything politically incorrect.)

Temple I at Tikal (in modern-day Guatemala), one of the most powerful cities of the Classic Maya period (250-900). It was a funerary temple in honor of King Jasaw Chan K’asill I.

The gang that couldn't shoot straight

February 4, 2020

The Iowa Caucuses debacle has had posters straining for sporting metaphors. The Democrats in disarray are down 10-1 to President Donald J. Trump and the Republicans in the first inning, some say. The Dems are the San Francisco 49ers down to the Kansas City Chiefs in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, which has a nice Blue State-Red State ring to it since the Niners play in California and the Chiefs in Kan, er, Missouri. (Just thought everyone needed a musical break with the great band Kansas’ surprisingly fitting “Carry On Wayward Son.”)

I, however, have a more apt sports analogy. The Iowa Caucuses are like the figure skater billed as the next Peggy Fleming who after four years of Winter Olympics prep falls on the first jump in the short program.

I think that sums things up perfectly — the Iowa Caucuses, a triple toe loop away from unmitigated disaster.

Brexit Day, Jan. 31, in Kinsbury, England. Photograph by David Howard.

A world lit by fire

February 4, 2020

The wildfires in Australia are a poignant metaphor for our time — a world out of control, untold collateral damage.

The Iowa Caucuses are in meltdown due to “inconsistencies in reporting data,” whatever that means. Results are due later today, Feb. 4. (Gee, they missed Groundhog Day just by two days. It would’ve been so appropriate.) Remember when we had voting machines that worked?

Meanwhile, President Donald J. “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (Kansas)” Trump will be acquitted in his witness-less impeachment trial. The Republicans say they voted against witnesses for the good of the country, which would be torn apart if Trump’s presidency were declared illegitimate. There’s nothing that lends an air of ease to a non-choice quite like one whose expediency is couched in faux nobility.

Stuck in the middle with you: President Donald J. Trump greets Finnish President Sauli Nanistö in happier times, Aug. 28, 2017. Photograph by Natig Sharifov.

'Coup'ed up with Trump

October 3, 2019

Well, that went well. We’re talking about President Donald J. Trump’s press conference with the latest hapless foreign leader caught in the crosshairs of his love-hate relationship with the press. Really, it almost doesn’t matter who it is. That it happened to be the president of Finland — land of the properly raked forests — held a certain irony, particularly after Sauli Ninistö turned out to be the sly one, telling Trump to keep America’s “great democracy” going.

Fans capture the moment when Justify captures the Preakness Stakes in the slop last year on his way to the Triple Crown. Courtesy Maryland Governor’s Office.

The Triple Crown theory of presidential politics

February 1, 2019

Who’s afraid of Howard Schultz? Everybody it seems. President Donald J. Trump was against the former Starbucks CEO-turned-possible presidential candidate, perhaps fearing he would corner part of the I’ve-done-the-business-thing-so-of-course-I’m-qualified-to-be-president market. Then someone must’ve reminded Trumpet that Schultz is a Democrat who would only rob the Dems of votes as a third party candidate, so Donnie Two Scoops has laid off.

William-Adolph Bouguereau’s “Orestes Pursued by the Furies” (1862). oil on canvas. Chrysler Museum of Art. We bet Sen. Mitch McConnell can relate.

A wall named Nancy

January 25, 2019

Sometimes in life you get what you want but do not recognize it. For more than a month, President Donald J. Trump, enabled by the Republicans, has held 800,000 federal workers and, indeed, the entire nation hostage and all for a wall that is designed ostensibly to increase security at the southern border but is really about keeping out the people he considers undesirable.

And yet, Donnie already has a wall.

Her name is Nancy Pelosi. And everywhere he turns, he finds himself up against it, her.