To be clear about where I am: Firmly pro-choice. Firmly opposed to the amendment from Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., which would effectively prevent women who purchase insurance on the newly created exchanges from obtaining abortion coverage.

But also: Respectful of the convictions of those who disagree. And, consequently, sympathetic to the notion that taxpayers should not have to pay for a procedure they believe is tantamount to...]]> Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- I'm hoping, for your sake, that you didn't spend your Saturday night as I did: watching the House debate health care reform on C-SPAN.

Pathetic, I know. The outcome wasn't in doubt, and the arguments were as familiar as an old pair of slippers.  Moral imperative! Government takeover! Long overdue protections! Crippling mandates!

I'm not a huge fan of the House measure, but I was glad to see it straggle across the finish line, if only to keep the process going. And, by the end of the long debate, I was cheering for it even more because of the appalling amount of misinformation being peddled by its opponents.

I don't mean the usual hyperbole...]]> Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 WASHINGTON -- Advice to readers about the coming orgy of analysis about the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: Ignore it. Disquisitions on The Meaning of It All for President Obama or the 2009 results as a harbinger for Congress in 2010 have scant basis in reality.

Over-interpreting election results is an occupational hazard for political reporters. This problem is particularly acute in the year after a presidential contest, when we are suffering from a bad case of electoral withdrawal.

Thus, The New York Times instructs that the contests offer "some clues about how Americans are viewing Mr. Obama, as well as an early measure of the landscape for next year's...]]> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- "I bet he wasn't folding laundry."

Carol Greider, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine, on what she was doing at 5 a.m. when the big call came, and her thoughts on learning of President Obama's prize.

Is there a woman around who read this quote and didn't smile with recognition? Greider's wry assessment encapsulates so much about the state of modern women: Nobel laureates, but also -- if not inevitably, then at least overwhelmingly -- laundry-folders, school lunch-makers, playdate-arrangers, schedule-managers.

This is less a complaint than an observation. In fact, I think to some extent women are reluctant to yield dominion over the home...]]> Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- In the matter of Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old boy who stashed himself -- or was stashed by his parents -- in the attic while a frantic world thought he was adrift in a homemade balloon, let us stipulate a few things:

That there is something presumptively wrong with people who name their children after birds of prey; that the Heenes, if this was indeed a hoax, make Jon and Kate look like Ward and June; that Andy Warhol was right, except his 15 minutes have stretched to 30 in the age of cable; that a constitutional amendment to prohibit parents from exploiting their kids on reality TV shows might be in order.

But all that isn't what really interests me. What...]]> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 There's only one thing dumber than picking a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel -- picking a fight with people who don't even have to buy ink. The Obama administration's war on Fox News is dumb on multiple levels. It makes the White House look weak, unable to take Harry Truman's advice and just deal with the heat. It makes the White House look small, dragged down to the level of Glenn Beck. It makes the White House look childish and petty at best, and it has a distinct Nixonian -- Agnewesque? -- aroma at worst. It is a self-defeating trifecta: it distracts attention from the Obama administration's substantive message; it serves to help Fox, not punish it, by driving up ratings;...]]> Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- My initial reaction to the news that a woman had won the Nobel Prize in economics for the first time was simple: Great! My second reaction was a bit more churlish: What took so long? Why aren't we done with these "firsts" yet?

I'm 50 -- OK, 51 -- so the course of my lifetime tracks the biggest transformation of the role of women in history. Barrier after outmoded barrier has gone the way of the girdle, and thank goodness.

This may sound like an odd digression, but this change is, in addition to the fiendishly attractive Jon Hamm, one reason I so enjoy "Mad Men." The television series takes place at the precise moment when the male-dominated edifice is about...]]> Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Miriam Sapiro was nominated to be deputy U.S. trade representative in April. The Senate Finance Committee voted -- unanimously -- to confirm her in July.

She's still not in the job -- because Sen. Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, is unhappy with the Canadian Parliament.

Seriously.

Bunning is upset about a measure pending before Canadian lawmakers that would restrict tobacco companies from adding candy flavorings to cigars and cigarettes. The measure is aimed at reducing youth smoking, but Kentucky lawmakers claim it would harm tobacco companies there -- and violate trade rules -- because chocolate is used as an additive to moderate the taste of...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- With apologies to E.F. Hutton, when Ron Wyden talks about health care reform, people should listen. When Ron Wyden balks at a Democratic health care reform proposal, people should definitely listen.

The Democratic senator from Oregon has been the Energizer Bunny of health reform for the last five years. This week, he lobbed a big rhetorical stink bomb into the works. Wyden warned publicly that the package being crafted by the Senate Finance Committee would cost lower-income Americans too much and give many people too little choice of insurance plans.

Under the finance committee proposal, individuals would be required to obtain insurance. But to drive down the...]]> Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Item: "President Obama and top Democratic congressional leaders are pushing hard for health care bills that would result in federal government funding of abortion on demand!" warns the National Right-to-Life Committee.

Item: A television ad broadcast by the Family Research Council shows an older couple -- Harry and Louise on Medicare -- sitting at their kitchen table and worrying about how to afford a needed operation. "They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortions," says the older man.

Item: House Minority Leader John Boehner asserts that House Democrats' health bill "will result in federally mandated coverage of abortion on demand in...]]> Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, didn't really mean it when he equated homosexuality with drug abuse and pornography as evils that "the government must restrain, punish, and deter."

He didn't really mean it when he decried a Supreme Court ruling invalidating a ban on contraception for married couples because it promoted "a view of liberty based on radical individualism."

When he urged that "every level of government should statutorily and procedurally prefer married couples over cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators," adding, "The cost of sin should fall on the sinner, not the taxpayer."

Or when he described...]]> Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The last, faint hope for truly bipartisan health reform rests with Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley -- and faint may be overstating the prognosis.

The 75-year-old Republican has been browbeaten by his leadership for collaborating with Montana Democrat Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee on which Grassley is ranking member.

Grassley has been besieged by nervous constituents during this most tumultuous of August recesses. He's up for re-election next year and is worried about a primary challenge. He's eager to become the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee when his tenure on Finance is up, and is said to fear that he'll be denied the post if he goes...]]> Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Candidate Barack Obama offered a lofty vision of how his White House would operate. When the details of health reform were being hammered out, he vowed, "We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies."

The campaign even aired an ad singling out Billy Tauzin, the drug industry's chief lobbyist. "The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies," Obama said in the ad. "And you know what? The chairman of the committee, who pushed the...]]> Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Does President Obama care more about passing health care reform that truly gets costs under control or getting re-elected? Does he care more about getting the nation's fiscal house in order or getting re-elected?

Right now, the evidence points to getting re-elected. Exhibit A came in Monday's White House briefing: 45 minutes of press secretary Robert Gibbs restating the president's "clear commitment in the clearest terms possible, that he's not raising taxes on those who make less than $250,000 a year."

Duh, some of you may say. Self-preservation is the first instinct of any politician. Breaking promises and raising taxes is a combination that is...]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said last week that he would vote against confirming Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court because he doubts she will "resist the siren call of judicial activism."

If that's what he's worried about, there are some sitting justices whom Sessions might want to lash to the mast -- quickly. Except these justices tend to be in Sessions' ideological camp.

Next month, even before the traditional first Monday in October opening and almost certainly with Sotomayor on the bench, the court will hear a campaign finance case that illustrates the activist itch among its conservatives.

Rehear...]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- If only Democrats and Republicans could get together and produce a health care bill that would expand coverage and control costs.

But wait -- there is such a proposal. In fact, there are two.

The first, which would in a more perfect world be my preference, is the measure devised by the odd couple of the Senate, Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Robert Bennett of Utah. This bill not only has the merit of being demonstrably bipartisan but has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office as fully paid for.

The problem is that the Wyden-Bennett plan would essentially blow up the existing, although rickety, system of employer-sponsored insurance,...]]> Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- If you're interested in how to get health care costs under control, the case of the F-22 offers an instructive example.

Huh, you say? What does a fighter jet have to do with health care? Nothing, of course, but it has everything to do with politics, which has, in our current system, a good deal to do with health care costs.

As I write, the Senate on Tuesday is debating an amendment to the defense authorization bill that would end production of the stealth fighter. President Obama wants to end the program. So does his opponent in the last presidential election, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. So did President Bush. So do the defense secretary and the...]]> Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The hardest question in the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor is one the nominee can't answer.

Not because she doesn't know the law or can't offer a satisfactory explanation for a phrase in a speech. Rather, it's because this question doesn't really involve her, although it has everything to do with the number of votes she will get.

The question concerns the degree of deference that senators should show to a president's choice for the Supreme Court. More specifically, why should Republican senators weighing President Obama's nominee give him more leeway to name justices to his liking than then-Sen. Obama was willing to accord President Bush when he...]]> Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Note to soon-to-be-former Gov. Sarah Palin: Big girls don't quit.

Just ask Hillary Clinton. Crying -- or at least misting up a little -- you can get away with these days. But quitting? Not until you absolutely have to, and even then you might hold on for a few extra weeks.

Just ask Serena Williams, or, more to the point, her older sister Venus. Their first set in the Wimbledon women's final yesterday went to a tie-breaker, which Serena won. But even when she was down 5-2 in the second set, Venus battled back against three match points only to lose on the fourth.

Just ask Jenny Sanford, who's doing her best not to quit her marriage even though her husband has declared...]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Finally, a new model for the wronged political spouse.

It's about time.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's let-it-all-hang-out news conference was a different approach, too. But a better one? Pick your poison: staged declaration of politically requisite contrition, or meandering mooning of a love-struck adolescent inhabiting the body of a supposedly grown-up politician.

The stomach churns at both -- and from the spousal perspective, I suppose I'd rather have my straying husband (I mean, my theoretically straying husband) driven by a different piece of his anatomy than his heart.

But Jenny Sanford presents a new and improved version of the...]]> Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The health-care debate is focused these days way too much on the tail and not nearly enough on the rest of the dog. The disappointing result could be a stubby little tail attached to a poorly designed -- not to mention astonishingly expensive -- dog.

The tail in my canine metaphor is the so-called "public plan" as part of the available health insurance choices. The dog is the broader structure of the proposed "exchange" to which those without employer-provided health insurance would go to obtain coverage.

I'm ambivalent on the merits of including a public plan in the exchange. But I think its advocates are wrong in elevating the public plan to...]]> Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats warn that the president's ambitious plans to overhaul the nation's health care system may be in danger. Sensing political opportunity, Republicans ramp up their criticism, warning of a government takeover of health care. Business groups balk at the notion of an employer mandate.

Is this health care deja vu all over again, the Clinton disaster of 1993-94 revisited?

When it comes to the prognosis for overhauling health care, pessimism is a safe bet, and there's been ample basis recently for that gloomy assessment. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of one proposal at $1.6 trillion. The Senate Finance Committee, reeling from...]]> Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The rap on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's ruling in the New Haven firefighters case is that she supposedly looked at the race of the parties and chose sides. The reality is a lot more complicated than the cries of "quota queen" acknowledge.

Ricci v. DeStefano is the proverbial hard case -- and maybe Sotomayor and her colleagues made bad law in denying white firefighters the promotions for which they had qualified based on test scores. We'll find out soon enough when the Supreme Court rules.

But if the appeals court got it wrong, the more accurate explanation may be found in the intricate minuet dictated by federal anti-discrimination law.

I...]]> Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- If Sonia Sotomayor is a radical activist eager to push the law leftward or to rule according to personal whims rather than constitutional commands, she's done an impressive job of hiding it all these years.

The amazing thing about the case against Sotomayor is how thin it is. The now-famous 32 words about a wise Latina judge. Her vote -- part of a unanimous three-judge panel -- against white firefighters denied promotions. The YouTube comment about judges making policy. And not much else.

This is a woman with more years on the bench than any Supreme Court nominee in the last 100 years. During that time, you'd think even the most middle-of-the-road judge would...]]> Sun, 31 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The job, in a sense, was Sonia Sotomayor's to lose -- even though she was the only one of the four candidates President Obama interviewed for the Supreme Court vacancy he didn't know beforehand.

Two -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Solicitor General Elena Kagan -- serve in his administration; the fourth one -- U.S. Appeals Court Judge Diane Wood -- was a colleague on the law school faculty at the University of Chicago.

Each was tempting: Napolitano has the legislative background missing on the court since Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement; Kagan has the track record of bringing together liberals and conservatives at a place at least as...]]> Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- The puppy ate my column.

Not literally, although heaven knows he'd have done that, too. His tastes aren't terribly discriminating, but he does have a fondness for newsprint.

No, the puppy ate my column metaphorically. He has cut into my sleep, curtailed my newspaper reading, demanded pretty much nonstop attention since he arrived two weeks ago.

I love him. So do my children. So -- or at least I heard him crooning the other day -- does my husband, which is pretty amazing under the circumstances of the puppy's arrival, about which more later.

I should be writing a column about those creepily manipulative "Onward, Christian Soldiers" Rumsfeld memos....]]> Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- "It contributes to the end of the days when women, at least half the talent pool in our society, appear in high places only as one-at-a-time performers."

That was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, standing by President Clinton's side, commenting on her just-announced Supreme Court nomination. I was in the Rose Garden on that sparkling June day more than 15 years ago, and I remember being struck by the force of Ginsburg's point: that breaking the gender barrier is not a one-time, been-there-done-that event. It is, instead, a constant evolution toward a time of unremarkable equality, when being the only woman -- on the bench, around the conference table, in the room -- feels more...]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- Should the judge be an umpire or an empathizer?

Chief Justice John Roberts memorably likened the judge to a baseball umpire, dispassionately applying existing rules to call balls and strikes.

President Obama is more, well, touchy-feely. As he weighs a replacement for retiring Justice David Souter, the president said, he wants "someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives." That "quality of empathy," he said, is "an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes."

This is red-alert talk for conservatives....]]> Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 WASHINGTON -- I'm writing a Mother's Day column early this year -- not exactly the one I intended.

The column I was planning began: Why is this Mother's Day different from all other Mother's Days? Answer: Because this Mother's Day, there are many more mothers in the White House -- and mothers of young children -- than ever before.

That remains true. The deputy chief of staff, Mona Sutphen, has a 4 1/2-year-old and an almost 2-year-old. Marne Levine, chief of staff for National Economic Council director Larry Summers, has a 3 1/2-year-old and a 7-month-old. The health care czar, Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, has two boys, 8 and 9.

The staff secretary, Lisa Brown, has a...]]> Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The first 100 days of a presidency are like the opening chapter of an unfinished novel. It will be possible, by the end, to look back and see the foreshadowing of character traits and plot twists, but for now it is too early to predict what direction the story will take.

You can read the first pages of the Barack Obama opus and construct opposing narratives. The young, naive president, having inherited a full plate, foolishly chooses to pile it higher. Unschooled in the ways of Washington, he arrogantly overestimates his powers of gentle persuasion, undervalues the entrenched forces arrayed against him and, Icarus-like, crashes. This could have been predicted from the opening...]]> Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 I'd like to thank Sarah Palin for her bravery in explaining the importance of a woman's right to choose. Even braver, the Alaska governor made her eloquent case for choice at a right-to-life fundraising dinner.

That was not, of course, Palin's intention in revealing that she momentarily considered having an abortion. Twice, actually -- once when she discovered she would be a mother at 44, again several weeks later when she discovered that her baby would have Down syndrome.

I'll quote Palin at length, partly because I want readers to see that I'm not taking her remarks out of context, even more because the account of her anguished choice about whether to "change the...]]> Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500  WASHINGTON -- When will President Obama fight, and when will he fold? That's not entirely clear -- and I'm beginning to worry that there may be a little too much presidential inclination to crumple. For all the chest-thumping about making hard choices and taking on entrenched interests, there has been disturbingly little evidence of the new president's willingness to do that when it discomfits his allies.

     "Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed," Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address.

     Well, not exactly. Look at the fate of various...]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Of course, my Bolton parallel is intentionally provocative. I happen to know both Bolton, back to his days in the Reagan Justice Department, and Johnsen, back to her days as legal director of the National Abortion Rights Action League. Dawn Johnsen is no John Bolton.

Bolton was as famously bristly as his trademark mustache. Johnsen is a slight, soft-spoken Sunday school teacher -- who also happens to be a serious legal scholar (like Bolton, a graduate of Yale Law School) with impeccable credentials (she was acting head of OLC during the Clinton administration.) To my knowledge, she's never suggested lopping a few floors off the Justice Department, as Bolton did with the...]]> Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 A recent study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that 22 percent of teen girls and 18 percent of boys had sent or posted online nude or semi-nude photos. Among younger teens, 13 to 16, 11 percent reported engaging in such behavior. If you've ever been, or known, a teenage boy, you can guess what happens next: One-third said they had seen nude or revealing photos meant for someone else.

And this being America, you can guess what else happens: The law gets involved. Nude photos of minors -- even if the minor is you -- are child pornography. Receiving a nude photo of a minor -- even if the minor is your girlfriend, and even if you are a...]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Here are Five Hard Pieces on the way to getting health care done this year:

Piece One: Should there be a public insurance option? This is a question of near-religious fervor that could crash the whole enterprise. Republicans hate the notion of a government program because they fear, with ample reason, that it is a slippery slope step to a single-payer program. Liberals demand a public insurance alternative for precisely that reason.

Potential solution: Have the public program abide by the same rules as private plans so it has no inherent advantage.

Drawbacks: In that case, what's the advantage? Plus, anything that smacks of a public program will be...]]> Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 I get the political fix in which President Obama finds himself. The sums are staggering -- if not to Wall Street, then to everyone else who's ever worked for a living. The public is worked up, increasingly convinced that its money is being flung around recklessly, to a gang of extortionists at AIG and at European banks, without any hint that the fundamental problem is being fixed.

As a result, the administration's already dim prospects for obtaining another boatload of money for the bank bailout have gotten even dimmer. This presents a huge problem because of the likelihood that another enormous sum will be needed. The president's budget envisions $750 billion, and even...]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 A "broken promise ... more like occupation-lite," charged the anti-war group Code Pink.

On the legal issues entwined in the war on terror, Obama is, again wisely, proceeding more slowly than many civil libertarians demand. Guantanamo will be closed -- eventually. Military commissions have been halted, torture policies renounced, and secret memoranda released.

Yet the Obama Justice Department backstopped the Bush Justice Department's assertion of the state secrets privilege to block lawsuits challenging wiretapping and extraordinary rendition. The administration argued that prisoners in Afghanistan cannot challenge their detention in court. It leaned on the...]]> Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Obama's words are about to be put to the test. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston Tuesday challenges the constitutionality of the act when it comes to federal treatment of same-sex couples married in Massachusetts.

Section 3 of the act, shamefully signed by President Clinton in 1996, provides that in "determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation or interpretation ... the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."

The lawsuit, brought by the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), argues that Section 3 violates the Constitution's equal protection clause by treating...]]> Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 By far the biggest and most important of these gambles involves health care, and the administration's seemingly paradoxical claim that it can simultaneously cover more people and cut costs.

The administration argues that the greatest long-term fiscal challenge is controlling the growth of federal health care spending, primarily Medicare, and that this cannot be achieved without tackling the broader health care system.

Simply capping spending for the elderly, disabled and poor will not work in isolation, the administration says, because providers would refuse to take part in government programs or hike prices for private patients. Yet with the federal...]]> Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Still, the ability of House Republicans to maintain their united front -- twice -- came as an unpleasant shock to the White House. Even after the first rebuff, the administration anticipated 20 to 30 Republican defections.

Instead, the vote demonstrated that everything you need to know about Congress you learned in middle school: Peer pressure works wonders. "The reaction against those of us who negotiated and endorsed the package is really harsh, to say the least, so I think that will deter others who are thinking about coming our way," Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins told me last week.

In one particularly vivid demonstration, Joseph Cao, the new...]]> Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 And certainly, there were problems with the rollout of his stimulus package. The administration ceded too much control over the contents to House Democrats, although it was nowhere near as hands-off as has been portrayed. It was entirely foreseeable that Republicans would cherry-pick individual elements for ridicule; the administration excised some of them but failed to do enough to anticipate the outsized problems that remaining items would cause. The president, until rebooting this week with travel and a prime-time news conference, lost control of the message to Republicans, who were only too happy to seize it.

But it is difficult to assemble a measure of this magnitude --...]]> Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Yes, and my new doll, Two-Faced Tania, has nothing to do with Lundeen. Beautiful name, though.

The classic, cynical Washington move at this point would be to note that the Obamas, actually, have been none too shy about deploying their adorable children when it suits their political purposes. "Young, private citizens" don't exactly pose with their parents on the cover of People magazine ("The Obamas At Home. Exclusive Photos!").

Having been none too shy about deploying my adorable children when it suits my journalistic purposes, I'm not going there. The Obamas seem appropriately attentive to how their daughters are dealing with their new celebrity. While hamming...]]> Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Forgive this bit of parental tale-telling, but her comment has been on my mind. I understood, on an intellectual plane, the significance of electing the first black president. Yet until he was sworn in, I don't think I fully absorbed its overwhelming emotional force.

A few snapshots along the way:

-- It's several weeks after the election, and I have the privilege of being invited to read to Mr. Canady's third-grade class at Emery Elementary in the District of Columbia. Every child is African-American. On the wall is a glossy poster of Obama.

"It changes how black children look at themselves," Obama said when he visited The Washington Post last week....]]>