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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
Nobody asked me, but....
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Not for the first time, I am indebted to Jimmy Cannon, the truly gifted New York sportswriter, who from time to time wrote a column, full of witty and sentimental one-liners, he called, "Nobody asked me, but ..."
With the professional hockey strike threatening cancellation of the entire season, that leaves us with polo as the only sport with virtually all-white superstars.
Who is the sadist who designs the window drapes in hotel rooms so that they never completely close?
I'm the first to admit that the inside of my car has been a lot less tidy since Martha Stewart has been out of circulation.
Who corrects the correctors?
On October 25, a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal had this sentence: "He (President Bush) gave a rare interview over the weekend to Fox News, a network sympathetic to Mr. Bush and popular with Republicans." On October 26, the Journal in its correction column wrote: "News Corp's Fox News was incorrectly described in a page-one article as being sympathetic to the Bush cause."
If George W. Bush in his first debate with John Kerry (which his own people concede he lost) really was wearing a wire in that bulge under his suit jacket, then who was advising him on the other end? James Carville?
Cloning is a complex, ethical issue. But there is something funny when C-SPAN showed a House of Representatives debate on the subject featuring 213 white guys in blue suits, identical shirts and red ties all expressing their personal opposition to cloning.
The United States has proudly helped restore and spread democracy to Germany, Japan, the countries of the former Soviet bloc and elsewhere. But not once in any of those nations has the United States ever once urged: "We have a wonderfully ingenious system for electing our president that you really ought to emulate. ... We call it the Electoral College."
I have not talked to a single serious politician who does not think that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, if she did run, would be the favorite and front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Nor have I found one politician, outside of the Clinton camp, who thinks that she could win the presidential election.
Has there ever been an automobile dealership anywhere that did not have its own "award-winning service department"?
After his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, regularly mentioned that he was only the most recent in the list of fellow Arizonans -- Barry Goldwater, Morris K. Udall and Bruce Babbitt -- who had failed to win the White House, adding that "Arizona is the only state where a mother does not tell her child that she could grow up and become president."
After the experiences of Ted Kennedy in 1980, Michael Dukakis in 1988, the late Paul Tsongas in 1992 and John Kerry in 2004, it may be time to tell all sons and daughters of Massachusetts with national ambitions that they should leave the old Bay State forthwith.
Before the Democrats do nominate a candidate in 2008, they might first begin by finding someone who has personally won elections in a red state. I personally liked Michael Dukakis, the 1988 nominee, who was a native of Brookline, Massachusetts. Here was the problem: George McGovern got more votes in Brookline in one election (1972, when he carried only Massachusetts against Richard Nixon) than Ronald Reagan (who won 44 states the first time and 49 states the second time) received in two elections.
Does anybody else remember when a college football coach whose team lost five games during the season was facing the axe instead of accepting an invitation to the Athlete's Foot-Ringworm post-season bowl game?
Put me down as buying a ticket to any movie with William H. Macy and Steve Buscemi.
