There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well.

George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower all rode their wartime heroics into the White House.

In another life, before taking the veil of journalistic purity, I practiced the black arts of a political operative, including 'debate prep.

I got into writing and thinking about politics because I was told there would be no math.

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.

Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.

As a general proposition, campaigns do not linger on the vice presidential nominee. When they have, it's always meant very bad news for the ticket. Think of Spiro Agnew's foot-in-mouth disease; Tom Eagleton's medical history; the real estate holdings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband; the unbearable lightness of Dan Quayle; Sarah Palin's reading list.