There is no such thing as political science, but there are tenancies so strong that they might as well be called laws of nature.

As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think about making a choice in the voting booth.

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.

Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.

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

In early 1961 a new president, John F. Kennedy, was told by military leaders and civilian officials that the Kingdom of Laos - of no conceivable strategic importance to the U.S. - required the presence of American troops and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Why? Because if Laos fell, Asia would go red from Thailand to Indonesia.