These are fantastically lucky days to be writing about American politics. A money-pit foreign occupation. Soaring oil prices. Insolvent entitlement programs. Complicated tax codes. Severely devalued dollar. Porous borders. Home foreclosures. And beleaguered middle-class families scrimping and scraping to come up with enough cash to buy luxuries like food and fill up the gas tank, let alone send their children to college.

Yep. Lots of issues an enterprising reporter could sink his or her journalistic gums into. But hey, why waste the energy and spill perfectly good brain cells worrying about all that peripheral stuff when we all know the next leader of the free world is going to be selected based on his or her faithfulness in wearing flag pins and whose pastor has delivered the wackiest sermons? The rest of this campaign is going to be a piece of cake. Like I said — fantastically lucky days …

Hillary Clinton, John McCain, the Republican National Committee and the United Church of Christ must all be apoplectic that President Bush called that hasty Tuesday morning Rose Garden news conference. Bush miraculously plugged the dike (for a good 20 minutes, anyway) on the torrential coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s tour to promote his new spiritual tome, Humility, and How I Achieved It.

I must have actually been watching a tape delay of the Bush news conference, because smack-dab in the middle of it I received a well-thought-out press release from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pummeling Bush for “years of neglect” of the American economy.

A real stickler for good manners, I was happy to see that the esteemed Madam Speaker actually issued her statement “in advance” of the president to help guide him and make sure he didn’t miss any important points. I am quite certain Pelosi would not have the bad manners to respond to the president on such serious matters before he had actually finished his remarks.

Also well-mannered was Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who waited a full 47 seconds after Bush finished before appearing in the Senate Radio and Television Gallery. Schumer, knowing full well how cable news programmers think, took advantage of the barely cracked electronic window and finished up in short order so the Rev. Wright exegesis could continue for the day.

Talking about Hillary Clinton — if I wasn’t talking about her, I certainly meant to — I got a real kick out of her weekend challenge to Obama to participate in several self-moderated Lincoln-Douglas-style debates.

You can always tell a politician is getting desperate when they start summoning up the spirit of Lincoln-Douglas. When a member of the journalistic caste suggests the Lincoln-Douglas idea, politicians normally look at them as though they transported in from Neptune. So, if a politician initiates it, something is up. In this case, that would be Obama’s superdelegate count.

“Just the two of us, going for 90 minutes, asking and answering questions, we’ll set whatever rules seem fair,” Clinton challenged while campaigning in Indiana this past weekend. “I hope we will be able to have a good old-fashioned Lincoln-Douglas debate right here in Indiana, so that you can see for yourself to make the decision about who our next president should be.”

I am not getting my hopes up. Non-moderated Lincoln-Douglas-style debates are pretty much dead on arrival at any news network except C-SPAN. The main reason other networks host debates is to showcase their own non-presidential talent. It’s icing on the cake if any meaningful discourse actually takes place.

Obama declined Clinton’s generous offer, stating that they have already debated 1,746 times. I may be off on that 1,746 number. I am a little distracted right now, going through videotape counting flag pins and watching old sermons by John Hagee and two former Clinton pastors named Dean Snyder and J. Philip Wogaman. Maybe not household names right now, but by the new nominating rules under which we are now operating, I expect they soon will be.

You can reach Jim Mills at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it