Eleanor Clift

According to a survey of television news, Ralph Nader got only three and a half minutes of air time since he launched his presidential race earlier this year. "Hardly enough to show I didn't shave," he groused to reporters.Nader's rants about the political "duopoly" that shuts out third-party candidates are old news, and his critique of Corporate America is getting shopworn, despite its searing accuracy.

We have a president who operates by belief, not reason, and who lives in a hermetically sealed alternate reality. How else to explain his performance before the press this week?Bush said he couldn't imagine planes being turned into missiles and flown into buildings, a statement that, if he read the newspapers, he would realize had been rescinded by his national-security adviser.

It would have been nice to hear an apology or even some remorse from Condoleezza Rice. But that's not this administration's style. She stuck to the party line that President Bush did all he could before 9/11, a position that is not supported by the facts.

It's hard to be both a rising star and a pariah, but that's what San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is in the Democratic Party. His approval rating is 67 percent, but many Democrats believe he hurt his party's chances in November by forcing the issue of gay marriage.Newsom was in Washington this week, but he wasn't conferring with John Kerry or anybody else outside of the California delegation. "Politicians aren't lining up to see me or meet me," he concedes.

Real-time images of a deadly car bombing in Baghdad conflicted with Vice President Dick Cheney's celebratory speech at the Reagan Presidential Library marking the one-year anniversary of the Iraq war.

Roe v Wade may be the law of the land, but the government of South Dakota thinks it knows better. Thanks to the combined effort of the GOP-controlled legislature and a Republican governor, abortion is illegal in South Dakota.There are no exceptions, not for rape or incest or for the life of the mother.

Liberal is such a dirty word in political circles that it's hard to believe that someone who has as liberal a record as John Kerry could become president.

The visionary flight to Mars didn't poll well, so now George W. Bush is floating another lame-brained idea. Democrats should rejoice. The fact that the president caved in to his conservative base and came out in favor of a gay-marriage ban is good news for the loyal opposition.First, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will never get through Congress.

Democrats love to hate John Ashcroft. Say his name on the campaign trail and it's a guaranteed applause line. Plus, he's always good for new material. His latest is to subpoena the medical records of women who have had late-term abortions.

With a newly grown beard and a stocking hat on his bald head, nobody recognizes Jesse Ventura when he strides around Harvard Square. It's not just the new look, it's that nobody expects to find Jesse "the Body" at Harvard, least of all Jesse himself. "I'm a kid from South Minneapolis; I enlisted in the Navy, barely went to college and now I'm teaching at Harvard," he says.Jesse and I have something in common.

By ruling gay marriage constitutional and declaring the less contentious option of civil unions unconstitutional, the Massachusetts Supreme Court made the perfect the enemy of the good.

The voters don't want to refight the Vietnam war, but with John Kerry looking like the likely nominee, Vietnam returns to the front pages. Kerry is accompanied on the campaign trail by the men he served with in the Mekong Delta. "I know a little something about aircraft carriers for real," he says, in an allusion to President George W.

Nothing happened in last night's Democratic debate to change the dynamics of the race, except that Wesley Clark may have joined Howard Dean in the penalty box when he declined to distance himself from supporter Michael Moore's characterization of President Bush as a "deserter." A more nimble politician wouldn't have made that mistake.Newly anointed front runner John Kerry wasn't a target the way Dean was when he had the lead.

It's one of those little ironies of life that Democrats in Congress are pressing for an expanded military while their party prepares to nominate an antiwar candidate for president.

As 2003 draws to a close, it's time to assess the year's winners and losers, and to speculate about the coming election year. Here are my picks:WINNERS:Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, tops my list.

Howard Dean is right, but so were the French when they opposed the war in Iraq. That's the problem. Saying that Americans are no safer now that Saddam Hussein has been captured is a correct statement on the merits, but given current American attitudes, there is some company you don't want to keep.The remark overshadowed Dean's otherwise thoughtful foreign-policy speech this week and became a lightning rod for other Democrats--and eventually Republicans--if he becomes the nominee.

History is repeating itself with another little-known governor from an obscure state vaulting ahead of the pack to become the favorite for the Democratic nomination for president.

They used to call it "taking to the diaper," a phrase that referred to the preparation undertaken by a prudent senator before an extended filibuster. The late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond holds the record for a solo filibuster from the time when he rambled for 24 hours and 18 minutes to prevent the Civil Rights Act of 1957 from coming to a vote.

It's a small thing, but I find it really grating. Republicans refer to their Democrat colleagues, pointedly dropping the suffix that makes it an adjective, and grammatically correct.

A former slave named Sojourner Truth electrified a woman's-rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, striding to the front of the crowd through a raucous band of clergymen who were determined to disrupt the meeting.

Welcome to Rumsfeld's reality. It's a brave new world in Washington now that Donald Rumsfeld has revealed the true nature of the conflict in Iraq. Americans didn't sign on for a "long, hard slog," as Rumsfeld put it so memorably in a memo to his top generals.Rumsfeld's words confirm what critics of the war have been saying.

Too bad President Bush didn't attend the 14th annual Courage in Journalism awards luncheon in New York on Thursday. He might have come away with a higher regard for the profession when he has lately disparaged for the "filter" it imposes on news.The International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) honors women journalists around the world for the work they perform under the most daunting conditions.

After all-Arnold, all-the-time, making the transition to the dreary Democrats is a hard sell. Whatever you think of the California recall, the theatricality of Schwarzenegger's political debut made the Democrats seem even more charismatically challenged than usual as they lined up to debate Thursday in Phoenix.They all had their set speeches and nobody managed to break out of the pack.

The zeitgeist is shifting. Liberal books are moving up the best-seller list. Rush Limbaugh is getting disparaged for racial insensitivity and allegedly buying illegal drugs.

The junior senator from New York paused to greet most of the two dozen reporters assembled to chat with her Wednesday morning over waffles and bacon. She wore a bright coral pantsuit that set her apart from the sea of men in blue blazers and women in conservative black.With a photo-ready smile and a confident manner, Hillary Clinton took the same seat she occupied 12 years ago when she accompanied her husband to meet with the Washington press.

Normally a president gets a boost in the polls when he addresses the nation from the White House. But President Bush's numbers dipped after he went on television to announce he was asking Congress for an additional $87 billion for reconstruction in Iraq.

When you're in the midst of a political disaster, do you know you're there? That question was posed by a Senate Republican who supported the war in Iraq. He wonders what the powers-that-be thought when Vietnam first began to spin out of control. "Did we know it was a disaster?" he mused.For those who remember Vietnam, the echoes are startling--from the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel mentality to the disconnect between hawk and dove.

It started with a rosewood tablet he carved himself and kept in his courtroom in Gadsden, Ala. That was 11 years ago, and the following he gained as the "Ten Commandments judge" enabled Roy Moore to win election in 2000 for Alabama chief justice.

The Texas Democrats are going national. Buoyed by a million dollars in Internet contributions, they're turning what started out as a partisan spat into an assault on President George W.

By stubbornly refusing a federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument in his courthouse, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has been hailed by Christian fundamentalists as a man of great courage.