September 2005 Time once again for the biggest beauty pageant America promotes. Cameras have come back to the U.S. Senate chamber and the popularity parade is well underway. As Senators examine Judge Roberts for Chief Justice this week, they will be mugging for the camera and asking tough sounding questions, framing for their constituencies the issues they ran on.

And who can blame the Senators? Hearings are the only times they get to put their faces out there, to get some national name recognition. Come late 2007 we will see the same names come up on the primaries of both parties. Hearings perform an important publicity function. Unfortunately, the hearings will not perform the function we need them to. The Senators' questions this week will be partisan, parochial, and fixed on a rear view perspective. Will Roberts uphold Roe? Will Roberts defend property? What about privacy?

Meanwhile Roberts is being examined for a post where he will shape the Court for the next thirty years. Yesterday's cases matter only if they come up for review, and how often does SCOTUS ever take up issues overturning its own precedents? But every new case bubbling up through the lower courts today has potential for either eroding or edifying the influence of the Constitution of the United States. Will the new Chief Justice read the Constitution broadly or narrowly? Will we have an originalist, a revisionist, or a pragmatist?

These are the important questions, but they don't play well to the cameras. They don't incite heated discussions on the Sunday shows. And important as they are, they won't be asked this week.

Nov 2003 Somewhere in the First Amendment between the establishment clause and the free exercise clause we need to pry open enough elbow room for American culture to stand.

I understand that the Pledge of Allegiance as written by a defrocked socialist minister never mentioned God at all, and that the words “Under God” admitted by President Eisenhower had more to do with the Red Scare of the mid-fifties than piety of any particular stripe. So much is, as they say, history.

Here’s the rub. As a person of faith, and there are a few, of various faiths, my allegiance is already pledged. The nature of faith is that it is supreme, transcendent, over arching, and over ruling all other commitments. Normally this isn’t a problem; most faith systems that have lasted more than a couple hundred years are pretty consistent with social order. But along comes the Pledge of Allegiance, and without that little two-word caveat “under God” I am hard pressed to make such a pledge. Of what value would it be?

I am old-fashioned, believing a pledge or promise to be just that. And this is after all the 21st century, where promises were made to be broken, contracts have escape clauses, and a few men and women on active duty feel no compunction carping to the press corps about their orders. But then I remember this is also the era of “keep it real” and “just do it.” Walking your talk never goes out of style, but being circumspect about your talk in the first place has done.

What’s at stake in the debate on the Pledge is not theology. God goes on, so does faith. Or if you are of the faithless persuasion, so does integrity, conviction. What is at stake is the Pledge itself, and our allegiance to the Republic, which is us, each of us, and all of us. If one party can’t say the pledge with, and the other party can’t say it without, then we remain, regardless of the Pledge, one nation eminently divisible.

Oct 2003 Now for the hard part. The Governator is set to take office, and Mr. Davis has graciously moved to step down. It is one thing to run a campaign and to win an election. Now to the governing. What sort of leadership style does an action hero pursue?

One wonders really what went wrong with Davis. He was re-elected just eleven months ago. For the record, I voted against the recall (sorry, Arnold). I am not a fan of Davis ever since he tried to pin the energy crisis on PG&E. When government deregulates power companies and forces them to sell-off "excessive capital" aka power plants, then government doesn't have the right to whine about low power capacity. Chalk it up to government interference in the private sector, not generally a good thing.

But I am not a fan of the recall. Duly elected governors get to finish their terms unless they are in jail. This is what distinguishes America from tin pot dictatorships in the third world. And no one ever brought any charges against Mr. Davis.

If we are to learn much from the recent hubbub in California, however, it goes more to leadership style than to a model for democracy. Why did Gray Davis fall on such hard times? He showed up for work every day, did his best, and got pounded. Why?

When faced with an energy crisis, he called in the power companies, locked the door, and hammered out a deal. When faced with a budget short fall, he put the phone on hold, sharpened his pencil, and tripled the vehicle license fee. There is a pattern here, and it is called ITS, Ivory Tower Syndrome. Californians are pretty easy going, and will swallow any line you care to throw out, but you've got to keep them informed. Work in closed session, no matter how sincere, will rile the peasants. Hence the recall.

But are you and I any different? Faced with a challenge, I know I tend to bar the gates and grind out a solution, solo. I'll show it to you when I am good and done, and not before. Guys fix their own messes, right? Rugged individualism, my favorite recipe for a melt down. Ask for help or an alternate view? Don't be funny!

So strong men fall off the mountain, or freeze in the arctic, or drown in the ocean, all within an arm's reach of help. And so we return to consider the Governator. What style of leadership does an action hero pursue?