September is always an amusing time of year for politics-watchers, because inevitably Congress will return from their five- or six-week-long paid vacation and then immediately start whining that there is so much on their plate that they simply won't have time to get everything done. Without, of course, ever seeing the irony of such statements (after taking all of August plus a week or two off). This year is no different, of course. Congress is back and they're already moaning about how much they have to do in September. After all, they've got an upcoming budgetary train wreck to create, the Pope is going to visit, and -- first on their list of looming deadlines -- they're supposed to vote on the Iran nuclear deal. It now seems the Republicans are going to fumble this one badly, due (once again) to the intransigence of the House hardliners.

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President Obama had some fun this week, and by doing so actually forced the media to tackle a serious subject on his agenda. The fun part was taking the whole press corps up to Alaska, and even filming an episode of Bear Gryll's celebrity survivalist show. I certainly never thought I'd type a sentence linking President Obama and Bear Grylls, but then we certainly do live in strange times. In a more normal political (but no less partisan) atmosphere, Obama might have been roundly criticized for acting almost Putin-like, being photographed as a tough guy in the great outdoors. Who knows, when the episode airs, he still may face such carping from Republicans. But seeing as how the Republican presidential race is currently redefining the term "cult of personality" in a major way, I don't think the charge is going to carry much weight. It's hard to argue that the dignity of the Oval Office means not appearing in a reality television show when the guy leading the pack on your side is a reality-show television star, after all.

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Senator Barbara Mikulski became the 34th Senate Democrat to indicate she'll stand with President Obama on the Iran nuclear deal, which is significant -- although, in all likelihood, also merely symbolic. The media are reporting it is significant because it assures Obama that his veto won't be overturned, but what they're mostly missing is that a Senate veto-override vote likely wouldn't even have to happen.

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President Barack Obama just had another bad August in the polls. This doesn't come as any real surprise, as summer seems to be the worst time of year for him throughout his term in office. Last month Obama posted the first positive July he ever has, but this month he reverted to form and slipped significantly in his job approval polling. Let's take a look at the new chart.

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The entire Trump phenomenon reminds me of a basic rule from the world of magical/fantasy fiction. It's not quite Asimov's "three laws of robotics," but it's still been used my many authors who write about wizards casting dangerous spells. The rule of thumb among wizards? "Do not call up that which you cannot put down." Don't summon demons or otherworldly forces if you're not strong enough to defeat them, in other words.

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In the midst of the current eruption of nonsense over American immigration policy from out on the campaign trail, I have a few more targeted questions to ask of all the candidates. They're really just extensions of one basic question, really, which would be: "What will your policy towards Cuba be if you become president?" However, since Republicans and Democrats have different basic viewpoints on the issue, it must be broken down into more specific queries in order to elicit useful answers. Both questions, for different reasons, will be tough for Democrats and Republicans alike.

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Another week has gone by, and Donald Trump remains the Republican frontrunner in the presidential nomination race. We've noticed that all the inside-the-Beltway pundits who so confidently predicted Trump's imminent and inevitable downfall are now slowly starting to revisit their predictions. This is making them extremely nervous, of course. Some are still finding solace in the "Trump's going to say something any day now that will sink him like a stone" way of thinking, but their numbers are getting smaller as time goes by and Trump defies political gravity once again.

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Deep into the political silly season, it seems the pundits are getting rather tired of being so very, very wrong in predicting the imminent demise of Donald Trump's candidacy, so instead they all seem to have turned to a new summertime storyline: predicting the imminent demise of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. This is what passes for conventional wisdom inside the Beltway in the dog days of August, but it's likely going to turn out to be just as wrong as the endless refrains of "surely this will sink Trump!" which preceded it. For anyone so disconnected from reality to understand what I'm saying here, a handy reminder that we have over fourteen months before the 2016 election. Even the first primaries are still a half a year away. And anything can happen in that amount of time in politics.

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We're going to begin today with a wrapup of the week that was in the presidential campaigns, and as befitting his status as the Republican frontrunner, we're going to start with Donald Trump (if you're sick of hearing about Trump, just skip down eight or ten paragraphs and continue reading).

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Donald Trump is unique. Let's start off with that. He's an outsider to the political process, he's got name recognition other candidates would die for, and he makes his own rules out on the campaign trail. He is (to use a word I coined a while back) a "celebritician" -- a celebrity who decided he'd become a politician. This horrifies many, mostly because he's been so successful (so far). But he's certainly not the first celebrity to toss his hat into the political ring, although he is the first big one to emerge on the Republican side in a while (ever since the days of Senator Fred Thompson, by my reckoning). But since each celebritician is unique, can anything be learned from the past history of quixotic celebrity political campaigns?

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