This is not a follow up to what I wrote last Friday, because this isn't about Illinois Governor Blagojevich's "crude" language. Instead, I write today about Blaggy's crude tactics. Because I'm kind of having a hard time condemning him for doing almost the same thing as what other politicians do more successfully (and completely "legally") with a wink and a nod. There's a game, and there are certain rules to the game. Blaggy went a bit too far, and was caught. He is now paying the price. But what he "got caught" at isn't that all that different from what many (if not most) politicians -- of both parties -- do.

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With slightly less than a month and a half to go before Barack Obama's inauguration, Washington, D.C. has officially reached the "freakout" point on the Richter scale of event planning. This may indeed turn out to be justified, if the predicted crowd shows up. Even so, some of what is quietly happening in background of the planning process is worth drawing attention to.

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Brian Williams, NBC's talking head extraordinaire, is probably a decent guy, a guy with whom you could sit down and have a beer. [More on the alcohol subject at the end, I promise.] But that doesn't excuse something he said last night on Jay Leno's show.

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Personally, I could care less whether he says "I, Barack Hussein Obama..." or "I, Barack Obama..." or "I, Barry Obama..." or whatever else he chooses to say. The man behind the name is who people voted for, not the name itself. The man will be president, and I don't care whether he calls himself by a nickname ("Jimmy Carter") by initials ("F.D.R" or "L.B.J.") or by his full name. Whatever he's comfortable with, as far as I'm concerned.

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There's an old inside-the-Beltway joke where a new House member is being shown around by a veteran of his own party. He is awed by entering the House floor for the first time, and is shown his new seat. He asks, pointing across the aisle to where the other party sits, "Is that where the enemy sits?" The older and wiser Congressman replies, "No, no, here in the House of Representatives we call our opponents 'the loyal opposition.' You're new, so you need to understand this. 'The enemy' is the Senate."

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Obama has said that he will be the President of ALL Americans. As such, he will certainly disappoint. But that's all right. I didn't just award him my vote, I awarded him my trust. My hope is that he is wiser than I, more knowledgeable than I. And I trust him to make the decisions I hope that I would make, if I were wiser and more knowledgeable. I hope Obama's presidency will be as all presidencies should be: constitutional, ethical, transparent, broadly representative and reality-based. Even though each of us are "special interests," he doesn't have to pander to me, he doesn't have to be "black," he just has to represent me. I don't demand a bigger piece of the pie. I may not even GET a piece of the pie. All I ask is that I have a seat at the table.

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Deep into the interregnum (interpresidentum?... interpresidium?) between the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration seems to be a good time to ask: Does this make sense anymore? Why does America wait two-and-a-half months between when we elect our leaders and when we actually let them enter office? And does it make sense to change it?

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Basing my reasoning on absolutely no hard facts (which I fully admit up front), here's the scenario that keeps suggesting itself to my addled brain (and which, to my surprise, doesn't seem to have suggested itself to anyone else): during the discussions between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (which took place between the end of the primary season and when she began campaigning for him), Hillary gets Barack to agree to this sideshow if he gets elected. She will be "offered" Secretary of State, which she will then decline "because there's so much to do in the Senate." But -- and here's the crux of my thinking -- she will gain by this situation by improving her prestige in the Senate and attaining more power than she normally would have (due to her low seniority status).

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At 12:39 PM (Alaska time) Democratic challenger Mark Begich led the incumbent (and convicted felon) Senator Ted Stevens by 2,374 votes -- an improvement of over 1,300 votes in today's tally. By my thumbnail estimates, there appear to be just over 10,000 ballots left to count, meaning that Stevens' defeat seems likely at this point.

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As I see it, the issue breaks down in a number of ways. The first question is anonymity -- do Americans have an absolute right to anonymity in political messages? The second question is technological -- is anonymity a right, no matter what the medium? And the third question seems to be political, and deal with campaign and election law -- what kinds of rules on speech are constitutionally allowable in politics?

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