Barack Obama made a campaign promise to visit the state of Alaska before the election. And what better time than right now to follow through on this promise? Obama should fly to Alaska the first chance his campaign schedule allows and make a speech at a rally with Mark Begich (and any other Democratic candidates for Alaskan office who care to join in). Begich is currently the Mayor of Anchorage, and is running to unseat the Republican Senator Ted Stevens. You may have heard Ted Stevens' name in the news recently. Which is why the time is now for Obama to make the trip.

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Today we look at Barack Obama's vice presidential picks, by popular demand. I have so far resisted jumping into the VP fray, mostly because I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said by dozens of others. I can't pretend I can see inside Senator Obama's mind better than anyone else, and to my way of thinking the whole silly-season exercise of trying to guess who it will be is a lot of sound and fury, which ends up signifying nothing. But I've been noticing one facet of the choice hasn't really been adequately addressed: the consequences of such a pick.

Now, I'm not talking about consequences to Obama's chance of winning -- there's been more than enough of that sort of thing already, whether you want to slice it by geography or demographics, or whatever. Instead, I'd like to talk about the vacancy left behind.

Because many on the list are currently holding public office. Meaning if they get the VP nod, they're going to leave behind an empty office for someone else to hold. And the consequences of what happens to that office is what I'd like to focus on.

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Sixty years ago, on July 26, 1948, President Harry S Truman singlehandedly desegregated the United States military.

While that statement is true, it does not tell the whole story, since nothing is quite that easy. The military resisted fiercely, and it took years to actually achieve full racial integration of the military. It wasn't until March 18, 1951 that the Defense Department announced that all basic training had been integrated, much less the entire armed forces (which took even longer). The Truman Library has a very nice timeline of desegregation in the military for those interested in all the details.

But although it was a long, hard struggle to get the military to accept equal treatment for African Americans, Truman's Executive Order 9981 was undoubtedly the start of the official process. Sixty years ago, Truman signed his name to the following:

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Be careful what you wish for, John.

That seems to be the message of the week for Senator John McCain. He took some campaign consultant's idea a few weeks ago and tried to make political hay out of it -- put a running "clock" up on his website to show how long it had been since Barack Obama had been to Iraq.

It was a sophomoric trick, but then what do you really expect from a Republican campaign consultant?

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Since this week seems to be "Numbers Week" here at CW.com, I'd like to take a very close look at two recent polls, because they show something astonishing which everyone appears to be either ignoring or missing: When pollsters ask about four candidates instead of two, Obama's lead goes up. When Bob Barr and Ralph Nader are added into the mix, they seem to both draw votes mostly away from McCain, widening the gap between McCain and Obama.

This seems strange, since the conventional wisdom would have it that Barr will draw voters away from McCain (he's already being spoken of as a "spoiler" for McCain in one particular state -- Georgia -- where Barr hails from); and that Nader will draw voters from Obama. But, as these two polls show, that doesn't seem to be the case.

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I had the chance recently to interview two professors in the field of statistics (from Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), who have jointly come up with an interesting plan for replacing the Electoral College. Their plan would retain the electoral advantages small states currently have, but would remove the winner-take-all system we have now.

Arnold Barnett (George Eastman Professor of Management Science at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management), and Edward Kaplan (William N. and Marie A. Beach Professor of Management Sciences, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Engineering at the Yale School of Management) originally published their scheme in the American Statistical Association's magazine Chance (20:6-9, 2007) under the title "A Cure for the Electoral College?" Their paper is only four pages long and is worth reading for those interested in the wonkier realms of American political theory. [You can download it at Chance magazine's website (click on "A Cure for the Electoral College?") or download it directly as a PDF file.]

Being statisticians, of course, the paper does have some math in it; but even if you skip over that and read the rest, you'll get a quick overview of the Weighted Vote Share (WVS) system they propose. In essence, their plan would come very close to a national popular vote, but at the same time the WVS system would retain the advantage small states now enjoy in the Electoral College.

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I had a dream last night, but it didn't really end well. I dreamed I got unprecedented access to Barack Obama and his family, and got to go home with them for an evening in order to do an extended interview. But it turned into a "went to school without my pants" nightmare, because I couldn't think of a single thing to ask them.

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It's been about a month since we last took a look under the microscope at the possible outcomes of the Electoral College vote this November, so it's time for an update. For those of you too busy to read this, I will sum it up for you in advance: Looks good for Obama!

Now, I don't want anyone to be swept up in untimely exuberance, and firmly caution against prematurely popping champagne corks here. There's a lot of time left in this race, and anything can happen. But things are undeniably looking good for Obama's chances of winning versus McCain's.

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For only the fourth (or fifth, depending on how you count) time in his presidency, George W. Bush had a veto overridden by both houses of Congress this week. This is big news, since it doesn't happen very often.

The bill which Bush unsuccessfully vetoed was the same Medicare bill which was passed last week by the heroic efforts of Senator Teddy Kennedy (which won him the coveted Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, I might add). The vote in the House was 383-41, including 153 Republicans voting against Bush. In the Senate, the vote was 70-26, including 21 Republicans. This increased the margins from when it originally passed (355-59 and 69-30 respectively, with 129 Republicans in the House and 18 in the Senate).

A huge list of interested parties were in favor of the bill, from the AARP to the American Heart Association. So who was against it? Insurance companies. This was bluntly (starkly?) pointed out by Democratic California Representative Pete Snark... oh, excuse me, that's "Pete Stark" (I don't know how I could have gotten that confused), speaking to the opposition: "I understand when we have 50 groups supporting our bill and you only have one ... it gets a little annoying. But we will see if we can find one other group to support your bill. I doubt it, but we will try."

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What exactly does Barack Obama mean when he calls himself a "post-partisan" politician? What, indeed does "post-partisan" mean? The answer to such a basic question seems obvious, but then again maybe not, since people all across the political spectrum seem to be misunderstanding the term itself.

So, as the incomparable Dave Barry might say, it's time to play "Mister Language Person," in the hopes of clearing up some apparent confusion, on both the left and the right.

"Post-partisan," for those speaking British English, means "to mail a letter to partisan." Um, no... wait... that's not quite right. "Post-partisanship" is, of course, "an ocean-going vessel with mail for partisans on it." No, that's not it either.

All kidding aside, the word is so new that I actually couldn't find it in the online dictionary I use. From the word's roots, "post-partisan" literally means: "after partisan," or (more eloquently) "beyond partisan." Beyond partisanship means moving away from the fractured nature of partisan politics which America has been going through for the past few decades (historians would correct that to "since America began," but then pointing this fact out would not be in the post-partisan spirit, so we'll move on).

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