When comedian Al Franken joined the U.S. Senate this year, the idea of it being a highly select and serious chamber loosened up considerably. So why not Sen. Lou Dobbs? The ousted CNN host (in photo) is being discussed as a potential challenger to Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J. But in a Monday interview, the self-described “Mr. Independent” said he also is thinking about a White House run. “I think that being in the public arena means you’ve got to be part of the solution.” No word on whether Dobbs would run as an independent or a Republican.
The similarities between Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin are striking. This is not to say that they are alike in every respect. Nor is it to say that Palin’s achievements to date rank with the others’. But it’s nonetheless true that a couple of traits span the centuries and unify these four political figures. The first is the reaction they provoke among the elites of their age — what one might call the “Coonskin Cap Critique.” The second is their advocacy of dispersed power, open markets and American individualism. Elites routinely underestimate the capacities of populist leaders. They mock their enemies as uneducated provincials who lack expert knowledge and therefore have no place interfering in politics. — 
Columnist and author Thomas Frank finds it “cosmically correct” that James K. Glassman (in photo), the co-author of “Dow 36,000,” will be the executive director of the George W. Bush Institute at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. “This great Wall Street optimist will oversee the remnants of an administration whose members once pooh-poohed the ‘reality-based community,’ who thought voluntary compliance was a good way to regulate industry, who took almost no action to deflate the mortgage bubble, who anticipated being greeted in Iraq as liberators,” Frank Follow us
