In 1928, the year of my birth, the name given to me ranked number six in popularity among American boys’ names. By contrast, in 2007 the name Richard did not even make the top 20.
Nor do I ever recall any boy named Richard in my daughter’s public school classes from 1985 to 1997. In baseball, the worst hitters fall below the Mendoza line, with batting averages under 200. That must be where Richard lies now.
This past August 29th, John McCain reached age 72. If elected president, that would make him the oldest person ever to enter upon that office.
Though it can qualify as an achievement, he did not celebrate his birthday with much, if any, hoopla. The public was not treated to photos of John blowing out even a few candles on a celebrative cake. Nor did we see him running around the block to demonstrate his physical fitness.
Of 23 students seated in a college classroom, guess how many were wearing wrist watches.
You are wrong.
The answer is only one.
Most of the mail that lands in the box on my porch these days I don’t want to open, much less read. Increasingly, my so-called snail mail has nothing personal about it.
Worse than that, many of the mailings are what my daughter and members of her generation would call “sketchy.” I strongly suspect they come from people out to get me.
The Winter Hill gang’s chief executioner confessed in court to murdering 20 people. For those crimes, he served a mere 12 years in prison and he now walks freely.
Becoming a government witness enabled John Martorano to get off with this wildly disproportionate sentence. Of this arrangement, Donald Stern, the former U.S. Attorney in Boston, says: “The only thing worse than this deal was not doing this deal.”
John McCain has six or seven houses he can call his own.
So what?
Barack Obama grew up living in areas outside of the continental United States.
What difference does that make?
I don’t care about such things. In fact, I regard making much of them as a waste of the public’s time. More than that, they distract us from real issues.
Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. What do all these men have in common?
They all received my vote for president.
If you think this is narrow thinking, you are correct. However I remain stubborn enough to judge that, in virtually every instance, the candidates mentioned above would have made better presidents than those who defeated them. How’s that for political obstinacy?