By Bill Bradley

The racial politics swirling around Barack Obama will undoubtedly dominate the week ahead in presidential politics. In fact, they may well dominate much of the next seven-odd months. It is not only about race, either. The questions yet unanswered by his speech last Tuesday in Philadelphia are at least as much about patriotism.

John McCain, returned from his tour of the Middle East and Europe, is in California for three days this week to raise badly needed funds and to stake a longshot claim to the Golden State in the general election. On Wednesday morning at the Bonanventure Hotel in Los Angeles, he delivers a major address on national security and geopolitical matters, addressing what he learned in Iraq and the other nations he toured last week.

Notwithstanding the firestorm of controversy over the past comments of his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and some consequent teetering in the polls, Obama had a good week last week. For one thing, it became apparent that he had far more cash on hand at the end of February than rival Hillary Clinton, not to mention John McCain, whose best month of fundraising doesn't match Obama's best week.
Obama's fundraising machine, centered on the Internet, has been humming along the whole time.

In addition, Hillary's fading hopes for the nomination took a major hit when it became apparent that there would be no do-over primaries in Florida or Michigan, two states which she had previously claimed victory notwithstanding the fact that she'd earlier agreed with the Democratic Party's decision not to recognize their rogue primaries in which no one campaigned. The hurdles to hastily organized primaries at the tail end of the season in June were simply too high, and Clinton forces would have had to block independents who participated in the real Republican primary -- largely on behalf of McCain -- from voting in a real Democratic primary.

By week's end, it was apparent that Clinton almost certainly could not catch Obama in delegates won in the primaries and caucuses or in the popular vote. The media counts, incidentally, which have Obama over 700,000 votes ahead of Clinton, do not include, oddly, votes cast in the caucuses. Most of those caucuses have had record turnouts, making them easily the equivalent of smaller primary elections. Include them in the popular vote, as they should be, and Obama's lead is well over a million votes.

And now the bad news. Obama got a good start on addressing his Jeremiah Wright last week. But only a start.

As I wrote in real time as the Jeremiah Wright firestorm broke 10 days ago, it was a clearly survivable situation. When Obama gave his speech on race in America and the Jeremiah Wright controversy six days ago, he solved much of his problem with regard to the Democratic nomination fight.

Polls show that his speech worked, especially with Democratic voters, and largely with independent voters.

An even more recent poll for CBS News showed, as does the Rasmussen poll, that most Americans think highly of Obama's speech. http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/MARB-ObamaCallback.pdf

Nevertheless, Barack Obama's path to the White House has certainly gotten longer and more perilous.

Obama is unlikely to become president unless he can explain Malcolm X (Wright's most outrageous statements are a stand-in for what he represented), the anger that produced him, and the preposterous statements that not infrequently emanate from the leadership of his church and other black churches.

He can't simply float along as the easy post-racial figure, a man Americans can vote for as a salve for the issue of race in America.

This may have been inevitable. And it certainly became inevitable when he decided not to be a Hawaiian, or a nice Ivy League lawyer, but a black Chicago politician.

Obama made a choice. He was born and in large measure raised in Hawaii, America's polyglot paradise in the Pacific, a place where questions of racial background can become so complex as to be irrelevant. But after a glittering Ivy League debut, he decided to enter politics, not as a multi-racial, post-racial figure in Hawaii or California -- where he spent two years attending Occidental College -- but in a 76% black state senate district in Chicago.

Why he decided to embrace his blackness as a very young man may be a matter more for the psychologically inclined than the politically inclined. In any event, it is what he did.

As a man who was neither a movie star nor super-rich, Obama needed a base for his rise. As he is a politician and not a deity, he is by nature an opportunist. (All politicians are opportunists. The question is the degree of egregiousness.) A big part of his opportunity was being a member of what is arguably the leading black church in Chicago.

For a man with a missing father, Trinity United Church of Christ and the Rev. Wright played a key role in Obama's life. Mothered by a white woman and raised in large measure by white grandparents, Obama sought what he did not have in his life as a biracial boy. A black family. The black church in Chicago became a stand-in for that. And Wright, a complex man who, by most accounts, has done some serious good in Chicago to balance his now well-publicized ranting, became in Obama's own recent words, an "uncle."

The church also answered the formerly frequently posed question about Obama. Is he "black enough?"

But as a result of this embrace -- and Obama notably refused to disown Wright even as he renounced his now infamous comments -- Obama still has serious questions to answer.

He has to explain to America -- and in particular, to key voting groups such as the Scot-Irish who make up much of the working class and patriotically-oriented in the country -- the anger that produced such irrational notions as the US government inventing AIDS to destroy the black people, or the idea that the US may have deserved 9/11. And why men such as Wright, whose generation grew up with a frequently rugged racism directed toward them and developed within them, have a chip on their shoulder today.

This task certainly not what Obama wanted to take on when he launched his candidacy on a wave of high-flown, impressively-delivered rhetoric, floating over the historic divisions of America on a cloud of post-racialism.

But it is what he must do now. He didn't intend to run as "the black candidate" but as a candidate who happened to be black. But being black, or at least, "black enough," as it turns out, was at least in part a choice for Obama. And as a result of that choice, he rose in Chicago enough to become a United States senator. And as a result of being a senator, he has enough stature to wage this campaign.

As a result, this conversation about race will continue throughout the campaign, together with a conversation about patriotism. "God damn America" is not a concept that goes down well with most voters.

This may be even more of an imperative for Obama than the racial issue, though the two are joined.

What is his idea of America? How is he an American patriot in a time of war?

What can he do to convince the Scots-Irish American voter that he is enough of a patriot to take on the uber-patriot, John McCain, a man who does not have to wave the flag because his very presence waves the flag?

In many respects, Obama represents an emerging America: multi-racial, with an internationalist perspective. But he will not represent any America, at least as president, until he demonstrates that he represents the enduring America.

If you don't want to read this entire review, or watch all four and a half hours of Frontline's big fifth anniversary Iraq extravaganza, Bush's War, here's the short version:

Bush lied, people died.

It's hard to know where to start with everything that is wrong with this two-part series, airing at 9 p.m. March 24 and 25 on PBS. So I'll start with what's right with it.

As television goes, it is a relatively comprehensive review of the major decisions and controversies of the Iraq war, with a little 9/11, Afghanistan precede. It makes some, though not many, attempts to be fair and thorough in presenting the perspectives of both sides. When you watch it, you might learn a few things. You'll remember a lot. It won't change your mind about anything.

We've got that out of the way. On to what's wrong. I'm not sure in the space I can reasonably fill here, short of exceeding Frontline's own 4:30-hour limit, that I'll be able to enumerate them all. It's daunting.

Let's start with the title. This documentary is not actually about George Bush, or his war. It is about his Cabinet's infighting. In fact, they probably should have called it "The Cabinet's Infighting," though that might not be a big viewer draw. Maybe "The Cabinet Infighting of Bush's War." Too clunky. How about: "Cheney-Rumsfeld Lied, People Died." That's catchier, and would not only get the viewers but lots of press.

Because this entire documentary, from beginning to end, is not even a Bush-bash, it's all Cheney-Rumsfeld bash. Bush, in the documentary named after him, gets some cameos, a walk-on here and there. He does have some speaking parts, he's not entirely a spearholder. But Frontline makes it clear in what disregard they hold the president of the United States. He is a chump who gets pushed around and manipulated by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, despite the best, but tragically flawed efforts of Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet. While the influence of those parties cannot be denied by any fair observer, it is not until he finally decides to get rid of Rumsfeld that the president of the United States presented as having much in the way of independent thought at all.

The Frontline documentarians, of course, avoid expressing any opinions. They rely on the liberal use … pun intended … of a series of scribblers from the New York Times, the Washington Post and other publications to do that for them. In fact, when Frontline can't find actual participants to do so, Frontline relies on ink-stained wretches to ascribe motives to people and in one astonishing case, to fantasize what a particular meeting must have been like, along with presenting as fact the conjecture that results from the newsman's usual second-, third- or fourth-in-line position in the game of information telegraph.

Of the actual participants in events, there is a heavy reliance on well-known Rumsfeld-Cheney adversaries such Richard Clarke, Richard Armitage, with no mention of the fact that they, and virtually everyone in this depiction of recent history, have axes to grind and their own sullied legacies to patch up. Few people actually close or aligned with Rumsfeld or Cheney appear to have been interviewed. Possibly because they knew how this was going to end up.

Frontline very much carries the water of the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, the advocates of which apparently couldn't be prevailed on to shut up, hence all the airtime. Though Tenet ultimately is thrown under the bus by Frontline as much as it describes Bush having done so, the CIA's view of both Afghanistan and Iraq gets a friendly airing. One of the more remarkable, unchallenged and unelaborated gripes is that after Sept. 11, 2001, the eager, action-ready CIA was forced to twiddle its thumbs in Afghanistan for almost an entire month before the U.S. military finally showed up on Oct. 7. This is stated without apparent irony, even though we've been informed that George Bush intended a sober, measured approach. There is no discussion of the fact that 26 days might in fact be lightning speed when it comes to planning and moving forces into place for the takedown of a foreign regime on its own turf.

Frontline takes a diversion into Guantanamo, where you will learn that the Cheney-Rumsfeld junta threw out the Geneva Conventions and authorized military tribunals, the turning on of lights, removal of religious materials, and other atrocities. I must have missed the part where they discussed the fact that the hated Crusader Gulag at Guantanamo does not actually violate the Geneva Conventions and that the people held there are unlawful combatants. Horror is expressed at what Gitmo might inspire our adversaries to do to our own soldiers. I must have missed the part where Frontline discusses what al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, the Iranian regime and others actually have done to the civilians and soldiers they have seized. The videotaped pleas for mercy, the forced confessions, the use of hostages to blackmail governments, the beatings, the beheadings, the bodies dumped by the road, etc.

We're now done with Afghanistan, which apparently is not part of Bush's war except to the extent it enabled the Cheney-Rumsfeld regime's Iraq agenda.

Frontline moves on to offer some detail on the stock versions of the pre-war intelligence failures and supposed distortions. It is largely an unquestioning review of conventional wisdom, and you'll learn nothing here. The belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction is presented largely as a fact pushed by Cheney rather than as something believed by every major intelligence agency in the world, including those of nations that vehemently opposed this war. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin is once again allowed to oppose the war on humanitarian grounds with no mention of France's keen interest in doing business with Saddam. The "16 words" controversy is presented by none other than Joe Wilson, with no mention of the view that – yellowcake deal or no yellowcake deal -- Saddam Hussein in fact had been in the market for uranium in Africa. You can also remain innocent of the fact that Joe Wilson is himself a controversial figure whose qualifications for his task are highly questionable and were in fact a bizarre case of nepotism.

To Frontline's credit, however, the utter failure of the CIA to have a clue what was going on in Iraq, to the point of lacking an intelligence estimate on Iraq's WMD, is noted.

This is probably a good place to mention one of the (other) fundamental shortcomings of this documentary. It takes place in a fishbowl. A Washington D.C. fishbowl, in which history largely doesn't exist. The Sept. 11 attacks are presented only as a horrific event that prompted Cheney and Rumsfeld to start rabidly pushing for the invasion of Iraq. The history of Saddam Hussein, and the many reasons why his removal made sense and still makes sense get lip service at best. The fact that the UN sanctions regime was on the verge of collapse, the danger that posed, and what was subsequently learned about Saddam's plans to resume his weapons programs in that event get no airing. The questions that remain about what Saddam might have done with the dormant elements of his WMD programs and whether they were shipped to Syria, not mentioned. The positive geopolitical ramifications of the removal of Saddam Hussein … Libya's capitulation and last summer's revelation that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program after the invasion of Iraq, if only briefly … not part of the scope of this project. Presumably the recently released Pentagon study that found extensive contacts between Saddam Hussein's intelligence agents and al Qaeda came out after this Frontline series was put to bed. But there is no reason to think Frontline, like most of the American media, wouldn't just have reported the "no direct operational links" part.

All of that history is in the rearview mirror and academic at this point … except perhaps the Iran part. All of that is arguably irrelevant to our nation's current concerns ... except perhaps the Iran part. And that's why Frontline's most egregious omission is in the second part of its series, on the conduct of the war.

There is little to argue with Frontline's presentation of the post-invasion period at first. Rumsfeld horribly and aggressively bollixed Iraq, from going in too light, to refusing to consider and prepare for the aftermath of the invasion, to refusing to recognize the problems as they mounted over a period of three years. The insider view of the top may provide you some new insight here. The daily bomb roundup and intensive atrocity fixation that has marked the American media's generally abysmal coverage of this war has tended to avoid any serious examination of larger trends and generalship, or distort it through a lens of Bush-induced disaster. Frontline does give in to some of that shocking headline-oriented coverage in the war period, lingering wistfully on Abu Ghraib. The bomb reportage focuses on significant trends, watershed events and their effects in a more meaningful way, but suffers from a repetition of footage that hardly seems necessary.

More significantly, Frontline offers a concise review of the leadership struggles, culminating with the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld. Here Frontline misses a great ironic snark opportunity, though it is not hard to see why. In portraying Rumsfeld's last year or so as an effort to just get the troops out of Iraq, marked by the "light footprint" pullback to bases, heavily armored patrols and an effort to build up Iraqi forces, Frontline fails to observe how closely that approach resembles the abandonment-at-all-costs desires of the Democratic-led Congress that came in screaming for Rumsfeld's head.

Removal of said head is a triumphant moment for Frontline, but sadly, it is also the end of the program. In what is Frontline's greatest omission and failure, the counter-insurgency strategy is, charitably, only marginally part of this presentation. The development of the surge strategy gets short shrift. To the extent it is discussed at all, it is presented as something Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow dreamed up, based on Col. H.R. McMaster's experience in Tal Afar, apparently highlighted to further stress what a bonehead Rumsfeld is. The more complex gestation of that strategy is not even alluded to. Its implementation is presented as something only intended to prevent Bush from exiting office with a defeat. The entire year of 2007 is relegated to a single narrated paragraph at the end.

Let me repeat that. The entire year of 2007 is relegated to a single, intoned paragraph, which basically suggests disaster is imminent. Here, read it yourself. It's only a few lines:

NARRATOR:

Violence is down in Iraq. They are cautiously calling clear, hold and build a success. But at a cost. The troops and reserves are stretched dangerously thin. The military worries how long the surge can be sustained. In his last State of the Union address, George W. Bush made a final plea to history …

PRESIDENT BUSH:

"The mission in Iraq has been difficult and trying for our nation. But it is in the vital interest of the United States that we succeed. We must do the difficult work today so that years form now, people will look back and say that this generation rose to the moment, prevailed in a tough fght, and left behind a more hopeful region and a safer America."

NARRATOR:

Soon Bush's war will be handed to someone new.

Well, Frontline calls it a plea. Given the great political pressure out there to abandon Iraq to a wretched fate that would likely dwarf anything we've seen to date, while ceding domination of that troubled region to the terrorism-supporting Islamic radicals of Iran, I'd describe it more as an admonishment for the United States to remain engaged in the world, to recognize its obligations and see to its own interests. But that's a minor issue.

While Frontline had thrown away significant air time marveling at the notion that so little could be known about an American wartime commander, Gen. George Casey, Frontline didn't manage to find any time at all to mention the name of the most significant Iraq commander of all, Gen. David Petraeus.

You could view all four and a half hours of this series and remain innocent of any knowledge of the dramatic turning of the tribes in Anbar that began in late 2006, as the Sunnis woke up to their own interest. Of the hard-fought, highly successful campaigns of 2007 to run al-Qaeda out of Baghdad, Diyala, the southern "Triangle of Death," not a peep. The fact that Moqtada al-Sadr has been intimidated into maintaining his truce, and that his forces are divided, nothing. The growth and increasing operational role of the Iraqi forces … it's like it never happened. The revelations about the ongoing role of Iran in Iraq and the dangers Iran poses to the broader region … a struggle in which the future of Iraq is indisputably a lynchpin … nada. The repeated failures of the Democratic-led Congress to force a precipitous withdrawal, and the sharp divisions within that Democratic majority, not a squeak.

Never mind the risk of genocide were the political incompetents of the anti-war movement able to effect their goals. On anything that might assist the American electorate in understanding this poorly reported war as we head into a critical election year, Frontline is utterly silent. It is shockingly irresponsible, and in its absence, a gross distortion of the situation in Iraq, in the broader region and in Washington.

But this documentary is not in fact about the Iraq War, or about American interests in a new century, where circumstances have been dramatically altered by events set in motion long before George Bush took office. Nor, as I mentioned, is it actually about George Bush. Bush's War is a narrowly focused, warmed-over Donald Rumsfeld-Dick Cheney hatefest.

Despite all these faults, "Bush's War" may be worth watching, as a starting point for discussion and debate. It may also be good for your circulation. If you hate the Bush administration, your prejudices and acrimony will be nurtured. If you happen to hold any other view, I'd recommend viewing this as a quaint artifact of the political battles of the first decade of the 21st century. I'd caution, however, it is four and a half hours you won't get back.

My apologies for failing to be much more concise in reaction than Frontline was in its presentation.

Disclosure: I accepted a paid Frontline advertisement on my Webpage, www.julescrittenden.com, as I have accepted advertising for other PBS programs in the past. I have endeavored not to let this remuneration for advertising space influence this review in any way.

Jules Crittenden blogs at Forward Movement.

Picture the money that is in your checking account as you read this. Your bank is federally insured, but something strange is occurring. As the months and years go by, the money you’ve saved is worth less and less. No one’s robbed you, but in a very real sense, you’ve been a victim of thievery.

The above is the certain result of inflation. Contrary to Federal Reserve assumptions suggesting inflation results from too much growth, the real truth is that inflation is a decline in the monetary standard. In our case, it’s a decline in the dollar’s value. And when the Federal Reserve oversees a falling dollar, it is robbing you in much the same way a thief might by removing actual dollars from your pocket.

Sadly, inflation is what Americans have experienced over the last several years. While the dollar as recently as 2001 was worth 1/250th of an ounce of gold, as this is being written a dollar would only buy 1/1000th of a gold ounce.

This helps to explain why all manner of goods, from gasoline to rent to food, have become more expensive. All are priced in dollars, and with the dollar far weaker today that it was at the beginning of the decade, each has risen alongside the dollar’s decline. This is inflation, and its first order impact is one whereby your money doesn’t buy as much as it used to.

When we take this further, we have to say that inflation is a tax; albeit a hidden one. Many of us blanch when our legislators seek to fund all manner of government spending through greater penalties on our work effort. That’s a tax we can see with the arrival of each paycheck.

Sadly, inflation is a lot more insidious. It creeps up on us gradually, but it’s a tax just the same for eroding the value of our work week by week. Even though our paychecks may look the same in terms of dollar amount, those dollars we’re receiving surely buy a lot less. The government can increase taxes by raising our rate of taxation, or through inflation it can reduce the real amount of its debt through dollar debasement. The average worker is harmed either way.

Worse, the ravages of inflation don’t just end there. Lest we forget, most of us have jobs thanks to the savings of others. The paycheck we receive each month is the direct result of someone else having saved. The saver, rather than spending the money, put the money in the bank or invested it such that entrepreneurs and businesses could access it in order to create jobs.

And inflation is most harmful to job-creating savers. First off, each day they hold onto money rather than spend it, their money is worth less. As such, there exists the incentive to spend rather than offer up job-creating capital. Secondly, those who save do so in the hope that their investment will be worth more in the future. When the Fed allows the value of the dollar to decline, investors see any investment gains eroded by the falling unit of account. Rather than risk their money on uncertain ventures, they consume it.

What this means for the average worker is that just as inflation makes the money we earn worth less, it also reduces the amount of money available to fund our wages. That is so because when we inflate, investment capital shrinks. Inflation is a sharp knife that cuts myriad ways, all to the detriment of our individual economic health.

All of this speaks to a fairly consistent pattern when it comes to successful presidencies. If it’s agreed that falling currency values enervate and often impoverish the average worker, we can then see why certain presidents succeeded, while others failed. Richard Nixon’s decision to take us off the gold standard opened the inflationary floodgates, and the falling dollar had voters unhappy enough such that the minor break-in that was Watergate ultimately ended his presidency. Inflation similarly made Jimmy Carter a one-term president.

Conversely, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both presided over a rising dollar. The economy and stock markets under each president soared. Reagan emerged from the Iran-Contra affair unscathed, while Bill Clinton managed to escape impeachment given the electorate’s happy countenance when it came to their personal economic circumstances.

Like Nixon and Carter, George W. Bush has overseen what in GDP terms is a rising economy. Still, the dollar has been in freefall under him, and the electorate is unhappy. This is always the case. Voters will excuse many mistakes, but when government policies undermine the value of their earnings, they necessarily become unhappy.

So when we look to the presidential candidates in our midst, we in many ways shouldn’t be surprised by the success of Barack Obama’s populist message. Voters have a real economic complaint, and it has to do with an inflation that has taxed their earnings all the while making it harder for them to increase their pay. Voters DO want change, and while it’s safe to say Obama’s ideas aren’t pro-growth, it’s also true that the inflation in our midst has made his message of hope far more appealing than it would otherwise be in a normal, inflation-free environment.

John Tamny is editor of RealClearMarkets, and a senior economist with H.C. Wainwright Economics. He can be reached at jtamny@realclearmarkets.com

I wonder what I would say to Eliot Spitzer if he were my neighbor.

Watching his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, in that first hastily-called press conference, I thought to myself, That's a deep wound he's left. Eliot Spitzer apparently took extraordinary actions to get what he wanted, jumping through hoop after hoop after hoop put in his way by his contact at Emperor's Club VIP. The payments they requested ratcheted up and up with each telephone call, if the affidavits from the wiretaps are to be believed. It seems clear this is not the only time he's been a customer at such an establishment. It's hard to argue that it was a momentary weakness. The facts are quite damning. They get worse the more we learn.

Preamble aside, here's what he said he planned to do in his initial announcement: "I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."

That seemed a tall order to me then, and it still does. It is likely to take a bit more than "some" time.

Many say Spitzer's troubles are quite pleasing because of their irony. Spitzer was known as a crusader, with a carefully cultivated squeaky clean image, and with few friends, so this episode goes beyond a simple john-caught-in-a-sting story. Indeed, even the admissions of marriage on-on-the-rocks dalliances years ago by his successor, and even racier ones emerging from the neighboring Garden State somehow don't carry the same weight. Roger L. Simon called it correctly when he pointed out: "The outcry against Spitzer was not because he was some man seeing a prostitute, but because he was a guy who puts prostitutes in jail seeing a prostitute."

But, I'm putting aside for a moment the laws, his political career, and his storied lack of allies. I neither despise his policies nor particularly applaud his successes.

Instead, at a distance, it is possible to think of him as a man who is a husband and a father, whom I have to believe will want to try to make amends to his wife. At least, that's what he says.

A measure of compassion -- not for him, but for the spot he is in -- emerged as I heard the line about his plans to "dedicate some time" to regain his family's trust. As if it is a project to be tackled over the weekend, or a gardening holiday. It sounded like the desperate hope of any male who thinks he can just focus in and fix things. But anyone with close relations to any other human being, and especially people who have hurt, or been hurt, knows that such pain does not go away quickly. Breached trust is not regained after just "some time." It takes much longer. And it takes a much different attitude.

Watching, I placed myself in his shoes, listening to that press conference. What must it be like to be caught so very publicly and red-handed, to have to ask your wife of twenty-one years to accompany you to the dais, to desperately want the clock to turn back? A living nightmare.

Hate the sin, love the sinner. What would I want to say to my pretend neighbor, perhaps while we met one another on the way down the street to pick up the dry cleaning? At a time, in other words, when he was not a governor but just another person? Like he is now?

I'd want to say: " Don't think it's all going to get better right away. But if you have true remorse, and truly want to change, it often can turn out OK. It can take years, decades, and the outcome is not always assured. If I were your wife, I would want to ask you how I can be assured you are really trying to change. "

I would want to talk about the difference between an apology -- that really just amounts to regret at being caught -- and truly making amends. When you make amends, you recognize your own wrongdoing and set out to put it right. "Sorry" gets you a do-over. Making amends begins to address the problem.

You get the sense, watching public figures do their public business, that people begin to believe their own press after a time. Celebrities "become" their personae, as do politicians. This is Spitzer's domestic challenge now, to take himself down a peg and do more than "dedicate some time."

He hasn't been seen much lately so maybe that's what he's up to.

We've all hurt people and we've all wanted to make it right. And we have all experienced the feeling of remorse over not having truly made it right. How many of us mutter an apology and move on -- when far more is required?

And so I would want, finally, to say this to my neighbor: "It's time to devote your life to deserving the trust of your family. You can do it, but only if you want it deeply enough."

Brad Rourke writes a column on public life called Public Comments, produces an occasional videolog called Taxonomies, is a founder of the Maryland neighborhood blog, Rockville Central, and is in a band called The West End.