It’s been great blogging for you on the vice presidency, the debates, baseball, and sundry other political and nonpolitical matters during this four-month guest gig. I’ve been accumulating a pet-peeves list in hopes that it would get long enough to make a decent post, but I guess I’ve been in too good a mood to think of many. All I’ve come up with is: saying “two-thousand ten” instead of “twenty-ten” (and so on — we really need to make the transition before 2066); “early on” when “early” does just as well; and “election cycle” instead of, well, “election.” These are the latest in a long list of pumped-up words and phrases headed by “5 a.m. in the morning” and “medication.” More is less when it comes to language.

So let me wrap things up on an...

Most liberals and many conservatives decry the extent to which George W. Bush, encouraged by Dick Cheney, has drawn unilateral power into the presidency during these past eight years. Even before 9/11, Cheney was hiding the workings of his energy task force behind a curtain of executive secrecy and Bush was, on his own authority, taking charge of how the federal government treats embryonic stem cells.

With Bush and Cheney less than 10 weeks away from eviction from the White House and a former Constitutional law professor about to move in, wouldn’t you think members of Congress would look forward to restoring their branch of government to prominence? Especially those who have a future as leaders within that branch of government.

Apparently not. Joseph Biden, one of the most senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, left the Senate to become Obama’s vice...

Match the content to the headline in today’s New York Times: “For the South, a Waning Hold on Politics.” Is the right answer A or B?

A. The president has been a Southerner for the past 20 years, but no more. Until recently, House and Senate Republican leaders were Southerners, and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. None of this is true any longer. Hence, the South’s “waning hold.”

B. Appalachia voted strongly Republican this year. So did Southern whites. Thomas Schaller was right: the Democratic Party should henceforth “whistle past Dixie,” writing off the South in its quest for political victory.

Here’s a hint: A makes sense (Southerners really aren’t as powerful in Washington as they have been in recent years) and B doesn’t. Why would Democrats choose now to...

I spent a couple days at West Point recently, guest-lecturing and visiting with some Army officers on the faculty who teach the introductory American politics course, which is required of all cadets. I quickly learned that they spend a lot more time in class stressing the importance of civilian control of the military than I do in my own intro course at Rhodes. Only much later did it occur to me that one of the reasons I and other professors at civilian colleges can pass over this subject lightly is that the West Point faculty do not.

What a luxury to live in a country where it doesn’t matter which candidate Army officers prefer because they will accept the results of the election no matter how it turns out. Did anyone one wake up last Tuesday wondering whether the Republicans would yield power if the Democrats won? Will anyone — even the most rabid haters of...

Students of presidential transitions all agree that Ronald Reagan did it right and Bill Clinton did it wrong. Two elements of doing it right are filling the major White House staff positions before choosing the cabinet and filling those major staff positions quickly.

By that reckoning, Barack Obama was smart to ask Rahm Emmanuel to be his chief of staff the day after the election. Emanuel, a fellow Chicagoan, knows Obama and knows his way around both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue: He was a leading Clinton staffer and is a member of Congress.

What wasn’t so smart was popping the question to Emanuel without knowing that his answer would be yes and, to make matters worse, allowing the proposal to leak to the news media. Obama is now in the awkward position of cooling his heels while Emanuel decides whether White House chief of staff is the job for him.

Here’s the thing: Over the years, almost all of my political predictions have been wrong. For example, Jimmy Carter was not handily reelected in 1980, as I not only predicted but bet.

I’ve been hoping all day that one of my Brainstorm colleagues would quote from my October 9 post. Alas, that hasn’t happened. So you’re just going to have to bear with me as I quote it:

“On September 2, at the time of the Republican convention, I was pinned down for a prediction during a talk I gave at the University of Mississippi. Here’s what I said: “Obama will win the popular vote by 5 or 6 points and the electoral college with roughly 350 or 360 votes.’ . . . Down-ballot gains for the Democratic Party are especially likely this year in the Senate, where the GOP has twice as many seats at stake as the Democrats. But, even in...

Not just candidates but issues are on many state ballots today. Efforts to ban same-sex marriage in California and abortion in South Dakota have gotten most of the attention. But in several states the issue will be one or another form of gambling.

Fifty years ago, not a single state owned and operated a lottery. Today 42 do, along with the District of Columbia, and Arkansas is deciding whether to become the 43rd. As has become the fashion when southern states create lotteries, the proposed Arkansas lottery would fund a new college scholarship program. Based on the experience of these other states, poor and working-class Arkansans will buy the lottery tickets...

There aren’t many stupid things in the Constitution, but one of them is the requirement that the president be a “natural born Citizen” of the United States. It’s stupid because we are a nation of immigrants that, in all other respects, draws no invidious distinction between the rights of natural-born and naturalized citizens. It’s stupid because it restricts the presidential talent pool in ways that bear no relationship to presidential talent. (If you think that being a two-term governor of California or Michigan is reasonable preparation for the presidency, forget it: the governors of both states are not citizens by birth.) And it’s stupid because no one can be sure what “natural born Citizen” means. The term’s English common law roots suggest two contrasting definitions: natural born as in born of parents who are citizens,...

I’m glad to see McCain and Obama campaigning in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states with big cities and lots of people. But why haven’t they spent any time at all (except to raise money) in several of the other large states: California, Texas, and New York, to name the three largest, along with Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois? Why, for that matter, haven’t we seen them in my neck of the woods — in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Tennessee? Or in New England states such as Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island?

The answer is the electoral college and, to my mind, it represents the chief defect of that system of electing the president. Except in Maine and Nebraska, a presidential candidate receives all of a state’s electoral votes merely by carrying it — it doesn’t matter if he...

A couple thoughts inspired by John McCain’s closing argument to the voters, which is that electing Barack Obama president would recklessly place both Congress and the executive in the hands of the Democratic Party.

First, what’s wrong with united party government? Through most of our history it has been the norm (from 1900 to 1968, for example, the same party controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress for all but eight years). The main benefit of having one party in charge is that in the next election voters will know which party to credit if things go well or to blame if things go poorly. That’s healthy for democratic accountability.

Second, all three branches of the federal government are up for grabs on November 4, not just the two that are on the ballot. Historically, vacancies on the Supreme Court have occurred at a rate of...