Horns of a Dilemma -

Horns of a Dilemma - I'm honestly not sure who to support for the GOP nomination this year.

The Reagan conservative and iconoclast in me is pulling for Brian Sullivan. His heart is in the right places on most issues, and anyone that the reflexive left hates this badly has to be good.

The GOP activist in me has his fingers crossed for Tim Pawlenty. He's the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today - I'd just love to see his speaking style compared, side by side, with that of Paul Wellstone. Pawlenty is smooth, relaxed, natural, a genuinely funny and personable guy in a way that comes across very well onstage. Wellstone rants and shouts like Mussolini. As a student of oratory (Dad was a speech teacher), these things also matter to me.

Both are great guys - I've met 'em - and I'm as torn as I've ever been.

I think either of them, in a head-to-head, Ventura-free competition, could clobber Roger Moe. I'm not even positive that Ventura'd beat Pawlenty, but one never knows with Governor Meathead.

I'll be looking forward to the convention.

Speaking of Oratory - I'm a huge student of Winston Churchill. There has been no better political orator in modern times. In 1940, when the British Army was disarmed by its debacle at Dunkirk, and nothing stood between Britain and the Nazis but 28 miles of water and a few hundred RAF fighters, and Brit cities were being pounded to flinders nightly, it can be argued that nothing did more to keep Britain in the war than Churchill's spoken word.

Today, the situation is a little different. We are the most powerful nation in the world. But we face a zealous, intractable, negotiation-proof enemy that is as hard to find has he is mindlessly brutal.

Victor Davis Hansen notes that we need the same stuff that made Churchill what he was, today - a language of confidence and aggressiveness.

Diversions - I don't watch a lot of TV. In fact, my TV is "broken" for the summer - my kids and I spend a lot more quality time when it's "broken". Shhhh, don't tell. Even when the TV works, I rarely watch much of it. I have never seen Friends, Frazier, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ally MacBeal, Buffy, or a host of other "must see" shows.I try to catch Edand Law and Order, sometimes, but it's not something I rearrange my schedule over.

I think I saw Seinfeld maybe twice in ten years. But I have seen it in reruns a lot, lately - and realize what I missed. OK - I sort of which I had seen it in first run, and wish they were making more of them.

Tom Shales has a great idea...