In these days of political passions, poll results are tossed around like fortune cookies, as if they can vaguely predict something of the future you might want to hope for.
They may come true someday, in hindsight.
But for now, they're just ammunition for media desperate for new "news" in this marathon political campaign to pretend-document some observation that came to them over lunch with colleagues — and then gets presented as "Breaking News."
This fresh Gallup Poll is different to my eyes.
It predicts nothing. But it does illustrate the split political personality of many Americans in these uncertain days of unpleasant choices.
They like this. They don't like that. Also that. And all at the same time.
That's what I discuss in this week's audio commentary.
This week's column grew out of the embarrassingly lengthy inability of the House of Representatives to choose a new Speaker. I didn't think you or the world at large needed yet one more tired take on the intramural squabbling that paralyzed operations in that lower chamber.
The years when I was a foreign and national correspondent, I decided if I was where all the other reporters were, then I was in the wrong place. I should be elsewhere reporting and writing on what's coming, what's quietly developing that few others were aware of.
I didn't always succeed in pursuit of that ambition. But that was my thinking.
And that's what I tried to do with this column, look at the unfolding mess from a different angle with a broader view: We Don't Have 2 Major Parties Anymore. We Have 4.
It drew a large readership and a good number of comments at the bottom, which I often use as a measure of involvement. I'm not writing for myself here. And if these posts don't draw readers and get them thinking and sharing their thoughts one way or the other, what's the point really of writing?
For the last few months, RedState has been publishing a series of occasional memories of mine. They seem to have been well-received.
The latest came out Thursday, a detailed recollection of the long-ago day that actor Hal Holbrook spent tutoring a naive teenager on art and drama. It shaped my writing for all these ensuing years.
You can read it here.
Last week's commentary really got me going. You remember last year at this time, our empathetic president was busy selling hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
That was created almost 50 years ago when Arabs turned off the U.S. oil supply because of our support for Israel when it was attacked. The point of the reserve was to have more than 700 million barrels of oil stashed in Gulf Coast salt caverns for genuine energy emergencies.
Repeat: Genuine energy emergencies.
Joe Biden saw an emergency last year when gas prices soared above $6 a gallon in some places, and polls showed Democrat members of Congress would be in trouble over that in the midterm elections.
So, he sold off, mostly to foreign markets, nearly half of our oil reserves that previous presidents, especially Donald Trump and Barack Obama, had wisely built up at low prices. Biden promised he'd fill the caverns back up right away.
Well, as you might guess with this man, he's not filling them back up. That's dangerous anytime, but especially so with two wars going on. That, uh, angered me, which I let out here.
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