Pope Benedict has arrived here in the Imperial City of Washington and all manner of road closings and television specials have been announced But the quietest notice came at the gym this morning I work out at the Catholic University gym and there were no pick-up games of basketball The main gy

Michael Sean Winters a dedicated blogger for In All Things will--like many of America s contributors--be doing the media rounds for the papal visit In addition to Michael s piece for Slate which Fr Jim Martin blogged about earlier this week he took questions from readers on the Washington

Today Pope Benedict s profound theological vision comes up against the whirlwind of America s 24 7 media culture and is indeed at the mercy of that culture A man not know for soundbites will be the subject of soundbites Instead of encyclicals and books and homilies the Pope s message wil

All this week we have been looking at the various ways politics has been corrupted by the rise of a professional class of campaign consultants They view candidates as puppets the electorate as a market and politics as an exercise in manipulation They induce a state of mind in candidates that re

The culture of campaign consultants and the layer of control it places between the people and their elected officials has changed and diminished our democracy in important ways But democracy is only as good as the voters want to make it If we the electorate put up with air-brushed answers to

The culture of campaign consultants is vile but not only because of the conflicts-of-interest and the greed and the narrow focus on winning over discrete groups of the electorate with particular tailored messages that do little to enlighten on the real problems facing the electorate The problem i

Yesterday we discussed the fall of Clinton strategist Mark Penn as a good first step in undermining the culture of campaign consultants and the sad realization that there is unlikely to be a second such step In this morning s Washington Post E J Dionne calls attention to the other nefarious e

The demotion of Clinton campaign pollster and strategist Mark Penn illustrates a broader sickness in the political world that sadly will survive Penn s saga The single worst development within American politics over the past 40 years has been the professionalization of politics and the rise of

nbsp One of the fun things about observing politics is that you get to see on an almost daily basis fallen human nature trying to wrap itself in glory Politics is a land of vice not virtue no matter how many speeches you hear about the nobility of public service Ambition pride envy malice

For the past couple of weeks we have been examining the critical role Catholic swing voters will play not only in the upcoming Pennsylvania primary but in the general election in November But of course even more important than the Catholic vote is the campaign itself the daily ups-and-downs t