If Republicans are interested in starting to dig themselves out of the hole they dug for themselves with women, they might consider dedicating the coming GOP national convention, in Tampa, to the memory of Mary Louise Smith, the first female chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. She held the post from 1974 to 1977, and was the first woman to organize, and preside over, a national convention, in Kansas City, in 1976.

It would be a fitting remembrance of Mary Louise if organizers of this year’s convention festooned the Tampa convention hall with her picture. The party owes her that much or more. She worked tirelessly for it and for Republican candidates for decades, only to have her beloved party, near the twilight of her career in politics, turn its back on her. Her brand of moderate Republicanism made her so unwelcome she was denied credentials when the party met in San Diego in 1996. She was able to set foot on the convention floor only by borrowing an usher’s badge.

If anything, politics since then has become even more polarized. Right wingers nowadays would have to swallow hard to forgive her membership on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, though she owed her appointment to Ronald Reagan. They would also have to tolerate her support for Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. But that’s precisely the point. If the party is to convince women that it has turned over a new leaf, it must put out the welcome mat for women, like Mary Louise Smith, it had previously shunned.

Mary Louise Smith was treated shabbily by the party she contributed so much to. It would have been much better if the GOP had made amends during her lifetime. But a tribute to her now would be a worthwhile reminder that not too long ago Republican women were valued and honored.

If you were worried that you wouldn’t be allowed firearms at the Republican national convention this year in Tampa, relax. Florida Gov. Rick Scott stepped in to assure that there would be no firearms-free zone on his watch in Florida. Tampa’s mayor had written to Scott to request an executive order that would temporarily waive a state law that barred the mayor from prohibiting people with concealed weapons permits from carrying arms in the vicinity of the convention in downtown Tampa. Scott vetoed the request because it would infringe “sacred constitutional traditions.” Never mind that the “tradition” dates only since June 28, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s concealed weapons ordinance.

“Concealed” weapons aren’t all that scary. By their nature, they are hidden, so what’s to be worried about? You may deduce that the bulge in your neighbor’s pocket is a revolver, but you can’t know for sure unless he removes it and starts shooting.

No, the really scary weapons are unconcealed, like the bulky .81 mm mortar I carried in the Pacific during World War 2. With that in mind, I recently contacted an old foxhole buddy, Cal Claus, of Arlington Heights, Ill., to sound him out on his willingness to give the GOP convention a taste of a really deadly weapon by joining me in assembling a disarmed (no firing pin) mortar in the parking lot of the convention site. As I expected, Cal was enthusiastic. All that remains is to locate a mortar, which we are working on.

The point of the exercise would be to spoof the absolute nuttiness of the country’s devotion to weapons of individual destruction. If we can assemble a mortar in the backyard of the GOP convention, it would be a telling demonstration of the utility of the weapon. Once people realize how simple mortars are to assemble and how wonderfully they loft rounds over obstacles, there presumably will be a groundswell of support for one in every household. And when that happens, Americans just might come to their senses.

So if you plan to attend the Tampa convention and come across a couple of old guys lugging parts for a mortar, don’t call the cops. Instead, lend them a hand. The big drawback of the mortar as an everyday weapon is that it’s terribly heavy. As Cal and I learned, assembling a mortar isn’t for everyone.

Democrats are extremely fortunate that they did not fall for John Edwards’ good looks, charm and smooth talking populism and make him their party’s presidential nominee in 2004. If they had, and Edwards had won the race against George W. Bush, the party and the country would now be knee-deep in the seamy story of Edwards’s personal life and President Edwards would be faced with serious prison time.

The thought of John Edwards in the White House may seem far-fetched now, but it looked like a real possibility not that long ago. The Des Moines Register, the paper Iowans once depended on, bestowed its blessing in an editorial endorsement headed, “John Edwards – His Time Is Now.” The Register gushed, “The more we watched him, the more we read his speeches and studied his positions, the more we saw him comport himself in debates, the more we learned about his life story, the more our editorial board came to conclude he’s a cut above the others.”

The others passed over by the paper included the party’s eventual nominee, Senator John Kerry, and such experienced public figures as Al Gore, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.

The Register, and many others, fell for Edwards despite his scant service in the U.S. Senate, almost no foreign policy credentials and no evident expertise for dealing with the country’s increasingly troubled economy.

Fortunately, more sober heads prevailed and Edwards’s candidacy soon derailed. It’s troubling, though, that a person with no evident qualifications to be president, but with towering ambition, could propel himself into contention for the Oval Office.

The Democratic Party had a close call with John Edwards. So too, in a way, did the press. The Des Moines Register could not have known about his character flaws, but it should have realized the difference between style and substance. By allowing itself to be bamboozled by Edwards, the paper did a disservice to readers, to the Democratic Party and to the country.

As President Barack Obama was flying into Afghanistan on Air Force One for a few hours of speeches and ceremonies on Tuesday, Sgt. Nicholas Dickhut was flying back in a box.

Dickhut, a 23-year-old from a small town in Minnesota, was killed in a firefight on Sunday in southern Afghanistan,  just hours after calling his little brother to wish him a happy ninth birthday.

His body will be returned to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware late Tuesday night.

Obama traveled to Afghanistan to sign an agreement setting terms for the relationship between the two countries after U.S. troops withdraw in 2014, and to make a televised speech to the nation. According to the White House, the agreement “provides for the possibility of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after 2014, for the purposes of training Afghan Forces and targeting the remnants of al-Qaeda.”

Dickhut’s death is a reminder that the casualties of war continue. More than 1,000 American servicemembers have died in Afghanistan since Obama took office, and more than 8,000 have met the Pentagon’s narrowly tailored category of “wounded in action.” More likely, as many as 1 in 3 of the 90,000 American servicemembers currently in Afghanistan can be expected to return less than whole, having suffered some kind of grievous injury or ailment, including traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dickhut was active online. A dramatic photo of him pointing his rifle after coming under fire by the Taliban while on patrol was taken by a Reuters photographer just three days before he died. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dickhut used instant messaging to describe to his mother what was happening in the picture.

The same day he was killed, he “liked” his regiment’s Facebook page.

Thank you, David Carr, of The New York Times, for clarifying for me how I got the idea that race had figured in the fatal encounter between George Zimmerman and his victim, Trayvon Martin. I must have gotten the idea through the process of osmosis that comes into play when a major news organization broadcasts something and word of mouth funnels it into the public’s consciousness.

The broadcast in this case was March 22 on NBC’s “Today” show. The program on that day aired a portion of what purported to be an exchange between Zimmerman and a police dispatcher about the Martin-Zimmerman encounter. According to the broadcast, Zimmerman had volunteered to the dispatcher, “This guy looks like he’s up to no good…he looks black.”

As Carr recounted the conversation in his April 23 column in the Times, “Here is what Zimmerman actually said:

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about.” The dispatcher then asks, “OK, and this guy – is he white, black or Hispanic?’ Mr. Zimmerman pauses and replies, “He looks black.”

If racism is a part of this dreadful incident, it certainly wasn’t shown in that conversation. The Today show wrenched Zimmerman’s words totally out of context. NBC apologized in a statement it issued and took disciplinary action against six staffers responsible for the editing lapse. But as Carr complained forcefully, nobody on the Today show looked into the camera and admitted journalistic wrongdoing directly to the show’s audience.

Years ago, the Des Moines Register committed a similar lapse when it reported about a local prosecutor that he had “left town and family.” He merely had gone out of town for a job interview, but the serious implication of the head and story, that he had abandoned his family, was left uncorrected.

The press commits numerous errors. Studies indicate that perhaps half of all news stories have mistakes. Errors can be reduced but they cannot be eliminated. The most the press can do about mistakes is correct them when they occur. Too often corrections are grudging and guarded. Even when they are forthcoming, they may be misdirected. I learned about the “Today” show blunder not from NBC but from the Times. As I said, thank you, David Carr.

Apparently, the New York Times has not heard that newspapers today are dead or dying.

Or maybe the Times benefits from comparison because so many newspapers are in decline today — not a surprising outcome when loyalty to readers is outweighed by fealty to share holders and bondage to Wall Street analysts and predictions on the next quarter’s returns.

Whatever the reason, and however fleeting this moment may be, take time to relish the outstanding reporting, writing and editing the print New York Times continues to offer.

As evidence of such a risky Pollyanna approach, I’d offer up last Sunday’s New York Times, as picked up from our Urbandale, Iowa, doorstep and devoured over the next few days.

(My experience called to mind a New Yorker cartoon from 25 or 30 years ago. A guy is sitting on the beach, reading a newspaper and the beach is littered with pages blown away by the wind — almost seems the pages outnumber the grains of sand. He shouts to a spouse, “Nothing, dear, just reading the New York Times.”)

Okay, so like most readers, I don’t read every line. But consider:

The top offering of a day was a lengthy, even for the Times, article on WalMart paying bribes to Mexican officials to assure the company’s boom times in that nation.

The sports section offered a feature on Amantle Montsho, 28, one of the fastest women in the world, who is favored to win Botswana’s first Olympic medal in London this summer. And Mary Pilon went to Botswana for the story about Ms. Montsho and her family. (Stories like that in the Times sports section make me wonder why, Frank DeFord aside, I continue to subscribe to Sports Illustrated.)

Meantime, closer to home, Charles Isherwood had to travel just down the street for a riveting article on the revival of Death of a Salesman and theater goers’ response to that classic.

Fantastic! The Times was the textbook case of why we rightly mourn the decay of so many newspapers today and the blend of sociology, politics, literature and other insights to the human condition that good journalism in general and newspapers in particular have offered us over the past century.

I was going to add some lines, too, about the great bonus we get in books written by Times reporters — like Tim Weiner’s recent one on the FBI — but then I ran across a piece by the paper’s recent editor, Bill Keller. He thought maybe books by reporters should be banned!

The Times, day in and day out, may not be as outstanding as the edition I devoured over the past few days. But you’ve got to give them credit for being way up there. And please don’t tell them newspapers are dead.

The Pulitzer judges who decided that no work of fiction was worthy of a prize this year generated a torrent of comment about the snub. The judges also deemed that no entry for editorial writing met its standard, but the lack of an award in that category drew no comparable reaction, perhaps because editorial writers, a self-effacing lot, are accustomed to being ignored.

Pulitzer jurors screened 44 entries in search of an editorial-writing winner. They chose three finalists, who were recommended to the 18-member Pulitzer board, which makes the final selection. Not for the first time, the board rejected all of the finalists. The passed-over writers, accustomed as they are to anonymity, suffered the slight in silence.

As a veteran Pulitzer-Prize-losing editorial writer, I can sympathize. I know the lament: How can board members, under severe time pressure, do justice to 2,500 or so entries in all categories?

Editorial writing poses a particular challenge. I define it as reporting plus, the plus being analysis and opinion. In my judgment, a good editorial is strong on original reporting, the facts that support the editorial’s point of view. When reporting is strong, readers at least learn from the facts even when they disagree with the opinion.
My Pulitzer entry I was proudest of was an in-depth look at Supreme Court justices’ investments in the stock market. It drew a lot of attention and even caused the court to modify its rules. But it also caused Pulitzer jurors to have to plow through masses of unfamiliar material. When I later asked a friend who served that year on the Pulitzer editorial writing panel the reaction of the jurors to my entry, he said they thought it was too much reporting.

My paper had invested a lot of my time in the project. Time is money in a news organization. Especially now, with belt-tightening the rule at many newspapers, it will be difficult to find editors willing to cut writers loose to do in-depth digging.

I don’t know if that was a problem in this year’s entries. It would be helpful if Pulitzer board members issue a brief explanation when they reach a none-of-the above verdict. That way, those who are Pulitzer losers can profit from the experience.

Meanwhile, it just doesn’t seem right for an award in a field that celebrates openness to be surrounded by this much mystery.

How appropriate!

The Iowa Republican Party is among those finding a way to celebrate the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic. Yes, the Grand Old Party is hard at work — re-arranging the deck chairs of the Iowa caucus.

A committee and three sub-committees want to fashion a guarantee — not that the caucus is freed from the death grip of the religious right, but that when a winner is announced that person is the bona fide choice of the evangelicals.

You may recall back in January that quite a stir was created when Mitt Romney was announced the winner of the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses by eight votes — only to have a sort of recount declare about two weeks later that, oops, the real winner by 34 votes was Rick Santorum (29,839 to 29,805).

The fact that the 2012 Iowa caucus could have been accurately been reported as either “too close to call” or “too close to be definitive as to a winner and a loser” satisfied neither the press nor the evangelical crowd.

So the Iowa GOP has a committee and subcommittees to look at ways to improve media relations, to better tabulate and track each vote and to train precinct workers so the vote in 2016 is accurate and timely. The mechanics are what dominates discussion now, not issues and not providing Iowa or the nation the option of supporting a candidate who say, for openers, would allow evolution to be included in high school textbooks.

Not on the GOP or press agenda is how to open up the caucuses so that someone who doesn’t say he or she is “called by God” has an opportunity to talk to the folks in the heartland about, oh, the economy, undeclared wars, civil rights and other issues not on the radar of today’s Iowa GOP.

So there’s no reason to expect that the 2016 caucus will be any different from 2012. After all, in anticipation of either a November re-election victory by President Barack Obama or a victory for Romney (who then does not deliver on the evangelical agenda) is reason enough for the Iowa GOP to want rearrange the deck chairs to protect the clout of the religious right in 2016.

If it even comes to that. The fear is that because of the vote-counting mix-up Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status is threatened.

In a few weeks, the Iowa GOP hopes to convince the national party and the news media that it has mastered the intricacies of accurately counting and then correctly adding and transmitting the vote totals from more than 1,700 precincts across the state on caucus night — all in a few minutes so the national press can breathlessly report the first tallies of that year’s presidential election.

The image of the excited crowd in Southampton, waving goodbye to the Titanic comes to mind.

How appropriate!

Every person awaiting trial is presumed innocent. Courts usually require that they post bail to assure their appearance at trial. If the accused is penniless, as Zimmerman is reported to be, the presumption of innocence doesn’t prevent him and the many others in the same boat from being jailed to await trial. Jails in this country are filled with people whose poverty prevents them from posting the money required by judges to meet bail requirements. Nor can they pay the fees charged by professional bail bondsmen to post bail for them.

(The Miami Herald and other media outlets are asking a judge to unseal court documents in the case.)

Creative judges can make the theory of the presumption of innocence a reality by fashioning alternatives to bail. If the accused has a job or family and other roots in the community, courts sometimes release them on their recognizance, simply a promise to appear, backed by an added penalty for absconding. Or judges can require the accused to wear an electronic device to monitor whereabouts. Or the judge can compel the accused to spend nights in jail or to be released in the custody of an individual or organization.

It would be fitting if the judge who sets the conditions for Zimmerman’s bail require that he be released in the custody of the National Rifle Association or some of its members. After all, the association is chiefly responsible for passage of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which Zimmerman invoked in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. In a sense, the NRA bears some responsibility for the pickle Zimmerman finds himself in. Having helped fashion the law, the NRA ought to be willing to help deal with the consequences.

In the midst of campaigning in the presidential primary in his home state of Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum on April 10 suddenly dropped out of the contest. My initial reaction: poor poll numbers must have done it. After all, Santorum was counting heavily on Pennsylvania to propel him back into the race against Mitt Romney.

As the headline on a recent Politico report put it, “Rick Santorum puts his money on Pennsylvania.” Indeed, Santorum was almost shameless in playing the Pennsylvania card before he called it quits. As he told campaign crowds in Pennsylvania, “You know me. You know how hard I work. You know how strongly I believe in the things and values that southwestern Pennsylvania instilled in me. You know that I come from a steel town, from immigrant parents. Grandfather worked in the mines….You know me.” Then, without warning, the hometown boy exited the race.

The possibility that he quit because he was in danger of losing his home state was a hunch on my part. It was also a newsworthy angle so de-emphasized it was easy for readers to overlook. The local paper where I live ignored it. The New York Times News Service account the local paper ran had buried Santorum’s worsening poll numbers in Pennsylvania so deep in the story about his quitting the race against Romney that it was edited out of the edition of the local paper I read.

The Times seriously underplayed the possibility that Santorum quit the race so central to his presidential ambitions because he faced a humiliating defeat in his home state. Instead of putting that angle near the top of the story about Santorum’s bowing out, the Times ran it in the twentieth paragraph: “…polls showed the race tightening, with Mr. Santorum in danger of losing the primary in his home state.”

There were earlier signs that Santorum was in trouble in Pennsylvania. An April 4 release by Public Policy Polling reported a poll that showed Romney with support from 42 percent of likely Republican voters to 37 percent for Santorum.

So it shouldn’t have been a total surprise when Santorum called it quits. The surprise is in how the press failed to see it coming and then failed again to make that part of the context of his departure from the race.