The 1960 presidential election between Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Vice President Richard M. Nixon launched the modern political television era.  Following that exciting race, which ended with Kennedy scoring a wafer thin popular vote advantage of one-tenth of one percent, the art of political campaigning would be changed forever while also becoming considerably more expensive.

There were very few televisions around when President Harry Truman scored his huge upset win over Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York in 1948 and they were owned by the nation's more affluent citizens.  

Four years later the medium was in its teething stages in the political sphere.  A major ad run by Republicans on behalf of General Dwight Eisenhower recited some major economic party talking points followed by the candidate appearing and stating that he intended to change all that after the election.

As incumbent President Eisenhower was in his last few months of his second term he passed along advice to his vice president that it would be foolhardy to participate in televised debates against his Democratic Party opponent.  

There was great emphasis made before Barack Obama's inauguration about reconciliation as a people, of reaching out across the aisle in a spirit of cooperation.  This emphasis was enhanced by the focus on Lincoln and Obama being sworn in on the same bible as America's Civil War president, who stressed "malice toward none and charity for all."

Obama indeed struck that note, but there were two areas of emphasis where the historical focus lay more with two Democratic presidents with direct linkage to World War Two and dealing with grave economic times.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded the correct note in his memorable first inaugural address in stating the phrase that stands out historically more than anything else said, "We have nothing to fear itself."  With America caught in the vise-like grip of the Great Depression, his words served to enforce and reinforce the American spirit and the necessity to triumph over economic adversity.

Barack Obama sounded a comparable note in stressing the necessity of Americans rolling up their sleeves and getting to work, stressing the essential of common goal and purpose in a manner that unifies rather than dividing.

There was great emphasis made before Barack Obama's inauguration about reconciliation as a people, of reaching out across the aisle in a spirit of cooperation.  This emphasis was enhanced by the focus on Lincoln and Obama being sworn in on the same bible as America's Civil War president, who stressed "malice toward none and charity for all."

Obama indeed struck that note, but there were two areas of emphasis where the historical focus lay more with two Democratic presidents with direct linkage to World War Two and dealing with grave economic times.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded the correct note in his memorable first inaugural address is stating the phrase that stands out historically more than anything else said, "We have nothing to fear itself."  With America caught in the vise-like grip of the Great Depression, his words served to enforce and reinforce the American spirit and the necessity to triumph over economic adversity.

Barack Obama sounded a comparable note in stressing the necessity of Americans rolling up their sleeves and getting to work, stressing the essential of common goal and purpose in a manner that unifies rather than dividing.

At the same time leaders of key American allies who supported completing that inspection effort were rudely insulted.  It was accordingly fitting and highly appropriate for Obama to send out a signal that the comprehensive change he advocated in his winning 2008 campaign would be carried out in the foreign affairs field.

When Obama cited the importance of reaching out and repairing damaged relations internationally he was visiting familiar terrain as a Democratic president.  Most of World War Two was fought under FDR, the same leader that presided over a domestic war against the Great Depression.  John F. Kennedy fought in World War Two and achieved heroism as a PT boat commander in the Pacific naval campaign.

Both Roosevelt and Kennedy achieved triumphs internationally, winning friends abroad with programs such as the Good Neighbor Policy under the former leader and the Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress under the latter.

Throughout the world Obama's November victory was greeted with elation.  World leaders and their people stand to embrace the new president and the kind of positive change he proclaimed to auger.

These were appropriate notes to highlight Obama's inaugural address and hopefully they will constitute a beginning, constructive building blocks toward a better future domestically and internationally.

Mr. Hannity: "Liberals," including US Catholic bishops, reproachfully stirred up millions of people to join nuclear freeze demonstrations in the early 1980s. (p. 76)

My response: Some brief background on this issue might help clarify the discussion. Early in the Cold War, American administrations pursued a strategic, offensive-defense security doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was for the US to maintain "strategic parity" with the Soviet Union --that is, a balance among number, power, sophistication and readiness of atomic bombs such that neither country would dare to start a nuclear war against the other thanks to fear of equally destructive retaliation by the adversary. Except for a temporary challenge during President John F. Kennedy's administration, which began courageously downsizing America's nuclear arsenal, the MAD doctrine more or less continued to guide American nuclear policy through containment to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of the 1970s, which aimed to mutually reduce US and Soviet nuclear forces. The acronym of MAD was quite appropriate; this delicate policy was truly insane, as it could not be continued for long without leading eventually to a global nuclear disaster.

Dalton McGuinty achieved an impressive triumph for the Liberal Party in last week's Ontario Province elections, winning the premiership by an impressive 10-point margin over his nearest competitor.

McGuinty won the premier's post with a 42 percent vote, a substantial plurality figure.  The 52-year-old lawyer held a solid edge over John Tory of the Liberal Progressives.  Tory achieved a 32 percent figure.

It is good news for progressives that McGuinty triumphed by opposing the issue that Tory hoped would propel his party to victory.  That issue was what is termed separation of church and state in the United States.  

Tory sought public funding of faith-based private schools.  His party's loss is seen as a reflection that Ontario's voters rejected the idea of financing through the public treasury parochial schools.

Friday evening I had the great pleasure of venturing to the Fifth Street Theatre in downtown Seattle to view a performance of "Camelot" starring Michael York in the role of the renowned King Arthur.

I was curious to see the new material in the musical drama, an element of the current road show version of the blockbuster Broadway hit that has endured as a standard.  

"Camelot" has been applied to the Administration of John F. Kennedy.  It was appropriate that the Harvard University chum of college student Kennedy was none other than Alan Jay Lerner, the great lyricist who teamed up with Frederick Lowe to achieve a second smash hit in succession following their earlier triumph with "My Fair Lady."

It was further appropriate that the changes in the original show's book, written by Moss Hart, were made by none other than Lerner's son Michael, as was reported in "Playbill" and elsewhere with a sense of keen anticipation.

There was a time when a young college freshman who had paid a disproportionate amount of time to following the exploits of baseball and football teams and was now seeking to play catch up and learn something about American history and politics received a Christmas gift that he found practical and intellectually stimulating.

This college freshman's father idolized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt among all other political leaders and gifted the young man just beginning his trek into the realm of knowledge with a copy of The Politics of Upheaval, the latest in the series of works on the only president in American history to be elected four times, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

To provide an illustration of the importance of this work as a developmental tool on this young student's mind, it is necessary to move forward to when this same person's first historical work was published.

I know this individual well since it happens to be me.  I learned how absorbing I found Schlesinger's book, as well as the influence it had on me, when I was living in Cape Cod and was being interviewed about my first historical work, Struggle for the Holy Land, by a local radio personality, Rob Morris.

The greatness of a speech is not in the ears of those who are present to hear it.  There were many gathered in Gettysburg who were disappointed at the president's brief remarks.  There were even more gathered in Nuremberg who rose to ecstasy on wings of hate provided by a madman.  A great speech isn't measured in the applause it brings, or in the approving comments in the next day's papers.

It's in the echoes.  It's in the way the words move down the corridor of years, painting events that come after, living in the minds of those who were not even alive when the words were uttered.

For those of us who lived through "I have a dream" or "ask not," those few words are enough to bring back a scene, a time, and heart-wrenching emotions.  For a generation before, "but fear itself" must have brought much the same reaction.  Before that, there was a "cross of gold," and before that "the better angels of our nature."

And before that, was a speech delivered by a young man of 28, a man just entering public life.  You may never have heard this speech, but it's words not only echo in our modern world, they resonate.