I’m curious about something. Does it really matter these days what a newspaper editorial page says about a political contest?

Endorsements for president are coming out now. One of them has surprised me. It comes from the Salt Lake Tribune, in the heart of Mormonland, aka Utah. The Tribune endorsed President Obama over Mitt Romney, the man who saved the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and a lifelong member of the Mormon Church. The Tribune’s reason? There have been too many Romneys, owing to the remarkable change of heart he’s had on some key issues. My bet is that the Deseret News, Salt Lake’s other paper – the one owned by the church – will back Romney.

Take a look at the Tribune’s editorial here. Be advised: It’s a long one.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/55019844-82/endorsement-romney-obama-president.html.csp

The Dallas Morning News the other day endorsed Romney for president. The News’ rationale is simple: Obama’s had his chance and he hasn’t done the job of turning the economy around.

I toiled on editorial pages exclusively for nearly three decades. I long ago lost count of the number of editorial endorsements I’ve written. But of late I’ve wondered about whether they matter.

Newspaper editors say they don’t intend to get people to vote the way they recommend. I’ve said it, too. But I’ve been thinking about that. If so, then why even bother? If it doesn’t matter what newspaper editorial boards say about political races, then why waste the space and expend the effort it takes to tell people what you think?

In this age of instant info and opinion – and age of cable news channels’ mixing of news and opinion and, indeed, presenting opinion as news while hoping no one can tell the difference – newspaper endorsements have become something of a relic.

I’m going to ask for some feedback on that one. I’d be quite interested in learning what others think of endorsements and whether anyone’s opinion on a political race ever has been swayed by what they’ve read on a newspaper editorial page.

An answer to that final question – about being swayed – will require a huge dose of honesty. Any takers?

I’m a political junkie and I must admit to some envy at those who live in those “battleground states” where the presidential campaigns have been spending all that time – and money – trying to win those states for their candidates.

The campaign’s final two weeks will be spent in basically four states: Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Ohio. Throw in occasional visits to Florida and Colorado and you’ll see where this election will be decided. The rest of the nation? Forget about it.

Texas never really became a battleground state. It once was heavily Democratic. It’s now even more heavily Republican. The beginning of that dramatic swing is open to some debate. Some argue it occurred way back in 1961, when Republican John Tower was elected to the U.S. Senate after Lyndon Johnson became vice president. The momentum picked up a huge head of steam in 1978 with the election of Republican Bill Clements as governor. And it’s been on a headlong rush toward the GOP ever since.

I would love to see Texas become a battleground state that commands the attention of the candidates for president. Democratic presidential candidates come here only to raise money at those high-dollar fundraising events. Republicans, with their death grip on every statewide office, come here even less frequently. Why bother raising money they know is going to pour in already from Texas?

Statewide census trends foretell a probable shift. The state’s Latino population – which tends to vote Democrat – is growing at a much greater rate than other demographic groups. And that brings into play the state’s large 38-vote Electoral College treasure, a number that figures to grow after the 2020 census.

Although the state’s political power once rested with the Democrats, let’s understand that traditional Texas Democrats didn’t resemble their current political descendants. No one ever accused Sam Rayburn, LBJ, Lloyd Bentsen, Big John Connally (before he changed parties) or my former congressman, Jack Brooks, of being squishy liberals. Conversely, the modern Texas Republican Party has been commandeered at many levels by some – to borrow a descriptive term – “severely conservative” officeholders who adhere to rigid ideology.

A majority Texans seem to agree with that view, as they keep electing and re-electing these clowns, er, individuals.

Thus, Democratic Party moguls have given up on Texas and their Republican Party brethren have taken the state for granted.

I hope I live long enough to see the day when that changes and Texas can command the kind of attention that little ol’ Iowa and other puny states are getting.

U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry delivered some words of wisdom to the Rotary Club of Amarillo: If someone tells you something is true because they saw it on the Internet, do some factchecking before drawing such a conclusion.

Thornberry’s remarks should ring true in this age of instant communication. It’s the product of the Internet and the proliferation of media, many of which have a political axe to grind.

Thornberry, a Republican from Clarendon who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since January 1995, cited Rotary’s Four-Way Test – which is a sort of code of conduct for Rotarians – the first of which asks: Is it the truth? In this age of instant information, Thornberry has concluded that whatever he hears isn’t always necessarily the truth. Instead, it is someone’s version of the truth.

Emails get distributed instantly around the world with assertions about all manner of things. One of the examples Thornberry cited Thursday involved President Obama. An email has been bouncing around that says the president has issued more than 900 executive orders during his term in office. Not true, Thornberry said, adding that Obama has issued a little more than 100 such orders, which is “about normal” for a president.

The Information Age can be described as the Disinformation Age, given all the bogus information that gets passed around as “fact.”

Allow me some candor here: So much of it in recent years has sought to demonize Barack Obama with filthy innuendo and outright smears.

What I’ve learned in my professional life is that one man’s fact is another man’s propaganda. Thus, I’ve learned the hard way to believe only a tiny fraction of whatever I see on the Internet. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve cringed at the words, “I know it’s true because I read it on the Internet.”

Thornberry’s message was a measured, reasoned response to the proliferation of malarkey (to borrow a phrase from Vice President Biden) that is littering cyberspace at this very moment.

I’m reminded of what an investigative reporter once told a meeting of journalists at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference I attended in the 1970s. “If your mother tells you she loves you,” he said, “check it out.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/18/mitt-romney-is-winning-the-white-vote-by-a-lot/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

It’s troubling to read stories such as the one posted on this link, about how white and non-white are deeply split in this country.

The first African-American ever elected president is seeking re-election and surveys indicate that his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, is winning the white vote by margins rivaling those rolled up by the late Ronald Reagan.

Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was supposed to signal some transformational moment, or so many of us believed – and hoped. He won with 53 percent of the total vote over Sen. John McCain. Obama had campaigned as someone who could bridge the racial divide. If the current poll numbers are accurate – and I tend to believe them – then the president hasn’t built that bridge. Or, perhaps forces greater than any single politician are tearing them down.

I’ve noted already that the diversity gap between the Republican and Democratic national conventions told the story of the parties’ composition. The Rs’ convention in Tampa was overwhelmingly white, with a smattering of blacks and Latinos. The Ds’ convention in Charlotte – to my eyes, at least – exhibited much greater racial diversity. I don’t know what that means, except that the Republican Party remains a haven for white voters while non-white Americans are drawn to the Democrats.

Which party, therefore, is more representative of a country that has a tradition of welcoming people of all races?

I love boxing analogies as they relate to politics.

Here is my take on last night’s Round Two of the Barack Obama-Mitt Romney series of fights.

If it had gone on another, oh, 10 minutes, moderator Candy Crowley might have had to stop the contest on a technical knockout. The Republican challenger, Romney, had more or less held his own for most of the 90-minute bout. Then came a couple of key moments that provided the president the opening he needed to finish strong.

Romney got a question about whether women should be paid equally with men when they do the same job as their male counterparts. He talked at some length about how as governor of Massachusetts he sought female applicants for staff jobs. He didn’t deal directly with the question: Do you support pay equity? Obama teed that one up. He talked about his signing of the Lillie Ledbetter Act, which mandates equal pay for equal work. Do you think undecided female voters took note of that? Of course they did.

Then Romney stepped in it once again on Libya. He accused the president of playing politics with the tragic attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. He said it took Obama two weeks to declare that it was an act of terror. Wrong. Crowley corrected Romney, noting that Obama made that declaration the very next day at the White House. Obama then turned to Romney and said it was “offensive” to assume that “anyone on my time” would play politics with such a tragedy. “That’s not what I do as president. That’s not what I do as commander in chief,” Obama said while glaring at the pretender, er, contender.

And then Obama finished with his sole reference to Romney’s infamous “47-percent” remark, made in the spring during a fundraiser in Florida. You remember that, right? Romney said 47 percent of voters are dependent on government, they’re “victims” and those are the folks who’ll back Obama’s re-election no matter what Romney says or does. Obama unloaded a flurry of rhetorical punches, declaring that many of those among the 47 percent are students trying to obtain student loans, “heroes” returning from the battlefield in search of starting new lives as civilians, people who depend on Social Security or Medicare.

I have to agree with the likes of George Will and Chris Matthews – one conservative pundit, one liberal – who said this presidential debate was the best they’d ever seen.

I am sure my Republican friends will take serious issue with me on this blog post. They’ll say the president’s economic record stinks. They’ll accuse him of covering up what happened in Benghazi. Fine. We’ll still be friends … I hope.

I can’t wait for the bell to ring for Round Three next week.

Mitt Romney’s famous about faces on key issues has many tongues wagging as the presidential campaign heads for the home stretch.

* He once believed that humans caused climate change; now he says it’s bunk.

* Mitt once thought we could institute “reasonable” controls on guns; he now opposes that, too.

* Romney rammed through a comprehensive health care reform for his state, which served as the model for President Obama’s own national program; now he wants to repeal “Obamacare.”

* Romney once espoused a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion; he now vows to select judges who would repeal Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in this country.

But he’s not the first Republican politician to switch so dramatically, particularly on abortion.

My favorite GOP flip-flopper is the 41st president of the U.S., George H.W. Bush.

Let’s flash back to 1980. Ronald Reagan was about to be nominated for president by the Republican Party. The Gipper was shopping around for a running mate. He actually negotiated with former President Gerald Ford about taking the job; Ford declined, not wanting to play second fiddle to the guy who almost defeated him for the GOP nomination in 1976.

So, Reagan turned to Bush. One little problem emerged, though. Bush was strongly pro-choice. Were he to take the job as Reagan’s VP, he’d have to change his mind on abortion – immediately. Bush did. He became adamantly pro-life the instant he said “yes” to The Gipper.

No one seemed to mind at the time. And that makes me wonder if the flip-flop charge against Romney is going to matter so much.

In my mind, it should. A politician should stand by his/her beliefs.

And just how strongly did Bush believe in a woman’s right to choose? When he served in the U.S. House in the late 1960s representing the Houston area, he acquired a nickname owing to his strong support of women’s reproductive rights.

His congressional colleagues called him “Rubbers.”

You know what’s been one of my favorite elements of the series of presidential/vice presidential debates so far? The absence of audience involvement.

Barack Obama/Mitt Romney One was notable for the lack of cheers, jeers, hoots and hollers from the audience; same for Joe Biden/Paul Ryan in their VP debate this past week. I’m hoping Obama/Romney Two – and Three, next week – will feature this much decorum.

Too many times in past debates, the candidates have played to the audience in the hall, not to the broader audience out there, in TV Land. Yes, some of these encounters have produced memorable sound bites and applause lines. We laugh about them now and recall how much punch they carried when the politician uttered them.

But they do nothing to enhance the quality of the discussion.

President Obama and Mitt Romney will have some important things to say, as will Vice President Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. We’ll get two more chances to hear the presidential candidates make their case in front of tens of millions of us. I’ve noted already that my mind is made up on this race, but all of us can learn something new about the men who seek to lead this nation.

I intend to focus my undivided attention on what they are saying. Crowd noise is just that – noise.

I hear they’ve started voting early in some states back east. Ohio, for one, has opened up balloting for president and the word is that the early ballots are tilting significantly in President Obama’s favor.

Good for them Buckeyes.

As for me, I long have hated the idea of voting early and I will, as is my custom, wait until Nov. 6 to cast my ballot for president and a bunch of down-ballot races.

Why the loathing of early voting? Simple: I don’t like casting my lot with a candidate without knowing all there is to know about him/her prior to election day. Were I to vote early for a candidate and then learn something hideous about that person before election day, I’d regret that vote for the rest of my life. I recall once way down yonder in Orange County, Texas, when a county commissioner candidate was revealed to have committed an act of extreme sexual harassment. Early voting had begun and the paper where I worked had endorsed this guy. We withdrew the endorsement and backed his opponent. That’s the risk you run when you vote early.

It’s supposed to have boosted voter turnout. It hasn’t worked out that way in Texas, where turnout of registered voters remains among the lowest in the nation. All it’s done here is boost the number of Texans who vote early. The total turnout is still hovering around 50 percent of registered voters.

Early voting in Texas commences Oct. 22. I’m quite sure many voters will flock to the polls to cast their ballots early. Good for them, too.

I’ll just wait until Nov. 6 and then stand in line along with the rest of the late-comers.

Then I’ll vote … and hope nothing happens to embarrass any of my candidates between election day and the moment they take office.

My name is John and I’m a poll-aholic.

I’ve been addicted to this affliction for some time now, going back maybe to 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a landslide.

I recall then that the polls had the race basically tied heading into the final week. But a danger sign loomed for President Carter: that big bloc of undecided voters. In the end, most of the undecided voters swung to Reagan and the Gipper won in a landslide.

No need to watch the polls in 1984, when President Reagan won in a 49-state landslide over Walter Mondale. The ‘88 polls were interesting, as Michael Dukakis squandered a 17-point lead over George H.W. Bush and lost big to the then-vice president. 1992? Go figure that one. Ross Perot at one point was actually leading in a three-way race with Bush and Bill Clinton; Clinton won with a 43-percent plurality and Bush never has forgiven Perot for stealing the election from him. Clinton’s re-election was in the bag four years later. Then came 2000 and that wild ride to the finish, with Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush battling it out to the wire in a photo finish. 2004 ended up right about where it began, with President Bush being re-elected by a slim margin over John Kerry. And 2008 was a bit of a roller-coaster as well, with John McCain leading right up until the time he decided to suspend his campaign during the financial meltdown – to what end no one knows to this day.

Here we are now. President Obama and Mitt Romney are see-sawing. One is up one week, then down. I’m getting dizzy watching these polls. The average of all those surveys, as of this morning, had the two men in a dead heat.

Why not fixate more on the issues? Well, my mind is made up. I know where these guys stand on the big issues. I’ve been in the “decided” category of voter for a long while. With my mind made up, I’m ready to cast my vote. But until then, I’m addicted to these polls.

I think I need help.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2012-10-13/beilue-survivors-were-heroes-dust-bowl

Let’s thrust ourselves back in time, say, to around 1935.

Some residents of the Panhandle are old enough to remember those days. That was an era of incessant dust storms that blackened the sky. Farms literally were blown away. Along with the dirt went people’s livelihoods. Dreams were shattered. Many people surrendered to their darkest instincts.

But many of those folks endured. They powered through the crisis. They came out all right on the other side. And when the world plunged into war in the late ‘30s – with the United States joining that conflict in late ‘41 – the nation rallied to defeat a hideous enemy and the greatest industrial and military power in the history of the planet emerged from the carnage.

Timothy Egan wrote a book in 2006, “The Worst Hard Time,” and has been the subject of some talk around these parts on the eve of the showing of a PBS documentary on the Dust Bowl that will air next month. Egan came to Amarillo recently to talk about his experiences talking with survivors of that terrible time. I know a few of them myself and they possess the stoutest of souls.

I want to mention this bit of history as many of us ponder an economic crisis that has become a major focal point of a presidential election campaign. One side says the worst is behind us and that we’re on the way back; the other side, though, says we aren’t emerging quickly enough from that crisis and we need to do more.

Whoever is right depends on one’s political persuasion. Me? I side with those who hold out hope that a brighter future is on the way.

And when I consider how difficult times really got on the High Plains during the first half of the previous century – and then look at where we’ve come since – I really don’t feel so bad.

I am keeping the faith.