Teaching your children about the history of the United States � through reading and travel.

Is this something you've done or will do for your children? Did your parents do it for you? Mine did, a bit, with trips to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. I appreciate what they did, and I wish I'd done more. It's too late for me now to take any inspiration, but I was quite moved by a description I read yesterday of American History Parenting on a truly grand scale. I read it in in Robert A. Caro's "Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)," but it's not something Lyndon Johnson did with his daughters. It's about Johnson's rival in the 1948 Senate election, Coke Stevenson. Stevenson had remarried (12 years after the death of his first wife) when he was 66, and a daughter was born 2 years later:
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"Other columnists have argued that the conservatives' quick action to replace Abrahamson is overplaying their hand."

"But it is no such thing; the chief's chair is rightfully Roggensack's, and delaying her ascension to the seat simply would be giving oxygen to Abrahamson's charade."

Writes Christian Scheider in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (about the lawsuit Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson brought to keep her position as chief after Wisconsin voters amended the state constitution to change the selection process from seniority to a vote of the 7 justices).

By the way, I wouldn't have used the word "ascension." When you're elected to a position, do you ascend? Funny that bothered me. It was just yesterday that I finished reading the book "Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson)," by Robert A. Caro. It's the story of how Lyndon Johnson first got his senate seat in 1948. It wasn't by winning an election. It was by stealing an election... most outrageously.

"An Honest Socialist/Could Bernie Sanders show Elizabeth Warren how to beat Hillary?"

A Wall Street Journal editorial. (There's a subscription wall that you can bypass if you Google some of the text and get your own link.)

Milton Friedman once observed that the 1928 platform of the Socialist Party of America may have seemed radical at the time, but nearly all of it was eventually absorbed by mainstream parties and became law. That�s also Mr. Sanders�s hope. He wants to drive the Democratic Party debate to the left so it drags Hillary Clinton along with it.

And it may be working. Mrs. Clinton has already disavowed her husband�s trade agenda. She�s proposed a rewrite of the First Amendment to limit political speech, and don�t be surprised if she also embraces expanded entitlements. The difference is that Bernie believes what he says, while Hillary believes whatever seems necessary to win.

The practical political question is whether Mr. Sanders, or some other liberal gadfly, can do well enough to serve as a stalking horse for a stronger candidate against Mrs. Clinton. Recall how Eugene McCarthy drove LBJ out of the 1968 race with a strong performance in the New Hampshire primary. Robert Kennedy soon jumped in as a more electable antiwar candidate.

LBJ really was someone who would say whatever was necessary to win. As for that 1968 business... we ended up with Nixon... who by today's standards was a big old liberal.

[NOTE: The last paragraph of this post is rewritten. Originally, it said: "And we ended up with LBJ, who really was someone who would say whatever was necessary to win." That's not a proper account of 1968!]

"'It is ambition,' he had written , 'that makes of a creature a real man.'"

"Pride, embarrassment, gloating: such emotions could only hinder his progress along the road he saw so clearly before him � the 'vision' he had indeed held for so long. They were luxuries in which he would not indulge himself."

"The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson," Robert A. Caro.