In a free society, public officials should not act in loco parentis when parents have the power to make media decisions on their own. Raising children, and determining what they watch, play, read, listen to, or download, is a quintessential parental responsibility. We should leave it that way and keep the threat of criminal sanctions for poor parental judgment out of the discussion.

The more constructive and far less authoritarian approach to the issue would be to find additional ways to further empower parents to make decisions about acceptable media content in their homes. Shame on those public officials or self-appointed culture cops who would suggest otherwise -- especially when criminal sanctions against parents are part of their regulatory playbook.

The Bush administration has been lambasted for excessive secrecy. But its persistently passive attitude toward the torrent of leaks that have sprung from its intelligence and national-security apparatus make it one of the country's least-secretive administrations. It would be much better for the country if the administration took seriously the dangers of transparency in an age when the revelation of secrets can get us killed by the thousands. This would involve not only the vigorous enforcement of existing laws, but exercising leadership to change a culture in which leakers are hailed by the press as "whistleblowers," even as they flout their oaths of office and violate the law.

Richard Nixon is the best parallel I can think of from the last century. Nixon adopted or proposed a host of liberal initiatives -- affirmative action, wage/price controls, even a guaranteed annual income. He did so, I believe, out of indifference. Nixon's goal with respect to domestic policy was to remain sufficiently viable politically to conduct American foreign policy.

There's some of this in McCain. Foreign and national security affairs are his passion, and he cares little about social issues. However, he is hardly indifferent about matters such as government spending, immigration, and clean government. Motivation and interest aside, a McCain presidency would likely resemble Nixon's in that he would combine hard-line foreign policy with some centrist or liberal domestic policies. But because McCain is far more principled, he surely would be more resistant to a broad liberal agenda than Nixon was.

We're five years into the war in Iraq now. Nearly 4,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Thousands more Americans and Iraqis have seen their lives shattered in what became the premier killing zone of a global war. But death and combat no longer make the front pages; the drama has been bled out of it, and the war has taken a back seat in the presidential campaign. Rather than maturing in time of war, the American people seem eager to put it out of mind.

After 1989, we were encouraged to believe that war was history. This illusion made the shock of 9/11 all the worse. Even then some people wanted to believe it was an aberration, something we had brought on ourselves and could fix with kind words and deeds. The ease of the Taliban's ouster then created the false impression that we had managed to reinvent war in a more palatable form. In fact, all we've managed to do as a nation over six-and-a-half years of war is confuse ourselves.