Dick Polman

Mark Twain once remarked, "Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place."

No dose of humor could leave us feeling sunny about a slimy Republican campaign that's awash in unprecedented cash, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has rendered the process farcical. But Twain rightfully suggests it's mentally healthy to laugh at life's idiocies, that humor can tamp down irritations if we view them through the prism of farce.

There's an old saying that Republicans don't fall in love, they fall in line. And sooner or later, they'll probably align for Mitt Romney.

But not just yet. With the Iowa caucuses in the rearview mirror and New Hampshire dead ahead, it's early days. This is the point in the GOP calendar when insurgent underdogs bark loudly at the establishment candidates -- and sure enough, Rick Santorum is assailing Romney as "bland" and "boring," while Newt Gingrich is vowing to go Shakespearean on Romney by crying havoc and unleashing the dogs of war.

After much digging, I have unearthed an issue that draws bipartisan support and landslide public approval. It even puts me on the same side as conservative legal eagle Kenneth Starr.

We believe that U.S. Supreme Court proceedings should be televised.

As scintillating as the Joe Paterno and Herman Cain stories may be, I prefer to note the stunning federal appeals court ruling released in Washington on Tuesday.

Don't snore. This story may lack the heat of scandal, but it's about your health insurance -- and the new federal reform law that requires you to buy some. It's about how a Ronald Reagan appointee used ironclad, fact-based logic to uphold President Obama's signature achievement.

I bet I have your attention now.

It is symptomatic of President Obama's perilous political status that he gets no boost from whacking bad guys.

Thanks to decades of successful Republican spin, Democrats are often perceived as insufficiently tough on America's enemies and averse to the use of military force. George H.W. Bush's mocking of candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- "I wouldn't be surprised if he thought a naval exercise was something you find in Jane Fonda's workout book" -- is not so different from Mitt Romney's warning about candidate Obama in 2008 -- that if he had to confront al-Qaida, he "would retreat and declare defeat."

The ethos of Ebenezer Scrooge is now infecting federal disaster relief.

It was inevitable that this bipartisan practice -- helping storm-tossed Americans, regardless of the cost -- would become politicized. After all, if "tea party" Republicans would hold the debt ceiling hostage, in exchange for a heavy ransom of spending cuts, then naturally we would expect them to insist that Hurricane Irene relief be fully financed only if the money is swiped from other programs.

Eric Cantor, GOP No. 2 in the House, summed up the ethos Monday on Fox News: "We will find the (Irene) money if there is a need for additional money. But those moneys are not unlimited, and we have said we have to offset that which has already been funded."

An unsolicited memo to Barack Obama:

Mr. President, can you speak Truman? If you want to stay in office beyond 2012, you need to channel his language.