washingtonpost.com - David S. Broder -- Washington Post Politics Writer

David S. Broder writes about politics and policy for The Washington Post.

If you were to ask Democrats Barney Frank and Chris Dodd -- the principal architects of the massive housing bill signed yesterday by President Bush -- which of its many features pleases them most, the answer would surprise you.

One of the wisest men I ever knew in Washington was the late James H. Rowe Jr. He came out of Montana, went to Harvard Law School and was recruited by Felix Frankfurter for a job on FDR's White House staff. In later years, he became a counselor to Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey and other Democrats of that generation.

It made no sense when Barack Obama left the country on his nine-day overseas tour for some of my fellow columnists to describe it as a high-risk venture.

On Wednesday morning, The Post published a poll of registered voters giving Barack Obama an eight-point lead -- largely because the voters said they trusted him more than John McCain on handling their No. 1 issue, the economy, by an astounding 19 percentage points.

PHILADELPHIA -- When the luck of the draw made him the chairman of the National Governors Association in this, the centennial year of its first meeting -- with President Theodore Roosevelt -- Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty knew how and where he wanted to celebrate the occasion.

CHICAGO -- While Barack Obama and his family were sunning on the beach in Hawaii last week, it was full speed ahead at his headquarters here. When I visited for the first time, the suite of rooms on the 11th floor of a rather posh office building on North Michigan Avenue -- known as "The Magnificent Mile" -- was filled with young people, most of them engrossed with the laptops on their desks.

LYNDEBOROUGH, N.H. -- Secretary of State Bill Gardner is as much of a New Hampshire tradition as the presidential primary he assiduously protects from all challenges. He may not know every voter in the state, but he knows every vote.

DENVER -- I cannot believe that it has been more than 20 years since I interviewed Sen. Joe Biden about his reflections on his first presidential race, but the date on the column is irrefutable: Jan. 6, 1988.

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- When Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, lists the November races that will swell his party's majority, New Hampshire is one of the first he brags about.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Change is coming, change you can count on.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Tom Donilon, the Washington lawyer who did the delegate-counting for Jimmy Carter in 1980, has a bit of practical wisdom that he has offered over the years to many other Democratic presidential hopefuls.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- This one was really different.

DENVER -- The Democrats had themselves a successful convention -- at the price of appearing quite conventional.

DENVER -- The leading women of the Democratic Party have done their part.

In the opening days of the general election campaign, an exaggerated optimism has swept through Republican ranks and an equally exaggerated gloom has infected the Democrats.

Friday evening in Oxford, Miss., Barack Obama and John McCain will meet in the first presidential debate of 2008, and this dramatic campaign will in all likelihood reach another turning point.

When it's September and important issues cry out for attention but we seem consumed by trivia -- watch out.

Every so often, reality has to intrude on politics. The candidates, of course, resent it and do their damnedest to avoid it. And those of us who make a living reporting politics are equally determined not to let the harsh truths of the outside world impinge on the "game" being played out on the campaign trail.

There were no knockout blows in the first presidential debate of the fall, but John McCain outpointed Barack Obama often enough to encourage his followers that he can somehow overcome the odds and deny the Democrats the victory that has seemed to be in store for them.

In the greatest crisis to confront the American economic system in three-quarters of a century, it is notable that the leaders of the two elected branches of the federal government have not been calling the signals.