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Drumroll. Suspense. Who will it be?

In this corner, we have Stormin' Mormon Mitt Romney. In the other, we have Brain-Buster Bobby Jindal.

Amid speculation that John McCain will announce his vice presidential pick soon, political nail-biters have begun placing bets. Favorites include Louisiana Gov. Jindal, with whom McCain met Wednesday, and former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, whose resume is familiar.

Can McCain's former foe become his new best friend?

Romney would bring more than squeaky clean qualifications and youthful good looks to the ticket. New polling in Michigan by Ayres, McHenry & Associates shows that Romney gives McCain a significant jump and makes him competitive in a state that hasn't voted Republican since 1988.

To an amazing extent, Bush foreign policy seems to be turning toward the positions of Barack Obama. On Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other issues, the administration was shifting gears just as the Illinois senator embarked on his overseas voyage. Some of these changes were forced on the White House by events. Some reflect late recognition that policies were not working.

These shifts may well boost Obama when he argues that his approach to foreign policy is best. Such arguments will only work, however, if he refrains from hubris. His foreign policy speeches reveal a man still on a learning curve.

Recent policy shifts at the White House have been quite stunning. On Friday, after talks between President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the White House announced that the United States and Iraq will seek a "general time horizon" for deeper troop reductions. This was a Maliki demand that the White House had not anticipated or sought.

Bush officials insisted this was not an "arbitrary date for withdrawal," like the 16-month deadline Obama has promised for a U.S. troop exit. Yet Maliki has changed the tone of the U.S. political debate during the campaign season. It is now harder for Bush or John McCain to denounce Obama for talking of timelines.

U.S. policy is also trending Obama's way on Afghanistan. He has called for a shift in focus and troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to fight against al-Qaida on the Afghan-Pakistani border. McCain has insisted that the central front in the anti-terrorism fight is Iraq.

You want a scary thought? Imagine a fanatic in the mold of Dick Cheney but without the vice president's sense of humor.

In her important new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals," Jane Mayer of the New Yorker magazine devotes a great deal of space to David Adding-ton, Cheney's main man and the lead architect of the Bush administration's legal strategy for the war on terror.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a veteran of many bruising battles with Cheney, was reported to have summed up Addington as follows: "He doesn't believe in the Constitution."

Very few voters are aware of Addington's existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration's Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror -- regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say -- was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.

This is the mindset that gave us Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the CIA's secret prisons, known as "black sites."

There is a difference between a view of the world and a worldview. A view of the world means you might like London and I might prefer Paris, but each preference can be equally valid because it is a matter of individual taste. A correct worldview is a way of not just looking at other countries and people, but having an intellectual and moral center that allows one to distinguish between good and evil; right and wrong; sound economic, social and political policies and bad ones.

There is a reason America is what it is. The economic power and military might are effects, not causes of America's greatness. It is because we offer the lives of our young and much of our fortune to defend liberty for ourselves and promote it for others that we are blessed with liberty. Too many other countries -- especially European countries -- receive liberty as America's gift, but contribute little to it.

This week, Europe will cheer Barack Obama as if he were Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, the commander of Allied troops that liberated Europe from Hitler; or John F. Kennedy before the Brandenburg Gate near the beginning of the Berlin Wall; or Ronald Reagan in the same place near its collapse.

Obama is no Eisenhower, Kennedy or Reagan. He might be more like the Pied Piper, leading Europeans to their doom. Does Europe believe that if it follows Obama, he will lead it away from world conflict?

Blind faith in Obama won't save Europe from war. Like the wise monkeys of the old Japanese maxim, Europe neither sees nor hears evil. It sees no evil in Iraq or Afghanistan; it sees no evil in the tide of immigration from countries that believe freedom and pluralism are offensive. Twice Europe had to be rescued by the United States and protected from the Soviets because it failed to hear the thundering hooves of approaching evil.

Raise your hand if you actually believe that offshore oil drilling will bring down gasoline prices at the pump.

Raise your other hand if you believe in Peter Pan, unicorns and variable-rate mortgages.

Last week, President Bush strode into the White House Rose Garden and announced he was nullifying the moratorium on offshore oil drilling that his father initiated 18 years ago following the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

And Congress, declared our fearless leader, is "the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources."

Wow. And we thought the gas crisis was more complicated. Apparently, it's the fault of those knuckleheads on Capitol Hill who continue to persecute the poor energy companies.

The American Medical Association recently issued a statement apologizing for its "past history of racial inequality toward African-American physicians." The statement followed the convening of a panel in 2005 to study the history of racial divide in organized medicine.

One can easily shrug off the racial divide in American medicine as just one more manifestation of the racism that has infected our society from the landing of the first African-American slaves in the 17th century until now. But the absence of well-trained and -integrated black doctors affects adversely the health of other African-Americans, who remain less healthy than other Americans.

To belong to the AMA, physicians must belong to local or state component societies. And for generations, many local and state societies simply did not accept black doctors for membership. To otherwise advance their profession, black doctors formed the National Medical Association in 1895.

These barriers have had a lasting effect. By 2003, there were 38.7 million African-Americans, 13.3 percent of all Americans. But today, only 4 percent of all physicians are African-Americans.

I lived this history. During my years at Northwestern Medical School, 1945-49, I recall only one black medical student, Rudolph Valentino Young, a citizen of pre-Castro Cuba.

This month Bill Gates starts his new full-time career as a humanitarian, leaving behind the software bugs to swat the kind that cause malaria.

We often think of those trying to save the world as bright-eyed young people, but Gates is part of a booming trend: the "encore career" as a substitute for retirement. Definitions are still in flux, but an encore career typically aims to provide a dose of personal satisfaction by "giving back."

Some 78 million American baby boomers are now beginning to retire, and one survey this year by a research institute found that half of boomers are interested in starting such new careers with a positive social impact. If we boomers decide to use our retirement to change the world, rather than our golf game, our dodderdom will have consequences for society every bit as profound as our youth did.

Marc Freedman, author of a book called "Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life," notes that adolescence is a relatively modern concept. Until the 19th century, teenagers normally were treated as adults. In the same way, he says, a new life stage is emerging -- the period of 10, 20 or even 30 years after one's main career is completed but before infirmity sets in.

The best things that graying do-gooders bring to philanthropy are their management experience and Rolodexes. Bill and Melinda Gates are most noted for showering billions of dollars on public health, but perhaps just as important has been the hard-nosed business sensibility they invoke, demanding metrics to demonstrate that particular approaches are cost-effective.

With all due respect, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton need to step aside and allow a new generation of black politicians and activists to emerge. The self-described "civil rights" politician-activists are making a mockery of themselves and the entire black community. Their respect in the black community has diminished (if not vanished), and it is safe to assume their respect is obsolete within the white political culture.

Recent comments by Jackson may even illustrate that he is not in support of the historical achievement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as the first African-American Democratic presidential nominee.

The vulgar comments made by Jackson -- that he wanted to castrate Obama -- show that there may be a certain amount of generational jealousy. We all know that Jackson's landmark presidential run in 1984 helped pave the way for the Democratic nomination of Obama. However, Jackson's recent tirade has led many to question whether he is jealous of Obama's progress toward becoming the first African-American president. Even Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., expressed his disgust with his father's comments, stating they "contradict his inspiring and courageous career."

The elder Jackson should be aware that his comments may provoke unsophisticated white voters to question their support for Obama. If an influential figure of the civil rights movement does not substantiate the success of Obama, then why should they cast their vote for him? A

lthough Jackson apologized for his reckless comments, expressing that they were "crude and hurtful," the damage has been done.

With only six months left in office, President Bush has finally repealed presidential restrictions on oil drilling in American waters.

Now it is Congress' turn to do the same and start bringing more domestic energy online.

To almost anyone outside of Washington, D.C., making better use of domestic energy resources would seem a painfully obvious step at a time when gasoline is at $4 a gallon. However, much of the nation's energy potential remains off-limits. This includes 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf, thanks to long-standing government prohibitions.

Congressional restrictions have been in place since 1982, while the White House policy was instituted by the first President Bush in 1990 and later extended by Bill Clinton. At the time, gas was little more than $1 a gallon and the need for additional oil supplies less pressing. However, the current president -- despite battling $2, then $3 and now $4 a gallon gas during his presidency -- had kept these outdated restrictions in place.

Until now.