In the congruence of popular, interesting, and unimportant -- what I call "deep but not profound" -- lies the issue of sports drafts.

The NBA is in crisis, more or less, because the two worst teams defied the laws of chance and did not end up winning (as the biggest losers are supposed to do) the right to draft the two best players. Even worse, the draft winners are in the far Northwest where despite the fact that basketball is played indoors out of the rain no one wants to watch the teams in Portland and Seattle either there or on television, and everyone in the East is asleep when they play anyhow.

So it's time for reform, as it always is when televised sports are in a kafuffle. Check that spelling please.

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Barack Obama and my son Nathaniel, who graduates college next week, have taught me (through speeches and essays, respectively) to recognize that if and when the election of 2008 produces a president who withdraws Americans from Iraq, it will be vital that Americans not repeat the finger-pointing, hate-mongering, and blame-assigning politics of the post-Vietnam period.

The withdrawal will be, if it ever happens, extraordinarily dangerous for people in Iraq and for stock markets and economic conditions around the world. It will be filled with scenes of horror and many in the mainstream media will immediately try to drag down any American president who is in office during this very difficult transition.

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