It’s about the court, it would seem.

Sen. John McCain is doing well with many voters. However, some conservatives insist they wouldn’t vote for him should he get the Republican presidential nomination.

Robert Mosbacher’s star is rising. Again.

“I’m trying to wipe the smile off my face, but it just won’t go way,” he told the Dallas Morning News earlier this week, as his staffers worked the phones to move former supporters of Rudy Giuliani to the McCain camp.

In politics, enemies need to be watched. However, it’s friends who can really cause trouble.

Failed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani learned this the hard way. His one-time pal, Bernard Kerik, kept making the wrong kind of headlines, and Giuliani suffered a kind of guilt by association.

Sen. Barack Obama, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, now finds himself in the same boat.

Two California groups, Vote Hope and PowerPac.org, are drawing national attention, and boisterous complaints from opponents, for their support of Barack Obama’s run for the presidency.

Both are operating outside the Obama campaign as 527 organizations, taking advantage of tax-code provisions that exempt them from federal spending limits. And both were founded by Steve Phillips, former president of the San Francisco School Board and son-in-law of billionaire banker Herb Sandler.

Celebrity support, always important in national campaigns, is likely to play an increasing role in the high-cost, heated presidential campaign of 2008.

When it comes to good-looking supporters, Barack Obama leads the pack, with Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx, and George Clooney. And of course, there’s his powerhouse stumper, Oprah Winfrey.

Hillary Clinton is backed by a slightly older, more established, show business crowd which includes Chevy Chase, Danny DeVito, Rob Reiner and Steven Spielberg.

Yesterday, the buzz was about a major shakeup of Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff.

Today, the talk has turned to expansion.

Fifteen years ago, veteran political operatives Ed Rollins, a Republican, and Hamilton Jordan, a Democrat, joined forces as co-campaign managers of Ross Perot’s bid for president.

This year, Rollins and Jordan may find themselves in opposing camps.

Rollins has signed on as the national campaign chairman of Mike Huckabee’s surging presidential campaign, while Jordan is one of the big names behind Unity08, a bid to “elect a president and vice president who will reunite America” according to their website.

Patti Solis Doyle, campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, is in the fight of her life.

Doyle, whose ties to Clinton go back to 1991, when she was hired as Clinton’s scheduler, has five days to turn the tide. After a solid defeat in Iowa, the New Hampshire primary is a crucial event for a candidate who was once considered a Democratic shoo-in.

This is Doyle’s first national campaign. Although she prefers to stay behind the scenes, she is known as a fiercely competitive person who runs a tight, well-organized operation. She has described herself as “tough as dirt.”

We’ve come to expect political dynasties. They’re a fact of life in the U.S., perhaps even more than royal succession is in the modern UK.

He claims he IS America in the title of his best-seller, I Am America (And So Can You!). So why is it so surprising that Stephen Colbert has announced he’s running for president?

For starters, Colbert is running only in South Carolina. And he’s a comedian.