It’s not always that candidates for president or vice president have children who are serving in the military during wartime. But the 2008 election will be decidedly different.

David Barstow provided a fascinating report in yesterday’s New York Times, about the Bush administration’s courting of retired military brass who provide military analysis to the TV networks and other media outlets.

Northrop Grumman Corp. has hired a lobbying firm headed by two former U.S. senators to protect a lucrative military manufacturing project it won with Airbus for a new fleet of tanker planes.

Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation, two of the Pentagon’s largest military contractors, announced last week that they are teaming up to develop a new bomber for the Air Force.

The companies are likely to face Northrop Grumman as they compete for the program, which will cost tens of billions of dollars. The fleet of B-2 bombers, the most recent bomber program, cost the Pentagon at least $40 billion.

Gen. Peter Pace, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his one-time vice chair, Adm. Ed Giambastiani Jr., have accepted corporate posts just a few months after retiring from the military.

SM&A, a consulting firm that advises defense firms and other companies, said Friday that it hired Pace as president and CEO of a subsidiary, SM&A Strategic Advisors. The 40-year Marine Corps veteran, who retired in October, also joins SM&A’s board of directors.

When Congress gets back to business in the New Year, one of its priorities will be consideration of the Bush administration’s request for a massive arms sale - in the neighborhood of $20 billion - to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.

Israel and Egypt also stand to gain billions more in U.S. weapons as part of the package Congress will review.

The proposed deal is controversial because of the Saudi component. Given the Saudi government’s questionable record on fighting terrorism and curtailing terrorism financing, its funding of extremist wahabbist mosques, its supply of foreign fighters into Iraq and a judicial system that recently ordered 200 lashes for a rape victim, some in Congress don’t believe the kingdom should be rewarded with top-of-the-line American weaponry.

It’s usually hairstyles, clothing or smoking habits that date an old movie.

But in the 1954 Christmas classic, White Christmas, it’s a song sung by Bing Crosby, called “What Can You Do With a General.”

Sue Payton, the senior acquisition official in the Air Force, is an unlikely military reformer. She has spent a career in the defense industry and recently completed a long stint under former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne swore her in 17 months ago as the service’s top weapons buyer, he said her charge was to infuse “integrity and transparency” into the acquisition process after a procurement scandal.

What do Reps. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., have in common?

All are senior members of congressional committees that oversee defense budgets and all are recent recipients of campaign contributions from competing manufacturing powerhouses vying for a military contract worth upwards of $100 billion.

The federal government is trying to reverse a recent judgment favoring a Department of Defense whistleblower who drew attention to overcharges on Lockheed Martin military contracts.

The chief of the Office of Personnel Management has asked the Merit Systems Protection Board to reverse its recent decision in favor of Ken Pedeleose, an industrial engineer with the Defense Contract Management Agency. Agency engineers and inspectors are the Pentagon’s front-line defense against contractor fraud.