This is a political blog, not a personal journal, but to paraphrase Tom Brokaw’s expression of a couple of days ago, I’m going to invoke a point of personal privilege this morning. It’s Father’s Day, which has me thinking of my old man, who is as good a political reporter as exists in this country, as well as the guy who taught me to approach our craft without ideology or an agenda or any meanness of spirit.

   President Clinton would occasionally call up reporters who covered him with a comment about something they wrote or said on the air. The only time that happened to me was while the president (and the press corps) were vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard. I’d taken the family along that August, and found myself on pool duty the day of the end-of-the-summer picnic the Clintons hosted for the traveling press. (The White House “pool” is a representative group of the full-time correspondents who travel with the president when he goes out in public. Anything they see while on pool rotation is shared with their colleagues.) So I watched Bill Clinton golf and then rode in the presidential motorcade to the press picnic, arriving a bit late.

   Our third child Grace, who is now the age Chelsea was in that story, arrived in this world midway through Clinton’s presidency. She has been introduced to George W. Bush a few times, and likes him for the most natural of reasons: he’s sweet to her. She revealed her political preference five years ago when I took her alone—there was a babysitting issue—to New Hampshire on a last minute trip with John Edwards, then beginning his first run for the presidency. Edwards was nice enough, but Grace couldn’t get her mind around the idea that Edwards wanted to dethrone Bush.

   “We have a president,” she told me indignantly.

   “Yes,” I said, “but next year we’re having another election to see if we want a new president.”

   “Well. I like Bush.”

   I told her that a lot of people felt the same way, but I was curious why she did.

   “Because,” she said, pausing to think, “he’s a good….father!”

   I laughed, although not in disagreement, and recalled what I knew of Bush’s patient parenting: (“Nothing you could ever do would make me stop loving you,” he once told the First Twins when he was governor of Texas and they were going through an exasperating phase. “So stop trying.”)

   “Yes,” I told my youngest, “I think President Bush is a very good father.”

   But that got me thinking about John Edwards’ life: How he lost his son Wade in a car accident, a son with whom he was exceptionally close (as I am with my own son Nick), and how Edwards gave up the practice of law soon thereafter, re-dedicating himself to his remaining child Cate, and going into politics. And how he and his wife Elizabeth subsequently had two more children, a girl and a boy who were then pre-school age.

   “Yes,” I repeated. “President Bush is a very good father. But that man (I pointed to Edwards, seated a few aisles ahead of us in the small, New Hampshire-bound plane) may be the best father in America.”

   That seemed to impress Grace. She leaned across me to catch a look at John Edwards—who was suddenly, in her mind, truly qualified to be president of the United States. Edwards, sensing that someone was staring at him, turned around, and gave her the warmest of smiles.

   It felt good to be a father that day. Then again, it always feels good to be a dad. But in that moment on a campaign plane my heart went out to the parents, and the kids of parents, who choose public service as a career. It's a sacrifice we often forget.