Should Hillary Clinton quit?

I'm pretty much fed up with her at this point. The pandering, the threats against Iran have worn me out. But I agree with the editorial in this morning's New York Times: neither candidate has won yet, so she has every right to stay in the race.

She ought to campaign with dignity and honor, though. And she should stop yammering about counting the votes from Florida and Michigan. Theirs were not legitimate primaries. The candidates did not campaign in either state, and Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan.

The Democratic parties in Florida and Michigan knew what they were doing when they violated party rules, and they knew what the penalty would be. To legitimize those primaries, said the Times, "would make the Democrats look unable to control their own, just when they want to make a case that they can lead the entire nation."

Clinton's insistence on having those votes counted seems increasingly weird. They won't give her enough pledged delegates to win the nomination, and the more she brings up that issue, the more desperate she looks. I can't imagine that her argument will sway any superdelegates.

We chose Highland Park as the site of our early-morning walk this morning, to give us one last chance to enjoy the beauty and peace of this spectacular place before the festival hordes descend.

And it was early-morning perfect. The lilacs are just a nudge pre-peak, thanks to this week's cool weather. Many of the daffodils, remarkably, have hung on and are still putting on a show in a few spots. The redbuds' flowers are beginning to fade, and there are more magnolia petals on the ground than on the trees, but the folks who go to the festival will have plenty to look at.

Highland's big draw is the lilacs, but to Bill and me, they're not its greatest attribute. We like the vistas farther up the hill, the work of exceptional landscape architects and horticulturists who have combined plants and topography and paths to create breathtaking views.

For a couple of weeks in late April, you walked up a slight hill near the west end of Highland's big hill, and suddenly a massive array of magnolias was spread out before you. Closer to the conservatory, tucked in next to a bank near the entrance of the Poets Garden, is an almost cloudlike grouping of purple and white redbuds and purple azaleas.

And on the central walkway leading to the top of the big hill, there has been a view of almost painful beauty, across rolling green hills to a giant magnolia, flowering cherries, and a delicate, wispy, weeping cherry.

As the lilacs fade, there'll still be late rhododendron and azaleas. And then things will get a little quieter - until fall, when the maples put on a show that rivals spring's.

Though there have been fits and starts along the way, Americans have, generally speaking, become more accepting of the gay community. Consider that homosexuality, until the 1970's, was viewed in the psychiatric world as a mental illness.

And there continue to be moments when our views about gender and sexual orientation are tested.

The sexual identity of children is still an evolving topic, and the boundaries of what's acceptable and what is intolerable are shifting.

"Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences," a piece that NPR ran yesterday, is a compelling look at how two families are handling their sons' natural inclination to be feminine. These little boys, beginning at an early age, have seen themselves as little girls.

They preferred girls' toys, clothing, and liked makeup.

This was extremely difficult on their parents. Acknowledging their sons' gender preference was akin to coping with a diagnosis of autism.

They had difficulty communicating with their sons. They had difficulty understanding them.

And sadly, they even had difficulty loving them.

One boy is subjected to a more coercive therapy intended to help him accept his male gender. The other boy's therapy was intended to allow his gender to take its own course. His parents now refer to him as "she," though he has not undergone any surgical changes.

The anguish in this story is palpable. Both parents are desperately trying to do the right thing.

But in the process, they may instill a mental illness in their sons that wasn't there before.

Years from now, we may not give gender identity in children much thought.

It could be as benign as hair or eye color.

But your heart has to go out to the children, who are the first among us to travel down this road. Their experiences will help draw the boundaries of what's acceptable to the rest of us.

It didn't work for Hillary Clinton, but the Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate must think that proposing a gas-tax holiday will help them in next fall's election. Yesterday they approved suspending state gas taxes for the summer, with only 15 senators voting against it.

The Assembly, dominated by Democrats, opposes the holiday, as does Governor David Paterson, so we're likely to keep on paying the tax.

That's a good thing. The high gas prices are painful, but they're necessary. And hundreds of economists are saying that cutting the taxes on gas will make things worse, not better. In a column yesterday, the Wall Street Journal's Mark Gongloff lays out the problem.

High demand is driving up the price of gas. Cut the price, and we'll use more gas, which will drive the price back up. And that'll just make the oil companies richer and increase global warming. Raise gas taxes and we'll drive less, buy smaller cars, and push for better mass transit.

What about the low-income and middle-income Americans for whom the cost of gas has become a real burden? Find some other way to help them. Reduce income taxes, for instance, or provide an income-related rebate. Or, frankly, ration the stuff.

Americans act as if the high gas prices are a surprise. They shouldn't be. We've put off reducing our dependence on oil for far too long. Maybe now we'll be ready to talk about real solutions.

What happened to Senator Hillary Clinton after her victory in Pennsylvania? Clinton's image of raw toughness and resilience was about as close to sexual energy as Clinton gets. Husband Bill was wowing the rural crowds in Indiana and North Carolina by just showing up and shaking hands.

And her empathy for working-class Americans resonated, while Senator Barack Obama's seemed to drift as questions about his relationship to Rev. Wright lingered.

Yes, it's the economy. Exit polls are confirming the economy is once again what's top of mind for voters.

But this time it was the gas tax, stupid.

Clinton and Obama sparred for 72 hours over the merits and perils of suspending the gas tax for the summer.

It filled the newsroom gap after everything had been squeezed out of the Wright story.

But Clinton unwittingly aligned herself with Republican candidate Senator John McCain, who also favors the idea. And worse, voters saw suspending the tax as a shell game, and not real help.

Obama called Clinton out on it as a "politics as usual" scheme that did nothing to help Americans. It was a gamble that paid off.

You half-expected him to borrow a line from the French queen of mean, Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake."

The truth is, neither Clinton's nor Obama's plan was actionable. It's unlikely that Clinton would have gotten big oil companies and retailers to lower gas prices. And Obama's approach, a tax credit for middle and lower income families, will take years to pass, if he can get it through at all. By then, $3.70 for a gallon of gas could seem cheap.

But for now, Obama's "truth to power" approach gave him a decisive win.

More than that, it revived his campaign to sure footing: sincerity, honesty, and change.

Obama supporters can breathe a little easier this morning. His margin in North Carolina was much bigger than the latest polls had predicted, and Clinton's margin in Indiana was much smaller.

Still, Clinton seems determined to - as she puts it - fight on. And she's expected to win two of the next Democratic primaries, in West Virginia (May 13) and Kentucky (May 20). News reports for the past two weeks have focused on Obama's negatives; that'll change now, thanks to yesterday's results, but the mood of those reports could swing back to Clinton's favor in just a week.

CNN was reporting this morning that Obama is expected to pick up more superdelegates soon, perhaps today, and that may help as well. But Clinton's "on to the White House" remark last night and her campaign's continued insistence that Michigan and Florida be counted make me nervous.

It was a relief to see that Clinton's pandering about the gas tax didn't pay off for her. And it was just a hoot to see her saying she doesn't care what economists say about the tax; sounds a little like George Bush and global warming, yes?

But it's troubling to see that Obama still hasn't found a way to attract the majority of working-class white voters. Whether that's due to his race or Clinton's faux good-old-girlness is hard to tell. It's a significant hurdle, though. And he'll have to find a way to change that before the fall.

City Schools Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard met with the press last week and gave an update on his plans to reduce central office staff by 100 full-time employees over the course of 12 to 24 months. A reduction of 32 jobs held by central office employees has already saved the district $2.7 million, he said.

And he will launch his "Dream Schools" in the fall, a program that will support six low-performing schools by concentrating "experience and resources," he said, where they are needed most.

The Dream Schools program is modeled after two similar programs, Brizard said, that have been extremely successful in the San Francisco and Miami school districts. Beyond moving more experienced teachers into more troubled schools, the program also uses a network of "coaches" starting at the principal level and working down to the classroom-level.

Coaches, who are from outside the district, will provide one-on-one support to those teachers who need help raising test scores.

Listening to Brizard, it sounds more of a business approach to education than we're used to hearing.

The change in leadership and management style over the last year, starting with interim Superintendent Bill Cala, and more recently with Brizard, is making a lot of teachers and principals anxious.

Being a principal in the city school district has always been a challenging job, but as one principal who asked not to be named said, "It's become a real pressure cooker. Everybody is watching their back."

The district's leadership has changed, but the challenge has remained relatively constant: how to teach in schools where concentrated poverty is the bedrock, and poor students make up 60 to 70 percent of the population.

Brizard isn't backing down. He's not easing the tension, he's acknowledging it.

Even as reporters questioned him about concerns that teachers have raised about safety, he said, "Some teachers are concerned, but not all of them."

And when he was asked about whether the unions were cooperating with him, especially when it came to moving senior teachers to more troubled schools, he said, "The unions are watching us, and it's no secret, we are not going to agree on everything."

Brizard is pushing for change. It's too early to tell how successful he will be, but the commitments he made when he accepted the job are going to require it.

This community often seems to be in search of itself. Are we a sports town? A high-tech town? An arts center? A medical center? Conservative? Liberal? Stodgy? Cutting edge?

We can be several of those things at once, of course. But our persona is often defined by community leaders. And right now, some of those community leaders are defining us as a backwater town - a place where we thumb our noses at the LGBT community, let politicians pick college presidents, and think the arts don't matter.

I've mentioned this before, and I don't mean to harp on it. But we've got a wealth of talent - particularly in the arts - and some community leaders keep turning their backs on it. In their view, the arts are "elitist." They get rid of important art at the airport, and push for a theater for Broadway shows but not one for classical music or dance.

So I hope they took note of a clear demonstration of the importance of the arts in this community last night: the sold-out house at the Eastman Theatre.

More than 3000 people turned out for the RPO concert. The big attraction, of course, was superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma. But Ma didn't perform until the second half of the program. And the audience was almost as enthusiastic about the first half, which featured Kodaly's "Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song."

This is Rochester, just as much as the crowds at a soccer game or a hockey game. (The raucous applause for Ma last night kind of reminded me of the reaction of sports crowds, frankly.) And the arts - the RPO, the Eastman School, the Memorial Art Gallery and Geva and Garth Fagan - will draw people to live here. They will, in fact, draw the people we want to work at our high-tech companies and medical centers.

Maybe some community leaders want to live in a backwater town. The 3000-plus people who packed the Eastman Theatre last night do not.

I've become increasingly depressed by the slog that is the Democratic primary season - not because of the length, but because of the Clinton campaign's gains and the reason for them.

I'm very much afraid that Hillary Clinton will win both the Indiana and the North Carolina primaries tomorrow - or will come extremely close in North Carolina, where she has wiped out Barack Obama's double-digit lead. The change has nothing to do with either candidate's stands on issues. There's little difference on most of them. My hunch is that people are gravitating to Clinton because she's the personality they want. Because she's effectively made class the most important issue in the campaign. She has convinced voters that she's one of them, and Obama isn't. That she's patriotic, and Obama isn't.

Either of them should be able to beat John McCain in the general election. But we may very well get Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate. And the more I listen to her, the worse I feel, about the coming election, and about this country. She announces that she'll obliterate Iran if Iran attacks Israel - and her poll numbers rise.

Maybe Obama can pull this off. But if Clinton does extremely well tomorrow, particularly in North Carolina, he may have a tough time persuading the remaining superdelegates that he's the better candidate. And then she'll insist that the Democratic Party count the faux votes from Michigan and Florida. And then it'll all be over.

And Democrats, who were in an uproar over the way George Bush won his first term, will have a candidate who's willing to do and say whatever it takes to get elected.

On a related note: I've developed a new obsession: conservative writer Peggy Noonan's Saturday column in the Wall Street Journal. Her politics and mine are polls apart: she was special assistant to President Reagan and a speech writer for Bush I. But she's one of the most perspective - and entertaining - commentators in this election campaign.

In her May 2 column, "Loyal to the Bitterness," Noonan says she's perplexed about the damage Jeremiah Wright has done to the Obama campaign. "What happened with Mr. Wright should not determine the race," she writes. "Mr. Obama's stands, his ability to convince us he can make good change, his ability to be 'one of us,' that great challenge for a national politician in a varied nation, should determine the race."

And then Noonan analyzes the reason for Wright's rage, and her own reaction to it. "I do not feel a sense of honest anger or violation at his remarks,"she writes, "in part because I don't think his views carry deep implications for our country."

It's yet another thoughtful musing from Noonan about the complicated issues that face Americans, and the complicated sentiments that make us who we are.

Abortion, to put it mildly, is an issue about which people of good conscience can disagree. And I understand the depth of the concern of people who oppose abortion rights.

But I'm appalled by the current campaign against a reasonable state bill called the Reproductive Health and Privacy Protection Act.

Despite reports by City and other media, anti-choice activists continue to insist that the bill will allow dentists, podiatrists - even social workers and school nurses - to perform abortions. This is patently false.

A YouTube video being circulated by New Yorkers for Parental Rights contains that claim and other untruths. And the Parental Rights group adds a little Karl Rove touch, repeatedly referring to the bill as the "Spitzer bill" and sprinkling unflattering photographs of former Governor Eliot Spitzer through the video.

The Parental Rights group may argue that the photographs are appropriate, not inflammatory, since Spitzer introduced the bill when he was governor. Maybe they can explain why one of those photos shows Spitzer, with a goofy expression on his face, standing in front of a swimming pool wearing a swim suit. (At least they didn't show him wearing nothing but black socks.)