Do emeritus professors like James Q. Wilson count?

I think someone like Fukuyama would be excellent, since he has not only a wide range of research interests but also a wide range of professional experiences.

Jon Elster.
Adam Przeworski.
Jennifer Hochshild.
Stephen Macedo.

Hmm. Maybe the first two violate condition 1.

Mo Fiorina was one of my favorite political science profs many, many years ago at Caltech. I think he's at Stanford now. He'd probably be great. And he must be a really, really senior guy by now.

Or Bruce Cain. I liked him too.

John Diulio was a prof of mine at Princeton before he went to work for the White House (he coined the term "mayberry machiavelli's) . Not only is he a dynamic thinker, but he is also able to make academic poli sci research accessible and relevant to the public. This is something I think the field desperately needs more of.

This is easy: Samuel P. Huntington.

Niall Ferguson - or does he count?

Philippe Schmitter --if only for the flowery language but also enormously astute mind. Like Huntington (he'd hate this comparison), a big thinker.

Also: John Ferejohn, one of the fastest-talking but one of the smartest senior Americanists out there.

Dave C.'s right: Samuel P. Huntington.

Does Fukuyama count? He's at SAIS, which grants Ph.Ds in International Relations, but not political science.

Too easy:

Joseph Nye,

for obvious literary reasons.

Joe Nye, Samuel Huntington, Graham Allison.

Ian Shapiro would be interesting.

I know in Middle East Studies Juan Cole has opened the floodgates to anyone who wants in. Some people who had never heard of a blog a year ago or thought it a ridiculous idea think it may have been what catapulted him forward professionally even more than he already was.

Alan Abramowitz of Emory University is one of the sharper observers of trends in public opinion and voting behavior. Also he has the all-important William and Mary connection.

But the key to having a blog that people will want to read is being able to write well. Most academics aren't. They think they are, because their academic writing gets reviewed and praised by other academics, but writing for a general audience is different.

I should add that a talent for written expression is useful in other fields as well. In that connection I wonder that Richard Posner's name has come up on so few short lists (or wish lists) for a seat on the Supreme Court. He is a conspicuously better writer than any Justice now sitting, and he has the kind of broad experience outside the legal world that we ought to want on the Court. Of course he is 65, and Bush like the Pharoahs may want to leave his enduring imprint on the landscape, in this case by appointing someone who can serve on the Court for the next 50 years. My own view is that changing the landscape is what the Corps of Engineers is for; a Justice whose intellect and combativeness stirs up the Court for 10 years is worth three reliable mediocrities who can each serve for 25. The first President Bush started what seems to be a modern trend of settling for Supreme Court nominees who are just good enough. It's a trend we can dispense with.

Oh, yeah, I'm really scared of some candy-assed, penny-ante North Carolina blogger who calls himself "KGrease"? Bring it on, Duke boy!!!

dd,

have you ever met munger? he is a giant of a man, sweats vile acidic fluids and has a crown of medusa curls for hair.

if you were a real man you would be trying to set-up a blog roundtable for APSA and invite MM/KGM. and that wonketee. she sure is cute.

I gotta echo what beengreased said. I've met both you and Munger and Munger's got you by 6 inches and about 50 pounds. Luckily, he's a nice guy.

oh yeah dan, munger will f u up fo sho!! I have seen him eat 39 tangerines in the scant space of 2 hours!

What about Arend Liphart?

AHA, Munger has a Ph.D. in Economics, not in Political Science

I don't think Arend Liphart could eat even 10 tangerines in a full day

How about Larry Sabato. I know he gets plenty of face time on television, but he never seems to get out all the information he wants to. His research would also seem to lend itself more to the topical nature of the blogsphere than some.

DD,

Maybe you could pursuade your colleague Dr. Wendt to start blogging!

Samuel P. Huntington. ?

Nick --

Prof. Wendt is now at Ohio State.

Hey...Louisville is ranked #8 (by some measures), 17th by others, the school offers the PhD in Urban and Public Affairs, I received tenure years ago, I'm on Crooked Timber's list...and I've been blogging since September 2003.

Oh, wait, those rankings.

Nevermind.

In addition to Mo Fiorina and Alan Abramowitz (both great choices), I think Mike Munger's colleague John Aldrich would be a good choice.

Among people I know personally, I think Bill Jacoby (Mich. State) and Jim Johnson (Rochester) would make interesting bloggers.

Sabato has something pretty close to a blog, where he gets out pretty much everything he doesn't have a chance to say otherwise. He calls it "Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball", here's the link:

http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/

You can get weekly email digests of it which, until recently, (when one of Sabato's TA's mercifully unsubscribed the list) were sent to all of the Politics grad students here at UVa.

As to the original question: Randy Schweller. A good scholar and a crazy man. A Schweller blog couldn't fail.

I'd recommend John Zaller (UCLA) and Larry Bartels (Princeton) as interesting candidates.

James Fearon, if only to see how many blog posts he could write in a single week ;-)

Fearon