Given all the hyperbolic chatter in the last few months about the imminent demise of the GOP (yes, I'm exaggerating...), The Daily Best decided to ask a bunch of prominent conservatives how to revitalize their ailing party. While most offered several paragraphs of analysis or prose, former McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, in his characteristic straight-shooting, laconic style, offered just three short sentences. In the world according to Schmidt: "Politics is cyclical. Republicans will return to power. The only question is how long the march back will be." Time will tell, but Schmidt's words might end up being the most prescient of the bunch.

John Edwards: That’s someone we haven’t seen or heard from in a while, but chances are, we’re going to be talking about him a lot this week. On Sunday, the onetime Democratic presidential hopeful and former senator confirmed reports that federal investigators are looking into his use of campaign funds in relation to payments made to Rielle Hunter, the former campaign videographer who had an affair with Edwards. His political action committee paid a firm affiliated with Hunter more than $100,000 for video services, but as the Charlotte Observer reported yesterday, the inquiry could go deeper into “a cluster” of different non-profit groups affiliated with Edwards that haven’t been subject to the same rules of transparency, including one committee that raised almost $3.5 million from a single donor. For his part, Edwards denies wrongdoing and says he’s cooperating. “I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in a statement yesterday.

But that’s not the only reason Edwards will be in the news. In a bit of either lucky or unfortunate timing—you be the judge—the former senator’s wife, Elizabeth, is out with a new book this week that talks about her husband’s affair with Hunter. According to ABC, the book’s publication was pushed up a week after excerpts appeared in the New York Daily News, and she’s set to appear Thursday on Oprah. In the book, Elizabeth calls Hunter “pathetic,” and writes that after she learned of the affair, a few days after he declared for president in 2006, she wanted her husband to quit the race. “He should not have run,” Elizabeth writes.

Jack Kemp, former GOP Vice Presidential Candidate and pro footballer, died this weekend at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. Newsweek's Eleanor "I think you're Swell-anor" Clift has written a column about him, in which she wonders if the GOP might be in a better place now had voices like Kemp's not been marginalized. She writes:  

Before there was John McCain, there was Jack Kemp, every Democrat's favorite conservative and a thorn in the side of the GOP. At the height of Reagan mania in the eighties, Kemp was pushing his party on civil rights and immigration at the same time he was one of President Reagan's principle foot soldiers on the push for tax cuts that would become the pillar of Republican politics......Kemp often said he had more interest in ideas than in partisanship, a formula that made him popular with Democrats but created friction inside his own party. When Republicans made a centerpiece of opposing immigration policies, Kemp dissented. He would have been a natural ally for President Bush, who took on his party to push for immigration reform, but by then Kemp was off the Republican radar, disparaged as a RINO—Republican in Name Only. He took being sidelined in stride, an attitude he credited to his career in pro-football. Asked in 1970 what qualified him to be a member of Congress, he said, "Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics: I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded and hung in effigy." 

Read the whole piece here.

Say what you will about George W. Bush: The guy liked to read, regularly devouring massive biographies of Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson and other public figures who, coincidentally, all had in common the fact that they had to make tough decisions while in office. As president, Bush even picked up a novel on occasion, including The Stranger by Albert Camus—prompting many reporters, including this one, to wonder, “Hmm.”

So far, reading du jour for President Obama has been thick briefing books. But everyone needs an escape. Over the weekend, we learned from his interview with the New York Times that Obama recently started reading Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a novel about a recently emigrated Dutch banker in post-9/11 New York who copes with marital strife by playing cricket. (That’s more culture than what his Secretary of State has been getting lately. In another piece published in the Times this weekend, Hillary Clinton says she hasn’t watched any movies or read any books in the last three months.) Here's what your Gaggler is wondering: Is Obama's reading list as powerful as an Oprah book club endorsement? We couldn't help but notice that Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Abraham Lincoln, has seen a surge in sales since Obama cited it as one of his favorites during the campaign.

Our favorite reads this morning from around the web:

Prosecuting Bush's team? Maybe. Convicting? No way.
Could top Bush Admainistration officials still be prosecuted over the torture memos? Yes. But even as some Democrats smell blood, convictions of people like Cheney, Rice, Ashcroft and Tenet seem much less likely. (NY Magazine)

Fears of a pandemic
Top global health officials expect the swine flu will begin to mutate and infect animals, which humans consume, with the virus. A pandemic, they say, is on the way. (NPR)

A swine by any other name
Word of the swine flu spread last week faster than the flu itself. As it continues, those trying to stop it are having a much more trivial and quirky disagreement: what's the most politically correct thing to call it? (New Yorker)

America's new "lawn ornament"
The Smithsonian in Washington has chosen an architect for the newest museum, the African American History Museum, to be built on the National Mall. A Slate slideshow explores what it should look like. (Slate)

Who knew the White House would be so exciting?
Barack Obama's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, relucantly moved into the White House to look after her granddaughters and keep them grounded. She's finding that (surprise!) the White House is a lot more fun than she thought. (NY Times)