PMC Commentary

How can we muck this up?

Headlined yesterday as "U.S. Agrees to Meeting with Iran and Syria," the WP's PostGlobal story by David Ignatius reported "The Bush administration has agreed to sit around a negotiating table with official representatives of Iran and Syria next month -- as part of a planned regional conference in Baghdad to discuss ways to stabilize Iraq."

Could it be?

Will it actually come to pass that the Bush administration subscribes to Lyndon Johnson's hortatory philosophy -- one he occasionally even implemented -- of "Come, let us reason together"?

Will these boys of stay-the-course fixation actually lunge from military futility to diplomatic possibilities?

Will they actually forego pigheadedness and, albeit kicking and screaming, permit a reasonable journey into the light, after months of disdaining so many thoughtful observers?

No doubt you noticed a lot of "actually"s in there, which no doubt are the actual rub. For when it comes to the incorrigible Bushies, nothing sensible ever goes without a deliberate hitch and considerable strain. Governing is a difficult business, and they're determined to make it as difficult as possible.

Naturally, "the Baghdad meeting doesn't signal a direct U.S. diplomatic engagement with Iran and Syria," continued the PostGlobal report. First, regional ambassadors and those representing U.N. Security Council powers will chat; then, maybe, things will move to the foreign minister level.

That's an important caveat -- meaning the Bush administration could first charge its man in Iraq with mucking things up; then, if not mucked up enough, it could move on to allowing its proven secretary of state to muck things up like they've never been mucked before, and have a cigarette afterwards. After all, she's an experienced professional at this.

According to one of the above's many underlings, "Iran and Syria haven’t formally agreed to attend the meeting, but 'they haven’t said no,'" either.

Wouldn't it be juicy if, say, Iran agreed to negotiate, but only after the Bush administration stops testing its mighty arsenal of inveterate fatuousness?

But let us not start by demanding the moon. Let us remain wise, and, unlike the neocons, accept that which we cannot change.

Still, can it be that there's some crack in the Bushies' steely weltanschauung; that they are actually thinking the heretofore unthinkable?

The PostGlobal piece was written with insider sobriety, so by all appearances that would seem to be the case. But reason has nearly always slipped through the cracks of this administration, leaving one not unreasonably dubious about any actual cause for hope.

Besides, more in keeping with cautious sobriety, the piece also noted -- in an almost otherwise out-of-place footnote -- that "the bombs continue to explode in Baghdad."

Success, with a touch of doomed progress

For our surging, friendless crusaders in khaki, more lugubrious news from the Land of sectarian Ooze:

"Iraq's most powerful Shiite militant cleric publicly repudiated the new Baghdad security plan for the first time on Sunday, according to a statement distributed by his aides that said the push to quell violence was doomed to fail as long as it was directed by the American military."

That bit of bombshelling came from the menacing-looking Moktada al-Sadr, owner-operator of Iraq's largest and most lethal militia, the Mahdi Army. Frankly, if I were roaming the streets of Baghdad on unsolicited neighborhood patrols, just knowing of the man's presence would cause me to shake like a spooked Don Knotts. But if I then heard him branding my mission as "doomed to fail," I'd faint dead away -- no actual resistance or proof of doom required.

The NYT's understated characterization of Mr. Sadr's drive-by eulogy then really kicked in: "Without his support for the stepped-up security effort, the prospects for continued sectarian violence and a direct conflict with American troops could increase."

Yes, they could. And the sun, reportedly, could come up tomorrow and George W. Bush could still be a dimwit. There are, you see, no absolutes in astrophysics or among the developmentally disabled.

"Mum" was Sadr's word on the escalation up till now, so the report was left to ponder that "It was unclear why he would turn against the joint American-Iraqi plan, but many of his followers have been losing patience with the failure of the security push to eliminate violence against Shiites."

What did I miss? Did not that sentence's second clause answer the first?

The original story was then edited and republished to reflect an update; said update being that "Members of another major Shiite group, the political bloc loyal to the anti-American cleric..., sought to clarify the cleric’s stance on the new security plan [Monday], declaring that Mr. Sadr still supported the plan, despite a statement attributed to him on Sunday."

So maybe he does support the surge, excepting when he does not. But once again I'd wager my own second clause nails down the first's "maybe."

Yet perhaps it makes little difference whether Mr. Sadr does or doesn't or sorta does or kinda doesn't, because Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- like Dick Cheney, having fallen off the Thorazine wagon -- has already declared the new American-Iraqi plan a "dazzling success."

Meanwhile, back on Earth, "the Americans have repeatedly asked for patience" regarding the plan -- notwithstanding that it's in the throes of "dazzling success" -- "and have emphasized that the plan’s results will only become evident after several months."

But you and I both know that Mr. Sadr's bankable "doom" won't be acknowledged by this administration, in several months, or a year. What will take place will go something like this: acknowledged failure by the future former president on the morning of Jan 21, 2009, lamenting that the new, Democratic administration had allowed the Iraqi situation to deteriorate beyond all hope since the afternoon of Jan 20.

Between now and then, however, the only Americans actually on the line are those friendless crusaders in khaki.

A short history and long definition of ineptitude

Someday, Democratic leaders are going to discover that the root word in leadership is "lead"; as in the infinitive, to lead, which my 1994 edition of Webster's defines as, "to guide on a way esp. by going in advance." Whimsical editors in Webster's Verbs & Political Reeducation Department must have anticipated the eventual return of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and added esp. by going in advance as a less than subtle but helpful clarifier.

In advance -- not backwards, sideways, or in circles, these latter three nevertheless being the only known Democratic-leadership direction of 2007, at least when it comes to the year's paramount issue, Iraq. But that last adjective means "superior to all others," which further means the successful guidance of legislation such as a minimum wage increase, which pretty much only Rush Limbaugh and the ghost of Milton Friedman opposed, was more a cosmic expectation than successful leadership.

At least the Democratic Senate has an excuse. Any minority of 41+ can be a powerful plug to the advancement of anything, and for my money the debating club's majority leadership would be better off if Joe Lieberman officially turned his coat. As the slimmest of all possible majorities, Senate Democrats will go nowhere on Iraq -- period -- and their demotion to minority status would at least be a convenient truth in explaining their cautious inertia to a parliamentarily befuddled and frustrated electorate in 2008.

But that leaves us with the already enduring question: What's with the House? There, the majority is king, and an absolute monarch at that. Yet its leadership cadre, though not ordering retreat, seems determined to line up in circular formation with muskets blasting. And it literally has no excuse -- not a Senate-like reasonable one, anyway.

Its latest snafu would be unbelievable, if it weren't for the truism that you just cannot make this sort of dreadful stuff up.

You will recall that the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense recently had an exceedingly good idea: link preparedness to deployment. Normally this would be considered standard operating procedure, but under the Bush administration its novelty qualifies it as strikingly brilliant.

But unfortunately, it seems that brilliant leadership is as oxymoronic in the Blue-Dog House as in the White House. For as the Washington Post reported yesterday:

The plan was bold ... but a botched launch by the plan's author, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action....

From the beginning, Murtha acted on his own to craft a complicated legislative strategy on the war, without consulting fellow Democrats. When he chose to roll out the details ... he caught even Pelosi by surprise while infuriating Democrats from conservative districts.

Then for an entire week ... Murtha refused to speak further. Democratic leaders failed to step into the vacuum, and Republicans relentlessly attacked a plan they called a strategy to slowly bleed the war of troops and funds. By the end of the recess, Murtha's once promising strategy was in tatters.

And with that, I'll leave you with these final, likely anticipated definitions: "generally incompetent: BUNGLING," which is Webster's take #4 on "inept"; followed by 5: "see Democratic leadership."

Our Ravingly Mad Big Dick

If we can ever find the undisclosed hole under the rock that Dick Cheney crawled out of to preach his deranged ministry of malicious innuendo and destructive patriotism, some duty-minded soul in possession of an idle F-117 Nighthawk should drop a freshly minted, 5000-pound-laser-Guided Bomb Unit-28 on it -- or in it, or however the hell a bunker buster works -- to close it up for good. Geez, the man could have been breeding in there all this time. It could be lousy with genetically disturbed Little Dicks.

For sad to say, there's something seriously the matter with the Big one. This is hardly news to the free world, but the "something" has now risen to the level of white-coat, net-catching time. He left the traditional-sleaze field of partisan eye-gouging some time ago to enter a personal abyss of plain, simple hate -- irrational hate; irreparable, even delusional hate.

His latest rabidity began with the unbalanced frothing that Democratic alternatives to Americans being slaughtered in someone else's civil war(s) only "validate the al-Qaeda [sic] strategy" -- an intentional phrasing of intentional treason. Treason, mind you, committed by those seeking a way out of madness. It doesn't get more clinically bizarre than that.

To which the Democratic speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, somewhat took offense, in response to which Big Dick said, "She accused me of questioning her patriotism. I didn't question her patriotism."

Mere Orwellian black-is-white, freedom-is-slavery rhetoric? Perhaps, but I think not. Much worse than that, his counterdefense reflected a certain, uncomprehending sincerity. Which is to say, he's living in a demented fog, a miasma of otherworldly detachment in which he's blind to what virtually everyone else sees clearly. Which is to say, he's nuts; that he's slipped into a kind of Strangelovian dementia from which he ain't coming out.

You need not take my diagnostic word for it. Take his. "My statement was that if we adopt the Pelosi policy, that then we will validate the strategy of al-Qaeda. I said it, and I meant it."

Dick, we believe you. That's the scary part.

This is the same man, after all, who has singularly imagined Iraq's "significant progress." Alrighty then. Get your coat and grab the net.

Somehow, Speaker Pelosi found the graciousness to characterize Big Dick's remarks as merely "beneath the dignity of the debate we're engaged in." Beneath dignity, for sure, but also indisputably beyond rationality.

And not only is he getting worse by the day; indeed, there seems to be no end to the unraveling of Dick's head. Maybe it's because he's living in terror that his bureaucratic lover Libby is about to rat him out -- that the former aide is thinking, barring an authentically traitorous pardon, that trading four years in a federal slammer with a nickname like "Scooter" for the freedom of exposing an ungrateful, certifiable lunatic isn't such a bad deal.

I don't know. Paranoid psychotics can be hard to read, since they happen to be both paranoid and psychotic. But something is eating away Mr. Cheney's reason, and he's gotten to the point where he's downright, demonstrably bats.

The Right's Joy of Misrepresentation

The right loves straw men. They're so much easier to k.o. than burly critics.

The beau ideal of these imaginary targets, repeatedly shadowboxed by Mr. Bush last fall, was that Congressional Democrats were opposed to eavesdropping on the ruthless Qaeda. Now that's just foolish; then came the bouncy shoulders and smirky, knowing grin.

The decider, however, studiously decided to avoid mentioning the Dems' actual opposition, which rested on that quaint little notion of constitutional legality.

What the heck. It was only civil liberties they were wanting to weigh in on -- a few piddling lines from the Bill of Rights. It wasn't like such a debate of such inconsequence deserved a lot of gravitas from the White House.

But wait, there's more. Yesterday the Washington Post's pugilisitic George Will took a break from puckering his brain to pleasure himself with the right's new straw-man model #2007, which, in his words, goes like this: "Congressional Democrats are ... afraid to [cut war funding] because they lack the courage of their (professed) conviction that Iraq would be made tranquil by withdrawal of U.S. forces."

Now, I quibble not with Mr. Will's assessment of Democratic courage. On the other hand, I've heard a littany of convictions voiced on alternatives to Mr. Bush's war mismanagement, but have yet to hear a solitary voice -- be it Democratic, or Greenback or Know Nothing -- "profess" the conviction that "Iraq would be made tranquil by withdrawal of U.S. forces."

But it's a great giggle for the easily amused right-wing base -- a real tee-hee, which is ring-management's real objective.

There they go again, those clownish Democrats, flashing the peace sign, reciting Ginsberg and reading Gandhi and placing naive trust in ethereal karmic vibes.

We get it. Boy, that's a good one.

Keep hustling caricatured fallacies, Mr. Will, since you know the wretched truth will enslave you otherwise -- the futility of what American soldiers face daily in Iraq: the "fluidity" of the multiheaded enemy's tactics, as the New York Times reported yesterday, the "focus on [gunning down] helicopters ... Roadside bombs [that] have been adapted to punch through heavily armored Humvees ... Attacks on Americans [that] also now include coordinated assaults from multiple locations, with a mix of weapons," a mix that now includes lethal chlorine gas.

A war without end so costly in human lives and national resources isn't really worth the effort of serious, honest debate. Is it? Mr. Will.

But it sure is good for some needling, partisan frivolousness over Democratic "convictions." And that is the true cause dearest to your and your right-wing brethren's hearts.

Those damn Danes

There's goes the ballgame.

Denmark is pulling out of that garden isle of purple-fingered majesty, Iraq. It's had enough, or at least its prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has, announcing Wednesday "that his country will withdraw its 460-member contingent from southern Iraq by August and transfer security responsibilities to Iraqi forces."

"Will ... transfer security responsibilities." I like that. It almost sounds as if some sort of security is in place, that a transfer of it will occur, and that the recipients of said security transfer have been deemed responsible, which no doubt they are, as long as southern Sunnis remain sufficiently terrified. Still, "transfer security responsibilities" is a niftily impressive-sounding phrase, no matter how you slice it.

Nevertheless, the stark downside remains: Denmark is bailing out.

We had a real shot at winning the Iraq war/civil war/internecine war/uprising/insurgency/general bloodbath -- nay, we had it won, by God -- till Denmark lost it for us. Well, it and liberal bloggers. And Keith Olbermann.

That, anyway, is the blame-game line I am recommending forthwith to the White House and Republican National Committee for their most traditional of all right-wing amusements: finger-pointing on chewed carpets when all things American go a bit ... sour.

You will recall, for instance, that decades ago the Chinese communists did not defeat Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The communists did not win anything at all. No, they lost China -- "they" being Trumanite pinkos in the State Department, United States Army and other well-known bastions of raw pinkoism.

Then "they" lost Korea -- they being the same Trumanite pinkos, who, it is true, were too busy fielding idiotic McCarthyite questions about their loyalty to pay much attention to the business of foreign policy. But such is the price of freedom we -- they -- pay.

And Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong did not victoriously reunify that country by kicking French and American butts into the Tonkin Gulf. No, "they" lost it, too -- the flower children, the liberal media en masse and Walter Cronkite, personally. Oh, and medal-tossing John Kerry and artillery-straddling Jane Fonda, who, according to my talk radio sources, were also "directly responsible for the deaths of 3 million Southeast Asians," right after Walter lost Vietnam.

"We" don't lose wars, you see -- we being the real Americans. Other people -- "they"; the those-on-the-left they -- lose wars for us. And of course occasionally those infernal, weak-kneed foreigners contribute to snatching victory from the we-us.

The Brits never cared enough about their own bloody empire, let alone ours, so they're skedaddling from our garden sandbox; and Lithuania, too, is throwing in the Iraqi towel, which is just like a bunch of lily-livered Lithuanians, don't you know.

But I blame the Danes, damn their Scandinavian hides.

You want sanity? Gore-Obama

A couple days ago, in "Kindly Take That Apology and Shove It," I wrote "the objective ... is a nominee who lacks a record of grotesque gullibility, easy manipulation, or lethal opportunism." I wrote it because I'm offended by the focus-grouped excuse being offered by those presidential candidates who voted in favor of handing a blank check to Mr. Bush, dated October 2002 -- their "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted 'Aye'" excuse, which is followed by the obligatory apology, "which is sold as heroic humility, but is in reality ... little more than an admission of staggering malfeasance."

I thought I should note that after writing the article's concluding lines, I then wrote, as an afterthought:

And, as logic would have it, that leads us to ... Gore-Obama.

Then I deleted it. The point of "Kindly Take That Apology" wasn't to pimp any one candidate. It was, rather, a lament over the ones we have. Most of them, anyway.

But logic does lead us to Gore-Obama, both of whom were prescient in seeing the looming catastrophe posed by the 2002 war-authorization vote -- and said so at the time. As for the team's lead member, I shall go to another piece I wrote, on 29 May 2006:

"Why should I run for office?" Mr. Gore asked [a NYT reporter].

Surely, Al, you jest. Why should you run?

Could it be that millions ... are longing for some realistic alternative....? Or that you could do more good as president than as filmmaker? Or that perhaps you should serve the term you already won?

Or that you’re the most forceful, honest and ethical voice speaking today in opposition to reactionary neo-Republicanism? Or that when the office calls, any personal preference to stay at home should take a back seat?

And shouldn’t you take your own advice, that which you so discerningly dispensed to [the reporter]? To wit …

You "brimmed with disdain at the state of American politics and political journalism, urging [your] interviewer to quit a career of covering politics to turn to matters of real consequence….

"Politics, [you] said, has become a game of meaningless, mindless battles, conducted by unscrupulous methods and people, designed to transform even the most serious policy debates into sport."

Al, isn’t one politician’s principled concentration on "matters of real consequence" the only way to counteract "unscrupulous" politicians self-embroiled in "meaningless, mindless" manipulations that cater to the lowest common electoral denominator?

"Political scribes," you lectured the NYT interviewer, "have to take off their cynical lenses through which they view every moral challenge as political spin."

Again, aren’t your own words, Mr. Gore, reason enough to run? Forget the pure horserace mentality of political scribes for now. First the gauntlet of "moral challenge" has to be thrown down. Without that focus, that repeated emphasis on what matters, the scribbling P.T. Barnums of the press corps will have nothing left to cover but the circus.

If you want change, Mr. Gore, you must get in the game.

You said it yourself.

I believed that then and I believe it now. As for Mr. Gore's repeated door-closings on a political reentry, he also always leaves just enough of a crack to permit some hope slipping through. The how, however, of moving him from detachment to reengagement requires better minds and larger resources than possessed here.

As for my suggestion of Mr. Obama as Veep, Al's eight presidential years would provide wonderful executive training for Barack's own two terms -- a bit like Jack Kennedy's appointment of his younger brother Robert as Attorney General, because, as the older joked, he wanted to "give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law."

And a final suggestion. If the huge "how" problem of Mr. Gore can be overcome, he should promptly depart from tradition and ask Mr. Obama to join him upfront in the secondary slot, with the latter throwing his not inconsiderable support to Mr. Gore throughout the primaries. They would be an unbeatable team -- primaries, general election and all. Then maybe we can get back to running this country with some proven thoughtfulness.

***

I wish to thank the contributors to this commentary who graciously consented to being thanked online:

Karla Lowe, Longwood FL
Marty Schiller, Cyberville USA
Kathy Bryant, Fort Worth TX
David Boyle, Northport AL

If you meant to contribute but didn't get around to it, you may of course still do so, here, as millions have already done.

Thanks to all.
-- P.M.

Three Georges and a Maybe

Yesterday I had just put down a new biography of George Mason, the Founding Father neighbor of George Washington, when I turned to less elevating contemporary goings on. And sure enough, there a headline sat, above the online fold, in which another George was comparing our own Revolutionary War to the amorphous "war on terror." Things went downhill from there.

''Today,'' said George Bush at a Mount Vernon celebration of the first George's 275th birthday, "we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life. And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the father of our country believed that the freedoms we secured in our revolution were not meant for Americans alone.''

POTUS 43, ever the adman for his peculiar war. Even poor, dead Mr. Washington isn't safe from the exploitation.

"George Washington's calm hand and determination," George III continued, "kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive." Time frame, please? Did those principles come with an expiration date?

"As president, George Washington understood that his decisions would shape the future of our young nation and set precedent.... Over the centuries, America has succeeded because we have always tried to maintain the decency and the honor of our first president.''

Well, some of us, anyway.

George Mason, the subject of my preceding attention before turning to Mr. Bush, was the architect of the Virginia Constitution and, in the revolutionary year of 1776, his state's "Declaration of Rights." As a neighbor of, and frequent correspondent with, George Washington, his writings characterized the revolutionary spirit -- "the decency and the honor" -- of our first president's governing sentiments that Mr. Bush so proudly referenced.

It would be a pleasant thing indeed if the currently sitting George understood and honored the motivating substance of the former George's era, rather than simply selling platitudes about times past, and, sadly and more critically, the spirit that has passed as well. To make this point, permit me to briefly quote from Professor Jeff Broadwater's George Mason: Forgotten Founder.

"Mason's first draft of the Declaration of Rights combined a succinct statement of the republican principles that underlay the Revolution with a smattering of constitutional doctrine and separate provisions designed to protect individual civil liberties." Take note, Mr. Bush, of those two short but powerful phrases, constitutional doctrine and civil liberties.

His "second article declared that [government officials] derived their powers from the people." Nothing exclusively "unitary" about that.

Mason also guaranteed the "right to confront one's accusers." He omitted exceptions to the right: no overruling exigencies, no consideration of a superior right of governmental secrets, no homeland territories excluded.

And interestingly enough, he "banned the use of ... 'the suspension of Laws,' a rebuke of the crown's practice of setting aside colonial legislation," which fellow revolutionary Edmund Randolph also condemned as "an arbitary practice of the king of England before the Revolution in 1688." Runaway signing statements, anyone?

Last, Mason's eighth drafted article I regard as the most sweepingly pertinent to what we've watched go down the tubes during the last few years. In it he wrote that "no free Government, or the Blessing of Liberty can be preserved to any People, but by a firm adherence to Justice, Moderation, Temperance, Frugality, and Virtue and by frequent Recurrance to fundamental principles."

I won't belabor those points. They're too obvious. I shall only suggest that Professor Broadwater could just as thoughtfully have subtitled his book, Forgotten Foundings.

Maybe someday the "fundamental principles" will be remembered and actually honored, rather than just sloganeered in the latest ad campaign.

Kindly take that apology and shove it

Q: What did Senators Daniel Akaka, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, Lincoln Chaffee, Kent Conrad, Jon Corzine, Mark Dayton, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Bob Graham, Daniel Inouye, Jim Jeffords, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Paul Sarbanes, Debbie Stabenow, Paul Wellstone and Ron Wyden know and when did they know it?

A: They knew in 2002 that the president of the United States was, at best, a disingenuous messenger. They knew Saddam was contained. They knew U.N. inspectors were searching for nasty bugs and chemical monstrosities and coming up empty. They knew heebie-jeebie tales of airborne drones and aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds were literally unbelievable.

They knew fanciful justifications for preventive and preemptive wars were geopolitically suicidal, unAmerican and just plain immoral. They knew that American troops thrust into the Middle East powder keg were a smoldering fuse. And they knew that no matter how politically gratifying an "Aye" vote might be, their war-authorization duty was to block the war's authorization.

Many of their Senate colleagues who failed in that duty now plead ignorance and manipulation; an otherworldly defense, since others served the same cooked intelligence failed to be ignorantly manipulated.

Hence the erstwhile prowar crowd -- some of whom now seek a promotion -- were carrier victims of either breathtaking gullibility or simplistic brainwashing or homicidal opportunism, "pure and simple," to quote the transparent manipulator. And everyone knows it -- a hyperbolic phrase I generally avoid, except in this case everyone really does know it.

But honest admissions aren't deployed by the aspiring higher-office bunch. Instead, they treat us to brazen insults to our own intelligence, which somehow, and somewhat uniquely, I guess, resists manipulation.

Most commonly we're treated to, "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have voted 'Aye,'" which is sold as heroic humility, but is in reality, as already suggested, little more than an admission of staggering malfeasance, since others less gullible or opportunistic or more immune to manipulation did know then what they know now, and appropriately voted "Nay."

Their shaky mea culpa, of course, is a product of reversed winds of war; but its origin was a prophylactic against the dreaded charge of Democratic weakness on national security matters. They wanted the electorate to know they're prepared to be every bit as ghoulish and irresponsible as Republicans in unleashing deadly firepower, no matter how flimsy the evidential excuse.

But one candidate has taken an even more insulting approach in deflecting the "soft on national security" assault.

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from," she offered a New Hampshire crowd Saturday -- without adding, "thankfully."

"She has argued to associates in private discussions that Mr. Gore and Mr. Kerry lost, in part, because they could not convince enough Americans that they were resolute on national security," explained campaign associates. Her "image as a strong leader, in turn, is critical to her hopes of becoming the nation’s first female president.... Apologizing might hurt that image," one adviser further explained.

Yet the lingering question of an apology, whether forthcoming in time or not, wildly misses the relevant point (although an honest apology, "I knew my vote was depraved, but I wanted to cover my butt," would come closer). Such an apology is not the objective. It's too late -- thousands of deaths and a half-trillion dollars too late -- for that.

The objective, rather, is a nominee who lacks a record of grotesque gullibility, easy manipulation, or lethal opportunism. Is that too much to ask of someone asking to be commander in chief?

Those Pussycats of Whoredom

The pussycats of electoral whoredom unleashed themselves early this presidential cycle, and what an unusually large and whorish herd they are.

The numerous "they" have staked out their respective street corners in the night fog, their backs leaning against lampposts, with foot propped and cigarette dangling, whispering "Want a date?" as though they've always been truly and only yours, whatever your eager wants and desires.

Rudy's on one corner, propositioning both the straight and the gay. He's always loved both, but now one a little more than the other. It's a question of market forces -- acute supply to meet retail demand.

Hillary's on another corner, batting her long lashes at the peaceful, thoughtful types, although she has loved long and well the martial types, too. It's a theatre of regret and redemption at its finest.

Mitt left the Northeast reservation to stake out the corner near the Falwell-Dobson crowd, having had those old, identifying tattoos of tolerance and reason removed. Anything for you, darlin', and if you like, he won't even remove his boots for the missionary routine.

Three other corners are populated by those who once exclusively worked Capitol Hill -- Chris and Joe and John E. -- but have since seen the volume profit to be made in opportunistic whoredom for the re-converted masses. Every good, self-employed hooker needs to adjust to mutating demand, and these cuties can adjust on a dime: principles are dashed off and on as quickly as their lovely black stockings.

And then there's John M., he of reputed virtue for resale. Poor Johnnie is a sad, desperate case, having pretty much been used up by his own insincerities, and who now finds himself not infrequently shunned. Even in whoredom, time and infidelity just might catch up to you.

Finally we have the likes of, say, Dennis, who's the world's worst practitioner of the world's oldest business. With boyish face and narrow charm, he's a misplaced loyal and devoted lover of truth unto himself, hence he doesn't work the streets well. He detests offering quickies, and of course Dennis isn't an aspiring trophy wife, either, so his enduring lures are severely limited to a severely select crowd -- that of idealistic consumers not of this tawdry world.

What mostly odd shoppers we are at the emporium of whoredom. We claim to yearn for fidelity, yet we know what we're buying -- and fidelity ain't the word for it. Then we cry disillusionment when our paramour jumps the bed to go hustle the naval base or business convention.

But what, in God's name, did we expect? That the pussycats of whoredom had actually changed their spots?

No, the veteran, successful whores know how to curl that index finger and flash the come hither look. After that, after we're momentarily satisfied, we then deserve getting bitten in the rear, because deep down we knew it was coming and we only fooled ourselves.

Idiocracy on your AM dial

I was still picking myself up off the floor over Mr. Bush's Valentine's Day attempt to make "American intelligence" an enduring oxymoron of lasting anxiety. Evidence? Hell, we're pretty sure what's going on with those pesky but wonderfully distractive Iranians, and since our hunches have played out so well, so far, we're going to stick with that boffo strategy. Solid intelligence is for amateurs.

Still, I could hardly wait to flip on talk radio the next morning to hear the stirrings, which, quite masochistically, I did -- only to hear the local host waxing proudly about Mr. Bush's admirable performance before the White House gaggle. Even though David Gregory of ultraliberal NBC News was loathsomely disrespectful, said the host, the president fielded his hostilities with grace, style and aplomb. What a guy.

The one rather disquieting omission in the AM host's press-conference review, however, was that of Mr. Bush's virtual declaration of WWIII's kickoff -- a needless distraction, no doubt, from swelling our hearts with pride at the president's deft handling of the loathsomely disrespectful Mr. Gregory. But I thought global ruination somewhat important. You know, for the children. So I called.

"Did we listen to different press conferences?" I asked. "Wasn't POTUS' casual introduction of the apocalypse a bit disturbing, perhaps even a trifle more important than the impressively stylish manner in which he introduced it?"

I was soon blasted with a swirling vortex of on-air irrelevancies. The host first launched a 9/11 binge; how we couldn't wait around for solid intelligence these days, how Saddam "could have had" links to al Qaeda -- just you wait, it'll all come out eventually -- followed by more breathtaking drivel, and so on and so on.

He erected such a solid wall of astoundingly stupid non sequiturs that I, in effect, wished him well in the hereafter -- a fate, I further noted, that his president was busily accelerating.

That fruitless exchange was then followed by a torrent of calls from the station's micro-dittoheads, who were lined up, waiting in the dark wings of chest-pounding machismo to salute the folly of military firepower happily crushing anyone we don't like, or just suspect. Simple as that. Blow 'em away, all of 'em.

A more depressing two hours is unimaginable. These people vote.

Someone -- I don't recall who or where -- recently wrote online about the declining need to worry about American democracy's health and the substitute need to worry about the developing ascendance of an "idiocracy." How true, and there's proof on your AM dial.

We are becoming a nation of idiots. It's not necessarily a matter of a majoritarian idiocracy, but it does seem that the idiots are disproportionately in charge of our collective future.  While not nervously engrossed in the latest vicissitudes of "American Idol" or whereabouts of Anna Nicole's corpse, they pause just long enough to subtract from the sum of human decency by going to vote for our burgeoning idiocracy's protagonists.

Is ours a permanent disability leading to the bitter end? I don't know. Such profound and predictive insight into the future is beyond my mortal powers. But I'll keep calling the talk-radio crowd, doing at least my part to impede as best I can its determined advance to our certain destruction.

He's nuts -- absolutely, certifiably, unmistakably nuts

I hesitate to write this morning about you know who addressing you know what yesterday, since everyone with a word processor and a conscience has already done just that. But sometimes an overloaded bandwagon is the only way to travel.

Like you, I'm sure, I was dumbfounded at Mr. Bush's saber rattling redux yesterday morning, before what looked like an equally dumbfounded press corps. It was like watching a slo-mo of a football play gone horribly wrong -- with each videotaped replay you cringe; you know what's going to happen and you're powerless to stop it. Except the consequences of this replay, of course, are worse to the power of ten.

The president's familiar "logic" was scandalous enough. "I can say with certainty that the Quds Force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated I.E.D.’s that have harmed our troops. And I’d like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds Force was ordered from the top echelons of the government. But my point is, what’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and its happening?"

The strategic, smirky grin deployed with that last line was meant to emphasize a profundity he alone had gleaned, and was now sharing for everyone's "Oh, I get it" benefit. If only we all had his insightful, incisive logic, there'd be no questioning of any of this.

Or at least that's the way I've always read his stilted body language expressed with inept, adolescent glee. Or, just as likely, and as is universally assumed with good reason, it could be that he simply doesn't give a damn what you think and he's overtly letting you know it. "What's worse?" indeed.

That Mr. Bush really wouldn't know the answer to his own, easily answered "what's worse" question was bad enough, but for him to posit as "preposterous" the idea that some, many, most suspect he might be "manufacturing" the evidence of Iran's direct involvement was insultingly, staggeringly, ahistorically and even deliberately obtuse. Where would anyone get such a silly idea?

I also hesitated to write on this general topic because anyone capable of scoring above 15 on a SAT test already knows all the proper and relevant counterarguments. It's like shooting neoconservative fish in a barrel. Nevertheless I shall briefly re-forge ahead with a determination to restate the additionally bloody obvious.

"When we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops," continued Mr. Bush, "we're going to do something about it, pure and simple."

At that, my blood ran cold and the chill proceeded right up my spine, as it likely did among our helpless troops as well. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to WWIII.

I recently wrote on the common history of independent arms transfers and third-party interventionism, which, up to now, sensibly failed to spark a global conflagration. "Sensibly" is the key word there. But of course the flow of history, for the Nietzsche administration, is something to be mastered and redirected through sheer, herculean will. And these Übermenschen actually think they're on a roll.

How does one overcome presidential madness? One impeaches. That's how. And, if necessary, one keeps on impeaching till the bloodthirsty bunch gets the message.

I've also always hesitated in calling for this most radical of Congressional options, given its smothering, and numerous, political difficulties. But should Mr. Bush persist in his irrational pursuit of global carnage, I no longer see any rational alternative. The only thing "preposterous" about it now would be if Congress doesn't catch it in time, given Mr. Bush's clearly stated intentions.

Sometimes it's even harder to know who's who

"The hardest bargaining with the world’s most reclusive, often paranoid, government remains ahead," read one news analysis of Tuesday's sorta nuclear deal, yet for a fleeting moment I was unsure if that passage referred to North Korea or the United States.

After all, President-Vice-President Cheney skulks around in "undisclosed locations" like some sort of mad political scientist straight out of Dr. Strangelove's central casting. After all, his boss-subordinate rarely deigns to Meet the Press for fear of prying boogeymen; and after all, both the president-vice-president and his boss-subordinate, along with their also-reclusive hired guns of jingoistic dementia, suspect everyone, threaten everyone, want to fight everyone.

After all, other news analyses pointed out that officials of both countries "met ... in Berlin [last month] and began talking of a new 'bilateral' approach." But because we all know the plucky Bushies don't do "bilateral" -- something, anyway, they have chanted with religious fervor for six years -- it was impossible to glean with precision which reclusive, paranoid government was unparanoiding its bad self and trying to get serious about initiating a serious diplomatic solution.

After all, one of the two nation's foreign ministers noted with what's usually interpreted as Asian inscrutability and calculating patience that "This is the first quarter, not the fourth." So who was who, and which was which, when it came to intelligently differentiating the two governments?

After all, a generic comment by an outside, expert observer didn't help identify who was who and which was which. Said a former National Security Council wonk of the preceding, reality-based administration: "They recognized that they had to adopt a practical approach. They had to do something to stabilize the situation, or they would face a full-blown crisis on the Korean peninsula." They? Which they? Both, to put it softly, have acted "impractically" to Sisyphean effect, and both seem to adore instability.

After all, with the redaction of just one little word, further comments by this same outside expert wouldn't have helped identify who's who, either: "This demonstrates something that we've seen overall, that in its waning days, with its options and resources limited by [fill in the numerous possible blanks], more and more it is turning to these practical policy options." It? And "its" waning days? "Its" limited options and rapidly depleting resources? Please, sir, one must be more specific in this age of national hemorrhaging otherwise known as ... "waning."

And, after all, and praise be to the gods of war, the recent nuclear accord brought our good friend and diplomatic pugilist John Bolton out of retired obscurity, yet his recidivist foaming and frothing also failed to elucidate: All this international comity, he fumed, "contradicts fundamental premises of the president's policy." But which president? The one who refused multilateral negotiations? which in the end he didn't. Or the one who categorically refused bilateral negotiations? which in the end he didn't. Confounding, indeed.

But, as it turned out, the first news analysis was actually referring to that other "most reclusive, often paranoid, government" -- that of adventurously brazen North Korea, led by the ill-read, ill-bred, struttingly pompous, geopolitically befuddled son-of-a-president Kim Jong Il. I think.

From scorn to laughingstock in 48 hours

More than anything, these days it's the rhetoric coming out of the Bush administration that fascinates, for it's an unintended verbal portrait of a world power self-wounded, self-marginalized, self-doubting, self-eviscerated and self-eclipsed.

It's a bit too soon to hold a wake, but for us geopolitical junkies, we are likely witnessing the accelerated death of an empire. The Bush administration has managed to execute in six years what most withering empires took decades or centuries to accomplish. And you can hear the American Century's essence expiring in the administration's own words.

The last 48 hours, I think, will be more than a comma in history books; they'll go down as an empirical turning point of note -- again, prominently noted by no other than the administration itself.

Most recently was its Cheneyesque "big-time" failure to wow anyone with its almost pathetic pleading about official Iranian rudeness in Iraq. No one any longer believes. And even worse for the administration, its once fear-stoking claims of threatening evil have become a laughingstock.

That assessment derives in part from a five-word news characterization of the immediate prehistory of the administration's intended momentous, weekend announcement regarding Iran: Even Bush's own propagandists, the news report understated with unintended comic effect, "anticipated resistance to their claims." One need not ask why.

What's more -- less comical but just as profoundly damaging -- the administration's very own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff openly questioned his empire's civilian leadership, telling reporters "I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit" in funneling instruments of American deaths into Iraq. That's the military equivalent of saying enough is enough -- you guys are idiots.

At roughly the same time, in a second ring of the imperial circus, the administration's defense secretary was rhetorically displaying his empire's teetering fragility. On Saturday, the reemerging Bear had performed a geopolitical pre-autopsy on American power, and by Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates still hadn't composed even a remotely persuasive rejoinder.

Mr. Gates' response was, rather pitiably, a mere pea shooter against an intellectual howitzer. "One cold war was quite enough ... Russia is a partner in endeavors, but we wonder, too, about some Russian policies that seem to work against international stability ... All of these characterizations belong in the past. The free world versus those behind the Iron Curtain. North versus South. East versus West."

But they don't -- not any more, anyway -- and it was the U.S. that single-handedly brought the harmful past upon itself.

Conceding that recent "abuses" -- another understatement -- "have negatively impacted the reputation of the United States" -- yet another understatement -- Mr. Gates also said American leaders hold firmly a "belief in political and economic freedom, religious toleration, human rights, representative government and the rule of law."

If that weren't so monumentally empirically disprovable, well, gee, he might have a point. But his emporer is unclothed, and all the world can see it.

Once a world power is met with unprecedented incredulity, once it is neither believed nor respected, once it moves to laughingstock from scorn, once, as a result, it becomes utterly friendless, the next logical but not unavoidable steps are rapid decline followed by internal decay.

Which is indeed avoidable, but such avoidance requires leadership with an upticked learning curve, which is sorely, staggeringly absent. And that is what depresses and makes decline seem, in fact, unavoidable.

The horribly impolite truth

Remember the initial looks of shock on the faces of theatre goers to "Springtime for Hitler"? The dropped jaws, the catatonic stares, the frozen visages of incredulity?

According to news reports, there was a repeat performance of that audience reaction in Munich Saturday, as an estimable assemblage of Western government officials, leading politicians and political cognoscenti were treated to a blistering reality check by an exceedingly undiplomatic Vladimir Putin.

Attending the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy, an annual gathering of Cold War origins, Mr. Putin said, in effect, You got your policies, you got your conferences, but global security is increasingly fleeting -- a victim of one superpower's chauvinism, ignorance, hubris and unidimensional thinking.

"One single center of power. One single center of force. One single center of decision making. This is the world of one master, one sovereign," said President Putin to the stunned gathering, many of whom in representative attendance by the maligned "one sovereign."

International conferences are usually polite open forums for equally polite closed minds, but Putin would have none of it.

"It has nothing in common with democracy, of course.

"Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations -- military force"; an assessment he further peppered with the adjectival rebukes of "illegitimate" and "unilateral" -- a force that has "overstepped its national borders" and "not been able to resolve any matters at all."

Instead, "They bring us to the abyss of one conflict after another. Political solutions are becoming impossible."

Yet Mr. Putin's most poignant and helpfully exhortative observation was of a Cassandra-like bent, which likely will meet the same reception as the Greek prophetess'. Any power that arrogantly presumes a globally hegemonic right, Mr. Putin forewarned, "destroys it[self] from within."

History is riddled with unexceptional examples, the dark warnings of which are ignored only at a modern perp's peril.

One could respond anemically with an irrelevant, ad hominem "poisoning the well" argument, as Senator and wannabe president John McCain did: "Will Russia’s autocratic turn become more pronounced, its foreign policy more opposed to the principles of the Western democracies?"

But what, item by agonizing item, of Mr. Putin's points? Ah, there's the rub.

Or, after recovering from "surprise" and "disappointment," one could offer an exhaustive critique of profound counterargument, as a White House spokesman did: "His accusations are wrong."

Ouch.

Or, after failing to logically punch holes in Mr. Putin's blunt "accusations," the "one sovereign" could simply heed his insights and set about correcting course.

Before it's too late.