PMC Commentary

The sameness of change

Debbie Thompson, Chicago Republican, says her "patience for this war, it’s run out. I think this is the most expensive, stupidest thing ever done. My frustration has reached a level that is so unsettling, something has to be done."

That quote set the stage for a New York Times piece on the changing political face of the Iraq war. To make something of that change, however, is to exercise in a minefield of befuddlement.

Ms. Thompson resides in a conservative congressional district where, says the Times, "there is a newfound hostility about the war that is being directed toward [the Republican incumbent], who was narrowly re-elected to a fourth term last November....

"Interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania -- home to 4 of the 11 [moderate] Republican congressmen who met with Mr. Bush about the war -- suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat."

That, one may think, is all well and good. Yet it comes with two gloomy by-products: The eradication of Republican moderates serves only to further radicalize the surviving GOP, and the substitution of Democratic reps from these Republican districts serves only to "conservatize" the party of New Deal heritage.

One can already hear the freshly installed Honorable Gentleman from Illinois: "Gee, I can't support this progressive cause or that -- I come from a volatile swing district and can't afford to rub the mossbacks the wrong way."

In short, turning out moderate Republicans does little or nothing for Democrats' liberalization. In fact, at best it could legislatively paralyze the Democratic Party, and at worst irreparably split it.

Then again, many would argue the party is already on the first road and has been spotted lurching precipitously down the second.

Also noted in the article was this: "While a majority of Republican voters continue to support Mr. Bush and the Iraq war ... there are concerns that the war is undermining the party’s political position. A majority of Republicans who were interviewed for a New York Times/CBS News poll this month said that things were going badly in Iraq and that Congress should allow financing only on the condition that the Iraqi government met benchmarks for progress."

What's more, "In a poll in March, a majority of Republicans said that a candidate who backed Mr. Bush’s war policies would be at a decided disadvantage in 2008. They also suggested that they were open to supporting a candidate who broke with the president on the war."

What, then, is one to make of recent polling that found Hillary Clinton losing head to head to both John McCain and Rudy Giuliani?

True, Hillary isn't her party's most high-flying dove, but she certainly doesn't bare the bellicose fangs of a McCain or Giuliani. So how -- given, in the poll, all those Democrats of nearly unanimous antiwar sentiment, a huge chunk of like-minded independents and a "majority" of war-cooling Republicans -- could Ms. Clinton possibly come out on the bottom?

The American voter has never been fairly accused of a slavish adherence to cogency, but that finding defies every breed of logic.

The conclusion to be drawn from these newsworthy tidbits is, as I referenced in opening, one of utmost befuddlement. Here we have a sea of roiling attitudinal changes all about us, yet the upshot of their repercussions will, more likely than not, signify nothing.

Or, "Bush the Neo-Autocrat"

Other than being stuck for something novel to write about, I'm not sure what manner of daftness was haunting Richard Cohen of the Washington Post yesterday when he proffered George W. Bush as "more liberal than you might think."

I thought at first it was merely a tongue-in-cheek piece -- "Bush the Neoliberal"; now there's a title suited for sarcasm -- but no, Cohen actually proceeded to make, or tried to make, a serious case. It was a damn slim one, but he gave it a go anyway, and I'll at least give him credit for editorial adventurism.

"Consider this," he wrote. "An overriding principle of conservatism is to limit the role and influence of the federal government.... [Yet] Bush has extended the [education] department's reach in a manner that Democrats could not have envisaged. I am referring, of course, to the 2001 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known as No Child Left Behind... It is precisely the sort of law that conservatives predicted Washington would someday seek -- and it did."

OK, maybe it's not what conservatives had in mind, but in what way does NCLB reflect core liberalism? Cohen seems to believe that liberalism, at all times and in every case, means merely more and bigger government for big government's sake. Others -- such as liberals -- believe liberalism stands for better, more responsible and more responsive government. Size doesn't really matter. NCLB, with its megalomaniacal focus on Rumsfeldian metrics, and not on the arts of actual teaching and real learning, hardly fits the bill. I don't care what Ted Kennedy thinks.

Cohen also suggested that Bush's appointments of a female national security adviser and Hispanic attorney general intentionally taunted conservatism's "much-mocked notion of diversity" in high places. Plus, "You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment -- or his frequent mention of the 'soft bigotry of low expectations' to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a 'mushy-headed liberal.'"

Bush may be appreciably soft in the head, and he may extol the virtues of immigration, but are his underlying motivations regarding diversity -- cronyism and the corporate-inspired importation of cheap labor -- "liberal" ones?

Cohen's wildest punch, however, was thrown in "mak[ing] the case that [Bush's 'neoliberalism'] is also true when it comes to Iraq."

Yes, you read that right. Iraq.

Writes Cohen: "One reason for our involvement was an attempt to do some good -- rid the world of a really bad guy and make life better for Iraqis and others in the region. This 'liberal' intent may have left Dick Cheney cold and found Don Rumsfeld indifferent, but it appealed to Bush.

"His war will be cited to smother any liberal impulse in American foreign policy -- to further discredit John F. Kennedy's vow to 'pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty.'"

There's so much wrong with that, it requires a dissection with heaps more patience than I have, so let's leave it at this: Not only was JFK thoughtfully and ultimately unwilling to pay any price and bear any burden, it was Lyndon Johnson's mutilation of Kennedy's loose manifesto that drove a nail in liberalism's interventionist instincts and, in short order, gave rise to a liberally alienated neoconservatism in reaction.

But Cohen's fundamental misstep was in slaying this humbug, already dead or dying, expressed early in his column: "The conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most conservative of all presidents."

For once, conventional wisdom is on to something, but that ain't it. What is gelling as proper conventional wisdom is that Bush is the most radical of all presidents. From busting the domestic budget to refashioning foreign cultures (trying to, that is), Bush has trashed virtually every tenet of authentic conservatism.

If conservatism survives his swinish presidency, it will be in spite of it, not a legacy of it. And it sure as hell won't be known as "neoliberalism."

On the other hand, if labeling the likes of George W. Bush as some sort of mongrel liberal will help deter conservatives from voting for another George W. Bush, then label away, Mr. Cohen.

Who's lying now?

Was anybody minding the store?

News accounts of widespread institutional negligence and dereliction of duty keep piling up.

It became clear shortly after 9/11 the Bush administration was going to launch a preemptive-preventive-absolutely-witless war against Iraq, without provocation, and nothing -- no diplomacy, no international condemnation, no domestic 'wise men' -- was going to stop it. The administration was dead set on war, and the intelligence community -- which the administration and others now blame for having dropped the ball -- was merely a source of cherry-picked goodies amid what we now know were reams of alarums.

"Months before the invasion of Iraq," the Washington Post reported Saturday, "U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan.... Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and 'probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups' in the Muslim world."

Furthermore, "The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be 'a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.'"

Furthermore, "The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al Qaeda terrorists."

Furthermore -- and here's the kicker -- "The report includes lists indicating that the analyses ... were distributed at senior levels of the White House and the State and Defense departments and to the congressional armed services and appropriations committees."

Let's repeat that last part: "The analyses ... were distributed ... to the congressional armed services and appropriations committees."

In the most perverse way -- and by that I mean the very depths of perversity -- the administration can almost be excused for plunging ahead. After all, internally it was determined to do so, but that was prior to the external certainty that Congress would lie down and rubber stamp whatever the administration wanted.

So there it was, scheming and plotting and dissembling, but at the same time intelligence agencies were passing around all these terrifying predictions about violent sectarianism and Qaeda resurgences and regional eruptions -- in effect, saying, "Here, here is what could preempt the administration" -- indeed, even passing these reports around to oversight congressional committees, which included Democrats, some even "antiwar" Democrats.

And what did these overseers do with all this bloodcurdling information? Why, some cheered the administration out of administration-equivalent mindlessness. Others either dismissed the intelligence warnings, or didn't read these or other intelligence warnings, or had staffers summarize them -- or worse, read them, had their blood promptly curdled, voted against war authorization, and then sat on their butts without saying a word to anyone.

The administration must have thought it was in a candy store without a guardian and in which nothing came at a price. So how else would a bunch of bad-seed, neocon toddlers behave, except to plow ahead? Every check, every balance folded. Every institutional watchdog took a vacation from responsibility. Every fail-safe collapsed.

No one was minding the store. Yet many in Congress now talk of the administration's past "deception." I find that as offensive, if not more so, than the administration's original lies, since the obligation to oppose evil is greater than the evil one's unnatural urge to suppress it. And the evidential offensiveness just keeps piling up.

***

[Note on "Comments" section: I seem to have picked up some odd little trolls who enjoy pushing a rather bizarre 9/11 conspiracy theory -- bizarre even for conspiracy theorists. I can't tell you the amount of time I've had to invest lately in monitoring and deleting their unintellectual droppings. I won't have such drivel on this site, but I don't have the time to police the site, either, so I'm discontinuing the 'comments' section (which at least has the benefit of toying with their clinical paranoia). My apologies to all of you who've had intelligent criticisms and other insights to add here, but of course you're always welcome to write me directly.]

Of "blunders and imbecilites," then and now

Still smarting over the preceding decade's "bloody and horrible embrace" that came to be known as the First World War, H.L. Mencken, in a 1929 issue of the American Mercury, reflected broadly on the art of "War" as unartfully practiced throughout the ages. On this Memorial Day dedicated to the fallen men and women of service to their nation, it seems fitting to resurrect Mencken's assessment of those who led them to their early graves.

"Of all the arts practiced by man," he wrote, "the art of the soldier seems to call for the least intelligence and to develop the least professional competency. Every battle recorded in history appears as a series of almost incredible blunders and imbecilities.... Even the greatest generals -- for example, Bonaparte -- walk idiotically into palpable traps, and waste thousands of lives getting themselves out.... The simplest problem of their ancient and elemental business flabbergasts them."

The quality of U.S. generalship hasn't always been so one-sided, of course, but after pondering some of its highlights -- from Washington's inept tactics to Burnside's Fredericksburg to Pershing's victorious but massive losses at Argonne -- it's hard to avoid a sense of harmony with Mencken's synopsis.

Yet at the time of Mencken's writing, his was a history of what's commonly accepted as "just wars": independence from an increasingly intolerant and bungling imperial power, the Union's preservation and then slavery's abolition, a worthy reaction to unrestricted submarine warfare. Hence even though they frequently were lousy handlers, the generals in charge would, mostly, be forgiven and ultimately hailed by the homefolks as heroes in the prosecution of a righteous cause.

And that, probably, is what most differentiates the "imbecilities" of Mencken's wars from the present one.

Mencken noted, somewhat ahistorically, for sure, that generals "seem to be congenitally incapable of reasoning clearly, even when all the facts are before them. Whenever, at the practice of their art in the field, they confront a problem of any complexity, they have to get help from civilians...."

The greatest help provided by civilian leadership up to Mencken's time was some semblance of a righteous war aim. In the rapidly changing contours of war, human error and unnecessary losses were -- and are -- expected, but civilian leadership, at the very least, presented "all the facts ... before" the military leadership to aid in accomplishing that aim.

The chief accomplishment of the Bush administration, however, has been to bury the facts, since they often conflicted with what was the administration's muddled war aim to begin with.

How determined, do you think, was the administration in disseminating to the military what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has uncovered and now released:"The most chilling and prescient warning from the intelligence community prior to the war was that the American invasion would bring about instability in Iraq that would be exploited by Iran and al Qaeda terrorists."

Those generals who did see and appreciate the intelligence community's "chilling warning" were early naysayers, by and large, and promptly dismissed. After those dispiriting experiences, how thorough, do you think, was the administration in being open and honest with the remaining military leadership? If the administration could brazenly lie to Congress and the American people, it doesn't require much of an imagination to picture it lying to, and covering the facts before, those who would be in charge on the ground thereafter.

So this time around, it's much harder to conjure Mencken's degree of harshness toward today's "generals [who] walk idiotically into palpable traps, and waste thousands of lives getting themselves out."

I'm certainly no booster of the martial mentality, but in view of its civilian leadership, defined, as is strikingly clear, by every pejorative from incompetence to criminality, it's tough not to sympathize with the generals for a change, more so than with Mencken.

Call them the Badlings

I still can't determine with any finality if yesterday's op-ed in the Washington Post by that paper's former religion reporter was an over-the-top attempt at objectivity or merely abject ignorance of American constitutionalism. It seemed to lean so far to the latter that perhaps it was only a poorly written stab at the former. No one, I thought, could be this unschooled in the American political tradition, especially a WP reporter -- and one who had covered religion, which, sadly, has become inextricably and organically tied to modern politics.

Its author, Hanna Rosin, could, I suppose, muster the defense that she was only relating a new reality in American politics -- that right-wing Christian ideologues in government, such as Monica Goodling, are here to stay -- yet the tone of her piece seemed so warm and fuzzy toward this theocratic trend, I initially read it as nothing more than an endorsement. It was shocking and horrifying, so much so that I kept wanting to believe in my "objectivity" hypothesis.

Ms. Rosin set the tone in her opening sentence: "To the Bush haters of America, the young Monica Goodling is a footnote of this wretched era, one of the many Washington types that they'll be happy to get rid of come January 2009: Venal Vice President, Ex-Lobbyists Turned Regulators and, in Goodling's case, Young Evangelicals in High Places."

Under hot lights Ms. Rosin could claim she was only reporting a contemporary reality: that most Americans do hate Bush, that this is indeed a "wretched era," and that for excellent reasons we'll be delighted to "rid" ourselves of these political malefactors and their enabling "Young Evangelicals in High Places." In effect, she could say, you can't blame her for simply reporting how bad things have gotten.

But again, it was the overall tone of Ms. Rosin's piece that disturbed, and appallingly so.

"Goodling," she wrote, has been "mocked" by comedians and commentators as "one of a 'bunch of hayseeds' staffing the administration." But for Ms. Rosin's money, we should properly "Call them the Goodlings: scrubbed young ideologues, ready to serve their nation, the right's version of the Peace Corps generation."

Nowhere in the piece does the author question if the wholly biblical worldview of these "scrubbed young ideologues" just might conflict with the wholly secular U.S. Constitution. Did the author just assume that anyone with any rudimentary schooling in American political and constitutional history would already know this?

And there were passages such as these: "Even after this administration is gone, they can work for one of the more than 150 members of Congress who call themselves evangelical or dozens of conservative think tanks and activist groups. Or they can run for office.... They will be around long after Bush is gone.... They are embedded firmly enough into Washington to provide jobs for smart young Christians for generations to come."

Was that a warning; or an objective statement only of what's coming, like it or not; or an expression of her own ideological relief?

To decide, you'll have to read it for yourself. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after reading it the first time. But then, with a severe case of incredulity that the Washington Post would ever have hired a right-wing Christian mole to report on religion -- meaning too often, these days, politics -- and then try to pass her off as a serious editorialist, I reread it trying to find "objectivity" loopholes.

Was I wrong? Is it really as bad as it read? Could it actually be that today we have in the mainstream media purportedly educated reporters who really can't distinguish between the Bible and the Constitution? Between Thomas Jefferson's vision and that of Pat Robertson's? Between age-old republicanism and creeping theocracy?

With friends like these ...

The National Republican Congressional Committee's propaganda arm inaugurated Campaign '08 yesterday, blasting away on radio and through automated phone calls at "18 freshman Democrats for allegedly marching in lockstep with [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi], a California Democrat who is regularly depicted by Republicans as an out-of-touch liberal."

Some chestnuts, no matter how splendidly silly, just never die, and the NRCC's advertising campaign about lockstepping Congressional liberals reminds me of Voltaire's quip about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Interestingly, the ad campaign's thrust is mostly a rehash of what already failed the GOP in 2006, which in turn mostly serves as a reminder of how wretchedly clueless the GOP is.

"Nancy Pelosi is not a good sell in the majority of these places," said NRCC Communications Director Jessica Boulanger, "and the fact that these freshmen are tying themselves to her every day in Washington is going to create significant problems for them back home."

The fact is, Ms. Boulanger, Nancy Pelosi may not be "a good sell in the majority of these places," but she's not much of a bad sell, either. Strange as it may seem to political junkies who eat and breathe this stuff, most voters wouldn't know the speaker of the House from the sergeant at arms. The NRCC tried blackening Democratic challengers in 2006 by "pre-"linking them to Pelosi, and most voters' reaction was, "Say what? Who?"

In addition, Ms. Boulanger, what a humdinger of a contradictory week to launch your message that "These Democrats are making themselves vulnerable by abandoning pledges they made on the campaign trail in exchange for lockstep partisanship in Washington."

For most voters there was only one pledge made in 2006 on one issue that counts, and not even the most skillful of hysterical propagandists could convincingly characterize the Democratic mishmash on that issue as a paradigm of partisanship.

But hey, that's still better than the sloganeering of the NRCC's chairman, Rep. Tom Cole, who for inexplicable reasons is fond of saying, "All politics is local until it isn't." Not exactly "New Frontier" stuff. Keep it up, Tom.

What should really worry these freshmen Democrats, however, is the back-up they're receiving from their own national campaign committee.

"Clearly, Republicans are running scared because Americans are responding positively to Democrats' New Direction agenda," said Jennifer Crider, Ms. Boulanger's communications counterpart at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- a "New Direction" agenda that is perhaps more aptly described as "Every Which Way But Loose."

But then Ms. Crider went and said something really silly, almost as splendidly silly as the Republican chestnut about lockstepping liberals: "While the NRCC is forced to rely on smear tactics, Democrats are delivering real results for the American people -- raising the minimum wage, lowering gas prices and holding the president accountable for the war in Iraq."

The first of those triumviral "results" is true enough, but of course gets washed away by torrential ridicule over the following two. It makes one wonder if this "communications director" reads the papers, and if so, if she has driven to a newsstand lately to buy one.

If I were one of these freshmen Democrats I'd lie in terror every night, brooding over not what the hapless NRCC is up to, but what my supportive "friends" at DCCC are saying.

Profiles in Sewage

I had almost decided to pass comment altogether on Congress' most recent dereliction of duty, since this particular act was universally predicted and virtually guaranteed. But what else is Congress good for, if not for kicking?

Yes, everyone knows that Congressional Democrats have mental blocks when it comes to unity and organization. Every now and then, however, an issue comes along -- oh, let's say, a needless, illegal war killing thousands and wasting billions -- about which voters really don't care to hear historical excuses of a Will Rogers bent. Get over it they say, in effect. Just get off your butts and get together and get it done. And don't phone home with comical excuses about your disorganized big tent of a party.

Surprisingly, we're not hearing much of that excuse this time around. That's the good news. The bad news is what we are hearing from Congressional leaders is even more insulting.

"We don’t have a veto-proof Congress," said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

"The president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines. We can’t pass timelines over his veto," said the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer.

Most insulting of all was the double-barreled unctuousness of Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus -- "I view this as the beginning of the end of the president’s policy on Iraq" -- and Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "This is another stage in the sequencing of ending this war," as she moved the only meaningful stage -- "the moment of truth," as she put it -- to September.

We were quite aware that you "don't have a veto-proof Congress," Mr. Reid. But did we hear Mr. Bush cave, saying he had lost his Congressional majority?

And we were quite aware that "the president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines," Mr. Hoyer. But did we hear Mr. Bush cave, saying it was clear that timelines were all that Congress was going to offer?

As for Mr. Emanuel's offensive defense, one is left slackjawed. There's spin, and there's spin. There is spin that softens a troubled stance, and then there's spin that evokes nothing but derisive laughter. The "beginning of the end of the president's policy on Iraq"? By that, Mr. Emanuel, you mean, I gather, that his policy will end Jan. 20, 2009, and Congress has begun counting the days.

Speaker Pelosi's inability to read last year's calendar, with "Moment of Truth" plastered all over "November," is too infuriatingly muddleheaded to even risk one's blood pressure on.

At least we had Russ Feingold's thoughtful assessment, which echoed the larger reality that Congressional leaders are suppressing at their party's peril: "There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action. Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq."

If it was "political comfort" they were looking for, Congressional Democrats crawled under the wrong rock. Acquiescence to a bullheaded president prosecuting an insane war isn't likely to endear their party to anyone but the equally bullheaded and shrinking opposition. And I doubt they'll be voting Democratic anytime soon.

Which begs the question, Who will? The answer, of course, is that the Democrats are counting on American voters' famous short-term memory loss, which is just as famously known as the American small-d democratic way.

Today's big-d Democratic way? Gutlessness. Or maybe the Democrats' guts have simply shifted south, because it takes a lot of balls to be this cowardly.

Give it a go and find out, Al

The Politico's Ben Smith has a useful overview of the mechanical pros and cons of an Al Gore entry into the presidential rat race. On balance, the cons don't seem nearly as negative as the pros do positive.

As Smith relates, the good news for Gore -- should he ever decide to take the plunge -- is that he's "one of the very few people in America who could enter the presidential contest as late as he wants without immediately facing the impossibility of raising the tens of millions of dollars required to get his message out."

Perhaps not literally "as late as he wants," but I'd wager that Gore could outdo in one month what Clinton and Obama spent a quarter of a year accomplishing financially, and I'd further wager I'd find no one to take the bet.

"Gore also has an organization waiting in the wings," writes Smith, namely the megaorganizer MoveOn.org.

The polling among Demnocrats looks reasonably good, too. "In a USA Today/Gallup poll earlier this month, he registered the support of 14 percent of Democrats, less than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois but more than former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina."

As for the downside, "Despite a media perception that he's remade himself into a post-partisan prophet, national polls suggest that he remains nearly as divisive a figure as Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Only 49 percent of Americans view him favorably, and 43 percent view him unfavorably."

I admit that sounds, well, unfavorable, but what Smith doesn't mention is that not only does Hillary remain a "divisive figure," her favorability rating is declining as she campaigns. I don't think it's supposed to work that way. (Editor and Publisher, "GALLUP: Hillary Clinton's Favorable Rating Plunges": "In the latest poll, conducted April 13-15, 2007, more Americans say they have an unfavorable (52%) than a favorable view (45%) of Clinton. As recently as February, her favorable rating was 58%.")

Also potentially problematic, note observers, is the "procedural hurdle" of the onrushing Iowa caucuses. Yet though most presidential campaigns begin in Iowa, it can be strategically smarter to make a late entry, skip Iowa, then knock off the Hawkeye State's winner in New Hampshire (a la John McCain in 2000), which makes an even bigger splash than the whole Iowa thing (although Mr. McCain soon encountered Karl Rove's defamation tour in South Carolina).

Smith's final, itemized "con" is Gore's almost evangelical message itself, "with its stinging indictment of both American politics and elements of American culture," which, as Smith points out, "isn't crafted to win votes."

Maybe not "crafted to win votes," but I'm not so sure it isn't suited to win votes.

Enough American voters may have finally grasped the inanities, as Gore writes in The Assault on Reason, of "the persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy" -- e.g., that foreign wars can be "won" by shopping at the mall, that deficits can be erased by slashing taxes, that global warming requires only more study -- and are, in turn, finally ready to buy some reality.

Gore, after all, isn't selling doom. He's selling challenges, much the way FDR did.

Of course I don't know if voters would buy. But this much I do know: There's only one way to find out, Al.

Do the Netroots foreshadow GOP doom?

The Washington Post has an interesting piece on the growing disparity between Democratic and Republican presences on the Internet -- interesting, that is, in its factual background, but an object of curiosity and even puzzlement insofar as its thematic conclusion.

The indisputable facts are these:

Nielsen/NetRatings provide one measure of the gap. Looking at the Web sites of presidential candidates from the two parties, it found that former senator John Edwards's site had about 690,000 unique visitors in March.... That was more than the combined number of visitors to the sites of the three leading GOP contenders [Giuliani, McCain and Romney].

There are other measures as well. No Republican comes close to matching the popularity of another Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.... The Democrats are ahead in the online money race. The top three Democrats [Clinton, Obama and Edwards] amassed more than $14 million over the Internet in the first three months of 2007; in contrast, the top three Republicans ... collected less than half of that, $6 million.

That's the background and facts are facts. When the analysis delves into the causes of the parties' disproportionate presence -- and consequential importance -- on the Internet, however, it treads debatable water.

One reason for the disparity between the parties, political insiders say, is that the top Republican candidates are not exciting voters the way the Democratic front-runners are. Another is that it takes a certain level of technical skill and understanding to be an online strategist, and Republicans admit that "the pool of talent in the Democrats' side is much bigger than ours."

But an underlying cause may be the nature of the Republican Party and its traditional discipline -- the antithesis of the often chaotic, bottom-up, user-generated atmosphere of the Internet.

There's little doubt that voters find the Republican candidates unexciting. The polls certainly reflect that, and my masochistic monitoring of talk radio provides (unscientific) confirmation. Even among still-ardent Bush supporters and self-described hidebound Republicans, one detects an astounding level of dispiritedness over the GOP's current slate of candidates. They're either too centrist on social issues, or too tainted by an unpopular war, or, more often, just plain uninspiring.

But are the Democratic front-runners "exciting" voters? It seems to me the cited "political insiders" are confusing Democratic-voter contentment with excitement. There's a sense out there among the rank and file that any of the front-runners will do, that they're all pretty closely matched on policy positions, and that any of them can whip any of their Republican counterparts, so just pick one and get on with it. I wouldn't call that excitement, though.

Yet it's the article's contention about the "underlying cause" of disparity -- the uncomfortable clash between the chaotic Netroots and the GOP's "traditional discipline" -- that seems most problematic.

Have conservative sites failed to raise cash and connect with the base because the latter is capable only of switching on an AM dial, and incapable of sorting out the undisciplined Netroots' messages? Or is it because the Bush administration has managed to accomplish what the Democratic Party couldn't? -- the wrecking of the Republican Party. Related to this is what, exactly, is the GOP base these days? The social conservatives? The war hawks? The deficit hawks? The libertarians?

George W. Bush may be America's worst enemy, but he's been Democrats' best friend. He has so upended and severed any semblance of conservatism from Republicanism, his greatest legacy may be that of having launched GOP mayhem and minority status for the next several decades.

The Goldwaterites hate the neocons, the deficit hawks detest the Tom DeLays, the social conservatives despise the libertarians -- and the unifying thread that originally was the Iraq war has unraveled and splintered them all back to irreconcilable basics.

Meanwhile the Democrats largely have the same, fundamental message: let's leave Iraq one way or the other and maybe get national health care rolling while we're at it, both of which the electorate at large is sympathetic to.

It's not excitement. It's the crunch of domestic Realpolitik -- and the one and only blessing of George W. Bush.

How do I apply?

Damn it's good to be on George's payroll. The work is easy, the hours are good, excellent performance evaluations are guaranteed, and the pay is fantastic. All you do is promise to be a good boy, let George look into your soul as verification, and then sit back and watch for checks in the mail.

Just ask President and Generalissimo Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who pockets about $80 million a month in "coalition support funds" from George "for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though [he] decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active."

Who can blame him? Those Qaeda and Taliban chaps are tough customers, and somebody could get hurt should one of Musharraf's lads whip out a support fund and start blasting away. Better to just kick back and savor those monthly deposit visits to the bank.

There are always party poopers, of course, always some clowns who don't get the memo, such as "some American military officials" -- who for inexplicable reasons "have been surprised by the speed at which [al Qaeda and the Taliban] have gained strength in the past year," and therefore "have recommended that [Musharraf's] money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan."

How old school, how Max Weberian. But that's the military for you, always thinking with a one-track, Protestant work-ethic mind. Nevertheless the Bush administration -- famous as it is for listening to its commanders on the ground -- says "no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them."

Another party pooper, old-school Democratic Senator Jack Reed, even publicly related last year that U.S. military officials based in Pakistan were urging that George's support checks go to "paying for specific objectives that are planned and executed, rather than simply paying what the country bills." And it seems there was a superabundance of "commanders and diplomats in the region" who "agreed with that recommendation."

A National Security Council spokesman, however, said the White House was "unaware of any such debate."

George has also dispersed around $1.6 billion to our good general Musharraf for nonspecific "budget support," a tidy sum of cash mostly intended to help him pay for things like health, food, education and the cultivation of democracy. But oddly, only around half that amount has actually been spent on the care and feeding of Pakistanis, or teaching literacy to the one in two Pakistanis who cannot read, or cultivating his nation's democracy that functions about as well as Florida's.

No doubt there are commissions to be deducted -- just another little perk of the job.

Apparently the only unambiguous requirement for getting on George's payroll is a payment of oblique lip service to his personal "war on terror." I can do that, so I'm Fedexing my resume today. Others may be more handsome, more muscular, more erudite, but my devotion to goldbricking for an indifferent employer at fantastic pay is second to no man's.

Well, maybe Pervez Musharraf.

Another successful White House tantrum

There was an underreported, or if you prefer, de-emphasized aspect of the Wolfowitz-World Bank fiasco that should have been the lead. More than being a mere touch of background information that helped explain Wolfie's dramatic but prolonged exit -- which is how it was reported -- it was, rather, the aspect that framed, defined and reflected the Bush administration's unerring approach to all things managerial: It's right, you're wrong, and everything can go to hell until everyone else cries "uncle," no matter how harmful this childish game might be to all parties concerned.

The "background" explained all the unnecessary anguish: "People close to the negotiations said that the threat to oust Mr. Wolfowitz had ... taken a bizarre U-turn" in its final hours.

Now, anytime the descriptive term "bizarre" pops up in national or international news coverage, you just know the White House is behind it full throttle. And sure enough, Wolfie's final exit strategy, it turned out, wasn't Wolfie's at all. It was the White House's from start to finish.

World Bank officials "said it appeared that both the White House and the Treasury Department were involved in guiding Mr. Wolfowitz’s strategy, and that the interests of the United States were being represented at the bank by the American director on the board, Eli Whitney Debevoise II.

"Mr. Debevoise, a Washington lawyer, arrived at his job at the bank in early April, the precise moment when the furor over Mr. Wolfowitz erupted."

What was the White House's orchestrated "bizarre U-turn," executed in-house by Mr. Debevoise?

On a dime it went from begging the bank board not to oust Wolfowitz to daring it to do so -- and by splashing, not submersing, all the substantiated facts unfavorable to him in the termination document. And that bizarre U-turn forced this response, said a bank official close to the negotiations: "It’s going to be difficult for the board to drop its charges against him, but they’re going to have to do it if they want to resolve this."

But that doesn't quite add up, does it? Why, one might ask, would the bank "have to" commit such a phony, insincere act -- that is, whitewash all those substantiated facts -- just to properly rid itself of its hapless chief executive?

Why? Because the White House was correctly counting on the bank to be the adult.

"In effect, bank officials said," the White House "was using the fear among European leaders at the bank of a possible rupture with the Bush administration at a time when the United States and Europe are struggling to cooperate on Iran sanctions, trade and other economic issues."

And that was what should have been the lead story -- the one that framed and defined the fiasco. Childish bullying and brinkmanship.

Think about it. The White House was willing to risk what very little it had in the way of amicable relations with world leaders just to defend its boy at the bank. It was willing to watch the thorniest issues of world poverty become monumentally thornier, just to avoid any seeming admission that it had placed a corrupt idiot at the helm. It was, in short, willing to worsen the lives of billions, just to protect one man -- its man.

"They’re staring each other down, but the bank side is blinking furiously," said a bank official, which we can now put in the past tense.

So the bank was the adult, albeit a promiscuous one. The White House's temper tantrum won the day. Again.

The bank's staff association, thoroughly incensed over the board's cave-in, released this statement: "Welcome though it is, the president’s resignation is not acceptable under the present arrangement," which "completely undermines the principles of good governance and the principles that the staff fight to uphold."

Your point being? You poor dears. You seem confused. We're talking White House principles here. When was "good governance" ever one its objectives? It has only one -- to win, no matter how harmful the childish game might be to all parties concerned.

Just one more sign of democratic decline

On the face of it this NYT piece was merely a lighthearted look at how frivolous presidential campaigning has become. Given a moment's thought, however, it's the frivolousness that turns a light heart heavy. Are voters really idiots, or do leading contenders for the nation's top job simply regard them as such? One of the two must be true, and either way, it speaks poorly for any semblance of an engaged, enlightened democracy.

The article noted this p.r. trend on a definite upswing:

"Stealing a page from the Soviet playbook, the current crop of presidential candidates has taken to eliminating whole chapters of their histories.... There are always unpleasant facts, episodes or viewpoints that run counter to the public self a candidate is marketing. But one of the striking features of the 2008 campaigns is the pungency of the various elephants in the various rooms. Candidates are strenuously de-emphasizing or ignoring completely experiences that are defining and, in many cases, extremely well known."

Such as ...

"Senator John McCain ... almost never brings up campaign finance overhaul, perhaps his signature achievement in the Senate."

Mitt Romney "boasts that he was 'the Republican governor who turned around a Democratic state' and 'vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations.' But you would never know where.

"Still unspoken, for the most part is Mr. Giuliani’s delicate family situation. His campaign Web site includes nothing about his children, with whom he reportedly has strained relations.

"Didn’t John Edwards once run for vice president? Mr. Edwards, a Democrat and former senator from North Carolina, tends to erase his stint as What’s His Name’s running mate in 2004."

And "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's turbulent final years as first lady? While Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, frequently invokes husband Bill on the stump, she has managed to avoid any mention of his impeachment and the unpleasantness leading to it."

Now as for Mrs. Clinton, she would have as much an obligation to campaign on her husband's impeachment and its related "unpleasantness" as Abraham Lincoln would have had in mentioning the fact that he once slept with a prostitute and thereafter lived in fear of syphilis and having spread it. Indeed, Hillary would have even less of an obligation than Abe, since she was hardly the one responsible for the unpleasantries. So that notation seems like a rather cheap shot.

But as for the others? Edwards was some sort of covert vice-presidential candidate? Giuliani's kids get "airbrushed," Stalin-style? Romney will confess the state he governed, but only when rubber hosed? And McCain obliterates "his signature achievement in the Senate" through fretful neglect?

All, of course, are the product of stage-managed timidity -- a politician's natural abhorrence of offending so much as one delicate voter with so much as one offending word, like "Massachusetts" -- itself a product of kowtowing to poll-driven, focus-grouped advisers who seem to believe voters' brains have yet to evolve from the Lower Paleolithic Age. But what does that say about these candidates who regularly declare the need for, and their possession of, intrepid forthrightness in this nervous age of national drift?

On the other hand, perhaps the advisers are right. Perhaps the great majority of voters drag their knuckles to the polls. Perhaps if Rudy never mentions his kids the electorate will never know he can't even keep his family together, let alone the country; and perhaps the electorate will idealize Edwards for having labored only as a soup-kitchen volunteer since 2004.

Either way, the accelerating trend of selective omissions from presidential resumes and voters' apparent acceptance of it doesn't bode well for a vigorously inclusive "national debate" this year and next. And if the least forthright candidate wins, it'll bode even less well for 2012 and beyond. Then we can chalk up the further advance of plastic democracy.

Blue dresses and high crimes and the 'liberal media'

I'm always amused by the "liberal" pundits who appear with monotonous regularity on the political talk-show circuit, occasionally to make some insightful point, but always to demonstrate their worldly sophistication. They are familiar names on a long list, too long to itemize here, but you know them: in a nutshell, they're the Joe Kleins of the airwaves.

They've been around the block, they want you to know. They've seen it all, heard it all, and they don't get excited about bombshells that rock only the impressionable little people and political amateurs. They're casual and dismissive, because they're so damned sophisticated.

Of course their sophisticated dismissiveness slipped a bit in the 1990s, when they tortured us for months on end over the Clinton-Lewinski matter. Every day, every night, every unholy hour we were subjected to their seemingly endless hairsplitting over "what rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors." They agonized over the president's sexual proclivities and the constitutionally profound implications attached, over what the DNA evidence would "prove," over the purely collateral nature of Clinton's "perjury," and other such drivel. They grilled legal experts and politicians with clear agendas. They were frantic and obsessed.

It was their obsession that fomented just enough national hysteria to permit Republicans to proceed with impeachment proceedings with (mistaken, as it turned out) political confidence. Without the endless coverage and analysis, the GOP's malicious prosecution would have gone nowhere and a president would not have been paralyzed for more than a year.

But that was then. And this is now:

"President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

"Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval, also directing department officials to take the necessary steps to bring it into compliance with the law.

"Mr. [James] Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program.... He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law.

"It was unclear from [Comey's] testimony what authority existed for the program while the changes were being made."

Let's see. The president launched an illegal spying program. The president later intervened to protect and extend the illegal spying program. The Justice Department knew the program was illegal and told the president just that. Furthermore, what constitutional "authority existed for the program while ... changes were being made"? Is this really "unclear"? Try "none."

Now compare, if your gastrointestinal system can take it, the amount of coverage and analysis of this monstrously flagrant high crime to that of yesteryear's obsession with a moment of whoopee -- a moment of constitutional irrelevance that nevertheless consumed even liberal pundits to the point of distraction for months.

This high crime? As opposed to Clinton's "high crime"? They'll give it two days', maybe three, at the most a week's attention. And their attention will be oh so worldly and sophisticated and dismissive. Then it will be back to business as usual -- meaning seemingly endless coverage and analysis of how disorganized the Democrats are and how squirrelly any talk of impeachment would be.

That's the "liberal media" for you.

Spin-slop

Some pols and all spinmeisters practice a brand of verbal politics that baffles: the use of heated or derisive language when moderation would be more effective, and moderation -- often defensive understatements -- when heated or derisive language is more fitting. The unbalanced result is usually a laughable heap of distortion that no one takes seriously, and in reality only spotlights their desperation and panic. Just who is it they're trying to reach? Those who are as cerebrally lame as their simplistic message?

The reigning and uncontested king of this rhetorical "art" is, of course, Tom DeLay, that erstwhile pol involuntarily reduced to secondary status of full-time spinner. He now has a regular gig writing for The Politico, where, speaking for the right wing at large, he squares off with another erstwhile pol, Martin Frost, on topical questions. This week's: Can the president recover politically? DeLay's take was an amusing journey through the grandest of spinning styles -- and wholly predictable.

Thus it should come as no surprise that DeLay believes, or, more accurately, says, the president can recover. But it's the way he says it -- his unhinged deployment of full-blown spin -- that persistently checks and ultimately checkmates his message's intended thrust. It's so cocky, so untethered from seven years of empirical evidence, so over the top, it's literally unbelievable. Which is to say, one gathers that even he doesn't believe it.

DeLay's favorite tactics are the euphemistic phrase and unbounded vitriol, depending on the object of his emotions. Pulling out the former, he writes, "President Bush can recover his popularity [even though] the most important issue of his presidency, the war, has not gone as well as people want."

"Not gone as well," of course, implies that something, somewhere and in some way, has indeed gone well. The implication screams for at least some smidgen of proof, but DeLay doesn't even try. This pregnant omission therefore only highlights the fact that everything, in every way, has gone kaplooey in Iraq and even DeLay is smart enough to know it. And if he knows it, who doesn't? So just who in hell is he addressing?

Even better, though, is when DeLay struggles to get real and show the American people how truly realistic he is. To wit, Bush's "credibility has slipped." Slipped? Everyone knows it has nosedived, plummeted and bottomed out. As I recall, that's been in the papers. Hence "slipped" is merely another unbelievable scrap of nonsense tossed on the previously mentioned laughable heap of distortion. So how, in what way, does this advance the right's cause?

DeLay is at his Coulteresque best, however, when stoked on hate. And his most recent column did not fail to disappoint:

"The Democrat overreach; the Democrats' cynical and unforgivable lack of any principled contributions...;[Bush's] domestic agenda ... is being hijacked by overreaching liberal Democrats...; Sen. Harry Reid['s] ... indefensible and idiotic 'The war is lost' rhetoric...; the shapeless, cynical vacuum that is Democrat domestic policy."

Aside from their vitriolic essence, these passages perhaps more importantly advertise the right's adolescence: its adherents refuse to pronounce the opposition party's name correctly. Take that! they're saying. Boy, I bet that stung.

But it hardly stings. It's just pathetic. And for the life of me I cannot figure out why the right would want to appear pathetic ... and desperate ... and just plain silly.

And that's why this brand of verbal politics puzzles me. How, for example, does the bratty, deliberate mispronunciation of a proper noun advance the right's cause or enlarge its base or persuade anyone in any way? It seems self-defeating. But I guess that's why I love it.

Mitch McConnell: overwhelmingly creative

Ever since House Minority Leader John Boehner grumbled about a "Plan B" and then the Gang of Eleven immoderately stormed the White House to berate the commander guy, it's been public knowledge that Congressional Republicans of varying ideological intensities are looking to skedaddle from Iraq.

But my, my, what a terrible place they're in. For years they've been on the front lines defending George and denouncing cut-and-run pusillanimity, and now they find themselves more eager to vamoose than Democrats. Oh dear. How to undo all the flag waving, all the troop supporting, all those embarrassing defenses of The Decider's determination. Just to turn on a dime and start talking like Democrats won't do.

No, in trying times like these a spectacular scapegoat is needed -- someone or some thing utterly removed from recent party politics yet conceivably capable of taking all the blame. And for my money, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wins the scapegoat-innovation prize.

"The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment," said Mitch last weekend on CNN's "Late Edition." Not the administration. Not George. Not George's strategery. The Iraqi government.

Say, this has possibilities.

"So far, they've not been able do anything they promised on the political side," Mitch noted, without noting the irony, adding what "growing frustration" he and his fellow Republicans feel about the whole, distant mess. "Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government."

Maybe you're not disappointed, maybe the Democrats aren't disappointed, but by God the plucky Republicans are disappointed and they're not afraid to say so.

"I don't know what their problem is," he went on.

Yes, who woulda thunk that after 1400 years of slaughtering each other the Sunnis and Shiites would suddenly erupt into civil war? They're an odd, unpredictable little people.

"But this country has made an enormous investment in giving the Iraqis a chance to have a normal government after all of these years of Saddam Hussein and his atrocities," he continued, reaffirming Republican nobility and American normality.

"I think Republicans believe overwhelmingly, is that the decision to get on offense in the war on terror after 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq has protected us fully here at home."

A touch more reaffirmation. Never hurts.

"What we are all discovering, however, it's very difficult to set up a functioning government in places like Iraq and Afghanistan."

Again, how sorrowfully unpredictable. If only Mitch and friends had had some previously bungled imperial occupations to learn from, like, say, maybe British or Russian ones. (This clown is like the "I wonder where I could buy a Toyota?" guy.)

"If we give up prematurely, we go home, declare it over, will they be back here on the -- in our own country? And I think the chances of that are overwhelmingly likely."

Back here? I'm sorry, they left ... when? Whatever. The main point is that only Republican courage to stay in Iraq this long has prevented the murderous inevitability to which Democrats have been blind.

But, God bless this strange little people and their disappointing little government: "I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request," huffed Mitch.

In short, what are wise men to do? It is they -- the tragic disappointments -- who fouled up the perfect plan. And since they are sovereign -- right? -- we have no choice but to honor their wishes. It's not like we're in the habit of bullying our way around the world, you know.

So maybe Republicans couldn't quite nail down their perfect plan, through no fault of their own, but at least Mitch McConnell has found the perfect escape clause. In fact, he's writing it, as we speak.