P.M. Carpenter

Breitbart.com manages to top what I thought was its untoppable surrealism

This keeps getting better.

Having assailed the NYT's Maggie Haberman for reporting Trumpian reality, Breitbart.com is now calling on Reince Priebus to cancel CNN's GOP debate, scheduled for December 15. The "left-wing cable news network," bellows Breitbart's John Nolte in nearly unequaled indignation, "has been caught red-handed selectively editing Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s comments about a 'Muslim registry,' and doing so in order to make it sound as though he is agreeing to this registry. He is not."

He isn't? He didn't? Nolte provides a transcript to prove his case, which is that the "left-wing liars at CNN" — prose note to Nolte: "left-wing lizards" would have delivered more alliterative punch — "have intentionally edited the video to make it look as though Trump said 'absolutely' to a Muslim registry. What CNN edited out is in bold:"

Reporter: Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims who are in this country?

Trump: There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems, and today you can do it. But right now we need to have a border, we have to have strength, we have to have a wall, and we cannot let what’s happening to this country happen any longer.

Reporter: Is that something your White House would like to implement?

Donald Trump: I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.

Concludes Nolte: "Trump’s 'absolutely' is clearly in reference to strengthening the border." True, Mr. Nolte, except that it clearly is not. The reporter didn't ask about "a lot of systems" or the "border" or a "wall." What reporter would ask Trump about "strengthening the border"? Who doesn't already know his position on such? No, the reporter specifically asked about a "database system that tracks Muslims." The reporter's follow-up question, then, rather logically followed up to the question he had asked — which is why CNN cut the irrelevance of Trump's digression.

Breitbart's John Nolte then urges us to "Look at the whole transcript" — meaning the portion that Nolte provides. Up to this allowed point, let's give Trump a kind of dubious benefit of the doubt. Let's agree with Nolte that Trump is uncomprehending when it comes to answering questions put to him in a logical order. If that were true, then CNN, in its editing, would have indeed violated journalistic ethics.

But let us go further by following Nolte's advice to "look at the whole transcript" — meaning, the whole transcript. For it is here we see that it's the right-wing reptiles at Breitbart.com who are doing some intentional editing. Because the reporter goes on to ask: "How do you actually get them [Muslims] registered into a database?" Responds Trump, directly: "It would be, just, good management." The reporter pursues his questioning: "Do you go to mosques to sign these people up?" Trump's reply is again direct: "Different places, you sign 'em up at different places."

My dear Mr. Nolte, would you please explain how Trump's two explicit, straightforward answers in relation to Muslim databases were in reference to anything but Muslim databases? Could you also explain, in your righteously indignant way, how your truncating the transcript was journalistically ethical? Yet CNN's editing was not? CNN did not "make it sound as though" he agreed to a registry. He did agree to a registry. And if you don't believe my transcript, here's his agreement, on video:

 

 

Breitbart goes full surrealism

In-the-tank-for-Donald-Trump Breitbart.com is livid — livid, I tell you, as in hissy-fit livid — that the NYT's Maggie Haberman is so "in-the-tank for Hillary-Clinton" that her understanding of plain English has corroded. Yesterday, Haberman's lividity-inducing lede was this:

Under assault from Democrats and Republicans alike, Donald J. Trump on Friday drew back from his call for a mandatory registry of Muslims in the United States, trying to quell one of the ugliest controversies yet in a presidential campaign like few others.

Here's the supporting Trump-reporter exchange, helpfully quoted by Breitbart, which proves, asserts Breitbart, that Trump "called" for no such thing:

Reporter: Should there be a database system that tracks Muslims who are in this country?

Trump: There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems, and today you can do it. But right now we need to have a border, we have to have strength, we have to have a wall, and we cannot let what’s happening to this country happen any longer.

Reporter: Is that something your White House would like to implement?

Donald Trump: I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.

So Breitbart is now attempting to disprove the provable by quoting self-evident proof of the blatantly proven. It's a clever tactic, because its readers will buy it, simply because it has nothing to do with the facts but everything to do with media-bashing. That is now the right's answer to all that's provable — and it comforts an exceptionally receptive base. 

This is not news. I realize that. But it is perhaps the most flagrant instance of the right's journalistic surrealism yet. 

 

Warlord Trump could be in trouble - and the Chinese are indeed in Syria (well, sort of)

Politically, one can think of Donald Trump as ISIS; Trump and ISIS as the Japanese in China; the opposition to Trump and ISIS as Chinese communists and nationalists; and the communists and nationalists as a unity force that ceased killing each other just long enough to kill Japanese instead, which is to say, ISIS — or Trump.

So reports the WSJ (paywalled; I cheated) on the Trump front. The GOP establishment, which includes the money behind such diverse ideologues as Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, is finally pondering a unified "guerrilla campaign" to knock out The Donald. "In the absence of our efforts, Trump is exceedingly unlikely to implode or be forced out of China the race," says a memo written by Trump Card LLC, a dark-money organization committed to kicking Japanese Trump's ass. "The stark reality," continues the strategically (and hilariously) belated memo, "is that unless something dramatic and unconventional is done, Trump will be the Republican nominee." Doom, needless to say, would ensue.

Thus off to an air war the allied establishment's boodle hopes to go, running "fake pro-Trump ads that show him supporting socialized medicine, seizing property through eminent domain and taking other positions that stray from GOP orthodoxy; using a Trump impersonator to show him insulting people; and attacking his business record in 'stark, nasty terms.'" The objective, says the memo, is the demoralization — not conversion — of Trump's troops. If Trump Card LLC can just keep the paranoids and pixilated populists from voting — "especially in New Hampshire's influential first-in-the-nation primary" — it'll be happy.

The only trick is to get the communists (Cruz's money) and the nationalists (Bush's, Kasich's, perhaps Rubio's) together as a unified force. Later, once The Invader is vanquished, they can go back to killing each other, which is how God meant American politics to be played. (Frankly, I'm rooting for the Japanese.)

On the ISIS front, David Ignatius has a superb piece on the hope of international diplomacy, political settlements, and diversity unified. "Just getting ['Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and the key European nations'] to the table is an accomplishment" for John Kerry, observes Ignatius. "The next step would be a cease-fire between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the non-terrorist opposition"; then "a multi-pronged assault on the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra"; and ultimately "a period of de facto partition" in which Syrian federalism and a Whiggish "diminution of the president’s power" would reign. For the United States, the key, for now, would be the "multi-pronged assault" on ISIS — which wouldn't include the United States.

"If you come to the [diplomatic] party, then you’re on the guest list," says one source who’s close to the Assad regime. A similar thought is expressed from the other side of the conflict by one Gulf official: "If there’s a cease-fire, then whoever continues to fight will be on the 'red list.'"

The U.S. needn't have intervened (in any big way) in China, for the latter's internecine slaughter turned on the common enemy, the Japanese. Factional unity could do the hallowed same in Syria, against ISIS. I just hope that, domestically, factional unity fails against Shogun Donald Trump.

 

Another few months of "harsh" scrutiny, and the nomination is Trump's

From the latest NBCNews/SurveyMonkey poll:

Donald Trump has the frontrunner spot to himself, with 28% support among Republican and independent voters who lean Republican.

Ben Carson has dropped 8 points to 18 percent (which is second place, alongside Ted Cruz), but his recent, eloquent opposition to canine rabidity may re-exalt him. Marco Rubio is at 11 percent. At 4 percent, Jeb Bush is still crushing Chris Christie, who squats pathetically at 3.

I cite these figures not because they are in any way suprising, but because NBC's reporting on them is enormously perplexing:

The attention that is gained from being the lead candidate in the polls can be a mixed blessing. The media tends to shift its focus to those candidates leading the race - and that spotlight can seem especially harsh to those who are newer to the political scene.

Who's the "lead candidate"? Who's been the lead candidate for months? That would be Donald Trump, who for months has likewise been subjected to that "harsh" spotlight. And it hasn't changed a thing, because the rules have changed. There aren't any now. The GOP primary base has been anarchistically swallowed whole, yet NBC News seems not to have gotten the memo.

 

For damn sure, "A Time To Pray"

From the NYT's "You Can't Make This Shit Up" section: 

Pray for Ted Cruz.

That appears to be among the chief tasks to be undertaken by the Cruz campaign’s "national prayer team," a group announced on Thursday and scheduled to begin its work next month.

Mr. Cruz, who has aggressively courted the support of evangelicals, said the creation of the team would "establish a direct line of communication between our campaign and the thousands of Americans who are lifting us up before the Lord."

Group members will receive emails containing prayer requests and a short devotional every week, the campaign said. They will also be invited to take part in a 20-minute "prayer conference call" each Tuesday.

I joined. I signed up under the name of Cornelius Drake, which I have always thought had a certain pious, swashbuckling tone to it. Within seconds I heard from Ted himself, via email: My "great commitment to this campaign and our great nation means the world to Heidi and me." I was touched, greatly.

You too can join — and then be touched — right here. 

 

Charles the Bard

What is a Friday without some Krauthammerian wisdom, which falleth gently like the torrential rain.

Quoth Charles: "We [said President Obama] have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL." Scoffeth Wisdom: "Yes, and what would we do without Luxembourg?"

This from the man whose pet Iraq-war coalition of the bribed willing included the awesome powers of Portugal, Eritrea and Albania. What would we have done without them? The same as we did with them: We bore the brunt of the war. Yet this was no scoffing matter in 2003. Nay, it was Presidential Leadership.

Doth scribe Krauthammer apply cyberink to screen to-day while wearing his jester's cap? Or imagineth Charles some profundity? Either way, his latest is a characteristic comedy of errors, in which he confuseth not Antipholus of Ephesus for Antipholus of Syracuse, though he should.

 

Hillary Clinton's ISIS-Syria policy resides in whatever universe you do

In her speech yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations, it seems that Hillary Clinton's most distinguished accomplishment had almost nothing to do with foreign relations. Rather, she validated theoretical physics' string theory. That is to say, she proved there are indeed more than three dimensions; at least four, possibly seven, maybe more. And somewhere in the haze betwixt four and seven+, Clinton delivered two remarkably distinct, but somehow parallel, speeches.

Auditing this otherworldly phenomenon, on two different planets occupying the same space, were the NY Times editorial board and the NY Times' David Brooks. As reported by each, the no-longer theoretical hijinks ensued. But remember, I read these reports from another dimension on yet some other (same) planet, and I can't know which one you're on. Hence everyone's reality is their own.

The NYT editorial board heard, for instance, that Clinton's "sharpest break with Obama policies was a declaration that the fight in Syria is no longer about first ousting Mr. Assad and then focusing on the Islamic State." In Brooks' world — the one in which dinosaurs still roam, for that 65-million-year-old asteroid never came — Clinton "gestured to the reality that … Assad is not some secondary threat who we can deal with after we’ve tamed the ISIS monster." She would "[deal] with both Assad and ISIS simultaneously," writes Brooks — which means that Assad would still come first, as would ISIS. This approach, one suspects, lies in the sixth dimension, which is an exceptionally complicated one and therefore the one in which Mr. Brooks is most intellectually comfortable. In dealing with "bitter and complex jockeying between Sunni and Shiite, between Iran and Saudi Arabia," he continues, "the presidency is for grown-ups, not rank outsiders" (such as those who so sophisticatedly advocated war with Iraq 13 years ago.)

Elsewhere in Clinton's dimensions-ramifying speech, the editorial board is soothed that she "rejected the idea of reintroducing huge numbers of American combat troops in the Mideast." The board also cringes, though, for she "open[ed] the door to a bigger, and accelerated, role in the region." Fifty special-ops forces may be insufficient, she said. (In my simpleminded three-dimensional world, I say "may be" means "are.") Clinton "also urged that the 3,500 American troops in Iraq as trainers and advisers be given greater 'flexibility' to work on the front lines with the Iraqi Army." What does that mean? It means American troops would be doing the fighting for the Italian Armylike Iraqis, which further means that 3,500 wouldn't be nearly enough. What would be enough? You got it. A "huge number."

Where the editorial board cringes, Brooks shimmers with seventh-dimension hope: "Some of Clinton’s specific prescriptions were a little too limited and Obamaesque for my taste (she didn’t even call for more American Special Operations forces to improve the bombing campaigns, though she said she would be open to it). But she is thoughtful and instructive on both the big picture and the right way forward."

That being? That of advice, says Brooks, from Max Boot, the neocon nitwit who "proposes a campaign like the one that allowed the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban after 9/11 — a light footprint campaign using Special Operations forces and C.I.A. paramilitaries…. Once life becomes a miserable grind for ISIS soldiers, recruiting will suffer." Thus we suspect an eighth dimension in Brooks' mind. The Taliban is not overthrown, ISIS is now in Afghanistan, and so are we — still, in America's longest war.

In my world — in my limited little universe in which all I can grasp are the three dimensions of history gone wrong, empiricism proved valid, and reasoned prudence our best hope — Obama's ISIS-Syria policy is the correct one, albeit one on the edge already. And tweaking it upward means detonating an abyss.

 

Trump, Yahoo Politics, and no, there's no difference

I shall leave it to others to scrutinize most of Donald Trump's remarks in his appropriately named Yahoo! interview, for most of his remarks aren't worth scrutinizing. (Example: Aside from sanctioning special IDs for American Muslims and warrantless searches and the "very, very careful" monitoring of mosques, Trump called Bernie Sanders "a communist with a socialistic bent." Now I can understand someone accusing a socialist of having a communistic bent, but since socialism is the ideological foundation of communism, it's more than a little tautological to accuse a communist of being a socialist. Trump partly salvaged his rhetorical sloppiness by calling Marco Rubio — with great precision — "a lightweight.")

This remark, however, screams for attention:

I’ve been really happy with the debates. I’ve obviously done well in the debates because, since the last debate, I’ve gone even higher. And I’ve enjoyed the whole debate process, but frankly, I think, you know, more time should be given.

That from the guy who whined and wailed before and after the CNN-Reagan Library debate that it was "too long."

God I hope he makes it to the nomination. We really shouldn't be deprived of another full year of this, this … whatever it is. Gibberish²? 

 

When "not half-baked" is followed by a "but" …

Speaking this morning at the Council on Foreign Relations, Hillary Clinton advocated a no-fly zone in Syria. Simple as that. Except:

Russia … would veto any U.N. Security Council effort to set up such a zone.

Russian intervention has also seriously complicated any possible U.S.-led initiative to set up a no-fly zone outside the Security Council’s purview because … it would run the risk of direct confrontation with Russian aircraft.

[The Obama] administration has not been willing to take on the enormous deployment of military assets that would be required to set up a no-fly zone on behalf of its rebel proxies. "It would require suppression of enemy air defense, which would in turn require the U.S. and its allies to reach deep into regime territory and completely destroy Assad’s missile capabilities," [said one analyst].

Then there is the question of which faction in Syria would front the tens of thousands of troops needed to clear such a zone on the ground in order to counter further expansion in the area by the Islamic State.

Obama [has] hinted that the no-fly-zone talk was rooted mainly in politics. "Hillary Clinton is not half-baked in terms of her approach to these problems," he told reporters [in September]. "But I also think that there’s a difference between running for president and being president."

A domestic, no-lip-flapping zone would be preferable. But this, after all, is the silly season of simple solutions to mindbendingly complex problems.

 

The besieged O'Malley campaign

This is just sad. Amusingly sad.

Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for the [O'Malley] campaign, acknowledged it’s possible the redeployment of staffers from Baltimore [to Iowa] will result in reduction of the overall size of O’Malley’s campaign staff but said that is not the aim.

In other news, Field Marshall Rommel acknowledged today that post-D-Day redeployment of Wehrmacht forces from the Eastern Front will result in the overall size of its anti-Russian campaign, but said that is not the aim.

 

Save a leg for me, you turkey

A cherished reader couldn't resist torturing me. She forwarded this letter penned by the eminent Missouri Ozarks State Rep. Mike Moon, most of which I hereby reproduce for your nauseous consideration:

Governor Nixon [the Democratic blackguard] seems intent on allowing the relocation of Syrian refugees in Missouri.

I do realize that the refugees we should be scrutinizing most is one [sic] who professes the muslim [sic] faith. Unless I'm mistaken, a practicing 
muslim [sic] can do whatever is necessary for the "good" of the faith - telling "fibs" is a smallpart [sic] of what they [sic] might do [and a hugepart of what Ozarkian thumpers do]. And, from what I've seen, a practicing muslim [sic] comes in all flavors (black, white, brown, yellow - American, African, European, etc. etc.). A "white" lie could allow an individual to pass through the vetting process.

In this instance, we cannot afford to be too careful - especially given the fact that immigration officials report [which they haven't] they cannot properly vet the refugees….

Unless appropriate legislative action is taken, Governor Nixon may very well proceed with the acceptance of the refugees. For the safety of Missourians, we can ill-afford [sic] to wait. I ask that [the Speaker] begin the process of calling the General Assembly into Special Session in order to tie the Governor's hands, putting a stop to the potential Islamization of Missouri.

Mike Moon [bold italics, P.M. Carpenter]

I'll be spending Thanksgiving just miles away from this esteemed thinker and, truly, voice of The People. 

 

Obama's successful - yes, successful - Syria policy

President Obama is trapped in an extraordinary irony of a public-relations hellhole. The reality is that his policy of ISIS-containment is working, yet the prime manifestation of his policy's effectiveness is something the president is prohibited from noting publicly, lest he be swamped by cheap ridicule, even cheaper political opportunism, and charges of Democratic naiveté — which hard-charging Republicans have specialized in for decades.

The reality, or rather the jutting manifestation of that reality? ISIS's sensationalistic acts of terrorism, whether in Paris or the skies of Egypt, are signs of its increasing weakness. ISIS once scoffed at terrorism-oriented Qaeda for its want of a caliphate, which to ISIS was supreme. A caliphate — a territorially expanding caliphate — would fulfill its apocalyptic doctrine, and serve as a recruitment tool for dreamy fanatics. Contain that territory, cause it to gradually suffer the loss of territory, and one essentially defeats ISIS by stripping it of its "divine" reason for being. This is being done, and so ISIS has resorted to a kind of internal heresy: It's behaving like al Qaeda; it's looking outward for its survival, not inward, for it's decaying from within.

That reality — its containment (and indeed its reversal of territorial fortunes) — will, in time, cause its recruitment to suffer. Even dreamy fanatics will realize that the prophecy was a lie. For now, ISIS is compensating by committing sensationalistic, Qaedalike acts of terrorism abroad. These acts are signs of weakness, not strength. But for fear of sounding callous toward the many victims of ISIS's terrorism, Obama can't just come out and say "Be patient; ISIS's acts of external violence are positive signs of internal corrosion."

So he is left to suffer the bloviating ignorance of Republican wannabes whose only stake is in quick, extravagant, politically expedient fixes — the chief "fix" being a colossal step backward to U.S. intervention and Iraqlike immolation. Nothing would make ISIS happier, or spur its recruitment more. Its prophetic, apocalyptic dream would come true. That tactically we would prevail is unquestioned. Strategically, however, what next? Who fills the vacuum? And what magnitude of earthshaking, radical Islamic reaction would follow? How many years of U.S. occupation and consequent besiegement would become the bloody norm? (That's the neocon dream: decades.)

What's striking is how successful Obama's containment policy has been … considering. This morning the NYT has an excellent piece on what would charitably be called the problems behind organizing a grand international alliance against ISIS. Obama is rightly suspicious of Putin's motives (namely, "propping up President Assad," as President Obama put it, and "taking attention off Ukraine"); Hollande's reluctance to invoke NATO's mutual-defense provisions, which would not only send Putin into a paranoid panic, but corner Obama; Brit Cameron's lack of domestic support for a Syrian intervention; and a grab bag of self-cancelling, contradictory goals of "Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia."

Notwithstanding this snake pit of international intrigue and colliding objectives, ISIS is showing unmistakable signs of weakness. U.S. intervention would only revitalize the fanatics, and swell their ranks. Meanwhile, Obama is somewhat straitjacketed in pointing out that ISIS's seeming strength — now exercised through foreign terrorism — is in reality an infirmity.

Ultimately, only a political settlement — which Obama is pursuing — will subdue the nightmare that is Syria.

 

My selfish upside to a Hillary White House

What is most peculiar about Hillary's presidential inevitability is that the American electorate, by and large, thinks she stinks. In Florida, for instance, (which demographically is like a southern Ohio), the malodorous Donald Trump "has a favorable rating of just 41 percent among all voters, while 51 percent have an unfavorable impression of him." Hillary Clinton, on the other hand … actually, there is no other hand. The same percentage (41) have a favorable opinion of her, while even more (54 percent) have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton.

In head-to-head matchups? Clinton is now losing to Trump by 8 points (49-41), and by 9 points to the ineffably clueless Ben Carson (50-41).

Now it's true that these numbers won't hold. They are momentary fictions; mere fragments of an electoral mind clouded with establishment-hate and thus easily attracted to the flamboyant antics of a Trump, or the soothing imbecility of a Carson. The latter is Trump's Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley, so we can rule him out. Should Trump then survive, he won't. Women, Latinos, African Americans, the young and the educated — all of whom vote in presidential elections — will be aligned against Trump, no matter how unfavorable they might be toward Hillary.

And her unfavorability rating is likely to stand, since the hardest task for a politician is to reverse negative opinions about him- or herself. Hillary's negatives, true to form, have been nothing but consistent. Yet is it even conceivable that she could lose to a party (even top-ticketed by someone other than Trump) that has alienated every significant voting bloc but that of really pissed-off old white guys? No. No, it is not.

All of which means Hillary's honeymoon will expire before her inaugural address is fully delivered. Right or wrong, justified or not, the American electorate is simply unfavorable to Hillary Clinton. Congressional Republicans, of course, will make the most of that. And though that's going to make for one helluva bumpy ride for Hillary, it'll be political commentators' salvation — quite possibly the four most dramatic and fascinating years in American political history.

So please don't mistake. Yes, I'm resigned to a Clinton presidency; you could even say distressed. But as a commentator, I'm also perversely delighted.

 

Trump is doing well in N.H., too

After slipping a bit in New Hampshire earlier this month, "Trump is more firmly on top in the latest [WBUR] poll," at 23 percent. In explaining Trump's hold, there is, of course, the Donald's charmingly eloquent vision of "bombing the shit" out of bad guys, which always triggers a high stiff one among the GOP primary electorate. But there's also Ben Carson going the way of Michele Bachmann, which tends to happen when a politician is ridiculed by one of his own advisers. ("Nobody has been able to sit down with [Carson] and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East," said Duane Clarridge, a national-security adviser to Carson. If only the theologically virtuous Carson had been self-permitted to screech Let's bomb the shit out of ISIS … well, that was the only iota needed. Alas, verbal delicacy done did him in.)

Aside from being vastly gratified by Trump's N.H. resurgence, I liked this part of the WBUR story:

Many of Trump’s supporters, including Gerard Scolamiero, an Exeter Republican, say they’re done with political insiders. "I’m tired of it," Scolamiero said. "And I want someone who’s outside of the system, who’s not going to game the system for their own ends."

Point of inquiry. Does anyone know what that means? Does anyone think Mr. Scolamiero knows what that means? To "game the system" for one's "own ends" — that being one's political agenda — is the singular purpose of pursuing high office. If by "gaming the system" Mr. Scolamiero means personal profit, there are much easier ways to make $400,000 a year than to labor in nothing but greying grief as a U.S. president. Jeb Bush, for instance, could be making many times that as a Lehman-destructive executive at Goldman Sachs.

But I shall worry no further about whatever it is that Mr. Scolamiero believes Donald Trump, as an outsider, is doing. As long as Mr. Scolamiero continues to support him, I'm content.

 

Despite my objections, I am wholly resigned

Paul Pillar, of Georgetown University and formerly the CIA, tells the NY Times: "I think the conventional wisdom, that Hillary Clinton is a more hawkish person and would be a more hawkish president, with everything that adjective implies, is correct."

I believe Pillar is correct. So you can work backward to my agreement with conventional wisdom, which, notwithstanding John Kenneth Galbraith's guffawing at its stupidity, is in fact sometimes wise. In its application to Hillary and hawkishness, however, it seems more obvious than anything else. One needn't be wise — just conscious — to know of her alarming senatorial tenacity when it came to the monstrous misdeed of the Iraq war, followed, as President Obama's secretary of state, by her urging "the administration to join a NATO-led coalition to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya," by proposing "that more forces be left in Iraq," and by pushing "to funnel arms to moderate Syrian rebels."

Is there some mystery, some ambiguity, some cryptic something-or-other about Hillary's muscular inclinations that I'm missing? It seems to me the burden of proof is on Hillary's supporters to disabuse her detractors of their empirically founded fears; accordingly, her detractors are relieved of the obligation to "prove" that which is fearful. It's all right there, there in the record.

Reconfirming that record is former Obama adviser Dennis Ross (now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy), who reflects: "Both when she was secretary of state and since, she has had a sense of focusing not just on the cost of action, but the cost of inaction. President Obama has been much more inclined to the cost of action versus the cost of inaction."

In my view, President Obama has been right to do so, and Hillary — especially in Near Eastern matters, which is to say, the Middle East — has been wrong. The Iraq war was a self-evident calamity before it even commenced, and yet Hillary refused to disown her supportive decision until just recently. "Libya is now a mess," as Martin O'Malley correctly observed last Saturday night; "more [U.S.] forces … left in Iraq" (which was never realistic) would have only exposed more U.S. forces in Iraq; and funneling arms to Syria's handful of moderate rebels would have only accomplished the funneling of more arms to Syria's thousands of radicals. Where Obama has outweighed the cost of inaction, such as in Afghanistan, the result has been, let's say, less than fetching.

Is it, then, unreasonable to object to Hillary's candidacy, what with its empirical, presidential promise of more muscular engagements? The question is often framed cleverly: How can you (that being I) object to Hillary's candidacy when any Republican alternative is far worse? But that, in its cleverness, is also a nonsensical question. In the real world there is no Republican alternative (thank God), thus a nominated Clinton is as good as a President Clinton. I accept that, for I live in the real world. And so my objection means nothing, although objections to my objection reflect something quite objectionable to me: Let's everybody leap on the bandwagon and root root root for the inevitable home team. That I object to almost as much as Hillary's candidacy, however impotent my twofold objections may be.