Oh, I Think The Speech Went Well. Really. I'm Betting The Slate Staff Stops Rimming Councilwoman Palin Long Enough To Pretend To Admire It.

HERE'S the thing: I don't understand what the McCain campaign is supposed to be about, other than about electing John McCain, and I wonder if he does, either. We're just about to rid ourselves of a guy who seemed to desire the Presidency, to the extent that he did, as a means of giving the finger to his Daddy, and perhaps anyone else who'd bothered to explain to him that he was a lightweight, a sponger of money and power, and a bar-rag of booze, and we've seen how well that's worked out. McCain, increasingly, seems like the guy who wants to be President because the current guy screwed him over.

[Two things, here, and this is partly in response to everyone who says to me, "Gee, Riley, you must spend hours planning out these little rants of yours": first, I was never fully in the grip of Bush administration paranoia (speaking of things which the Psychiatric Industry doesn't feel there's money to be made by shilling). I didn't use the phenomenal power of this blog to warn anyone that they were about to suspend the 2004 elections, or that an attack on Iran was imminent. This is not to say there's no reason to think it capable of just about anything; I'm just trying to add some perspective to the observation that every time I type something about "nearing the end of the Bush II administration" it feels like whistling past the graveyard. While a bug crawls down your back. The other is this: I have a lot of things to say about this country, this culture, and these times that may be fairly regarded as scabrous, or the ravings of a comic, or not so comic, sociopath. Like all men, as Borges said, I have been given bad times in which to live. But, so help me, I could watch a Real World marathon and still not believe this country deserves the politics it actually has. Okay, that's not quite true. I could never watch a Real World marathon.]


I do remember watching George Wallace block the door to admissions at the University of Alabama (funny, though, I don't remember where or how I first heard that the whole thing was theatre; I was nine at the time, and it seemed vaguely threatening, like Wallace might be prepared to order his bodyguard of State Trooper Golem to shoot it out at any moment). I spent my teenaged years with Nixon in the White House, when for the first time, historians tell us, we had people installed at the highest levels of the Executive branch who thought "ratfucker" was a compliment. This was followed, far too closely, by the disheartening ascension of Ronald Reagan, who is sometimes thought of as Barry Goldwater with brain bubbles, but who I think is more accurately described as the Reverend Carl Macintyre with charm. All of this was embroidered with the figures of Strom Thurmond and Jessie Helms, John Stennis and James Eastland, the desiccated sons of Jubal Early, and the--again disheartening--cadre of Confederate bummers that followed in Nixon's wake like hookers in, well, Hooker's: Lott, Gramm, Gingrich, and their Prairie cousins, Dicks Armey and Cheney. (What was disheartening about this bunch of toads was that what would never qualify as crypto-racism in rational society--they, at most, generally remembered not to say "NIG-ra", or "wetback", when the cameras were rolling--was, in the Press, combined with their collection of bumper-sticker slogans and a savvy about television presence equal to the average midsize-market carpet remnant retailer who does his own commercials--apparently, to the Press of the 1980s, any backwoodsman who had mastered the Teevee, or, for that matter, the mysteries of the electrical outlet, was a veritable Technological Pioneer--to form something New! and Different! and Masterful! and never mind it was a tenth-generation Xerox of what States' Rights arguments were left from the 50s and 60s. The disheartenment of Ronald Reagan, meanwhile, had much less to do with politics--those were bad enough, but, beyond his collusion with Democratic Congresses to help bail out the Wealthy, mostly ineffectual--and more to do with a desperate national self-hypnosis to the effect that we could stand Truth on its head, just this once, and, since we weren't really doing anything else important, all pretend to be dress extras in The Space Age Finds Andy Hardy. With Ronald Reagan as the genial uncle with the henna-ed hair who teaches Andy a lot about life, before stealing his car and running off with Polly bound and gagged in the rumble seat.)

So, y'know, to me McCain's a minor leaguer with bum wheels. Sure, his record on the King holiday is shameful, but, let us be honest here, in this he was at least following the will of what seems to have been every single resident of the state of Arizona with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater. And since the major newspaper in those parts was the then-Pulliam-family-owned sister to the Indianapolis Racist Star, I like to imagine I have some insight, however doleful. I have no interest in, and really little tolerance for, the standardized left-blogosphere attacks on McCain, which have come to resemble the worst sort of Kos diarist on a three-day sugar bender. He's a reliable "conservative" vote with a mule streak. He's used his POW experience to further his political career. Of course. He overstates his military expertise. Of course. His reputation as a maverick is overblown, and is contingent upon sharing his party's notion that anyone who speaks civilly to a liberal Democrat--even in the Senate!--is a treasonous rat bastard. He didn't just flip-flop on major issues; he dove into an empty pool hoping to impress the yahoo "wing" of his party. Yes, yes, and yes.

I don't give a fuck how rich his wife is, or if he can remember how many houses (s)he owns, and I don't care if he knows what ROM stands for or if he's ever opened a jewel case. These are double-edged light sabers, batteries not included. I understand the impulse to scratch and claw, and I realize it's worthless to tell anyone not to, but there has never been a plummier election for issues-based harvesting. Maybe the belated recognition of that will not prove fatal.

And if it doesn't, there's John McCain to thank. I may admire the courage of the politician who speaks truth to potulent mobs of his own supporters, or even, in this case, "truth", but I'll be damned if that speech last night didn't half convince me the man would rather rub James Dobson's nose in dachshund dirt than win the election. Which may be the single best reason anyone could have to vote for him. Or at least admire him, with grudge.

The man wanted Lieberman. God knows Holy Joe is ready to help sink another major political party. Instead he had a "conservative" "religious" Veep thrust upon him, and we might now speculate whether he choose Councilwoman Palin the way you'd check the point of a stick before jabbing someone's eye with it. This, of course, might have been made clear had the announcement been met with a serious, and appropriate, round of "Th' fuck?" when the Press knew the mikes were on. And the choice got away from him, and pooches were screwed, first in the vetting, and second in the fact that Commander Palin turned out to be a lying nutjob hypocrite, which, of course made her immensely popular with that 30% of Americans who still tell pollsters they think George II is doing a bang-up job, and, anyway, history will absolve him. This was exponentially increased by the fact that the Press a) pays what passes for attention to these things and b) loves a good roll in the hay, provided there's a nice moral at the end to make them seem less prurient. The result, you may have heard, was a convocation of white people roaring as That New, Hot, Cub Reporter read someone else's wordsmithery off a teleprompter.

And yes, this is the way it's been going for the McCain campaign ever since the polls started telling them they had a chance to win. And yes, one may have flashed a secret smile last night, watching as much of the thing as one could stand, at the fact that McCain would use His Night to remind the religious whackjobs they still had to pull the level with his name on it in November if they wanted that Date With Sarah to materialize. Or one might have admired his brave trust--which had to be called into question when a protest broke out (imagine, Reader, a protest on the Disneyfied American political scene!)--that not one of a barnful of Republicans had smuggled in a handgun.  

But, y'know, he deserves those compromises he's been forced to make. If he were a real maverick he wouldn't have to, and he wouldn't be the Republican nominee. He had the standing, in 2000, to blow the lid off our filthy politics, and to strangle the Bush administration in its cradle. He's had the chance, all along, to denounce the hate-filled, thieving charade of the Republican majority; instead (like my boy Dick Lugar) he crafted himself a mask so he could keep voting with them reliably. It suggests that the McCain of "because her father is Janet Reno"; the McCain who reversed himself on torture--on torture!--and hugged George W. Bush, is the Real McCain. At the very least, his hatred of one extremist sect of his extremist party doesn't make him sane. It just means he might be part-way there.

Knocked Up In Wasilla With The Juneau Blues Again

OKAY, first, it turns out Peggy Noonan may possess half a brain. Fittingly, we learn this only by accident.  With apologies to Tom Lehrer, if I hadn't already lived through Heinz Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize the news might'a killed me.

The Noonan, Murphy, Todd ménage demonstrates, once and forever, that at least some of these people are in possession of something approaching normal intelligence, which is precisely the point, and that the major requirement for a teevee/wingnut sinecure pundit, after hair and cosmetics in the former case, is the ability to shoehorn it into a single dimension. You don't hear anybody, not a single cable noisemaker, certainly not Tom Fucking Why Are You Here Again? Brokaw, talk like this on the air. You hear discussions of The Experience Question, speculation about the vetting process or the political strategy behind it, and all of that in a sort of Neverland version. What I doubt anyone has heard, really, is an honest What Th' Fuck Is That? regarding Councilwoman Palin.

It's vertiginous. The more people proclaim they Love Uh Murrica, the more willing, even eager, they are to see her in the hands of witlings. The Republican party apparently now sees as its mission the igniting of bags of dogshit on liberalism's door (let's rephrase that; it now embraces that as its mission, the current generation having tired of pretending to read the Cliff's Notes to Reflections on the Revolution in France and The Wealth of Nations).

And people like Chuck Todd, who are supposed to be in a position to, uh, note it, now see as their mission the touting of cartoon horse races, which, above all else, requires convincing the rubes to bet up the losers. Noonan, Murphy, and Todd, behind the scenes, discuss how "bummed out" "everybody" is about the choice--has that been reflected in any of the coverage? None that I've seen, though I restricted myself to PBS, on the grounds that I can do so without hurling very often, which is more of a personal thing than a tribute to their coverage. Still, the Democratic convention was forty-eight hours of Clinton v. Obama, followed by twenty-four of creeping disappointment when it didn't materialize in person like it materialized in the Press.

Look, I'm realistic enough to realize these people will not tell the truth on air, not if they hope ever to return, but if you're going to avoid the obvious, couldn't you at least try to be fair about it, and not compensate by making shit up and treating that as obvious?

By the way, Noonan's mea culpa is a hoot, in that she apologizes--twice!--for using "a barnyard epithet"! Peggy, Peggy: you said "bullshit". In fact, you excused yourself and said "bullshit". Sheesh, it's probably the one thing in your professional life you shouldn't apologize for.

(Was it David Steinberg in his prime who had the bit about finding "bullshit" in the dictionary? "There it is--bullshit, noun,  and it's defined as 'Nonsense'.  How'd they find the only guy who doesn't know what 'bullshit' means?")

My tape of last night's Festival of Patriotic Fart Lighting cut out after only one hour (and two African-Americans), so I had to catch Councilwoman Palin on the YouTube. And, y'know, I understand that the thing got away from McCain a little bit, but they asked for it. Having been buoyed by a month of good polling numbers they finally found themselves with the obligation to do something beyond hope Obama continued to come to them, and they shored up the fucking base. You'd think if there was one Republican out there who wouldn't allow the Convention to become a replay of 1992, except dumbed down two grade levels in reading comprehension, it would be Maverick McCain. It was redolent of that pathetic Joint Session speech of Junior Bush's in Spring 2001, when the Republicans were jumping up to applaud his finishing sentences like he'd just revealed Phryne in all her glory. I know, I know: we're at the Republican National Convention. Hard to miss when there're more black faces at the podium than in the audience. It was either that or a tape of a suburban megachurch during National Brotherhood Week.

But, c'mon, somebody gave Commander Palin that speech to read. Were they really unaware it was being televised, meaning it was going out to people who aren't just killing time and wildlife before The Rapture? Good Lord, you're the party responsible for the mess people Out There--the people you claim Grandma Palin is One Of--find themselves neck deep in. Cheering throngs of yahoos would seem to be the last thing you'd want to show, but then, maybe you're down to your Last Thing. We can only hope.

By the way: spare me any more fucking lectures about how Liberals, or The Angry Left, or however it is you refer to sane people these days, "just don't get" evangelicals. Yes, yes, yes, you publicly excuse your own if your fat gets anywhere near the fire. This does not come as a shock to anyone who's been paying attention. If Young Miss Palin had denounced the war in Iraq and claimed Jesus was the Prince of Peace we'd've seen how quick you are with the shunning. And, yes, you hate sex and love reproduction. Also not new. Sin is only really a sin if people you consider sinners are doing it, though you'll never put it that way, because Jesus puts a premium on artificial humility. At least His sales reps do.  We get it. Now, you get this: we see through it. If you really think it's still 1992, at least quit trying to pretend you aren't the same bunch who thought Murphy Brown was a real person.

And if it's really a private matter then shut th' fuck up. Quit parading that "she chose Life", excuse me, bullshit; none of us has any insight into the real dynamic at work here. We do know two things: that her mother was willing to sacrifice her on the altar of an ambition most sane people believe she had no claim on, and, two, that there is apparently no real hurry on the matrimony thing, which I would imagine would knock the props out from under the immorality/rising illegitimacy rate argument. That is, I would, if I didn't understand evangelicals.

Strap On Your Thinking Caps, America, As Old Gold Cigarettes And Your Local Sinclair Dealer Bring You Well, That's Remarkable!

David Brooks, "What the Palin Pick Says". September 1

John McCain is not a normal conservative.

Well...that's Remarkable! David Brooks, since, starting with the collapse of the Republican party at the beginning of the second Bush term, you've been telling us how awesomely diverse "conservatism" is. But then suddenly, when its political fortunes are tied to a guy who is intensely hated by the biggest lunatics in his own party--not exactly a scarce commodity--for reasons that in the real world could only be termed "microscopic", suddenly there are "normal" and "abnormal" conservatives. And what's especially odd about that is, the more "normal" a person appears in real life, the more likely he is to be an "abnormal" conservative. And--especially,and--vice versa.

He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government.

I'm sorry, David Brooks, but...that's not Remarkable! So this might be a good time to reacquaint you, and the folks playing along at home, with the Old Gold™ Rulebook. Old Gold: not a cough in a carload! Okay, you are an extraordinarily overpaid political pundit whose sole requirement is to squeeze out roughly 1500 words a week, plus your main side gig, teaming every Friday with Mark Shields to reprise your Carl Reiner/Mel Brooks routine as The Prototypes for Disney World's Rejected Hall of Animatronic™ Talking Secretaries of Transportation, which, frankly, is beginning to wear a little thin, if you'll forgive some well-meant criticism. Your job, so far as any of us can tell, involves circulating Republican talking points while giving the impression of an imminent asthma attack, thus making anyone responding to even the most heinous of these seem like a heartless bully, and possibly a legally culpable one as well. To complete the image, you are supposed to seem uncomfortable with the torchlit crusading of the party's Bronze Age "social" "conservatives" without, naturally, denouncing their excesses or turning away their votes.

So in this instance, for example, reciting your high school debate team talking points --oops, sorry, I forgot; you were a "liberal" back then, am I right? Eh?--about "the proper size of government" (now marked down from "shrinking the size of government") is simply too much at odds with "Reality" to be Remarkable. Ronald Reagan talked practically non-stop about his abstract intentions to reduce the size of government, and when he left the federal payroll was 10% larger and the budget was up 25%, and there was a new cabinet position. Bush II, of course, is worse yet, although the cabinet thing remains tied.

He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda.

He seems to pander to it pretty energetically, though.

As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

Okay, we haven't made it out of the first paragraph yet, and you're already flailing.  Deep cleansing breath.  Let's just run through that list of McCain's supposed apostasies, shall we? First, and foremost, he co-sponsored campaign finance reform. Two, he sass-mouthed Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones U. back in 2000, though seven years later he'd join the choir and endow a pew. Three, he voted against The Bush Tax Cuts, because he insisted on program cuts to go with them. Four, he has, on occasion, behaved like a Senator, notably in that Gang of Fourteen business, which, one might note, got the so-called "Democrats" in the Senate to agree not only to dance at the successive bachelor parties for John Roberts and Sam Alito, but to do so strictly for tips, in exchange for the Republicans not doing something (the "nuclear option") which would not exactly have played well everywhere.  The fact that Limbaugh has chosen to release torrents of intestinal gas while McCain was in the elevator with him does not constitute a GOP policy dispute for most sane people.

And speaking of gas, whenever you fill up, remember to look for Dino the Dinosaur and the fine family of Sinclair gas and lubrication products.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

Judges? Okay, we're giving that one a Not Truly Remarkable, since simply making shit up about McCain's supposed anti-corruption track record while ignoring his campaign's continuing reliance on lobbyists is not Remarkable at all, but neatly parodying your own parody of Democratic National Convention platitudes from last week--if that's what you were up to--is.

Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy.

Okay, points for turning the negative space of Palin's accomplishments into a sort of amorphous blob of philosophical incertitude while simultaneously not being George Will. Remember, the "not George Will" bonus is available only once per round.

Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska.

Unremarkably, since the "conservative" social agenda is 99% jawbone and 0.001% legislative action.

[Speaking of which, her Eagle Forum questionnaire, with the famous "If 'Under God' was good enough for the Founders it's good enough for me" response, seems to have been taken down, but the social agenda she "hasn't pushed" is still cached here. ]

She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Judges? Okay, the ruling is Not Remarkable, with a minor dissent on the grounds that reusing leftover Bush 2000 clichés is supposed to be avoided, just like all other references to the formerly misunderestimated Winston Churchill Junior. They're ruling that one inadvertent.

Incidentally, I'm from Indiana, where you get credit (or blame) for "working with liberal Democrats" if you pass Evan Bayh in the hall and wish him a good morning. So I'm just curious as to where Sarah Palin finds liberal Democrats to work with in Alaska? And what do they do--play three-handed Euchre?

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Fake bio, David. As Republican as, well, claiming to be a former liberal. That's your second warning.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

Okay, again, we'll pass it, even though Augeas is a registered Republican and the last thirty years worth of oxen shit is the overflow from Reagan's bedpan.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience.

Okay, Remarkable! in that in the previous 350 words you had not a) mentioned her lack of experience; b) talked about your reaction to it; nor c) led anyone to believe you thought the highest office in the Land required anything much beyond a lack of governing philosophy and a PR department with no scruples.

She seems like a marvelous person.

So do most sharpers at cards, except they tend to avoid lying to your face before the pot gets big.

She is a dazzling political performer.

That's Conditionally Remarkable! David Brooks. How many times, exactly, had you seen her before Monday's deadline? Two?

And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent.

I'm warning you, Brooks. Not only are you out of here if you pull that Bobo shit again, but I'm going to personally give you an asthma attack that'll last til Election Day.

On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

Just as an aside, does it hurt when you type something like that? Is there some point where every artifact of self-respect has crumbled to dust?

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

Just like Old Golds™ have a tendency to taste rich, smooth, and mild. C'mon, Brooks. She's a fucking Jesus-addled nutball.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

Now, that's truly Remarkable! seeing as how it was the combination of Christ-like certitude and neocon "morality"-based foreign policy that provoked the Sov Russia into jabbing a stick in our eye the minute it had the chance, while Republican-controlled Congresses kept bettering their own earmark records in a way Michael Phelps would have envied. As for "reforming the process of government", what? The biggest dump ever taken on the Constitution, absent rebel armies being camped 100 miles from DC, wasn't enough reform for you?

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

Wait, David, Vertigo! is on another network. There's a clear-cut moral imperative for us to act as though we can order Russia around--in the Caucases!--but protecting the health of our own citizens is a tricky moral quandary lined with metaphysical landmines? Do you shave yourself in the morning?

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

BZZZZZTT! I'm so sorry, but three inadvertent Bush clichés and you're Out! like one of those cigarettes that doesn't use Old Gold's™ luxury blend of carefully selected tobaccos from around the globe! Here's a carton for you, plus our home game, and a $25 gift certificate to Red Lobster.  Better luck next time, David Brooks, and when you see Mark Shields, talk retirement! G'nite, folks!

Dear Senator McCain:

JUST to clarify, I agree that the pregnancy of young Miss Palin is a personal matter.  I do, however, believe that under the First amendment we are justified in asking whether the father is Janet Reno.

Yours,

Riley

Shorter New York Times Sunday Magazine: It Takes A Truly Remarkable Leader To Be So Thoroughly Hated

Peter Baker, "The Final Days of the Presidency of George W. Bush". August 31

CONTINUING the Times Sunday Magazine personality-profile technique pioneered in its pages with Zev Chafets' Rush Limbaugh: Hero or Savior? namely, that the best way to know a man is to crawl up his rectum tongue first, Peter Baker discovers there's no one on the planet who doesn't admire George W. Bush's stoicism in the face of the utter, spit-on-the-ground contempt he's justly held in by the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Or at least none worth talking to.

...friends say that Bush, who just turned 62, has been looser lately, more relaxed, more willing to joke around and even do a little dance for the cameras from time to time....

Whatever the president’s virtues, they remain unappreciated in his own time....

If anything, it may be that the low numbers have become almost a badge of honor for Bush....

Donald Ensenat, a friend of Bush’s for more than 40 years who worked as his chief of protocol before stepping down last year, said that the president’s view, as he paraphrased it, has come down to this: “I’ve already taken my last licks for being unpopular, so these last two years I do what’s right — that’s my job, not with my finger in the air.”...

Stoicism has been a hallmark of his second term....

He can flash anger over what he considers unfounded criticism or at something on his schedule he does not like, but he does not wrestle with his inner demons, at least not out loud....

As Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Texas pastor who gave the benediction at both of Bush’s inaugurations and officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding, told me, “Assuming the fetal position is just not in his vocabulary.”...

Friends and advisers usually cite what some call “the three Fs” to explain Bush’s seeming serenity in the face of so much tumult — faith, family and friends.

“It’s his deep-seated faith in God,” says Mike Conaway, who once worked for Bush and now serves as a Republican congressman from Texas. “He’s rooted in his walk with Christ. He believes he’s got a role and he’s doing what God wants him to do.”...

And then there is his near-fanatical dedication to his workout regimen, which friends credit for keeping him on an even keel....

The devotion to exercise and schedules seems to stem from the same discipline Bush summoned to quit drinking at age 40....

He also likes to look ahead rather than back....

“I feel so strongly about my principles and my values, and I’m an optimistic guy.” --George W. Bush

...the father said the son could handle the heat. “He’s fine,” he said. “We talk all the time. It’s been a tough run in terms of criticism. But that’s all right. He’s strong.”

Bush's unpopularity moves through the piece like objects in a Robbe-Grillet novel, all shiny and oddly self-propelled; Bush is unpopular because, you know, the Iraq thing, but Iraq is now a success. So now he's suffering from what G.W.H.M.S.Pinafore Bush calls "a bad break on the economy", which is doubly ironic, according to Baker, because back when Iraq wasn't a success no one gave him credit for the sparkling economic recovery his policies had brought to nearly one full percent of the population.  Life's just like that.  

We ask again--we're endless fascinated by this--would you, could you, write this sort of thing without feeling some deep emotional or legal compunction, such as you, your newspaper, and your profession being largely unindicted co-culprits? Would you say this sort of thing just for money? Would you spend good money to get someone to say it? Seventy percent of the public sees George W. Bush as a failure, and one of historic proportions. Are they all misinformed? Are they simply too illiterate to catch on as Washington insiders try to explain things? Does current market research suggest they never read the Times Magazine, nor patronize its fine advertisers? The public has been mislead about The Surge through a successful marketing campaign, but the public had long since tuned out, and rightly so.  

Happy endings, Orson Welles once noted, depend on stopping the story before it's over; crediting The Surge for "progress" in Iraq relies on sculpting it while it's still going on, plus a unique trick of perspective: "Surge" is synonymous with the (desperate) escalation of forces in 2007 back up to circa 160,000. It also credits, by extension, the tactical changes under General David Petraeus, the so-called Seize, Clear, and Hold.

What the "vindicated" Surge does not convey--this is doubly unsurprising when all one's sources are current and former Bush underlings now aiding the production of one's upcoming book--is how much of its "success" consists of redefining failure upward. The Surge, like the Soviet System in the old Solidarity gag, is a success because it solves problems we otherwise wouldn't even have.  My Iraq Adventure, v. 1.0 included as a prominent feature the rubbing of Sunni noses in the sand; the Surge now succeeds on the back of the reluctant admission--as in "having no choice but"--that bribing Sunni tribal chieftans was preferable to the Bizarro World ideological purity which had held (since Vietnam, kids!) that the mere application of US military force coupled with a refusal to let Dirty Hippies, in association with Librul Media, Inc., lose another war for us, guaranteed success. We can couple this with the similar pressure put on the Shi'a-dominated government, or "government", to provide the Republican party with pleasant news going into 2006, and with the largely-complete ethnic cleansing and enormous numbers of (largely Sunni, largely well-off and educated) refugees now gone to Jordan and somewhat north, south, east, and southwest of there. It's difficult to understand what species of historian is supposed to be trumpeting this sort of thing in fifty years time, given even a slightly elevated vantage point on the accomplishments of American imperialism over the past half-century. Latter-day Truman worship (not exactly a universal, to begin with) depends on a continuation of the Cold War narrative; God help us if Bush doesn't prove to be the culmination of that folly.

Of course this points out the dangers of reverse-Santayanaism, the idea that the future will surely be smarter than we are, but in this case it's difficult to see how it could get any stupider than the eager recipients of "The Surge: The Riskiest Presidential Decision in a Generation", and "George W. Bush: The Man Who Makes Tough Decisions Without Regard for Opinion Polls". The Surge was specifically cooked up by what remained of the people who brought you the Iraq Disaster in the first place. It amounted, basically, to a scheme to keep US troop levels elevated by extending tours and reducing the amount of time between them. In this time frame--that is, the run-up to the 2006 midterms, beginning with the massive hemorrhoidal discomfort among his own, majority, party in spring 2005--Bush the Decider had basically three options: A) find a way to double-down; B) accept some sort of wishy-washy Ur-Baker/Hamilton, let's negotiate with the Terrasts scheme; or C) Cut and Run. Is there really any reason to accept the idea of A) as the risky choice? It's his only fucking choice, both in terms of the supreme hubris that got us to that point in the first place, and in terms of the best political calculation with regard to 2006. What in the personal history of George W. Bush suggests he'd have chosen otherwise? What example is there of Bush every making a decision that went against the Republican grain? We are speaking of the most ideological administration in US history, and the titular head who never vetoed a single measure passed by a Republican majority. It's the most risible aspect of the ludicrous notion of George W. Bush, Steely-Eyed, Poll-Averse Decisioner-in-Chief.

This is enough of an indictment (of the simple-minded Surge Be Workin' media coverage; alas, there will never be sufficient indictment of Bush himself), but we surely can add "Compared to What?" We have no way of knowing, now, what so slight a nod in the direction of Reality as the Baker/Hamilton "Do Not Open Until After Xmas Midterms" Report would have accomplished, just as we have no real way of knowing what sort of realpolitik shenanigans have been pulled behind the scenes to bolster our "success". In 2005/2006 the administration was wallpapering Iran with threats of imminent retaliation. Since then the Sadrists have been relatively pacific. Was that another Bush "decision"? If so, when did he announce it? And we have no way to gauge the ultimate fate of post-invasion Iraq. The one thing we can say is that it was sold on horseshit, executed on moonshine, and continued for years after its ultimate failure for the one and only purpose of saving what remained of Bush's face and leaving the cleanup to his successor. Mission Fucking Accomplished, and thanks almost entirely to a Democratic Congress elected in 2006 to force the opposite, and which, refusing to do so, now shares his Sticky Shit on the Dumpster Bottom-level approval ratings, though not his backlog of toadying apologists.

In A Related Note, Kindly Get The GILF Jokes Out Of Your System By Monday. Thanks, And Enjoy The Weekend.

PETER Baker, in the Times:

The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain — daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message.

Really? Because it seemed to me to be the exact opposite--the result of an over-long, over-thought, overly-vetted process that involved a few dozen exorbitantly-salaried consultants with their several dozen fingers firmly on the pulse of hyperreality, answering questions they'd have been better off not asking.  Palin's the kind of mistake only a committee could make (cf. Dan Quayle, who, even though you know it didn't happen that way, you could see Pappy Bush choosing in some slightly inebriated haze).  Better choose someone who looks like she knows what 'operating system' means! Should have executive experience, but no Washington Insider status! As close to a caricature of a Red Meat Republican as we can find! Must be pro-Big Drill. And, of course, A choice lazy journalists will hail as Maverick McCain being daring, hazardous, and defiantly off-message! Mission Accomplished, and in the worst possible fashion. "Qualified to be one minor anesthesia misshap during a bi-monthly tumor removal away from the Presidency" obviously didn't make the cut; I don't know whether that was intentional or not, given that these are experts in proposing blind guesses about what people who read Us weekly will decide about complex issues. I think the two things we can say are, one, that viewing themselves now as having a chance to win the thing they were desperate to knock Obama's speech out of the news hole, and they succeeded in the same way having the candidate butcher a cow in a campaign stop in Kansas City would've (It is easier to get to the Top than to stay there!); and, two, that the one bit of floundering they didn't do is take the whole "Hillary Democrats, Ripe for Plucking" routine seriously, not in nominating an anti-Feminist, anti-Reproductive Rights, We've Got Lots of Good Unplundered Tundra Up Here ideologue. Clearly, she's a jab-it-in-your eye pick, one that'll give the moronic base a satisfyingly anti-abortion woman they can accuse Democrats of being hypocritical for opposing. Everybody knows that, right?

Yet in making such an unabashed bid for supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he risked undercutting his central case against Senator Barack Obama.

Oh.

Altitude Sickness

Trust me, it gets connected.

David Brooks, "I'se Gwan T'Be De New Preserdent!"

MSNBC, ostensible news network

Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel, respected career journalists

LET'S just tidy up a bit before we make a bigger mess. I have no need to look for inspiration in a President of the United States, and if I felt any I'd re-read Lincoln's letters or FDR's bio. There's not much in life short of great physical pain or severe deficit that's worse than other people's enthusiasms. Of course, in real life one can simply wait for the enthusiast's inevitable comeuppance; even in science and Art effusion loses out to sobriety in the end. The enjoyment of Keats is not affected one whit by Edna St. Vincent Milay remaining in print. Or Jewel.

Anyway, Democrats. If it weren't for Republicans there'd be a bounty on 'em, with apologies to Dan Jenkins. And if there are any left after this week who still imagine Keith Olbermann speaks for them, or anything other than the remarkably distended Ego which is endemic among his tribe, we ought to make an exception. NBC should not be ashamed of itself, only because NBC should have died of embarrassment in 1976 when, in what was then an obviously desperate attempt to latch onto some of that Barbara Walters/News for Monosyllabic Mouth Breathers cachet, but would these days be termed Sound Marketing, it had John Chancellor highlight a segment on the startling link between Marihuana use and gynecomastia. Bear in mind this was 1976; had there been even the most tenuous connection half the male population under thirty would have been walking around looking like Anita Ekberg, and Paul McCartney would have been frequently mistaken for Morganna, the Kissing Bandit. Everything the Peacock's done since then has been a simple waste of oxygen.  

Speaking of Brokaw, it's funny how the memory plays tricks; I honestly can't recall either he or Ted Koppel mentioning "kabuki" during the 1984 Republican convention, or complaining of its length or lack of substance. Y'know back when either could have made a difference. Koppel actually said that shorter conventions would leave the networks with extra cash they could spend on coverage of Pakistan! The man needs to be checked for female breast development. This is you in fifteen years, Olbermann. Fuck trans fats, man. Ego kills, and from the top down.

Of course, there's always a Republican there when you need him (and, especially, when you don't) to remind you that while liberals, and the media, and the librulmedia are the improperly handled poultry product and dirty wooden cutting board of the national discourse, there's only one real source of massive E. coli infestation. David Brooks, speaking in what might be described as Late Middle Op-Ed Ebonics:

We must close the book on the bleeding wounds of the old politics of division and sail our ship up a mountain of hope and plant our flag on the sunrise of a thousand tomorrows with an American promise that will never die! For this election isn’t about the past or the present, or even the pluperfect conditional. It’s about the future, and Barack Obama loves the future because that’s where all his accomplishments are.

Honestly. I once stood maybe twenty yards from a horrendous automobile crash. You know the cliché survivors use about everything being eerily quite in the aftermath? It's true. And it had to have been what it sounded like at the Gray Lady after he turned this thing in.

For godsakes. We are barely treading water in the wake of thirty years of Republican control, and those of us lucky enough to have survived to this point are still at imminent risk of being sucked into the vortex or decapitated by flotsam. Were I to ask you what distinction there would be between the imaginary country ruled by David Brooks over that period and the actual one he served as a male cheerleader, what would you answer? And how much of that is due to the Morning in America, One for the Gipper schmaltz it was festooned with? How much is owing to Support Our Troops, Honor Our Lapels, and Just Wait Here, Your Boat'll Be Rising Any Minute? There's nothing wrong with pointing out that the Democratic National Convention just passed was rife with platitude and lousy on specifics, assuming, that is, that Olbermann hasn't been named National Censor while I've been typing. But it's quite another thing to try to pretend that this represents some horrifying break with tradition. I happen to feel that bunting, and faith-based appeals, and promises to Get bin-Laden, And This Time We're Patriotic! are sadly misplaced at best; David Brooks ought to look upon them as a fucking gift from a faith-based Higher Power which did not see fit to have the Democrats stomp him and his party into a puddle, as would befit Omniscience.

It's Like You're Readin' My Thoughts, Man.

Sarah Kershaw, "Look Closely, Doctor--See the Camera?" August 27

OKAY, I'm no expert, but I think that if you're writing a piece about paranoid psychosis it's best not to introduce the same character twice in succeeding paragraphs in a slightly different guise:

“Most likely these people would be delusional anyway,” said Dr. Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York, who said he saw five patients at the hospital from 2002 to 2004 with Truman Show delusion. Dr. Gold and his brother, Dr. Ian Gold, the Canada research chair in philosophy and psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, came up with the term “Truman Show delusion.”

“But the more radical view is that this pushes some people over the threshold; the environment tips them over the edge,” said Dr. Joel Gold, who is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University. “And if culture can make people crazy, then we need to look at it.”

Emphasis mine.  Of course, it might help matters if said character didn't speak in self-anhilating sentences, but, hey, he's a psychiatrist. You're the one who opened the box.

The delusions are fueling a chicken-and-egg debate in psychiatry: Are these merely modern examples of classic paranoia fed by the current cultural landscape, or is there something about media like reality television and the Internet that can push people over the sanity line?

Trick question, right?

Are we taking audience questions? Because I'd like to know if the coffee and doughnuts are for everyone, or if they're just virtual, and, as a follow-up, th' fuck are you going on about?

Because unless everyone's lying to me, it's 2008. Mass media's been bedeviling us for a century now; psychiatry even longer. (Did you know Uncle Siggy and Nicola Tesla were born two months apart? And they're both Austrians? Neither did I. And they've both been used by a succession of crackpots to excuse practically anything. But only one was a cokehead.)

Maybe you could have gotten around to this a little sooner, when all the paranoids thought Harding and Cox were speaking to them through the walls, or the contents of Fibber McGee's closet threatened them every time they turned a doorknob. You know, before we were all subjected to Jim Carrey? I know, I know, Science proceeds at its own pace. So too, presumably, does psychiatry. But there comes a time when we have to question Knowledge for its own sake and the pretense of expertise where there is none. I mean, it's one thing when the promise of Safe Uses of Atomic Energy fails to pan out; it's quite another to still have a nuclear power industry dedicated to lobbying the government to ignore the perils it subjects the rest of us to, fifty years after the fact.

And here's the thing about that, for me, at least: I can at least see some of Big Nuke's argument. What's yours? Psychology seems to have turned its entire supply of what Jonathan Miller called "the charismatic panoply of modern professional power" to the service of The Almighty, as in Dollar, since--not surprisingly--the election of Ronald Reagan. In that time we've deprived millions of people of their right to walk around loose because human beings like to smoke a little reefer, while turning mental patients out to live, and die, on the streets. We've decided that modern concepts of mental or emotional competence simply get in the way of a sufficiently satisfying level of applied 17th century penal practices, and we've reduced legal considerations of sanity to a sentencing footnote in many cases. We've executed people who had the mental competence of nine-year-olds.  Where's psychiatry been while all this was goin' on? Not on the ramparts, unless by that you mean the front lines of convincing every parent whose child tokes a doobie or develops a case of sassmouth that he urgently requires your ministrations, please pay in advance. We continue to "educate" vast segments of the population with methods that are hopelessly foreign to them, and then blame them for their failure. For godsakes, the learnéd men and women of the biological sciences, geology, and paleontology take their precious time to fight the good fight over crackpot state and local school boards injecting Jesus into science texts. Where's psychiatry on the dehumanizing effects of cookie-cutter education, of treating high school students like criminals, of the shameful discrepancies between rich and poor?

It is, apparently, busy writing books on whether we're being driven insane by reality television. For chrisakes, Doc, just watch for half an hour.  

Are They Suggesting There Are Meth-Addled White Supremacist Unemployed Truckers Whose Friends Are Not Planning To Shoot Barack Obama?

ONE: Why did I see Dan Bartlett on CBS News last night (talking to Katie, not being led somewhere in handcuffs)? Two: Why does CBS, not just a fine part of the National Amusements family, but one which depends on enticing vast numbers of the citizenry to its programming in order to pay its catering bills, imagine that a man whose entire career to this point is not only fairly encapsulated by the sobriquet Toady, but could, without harming a hair on Accuracy's armpit, be expanded by the addition of to the Worst, Most Dishonest, and Least Liked President in American History has something to recommend him? Three: Why does that something include, in what I hope will be my single accidental exposure to one of the petty henchmen who tried to rub out Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, Bartlett informing Katie, and the 5.5 million people who either tune in or are too bedridden to operate the remote that Barack Obama has now been defined by The Celebrity Thing?

How did we get here, where the "news" is couched and Commentary is the anthesis of Thought? Isn't the single requirement for giving someone like Bartlett airtime that he demonstrate some independence of mind? Kee-rist, he's not even a decent regurgitator of right-wing tripe. He's just a skid mark between partisan hackery and the cachet received from millions of half-informed viewers for Bein' on th' Teevee; the greater part of the dishonesty of the thing is simply that he's standing there. This is, after all, one of the three major networks which caved in to the Nixon/Safir(e) assault on The Press. I don't recall the other two, just offhand, but I remember Eric Sevareid's commentary suddenly being labelled "Commentary". It may be fortunate, then, that they try to pretend that what Bartlett is doing is "reporting"; what they'd have to label it probably violates FCC obscenity guidelines.

And this coming from Riley, who (I may have mentioned this once or twice) believes that Obama=Celebrity is in fact the most masterful stroke of a political season (though, to be fair, this is not exactly saying much) which may be said to be fairly subsumed by the juvenile implications of "stroke" and the actuarial odds of John McCain suffering one.  Okay, so in fact the real credit goes to the Campaign That Never Gets Called, and to "Progressives" who, having publicly and unapologetically swooned over the man in January were utterly dumbfounded by the charges in May; both had to appeal to the Hilton family for help.  These would be the same people who are busy pummeling PUMAs as Day Three of the Convention dawns in the Rockies. Now that I think of it, this may be the One Thing Bush actually Got Right: the nation has now had so much experience of its collective head spinning 'round that incidents of political whiplash have fallen to statistical insignificance.

And let us here pull up a special dentist's chair in Hell for Jacob Weisberg's "Racism is the only reason Obama might lose", in which, as Bob Somerby has already noted, a Slate columnist explains to us the moral superiority that is the Slate columnist. Finally Hell has come full Circle, and the horse race vacuities so beloved of the Press are now the standards by which we weigh the voting preferences of entire generations and find them repugnant. That older Americans--be they white, black, or better able than most Slate pundits to think beyond the stereotypical--might be less inclined to bandwagon jumping, less swayed by claims of Real Change, And This Time We Mean It!, more suspicious of the scanty resumé, is of no import. That they might be less charitable to a candidate who has accused them of miring America in a sort of mindless partisanship for its own sake, whose health-care proposal was inferior to Senator Clinton's, who uses "crisis" and "Social Security" in the same breath, matters not at all, since these are Issues, and thus to politics what Grandma is to sexual positions. (It's interesting, though, that PUMAs are fired on for being insufficiently determined by a single-issue.) We feel the necessity of enshrining a line, not an original thought of Weisberg's, but grimly pleasing, nonetheless, for appearing in the Voice of the Rational Anti-Rational Reverse Contrarian With A Half Twist:

Many have discoursed on what an Obama victory could mean for America. We would finally be able to see our legacy of slavery, segregation, and racism in the rearview mirror. Our kids would grow up thinking of prejudice as a nonfactor in their lives. The rest of the world would embrace a less fearful and more open post-post-9/11 America. But does it not follow that an Obama defeat would signify the opposite? If Obama loses, our children will grow up thinking of equal opportunity as a myth. His defeat would say that when handed a perfect opportunity to put the worst part of our history behind us, we chose not to. In this event, the world's judgment will be severe and inescapable: The United States had its day but, in the end, couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race.

Honest to God, I think he lifted that quote from Al Trautwig's Olympic gymnastic coverage. If the Deputy Assistant Campaign Chair for the Quad Cities had said it there'd be calls for Obama to denounce him. Okay, okay, so there are calls for Obama to denounce something every other afternoon, including his previous day's denunciation; this one would be justified. If Geraldine Ferraro had said something like that last April--that it would be "risky" to vote for Obama since his defeat would mean the crushing of every child's hope of a Brighter Tomorrow for the next two generations--she wouldn't have been denounced as a racist; she'd have been quietly committed to the Betty Ford Paint Huffing Ward.

Naturally, none of this even bothers with making the case that the next President should be chosen on the basis of melanin ("You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions." Thanks, Jake.), just as the last one was chosen on the basis of his perceived regular-guy bonhomie. Weisberg does note the negative qualification of McCain's computer illiteracy, as though our next Surfer in Chief will need every email alert at his disposal ("My fellow Americans, I stand before you to announce that the new Vista upgrade is teh suck!"). This, I remind you, comes from Yet Another Slate Columnist who rode proudly off to war behind a President who is occasionally flummoxed by the Bicycle. Figuratively rode to war, I mean.

How'd we get here, again? How'd the finally-exposed (and no thanks to Slate) mendaciousness and venality of the Republican party come to be replaced by the self-annointed moral arbiter with the atrocious international track record, and without the former even having the grace to disappear? I dunno, but I have to admit that I was a lot more comfortable back when I could blame it all on Republicans.

Things You'd Read Only To See If Your Immediate Reaction To The Title Was Borne Out 100%, Vol. XXCVI

Fareed Zakaria, "What Bush Got Right". August 9

WAS your answer "Things Fareed Zakaria already supported?" Wow. Mine, too. Wanna make out?

Now, your next question, which I forgot to ask you to place in a sealed envelope and hide, anywhere in the city, along with my paycheck, is "Th' fuck, Riley? Were you stuck in a doctor's office this morning with only one magazine to read?" And the answer is No. I was stuck in line at the grocery, when the cashier disappeared while I was still third in line (evidently, judging by the duration of his absence, to change drachmas into leks, which errand caused him to arrive at the office just as a passing customer went into premature labor), and somehow I looked down at the magazine rack, which is like scanning for Gorgons. And there was this sad little toric survivor looking back, waiting to be picked up and pulped, with some sort of Newsweek patented Soviet Heroic portrait of the Acting President on the front, converted to black and white, sliced off the neck, eyes and chin still skyward, as though some real citizens had managed to get at him, or vandals had broken into Peggy Noonan's secret Commander Codpiece altar and put the statuary to the guillotine. How could I not take it home? Okay, I didn't, but I came home and read the article.

And, since we're coming clean here, it wasn't with the intention of sitting at Professor Zakaria's feet, or engaging the question. More like seeing what the warflogging regular Daily Show guest was parading down the runway in this season.

The most obvious case is Iraq. For many people—a clear majority of those polled—the decision to go to war is now seen as a mistake. But wherever one stands on that issue, it is overwhelmingly clear that the administration made a series of massive blunders in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. It went in with too few troops, dismantled Iraq's Army, bureaucracy and state-owned factories, arrested tens of thousands of Iraqis, mistreated and tortured some of them, and used overwhelming military force against all perceived threats.

How convenient it is for the Church of the Reformed Warflogger that Bush and Rumsfeld "botched" "the job"! What prodigies of Error it manages to excuse! Reader, imagine yourself the driving instructor who hears the bells jingle over the storefront door, looks up to find a paid companion steering the dark-sunglassed and red-tipped cane-wielding Zakaria to the counter.

But then, you, Dear Reader, are merely one of the rash, uninformed Poll answerers to whom Zakaria now inclines his head, almost imperceptibly, in patrician recognition of your superior, if clumsy, numbers. Hell, you're not even right anymore (The Surge is working!), you just happen to be standing where Right might be located if someone were so unfair to Dr. Zakaria as to take a look.

So, by all means, leave us extend the same sort of fairness that the War's opponents famously received back in the Golden Days. We will refuse to question how anyone paying attention during the first two twelvemonths of what wags are now calling the Bush Administration would have trusted it to park his car, let alone sell him on the idea of Preemptive War. Let us politely avert our gaze should anyone mention the risible Festival of Hubris that preceded it, and primly raise our napkin to cover our mouth before we hawk up great gristly gobs of Imminent Threat from a tenth-rate military power, already exhausted by two wars and an embargo, which not even the fabulists in the administration could arm with ICBMs. Fair's fair. Just because all you bandwagon jumpers now see the war as a mistake does mean we can casually dismiss all the thinkers who were wrong about it all along.

Instead, let's ask Zakaria what the fucking hurry was. Let's ask him now, in 2008, where he proposed to raise the additional troops necessary to do the Job the Way he said he had wanted It done after the first method didn't work out so hot. A draft? Building a coalition by answering the objections of Germany, France, and Russia? Legos™? It's multiple choice, Professor, and there ain't that many choices. The Bush administration already selected "None of the Above". Many see that as a mistake.

Here's Zakaria, in the first of Slate's biennial Let's Cut a Check To People Who Were Dead Wrong About the War if They'll Agree To Excuse Themselves, Plus Hitchens, Roundtables, just after New Year's, 2004, the only one which he appears to have participated in:

Given the costs, was the war worth it? I think it was. Many of the costs (ruptured alliances, the postwar mess) can be alleviated (through better planning, diplomacy, etc.). I don't minimize these and have been vocal in pointing them out. But they do not invalidate the entire enterprise.


I've often been associated with the "democratization spillover" argument, so let me point out that the elimination of Saddam Hussein has been a big plus for American national security. The most anti-American and expansionist regime in the Middle East has disappeared. An actual and potential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait has been eliminated. A violent, rejectionist state has faced consequences. This has had a sobering effect on the region: See Syria and Libya's recent behavior. Given our interest in a stable Middle East, this is good.

Now?

The outcome? Chaos; an angry, dispossessed and armed Sunni community; a sullen and restless Shiite population; an insurgency; a jihadist terrorist movement, and spreading sectarian violence. In addition, foreign forces were destabilizing the country because both the invasion and the occupation were undertaken without first gaining support from neighboring Arab states or winning international legitimacy. The result was a perfect storm in international affairs, a failure that kept getting worse.

It's funny that "getting rid of Saddam Hussein" is now absent from the list of What The Fuck Did Bush Get Right? and that the 2004 litany of the Costs, which, surprisingly, turned out to go unalleviated, subsumes the War's Great Accomplishment, now that the public tells pollsters it doesn't believe the Middle East has erupted in a Jubilee of Democracy and America Respecting. 9/11 Changed Everything. Who knew the Dictates of Careerism would change it back?

Y'know, it's far from me to doubt the sincerity of anyone's penance over the Disastrous Iraq Adventure, but from my limited understanding of the genre one is supposed to actually wear the hair shirt, not open the closet door and show us where it hangs. "[We] went in with too few troops, dismantled Iraq's Army, bureaucracy and state-owned factories, arrested tens of thousands of Iraqis, mistreated and tortured some of them, and used overwhelming military force against all perceived threats". What gave you to imagine it would be any different? Especially since our mission there, as redefined by its public backers after Rationales 1-5 proved somewhat faulty, involved punishing the Middle East for a generalized anti-Americanism.   Or when the Acting President (and much of the Congressional leadership) couldn't be bothered to learn the distinction between Shi'a and Sunni. What did you think was going to happen? We acknowledge torture and mistreatment because we cannot deny what photographic evidence got out before the lid was shut; we ignore the thousands of innocents killed by our own actions out of camera range. That is what war is, and it is reprehensible in every way to ignore it, or forget it, or treat it like a side effect. The women and men of the US military serve, overwhelmingly, honorably. But anyone who unleashed, or excused the unleashing, of a couple hundred thousand of them on a people we proclaimed culpable in a coordinated act of murder we knew they had nothing to do with must face a lifetime of consequences, not an obligation to re-tailor the story before he's allowed on with Jon Stewart again.

So, I'd come that far; let's briefly address Dr. Zakaria's main contention:

...blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality. The administration that became the target of so much passion and anger—from Democrats, Republicans, independents, foreigners, Martians, everyone—is not quite the one in place today. The foreign policies that aroused the greatest anger and opposition were mostly pursued in Bush's first term: the invasion of Iraq, the rejection of treaties, diplomacy and multilateralism. In the past few years, many of these policies have been modified, abandoned or reversed. This has happened without acknowledgment—which is partly what drives critics crazy—and it's often been done surreptitiously. It doesn't reflect a change of heart so much as an admission of failure; the old way simply wasn't working. But for whatever reasons and through whichever path, the foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases the next president should follow rather than reverse them.

No. Let me say, both as a Crazy Critic and a Stander To The 'Failure' Side of the Iraq "Argument", that viscous liquid running out from underneath the Brick Wall of Reality where it collapsed on the Bush administration, its neo-con puppetmasters, and--collaterally, if you prefer--everyone foolish enough to have defended it, does not smell of moderation, admission of failure, nor a sadder-but-wiser realism. It's the result of their having trusted the Helmet of Stupidity to protect them in repeated crash testing. It's not the first Bush administration that promoted Alberto Gonzales, that eventually fired Donald Rumsfeld ("the finest Secretary of Defense this Nation has ever had"), or sought to make waterboarding legal. Bosh. This is like saying the twenty-seven-year-old man who impregnates his 13-year-old mentally retarded cousin has seen the light because he offers to marry her as the cops are hauling him away. Bush is, at best, the Horrible Example to end all Horrible Examples, and if he got anything right--inadvertently, of course--it was to make a growing number of Americans aware of the toadying know-nothingism that passes for their mainstream punditry.

In Other Words, He Blocked A Shot.

"There's a constant chess match between the middles of which way they're going to hit--wrist-away or cross-body. Players are always getting more information about where the set is, split-second information about the approach angle of the hitters, and factoring into that the history. David Lee taking that all into account, making an amazing blocking move."

--NBC "indoor" volleyball analyist Kevin Barnett

In Other News, How Long Before Rachael Maddow Turns Into A Misogynist?

Jonah Goldberg. "No Change: Nothing new here with Obama". August 22

THE local CBS affiliate has a nightly news toss to a canned segment generally mouthed by Alexis Christophorus, designed, as far as I can tell, to give the impression that the local folks are tuned in to the national scene as well, beyond the weather map, I mean. Last night came word that a new, somber frugality will be hitting the fashion runways this fall--and, one guesses, hitting Christophorus herself--an artistic and economic response to our horrible times. At one point she said:

You wouldn't think of H&M as conservative.

Which is absolutely uncanny. And not only would I not think of H&M as conservative, I wouldn't think of H&M at all, nor have I ever, nor shall I again. For that matter, I don't think much of a teevee clotheshorse reporting real economic pain as reflected in the enforced drabishness and absence of Kicky she will be forced to endure This Season.

Of course, coming as this does just before the midpoint of two weeks of the NBC-brand mushification the Olympic Games, and one week each of the conventions of my two least favorite major political parties, I had already taken the precaution of locking up the guns and having my Poor Wife hide the shells. But that's just me. Still, if anyone out there is planning on traveling through a wormhole and returning to 1973, I'll be happy to cough up bus fare for a side trip to the Goldbergs' place, provided you'll smash their teevee.

The Republicans are in terrible shape. There hasn’t been a more battered brand name since Bart Simpson swallowed a jagged metal “O” from his box of Krusty-O’s cereal.

Okay, never mind: the teevee's playing in his head all the time, anyway. Just smash that.

Those are, respectively, sentence #2 and sentence #3 from a column soon to grace the pages of a major Los Angeles daily near you. Which more or less forces us to note 1) that The Simpsons is a television entertainment, formerly a comedy, still fictional; 2) that "the Krusty brand-name", an on-going gag which included The Clock That Gets Extremely Hot If You Leave It Plugged In--who wrote that?--is never battered, economically, because its comic immorality grants unconditional marketplace immunity; and 3) that we understand, on more than one level, why Goldberg refuses to get the joke; we just wish he'd get an editor. Preferably one willing to try to explain that English makes a poor cudgel:

The latest Reuters poll has Grandpa Munster up five percentage points over our secular messiah.

You know, I think, that I've got nothing against Obama=Messiah jokes, or McCain=Depends, but that is to say they're based on some reasonably fair, reasonably caricatured critique; it's not to excuse you relieving yourself in public at every opportunity. It's a substitute for thought. If I overheard you using it on the bus I'd pay you no mind. But over and over and over again, in a major metropolitan daily, is beyond comprehension. I have no idea why they put up with this shit from Maureen Dowd over on the other coast, and she's got a Pulitzer, if one worthy of the Best New Artist Grammy given The Starland Vocal Band in 1977.

But let's answer, quick; we're just two paragraphs from Goldberg calling Obama an elitist.

Because we do, in fact, make the same argument: how is it that this race is close? But then we like to imagine we're making it from the opposite end of the Rationalist/Replaying Your One Sermon To The NRO Choir spectrum. We think Obama should be clearly ahead. But we have no idea what a reasonable spread would be. Something short of "Knockout", certainly. We have no problem understanding public reticence about a man with a scant public resumé; we're reticent, too. We have no problem placing much of the blame on the Obama campaign, overdue for a major shake-up at least twice over by now, and now too late. We're uninvested in time, money, or emotion. It would perhaps be gratuitous to insist, now, that the campaign's, and the Democratic party's general, aversion to stomping the GOP back to the Stone Age is to blame, except that we've been saying so throughout the campaign. Yesterday, Salon joined Slate in urging that Those Horrible Hillary Harridans be kept off the dais next week, lest someone watching get the impression that Democrats are of more than one opinion. First the farce, then the tragedy. I used to rail about claims of Democratic party incompetence in national elections that it was largely a creation of the mass market media's script (Fritz Mondale, e.g., "promising to raise taxes", as opposed to what he really did, which was call Ronald Reagan a facile liar, in which he was proved correct, not that that made him The Amazing Kreskin or anything). This was demonstrated beyond doubt in 2000, where the competent candidate was hit with every sort of anti-Democratic slime, as well as a big batch whipped up specially for the occasion. But now, given something approaching as close to preferential treatment as it'll ever get, the party reveals itself as the teenager who stashes her Goth get-up at a friend's house and leaves the house each day in J.C. Penney coordinates,  so Mom and Dad won't find out.

Which is depressing, but not unexpected; the thing I find mysterious about those poll numbers is, Who th' fuck is voting for John McCain?