Tina Brown, Genius

Peter J. Boyer, "Sarah Palin Plots Her Next Move". July 10

ASSUMING, that is, you imagine "genius" could describe someone who dreams up new labels for half-eaten candy bars she finds discarded on the sidewalk.

Okay, fine: some guy's got a warehouse full of buggy whips in the Model T era, and you're hired to sell them. The fact that I didn't think Newsweek was salvageable when I was a teenager is immaterial. The fact that you imagine putting Sarah Palin on the cover of something else will do it is irrelevant. Hell, maybe it's Justin Bieber. I'm 57 years old. It's not like my entire lifetime hasn't been spent wondering what th' fuck it is makes things popular: Bonanza, Herman's Hermits, Disco, the Iraq War. It's not like I don't understand that what was rightly viewed as the lowest form of schlock back when William Castle was dishing it out to drive-in moviegoers is now seen as Capitalism's great contribution to the culture. It's just that I don't understand why you'd get up every morning and do it. How much better can ya eat? My Poor Wife had on one of those morning "news" shows with some idiot blathering about longevity, and I said, "Why would these people want to live forever? They think there'll be another Dan Brown novel every two years to eternity?"

I don't care. Sell the rubes whatever you have to sell them, but is there some glory in plumbing the depths? A Nobel for discovering a new Lowest Common Denominator? Jesus Christ, this thing is 4200 words, and it's about nothing. It consists of a handful of Palin quotes (saying nothing, of course, but translated into English from Gibberish) and a few loving paragraphs about that fanboy and his movie (which, you'll be relieved to know, is probably going to make back its initial investment thanks to a distribution deal with Wal*Mart; so much, I guess, for Setting the Record Straight with those of us who have been so badly misinformed about the Half-Term Governor's many accomplishments). In fact the movie seems to've been the guiding light here. We get Sarah Palin, the crusading Governor who tackled Big Oil, and who cobbled together a legislative coalition of Mostly Democrats to do so, Sarah Palin, brave tax hiker, Sarah Palin, Maverick.

Of course the problem is--well, the real problem is that most of us have heard the woman speak, or "speak"--none of this ever explains why she can't go five minutes without saying "Lamestream Media", why she can't say anything insightful about Barack Obama, or why she sounds like a jayvee softball coach trying to inspire a group of twelve-year-olds with some half-remembered Reaganisms she learned second hand in a church league. If she used to be so thoughtful, how'd she go stale so fast? I've read three or four Palin hagiographies, for some reason, and none ever begins to try explaining why she fucking quit the governorship of Alaska. There's always some mumble-jumble about her opponents, as though most states chose their top executives by acclamation. I've yet to see anything approaching an explanation, let alone an honest one; none of her defenders will say, "Well, she saw an opportunity to cash in," even though they believe that's as American as caribou pie. It's the dog that didn't bark. As if we needed one.

Sure, sure: I think Sarah Palin is unqualified for any political job other than FOX commentator, "best-selling" author, or buffoon, and I think anyone who insists she's qualified to be President of the United States, or Governor of the Tundra, for that matter, is a liar or an idiot, and probably both. But could someone at least try? Address why so many Americans--who've seen her in action--think she's beyond laughable? Jeez Louise, you people had eight years to do this with Bush. Maybe you should have, y'know, practiced.

I Suppose We Should Just Be Thankful It's Not At Half-Staff

Indianapolis Star photo Charlie Nye

LEAVE us not mistake each other here. This is part of yesterday's Whiteland (Motto: Yes. Yes It Is.), Indiana, procession for James Allen "Jimmy" Waters, killed in Afghanistan on July 1st, aged 21 years. It is well to show your respect for his service and his sacrifice, your respect for the loved ones who have lost his companionship when his life should just be beginning. It's okay with me if you want to assuage your guilt at sending young Americans off to kill, and die, for nothing other than a ten-year fit of pique. None of that makes the flag of the United States of America a piece of apparel. It doesn't belong on your sweaty torso. It doesn't belong on your little girl's tank top. It's doesn't belong on the Colts' helmets, or on the lapel of your favorite politician. It doesn't belong to you. If you can't be bothered to treat it respectfully, then at least quit using it as a facile substitute for genuine sentiment and real thought.

Friday Monon Knee Warmers

Adrian Belew One of Those Days
Eno No One Receiving
Carlene Carter I'm So Cool
The Dave Clark Five Try Too Hard
David Byrne His Wife Refused
Bryan Ferry Let's Stick Together
Dave Edmunds I Hear You Knocking
The Nazz Open My Eyes
Kathleen Edwards 12 Bellevue
Mott the Hoople One of the Boys

Nobody Could Have Predicted That, Vol. MMCDXXXII

Scott Elliott, "Good schools fearful of bad grades: Critics say rating system may unfairly penalize high-achieving schools". July 7

OUR story so far: beginning with the egregious No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (enthusiastic, and later regretful, co-sponsor: Ted Kennedy), plausible, or "plausible" deniability that right-wing education "reform" was aimed at poor urban districts and teachers' unions has been supplied by the requirement that all schools show improvement under the act, a legislative beard Indiana cheerfully donned when the Daniels administration began its own offensive. (It's always instructive, and frequently touching, when the Republican party demonstrates a vague understanding that the law is required to be fair, at least while the cameras are rolling. Innit?)

Well, Time, as is its wont, evidentally, has continued marching, and the Piper, as usual, has turned up with an invoice. And guess what? We didn't really mean it!

Munster High School in Lake County has been ranked one of the nation's best high schools by Newsweek magazine.

Sorry to butt in, but that means shit. Literally.

So why is Principal Steve Tripenfeldas worried? So worried, in fact, he sent a letter to the Indiana Board of Education?

Because under the state's rules, his school is about to receive its "letter grade" state rating -- and it's, gulp, a C.

"Don't let a school that has an (end-of-course exam) passing rate well over 90 percent for Algebra 1 and just under 90 percent in English 10 with large gains be labeled as a C school," he wrote. "Before the letter grades are published, please work to make sure that those letter grades are accurate."

"Accurate", in this instance, means "flattering to well-off Republican districts with no tradition of the Gentleman's C".

For years, Indiana has laid down a tough penalty on schools that failed to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind law. When the state rates schools, flunking AYP means a two-step demotion on the state's five-category rating scale.

The state board now wants to move away from counting AYP against schools, but new state rules won't come fast enough to help schools this year.

"Can we give ourselves a waiver?" board member David Shane asked at Wednesday's board meeting.

The answer is "maybe."

Maybe. That's education administration jargon for "Definitely, soon as no one's looking".

Indiana's move to A to F letter grades this year when ratings are released July 22 has raised the stakes for the AYP penalty. The goal of the letter grades is to make state ratings more understandable than the current categories of exemplary progress, commendable progress, academic progress, academic watch and academic probation.

Tripenfeldas' letter expresses the concern of many Indiana educators -- people understand that C means "average." State board members agreed letter grades have changed the landscape.

It's interesting that not only does much depend on who owns the ox, and who does the goring, but how often the people complaining now were the ones holding the pike when the whole thing started.

"I understand the rationale, but at the same time we're working on a flawed system out there," state board member Mike Pettibone said. "Our public is going to think Munster High School is a C high school."

When the public is only supposed to believe that every urban school deserves an F.

AYP, as it was originally designed, was supposed to force schools to focus attention on groups of students that often were overlooked. "Subgroups" whose test score growth is tracked under AYP include ethnic minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics, but also students in special education classes, kids with disabilities, poor children and those learning English as a second language.

For schools with lots of qualifying kids, there can be many subgroups. Tripenfeldas, for example, complained that Munster has 33 subgroups and only one -- a subgroup with 41 special education students -- fell short of the required test gains. Lawrence's Harrison Hill has taken a rating hit in the past when just one of its 29 subgroups didn't make AYP.

Right. It's absolutely unconscionable to penalize Munster schools when they bear the burden of educating almost 90% of the state average number of special education students, or as they struggle to overcome a poverty rate almost 31% of the Indiana average or cope with half the English language learners of the average school district.

Jesus Christ. If we could just figure a way to make cars run on nausea and bullshit we'd be fixed.

Olio: I'm Out Of It Edition

• How did the meeting go, say, at ABC News yesterday? Was there some debate over whether ten minutes at the top of the national news was sufficient coverage of the Casey Anthony trial? Did they decide against a Special Report for later in the evening? Was there one malcontent in the back asking if they couldn't find something more important to do? (I'm just kiddin' about that last one.)

I have absolutely no knowledge of this thing, aside from the fact that it involves a child who died in a bathtub or drowned in a pool (and, may I add, it took a considerable amount of steely-eyed reserve to limit it to that). Nevertheless, I feel I've lived a rich and rewarding life.

Despite the concerns of some of our best minds, Irony seems to've pulled through the Piss-Pants Era just fine. But Shame just dropped by the side of the highway sometime during Ronald Reagan's first press conference, and everyone just tiptoes around the rotting carcass and pretends he doesn't smell anything. Really: did someone at NBC figure that if they didn't lead with a regional murder story viewers would tune out in the millions?

And the worst of it from a personal perspective is that I absently turned to local Channel 8 at the news weather hour, and was met with Disgraced Former Marion County Prosecutor and Tim Durham Henchweasel Carl "Facetime" Brizzi, who's gone from grafterrific elected official making unwise and unethical comments on the local news at every opportunity, to 8's "legal analyst". Imagine turning on the teevee in your Houston hotel room and finding Tom DeLay on the Redistricting Beat.

• I'm spending entirely too much time on the bike trail, and starting to wonder how I'm gonna manage when it gets too cold to ride. (We've got a stationary bike, and last year I rode it longer than I rode outdoors, but last year my knees were much worse off and the stationary bike was easier on them. This year I'm gonna be fighting boredom.)

It's really tempting to see the Monon Trail as a microcosm of America Herself: a lot of basically nice, pleasantly mazed folks whose lives and well-being are constantly threatened by a dedicated cadre of high-tech Nazis in bike outfits.

But I won't; for now I'll just mention that 1) lactic acid is not your friend, unless you drink German wine and have more patience than most of your countrymen; 2) excessive solarization is not your friend if you plan on living past the age of 23; and 3) wicking teeshirts remove sweat more efficiently than going shirtless, so please fucking stop.

• Exercise Nazis, in general: I was fairly athletic, in my youth, which was long enough ago that my daily tennis outings were disturbed to the point of rage killing by the Tennis Boom of the early 70s, and the luster of a track career was dimmed by the Jogging Craze. (I got off easy; my friend Cowboy Clint, a real working cowboy, had to buy a complete new wardrobe when Urban Cowboy became a hit.) I've managed to avoid these people like the plague--precisely like the plague--for thirty some years now by the simple expedient of being lazy. I'm all for physical exertion. I love sport, and I'm still pretty competitive. I admire people I meet on the trail who are training hard--I'm particularly impressed that there are so many women out there who know how to run--and it's good to see people who, conversely, are having fun at it. But 40% give every impression that they're there as an excuse to buy outfits.

• On the other hand: foam rollers entered my cloistered reality about four days ago, and I'm 100% sold on them already. And weighted juggling balls are the next coolest thing to learning to use a speed bag.

• I'm not sure how long I overlooked it, but my local post office branch flies a POW/MIA flag right under Old Glory. I've written in to ask on who's authority, but you know how the mails are.

Another microcosm: apparently lost to the Mists of Time is the fact that this thing started out as a political argument: the US shouldn't recognize Vietnam--in fact, should go back and finish the job--because of the thousands of POWs still being held by the Commies. This, of course, was pure bullshit, essentially a road-show version of the Manchurian Candidate tales about Korea, and an offshoot of the whole We Weren't Allowed To Win business. The Vietnamese were extraordinarily forthcoming in the search for missing Americans, far more than any country which had expelled an invader could have been expected to be. As for now--who's missing, exactly? Who's got a hidden camp full of captured Americans? Nobody. We're the captors, not the captives, and it's been that way for forty years now. This is just another tic of excessive militarization. I'll let you know if I ever hear back.

Happy Birthday, Murica

WE'VE had our own Missing Blonde story here the past month, an IU student who disappeared of a 4 AM about a month ago. One of the last places Lauren Spierer was seen in public was a Bloomington bar. Lauren Spierer was a year short of being there legally.

This didn't rate much more than a mention on the timeline with the locals--cynics of my height and shoe size occasionally note that commercial enterprises that cater to middle-class pursuits rarely do--until the official search was more-or-less called off, when the Indianapolis Star noted the bar in question was the source of a notable percentage of the underage drinking citations issued by State Excise.

And here's the thing, Murica: that story brought a predictable number of the Star's commenters (caution: don't go there) to insist this amounted to some sort of war on Freedom. Freedom! The freedom to drink if you please, the freedom to sell liquor to people the law says are minors. This is a change, Murica, and not for the better. Listen, you and I know that on occasion my willfulness trumps your ordinances, and did so to a greater extent when I was that age. But I always knew where the line was before I crossed it, and I didn't use any Randbabble to excuse myself. (For that matter, th' fuck did I want to pay to drink in bars? When did being impoverished stop being part of the college experience?) This sort of crap is recent, it's the direct result of facile libertarianism (pardon my redundancy) being manipulated by the Republican party. You may recall, Murica, that we had this conversation a few years back, when every pundit who pockets teevee money fell all over himself excusing the Bush Twins for being nabbed with fake IDs, on the scientific grounds that Everybody Does It, a standard previously applied only to scrupulousness of tax preparation on the part of corporations and persons in the punditological tax bracket. It sure didn't catch on as a general maxim after that. No "Everybody Says Racist Things" or "We've All Texted Photos of our Junk, Haven't We?"

Where did the distinction between Freedom and License go, Murica? The same place honesty and fairness went? Y'know, if you manage to blow out all 235 candles today…

Friday Monon Knee Warmers *

Boz Scaggs Some Change
Deaf School Thunder and Lightning
Frank Black Hang On To Your Ego
Randy Newman It's Money That I Love
The Strangeloves I Want Candy
The Vibrators Stiff Little Fingers
Pere Ubu Flames Over Nebraska
Love My Little Red Book
Kings of Leon Pistol of Fire
The Loud Family Aerodeliria

_________

* Just songs from my iPod Shuffle (4th Generation) that happened along like an old (or really old) friend to give me a little encouragement on the trail.

#5 With A (Dum-Dum) Bullet

RealClearPolitics




SO, basically: 1) there's as much of an actual excuse for all the Bachmann chatter (she's been featured on my local fucking news--which can't be bothered with the FSSA story, or the Toll Road bankruptcy, and which last night referred to the long-overdue ban on texting while driving as "controversial"--the last three nights running) as there would be for a brace of Ron Paul stories or Newt Gingrich arrest reports, and considerably less than in-depth examinations of Herman Cain, Your Next Ambassador to Pepperoni. 2) the obvious person to unite the "true" "conservative" base of the party is…the former Half Term Governor of Alaskaha, Sarah Louise Palin, who would then be shot down in a general election so devastating to Idiot America that it might take Paris, Snooki, and Cokie with it. And 3) Fred Thompson must be somewhere thinking to himself, "Dammit, I peaked too early."

And really now: if you are enough of a Sarah Palin die-hard fanboy that you, like another 14.5% of your fellow Republicans, believe that she should be your next President, who else here is really gonna measure up if she lets you down? It might look like 2/3 of the votes are up for grabs for a Romney challenger who breaks out of the pack, but how do you appeal to the disenfranchised Herman Cain voter, exactly? Oh, they'll support the nominee; Republicans supported Bush the First in '92 and Dole in '96, but there wasn't any fire about it. To the casual onlooker and scrupulous observer of the Law of Gravity all Crazy looks the same. But from the inside, on primary day, your Perry aficionado or Santorum intransigent is going to have to decide if he'd rather lose with Crazy-Eyes or Mr. Tiffany or Tundra Snooki than pull the Romney lever and have some sort of sporting chance. Sure, there's plenty of time for the herd to change direction; there's plenty of opportunity for a concerted effort to remove Mitt, derail the Pawlenty Express, or cockblock Sarah, if the situation calls for it. And, yes, whichever of these jokers gets the nomination will automatically collect 180 electoral votes just for being Republican. But for now, please, tell me how any of these guys has a chance.

Olio

• Posting will be light:


Max.


• Brave Indiana Blogger Doug Masson brings us word of this L.A. Times piece on the ongoing disaster of Daniels & Henchmen's FSSA privatization, as well as word that the operator of the Indiana Toll Road for the next 75 years may be turning belly-up (that's despite tolls having doubled, and being scheduled to increase again July 1).

You can couple that with the fact that Illinois is having an actual debate on the creation of coal gasification plants--which sailed through the Daniels-Statehouse Republican graft trap earlier this year--going so far (at the lobbyists' bidding) as to actually rewrite legislation to protect ratepayers--known to Hoosier Republicans as "Who?", if they're known at all--from astronomical rate increases, and you wind up with Daniels' only positive legacy being the two months people with nothing better to do imagined him running for President.

• Michele Bachmann Is So Smart! Block Captain Dave Weigel defends her getting her John Waynes confused by pulling out some other hack's artificial resuscitation. And in doing so manages to get John Wayne Gacy's hometown wrong.

Bachmann's problem, if we even want to call it that, is that she's been hopelessly defined as a gaffe-machine who flubs silly things.

Well, for one, it sure seemed to be a Problem If We Want To Call It That back when everyone with a Republican media sinecure was trying to debunk it by proclaiming her brilliant by acclamation. So you're not really permitted, ten days later, to pretend you didn't know what was going on. It would also seem to be a bit of a problem if we imagine that a hopeless gaffe-machine shouldn't be identified as such (though it's fine to insist on the opposite against all evidence) simply because she's a Teabagger, and they don't like it. Too fuckin' bad. This is why you shouldn't climb out on a limb that's already been sawn through. Something you learn in a small town, Dave.

Does it matter? Not in the particular, much, except to note that she can't put a campaign staff together capable of keeping her from sounding like an idiot, when that would appear to be Job One. And in a larger sense, yes, because a lot of us ain't gonna buy Michele Bachmann, Intelligent by Fiat. Or Sarah Palin. Or George W. Bush. It's beyond time for one of those declarations to get backed up by some actuality, instead of being shot down within thirty minutes the next time the statesman in question opens his or her mouth. Would this sort of gaffe mean anything if it came from someone who was intellectually qualified to be President? No. And that wouldn't keep Peggy Noonan or David Weigel from making a big fucking deal of it if they chose.

There is no longer a default position of Reasonableness in the national debate. I remind you, in case you've forgotten, that this condition obtains entirely at the whim of the American Right, which has been on the wrong side of rationality for thirty-five years, and richly rewarded for it. If you chose to defend Michele Bachmann's smarts, or Mitch Daniels' effectiveness, or Newt Gingrich's morals you are entirely on your own these days. Be thankful for the twenty minutes when only the knowledgeable realized how full of shit you were, Dave. Y'know, sooner or later a Republican candidate has to stop talking only to Republicans. Y'all've finessed this by limiting yourselves to "swing voters", who are just as gullible but not so ideological. It has not worked. You win elections but accomplish nothing. You keep hoping you can do so, somehow, without dismantling that alternative news universe you've been living in since 1980; this was the attraction of Mitch Daniels' artificial accomplishments. But it doesn't work, and it's never gonna. Bachmann has zero appeal outside of the lunatic fringe that drives your party. Maybe that's enough, God help us. It doesn't mean she's not a lunatic.

He'd Lie. I Could Have Saved You 1400 Words.

Gideon Rose, "What Would Nixon Do?" June 25

THE other evening my Poor Wife was watching some piece of historical dreck à la Hollywood--for the uninitiated, "watching", in my wife's parlance, means she had a program on between commercial interruptions, perhaps checking backwards and forwards on a couple other shows she was "watching" as well, instead of full Remote Control Audio Visual Phantasmagoria mode, where she moves methodically up from Channel 1 to Channel 850, and back down again, at roughly the same speed which allows you to light your home using alternating current without noticing any flickering--and I looked in just long enough to remark how prescient 13th century English barbers were to have accurately recapitulated early 21st century men's grooming styles so long before the fact. Probably had something to do with Nostradamus.

Do not get me wrong; I enjoy Hollywood historical dreck. But it belongs on my teevee, or accompanied by an $8 box of Milk Duds and some petrochemical-coated popcorn, not on the pages of the Times.

Administration hawks, largely in the military, are uneasy; they had wanted to go slower, so as to safeguard recent gains made against the Taliban. Administration doves, largely in the White House, are disappointed; they had wanted to pull back faster, seeing the killing of Osama bin Laden as an ideal opportunity to get out.

The president split the difference, suggesting that he was charting a “centered course.” But he has actually once again evaded the fundamental choice between accepting the costs of staying and the risks of leaving.

In other words, he did exactly what the American public wants, in this and everything else: Victory, but no Cost; withdrawal, but control; no taxes, but no cuts in services; hair-trigger diplomacy, but no consequences; no fences, but no rabbits.

Listen, I'm not taking a backseat to anybody in opposing our little Afghanistan adventure; you wanna complain to me, first show me where, in public, you opposed it in 2001, and where you, in public, said we'd be there for a generation, looking for a way to leave. This war is the American public's war. It was so overwhelmingly popular we almost lynched Susan Sontag, in case you and Andrew Sullivan have forgotten.

I don't care for anything the President has done in Afghanistan. But a half-assed draw down which splits the difference and thus serves up neither fish nor fowl? That's precisely the ending this thing deserves.

On the other hand neither it, nor the President, deserve any lessons learned from Richard Fuckhous Nixon:

Although Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger had steeled themselves for the possibility of an eventual South Vietnamese collapse, they hoped it could be avoided and did what they could to prevent it. And had events in Washington played out differently — with Watergate not crippling the administration and with Congress less hell-bent on slamming the door behind the departing ground troops — they might have succeeded.

Good Lord. #1: there is no possible scenario that could be conveyed in English in which the "collapse" of the "South" Vietnamese "government" could have been avoided; that's like suggesting there was some way to reform the pox. "South Vietnam" was just our term of convenience for what was left of the mandarin class after the Vietnamese threw the deserving French out on their collective oreille; "government" was a euphemism for "strong man", whoever it was we figured at the time was corrupt and ruthless enough to run things for us. We had to gun down one of 'em ourselves, you'll recall. The idea that Nixon and Kissinger could possibly have imagined the South would survive absent hundreds of thousands of US troops in perpetuity is ridiculous. The idea that they could have succeeded, absent Watergate and an "anti-war" Congress, is beyond ludicrous.

Mr. Obama does not have a Watergate to contend with, nor does he face a passionately antiwar Congress. And his opponents on the battlefield don’t have the capabilities or support the North Vietnamese did. Without these stumbling blocks, he should be able to pull off a Nixonian strategy in Afghanistan. But this will involve more than simply tinkering with the number of troops being pulled out. It will mean denying what is going on, aggressively covering the retreat and staying after leaving.

Well, one: it seems like it might be easier to effect a withdrawal if you did have an anti-war Congress; Nixon could have, except he had, equally, a pro-war Congress, and his personal desire was for a military victory. I'm not sure what Obama wants, besides a successful domestic solution. And as pathetic as our "ally" in the South was, at least it represented a once-established order in Vietnam; we got nothin' like that in Afghanistan.

But, by all means, he should just lie about what he's doing. I'm sure the Republican party would understand, and fully support him.

The first rule of withdrawal is you do not talk about withdrawal. You may agree with the doves about the value of exiting, but you should respect the hawks’ fears about what will happen once people realize what you are doing.

The Hawks got you into the thing, and all they could foresee was victory. That something unappetizing will happen once you've stopped propping up a corrupt and illegitimate regime and moved on is a given, not a brilliant analysis born of aggressive foreign policy stances.

The second rule of withdrawal is to lay down suppressive fire so the enemy cannot rush into the gap you leave behind. The Nixon administration was brutal and ham-fisted about this, using secret bombing runs along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and expeditions into Cambodia and Laos to buy time and space for its “Vietnamization” programs to work. Thanks to technological advances, the Obama administration can do the same thing while incurring far fewer human, financial, legal and political costs. Drone attacks and raids against enemy targets in Pakistani sanctuaries today are a precision replay of actions in Cambodia and Laos, but more effective and less controversial.

I guess the real reason lying about shit is such good advice is that it'll result in people still believing you forty years later, despite all evidence to the contrary.

C'mon. Nixon campaigned (in '68) on his "secret plan" to end the war. Bombing Cambodia and Laos wasn't it. That was more of the Boy, There's A Big Surprise plan to escalate the war to win it, after it was already hopeless, and to do so with air power, the lazy President's way to appear omnipotent while accomplishing nothing. And this took place long before Watergate, and a while before there was much of a Congressional opposition to the war to speak of. Stronger than opposition to Afghanistan today, for sure, but also an organic development to the entire mission there, not an ad hoc opposition to a particular President featuring many of the same Foreign Affairs types who got us into it in the first place.

Unlike Mr. Nixon, however, Mr. Obama is relatively popular and widely trusted. He has gained credibility on national security thanks to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Congress is obsessed with domestic economic issues rather than foreign policy and deferential rather than hostile to military leaders — who themselves support staying engaged in Afghanistan.

Such a favorable domestic environment is matched by a relatively favorable international one, in which America’s ability to project power remains strong and most of the world shuns radical jihadists. Should Mr. Obama seek to fend off a complete enemy victory in Afghanistan even after most American combat forces leave, he should be able to succeed — at least until, as Mr. Kissinger put it, no one gives a damn.

Having tired of the fight in Afghanistan, the United States now has to perform political triage, deciding what goals are still worth fighting for and how they can be achieved.

And for which maybe we can thank the people who got us stuck there because of 9/11, rather than blame the people who said we had no mission beyond aggrandizing the Bush administration and killing whoever wasn't in a position to duck.

This President--who did get Osama bin Laden, which means he has every right to tell the rest of you adventurists to shut th' fuck up--certainly deserves, at minimum, the right to conduct Afghanistan policy without interference from the party which signed blank checks and extraordinary rendition orders for eight years. And maybe next time we can insist on not being lied to in the first place, so that lying to us later doesn't become a stroke of genius. As for the rest of the world, I don't really know who it's backing. I do know it understands full well that we're willing to lie about anything whatsoever when we think it advances right-wing interests around the globe. And they've known that since…Nixon.

A Note About--Of All Things--Coverage Of The Republican Presidential Candidates

Steve Chapman, "Another Texas Republican for President?" June 23

OKAY:

The Republican presidential field looks less like an assemblage of candidates than a collection of fatal mistakes and irreparable flaws, with occasional embodiments of one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Mitt Romney? A flip-flopper who inspired Obamacare. Tim Pawlenty? A too-bashful critic of Romneycare, with a sleepy persona. Newt Gingrich? Serial adultery and terminal hubris.

Herman Cain? A rousing speaker with a future in talk radio. Rick Santorum? Not many politicians warm up for a presidential race by losing a Senate seat in a landslide. Michele Bachmann? Only one House member has ever gone directly to the presidency (James Garfield, in 1880).

Jon Huntsman? Service in the Obama administration is no way to gratify Republican voters. Ron Paul? A libertarian in a conservative party whose 2008 race yielded a paltry handful of convention delegates.

All this explains why a 2012 race is now tempting Rick Perry, the three-term governor of Texas whose liabilities come with some assets: a record of fiscal frugality and economic growth, a flair for channeling anti-Washington sentiment, a proven fundraising capacity and an appealing biography (hardscrabble farm upbringing, Eagle Scout, Air Force pilot).

The name of Indiana's governor--Mitch or Mark or Mike Somebody--came across the local news crawl last night. He was shoehorned into a story about Planned Parenthood shutting operations as a lawsuit proceeds over the bill he signed last month defunding all its services, because the inmates of the Indiana General Assembly had Shorty by the shorties.

Daniels has been invisible in the month since he announced his wife wouldn't let him run for President.

The curious thing about that--national interest in Daniels' persona, that is, in his insistence that he was charismatic by virtue of being charisma-free, was always forced and artificial--is that all those qualities which supposedly made Mitch (and his BFF Haley Barbour) such strong candidates seem, in the space of a fortnight, to've dropped off the radar. In May the Republican party desperately needed someone who was believable on fiscal responsibility but with a low coefficient of Kook; in June Michele Bachmann is a brilliant political monologist.

It's difficult to come up with any possible explanation other than the obvious one: this didn't pan out for the party, so continuing to harp on it just makes the actual candidates look even worse.

The same probably goes for denigrating Bachmann's chances on the grounds that James Garfield was the last House member elected President, as opposed to noting that America elected a certifiably batshit insane, overmatched cipher and religious maniac just seven years ago. I guess that beats stating any of the few thousand real reasons she won't be elected President, or at least dealing with the emails that would come after.

But, look: the contractual obligation to fill column inches is one thing, and taking Rick Fucking Perry even semi-seriously is quite another.

The Republican party, above all else, is desperate not to nominate another George W. Bush. At least it's desperate not to nominate its notion of George W. Bush, which we all remember was not exactly that shared by the average, normal, literate adult human who heard the man talk. To them George W. Bush was not the bumbling, intellectually incurious son of privilege who fucked us over internationally while destroying the national solvency through a combination of cupidity, stupidity, and ideology, no. He's the guy who turned out to be a secret liberal.

The Republican party might just as well decide between Romneyhair and Perryhair; it might as well forget looking for excuses, and start looking for a way to cut everyone else out of the race before the next debate makes "pundits" start taking Herman Cain seriously. The Republican party is so thoroughly dishonest, and has been since Nixon, that it might as well start pinning its real hopes on Justin Timberlake turning conservative in his 50s. Between now and then it's got nothing; it's got two generations lying scoundrels. The Republican party ought to be apologizing to Newt Gingrich. Anybody telling you that Rick Perry is the next great hope of the party should never be believed about anything, ever again. And whoever keeps emailing me hourly updates of Chris Christie's accomplishments should be up on Federal racketeering charges.

The Proctoscopy Of American Politics

Jennifer Rubin, "Path to the nomination: Michele Bachmann". June 22

FIRST: for someone of my age and irritability, it's always instructive to be reminded--as seldom as possible--that the regular WaPo line-up of rightist hacks, shills, cranks, and monarchists isn't sufficient to overcome the Librul bias of The Media, and so Jennifer Rubin needs a blog. Or maybe it's just that people found Kathleen Parker too highbrow.

And I may be apologizing for this between now and the Republican National Convention, but this race just fascinates me. It's so bad I don't even miss Mitch Daniels.

Reader, in 1988 the Democratic field, minus Gary Hart, was commonly referred to as the Seven Dwarfs. It comprised Al Gore, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Bruce Babbit, Dick Gephardt, Jesse Jackson, and Paul Simon: three Senators, a governor, a Representative, a former governor, and one of Dr. Martin Luther King's lieutenants.

The current Republican field consists of a Senator, a former Senator, two former governors, a Representative, a disgraced former Speaker of the House, and a pizza delivery guy. Maybe the Press is out of nicknames. Maybe they've fallen out of favor, what with George W. Bush off doing whatever th' fuck he's doing. Maybe we're just waiting for someone really accomplished, like a half-term governor or two, to smarten the place up.

And, for me, the unintentional humor of Haley Barbour/Mitch Daniels, Great Rich White Hopes, has been eclipsed by Michele Bachman, Intelligent by Proclamation.

The New Hampshire debate, therefore, was a shock to many who had lumped her in with Sarah Palin or were unaware of her background as a lawyer, legislator and small-business woman. Gaining credibility in the eyes of the chattering class is an important step that will allow more serious coverage, consistent fundraising and expansion of her appeal beyond core Tea Partyers.

Y'know, "Bobby" Jindal answered the call when his party desperately needed an Ethnic to call its own, fumbled the toss, and is going to be living, Bayh-like, off his wife's oil company board memberships for the rest of his life. Michele Bachman, with yet untold millions in a campaign chest buying who knows how many image consultants dedicated to keeping her from looking like a sterno bum come to Jesus, manages to get through a single Republican "debate" without cackling something about Chinese electricity, One World Currency Proof Sets, or how slavery's been unfairly maligned, and she's suddenly declared Not Sarah Palin by people who never actually admitted Sarah Palin is a moron. Or not while they knew anyone could hear. And all I can say is, Jindal had it comin'.

She has at least four tasks ahead of her. First, as many of the candidates must do, she will need to convert her searing criticism of the president into a positive agenda of her own. In the debate she told us she was against the EPA, against raising the debt ceiling and against Obamacare. But what is she for, and will that agenda sound plausible? She will need to spell out what a Bachmann budget would look like and what she would propose in lieu of Obamacare.

Why are you picking on her? The last Republican candidate to spell out anything was George Herbert Walker Publius Bush, Sr., and it had something to do with taxes.

Second, she is up against candidates with executive experience ( Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney); she therefore would do well to highlight her own leadership and management experience. Perhaps that comes from her private-sector business. Maybe her role in helping to build the Tea Party could be used to demonstrate her organizational abilities. In short, why is the congresswoman ready to be president?

And here I thought the routine about Mitch Daniels, Entrepreneurial Hero was a knee-slapper.

Third, she’s going to have to pass muster as a plausible commander in chief. That, once again, means more than criticizing President Obama’s messy Libya policy or his submissiveness to Vladimir Putin. It requires that she show some seriousness about both the vision and the details of a foreign policy that conservatives can embrace. Is she going to toss around troop figures for Afghanistan like Huntsman did, or spell out a thoughtful policy? She’d do well to make some high-profile speeches and trips. In short, if you want to be at the grown-ups’ table in the race you must have the stature of a commander in chief.

I suppose a codpiece is out of the question.

And finally, she’d do well to show that she can unite the party, not simply shove out of the way all but core conservatives. Can she find a tone and message that will draw in Main Street conservatives, hawks, Tea Partyers, libertarians and the rest? She has shown she can fearlessly hammer the opposition, but can she woo the undecided?

Look, let's just say it: Bachmann's appeal is that she's clinically insane and functionally illiterate. The more she tries to hide it, the less she appeals to her natural constituency.

Bachmann isn't there on the hopes she's going to unite the Republican party. She's there as a placemat for the Teabaggers. Which is why "conservative" punditasters were so theatrically astonished at her accomplished performance last week. If she truly becomes a threat she'll be chopped down in a minute. She's there at the sufferance of a party well-versed in giving the rabble just enough to keep it coming back for more crumbs.

Her most significant challenge (and vice versa) will be Texas Gov. Rick Perry, should he choose to run. He’s got the conservative credentials plus the executive record. His fundraising prowess and appeal to both social conservatives and libertarians (who like his minimalist view of the federal government’s power and role) may be enough to deprive her of votes she will need to beat Romney.

A bag of hair. But really nice hair.

Bachmann may not be the front-runner, but of the current stable of contenders she may have the most plausible route to the nomination — provided Pawlenty doesn’t get his act together and Perry stays in Austin. That, I am certain, still shocks many in the punditocracy and the political establishment.

Assuming you still believe a) they know anything and b) they could remember how to tell the truth long enough to mention it. Bachmann's being set up as a Veep contender to keep the base in line. 2008 already demonstrated that, as certifiable as the entire party may be, outright hallucination accounts for only about a third. If you think Bachmann is being unfairly tarred with the Palin brush now, have her win Iowa, and maybe South Carolina, and see what the money boys in your own party have to say about her then.