p m carpenter's commentary

John McCain Has Got Be Really, Really Sore By Now

With a superspook's "high level of confidence" I'm issuing an intelligence estimate on what John McCain is doing this morning, without bothering with verification (you know, the way the real superspooks do it).

He is, I venture to say, running around the state of New Hampshire buying up every copy of the Washington Post he can get his hands on -- because splattered all over page A01 is a bloody indictment of his elaborate hypocrisy. Should this intel reach New Hampshire's peculiar independents with a fondness for going both ways, John is likely to find his love for them vastly unrequited next week.

The Post story -- more like a bill of particulars -- will read to those courted voters like discovered love letters to another. McCain's passion for deceit and betrayal will leave them in tears, sobbing as the jilted often do. For the only thing "straight" in John's talk has been, it turns out, the high hard one he's had for the monied boys.

All those denials of illicit hanky-panky with tawdry special interests? -- his avowals of fidelity to the defenseless human victims of Washington's insider and geometric corruption? Well, sometimes a man slips up. And sometimes the occasional slip morphs into a seedy addiction. And of this, it is now clear, John is tragically guilty; he's been caught red-handed in the tentacled arms of those others.

"As a presidential candidate this year," reports the Post, "McCain has found himself assiduously courting both lobbyists and their wealthy clients, offering them private audiences as part of his fundraising. He also counts more than 30 lobbyists among his chief fundraisers, more than any other presidential contender."

And his come-hither appeals have worked. Boy, have they worked. His would-be corporate and lobbyist lovers have queued at his political boudoir, each holding a number -- a sizable one. J.P. Morgan, General Electric, Xerox, Sony, Cablevision, BKSH & Associates (a lobbying firm for "drug companies, an oil company, an automaker, a telecommunications company, defense contractors and the steel industry, among others"), and the Loeffler Group (another lobbyist for "oil, auto and telecommunications companies, as well as a tobacco firm and an airline"), is but a partial list of his willing and eager "clients."

"The money is coming in very heavily now," said McCain with a smile on "This Week" yesterday. I'd be smiling, too, what with all that frequent and upscale intercourse.

It seems the facts of life have changed, in John's mind. In 2002 he condemned such dalliances, because "money," he gravely intoned, "does buy access in Washington, and access increases influence that often results in benefiting the few at the expense of the many." But now he's hired political pimps to make some revisionist points: "If you give to him," says his chief strategist, "you know there's no quid pro quo. People give to him because they want him to be president of the United States."

Isn't that sweet? That little love bug has nipped at the hard hearts of corporate tycoons and their callous lobbyists; there's not an ounce of self-interest in their pumping, throbbing chambers. They merely want to see their Johnny as president.

In 1991 the Senate ethics committee ruled Mr. McCain as a man of "poor judgment," but it knew but a third of it. McCain would soon add, "and superior cynicism, with swinish hypocrisy to boot."

For that is McCain's real "Iron Triangle" -- his 2000 shibboleth that even then was subject to modification, drifting as it did from "special interests, campaign finance and lobbying" on some days to "money, lobbyists and legislation" on others.

But John finally nailed it down. He finally narrowed his ferric geometry beyond further interpretation. Others may offer money, lobbyists and legislation, but John brings you poor judgment, cynicism and hypocrisy.

I've asked it before and I'll ask it again: Where do Republicans get these guys? Hey, it's not like I'm pimping for some Democrat. When that fateful day comes to cast a vote for the next executive whore, I might just write in the name of George Carlin. Better to champion a politically knowledgeable and honestly funny clown than another of these humorless prostitutes.

Huckabee's Latest -- But First, Put Your Boots On

Either the unctuous Mike Huckabee is tremendously undisciplined or his internal polling shows him slipping in Iowa to the equally oleaginous Mitt Romney. For Mike has gone negative, against all promises. Big time. And with real flair.

A horse race is what these preliminary spectacles are commonly called. But the one in Iowa is no longer branded by the noble equine; it is, I am delighted to pass along, merely that of a greased-pig race.

The two gubernatorial Holy Men have been kicking, squealing and spinning in the mud, but each is so lathered by the slipperiest of genuine insincerity, neither has been able to execute a full Nelson.

Till now.

The Huckster finally pulled it off, although in truth he pinned himself -- not Romney -- and for that he gets even more points.

What in Huckabee's God's name am I talking about?

Well, it's certainly not the Arkansas governor's recent deployment of garden-variety negative campaigning, whose accepted premise is that a candidate verbally assaults his chief opponent at every turn for being so dang negative all the time. Or, as Mr. Huckabee reframed the paradox: "Every Iowa voter is being bombarded with nasty and negative attack ads that are just absolutely untrue, and I feel that I have to set the record straight. All I’m trying to do is make sure the issues are framed in the proper context, and I don’t think it’s a matter of trying to be negative at all."

And that's when an aide slips the note: "Insert knife now." Which Mike promptly does, leaving blood all over the floor. One classic thrusting maneuver is his offensive defense of his own pardons-gone-wild record, in which he tells "the story of a decorated Iraq war veteran, Anthony Circosta, who could not get a job as a police officer [in Massachusetts] because of a blot on his record for harmlessly shooting another boy with a BB gun at age 13."

Says Mike of this immense human tragedy: "Mitt Romney twice said no because Mitt Romney wants to brag that he never ever gave a pardon. I wouldn’t be bragging about not giving a decorated soldier a chance to become a police officer."

Ouch. A blistering twofer. Not only is Mitt anti-soldier, he's anti-cop to boot, which surely gets the patriotic, law-and-order blood of Republicans everywhere boiling. But heaven forfend that you read anything negative into that. Mike is a Man of God, and he wouldn't manipulate your emotions; nor would he ever cast the first stone; nor would he ever engage in "tearing each other down," as his latest TV ad shrinks from in pious horror.

But so much for such pedestrian hypocrisy. What, pray tell, constituted Huckabee's match-winning Nelson?

Well, forget horses and forget pigs. This one has something of the canine in it -- something along the lines of an offspring of Checkers or Fala.

As you have no doubt heard, Mr. Romney has had less than glowing things to say about John McCain lately; ever since, that is, John started crawling up Mitt's skirt in New Hampshire and pounding him where it hurts. And to the rescue has come ... Mr. Huckabee.

"It is enough to attack me" (and his poor little dog, too?), said the indignant governor in the senator's defense. "But now to attack John McCain" -- "an honorable, decent, true-to-heaven American." And Mike said this presumably without giggling or gagging.

If that sort of maudlin, wholly self-interested friendship of the enemy of one's enemy -- complete with angels soaring betwixt high-flying American flags -- doesn't make you smile in admiration of the greasiest pig of the litter, then you're love of our nation's political swill has faded beyond retrieval.

In fact I salute Mike Huckabee, for he's showing us that the game really can't be played except in the rubbish of genuine insincerity and chronic hypocrisy.

Oh, how I pray that Mike goes all the way. But my money is still on McCain by default, for his more porcine compadres are oinkingly clearing his path.

Bush's Chickens

For a while it seemed that Bush's chickens would not come home to roost until he had flown the coop, leaving a vast wasteland of unparalleled blunders for his successor to clean up. That's been the president's strikingly transparent plan for at least a year -- Come on, boys, hop on these powder kegs with me and let's weigh down the lids till I escape to Crawford for good, where I'll brag of the stability I left behind, and blame the subsequent, inexorable convulsions on the new guys.

And you have to give the devil his due. For a while, it looked like he just might pull it off -- that he would indeed keep enough assorted fireballs in the air, that he would whack a sufficient number of moles, that he would weigh down the power-kegs just long enough to dump them, yet unexploded, on someone else.

But fate -- that conspiracy of the inevitable -- has a way of biting one in the ass at the most inopportune times, especially when one has contributed all the fateful decisions. And as I write, it's taking a huge chunk out of Bush's butt. He may, after all, not make it to the finish line of 2009 quite so cleanly.

As the Washington Post reports this morning, "President Bush held an emergency meeting of his top foreign policy aides yesterday to discuss the deepening crisis in Pakistan, as administration officials and others explored whether Thursday's assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto marks the beginning of a new Islamic extremist offensive that could spread beyond Pakistan and undermine the U.S. war effort in neighboring Afghanistan."

His house of cards is being scattered by tangible blowback, and even Bush is aware of it. For him and his co-bunglers, it's serious panic time.

"They are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan" -- you think? -- "which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban has strengthened and expanded its operations. Unrest in Pakistan and increasing fuel prices have already boosted the cost of food in Afghanistan, making it more likely that hungry Afghans will be lured by payments from the Taliban to participate in attacks, a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan said."

Then paraphrasing the officer: "If there is indeed a new challenge by Islamic militants emerging in Pakistan, then the United States will have to do whatever it can to support Musharraf."

So we're back to square one, the principal occupant of which, with Bush's support, has been at the problematic core of so many firestorms since the beginning.

But it was the words of two U.S. officials who've served in Afghanistan that unwittingly revealed the deeper problem.

Said one: "My prediction is, Musharraf will go into a bunker mentality and be nicer to the Muslims. He goes through the pretenses of crackdown but never follows through."

Said the other: "Pakistan isn't really engaged in a fight against terror. One of the mistakes amongst many U.S. policymakers is to project the American construct of a war on terror onto the Pakistani regime's struggle for survival. There are some congruencies between the two, but even more differences."

Sorry, fellas, but the congruencies smother the differences.

Ever since George W. Bush hit his trifecta in 2001, his much-vaunted "war on terror" has never "really engaged in a fight against terror." There was a "pretense of crackdown" immediately following 9/11, but no critical "follow through," because Mr. Bush's wars have been, above all, politically domestic ones since the run-up to the 2002 elections.

And now the unintended, and unattended, consequences are swaggering around large, carrying the biggest club imaginable. Looping back to the above-quoted Army officer: "Pakistan must take drastic action against the Taliban in its midst or we will face the prospect of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of al-Qaeda -- a threat far more dangerous and real than Hussein's arsenal ever was."

Which further loops us back to the almost purely political since 2002 -- hypernationalistic distractions at home in the pursuit of a permanent Republican majority that in fact have embodied Mr. Bush's "war on terror," and which now have been reduced to his mere "struggle for survival."

I pity the poor schmuck who inherits this mess -- and it's looking like it'll be even messier much sooner, what with all those chickens running around, finally coming home to roost.

Memo to Pundits: George W. Bush Was the Triggerman, and We Don't Need Another George W. Bush

Let's be clear. George W. Bush was the triggerman.

I did a slow burn yesterday throughout the cable-news coverage of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Pundits and analysts came out of Washington's woodwork to pontificate on the tragedy and speculate on who the villain behind it might be. It could be al Qaeda, of course, or even Ms. Bhutto's insidious protector, President Musharraf. Yet not one of these musical-chair popinjays ever so much as even hinted at the manifest truth: that the ultimate responsibility for Ms. Bhutto's death and Pakistan's fresh round of turmoil lies with the man in the White House.

For seven years, through self-thwarting military crusades and mindless saber-rattling and Western ideological offensives, Mr. Bush has stirred the pot and rattled the hornet's nest of the Middle East and South Asia. He took an intolerable situation and made it impossible. His gun-blazing cowboyism has radicalized vast segments of Islam, propped up dictators and alienated moderates. And now it has killed the astonishingly courageous Ms. Bhutto.

Was it al Qaeda that physically pulled the trigger, as it promised it would? Could be. And God knows it's strong enough once again to have squeezed it off. As Mr. Bush was playing global checkers rather than chess, and chasing the one stabilizing strongman and principal opponent of al Qaeda in the Middle East, he was letting the terrorists off the hook -- to regroup, and multiply, and metastasize, with exponential momentum.

I know of not one Middle East analyst who differs with the analysis. Bush diverted crucial resources from the critical battle. In doing so he pumped life into a severely endangered species. He also handed it the perfect propaganda material on which to newly thrive -- the monsters could not have written the script more favorably themselves -- and he squandered every square inch of the mountainous good will heaped on the U.S. after 9/11. His single-minded bellicosity and obliviousness to harsh, geopolitical realities have done nothing but aggravate and embroil. And now his propensities have killed the courageous Ms. Bhutto.

Yet not one of the cable-news pundits even hinted at the manifest, blistering truth in their exhaustive speculations. One wonders whether the cause was gutlessness or blindness. Nevertheless the effect was the same: The American people will continue to have little inkling of the catastrophic consequences that Mr. Bush has wrought for U.S. national interests, or of the equally disastrous consequences for the poor bastards at the geographical heart of it all.

The pundits did, however, speculate with profundity on what it all means to the presidential crop. And in my opinion, they balled that up as badly as their whodunit analyses.

Experience, experience! they cried with approval. That will be the electorate's demand that goes forth, thereby benefiting, principally, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. "Change" is now so risky and yesterday.

And what were these reassuring voices of experience saying? A short survey of the banality should suffice.

McCain's insights were that Bhutto's assassination was "tragic," that the "radical Islamic extremists" profited from it, and that if he were president he'd be huddling at that very moment with his national security council. Damn, I wouldn't have thought of that. I guess that's why I'm not in the big leagues.

Giuliani's insights were that Bhutto's assassination was "tragic," that "terrorism anywhere" -- and it happens to be everywhere -- "is an enemy of freedom," and we must, of course, "redouble our efforts to win" -- yep -- the "Terrorists' War on Us." Well, if nothing else, he can dazzle them to death with clever wordplay.

Clinton's insights were that Bhutto's assassination was "tragic," that she was "outraged," and that "it certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next president." And that would be, specifically ... ? Perhaps experience in converting a national healthcare plan into more than 1,000 pages of inscrutable, unworkable mumbo-jumbo?

Parenthetically, because it's just too juicy to pass up, Mike Huckabee's insight was that maybe Musharraf should continue martial law, which, of course, was abandoned weeks ago. Would someone please buy that man a newspaper subscription?

But the upshot of all the "experienced" candidates' wisdom was -- if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly -- that more of the same is the surefire cure for what ails us. More Bushian doggedness, more us vs. them, more muscular squaring off into other peoples' problems, however much we've so haplessly exacerbated those problems for seven, long, agonizing years.

Contrary to the pundits' speculations on what the electorate will now both want and need -- that is, purely self-proclaimed experience -- it seems to me that accumulating events cry out instead for profound change. And if the electorate can't see that, then once again it will get the president it deserves.

We're Drowning Ourselves in a Surreal Reality

There's nothing quite like the Bush administration's war spending to highlight the almost surreal malignancy within our government. I say almost, because unfortunately the malignancy is all too real. I just hope my passport is in order when the piper comes for his payment.

On occasion, however, the surreality blows by with tornadic force, as it did this morning upon reading this lede from the venerable Walter Pincus of the Washington Post: "The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide battle against terrorism ... came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq."

Think about that for a moment. Did the "latest estimate" of these whopping expenditures for which shoe clerks and housemaids are responsible come, say, from the guy who's actually spending all the money? Perhaps his Office of Management and Budget? Maybe, at least, the Congressional Budget Office?

No, they came casually delivered by a lone GOP senator in the course of speech on other spending.

In what Pincus labeled as "a little-noticed floor speech," there stood home-remodeler-extraordinaire Ted Stevens of the Appropriations defense subcommittee offhandedly mentioning to 300 million Christmas shoppers that their national credit card is taking on what the fiscally sane see as a bit too much ballast. "This cost of this war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion of that every month," Stevens noted in strange approval, just as he was voicing support of "adding $70 billion to the omnibus fiscal 2008 spending legislation to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, as well as counterterrorism activities, for the six months from Oct. 1, 2007, through March 31 of next year."

Alas, that little omnibus bauble will cost a mere $11.7 billion a month, so for six more of them were $3.3 billion ahead. Congress just loves a bargain, especially at this time of the year, so it scooped it up -- no questions asked, no conditions attached. Better get it while it's hot; the savings may not last.

Meanwhile, over the span of fiscal year 2008 the Bush administration is "requesting" -- I like that; you know, like Tony Soprano would request -- "$189.3 billion for Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism activities [hence the vague Stevens reference to the more exact $15.8 billion a month]." And this amount, whose appropriation we cautiously anticipate on a bed of pins and needles, happens to be the payoff for our splendiferous success in Iraq. Which is to say, it is "20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher than for fiscal 2006."

It's success like that that makes failure such an appealing option.

The purported success, however, comes with some truly creative twists that help explain the creeping costs. To wit: "One relatively new cost is the $300 monthly payments to almost all Iraqis recruited as part of the 'Concerned Local Citizens' (CLC) program, which arms neighborhood groups to provide local security. The latest quarterly Iraq report by the Pentagon puts the program total at 69,000 people," of whom more than 80 percent are Sunnis, of whom a further 80 percent were likely shooting at us in 2006.

Hence on closer examination we see that Gen. David Petraeus' brilliance is reduced to bribery. No questions asked, no eyebrows raised, no fiscally sane inquiries into its advisability. If I, as a member of Congress or OMB functionary, proposed that we start paying 69,000 street-muggers $300 a month as an inducement for them to stop hitting little old ladies over the head, I'd be hooted and hollered out of Washington's professional circles as a McGovernite nitwit. Yet what's the difference?

But the Iraqi payments are actually more Nixonian. For Petraeus is merely skewing to the governing advice of that renowned political philosopher of Watergate fame, Chuck Colson, who once just as famously observed that "When you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."

Perhaps. As long as the Soprano protection money holds out, anyway. But is anyone in Washington, from the Bush administration on down, taking note that we simply can't afford this?

A Clinton OMB official commented that "Stevens is being realistic," which is both bizarrely and grotesquely accurate. "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror are not getting cheaper," he warned.

Just as we're getting poorer. We save nothing, borrow everything, and act as though the piper will forever postpone his calling on his. We're drowning ourselves in a malignant, surreal reality.

Elmer "The Huckster" Gantry Gets an Evangelical Grilling

Peter Wehner, a former deputy assistant of seven years to the current Holy Man in the White House, has written an amusing WaPo op-ed that declares the running religio-political strategy of aspiring Holy Man Huckabee to be "fraught with danger."

Now, there's danger, and there's danger, but when a strategy is "fraught" with the stuff, well, that's really dangerous. So a special heedfulness is warranted, no matter how belated the bellringer, and no matter his motive. One wonders how much the Romney campaign paid Mr. Wehner for choking down and then spitting up his 766 words of hysterical hypocrisy, or if Mitt merely promised to move him from deputy assistant to first-chair assistant at some presidential point down the road. But, as stated, no matter. We have danger to unfraught.

"Some of us -- in my case, a political conservative and evangelical Christian," writes Wehner, "are getting a queasy feeling when it comes to the presidential campaign of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and much of it has to do with his use of faith in this political campaign."

Pete, we know how you feel -- all that queasiness and more -- because we've been heaving our innards ever since your man declared Jesus as his favorite "philosopher" back in 2000 and shortly thereafter launched his messianic Crusades, per Godly memos for his eyes -- and others' lives -- only.

But I keep digressing. It's the Huckster at the stake, here, and it's to the Huckster we should navigate our thoughts and concerns. Time is running out, the Iowans' clock is ticking, Mitt is panicking, hence your evangelical-Christian knifing, Mr. Wehner, is of uppermost urgency. Let us proceed.

"Invoking one's faith is not unprecedented in American politics," as Pete does indeed proceed, without invoking any illustrative but embarrassing personalities that might negate his wholly personalized claim that "it can even be reassuring." Nevertheless -- insert Law and Order theme chime here -- "it is" -- you guessed it -- "fraught with danger."

To make his point, Pete reaches back to a speech Huckabee made to some Baptist preachers in 1998, a speech that seems to be making the cyber-rounds. "I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer," said the governor. "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers -- that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."

You can, of course, play with that peculiar syllogism all you want, but you'll never square the circle. You'd have an easier time unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics. But, Mike said it, and there it sits, and he obviously took his unquestioning, head-nodding, hallelujah-barnburning audience into consideration before dumping it on them.

"I hope we answer the alarm clock" -- especially those ticking in Iowa and South Carolina, Mike may well have been thinking as he continued -- "and take this nation back for Christ."

Naturally there's a menacing similarity between that declaration and some clown of a candidate declaring fundamentalist Jesusism as his unavoidably singular philosophy in presidential life, but dang it, there I go again, digressing. Just note that Mr. Wehner found Huckabee's declaration profoundly disturbing.

The Arkansan had walked right up to the "bright lines" separating "the City of Man and the City of God," and though he "may not have crossed any" yet, "he's edging close to them," observes Pete.

That may be, although I'd argue that Huckabee dynamited those separating lines long ago. When a politician asserts a necessarily uncompromising allegiance to what he believes are literally the words of God Almighty, then the White House, should he occupy it, becomes a political ministry. Just try separating his secular politics from what he sees as his divine calling. It can't be done, unless he chooses to deny his God, in which case he's merely an apostate worm, unworthy of both the secular and celestial pulpits.

Which in itself raises an interesting paradox: In a secular democracy that celebrates religious freedom, any authentic evangelical Christian automatically disqualifies him- or herself from public office.

But, leaving that aside for the moment and returning to the problematic Mr. Huckabee, I concur -- attaching only a slight modification -- with the judgment offered by John Brummett, an Arkansas News Bureau columnist who, out of proximity, likely knows the Huckster well. "I submit that he's as much a product of his disc jockey past as his preacher past," wrote Mr. Brummett. "His pronouncements are no more sermons than in-studio performances. When the red light says 'on air,' nice spoken words flow gracefully from Huckabee, but often without full attention or sensitivity to any impact beyond the moment.... He's an economic pragmatist and populist third. He's a social conservative second. He's a performance artist first."

And now for the modification. Rather than cloaking him in the more polite description of "performance artist," let's just call a spade a spade. Huckabee is first, foremost and above all a world-class demagogue. That doesn't mean he's always insincere; these creatures of demagogic origin are often immensely genuine in their beliefs, and can be soft-spoken as well.

The problem is, they slither and slime their way through the political minefields to arrive safely at their destination of public office, where they can then do real damage. They'll say anything to get there: they'll reassure the worried evangelicals at brunch and the anguished constitutionalists at lunch, with equal fervor and convincing sincerity.

To violate my own non-digression pact once again, haven't we had enough of the dreadful demagoguery that naturally springs from the likes of Mr. Wehner's former boss, and that Mr. Wehner now so artificially deplores?

Merry Chri... Happy Holi... -- Just have a good, safe, and uncomplicated one

Normally I would wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, but that would only please the reptilian O'Reillyites, who undoubtedly would interpret my usage as a blow for victory in their faux culture war.

So, instead, I'll wish you the more generic Happy Holidays!

Also, Happy Something-Or-Other! to those of you who still worship Baal, Isis, Dagon, Melek, Vesta, Nusku, Odin or Goibniu -- all great deities who have, alas, fallen. Or, that's the scuttlebutt, anyway.

As for you agnostics, I would like to wish you Happy Holidays as well, however I find myself unable to commit to that.

To you atheists out there, well, Satan -- or is it Hades, or Sokar? -- has your number, so I'll leave it up to him (them) to issue the proper greetings.

Oh, to hell with it. Merry Christmas!

My very best to all,

-- P.M. Carpenter

Ron Paul's Curious Contradictions

The most pointedly interesting aspect of Ron Paul is, paradoxically, the broadest. Which is to say, it's the vastness of his occasionally microscopic and always idiosyncratic thinking that astounds. Which is to say, after listening to him for a while, one is left pondering: How can a man who gets so much right, also get so much so profoundly wrong?

Yesterday morning this writer's pondering came to an end, thanks to his, ah, informative appearance on "Meet the Press." Paul's simplicity of presentation, it became clear, merely reflects an astonishing failure to comprehend the complexity of history. If a man doesn't know where he's been, he cannot possibly know where he is, or how he got there. Consequently, understanding where to go next becomes, to put it mildly, problematic.

The Russert-Paul exchange over America's Civil War was perhaps the most instructive:

MR. RUSSERT: I was intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery."

REP. PAUL: Absolutely. Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it was the -- that iron, iron fist...

MR. RUSSERT: We'd still have slavery.

REP. PAUL: Oh, come on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done is do like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans and where it lingered for 100 years? I mean, the hatred and all that existed. So every other major country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war. I mean, that doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach.

There were so many fantastical missteps in Paul's historical journey, one at first feels as marooned in befuddlement as Paul inarguably was. Indeed, there was far too much to bother with dissecting here, except, quickly, the principal historical point he tried making, which also just happens to profoundly conflict with his present emphasis on untainted constitutionalism.

In brief, Lincoln's war -- and by the way, he didn't "go to war"; he defended against a military assault -- was, in Lincoln's mind, precisely one over the strict adherence to constitutionalism. (The abolition of slavery was, as you know, and Mr. Paul apparently doesn't, not an original war aim.) In fact, Lincoln was engaged in precisely the opposite of what Paul accused him of -- "get[ting] rid of the original intent of the republic." And what was that intent? The absolute supremacy of constitutional rule -- meaning the peaceful deference to majority rule. If one state or geographical collection of states up and decided that things would be its minority way or the highway, then, manifestly, the republic could not endure, and what Lincoln loved and admired as the greatest experiment ever in self-rule -- constitutionalism -- would be at an end for all.

Hence the irony of Paul's constitutional assault on Lincoln's rock-solid constitutionalism. But when combined with his other historical misunderstandings of the Civil War, slavery and comparative government, such irony merely betrays a simple lack of constitutional grounding. And for a man whose nearly exclusive mantra pounds on the purity of constitutionalism and original intent, that astounds.

So does the extreme simplicity behind the idea of a great and federal republic stripped and starved of federal power, as Paul advocates. The idea that the United States could advance itself by remolding itself into the Somewhat United States -- with each of its 50 entities shooting hither and yon; some providing, say, health care and others dismissing, say, meat inspection -- well, again, the contradictions abound. And astound.

If you would like -- as Paul referred to our current course with more than merely a little legitimacy -- "soft fascism," but to the power of 50, then just deprive the one central watchdog -- the federal government -- of its power to enforce the constitutional guarantees that have flowered over time and through progressive development, not rigidity. The systematic problems we face today in the reversal of those guarantees stem from the corruption of that system's intended checks and balances, and it is therefore within the system that the problems must be forcefully addressed.

Just giving up, and reverting to an atomistic hodgepodge of regional identities and control, as was attempted in the early 1860s, would result in the effective end of America's constitutional experiment. We'll sink or swim as a nation -- and our vivisection into 50 wholly sovereign authorities would only guarantee the first.

Lincoln could see that. Ron Paul can't.

Bend Over, America, and Smile for Some 527 Lubricant

Ever since the Tillman Act of 1907 banned corporate contributions to federal-office campaigns, politicians have morphed ever so steadily into rat-like figures scurrying about in the dark for opportunistic hunks of cheese. Or perhaps "mole-like" would be a better metaphor, because campaign-finance reforms have produced little but fruitless games of whack-a-mole: dynamite one subterranean corridor of influence buying or unfair financial advantage, and some politically creative genius is sure to tunnel two legal paths around it.

The latest 800-pound gorillas (I seem to be stuck on mammalian metaphors) to muscle their way into the zoo of politics are, as you know, the 527s -- those third-party cabals that are, of course, utterly independent of any candidate. Although they must report their loot and expenditures to the IRS, they may also accept contributions in any amount from anyone -- like in the old pre-Tillman Act days -- and therefore lie outside any pain-in-the-ass FEC restrictions.

The most notorious and lethally effective 527s to date were those associated with -- oops, utterly independent of, I meant to say -- the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004. Texas oil money flowed like rancid honey on George's behalf, first devastating John McCain's insurrection; then, four years later, bundles of mysterious cash from nowhere Swift-boated John Kerry into hapless obscurity. The nearly one-third of a billion dollars George himself spent wasn't enough to bank on, and since the 527 expenditures were, as we all know, utterly independent of George, he could just smile and deny having any leverage over putting a stop to their scurrilous lies.

Now, though we're still in 2007, the 527s are already looming large. The money raised by candidates themselves -- often, candidates who have vowed to abide by publicly financed, matching-fund caps -- is becoming increasingly insignificant when compared to the massive amounts flooded rather anonymously into the political marketplace.

To wit, as the L.A. Times reports: "The Democratic presidential race heated up Saturday, with Barack Obama charging that rival John Edwards committed campaign hypocrisy by deriding political organizations called 527s at the same time he allegedly will benefit from their spending."

But the benefits fall into more than just the "alleged" category. A 527 group, the "Alliance for a New America," just purchased a whopping $756,000 worth of pro-Edwards air time in Iowa, and lo and behold, one of its officers just happens to have been Edwards' presidential campaign manager in 2004. And although union contributions to federal candidates were banned by the Smith-Connally Act of 1943, the media buy -- which is largely financed by the Service Employees International Union -- is perfectly legal. It comes from a 527, so it is innocently and utterly independent of the candidate, right?

Then comes the charade, the Kabuki dance, the laughable display of specious sincerity: "I can't talk to them about it at all. We're not allowed to coordinate in any way," said Edwards. "I don't have any direct control [note the adjective] over it, because the law requires that I stay out of it. But I would prefer that all 527s -- not just this one -- but all the 527s stay out of Iowa. But I have no legal authority over that."

No "controlling legal authority," anyway, although he would "prefer" -- now there's a blistering denunciation -- that his friends not spend three-quarters of a million dollars on his behalf, especially since he's running third in the political fight of his life.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I like Edwards. And if I were in his political shoes, I'd be grabbing for all the 527 cashiers that I could possibly non-coordinate. I'd send them flowers, I'd respect them in the morning, I'd promise to love them from afar with all my heart, and I would absolutely deny any rumors of any sub-rosa tawdriness.

Furthermore, this particular 527 -- it "encourag[es] voters to ask the candidates how they will make the middle class and working Americans their top priority in Washington, while ensuring that special interests and corporate America lose their stranglehold on our government" -- issues forth a profound message of social decency. The problem, of course, as George proved in 2000 and 2004, is that the dollar-hemorrhaging Dark Side will always be able to overshadow the Light, and do so in a way that its thoroughly gullible troops will buy hook, line, and political stinker.

The 527 "Trust Huckabee," for instance, is phoning around Iowa smelling up the governor's opponents. But, says the eminently trustworthy Huckabee, "It's not being done with any cooperation, coordination or the blessing of our campaign. In fact, I don't think it's anybody whose really supporting me. I really don't." Now there's an entry for Ripley's, if I ever saw one.

The answer so far to curing all this seemingly incurable skulduggery is simply to let the charade-chips fall where they may, while relying on an educated, informed and engaged democratic body to sort the gems from the bullshit. From the chaos comes order, is the theoretical proposition. But the real theoretical element in that defense of our campaign-finance system is the part about an educated, informed and engaged democratic body.

For we're less committed democrats than we are ignorant consumers. We'll buy anything the merchants of bullshit have to sell. And if you're tempted to question that vulnerably over-the-top proposition, just look at where the principal 527-beneficiary of 2000 and 2004 is sitting.

That Huey Long of Arkansas -- Now He's Going Down, Too?

One almost pities them. Every time Republicans start narrowing their choice of presidential candidates, they get the head handed to them by the vulturous press or some antagonistic, oppo-research operation. So they move on to the next Great White Savior, only to witness another beheading.

And it's starting to look like when all is said and done, they'll be left, through a savage attrition process and by sheer default, with the one candidate they largely like the least: John McCain.

The latest victim of easily scooped-up scrutiny is the Most Right Reverend Michael Dale Huckabee, the one-time Southern governor who now appears to have been but another Huey Long, without the demagogic charm.

And that's no exaggeration. Reading this morning's New York Times piece on Huckabee's executive tenure is like strolling through the Louisiana statehouse, circa 1930s. "Against the political advice of his party and his aides," reports the Times, "[Huckabee] pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicts, including murderers, sometimes over the heated objections of prosecutors and victims’ families" ... just like Huey ... "He was cited five times by the state ethics commission for financial improprieties" ... just like Huey ... and he "unapologetically accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and other gifts while he was governor" ... just like Huey.

In 1999 alone, for instance, Rev. Mike "reported getting $112,366 in gifts," damn near twice the amount of his salary. But my favorite? He also used "a state fund meant to operate the governor’s mansion for personal family expenses like pantyhose and meals at Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken." The story does not specify for whom the pantyhose were, but at least we now know how the governor came to be the bloated hunk of trans fat he once was.

Also like Huey, he actually did some good for his state, albeit through a brutal arrogance that vastly annoyed his own political camp. For example he pushed through "a major expansion of health insurance for children of the working poor whose families did not qualify for Medicaid," which left ultraconservative neanderthals like Peggy Jeffries, "then a Republican state senator and now executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the Eagle Forum," wouldn't you know, sputtering "None of us understood what he was trying to do." About that, Peg, I have no doubt.

Huckabee also "confounded Republicans ... when he pushed for a fuel tax increase to finance an ambitious road-building program," which, again, is reminiscent of Huey and his ruthless surcharge-taxing of Louisiana oil companies to pay for the governor's pet projects. One can quibble ideologically over Mr. Huckabee's executive desiderata -- whether, that is, they were advisable or not -- but the sticking point for Republicans, politically speaking, is that Mr. Huckabee was, it seems, exceedingly brutish about them. GOP pols prefer that graft be spread around evenly and politely, and this, Mr. Huckabee did not do. "If you don’t line up with him, Katie bar the door," is how one former Republican state rep remembered his merciless meetings with the impolitic governor.

In short, Mr. Huckabee did not at all play well with other Republican sachems he now needs, while he seems to have had a rather luxurious time doing it -- and at the ideologically opposed, taxpaying rank-and-file's expense. To be even shorter, such things will not bode well in the primary marathon.

Moving on down the thinning line, off-and-on varmint-hunter Mitt Romney is forced to spend more time these days explaining what the meaning of "saw," is, than laying out the finance-capitalist utopia he was on the verge of delivering unto us. He, too, appears to be going down, and the only thing keeping him afloat for now are the hysterically desperate voters transferring from the doomed Rudy Giuliani, who last I heard had gone from a nearly 20-point lead in Florida to third place.

Of course there is always Fred T. Who?, but he seems to be on permanent sabbatical at a rather inopportune time, and unavailable for comment or anything else of interest. And naturally there's Ron Paul, who's anti-imperialist message is about as unnatural a match for imperial Republicans as Dennis Kucinich's. So let him rake in all the cybercash he wants. I just hope he saves some of it for a nice, long vacation in the Bahamas, once this silliest of seasons is over.

Hence, through attrition and default, Republicans could likely homestead where they were supposed to from the start -- in the House of John McCain. But I doubt enthusiasm will be bubbling over.

It's true the Arizona senator has his own history of ethical lapses that could do damage; but those were so 1980s, when ethics were uniformly abandoned as unbusinesslike in Reagan's America. No, what will make the faithful cringe is the senator's present and despicably tolerant attitude on immigration. Yet, what -- literally -- choice do they have left? The rootin-tootin and utterly anonymous Duncan Hunter?

The season upon us may be silly indeed, but for those of us on the outside of the Republican circle of angst, it sure is fun.