PMC Commentary

Proof positive that we're absolutely nuts

If you're in the mood for reading the most disjointed, disconnected, cognitive-dissonant political poll ever produced, just take a look at this one from the New York Times/CBS News. It would take a PhD in social psychology -- or better yet, abnormal psychology -- to unravel its bundle of contradictions and otherworldly discombobulations.

Should the 1,362 adults surveyed prove to be truly reflective of the greater electorate, then we're in even bigger trouble than I thought when their participating numbers expand to the power of ten in the 2008 elections. Surely the poll couldn't be, could it? If it is, it means frighteningly large segments of likely voters have learned absolutely nothing after six years of this country's worst president and twelve years of the worst Congresses ever, hands down. The poll is, quite simply, a study in witlessness.

First the mixed good news, what little of it there is. "Just 34 percent of all respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, and that is the lowest it has been since December 1998" -- after which voters returned these known nincompoops to three more congressional terms and two presidential ones.

"By contrast, 47 percent of respondents said they had a positive view of the Democratic Party" -- which I suppose says more about the party's message-bungling than it does voters. But still, less than half have switched brands after all the GOP-product liability of lo these many years? Pathetic.

And that was the good news.

Now try this on: "The poll found that Republican voters remain largely loyal to Mr. Bush and his positions on the issues. Among Republicans, 75 percent approve of his job performance, and by overwhelming numbers they approve of his handling of foreign policy, the war in Iraq and the management of the economy."

I cling to the desperate hope that these partisans were merely Pavlovian in their response to the telephone ringing, and that most will find it thoughtfully unbearable to pull an "R" lever in 2008. Right? Please tell me I'm right. I'm beggin ya.

Furthermore, in tabulating one of those "How little do Americans know about American history" questions, "Republican said they were concerned that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan."

Drifted? Bush is the culmination of Ronald Reagan's principles -- supply-sided, bloated deficits; a bloated and further bloating military; reckless interventionism; a blindness to opposing ideologies' root causes; sops to social conservatives; class warfare.... And those are the nostalgic parts.

And here's something that will really rattle you, from the "They said what?" department: "Republican primary voters have a definite idea of what they are looking for in a candidate: They want a presidential contender who will make it more difficult for women to obtain abortions, who opposes same-sex marriage and who will push for more tax cuts."

Talk about keeping your eye on the ball. Collapsing domestic industry and massive trade deficits, for instance, don't hold a candle to the looming national threat of Bill and Bob at the altar.

Still, a plurality -- meaning a mix that included, maybe, noninstitutionalized folks? -- said "that if the election were held today they would vote for an unnamed Democrat for president rather than a Republican."

That's a start. On the other hand, there's plenty of time for Democrats to reverse the trend by allowing Republicans to decisively frame the issues -- like Bill and Bob.

Their "frantic orthodoxy" is showing

Prompted by the Libby verdict, a fascinating piece from the Washington Post's "Department of Human Behavior" appeared Monday, titled "Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong -- You're Evil."

First the basics: "The contours of th[e] debate [over Iraq] are straightforward. Opponents of the war believe passionately that President Bush, his neoconservative allies and a complicit Congress deliberately misled the nation into war. Supporters of the president and the war concede that mistakes were made..., but say this involved no attempt to hoodwink the nation.

"Antiwar groups declared that the Libby trial laid bare the Bush administration's smear campaign to discredit a war critic.... Supporters of the administration and the war declared the trial showed that Bush had done nothing to mislead the nation and that war opponents are being paranoid."

Then it really starts to get interesting:

"From a psychological perspective [it] is not that supporters and critics disagree, but that large numbers of people on both sides claim to know the motives of people who disagree with them."

A good hook. Then came the jab:

"A wide body of psychological research shows that on any number of hot-button issues, people seem hard-wired to believe the worst about those who disagree with them."

But after the jab came what I'd tally as a wildly missed cross:

"It is important to note that the experiment does not establish which version of Bush's motives is true. It is possible, in other words, that everything you believe about Bush's motives is true and everything that your opponents believe is false. But a number of studies suggest people ought to be cautious about such conclusions. Studies have found, for example, that people believe that those who disagree with them are less informed and that those who agree with them are better informed. On issues in which information is widely available, people concede that their opponents are knowledgeable but insist that their conclusions are self-serving and biased."

Ah, there's what is at the heart of the missed blow: "self-serving and biased." At least in the war "debate," much of the relevant "psychological research" folds like a sophistic house of cards, because, without chewing up a couple gibabytes repeating it here, the record shows beyond any doubt that, indeed, "Bush, his neoconservative allies and a complicit Congress deliberately misled the nation into war." There simply is no legitimate debate on this; no two, roughly matched opponents; no equivalency in objectivity. We have, instead, a knockout decision. It's over.

And that's where it gets even more fascinating, psychologically speaking. For even though many Bush supporters know what others know, they continue to rally -- but only, I've noticed, when they're being pummeled against the ropes.

If you read this commentary regularly, you know I'm also fascinated by talk radio and its chorus of True Believers. Nothing speaks of BushSpeak like the cattle herd of Fox News loyalists who ring up their AM radio station to bellow the latest party line. Yet here, I've noticed a curious shift of late.

When it comes to the Bush administration, the herd has largely gone quite. In fact, whenever yet another major story breaks that lends even more excess evidence on the administration's wretched degeneracy, the story is a virtual guarantee that callers will register opinions about the local schools, or state legislature, or latest gardening techniques -- anything but Bush Inc. One reasonably assumes they're too damned embarrassed.

So I call to stir the pot. Only then does their bloodied partisanship commence (and almost invariably suited up not so much in defense of George Bush as in retaliatory scorn of Bill Clinton). One recent morning I called simply to note their silence on all things Bushie and further note -- poke, poke -- that it must be a product of shame. One by one the Clinton-hating Bush-lovers then frothed in unison; but still, they had to be poked -- and hard. Otherwise they preferred to ignore the whole mess. In short, Bush's willing defenders are thinning out to a true, lunatic fringe that sounds more lunatic than ever.

What to conclude? Theologian and all-round genius Reinhold Niebuhr once put it succinctly: "Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure."

In other, less eloquent words, the right's strident partisanship is inversely proportionate to its defensibility. And that, it would seem, is what's at work these days in the right's embarrassed little minds.

So stoke the fire, to mix more metaphors. Maybe they'll blow.

Mitt Romney: Prince of Tweak, Patriarch of Plasticity, Potential Paperback Writer

Mitt Romney is a man who understands tweaking. To tweak -- principles, especially -- is important in politics. It's so important that he tweaks with a sledgehammer. Why play around? is Mitt's attitude. Let's tweak the bejesus out of this puppy.

The tweaking to which I refer has been, to date, twofold. First, Mitt had to please the reasonable people of the reasonable state of Massachusetts to have any reasonable chance of becoming governor. This he did, by becoming reasonable.

Then, one day, Mitt had a dream. It was a big dream. So big it called for a big tweak. He wanted to please even more people by becoming president of the United States. But first he had to re-tweak his original tweaking, because he was faced with having to please the unreasonable people of unreasonable Republican primaries to have any reasonable chance of becoming president.

What to do, what to do. And that's when Mitt's sledgehammer-tweaking really kicked in. He bludgeoned his first tweak. With cash.

Over a period of just a few months, Mitt busily signed bribes ... pardon me and Scooter all to hell: donation checks ... to theretofore ideologically displeased groups to reverse ... pardon again: prove ... himself as one of them -- a certified, dues-paying, ticket-punched, perfectly coiffed-dittoheaded-right-wing whacko. He gave ...

*$15,000 to Massachusetts Citizens for Life (once "critical" of him, it now "issue[s] favorable statements")

*$10,000 to the Massachusetts Family Institute (affiliated with James Dobson's Focus on the Family, which endorses the family when not excusing its friends' adultery)

*$10,000 to Massachusetts Citizens for Limited Taxation (to its "surprise")

*$5,000 to the National Review to buy steak dinners for its raw-meat readers (some thing called "Evangelicals for Mitt" pitched in another cholesterol-dripping $5,000, but said the doubling down was "a coincidence")

*$35,000 to the Federalist Society ("an influential network of conservative lawyers" who genuflect daily to a bust of Robert Bork)

*and $25,000 to the Heritage Foundation ("a leading conservative research organization" that conducts some of the most misleading, conservatively researched garbage you'd ever want to read)

Opportunistic flip-flopping? Brazen whoring? Let's just say Mitt is flexible, and of course generous.

Should his presidential plans not work out, I suggest he become a paperback writer. For the Beatles seemed to have someone of Mitt's tweaking abilities and professional desperation in mind when they wrote its lyrics.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It's based on a novel by a man named Lear,
And I need a job....

It's a thousand pages, give or take a few.
I'll be writing more in a week or two.
I could make it longer if you like the style.
I can change it 'round....

If you really like it you can have the rights.
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it you can send it here,
But I need a break,
And I want to be a paperback writer.

Newt after midnight

My apologies for writing about Mr. Gingrich twice in one week. It's a sadistic imposition on you and masochistic for me. But, his unrelenting evil makes public vigilance (I just typed "pubic vigilance" first; a Freudian slip) a civic obligation. So no matter how much he makes our skin crawl, his presence merits a certain prominence in any regular commentary. As pre-fortification I recommend Gas-X and a liberal shot of scotch.

Newt has become another, perpetually reinventing Nixon -- without the brains. Like some classical music that isn't really as good as it sounds, he's a windbag cum laude who nevertheless has the strategic foresight to pepper conservative media with subsidiary puppets who periodically praise him as an underdoggedly "big idea man."

You will notice, however, that the puppets never actually cite any of these big ideas. When you can find one, merely scratching its surface reveals a lurking imbecility normally found only in booby hatches where similar "big ideas" sprout hourly like mushrooms. Best to keep any details of his genius murky.

But let us not further tarry on the nonexistent or insane. Let us, rather, proceed to the latest talk of the town about Newt, which as you know by now has centered on his family values. In brief, he likes fresh and numerous ones. Families, that is, not values. Come to think of it, in his case this tedious rallying cry should be "families values."

Yet what a contrite little demagogue he is. Though his purification did not quite measure up to Jimmy Swaggart's on-air emotional catharsis, Newt braced himself for Focus on the Famil(ies)'s James Dobson's lumbering softball question about dalliances with ladies other than his wife(s) -- Mr. Dobson tastefully eschewed the more common term: adultery -- and answered, according to the cleansed AP transcript, "The honest answer is yes." (His actual response on tape was somewhat stuttered, with a "well" and a "fact is.")

Naturally, given Speaker Ahab's recent obsession with ridding our fair nation of high government officials who've engaged in improper conduct, his public confession to what everyone already knew raised the question: Is he a hypocrite?

To which I answer: No, or at least not really. For that's an insult to hypocrisy. I, for instance, am a hypocrite when I forgive liberal politicians for dipping into conservative customs of back-peddling and flip-flopping they normally decry, and of course they're hypocrites when they do it. But that's just necessary tradition, and playing with its finer edges is an exquisite and noble political art.

Newt, however, transcends mere hypocrisy. Wrapped in the flag, toting a cross, and still unforgiving of others, he stretches insincerity to unexplored heights, insulting not only hypocrisy, but every traditional notion of authentic remorse and genuine contrition. Any real man of his hyperactive balls would simply say "I screwed up and, consequently, out of verifiable sorrow I'm outta here." But that of course would mean he's actually outta here, and, like Nixon, "outta here" isn't something Newt does.

So let us not cast the forgiving and easily escapable net of hypocrisy over Newt. Let us, rather, express ourselves with lasting Old Testament wrath, and simply treat him as what he is: a squalid, unrepentant little man of utmost detestability.

They're quite mad, you know

The Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq war reminds me of flying-ace Snoopy, with goggles down and steely determination, though of course his victories are all in his head. Or maybe a Vegas high-roller, who, after an unbroken four-year losing streak, decides to bet what little is left in one last gamble.

The first metaphor is that of delusion; the second, that of pathetic desperation. Still, either is superior to the administration in sanity or wisdom, since neither is playing with other people's lives. In doing the latter, one enters the decidedly unmetaphorical realm of criminal recklessness -- which some men in uniform, perhaps looking for civilian brownie points, now want to broaden.

"The day-to-day commander of American forces in Iraq has recommended that the heightened American troop levels there be maintained through February 2008," reported the NYT yesterday, and this morning reports that his boss, too, now "assert[s] a need for open-endedness in the American commitment."

And here's a quotable quote to clarify things: "The White House has never said exactly how long it intends the troop buildup to last, but military officials say the increased American force level will begin declining in August unless additional units are sent."

So we'll have fewer there, unless we send more. That's the kind of clear thinking that promotions are made of. If only I had signed up for a military career years ago: I could have sat and thunk profound thoughts like that all day long, in the secure pursuit of a dynamite pension.

Logic aside, "more" is what seems to be in the Iraqi cards, to return to our gambling metaphor.

"The confidential assessment by the commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, reflects the military’s new counterinsurgency doctrine" -- that would be counterinsurgency doctrine #? -- "which puts a premium on sustained efforts to try to win over a wary population."

What did I miss? How is that "new"? Haven't we been reading about "sustained efforts to try to win over a wary population" for months, even years?

Nevertheless the effort is marketed as truly newly new, and whose announced introduction just happens to come after the midterm elections and after a partial "surge" deployment is on the ground and in harm's way. Arnold Rothstein himself could not have dreamed up a slicker shell game.

What's more, "to meet troop requirements" for the extended, heightened stay, "the Army would need to look seriously at mobilizing additional National Guard units later this year." The Army may first want to look at this piece, however, which I commented on a few days ago and leads off with the staggering revelation that "nearly 90 percent of Army National Guard units in the United States are rated 'not ready.'"

Naturally, to soften the altogether expected blow of the coming troop-level bait and switch, "the Bush administration [is already citing] what it calls early signs of progress." Yet just as naturally, those signs are in reality less than progressive, as scores of Shiite pilgrims on their way to Karbala would tell you, if only they had survived recent massacres.

Yesterday I quoted former White House aide Mary Matalin on "madness," a condition her ilk believes applies to a criminal's prosecution, but not to this war. So continues the asylum's reign.

***

NOTE: My book, Political Low Roads: American Demagoguery and the Rise of the New Right, is now available for pre-order. Be the first on your block to own a copy, or two, or 30, and take a sobering journey through the rhetorical shenanigans that got us into this mess. You can order Political Low Roads through BarnesandNoble.com, Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher. -- P.M.

Hippy-Dippy Libby Fibbies

Scooter's conviction has triggered a flood of speculation on an even darker future for the Bush administration. But in my opinion the speculation is symptomatic not of a changing tide so much as a trivialization of what's been so wrong, so blatantly criminal, so impeachably corrupt for years.

Quickly survey in your mind the post-9/11 era and you'll be shaken by a concentrated, tornadic squall of widespread manipulation, deceit and illegalities. Yet what do many pundits focus on, after all that? One aide's lying.

Others may see his conviction as symbolic of a coming dominoes collapse, but I see it as another pitch-tent sideshow -- while the main circus moves on to perform once again, and with the same routines.

After all, the powers that be have a lot of P.T. Barnums in their ring, all of them eager to distract, distort, and dissuade the public from thinking that anything has changed. In this pursuit the P.T.s will chew up print and the airwaves with a twofold offense -- and odds are their propagandistic extravaganza will be a smashing success.

The well-orchestrated campaign officially kicked off about 48 hours ago with the coming of Scooter's official demise (otherwise known as the pre-pardon phase), neatly contained in a WP analysis of the Libby verdict.

First, notwithstanding a remarkably solid media record of kid-glove coverage and Democratic timidity, we'll read and hear how the Bush administration is merely being subjected to more of the liberal media's slamming, said media being owned and operated, of course, by the DNC.

"I don't buy the conventional wisdom that we haven't had accountability in the past," said an anonymously, intentionally oblivious White House aide, setting the standard for the administration's on-the-ground circus barkers.

"Is it different because Democrats are in charge? Of course.... But that's fine, that's a reality that we're prepared to deal with," the aide continued.

In short, it's all politics. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

Their second principal attack mode is and shall continue to be grounded in -- what else? -- "Hey, the Clintons were worse."

"Scooter didn't do anything," said a snarling Mary Matalin of former Cheney employ. "And his personal record and service are impeccable. How do you make sense of a system where a security principal [Clinton admin's Sandy Berger] admits to stuffing classified docs in his pants and says, 'I'm sorry,' and a guy who is rebutting a demonstrable partisan liar is going through this madness?"

"Madness" -- the prosecution of a high-ranking White House aide trying to dupe a federal prosecutor on the conspiratorial outing of a CIA agent for political revenge. Oh dear, what other madness comes our way? To nip it in the bud, I suggest a Medal of Freedom for Public Servant Scooter. Everyone else either crooked or incompetent has one.

But you know what? The right's twin-edged talking points will work. And they'll work like a dream. The circus will stay on tour as though nothing has happened. I hope I'm wrong, but I think recent history supports my pessimism.

Take your pick: Passing political battles or permanently dead bodies

It's crunch time for House Democrats on this mess of a war.

Their leadership has already modified John Murtha's original proposal -- the one stipulating that in the best of all mediocre worlds, U.S. forces, at the very least, are to be trained and equipped before sent into combat -- watering it down so the president can bypass the stipulation as long as he goes to Congress first and fabricates an urgent need for a watery exemption.

That parliamentary cave-in didn't exactly set the stage for intraparty comity. The Blue Dogs were appeased, of course, but party liberals -- otherwise known as the party's conscience -- were royally upset and rightfully so; just as thousands of untrained, ill-equipped troops were, I would think.

But the compromising abuse of House liberals didn't stop there. According to Politico's "The Crypt," the speaker is now "facing a full-blown revolt" from the abovementioned party's conscience "over the $98 billion Iraq supplemental bill" -- the already waterlogged one -- "because it doesn't ... includ[e] setting a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq." That just sort of slid into the watery muck of presidential and Blue Dog appeasement.

So an uproar among the conscientious ensued, causing the Democratic leadership "to postpone markup of the Iraq bill in the House Appropriations Committee by at least a week ... to buy time to resolve the matter."

But not to worry, says a "senior Democrat [sic] lawmaker" in the most savory of Panglossian pabulum. The speaker "will get everyone on board at the end of the day."

On board what? The RMS Lusitania?

I led off by saying it's crunch time -- and crunch time it is. No more time-buying postponements to work out the unworkable. We're down to the nut of it, the black and white of either train or not train, equip or not equip, schedule a withdrawal or concede, at minimum, two more years of bloody futility. There is no in-between. The buying of liberal House members with new post offices or bike paths won't cut it. We either stay with proper support, or we go.

"The Crypt" noted, however, that which troubles even the most humanly conscientious of political animals. Should the House bill carry a withdrawal date, and should Blue Dogs join Republicans in opposition to it, and should the bill consequently go "down for defeat outright," then the war would end "by default since there would be no more money for combat operations."

"The political consequences could be disastrous for the party.... Republicans would punish the Democrats for years over it."

But here's something else the Democratic Party at large should keep in mind. Cower in the face of "political consequences," and more dead soldiers will be gone in vain for eternity.

Plan B? Like reality, an outmoded concept

In a 'Music Man' motif of closing their eyes to a situation they do not wish to acknowledge, the looming, if not imminent, American failure in Iraq has the Bush administration producing a theater of almost comical cognitive dissonance.

Just as "several administration officials [were] firmly clos[ing] the door on the subject of fallback plans" for what the U.S. should do, should doom finally befall us, our new defense secretary was informing Congress, located just off the reservation, that "I would be irresponsible if I weren't thinking about what the alternatives might be."

But then, I guess, he got the door-closing memo. So Mr. Gates got up to speed with Team Bush. Which means, like all its good lieutenants, he too started thinking irresponsibly. Hence the administration is now uniformly silent about reality, sticking to the old crappola about failure not being an option and now the new crappola of no fallback plans. Period.

But does it not seem that American adults are quite aware that maybe not every little thing is going swimmingly well for the U.S. in Iraq; that maybe we've had a few problems crop up while cultivating their democratic garden; that maybe, as small-r republican adults, we should be clued in on alternative futures a bit more? Notwithstanding, the administration treats us like neurotic children. "Not in front of the kids, dear. It might upset them."

It further seems the administration cannot comprehend that simply acknowledging what everyone else already knows -- that a fallback plan does indeed exist (please, please confirm that one exists) -- is not necessarily an admission that failure is necessarily expected. It's just an option -- maybe an imposing, even the singular, option, but an option nonetheless. We're big boys and girls and we can handle it. After all, if we can handle this administration for eight grueling years and a bribe-eating Republican Congress for twelve, it even further seems we can handle anything.

But off the administration goes, huckstering even more cognitive dissonance for the unwashed childish masses. An extended non sequitur in point:

Bush has warned that the U.S. commitment to Iraq is not open-ended and will require increased effort from Iraqis. Pressed to specify U.S. limits, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that there would be ample opportunity "to see whether or not in fact the Iraqis are living up to the assurances they gave us."

"And what if they don't?" Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) asked.

"I don't think you go to Plan B," Rice replied. "You work with Plan A."

And what, again, is Plan A? Why of course, to issue another warning that the U.S. commitment to Iraq is not open-ended and will require increased effort from Iraqis. And what in the meantime? Something like this, that's what:

Iraqi special forces and British troops stormed the offices of an Iraqi government intelligence agency in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, and British officials said they discovered about 30 prisoners, some showing signs of torture....

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, condemned the raid in Basra. He publicly said nothing about the evidence of torture.

OK, so Plan A has a few kinks -- like defending a government as wretched as the one we overthrew for "humanitarian reasons."

Yet the Bushies thrive on cognitive-dissonant powers that transcend mere self-contradiction. Theirs is the stuff the metaphysical is made of. We, on the other hand, are just one-dimensional children who don't get it.

Heaven help us: George reportedly is thinking again

Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi embodies all the (foreseeable) unforeseeable consequences and ultimate, self-defeating futility of America's geopolitical-military strategizing in Iraq. For he is the potential face of Afghanistan's Osama bin Laden, circa 1980s. For he is our friend. For now.

A Sunni Arab, Sheik Abdul Sattar leads a tribal militia opposed to the departed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. So rumor has it that the U.S. is bankrolling the sheik's larger organization, the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of his and 24 other tribes similarly opposed to al Qaeda's jihadist fundamentalism.

Or at least religious moderation is the sheik's principal pitch to U.S. officials. The New York Times notes, however, that "part of the sheik's mission is rooted in the tribal law of revenge. His father was killed by Al Qaeda in 2004 for opposing its kind of fundamentalism. Two brothers were abducted and never heard from again, and a third brother was shot dead."

That's a load of revenge. And I know if I were the sheik I'd sell my story to the U.S. as one almost exclusively rooted in idealistic opposition to al Qaeda -- not familial and tribal payback. I'd also know that the U.S., desperate as it is, would be all too willing to buy it, asking as few questions as possible. The underlying cause for cynicism is adorned with all the earmarks of a triangulated, incurious compact made in hell.

"I swear to God, if we have good weapons, if we have good vehicles, if we have good support, I can fight Al Qaeda all the way to Afghanistan," says the sheik, adding, naturally, that "We don't have enough weapons." Yet given enough weapons, vehicles and early support, he could also fight Nuri al-Maliki all the way to Tehran. After that, the geopolitical possibilities become extraordinary indeed.

Nonetheless "as part of a broad review of options in Iraq, President Bush is looking at whether to give greater support to Sunni Arab tribal leaders who have grown disillusioned with the radical arm of the insurgency. It is a strategy long urged by officials in Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and now vigorously backed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

I'm not sure which is more frightfully worrisome: that Saudi Arabia has a self-interested dog in this fight; that Condi thinks she knows the odds well enough to place a smart bet; or that George, who didn't know Sunnis and Shiites from Baptists and Methodists prior to invading their lands, is the decider of it all.

The Times further reports the sheik "has met three times with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki" -- measuring the palace drapes on the sly? -- "since announcing his campaign in September," and that "an adviser to the Iraqi cabinet on tribal affairs ... said the government had responded to Sheik Abdul Sattar's requests 'within a limited capacity,' because 'this is what the government can give.'"

You've heard of the bum's rush? Well, the government advisor's was, no doubt, a wise one. Yet George has still to weigh in -- a man whose attraction to sound empirical judgment is about as strong as my love for Ann Coulter.

For decades the U.S. has had a nasty habit of cutting quick deals for questionable profit, and later asking with feigned innocence why its beloved friend bit it in the end. We don't seem to learn. So here we are, about to cut a likely bin Laden-redux deal, assuming one hasn't been cut already.

History doesn't impassively repeat itself just because of our simple ignorance. We make sure we it slap good and hard in the face, first.

Newt's "Big Idea": Clap 'em in irons

In a videotaped interview (see the WP's front page) at last week's gathering of 19th-century Tories and 21st-century homophobes -- the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC -- Newt Gingrich strutted his conventional schtick. The former Speaker is routinely hailed as a "big-idea man" by fellow conservatives, yet he seems determined to obscure the epithetical reasons. At this, he is quite successful.

I'll relay the interview's ending first, which was just a bit of housekeeping. Is he running? To which his reaction was, How common, how predictable, how utterly shallow of the press. He wouldn't even "begin to think about" a presidential run till September 30, and "not a day earlier." He is, after all, an idea man, one unbothered by the pedestrian rubbish of organizational detail. The preceding four minutes were, however, consumed by campaign rhetoric of equally pedestrian soundbites.

The "Clinton machine is endlessly ruthless, very formidable," said the non-candidate in anticipation of his opposition, whom we know nothing about when it comes to monumental issues of the day that only Newt dares to tackle head on -- with poll-driven, focused-grouped zeal.

Where is she on English as our official language? -- which 84 percent of the American people support, he noted. And keeping God in the pledge of allegiance? -- which 91 percent of the American people support, he noted. Well, Newt's with you by God, and she's not, I guess.

But we do know she doesn't favor your right to burn the American flag in support of these issues. And that's a start.

One can also only guess that banning the burning of the American flag is a central tenet of "European socialism," for that phrase is what Newt used to contrast his noble conservatism with the Democratic ideology he's fighting here at home. He advocates "boldness," you see, just as Ronald Reagan did, and that's how one beats the unnamed she of flag-burning bans.

Boldness. Bold ideas. Such as a bold new Bill of Rights, in which Newt's conservatism of traditional "broad values" like "limited government" means our "rights come from God" and our government of limitations "protects individuals from the state" -- "except in cases of national security."

In short, Goodbye Jefferson, goodbye Franklin; Newt has the bold balls to envision the exchange of individual freedom for the security of a police state. And that idea is about as new, and bold, as Joe McCarthy.

Newt also informed us that in our "worldwide war" against terrorism the Democratic alternative is to "accept defeat and leave" Iraq. Those typical, typical Democrats -- typified by Jimmy Carter's defeatism, he continued. "This idea that we can be weak and defeated and not have very substantial consequences is foolish," instructed the geopolitically ballsy Newt, who decided in the 1970s that teaching history in Georgia was the ballsiest way to defeat worldwide communism in Vietnam.

Oh well, to each his own. I suppose Newt regarded draft deferments as just one of those rights that "come from God," which God knows I would have.

All in all, however, except for resurrecting McCarthyite notions of limited-government Gestapoism, Newt consistently fails to reveal himself as the "big-idea man" of modern conservatism. If his is the best mind it's got, if his is what actually passes for innovative thought, then we're either completely safe or in more horrible trouble.

Bombshells, Blackguards and General Breakdown

Incompetence, neglect, profligacy, isolation, malfeasance, even a textbook psychosis of clinical disconnect -- all are reaching critical mass at government's highest levels. Every day, it seems, we read another disclosure of scandalous failure. Taken separately, they're bad enough. Lump them together and one wonders just how much longer the nation can endure, how much more it can tolerate.

The latest -- merely the latest in this accelerating implosion -- is that the Bush administration has permitted the Army National Guard and Reserves to fall to 12 percent readiness. The "12" is no typo. Should a natural catastrophe strike, oh, let's say Alabama, the Guard would find itself without "trucks, Humvees, generators, radios, night-vision goggles and other gear that would be critical for responding to a major disaster," not to mention a "terrorist attack or other domestic emergency," reports a congressional commission.

The reason for this deplorable state of readiness is, of course, the administration's singular fixation on Iraq, which is sucking all the material oxygen from anything and everything unrelated to its civil war, but profoundly relevant to the war on insecurity and unpreparedness at home.

Accordingly the administration has already launched roughly half its projected number of new "joint security stations" in Baghdad, part of its sixth stab at pacifying the capital city and in direct opposition to what Congress wants, its generals want, the Iraqis want and the American people want. Its obstinance, however, is peddled as leadership.

American soldiers are fanning out from small, vulnerable outposts, charged with somehow predistinguishing nervous civilians from homicidal militants, insurgents or common criminals. Meanwhile our "friends," the Iraqi security forces, "are kept out of briefing sessions, largely because the Americans are suspicious that information will be passed on to" ... see aforementioned list.

What is daily American life like under these circumstances? For just one U.S. battalion in western Baghdad, insurgents recently "blasted rocket-propelled grenades at an Iraqi-guarded checkpoint," followed that with a "barrage [of] small-arms fire," "then detonated two car bombs when American troops rushed to respond," then, for good measure, lobbed "two mortar rounds ... about 50 yards outside another outpost the battalion had set up." And all in one day.

"I guess it is a little scary," remarked 22-year-old Army private, Peter Lahoda.

One need not wonder why he finds it so, since he made the comment "as he gripped an M240 belt-fed machine gun in a turret that has been shot at three times from the street below."

Sorry to ruin your day even more, Pete, if that's possible, but here are a couple little items just as scary -- perhaps even scarier. Thursday our vice president, apparently living in some other cosmic time zone, said if we "withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance." Yes, let's do keep a watchful eye out for that development.

And on a higher front, an online foreign-policy journal relates that "Those close to [the president] report that he remains convinced of success in Iraq and of how success will revive Republican political fortunes."

I am reminded of another little fellow who was convinced, right to the very end, that new jet fighters or FDR's death would prove to be the anticipated turning point in his war gone bad. Things didn't quite work out for him, though -- or for those he led.

I never dreamed I'd live to see the day in which I longed for my government to be marked only by incompetence, or only by neglect, or profligacy, or isolation, or malfeasance, or even a clinical disconnect. But these days, any one of these, by itself, would seem like Camelot.

Day-Care Democracy

The Politico ran a piece this week titled "Democrats Snipe At Senate Leaders over Handling of Iraq Issue," but I found the story to be less about Democratic sniping than small-d democratic paralysis.

In the midst of two failing wars (for us, that is), at least one of which we have no business fighting, pols in both parties in both houses are bickering like children, permitting urgent business to languish, strategizing electoral politics instead of resolving key legislation, and generally acting like they've all the time in the world -- while those in their charge die. To me, that was the story's genuine upshot.

But rather than just comment on this two-ring circus, I've taken the original 1136-word piece and compressed it to its thematic essence. Your exasperation will have more kick that way. It's like injecting pure smack. So here it is, straight off the cyberticker ...

"Senate Democrats are accusing their leaders of mismanaging the twin efforts to block President Bush's troop surge in Iraq and force a quicker end to the war....

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ... postponed for at least a week action on a Democratic plan to rewrite the 2002 congressional resolution authorizing the war....

"Senate insiders faulted [Joe] Biden and, to a lesser extent, [Carl] Levin, for telegraphing their [reauthorization] to Republicans prematurely....

"In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is confronting ... a caucus deeply divided over a plan....

"Compounding problems for Democrats, Pelosi and Reid have yet to agree on an overall strategy for ending the war....

"Senate Republicans blasted the Biden-Levin proposal as unworkable and dangerous for U.S. forces in Iraq.... GOP leaders vowed to offer their own resolution stating that Congress would never cut funds for troops engaged in combat....

"Reid ... backed down and, instead, promised Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the Biden-Levin resolution will not be brought up for at least a week, possibly longer....

"Reid and McConnell are now trying to work out the ground rules for an open debate on Iraq, one not tied to any other legislative matter ... although it's not clear if the two sides can work out such an agreement....

"Republican senators and aides said that Democrats had overreached....

"While [Orrin] Hatch ... acknowledged that there was no constitutional prohibition to [a reauthorization], he said it 'would infringe on inherently [sic] presidential powers....'

"[Russ] Feingold, on the other hand, wants to cut off funding for the war....

"Feingold's comments show how difficult it will be for Reid to execute his preferred strategy of forcing Republicans to take votes on interim measures to limit, or scale back, the war before moving toward an up-or-down vote on cutting off funds....

"Faced with these competing pressures, Reid admitted he was unsure of what his next step would be....

"Across the Capitol, Pelosi faced similar problems as she weighed whether to allow [John] Murtha a vote on his proposal....

"Republicans have dubbed it the 'slow-bleed' policy.... Its constant repetition by GOP spinmeisters and their political allies has definitely weakened support for the plan....

"Murtha ... has planned to insert his proposed restrictions into the upcoming wartime spending bill. But ... Rep. Dave Obey ... may now add waivers to the bill, which would allow the Pentagon to essentially ignore the Murtha language....

"The Murtha plan may have suffered too much damage to be politically viable anymore....

"Top Democrats tried to play down the problems they face over the Murtha proposal...."

But here's the best, the absolute topper that makes me embarrassed to be a citizen of these here congressionally oafish United States.

"Republican strategists ... looked at the problems facing Reid and Pelosi and gloated.... 'We're at the best we've been since the election,' said one senior Senate GOP aide. 'It may not last, but this is definitely the best we've been in a while.'"

Well, isn't that special. And here we thought it was all about the troops.

Pay no attention to that explosion -- it was just "symbolic"

The suicide bombing at the American military base in Afghanistan hosting the vice president on Tuesday, and killing two dozen, reminded me of the "Godfather II" scene in rebel-torn Havana, in which a revolutionary blew himself up, taking one of Batista's soldiers with him. The lesson fast-learner Michael drew from this? "They" -- the rebels -- "can win." With that, he took his bribe-stuffed briefcase and fled.

Reasonable people can debate with growing legitimacy the merits of fleeing Afghanistan -- it may be too far gone, it's an intolerable drain on the already overstretched U.S. military, our continued presence will only breed more terrorists -- but the Bush administration's public reaction to the bombing once again demonstrated something beyond debate: its head remains firmly stuck in the sand.

In a recent news analysis, here was the administration's official take on this deadly bombing at the front door of U.S. military base in a country we subdued, reputedly, years ago and have controlled, reputedly, ever since:

"American officials insisted that the importance of the attack ... was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney."

However when combined with the Taliban's real spring offensive that is about to grab more headlines and fill television screens with more scenes of real carnage, and combined as well with the Bush administration's real negligence of all things Afghan really going downhill, the suicide-bombing's "symbolism" takes on a bit more substance. In fact, it seems just as downright real as the coming blood and past neglect -- a tangible citation of just how foolishly distracted the administration has been by all things Iraqi, at Afghanistan's expense.

The bomb's shock waves must have exacerbated Mr. Cheney's dysfunctional brain waves, because all he could come up with in the way of explanatory symbolism was that the attack indicated the terrorists "question the authority of the central government." They "question" it. Let's see, did they do that with hands raised?

He also, in the reportage's paraphrase, "argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort." Would that be a tangible effort? In response to mere symbolism?

Some poor schmuck of a U.S. sergeant in Afghanistan got assigned -- excuse me, "tasked" -- with the job of explaining the symbolic bomb to the press, in which he giddily reported that its symbolic explosion "did not penetrate the outer ring of security." The news report concluded that that "account suggested that the security around the base had kept the bloodshed of an Afghanistan under attack by both Taliban and Qaeda forces outside the high walls of the base, the hub of American military activity in the country."

Which means -- you guessed it -- that, after five years, we've effectively conquered and are holding roughly one square mile in Afghanistan, the very rats' nest that precipitated our five years of responsive haplessness and resulting decline.

Unhappily we can't take a cue from the Bush administration and simply file the consequences under "Symbolic." Our decline is real.