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Power Line has chosen as their Book of the Year Norman Podhoretz’s World War IV; The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism. Gabriel Schoenfeld referred to the award dinner in out first Picking yesterday.

… Last night I listened to Henry Kissinger speak at a dinner (honoring Norman Podhoretz for his new book) that was put on by the amazing trio running Power Line. He made one point that struck me with special force: American withdrawal from Iraq will be an unmistakable American defeat, and the consequences will not be long-term, they will be immediate and grave.

No one can predict the future, but Kissinger’s analysis and warning seems irrefutable. Is that what America wants? This election is shaping up to be even more critical than the Carter-Reagan choice of 1980. Am I correct in thinking that, of the post-war elections, only the Nixon-McGovern race in 1972 had more riding on it?

In addition to the book, Mr. Podhoretz has written, for Commentary, the case for a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. It is 7,000 words and almost fills us up tonight. Here is how he closes.

… The upshot is that if Iran is to be prevented from becoming a nuclear power, it is the United States that will have to do the preventing, to do it by means of a bombing campaign, and (because “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long”) to do it soon.

When I first predicted a year or so ago that Bush would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities once he had played out the futile diplomatic string, the obstacles that stood in his way were great but they did not strike me as insurmountable. Now, thanks in large part to the new NIE, they have grown so formidable that I can only stick by my prediction with what the NIE itself would describe as “low-to-moderate confidence.” For Bush is right about the resemblance between 2008 and 1938. In 1938, as Winston Churchill later said, Hitler could still have been stopped at a relatively low price and many millions of lives could have been saved if England and France had not deceived themselves about the realities of their situation. Mutatis mutandis, it is the same in 2008, when Iran can still be stopped from getting the bomb and even more millions of lives can be saved—but only provided that we summon up the courage to see what is staring us in the face and then act on what we see.

Unless we do, the forces that are blindly working to ensure that Iran will get the bomb are likely to prevail even against the clear-sighted determination of George W. Bush, just as the forces of appeasement did against Churchill in 1938. In which case, we had all better pray that there will be enough time for the next President to discharge the responsibility that Bush will have been forced to pass on, and that this successor will also have the clarity and the courage to discharge it. If not—God help us all—the stage will have been set for the outbreak of a nuclear war that will become as inescapable then as it is avoidable now.

A “Sex Show” has been touring campuses in the East and Duke University had them over for a visit. It was Duke’s bad luck Stuart Taylor noticed.

… So, some might be surprised to learn that on this year’s Super Bowl Sunday, Duke University played host to a group of strippers, prostitutes, phone-sex operators, and others in a “Sex Workers Art Show” to display their “creativity and genius.” The university spent $3,500 from student fees and various programs to pay the performers and cover expenses.

One account of the February 3 show in the on-campus Reynolds Theater — from which I have redacted the more repulsive particulars — was posted on the Internet by Jay Schalin, of the conservative-leaning John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. …

… While the show portrayed “sex workers” as both artistic “geniuses” and victims of society, males who pay strippers to perform had better have politically correct motives. The Sex Workers Art Show passed the political correctness test because, in the words of its website, it not only “entertains, arouses, and amazes” but also offers “scathing and insightful commentary on notions of class, race, gender, labor, and sexuality.”

As if the nation’s campuses were not sufficiently steeped in such stuff already. …

… Brodhead and the board understand how the p.c. game is played. If only the lacrosse players had understood that, they could have lined up university funding to hire a better class of strippers: college-educated white people spouting vacuous political bromides and sporting dollar bills and sparklers in the right places.

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Gabriel Schoenfeld parses the Dem Iraq rhetoric.

… Last night I listened to Henry Kissinger speak at a dinner (honoring Norman Podhoretz for his new book) that was put on by the amazing trio running Power Line. He made one point that struck me with special force: American withdrawal from Iraq will be an unmistakable American defeat, and the consequences will not be long-term, they will be immediate and grave.

No one can predict the future, but Kissinger’s analysis and warning seems irrefutable. Is that what America wants? This election is shaping up to be even more critical than the Carter-Reagan choice of 1980. Am I correct in thinking that, of the post-war elections, only the Nixon-McGovern race in 1972 had more riding on it?

Mark Steyn reminds us that lost in the Canterbury flap were some of the outrageous inroads the fundamentalist Moslems have made in British culture.

The other day I got an e-mail from a British reader passing on a low-key press release. It announced that the Department for Work and Pensions had ruled that polygamous men were entitled to receive spousal welfare benefits for each of their wives. My correspondent then wondered whether I’d planted someone deep within Her Majesty’s Government “who comes out with this stuff just to boost sales of your book?”

Well, no, that would be pretty expensive. Still, to reprise the line of Canadian cynics apropos James Jesus Angleton’s belief that Pierre Trudeau was on the Soviet payroll: Why bother paying someone when he’s prepared to do it for free? Every day around the developed world, minor government bureaucrats get advice from minor government lawyers and make small incremental adjustments to Western civilization. “Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate,” read the new British guidelines. “The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65.”

You can’t (for the moment) marry multiple wives within the United Kingdom, but if you contract a polygamous marriage in a jurisdiction where polygamy is legal, such as certain, ahem, Muslim countries, your better halves (or better eighths?) are now recognized as eligible for British welfare payments. Thus the concept of “each additional spouse” has been accepted both de facto and de jure. …

A post from the Captain reminds us of more Clinton slime.

Interesting campaign analysis from Charlie Cook of National Journal.

One of the fascinating byproducts of this remarkable presidential campaign is that so many people, not just political junkies, are watching with rapt attention.

My 18-year-old, fairly apolitical son was recently grilling me about the race, and I found myself saying that there had not been such a weird and turbulent presidential campaign in my lifetime.

In fact, I told him I doubted I would ever see one like it again. …

WSJ Editors note more studies showing the foolishness of ethanol.

The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill’s latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Then again, Washington’s energy neuroses are more political than practical, so it’s easy for the Solons and greens to ignore what would usually be called evidence. …

John Stossel thinks the stimulus is nonsense.

… The federal government is in the red. Bush’s new budget has a $400 billion deficit. There’s no lockbox with $100 billion in it. So to give everyone a tax rebate, the government will have to borrow more money. But that only moves the cash from one part of the economy to another. As (George Mason University economist) Roberts says, “It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end.” …

 

… Economists call this the “broken window fallacy.” In the 19th century, French economist Frederic Bastiat illustrated it with the story of a boy who breaks a shop window. At first the townspeople lament the loss, but then someone points out that the shopkeeper will have to spend money to replace the window. What the window maker earns, he will soon spend elsewhere. As that money circulates through town, new prosperity will bloom.

The fallacy, of course, is that if the window had not been broken, the shopkeeper would have “replaced his worn-out shoes … or added another book to his library.” The town gains nothing from the broken window.

This logic is lost on the stimulus promoters. I’m surprised they don’t suggest that we prevent recessions by breaking lots of windows. …

ECO – World gives us the latest case against globalony.

The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. …

John Tierney on NASCAR physics.

When Junior Johnson entered the Daytona 500 in 1960, he’d already achieved fame in two careers — first as a moonshiner who kept outrunning federal agents, then by applying those skills to win stock-car races.

Now he was ready for a new career as an “intuitive physicist,” a term borrowed from Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, who teaches nonintuitive physics at the University of Nebraska.

Johnson was stuck driving an old Chevrolet that was slower than the Pontiacs at Daytona that year. But in practice he discovered that he could keep up with a Pontiac if he stayed close to its rear bumper. He suspected, as he put it, that “the air was creating a situation, a slipstream type of thing.” …

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Peter Wehner says Pelosi has morphed into Baghdad Bob.

… Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, has become our Baghdad Bob. And what a spectacle it is. Jihadists in Iraq are testifying to their own failures. At the same time, the Speaker of the House seems to have a deep ideological investment in ours.

Christopher Hitchens is not as polite to the Archbishop as Mr. Warren was yesterday

… And just look at how casually this sheep-faced English cleric throws away the work of centuries of civilization:

[A]n approach to law which simply said “there’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts”—I think that’s a bit of a danger.

In the midst of this dismal verbiage and euphemism, the plain statement—”There’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said”—still stands out like a diamond in a dunghill. It stands out precisely because it is said simply, and because its essential grandeur is intelligible to everybody. Its principles ought to be just as intelligible and accessible to those who don’t yet speak English, in just the same way as the great Lord Mansfield once ruled that, wherever someone might have been born, and whatever he had been through, he could not be subject to slavery once he had set foot on English soil. Simple enough? For the women who are the principal prey of the sharia system, it is often only when they are shipped or flown to Britain that their true miseries begin. This modern disgrace is deepened and extended by a fatuous cleric who, presiding over an increasingly emaciated and schismatic and irrelevant church, nonetheless maintains that any faith is better than none at all.

John O’Sullivan has a defense (sort of) of the Canterbury Fool.

… At about the time Rowan Williams was named for the ancient See of Canterbury, a friend who’d known and admired the new archbishop well at Oxford told me he was alarmed by the news. “He is a fine teacher, a very scrupulous theologian and a pious man,” said my friend. “But he lacks political skills and everyday common sense – which today are essential qualities in a successful archbishop.”

He went on to predict that Anglicanism would be convulsed in rows that would deeply distress his old friend.

That was a safe bet: The worldwide Anglican Communion was already embroiled in painful disputes between progressives and traditionalists over women priests, gay marriage and the authority of the biblical tradition.

Alas, in the course of persuading both sides not to push their disputes to the point of breaking up Anglicanism, Rowan Williams as primate (first bishop among equals), has repeatedly turned the other cheek – and repeatedly got slapped by both sides. More, he has shown a genius for putting his foot in it with ill-judged public statements – for instance, that terrorists “can have serious moral goals” or that Western market transactions might be “acts of aggression” against the world’s poor – that then require several rounds of further explanation. …

Debra Saunders has Canterbury comments.

… It’s not only Our Betters in Europe who, in the name of political correctness, become apologists for polygamists. In 2005, then-Canada Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study to debunk the notion that same-sex marriages could lead to legalized polygamy — only to watch the three law professors on the panel recommend that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law. Because: “The parties most likely to suffer from this rule are the left-behind wives.”

If secular Western nations had bedrock values, maybe there would be no need to worry about Values Creep. But when, as the honor-violence report noted, even women’s activists defend female genital mutilation, it’s clear that the only absolute in liberal societies is doubt.

Up against fanatics with barbaric ideologies, we are outgunned. We don’t even care if they want to hurt us.

“If you had a map of the U.K. showing the location of Islamist groups — or terrorist cells — and you had another map showing the incidence of honor-based violence and you overlaid them, you would find that they were a mirror,” noted Nazir Afzal, the Crown prosecutor on honor-based violence.

It makes you wonder if Western nations have a death wish.

Mark Helprin, who’s been very quiet lately, stirs from his lair in Charlottesville to slay some talk-show dragons.

What a kerfuffle! Half a dozen talk-radio hosts whose major talent is that, like hairdressers, they can talk all day long to one client after another as they snip, have decided that the presumptive Republican nominee does not hew sufficiently close to their gospel.

As anyone who has listened to them knows, the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like. And if a great institution of the left can weigh-in as it does in the choice of a nominee, why not its fraternal twins on the right? It doesn’t matter that Mitt Romney, suddenly their Reagan, became a conservative in a flash of light sometime last year, or that their other champion, a populist theocrat, is in many ways as conservative as Vladimir Lenin. The task is to stop the devil McCain.

As a mere print person whose words are not electrified and shot through walls, automobiles, pine trees, and brains, I realize that what I write in the bloody ink of a dying industry may be irrelevant. But from my antiquated perspective, something is very wrong.

Ostracism following tests of “right thinking” is a specialty of the left. …

We’ll do a little nuance here as Thomas Sowell defends journalists, and entertaining talk-show hosts, who have not yet climbed on the McCain bandwagon. His example is not to the point, but an interesting history lesson nonetheless.

… The carnage of the First World War was a shock from which a whole generation never recovered. Millions of soldiers on both sides were killed. A whole continent was devastated and millions of civilians were starving amid the ruins. Surely it was a humane and noble desire to want to avoid a repetition of that.

So when Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times of London, decided to filter the news, in the interest of peace, that was understandable.

Rather than print news that could rekindle animosities among nations that had fought in the First World War, Dawson filtered dispatches from his own foreign correspondents in Germany to remove negative reports of what the Nazis were doing.

Some of The Times’ correspondents complained at the deletions and rewriting of what they had written, and some resigned in protest. They apparently understood that their role was to report the facts as they saw them, not cater to some hope or agenda.

We now know in retrospect that The Times’ use of its great influence to promote the interests of peace had the opposite effect.

It downplayed the dangers of Hitler, thus contributing to Britain’s belated awakening to those dangers, and its vacillating responses — factors which emboldened Hitler to launch the Second World War.

It was not just that Dawson guessed wrong. More fundamentally, he misunderstood a journalist’s role and the betrayal involved when he went beyond that role, even for a noble cause.

David Brooks says neither of the Dems is going to govern as they campaign. Should we be surprised?

There’s a big difference between the Republican and Democratic campaigns: The Republicans have split on policy grounds; the Democrats haven’t. There’s been a Republican divide between center and right, yet no Democratic divide between center and left.

But when you think about it, the Democratic policy unity is a mirage. If the Democrats actually win the White House, the tensions would resurface with a vengeance.

The first big rift would involve Iraq. Both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have seductively hinted that they would withdraw almost all U.S. troops within 12 to 16 months. But if either of them actually did that, he or she would instantly make Iraq the consuming partisan fight of their presidency.

There would be private but powerful opposition from Arab leaders, who would fear a return to 2006 chaos. There would be irate opposition from important sections of the military, who would feel that the U.S. was squandering the gains of the previous year. A Democratic president with few military credentials would confront outraged and highly photogenic colonels screaming betrayal. …

Dick Morris show us how to follow the Clinton money.

… Foreigners are not allowed to contribute to presidential campaigns. But Bill’s 1996 campaign was accused of taking funds from the Chinese government passed through James Riady and through Al Gore’s visit to a Buddhist temple.

The Emir of Dubai must be smarting from the rejection of his efforts to take over security for key American ports and one can easily imagine that a desire for political acceptance by the next president may have been behind his generosity to Bill Clinton over this decade. Dubai has been gobbling up U.S. businesses. It recently bought a 20 percent stake in Nasdaq, Barney’s, Loehmann’s, it bought the Essex House Hotel, a 4 percent stake in Chrysler, a $5 million stake in MGM Mirage. In other words, Dubai is here to stay and may need help and permission for further investments from the federal government. Is it too much of a leap to speculate that the Emir might want to protect his investment by buying out Bill so that he can lend much needed cash to Hillary at a crucial moment in her campaign?

Especially at a time when Dubai and other foreign sovereign wealth funds are seeking to buy significant shares of cash-poor American banks, the major infusion of money into the Clinton campaign from the Middle East could become an important campaign issue.

Hillary and Bill could clear all this up by simply releasing the details of their personal finances as it was once customary for candidates to do. …

Post from Breakthrough Blog on the opposition to the $2,500 car.

Car A gets a fuel efficiency of 46 miles per gallon. Car B gets about 50 miles per gallon. Car A is called the Toyota Prius and is hailed by environmentalists as a step towards solving global warming. Car B, a new car called the Tata Nano unveiled by an Indian company, is reviled by environmentalists as disastrous for global warming. The New York Times devotes an entire editorial condemning the Tata Nano. Columnist and author Tom Friedman calls for the Tata Nano to be “taxed like crazy.” The reason for this extreme criticism? The Tata Nano is cheap – very cheap. It is a revolutionary new car design that will cost only about $2,500 and will bring car ownership within reach of millions of new people in the developing world.

The environmentalists’ hypocrisy is breathtaking. How can anything be criticized simply for being affordable? Tomorrow, if college education is made more accessible and affordable in India, will the New York Times denounce it on the grounds that college graduates tend to earn more and buy more consumer goods and hence enlarge their environmental “footprint”? The attitude of many environmentalists today is not unlike that of the Duke of Wellington at the dawn of the railroad era, who criticized the railways on the grounds that they would “only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.” …

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David Warren, Canadian, looks at Britain and sees Canada’s future.

… In various other ways, Shariah is being recognized, semi-formally. For instance, although bigamy remains nominally a crime in Britain, the Labour government has approved new social provisions by which extra welfare payments, council housing privileges, and tax benefits may be claimed by polygamous households, and the cash benefits to which the extra wives are now entitled may be paid directly into the account of their husband.

At a higher level, the (Anglican) Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, publicly called this week for the recognition of “some form of” Shariah law for Muslims in Britain, and said it should be given equal status with parliamentary law. While Archbishop Williams has a long history of muddled pronouncements, and is widely observed to be emotionally unstable, the strength of his office is now engaged on the Islamist side. …

John Fund charts the ways McCain can win in Nov.

… He is the only potential GOP candidate who is clearly positioned to keep the basic red-blue template of how each state voted in 2004 intact and then be able to move into blue territory.

Let’s assume that Ohio goes to either Mr. Obama or Ms. Clinton. It’s at least as likely that Mr. McCain could carry New Hampshire. The Granite State went only narrowly to Mr. Kerry, a senator from a neighboring state, and Mr. McCain has unique advantages there. New Hampshire elections are determined by how that state’s fiercely independent voters go, and Mr. McCain has won over many of them in both the 2000 and 2008 GOP primaries. He spent 47 days in New Hampshire before this year’s primary and is well-known in the state. If Mr. McCain lost Ohio but carried New Hampshire and all the other states Mr. Bush took in 2004, he would win, 270-268.

It’s true that Democrats will make a play for states other than Ohio that Mr. Bush won. Iowa is a perennially competitive state that could go either way this fall. Arkansas polls show that Hillary Clinton might well be able to carry the state where she served as First Lady for over a decade.

But Mr. McCain’s roots in the Rocky Mountain West complicate Democratic efforts to take states in that region. His fierce individualism and support for property rights play well in Nevada and Colorado, which were close in 2004. New Mexico, next door to Mr. McCain’s Arizona, gave Mr. Bush a very narrow 49.6% to 49% victory in 2004. But Mr. McCain’s nuanced position on immigration marks him as the GOP candidate who is most likely to hold the Hispanic voters who are the key to carrying New Mexico. ….

Jeff Jacoby celebrates Obama’s victories among white Americans.

ON THE SUBJECT of Black History Month, I’m with Morgan Freeman, who described it a few years ago as “ridiculous” – for the excellent reason that “black history is American history,” not some segregated addendum to it. The only way to get beyond racial divisions, he told Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes,” is to “stop talking about it. I’m going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.”

Amen to that. The sooner we resolve to abandon the labels “black” and “white,” the sooner we will be a society in which such racial labels are irrelevant. And what better moment to make such a resolution than this one, when white Americans by the millions are proving that the color of a person’s skin is no longer a bar to anything in this country – not even the presidency.

Whether or not Barack Obama’s bid for the White House ultimately succeeds, it has already demolished the canard that America will not elect a black president. His impressive win over Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses could perhaps be dismissed as a fluke, but after Super Tuesday there is not much left to argue about. Obama carried 13 states last week, and the whiter the state, the more imposing his victory.

He took Utah with 57 percent of the vote; North Dakota with 61 percent; Kansas with 74 percent; Alaska with 75 percent. Idaho chose Obama over Clinton by 80 to 17 percent. …

Bob Novak says, “Not so fast.”

Which Democrat really won Super Tuesday? Thanks to the Democratic Party’s proportional representation, it is not easy to say a week later. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama ran a virtual dead heat for delegates that day in 22 states clearly stacked in Obama’s favor. But the way Obama lost California raises the specter of the dreaded Bradley Effect.

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American Democrat, in 1982 unexpectedly lost his bid for governor of California. His defeat followed voters telling pollsters they prefer a black candidate and then voting the other way. In California’s primary last Tuesday, Obama lost by 10 percentage points after one late survey showed him ahead by 13 points and two others gave him a smaller lead.

Was this presumed 20-point reversal caused by the Bradley Effect, which has worried Democratic leaders about Obama since he became an obstacle to Clinton’s majestic procession to the Oval Office? It is much too early for that conclusion, but the subject is in the minds and private comments of Democratic politicians pondering the stalemate for the party’s presidential nomination. …

Changing subjects, George Will writes on the foolishness that is ethanol.

Iowa’s caucuses, a source of so much turbulence, might even have helped cause the recent demonstration by 10,000 Indonesians in Jakarta. Savor the multiplying irrationalities of the government-driven mania for ethanol and other biofuels, and energy policy generally.

Indonesians, like most Asians, love soybeans, the world price of which has risen 50 percent in a month and 125 percent in a year, partly because of increasing world population and incomes, but also because many farmers have switched land from soybeans to crops that can be turned into biofuels. In 2005, America used 15 percent of its corn crop to supplant less than 2 percent of its gasoline use. In 2007, the government-contrived U.S. demand for ethanol was more than half the global increase in demand. The political importance of corn-growing, ethanol-making Iowa is one reason that biofuel mandates flow from Washington the way oil would flow from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if it had nominating caucuses.

ANWR’s 10.4 billion barrels of oil have become hostage to the planet’s saviors (e.g., John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama), who block drilling in even a tiny patch of ANWR. You could fit Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware into ANWR’s frozen desolation; the “footprint” of the drilling operation would be one sixth the size of Washington’s Dulles airport. …

Robert Samuelson says, “No stupid! It’s not the economy.”

… We have a $14 trillion economy. The idea that presidents can control it lies between an exaggeration and an illusion. Our presidential preferences ought to reflect judgments about candidates’ character, values, competence and their views on issues where what they think counts: foreign policy; long-term economic and social policy — how they would tax and spend; health care; immigration. Forget the business cycle.

True, presidents try to manipulate it. In 1971, President Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls in part to prevent inflation from jeopardizing his reelection. The economy boomed in 1972. But the controls were a time-delayed disaster. When they were removed, inflation exploded to 12 percent in 1974. In 1980, the Carter administration adopted credit controls to squelch raging inflation. The result was a short recession — a complete surprise — that probably sealed Jimmy Carter‘s defeat in November.

History’s long view teaches the same lesson. No president tried harder, with good reason, to influence the business cycle than Franklin Roosevelt. When he took office in 1933, unemployment was roughly 25 percent. By executive order and congressional legislation, FDR effectively abandoned the gold standard, adopted deposit insurance, tried to prop up falling farm and factory prices, rescued many defaulting homeowners, regulated the stock market, and embarked on massive public works.

With what result? Well, leaving the gold standard aided recovery. But some economic research suggests that other New Deal measures may have frustrated revival. In any case, all of them together didn’t end the Great Depression. World War II did that. In 1939 unemployment was still 17 percent. …

How’s this for some good news? Steve Chapman thinks nuclear terrorism is unlikely.

… Assuming the jihadists vault over those Himalayas, they would have to deliver the weapon onto American soil. Sure, drug smugglers bring in contraband all the time — but seeking their help would confront the plotters with possible exposure or extortion. This, like every other step in the entire process, means expanding the circle of people who know what’s going on, multiplying the chance someone will blab, back out or screw up.

Mueller recalls that after the Irish Republican Army failed in an attempt to blow up British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, it said, “We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.” Al-Qaida, he says, faces a very different challenge: For it to carry out a nuclear attack, everything has to go right. For us to escape, only one thing has to go wrong.

That has heartening implications. If Osama bin Laden embarks on the project, he has only a minuscule chance of seeing it bear fruit. Given the formidable odds, he probably won’t bother.

None of this means we should stop trying to minimize the risk by securing nuclear stockpiles, monitoring terrorist communications and improving port screening. But it offers good reason to think that in this war, it appears, the worst eventuality is one that will never happen.

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Mark Steyn’s weekly OC Register column reviews the campaign to date.

… it should be noted that the defining McCain moment came back in the fall when he responded to Hillary Clinton’s support for public funding for a Woodstock museum. If you’re under 70 and have no idea what “Woodstock” is or why it would require its own museum, ask your grandpa. But McCain began by saying he was sure Mrs. Clinton was right and that it was a major “cultural and pharmaceutical event.” Which is a cute line. And McCain wasn’t done yet: “I wasn’t there,” he said of the 1969 music festival. “I was tied up at the time.”

And the crowd roared its approval. It’s not just a joke, though it’s a pretty good one. It’s not merely a way of reminding folks you’ve stood up to torture and you can shrug it off with almost 007-cool insouciance. But it also tells Republican voters that, when Sen. Clinton offers up some cobwebbed boomer piety, you know a piñata when you see one, and you’re gonna clobber it. …

If you want Mark with a little more bite, we have a Townhall link to his CPAC speech. Twenty-eight minutes of fun.

So how did McCain do at CPAC?

John Fund liked McCain’s appearance.

Democrats, and even a few Republicans, have suggested that John McCain may not wear well as a candidate, with many making comparisons to Bob Dole, the former war hero and longtime senator who was the uninspired GOP nominee in 1996 against Bill Clinton.

But Mr. McCain put many of those doubts to rest yesterday with a thundering speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. …

John Podhoretz did too.

What John McCain delivered at the Conservative Political Action Conference was a nearly perfect political speech in a nearly perfect setting. The rhetorical dynamic was to present McCain as an “imperfect servant” — first of his party and then of his country. This had the effect, first, of creating a mood of rueful modesty, which are the necessary critical grace notes for any speaker trying to make a case before a partly hostile audience. Any hostility shown him by the audience — and there was some — seemed unreasonable and ugly-spirited given the outstretched hand of the speaker.

The purpose of the speech was for McCain to make the case that he is a conservative, and indeed, it was a speech rooted in conservative philosophy, featuring two (count-’em) quotes from Burke on the nature of liberty and the threats to it. But he did far more. …

Jennifer Rubin, also in Contentions.

McCain did himself a lot of good in his CPAC speech. The crowd gave him a very friendly welcome. The only boos I could discern came during his discussion of immigration reform. Throughout the speech he was interrupted several times by healthy applause. Specifically, he did six smart things:

First, he did not deny there are real differences between him and the assembled. …

The Captain’s first post today is on the McCain speech.

… McCain focused the latter part of his speech on the big issues that he says will define the election — the war, the Democratic insistence on statist policies, and entitlement reform. He concluded that part of the argument with this (emphasis mine):

These are but a few of the differences that will define this election. They are very significant differences, and I promise you, I intend to contest these issues on conservative grounds and fight as hard as I can to defend the principles and positions we share, and to keep this country safe, proud, prosperous and free.

We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won’t continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.

If conservatives hear that carefully, that is an invitation to the table. They should accept that invitation and start seeking to fill the seats. …

He also posts on MSNBC going in the tank for Obama.

… What? MS-NBC biased? Oh heavens, could that possibly be? Before the Left gets particularly outraged by that particular idea, let’s recall that this is the network that airs Keith Olbermann, who saw Peter Finch’s performance in Network and didn’t realize it was satire. Their supposed news anchor spends every night ranting about conservatives and Republicans, daily issuing them the title of “The Worst Person In The World”, which ignores people like Richard Ramirez, Ali Khameini, Osama bin Laden, the Castro brothers, and so on.

And yet, Republican presidential candidates have regularly appeared on MS-NBC, despite the almost relentless bias against them on the cable channel. They haven’t even demanded Mr.Meltdown recuse himself from the proceedings. Apparently, they don’t feel as though the pettiness and rancid commentary at MS-NBC can knock them off their stride. Hillary feels differently — shouldn’t that say something about her candidacy? …

And he speculates on the source of Clinton’s $5 million dollar loan.

Neal Boortz comments on McCain.

… But .. McCain is the guy. He’s going to be the nominee unless something really bizarre happens. If you don’t support his candidacy .. if you sit out the election .. just how much influence do you think you are going to have during his presidency? That is …if your actions don’t put Hideous Hillary in office.

Charles Krauthammer tells us how we got to McCain.

… The story of this campaign is how many Republicans felt that national security trumps social heresy. The problem for Giuliani and McCain, however, was that they were splitting that constituency. Then came Giuliani’s humiliation in Florida. After he withdrew from the race, he threw his support to McCain — and took his followers with him.

Look at the numbers. Before Florida, the national polls had McCain hovering around 30 and Giuliani in the mid-teens. After Florida, McCain’s numbers jumped to the mid-40s, swallowing the Giuliani constituency whole. …

… Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. It was Bush who strongly supported the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives such as Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives such as George F. Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively).

Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain. …

VDH has a call to arms.

… The alternative is a Republican loss, and likely increased Democratic control of the Congress and soon a trifecta with the Supreme Court.

We would witness a new generation of European-like tax increases, unnecessary new programs, negotiated or unilateral surrender in Iraq, loss of what has been achieved in preventing another 9/11 (a return to the Sandy Berger/Albright response to terrorists in the late 1990s when our embassies were leveled and Pakistan got the bomb), 2-3 far Left Supreme Court justices, and the race/class/gender industry given official sanction.

The idea that feuding conservatives would each not make some sort of concessions to prevent all that is lunatic.

Gerard Baker of the London Times says the Dem race is Dunkin’ Donuts against Starbucks.

I’m not sure when the term latte liberal replaced the old champagne socialist as the favoured term of derision for the well-heeled leftie but it looks an increasingly useful metaphor for understanding how the deadlock in the Democratic presidential primary election might be broken.

The two candidates have fought themselves to a standstill. In the closest race in any US presidential primary campaign in decades, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are more or less tied in total votes received and in delegates elected for the party’s nominating convention.

Super Tuesday, when almost half the country voted in the nearest thing ever to a nationwide primary, was supposed to break the logjam but has merely tightened it.

The reason the race is so close has nothing to do with policy differences. I’d wager that not one voter in a hundred could name with any confidence a single difference between the two candidates’ stances on the war in Iraq, healthcare, taxes, public spending, abortion or anything else. That’s because there isn’t one. …

IBD Editors say it’s time to prepare for global cooling.

According to Popular Mechanics, a truck was the Auto Show big hit in Chicago. Navistar introduced its new big rig.

At what was by far the most jam-packed unveiling of the entire show here so far, Navistar International today took the wraps off its new flagship truck, the LoneStar. This monster is the big-rig equivalent of a Harley-Davidson dresser, with a huge chrome grille and lights galore. But there’s some green poking through that smoke: As part of Navistar’s Advanced Classics line of Class 8 trucks designed with advanced aerodynamics, the LoneStar is projected to be 5 to 15-percent more fuel efficient than traditional trucks. …

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Samizdata with a quote of the day we can all understand.

Accuracy in Media finds out just what H. Clinton was doing during the Watergate hearings. Her supervisor in the House Impeachment staff says;

… During that period I kept a private diary of the behind the scenes congressional activities. My original tape recordings of the diary and other materials related to the Nixon impeachment provided the basis for my prior book Without Honor and are now available for inspection in the George Washington University Library.

After President Nixon’s resignation a young lawyer, who shared an office with Hillary, confided in me that he was dismayed by her erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel-as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon. In my diary of August 12, 1974 I noted the following:

John Labovitz apologized to me for the fact that months ago he and Hillary had lied to me [to conceal rules changes and dilatory tactics.] Labovitz said, “That came from Yale.” I said, “You mean Burke Marshall [Senator Ted Kennedy's chief political strategist, with whom Hillary regularly consulted in violation of House rules.] Labovitz said, “Yes.” His apology was significant to me, not because it was a revelation but because of his contrition.

At that time Hillary Rodham was 27 years old. She had obtained a position on our committee staff through the political patronage of her former Yale law school professor Burke Marshall and Senator Ted Kennedy. Eventually, because of a number of her unethical practices I decided that I could not recommend her for any subsequent position of public or private trust. …

Another Clinton controversy over foreign money.

Apparently, Hillary is considering using some of her own money to finance her campaign.

 

If she does, I can guarantee there’ll be questions about the millions in foreign money Bill Clinton has racked up in speaking fees that’s likely stashed in their joint checking account. …

Kansas City Star reports Obama’s claim GOP will have Hillary dirt.

Sen. Barack Obama predicted Wednesday that Republicans will have a dump truck full of dirt to unload on Hillary Rodham Clinton if the former first lady wins the Democratic presidential nomination. Obama said he offers the party its best hope of winning the White House, a claim Clinton also made.

At a news conference the morning after Super Tuesday, Obama offered some pointed advice to members of Congress and other party leaders who will attend the national convention this summer as delegates not chosen in primaries or caucuses.

He said if he winds up winning the most delegates in voting, they “would have to think long and hard about how they approach the nomination when the people they claim to represent have said, ‘Obama’s our guy.’” …

Gabor Steingart in Der Spiegel with another perceptive report on the race.

The duel between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama may be fascinating for the party’s supporters, but it’s jeopardizing a Democratic election victory in November. When two people quarrel, the third often wins — which is why John McCain could end up as president. …

VDH says; Weird times and weird election.

In this weird presidential campaign, almost everything has turned out opposite from what pollsters and pundits predicted. Even Super Tuesday proved not-so-super, and things are still not quite settled in either party race.

The election was supposed to be about a shaky Iraq. But after the successful surge and the recent economic downturn in the U.S., candidates now talk more about mortgages and illegal immigration than chaos in Baghdad.

John McCain was said to be finished by July. Then he was back again as a contender by January and is a supposed sure thing in February.

Barack Obama was at first just to be a runner-up; front-runner Hillary Clinton once worried more about the fall Republican nominee. Then, after the unexpected Obama victory in Iowa, his surging poll numbers assured us that Hillary was toast in New Hampshire. But she suddenly came back there, and also won in Michigan and Nevada — but that was all before Obama resurged in February. …

The Captain has CPAC advice for McCain.

Dan Henninger says it’s McCain or the wilderness.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham aren’t the only conservatives in agony over John McCain. The base is bummed. At the Portofino Hotel in Orlando, Fla., where Rudy Giuliani went down with a graceful valedictory concession, an energetic Rudy guy in dark glasses and slicked black hair — hours before ebulliently cheering up anyone who would talk to him — ran up to a reporter waiting for a car. “My wife just heard. Rudy’s gonna endorse McCain! S—!!!!”

Conservatives can’t catch a break. Taxes, judges, the culture — somewhere a conservative is always getting shafted. The party broke up on the rocks of the 2006 election. Its 2008 presidential nomination has been contested by men claiming the mantle of Ronald Reagan but who in fact are: John McMaverick, a New York City mayor on his third marriage, the moderate governor of liberal Massachusetts, and the funniest governor ever from Hope, Ark.

There are murmurs of heading into the political wilderness. Sit this one out. Rather than sell the party’s soul to John McCain, let Hillary have it, or Barack. Go into opposition for four years while the party gets its head together and comes up with an authentic conservative candidate. If this sourness takes hold at the margin, say among GOP anti-immigrant voters, it might happen. …

George Will comments on Tuesday results.

… On Tuesday, the Democratic Party paid a price for early voting, especially in California, where more than 2 million votes were cast in the 29 days prior to what is anachronistically called Election Day. The price was paid by the party’s most potentially potent nominee, Obama, whose surge became apparent after many impatient voters had already rushed to judgment.

Although Obama lost California to Clinton by 380,000 votes, he surely ran much closer in the votes cast on Tuesday, after her double-digit lead in polls had evaporated. Had he won the third of the three C’s — he won Connecticut, where a large portion of voters are in her New York City media market, and in Colorado, a red Western state rapidly turning purple — he might now be unstoppable.

Evangelical Christians, who in 2006 gave Republicans more votes than Democrats received from African-Americans and union members combined, wanted to determine the GOP’s nominee — and perhaps they have done so. By giving so much support to an essentially regional candidate, Mike Huckabee, rather than to Mitt Romney, they have opened McCain’s path to capturing the conservative party without capturing conservatives. McCain’s Tuesday triumph was based in states (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, California) he will not carry in November. …

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Snow in strange places catches David Warren’s attention.

… Surprise plays an important part, alike in humour and in military tactics. Perhaps it is even more important to humour, for as we’ve seen through recent history, the United States Army is more or less irresistible even when you can see them coming from miles away. And for human events, this paradoxical metaphysical conceit seems written into nature. Here we were preparing the dykes against global warming, when some ship’s anchor did more economic damage than the perfect storm.

More, anyway, than the perfectly wonderful storm: the blanket of snow that descended this last week over large parts of the Middle East, and indeed also right across China. It was snowing, even near Riyadh (for the first time since 1968), and on Abu Dhabi, with lots on Persia. It was really snowing, in towns at higher elevations, such as Jerusalem and Amman. Beautiful snow, piling up inches deep, bringing almost everything to a stop, except the gleeful children. (Alas, no evidence of snow in Gaza.) …

David Harsanyi turns down the anti-McCain volume, but still makes the point.

… Anger towards McCain, despite the spin of his supporters, isn’t exactly irrational. McCain has shown an elastic sense of principle. To conservatives, it seems like temperamental predilections are just as likely to determine his positions as poll numbers. He’s a man they have trouble trusting.

Conservatives may remember that after losing the South Carolina primary in 2000, McCain derided conservative evangelical leaders as wielding “evil influence” on the Republican Party. (“Evil influence” apparently means convincing people not to vote for John McCain.)

Now, he’s one of the believers.

Conservatives may wonder why McCain joined Russ Feingold in writing legislation that allows the federal government to dictate free speech in ways never before imagined. Or that he joined Ted Kennedy on an immigration bill that was opposed by most conservatives. Now, McCain sounds like he’s ready to join the Minutemen.

Free-market types may wonder why John McCain supports cap-and-trade schemes. Others may wonder why he not only buys into end-of-world global warming scenarios, but opposes drilling in ANWR — comparing that stretch of tundra in Alaska to the Grand Canyon and Florida Everglades. …

Invoking Goldwater Fred Barnes wants us to think about winning in November.

… McCain, probably alone among Republicans, can win this fall, but not without the full-blown support of conservatives. If he continues to reach out to them while running as a conservative, they need to heed Barry Goldwater’s advice in 1960. “Let’s grow up, conservatives,” he said. “If we want to take this party back, and I think we can, let’s get to work.”

The Captain looks at the Dem’s problems.

… What happens if Obama comes to the convention — and Hillary beats him with the superdelegates?

It could create a huge firestorm in Denver that could consume the party’s oxygen for the next several years. The African-American vote would see this as a stolen nomination and could walk away from the Democrats. Rank-and-file voters, especially those who supported Obama’s call for change in politics, would likely see this as smoke-filled-room maneuvering — which is exactly what it would be. The bitterness would extend to the House and Senate members of the superdelegate assembly who backed Clinton over Obama, and it could threaten the Democrats’ down-ticket races as well as their presidential election chances.

Under that scenario, would Hillary follow Bowers’ suggestion and push the superdelegates to support Obama and concede power? Or will Hillary and Bill lean heavily on them, call in their chits, and fracture the party on the chance that they could unite it afterwards? Given the Clintonian attraction to power, I’d call the latter scenario a lot more likely.

Another problem for them is the slime around Bill Clinton. Marty Peretz calls him out.

“The Clintons’ shadiest donors” are featured on an adjoining spot on our home page. Generally, it is not entirely new. Still, in accumulated detail, one cannot quite get over how Bill and Hillary live with these scummy personages. And have the insolence, besides, to lecture others on ethics in public life. I’ve made this point once before: the former president’s latest book should not have been called “Giving” but “Taking.”

In any case, we owe the New York Times enormous gratitude for having unearthed the tale of Bill Clinton’s shenanigans with Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, dictator of Kazakhstan …

Here’s the NY Times piece. You will read it in open-mouthed incredulousness.

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton. …

… Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges. …

John Stossel writes on foreign adoption restrictions from our government.

Do you want to rescue an abandoned child and give him a loving home?

Don’t even try, says the U.S. State Department.

That’s not exactly what the bureaucrats said, but it’s close. The State Department says the Guatemalan adoption system “unduly enriches” so-called baby brokers and that “Guatemala has not established the required central authority to oversee intercountry adoption.”

“Central authority”? This from our government? They sound like Soviet apparatchiks. …

Evolutionary economics discovers what’s fair.

Because 99 percent of our evolutionary history was spent as hunter-gatherers living in small bands of a few dozen to a few hundred people, we evolved a psychology not always well equipped to reason our way around the modern world. What may seem like irrational behavior today may have actually been rational 100,000 years ago. Without an evolutionary perspective, the assumptions of Homo economicus—that “Economic Man” is rational, self-maximizing and efficient in making choices—make no sense. Take economic profit versus psychological fairness as an example.

Behavioral economists employ an experimental procedure called the Ultimatum Game. It goes something like this. You are given $100 to split between yourself and your game partner. Whatever division of the money you propose, if your partner accepts it, you are both richer by that amount. How much should you offer? Why not suggest a $90–$10 split? If your game partner is a rational, self-interested money maximizer, he isn’t going to turn down a free 10 bucks, is he? He is. Research shows that proposals that deviate much beyond a $70–$30 split are usually rejected. …

NY Times reports on bad air at the Chinese Olympics.

Every day, monitoring stations across the city measure air pollution to determine if the skies above this national capital can officially be designated blue. It is not an act of whimsy: with Beijing preparing to play host to the 2008 Olympic Games, the official Blue Sky ratings are the city’s own measuring stick for how well it is cleaning up its polluted air.

Thursday did not bring good news. The gray, acrid skies rated an eye-reddening 421 on a scale of 500, with 500 being the worst. Friday rated 500. Both days far exceeded pollution levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. In Beijing, officials warned residents to stay indoors until Saturday, but residents here are accustomed to breathing foul air. …

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Turns out a lot of today is history day.

Jonah Goldberg is first with things you never knew about W.

I’m thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.

Oh, and I’m not thinking of George W. Bush, but another “W” – actually “WW”: Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.

President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, …

International Herald Tribune wonders how a democracy produced Hitler.

Could something like it happen again? That is invariably the first question that comes to mind when recalling that Hitler was given power in Germany 75 years ago last week.

With the world now facing such great instability, the question seems more obvious than ever.

Hitler came to power in a democracy with a highly liberal constitution, and in part by using democratic freedoms to undermine and then destroy democracy itself. That democracy, established in 1919, was a product of defeat in war and revolution and was never accepted by most of the German elites, notably the military, large landholders and big industry. …

Bret Stephens reminds we have always been “in decline.”

In 1788, Massachusetts playwright Mercy Otis Warren took one look at the (unratified) U.S. Constitution and declared that “we shall soon see this country rushing into the extremes of confusion and violence.” This, roughly, is the origin of American declinism — and it’s been downhill ever since.

A couple centuries later, an international relations theorist at Yale named Paul Kennedy sought to explain the decline of great powers in terms of a ratio between military commitments and economic resources. The Reagan military buildup and the deficits that went with it, he warned, had brought the United States to the point of “imperial overstretch.” Not quite. Within a few years, the Soviet Union collapsed, Europe and Japan (with no military burdens to speak of) entered a long period of economic stagnation, and the U.S. consolidated its position as the world’s only true superpower.

Declinism is again in vogue. “America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order,” writes Parag Khanna in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story titled, cheerfully, “Who Shrank the Superpower?” In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Fred Kaplan observes that “the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted.” Mr. Kaplan’s new book, “Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power,” sounds just a bit derivative of Nancy Soderberg’s “The Superpower Myth” (2005), Roger Burbach’s “Imperial Overstretch” (2004) and Charles Kupchan’s “The End of the American Era” (2003).

American “decline” is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House. …

David Brooks comments on Clinton.

… there are certain moments when her dark side emerges and threatens to undo the good she is trying to achieve. Her campaign tactics before the South Carolina primary were one such moment. Another, deeper in her past, involved Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.

Cooper is one of the most thoughtful, cordial and well-prepared members of the House. In 1992, he came up with a health care reform plan that would go on to attract wide, bipartisan support. A later version had 58 co-sponsors in the House — 26 Republicans and 32 Democrats. It was sponsored in the Senate by Democrat John Breaux and embraced by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others.

But unlike the plan Hillary Clinton came up with then, the Cooper plan did not include employer mandates to force universal coverage.

On June 15, 1993, Cooper met with Clinton to discuss their differences. Clinton was “ice cold” at the meeting, Cooper recalls. “It was the coldest reception of my life. I was excoriated.”

Cooper told her that she was getting pulled too far to the left. He warned that her plan would never get through Congress. Clinton’s response, Cooper now says, was: “We’ll crush you. You’ll wish you never mentioned this to me.” …

Peter Wehner on the Brooks piece.

Many quality posts from the Captain.

Andrew Sullivan compares Clinton to Thatcher.

… Think of Margaret Thatcher: a woman who came from lowly beginnings to master a chemistry degree and a legal career in the 1940s and 1950s, who won a seat in parliament single-handedly and eventually became a three-term prime minister for the Conservative party. Yes: the Conservative party. You think she didn’t have to deal with prejudice and chauvinism? More than Hillary Clinton will ever know. But she never engaged for a second in the gender politics and nepotistic shenanigans that Clinton has. Thatcher had a rich husband but he was not a stepping stone to politics. She had two children, but never used them for public attention or photo-ops. She did it all – indisputably – on her own merits. …

 

… There were also, of course, the now famous New Hampshire tears – to evoke sympathy. And the blunt appeal on gender grounds alone. And the refusal to disavow the use of her husband for her own political purposes, even as he told lies and cast racist aspersions about her opponent. And, on the eve of Super Tuesday, the tears again. Can you imagine a male politician breaking down in public the day before a crucial vote – and expecting it to help?

It’s time feminists realized that Clinton is a dream gone sour. If you believe in women in politics, in female leaders who lead by themselves, on their own merits, with no strings to pull and husband-presidents to rely on, do yourself a favor and vote for Obama.

One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one.

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David Warren marks the Tet Offensive 40 years later.

… The Tet Offensive ended not only in a huge allied victory in the field — some 45,000 of the Communist soldiers had been killed, and their infrastructure entirely destroyed. It was victory after an event that showed skeptical South Vietnamese, and should have shown the world, the nature of the enemy our allies were fighting.

Walter Cronkite, the famous news anchor of CBS, led the American media reaction. After a very brief visit to Saigon, in which he got himself filmed wearing flak jackets, he returned to the United States, declaring before his huge prime time audience:

“It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honourable people who have lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.”

The media turned a tremendous victory into a tremendous defeat. Yet seven more years would pass until an America, which had by then abandoned Vietnam, and a Congress, which had cut off military supplies to the South Vietnamese, watched the helicopters removing America’s last faithful servants from a roof in Saigon’s old embassy compound. The South Vietnamese Army had surrendered, to another Tet Offensive, as it ran out of ammunition.

We have seen this “Vietnam syndrome” writ large, through the intervening years. We see it today in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Romans, too, won all the ground battles.

Karl Rove says reports of the GOP’s death are greatly exaggerated.

… we are told Democrats have raised more money. You will search in vain for a similar declaration of last rites for the Democrats in 2000 when Republicans outraised them. And having more money doesn’t decide the contest. Consider 2004, when Democratic presidential candidates, committees and 527s outspent their Republican counterparts by $124 million—and lost. Besides, the RNC has nearly eight times the cash on hand as the DNC. Just a month has passed since voting began, and nine months remain before November. Let’s see what happens to Republican bank accounts as the year goes on.

Maybe we are not seeing the crackup of the GOP. Rather, America is more likely to be at the start of an intense and exciting election. The contest will be hard fought, the actions of the candidates each day hugely significant. It’s far too early to draw sweeping conclusions about the health of either party; the presidential race, after all, has barely begun. Lots of surprises lie ahead.

Jeff Jacoby with “A Conservative’s Case for McCain.”

… Conservatives bristle at the thought of a Republican president who might raise income and payroll taxes. Or enlarge the federal government instead of shrinking it. Or appoint Supreme Court justices who are anything but strict constructionists. Or grant a blanket amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Now, I don’t believe that a President McCain would do any of those things. But President Reagan did all of them. Reagan also provided arms to the Khomeini theocracy in Iran, presided over skyrocketing budget deficits, and ordered US troops to cut and run in the face of Islamist terror in the Middle East. McCain would be unlikely to commit any of those sins, either.

Does this mean that Reagan was not, in fact, a great conservative? Of course not. Nor does it mean that McCain has not given his critics on the right legitimate reasons to be disconcerted. My point is simply that the immaculate conservative leader for whom so many on the right yearn to vote is a fantasy. Conservatives who say that McCain is no Ronald Reagan are right, but Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan either. Neither is Mike Huckabee. And neither was the real – as opposed to the mythic – Ronald Reagan. …

… As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been easier to go along with the crowd.

A perfect conservative he isn’t. But he is courageous and steady, a man of character and high standards, a genuine hero. If “the House that Reagan Built” is to be true to its best and highest ideals, it will unite behind John McCain.

Dowdy Maureen with inside dope on the dopes.

… Thursday night (debate night) was not the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Just a beautiful, dare we say, fairy tale.

Hillary is done with playing a supporting role to a political natural. And why would Obama want to follow in the frustrated footsteps of Al Gore, who became Bill Clinton’s vice president only to find that the job was already taken by Hillary? Think about being third banana to Billary? There won’t be any Dick Cheney-style coup in Hillary’s White House.

“Can you imagine being in that position?” a member of Team Obama said tartly. “Well, neither can he. It’s just part of their campaign to marginalize him. I think they’re pushing every freaking button they can right now.”

Team Obama refers to the Clinton campaign as “Jaws” because “just when things are quiet, they keep trying to come back and capsize the boat.” …

NY Mag says she’s crying again.

Yep, it’s official. Hillary Clinton is running to be Crybaby-in-Chief. …

Andrew Ferguson in the Weekly Standard says normal people can’t run for president anymore.

In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he’s been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: “Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office.” If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at last clear the field for Fred Thompson, who might then become president. But not until then.

Thompson withdrew from the presidential race last week. He ended his campaign as he had conducted it, with a minimum of fuss and no wasted words. He released a withdrawal statement over the Internet. It was three sentences long, and he hasn’t been heard from since. My guess is we’ll be missing him dreadfully by spring.

The charge against Thompson, who entered the campaign last September when polls showed him a favorite among Republican voters, was repeated so often it became a cliché. Like most clichés it tells us more about the people who used it than about the state of affairs it was supposed to describe. His campaign lacked “energy.” He didn’t get out enough on the campaign trail, and, when he did, he didn’t hold enough events. His speaking style was too low-key, and his speeches were too long, and more often than not his “performance” in televised debates was lackluster. He just didn’t have the fire in the belly. …

The American reviews a book on Starbucks.

In the hilarious 2000 movie “Best in Show,” a couple discusses how they first crossed paths. “We met at Starbucks—not the same Starbucks. We saw each other at different Starbucks across the street. I knew you’d be at one Starbucks, then I’d be at the other Starbucks, but then I’d think maybe I should go over to the other Starbucks, and then you’d be at the other one.”

This was a parody, of course, but it is not uncommon in real life to see two or more Starbucks stores located on the same intersection, in the same shopping mall, or within a block or two of each other. Twenty years ago, only 585 coffeehouses existed in the entire United States. By the end of 2007, the country had more than 7,000 Starbucks stores—less than a third of the 24,000 Starbucks locations worldwide. The company plans to establish another 16,000. The goal, according to Starbucks chief strategist Howard Schultz, is to make it the biggest chain on Earth. …

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Regarding the hundreds of Bush lies, Gabriel Schoenfeld found others of similar quality.

Last week we noted that the Center for Public Integrity, a public-interest group in Washington DC, had created an online database of the 935 “false statements” uttered by ranking officials of the Bush administration to push the United States into war with Iraq. The New York Times, reporting on the new research resource, compared the scandal the center had documented to Watergate.

But if the Bush lies were bad, how about the lies told by Bill Clinton on the same score, or for that matter, the lies told in the editorials of the New York Times? Connecting the Dots has uncovered a couple of whoppers, which the Times, in its story on the matter did not — or affected not to – notice. …

Mr. Schoenfeld also comments on spiffy new office building at the CIA.

Mark Steyn looks at the field and the eventual McCain/Clinton contest and says, “It’s a shame one of them has to win.”

President McCain? Or Queen Hillary? Henry Kissinger said about the Iran/Iraq war in the ’80s that it’s a shame they both can’t lose. Conservatives have a slightly different problem: It’s a shame that neither of them will lose – that, regardless of who takes the oath come next January, the harmonious McCain-Clinton consensus policies on illegal immigration and Big Government solutions to global warming will prevail. Where’s Neither-of-the-Above when you need him? …

VDH Corner post with a different perspective.

Three unexpected developments have given Republicans a shot this year at winning — once thought impossible, given the normal desire of the electorate for a fresh party after eight years, and worries about Iraq and the economy. All can change, but for now they have a real shot.

The first, of course, is the radical turnabout in Iraq. Had we been seeing over 100 dead a month, the loss of Baghdad, and a failure of the surge, McCain would be finished and his Republican rivals would have carved out a third position between Bush and the Democrats that would have been still rejected by the voters.

Second, no one anticipated the surge of Obama, and the Clintons’ overt and clumsy efforts at personal destruction that turned off even liberals — a development that explains why a McCain in theory could be palatable to disaffected Democrats and Independents. …

Froma Harrop has a good Kennedy question.

Are we done worshipping the Kennedys yet? And what do you mean by “we”?

That was quite a spectacle — the commentariat gushing superlatives over the alleged power of Ted and Caroline to deliver liberals to Barack Obama. Half the electorate wasn’t even born when the sainted John F. Kennedy was assassinated — and few have any idea who Ethel is. Though the Kennedy brand is in steep decline, the wave of conformist opinion still thinks this endorsement is very big.

Americans fought a revolution to free themselves from ruling families. Thomas Paine wrote that “we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.”

Nonetheless, the Kennedys fancy themselves liberal kingmakers, and the media swallow their presumption whole. “The torch is passed,” the chroniclers scribble, as candidates beg Kennedys for their “prized endorsements.”

JFK was indeed a charismatic figure, but the more we learn about his Camelot in Washington, the less perfect it sounds. (One might start at the 1960 election, which was stolen with an assist by the mob.) …

Charles Krauthammer gets inside the head of the Narcissist.

… Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat had done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.

But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama‘s statement that “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that . . . Bill Clinton did not.”

The Clintons tried to use this against Obama by charging him with harboring secret Republican sympathies. It was a stupid charge that elicited only scorn. And not just because Obama is no Reaganite, but because Obama’s assessment is so obviously true: Reagan was consequential. Clinton was not. …

Jennifer Rubin in Amer. Spectator says we shouldn’t gloat while watching the Clinton crack-up.

David Brooks considers the changes McCain must make soon.

John McCain is exhausted. He hasn’t had a full-night’s sleep in forever. It took him 10 hours to get to California because of flight trouble. He underperformed in the debate Wednesday night, as his staff understands. He took some shots at Mitt Romney that were gratuitous considering the circumstances, as he privately acknowledges.

But somehow in the midst of all this frenzy, McCain has to transition from being an underdog to being a front-runner. He has to transition from being an insurgent to being the leader of a broad center-right coalition. He has to transition from being a primary season scrambler to offering a broader vision of how to unify the country.

By the end of next week, McCain could be the de facto leader of the Republican Party. The McCain staff is acutely aware of the responsibility this entails, and what it will take to operate at the next level. …

 

 

Just in case you think Pickerhead has gone native, here’s the McCain opinions of one of our favorites, Thomas Sowell.

We have been hearing for years that Senator John McCain gives “straight talk” and his bus has been endlessly referred to as the “Straight Talk Express.” But endless repetition does not make something true.

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker.

There are short, blunt lies — and he told a big one on the eve of the Florida primary, when he claimed that Mitt Romney had advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Even the Washington Post, which supports McCain, said that the senator “has distorted the meaning” of what Governor Romney said, that Romney “has never proposed setting ‘a date for withdrawal.’ ” …

Chicago Sun-Times columnist makes the case for vouchers.

Chicago is gearing up for another round of tumult from the closing of possibly more than a half dozen failing schools. Whatever the Chicago Public Schools administration does to solve this problem, the parents of students have no choice but to cope.

Middle-class families exercise school choice by loading up a moving van and relocating to a suburb with good schools. The rich can afford private schools. Only the poor — often minorities in inner cities with under-performing schools — are stuck with little or no choice.

President Bush tossed out an idea Monday to open up choice for poor kids but, as usual, it was rejected out of hand by Democrats and teacher unions. The $300 million Pell Grants for Kids proposed by the president in his State of the Union message is modeled on the popular Pell Grant program that helps poor kids go to college. Basically, the Bush plan would turn over tax dollars to parents to send their children to private schools.

In other words, vouchers. …

According to Contentions, the winter storms continue to rage in China.