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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. …