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Yesterday’s David Warren selection started thus;
The Prague Democracy and Security Conference was cleverly scheduled to overlap with the G8 conference in Heiligenndam, this week. Politics is generally a rat’s game, but the Prague meeting was more worth attending. I was delighted that President Bush chose to be there, and be seen, before proceeding to the company of the great posturing buffoons in Germany. I wish Stephen Harper had also been there.
It was, however, entirely appropriate for Bush, who has been aptly described by Richard Perle as, “A dissident in his own administration.” At this point, fairly late in his presidency, it would seem that he has failed to mobilize the American electorate behind the “Bush doctrine,” as declared so eloquently in the months after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington; and failed even to mobilize the U.S. bureaucracy, which has consistently resisted direct presidential orders throughout both his terms, and in such cases as the CIA and State Department, often sabotaged them. …
Pickings did a poor job of explaining the Prague Conference, and so today we open up with a couple of items from Contentions by Joshua Muravchik. First he posts on Bush’s speech.
… In rattling off the names of five “dissidents who couldn’t join us because they are being unjustly imprisoned or held,†Bush mentioned figures in Belarus, Burma, Cuba, and Vietnam, all of which are easy to talk about. Then he named a tough one: Ayman Nour, the Egyptian presidential candidate currently languishing in jail. No country has been seen as more of a weather vane of U.S. determination about democracy promotion than Egypt, where Washington has so many other diplomatic interests. During Secretary Rice’s last visit to Egypt, her failure to mention Nour was widely read as a sign of American retreat. But if retreat it is, the Commander in Chief apparently hasn’t gotten the message. …
Then Joe Lieberman’s.
… Another speech worthy of attention was given by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a man who, before our eyes, grows stronger as the going gets tougher. His keynote speech to the opening dinner was an easy occasion for platitudes. He might have heaped praise on Natan Sharansky and Václav Havel, topped it off with some bromides about freedom, and taken his bow to much applause. …
Gabriel Schoenfeld follows up on his post about secrets leaked by the LA Times.
Bret Stephens devoted his weekly in WSJ to Prague.
Couple of items on Dan Rather and Katie Couric from Roger Simon and The Captain.
Michael Barone noticed the polls show the Dems static and the GOP in a lot of flux.
George Will comments on Harry Reid’s tenure as senate majority leader.
We have a lot of Camille Paglia’s latest for Salon. She starts writing about the chances Gore will run.
… Despite numerous polls claiming that registered Democrats like myself are happy with their current field of presidential contenders, the Gore boomlet betrays subterranean tremors of doubt. After two major televised debates by both parties, only a Pollyanna on helium would believe that any of the top-tier Democrats will definitely be able to defeat a leading Republican like Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani.
As the Bush presidency dissolves under the rain of tragic bulletins from the Iraq debacle, too many Democrats seem to believe that their party will simply sail into the White House in 2008. But the conservative grass roots are in open rebellion against the waffling Washington Republican establishment, most recently because of its bungling of the incendiary immigration issue. Campaigning against the rapidly deflating Bush zeppelin is a dead end. …
She has some Hillary thoughts.
… For many Democrats like me, however, Hillary’s history of prevarication, rigidity and quasi-divine sense of election is profoundly unsettling. And who exactly would be running the government — that indefatigable buttinski, Bill Clinton? Spare us! …
And then unloads on Al.
… What exactly were Gore’s achievements in his eight years as vice president? What steps did he take at the time to shape public policy on global warming? What did the Clinton administration do to win U.S. adoption of the Kyoto accords? (Answer: next to nothing.) What political role did Gore play in the world after leaving office? There are some mighty big blanks in Gore’s record.
As a global warming agnostic, I dislike the way that Gore’s preachy, apocalyptic fundamentalism has fomented an atmosphere of hysteria around this issue and potentially compromised the long-term credibility of environmentalism. Democrats who long for his return as the anti-Hillary may not realize how Gore has become a risible cartoon character for much of the country at large. Anyone who listens to talk radio has been repeatedly regaled by clips of Gore bizarrely going off the deep end at one speech or another. And Gore, far worse than Hillary, is the Phantom of a Thousand Accents — telegraphing his supercilious condescension to whatever audience he’s trying to manipulate. …
Which brings us to another Contentions post. This time on global warm………zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
… In this case, the direct evidence doesn’t support the theory of anthropogenic climate change, so proponents have clouded the issue by seizing on unrelated phenomena in a more or less desperate and blatantly opportunistic way. “Global warming†has reflexively been invoked as the explanation for everything from the devastating 2005 hurricane season (but not the barely noticeable 2006 hurricane season) to the recent proliferation of stray cats. For about two years now, it’s been possible to predict that any report of a noticeable change in the environment or in plant or animal behavior will now be chalked up to global warming, with the implication that we must therefore take some sort of radical action to atone for the sin of carbon dioxide emission. …
John Stossel says property owners won one in Illinois.
Walter Williams on school choice.
… The solution to America’s education problems is not more money, despite the claims of the education establishment. Instead, it’s the introduction of competition that could be achieved through school choice. Most people agree there should be public financing of education, but there is absolutely no case to be made for public production of education. We agree there should be public financing of F-22 fighters, but that doesn’t mean a case can be made for setting up a government F-22 factory.
A school choice system, in the form of school vouchers or tuition tax credits, would go a long way toward providing the competition necessary to introduce accountability and quality into American education. What’s wrong with parents having the right, along with the means, to enroll their children in schools of their choice?
The Institute for Justice got honorable mention in John Stossel’s column. WaPo obit says they lost one of their favorite clients.
The Airbus 350 has sold 13 to almost 600 for the Boeing 787.