Trent's lot in life

As he engineers his abrupt departure from the U.S. Senate, perhaps with an eye toward cashing in on his connections and scoring a golden-parachute deal in the lobbying industry, lame duck Republican leader Trent Lott is winning plaudits in the mainstream press for his frequent willingness to work with Democrats across the aisle.

But that's only part of his legacy. His lot in life is that he turned off a lot of people across the political spectrum, which pretty much guarantees that his political passing will not be universally mourned.

It is sometimes suggested that his now-infamous praise of Strom Thurmond's segregationist past was merely an aberration, a transient moment that should not be allowed to define Lott's career. (At a birthday party for Strom in December 2002, Lott had waxed nostalgic about the old guy's 1948 pro-segregation presidential campaign. Referring to his fellow Mississippians, Lott said: "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.") But this outburst was not an aberration; rather, it was part of a pattern.

Trent Lott epitomized the post-'60s surge of Republican stength in the South. That surge was made possible because white southern Democrats, fearing or resenting the influx of black votes into their party in the wake of the civil rights movement, took refuge in the GOP. Lott, as one of the first elected Mississippi Republicans, successfully surfed that wave all the way to Washington.

And he had long displayed his sympathies. As a college student at Ole Miss, at the peak of the '60s civil rights movement, he led a campaign opposing the integration of his fraternity. As a congressman, he voted against renewal of the Voting Rights Act (the law that had enfranchised millions of blacks in the South), and opposed establishing a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Years later, as a senator, he was still giving speeches to the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor group to the segregationist White Citizens' Councils; as he told one gathering in 1992, "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy." He kept showing up at those gatherings even though the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, and the Anti-Defamation League had all identified the CCC as a hate group.

That's the context for Lott's praise of Strom, and it's worth remembering that many conservatives were nearly as furious as the civil-rights activists. Lott was widely assailed on the right; as commentator Jonah Goldberg wrote at the time, Lott's "idiocy" was "indefensible morally, intellectually, and politically....It (does) not seem intellectually risky for most conservatives to denounce Lott, because we feel no allegiance to the racism of the past. We could be just as outraged as sincere liberals."

And, for many conservatives today, the Strom affair is merely one item on their list of grievances. They have long viewed Lott as a sellout to the cause; as the popular blog redstate.com remarked yesterday, "Trent Lott long ago stopped being useful...He hates conservatives. He hates most anything other than establishment Republican ideals of entrenched power and earmarks."

Speaking of earmarks...Conservatives who believe in balanced budgets and small government have long identified Lott as a hypocrite who talks a good game about reducing the size of the federal behemoth - while, in practice, relentlessly larding the federal budget with special-interest pork projects for the folks back home. (These projects, called earmarks, are slipped into bills often in the dead of night, in the hopes that nobody notices.) One classic Lott maneuver occurred last year, when he stuck a $700 million earmark - reportedly the largest in history - onto a defense spending bill, with aim of financing the rerouting of a CSX freight line on the Gulf Coast, thereby making it easier for Mississippi developers to build new casinos.

Writing back in 2001, conservative commentator Ramesh Ponnuru framed the problem: "Lott's strategic flaw is his narrowness of vision....A senator who is avidly pursuing pork is not a senator who is likely to have a grand strategy for advancing the conservative cause or to be an effective advocate for that strategy." And, around that same time, veteran conservative activist Paul Weyrich complained, "I don't think anybody has disappointed me more in public life."

And speaking of Lott's fealty to "entrenched power," is it really mere coincidence that he is leaving the Senate shortly before a lobbying reform bill becomes the law of the land? (By the way, Lott was one of only 14 Republican senators to vote against that reform bill.) If he quit his seat in 2008, with the law in effect, he'd have to wait two years before fattening the wallet. But if he quits now, before the new "revolving door" provision kicks in, he'd only have to wait one year.

When asked about this yesterday, he insisted that the new law didn't play "a big role" in his thinking - a verbal loophole through which you could drive a Hummer. Indeed, his fondness for corporate lobbyists is well documented. In 2006, he led all current lawmakers as the most frequent flyer on corporate jets (typically, tobacco giant UST, and BellSouth), tallying 18 trips - and 123 between 2001 and 2006. And life on K Street would be a comfortably family affair, since his own son, Chester, is already a lobbyist. Or he could simply opt for "consulting," which on paper is a notch away from official lobbying.

Either way, it beats being doomed to four more years as a member of the Senate minority party, and it would pay a lot better, too. Such are the ways of Washington today. When you lose clout, you can always cash in.

It also seems fitting that Lott's interim replacement would be chosen by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former Washington lobbyist himself (at the still-named Barbour, Griffith & Rogers). It's precisely this kind of incestuousness that has soured so many conservatives on their elected leaders. Which is why the reaction to Lott is basically, "Don't let the revolving door hit you on the way out."

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Speaking of Senate entrenchment, I noticed a report this morning that Edward Kennedy will receive an $8-million advance for his memoirs, due for publication in 2010. The report contained this sentence: "Mr. Kennedy...is expected to write candidly about his personal history, including the 1969 Chappaquiddick accident in which he drove off a bridge in Martha's Vineyard, resulting in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former member of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's staff."

Here's what I plan to do. Assuming that a review copy doesn't land in my mailbox in 2010, I'll go to a bookstore and look up the Chappaquiddick passages. If the author fails to "candidly" address, for the first time, whether he was in fact drunk behind the wheel; why he was leaving the Vineyard party with the young woman (conveniently without his driver); why he somehow failed to notice that he had taken a 90-degree turn onto a bumpy dirt road, instead of staying on the asphalt road that led to the ferry (where he was supposedly taking her); why he failed to notice all this, given the fact that he knew those roads well; why he failed to call the police for help after swimming to safety while Kopechne remained trapped in his car; why he instead consulted solely with his closest political aides in secret; why he failed to report the accident until after the car and dead girl were discovered 10 hours later...if Kennedy fails to advance our sketchy understanding of all these issues, then I'll deem his book unworthy of purchase.

In flagrant breach of the Reagan commandment

Yeesh, whatever happened to Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment, "Thou shall not speak ill of any fellow Republican"?

Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani spent the holiday weekend speaking ill of each other...wait, let me amend that. Each guy spend the weekend insisting that the other guy is a fraud and a hypocrite. Mitt basically said that Rudy is Hillary lite, a closeted liberal on social issues, a friend of the sleazy (Bernie Kerik), and a lousy role model in his personal life. Rudy basically said that Mitt was a closeted liberal on social issues, a mediocre governor, a softy on violent crime, a wimp on taxes, and Ted Kennedy lite (Rudy hit Mitt again this morning, on MSNBC: "He was the one as governor of Massachusetts who was likening himself to Ted Kennedy, this guy didn't even support Ronald Reagan").

You're free to wade into the crossfire and determine which guy has the better case; be advised that Mitt also accuses Rudy of "making up facts," which is a polite way of saying that Mitt thinks Rudy is a liar. I'm mainly interested in Rudy's decision to go after Mitt in this manner. Earlier this autumn, Rudy was publicly signaling that he planned to obey the Reagan commandment ("It’s my intention not to attack any other Republicans"), yet now he appears to be fully engaged.

The Giuliani camp says that Rudy is assailing Mitt simply because (to paraphrase a line from the late screenwriter Paddy Chayevsky) he's mad as hell about Mitt's hits and he's not gonna take it anymore. But clearly it's more than that.

Despite what Rudy's aides have been saying lately - that Rudy will be fine even if he loses the gatekeeper contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, that Rudy will simply bounce back in the big states - they obviously fear that early losses in Iowa (Jan. 3) and New Hampshire (Jan. 8) could create momentum for the early winner and hamper Rudy's prospects for a quick recovery later in the month and in early February. And right now, the state polls indicate that Mitt is well positioned to win both Iowa and New Hampshire.

In other words, the Rudy camp appears to understand that Rudy's lead in national Republican surveys doesn't mean squat. The top slot in national polls usually goes to the candidate with the highest name ID; those polls tell you nothing about the state-by-state terrain. (In 2003, Joe Lieberman scored high in the Democratic polls, mostly on the basis on his high name ID.) And the terrain in Iowa and New Hampshire favors Mitt, who has out-organized and vastly outspent Rudy.

Hence Rudy's decision to dump the Reagan commandment, in the hopes of moving up early by cutting Mitt down. The risk, of course, is that both guys will suffer, that each will merely sow greater doubts about the other, and that some primary voters might sour on the mutual savaging and go looking for an alternative candidate, somebody who seems less soiled (in Iowa, perhaps Mike Huckabee; in New Hampshire, perhaps John McCain; in South Carolina, perhaps Fred Thompson).

So it goes, in the most fluid Republican race in living memory. No doubt we'll see further evidence on Wednesday night, when they all meet again, in the CNN-YouTube debate.

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By the way, if Rudy's rivals are looking for fresh grist, this report might work just fine: Rudy on the stump regularly inveighs against special-interest, money-wasting congressional "earmarks"....at the same time that Rudy's law firm (which paid him $1.2 million last year) scores special-interest, money-wasting congressional earmarks for its clients.

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And speaking of Fred Thompson, it can't be a good sign when a Republican candidate who fancies himself to be the true conservative in the race feels compelled to complain of media bias...and levels his charge at Fox News.

During an appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace made an obvious observation - that Fred's candidacy has basically flatlined in the polls since the day he announced - but the candidate got so incensed that he briefly registered a pulse:

"This has been a constant mantra of Fox, to tell you the truth....(F)or you to highlight nothing but the negative in terms of these polls...kind of skews things a little bit....I understand the game of build-up and I understand the game of take-down. And we all go through it. And I’m perfectly willing for you to do that with regard to me as you do the other candidates. But you have the right to put in your one side, put in the Fox side, and I have the right to respond to it."

That's the gist of a long and testy exchange with Wallace, a classic illustration of how a politician in potentially dire straits will always try to blame the media (even an ostensibly friendly outlet) for his woes.

This is the same politician who, during his extended wink-wink pre-candidacy phase, basically took up residence on Fox's Sean Hannity show, where he has logged nearly as many minutes as Rudy. But the fact remains that he has barely moved the needle while on the stump. In the two early primary states most critical to his candidacy - South Carolina and Florida, both in his home region - he has steadily lost ground to his rivals (especially Mitt), and it's hard to imagine this slide is due to the "constant mantra of Fox."

However, he did make one good point yesterday, when he cited the support he has received from the conservatives at the National Review magazine. (Another symptom of the divisions among conservatives, as they assess the GOP field). The National Review gang has indeed praised some of Fred's policy proposals - and last week they even took a fresh swipe at Rudy, pointing out that, as mayor, Rudy "launched lawsuits that sought liberal (court) rulings to punish gun manufacturers...Conservatives can only hope that President Giuliani - if such is our fate - can be counted on to appoint judges who would throw Plaintiff Giuliani out of court."

If such is our fate....In this season of fluidity, even the commentators are in breach of Reagan's 11th commandment.

Rudy as Machiavellian, Hillary as Nixonian

A few Thanksgiving leftovers:

Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been pandering so relentlessly for conservative GOP primary voters, each insisting that he is the superior immigrant-basher, that at some point I wouldn't be surprised to hear one candidate top the other by declaring that all illegal aliens should be waterboarded.

But as I mentioned recently in print, this panderfest poses political risks for the Republican party, given the growing clout of the Hispanic electorate in states that are increasingly crucial in presidential elections (Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, among others). As Karl Rove and various conservative commentators have repeatedly pointed out, legal Hispanics do not appreciate it when their illegal ethnic brethren are being demonized.

And as New York Times columnist David Brooks notes today, Rudy's serial flipflops on immigration are particularly lamentable. When Rudy was mayor, he was an outspoken defender of illegal immigrants - as these speech excerpts (resurrected by Brooks) indicate:

"There are times when undocumented aliens must have a substantial degree of protection," such as when they send their kids to school or report crimes to the cops. "Similarly, illegal and undocumented immigrants should be able to seek medical help without the threat of being reported. When these people are sick, they are just as sick and just as contagious as citizens.....If you come here and you work hard and you happen to be in an undocumented status, you're one of the people who we want in this city."

And as recently as last year, when the GOP Congress passed a bill criminalizing illegal immigrants, Rudy denounced it, saying in a speech that the "punitive" approach "is actually going to make us considerably less secure than we already are."

But rather than standing firm on a bedrock belief, Rudy is spinning like a weathervane - and further alienating the GOP from the fastest-growing cohort in the electorate.

There's little doubt that, if Rudy and Hillary are the '08 nominees, Rudy will seek to paint his opponent as a calculating Machiavellian politician. But, given how he defended his immigrant-friendly principles back in 1995 - "sometimes leadership means taking unpopular positions, rejecting harmful political fads" - and how he is pandering today, he can merely level that charge by looking in the mirror.

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Speaking of Hillary, I am intrigued by Democratic pollster Peter Hart's contention that her 2008 campaign is striking similar to Richard Nixon's 1968 campaign. (Or, as he specifically put it earlier this month, "Hillary Clinton is really Richard Nixon circa 1968.") Hart, who made the analogy based on his readings of the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll of voters nationwide (which he conducts with Republican counterpart Bill McInturff), was not intending to suggest that Hillary is a dead ringer for the Trickster; rather, he was referring to certain parallels in public perception, then and now.

Back then, with an unpopular war raging overseas, Nixon was a battle-tested partisan who was far more respected than liked. Voters saw him as polarizing figure who was not particularly trustworthy, but they viewed him as knowledgable and experienced. Similarly, as Hart says today, Hillary is respected for knowledge and experience (76 percent of Democrats, 51 percent of all adults), but not particularly likeable (49 percent of Democrats, 34 percent of all adults), or trustworthy (only 34 percent of all adults see her as "honest and straightforward").

Nixon in 1968 was seen as the ultimate survivor of partisan warfare, a gut fighter who had been knocked down repeatedly yet always bounced back. And Hillary actually advertises herself that way; as she put it the other day, "They've been after me for 15 years, and I'm still standing!"

Of course, we all know how Nixon turned out. Hart was not implying (nor am I) that Hillary as president would give us another Watergate - although I do find it noteworthy that her current hostility toward the press is vaguely Nixonian. Mostly, I would suggest that Hillary's chief obstacle, in the year ahead, is the lingering concern, among many Americans, that she does not fully represent a break with the polarized past, but merely its perpetuation.

Revenge of a duped Bush flunky

On the eve of your big holiday meal, here's an appetizer:

Presumably there are more onerous jobs in America than being George W. Bush's press secretary, but at least your average gravedigger or toll-booth worker isn't viewed by millions of his fellow citizens as a falsehood-peddling flunky who sold his integrity in the service of misplaced loyalty.

Such is Scott McClellan's fate, which explains why the former Bush spokesman is now trying to settle a few scores - with Bush himself, and other major players in this perpetually dissembling administration.

We've known for awhile that McClellan was trotted out, back in 2003, to falsely assure Americans that nobody in the White House had leaked Valerie Plame's confidential CIA status to the media (in retaliation for her husband's criticisms of Bush's case for war). McClellan told the press that he had checked with Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, and that both men had pleaded innocent to any involvement in the leak.

Court testimony later revealed that both men had lied to McClellan. And now, in a memoir scheduled for publication next April, McClellan is seeking to cleanse himself. He's hardly the first ex-Bushie to assail the administration (Paul O'Neil, Matthew Dowd, and George Tenet come to mind), and, once again, we are left to wonder why these people didn't blow the whistle a lot sooner. Nevertheless, here we have an erstwhile loyalist seeking to remove the knife that had been embedded in his back. It's yet another ignominious moment for this waning regime.

The book excerpt released by McClellan's publisher reads thusly:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff (Andrew Card), and the President himself.

Well. Apparently McClellan isn't still basking in the praise that was heaped upon him, by the president himself, when he left his job in April 2006. On the South Lawn, Bush told his departing flak: "Scott, job well done."

Valerie Plame is now the party more likely to be applauding Scott for a job well done, because his memoir might wind up aiding her lawsuit against the Bush team. She has issued this statement: "...McClellan confirms that he was sent out to lie to the press corps and the American public about two senior White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby who deliberately and recklessly revealed my identity as a covert CIA operations officer...Unfortunately, President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's felony sentence has short-circuited justice...Vice President Cheney in particular knew that Scooter Libby was involved because he had ordered and directed his actions. McClellan's revelations provide important support for our civil suit against those who violated our national security and maliciously destroyed my career."

The McClellan book excerpt prompts new questions. For starters, who among those people had snowed McClellan - and the public - while knowing all along that the cover story was a lie?

And what about Bush himself? McClellan told CNN last March that, to the best of his knowledge, Bush had also come to believe the false information, "based on the assurances that we were both given." In other words, he has long been saying that Bush didn't deliberately lie to him - and there's no indication that his memoir will say anything different. Some liberal bloggers therefore believe that this whole story is overblown and that McClellan is playing the journalists for suckers.

I disagree. Even if Bush was merely a clueless conveyor of the lie rather than an architect of the lie, what does that say about his executive skills? How thoroughly did he question Cheney and Rove and Libby before he bought into the lie? And doesn't it appear he was less than enraged about being duped, as evidenced by his failure to honor his own promise to fire any and all leakers? (By the way, poor McClellan was trotted out to make that promise. Here he is, on Sept. 29, 2003: "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration.")

We don't yet know whether McClellan pursues these points in his memoir, because the italicized passage above is the sum total of what his publisher has released thus far. It's hardly ideal that info-merchants can dribble out these historical nuggets in the pursuit of sales and profit, but perhaps, on Thanksgiving eve, we can at least be thankful for this:

Sooner or later, through fair means or foul, the truth will out.

Why Republicans want to spend more time with their families

Mike Ferguson, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, announced yesterday that he would not seek re-election in 2008. Here's what he said: "I know that now is the right time to step away from public life to focus more on family life while our children are still young."

In translation, here's what he really meant: "Even though I have raised nearly $800,000 for a 2008 race, I'm bailing out anyway, because I don't want to be drowned in a tsunami. In fact, the Nov. 19 cover story in National Review, surveying our prospects as a party in 2008, is headlined, 'The Coming Cataclysm.' Like so many of my House Republican colleagues who are running for the exits, I fear that the '08 election will embalm us in the minority for the foreseeable future. As recently as 2006, I was an assistant majority whip. I had a little power of my own. But even if I manage to survive next year, I'll be powerless to do much of anything - especially if a Democrat wins the White House and sets the agenda. Better to just pull the plug right now, and hide behind my kids."

Ferguson is a metaphor for the national Republican miasma. He's bailing from a north-central Jersey district that was long considered to be a GOP bailwick - until 2006, when Ferguson, in his quest for a fourth term, had to scratch out a victory by less than one percentage point. He barely made it, even after distancing himself from President Bush as much as politically possible, and purging his website of all photos showing he and Bush in the same frame.

He clearly had no desire to risk that kind of ordeal again, especially since there is no guarantee that the '08 GOP presidential nominee will have any coattails in blue-state New Jersey. (Rudy Giuliani might have coattails, but his nomination is by no means assured, and Hillary Clinton, who is generally popular in New Jersey, might simply cancel him out.) And if you doubt New Jersey is blue, just remember what happened in 2006, when Dick Cheney showed up to campaign for GOP senatorial candidate Thomas Kean Jr. Somehow, Kean managed to arrive 15 minutes after Cheney had departed. Kean's ostensible excuse: the traffic was murder.

Anyway, in the wake of Ferguson's departure from a swing district, he is creating another open-seat opportunity for the Democrats - who have already been poised to capitalize on similar fortuitous openings nationwide. Another occurred two weeks ago, when longtime Republican congressman James Saxton, announced he would not seek re-election in his South Jersey district, which runs from Camden east to the Jersey shore. Saxton was ensconced a lot longer than Ferguson, and therefore cruised to an easy win in 2006, but his retirement opens a seat in a district that has been slowly trending Democratic. National House Democratic strategists are eyeing both these districts, and pledging to spend serious money; they have already settled on candidates for each, while the GOP has been scrambling.

All told, 18 House Republicans have either announced they're bailing out in 2008 or even earlier (ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert, for example). That's about nine percent of the current House GOP membership, and it speaks volumes about the current Republican mood. By contrast, only four House Democrats are leaving the chamber. Stuart Rothenberg, the nonpartisan Washington analyst of House races, succinctly sums up the GOP's potential '08 baggage: "damage to the Republican brand," thanks to President Bush, "as well as from a series of highly publicized scandals and ethical problems."

By definition, most of the departing Republicans are moderates who hail from swing districts (conservatives who represent deeply-red districts are not at risk next year). The GOP will now be forced to expend potentially scarce resources simply to defend vacated seats in Arizona, Ohio (at least two), Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, and Minnesota, among others. Ideally, the party would be able to target some vulnerable Democratic freshmen (for instance, Nick Lampson, who now occupies the indicted Tom DeLay's seat, in deeply-red suburban Houston), but it's tough to do that if you're stuck on defense without adequate funds.

It's rare to use the words "GOP" and "scarce resources" in the same sentence, but this is how life is during the waning days of the Bush era. The party is not flush with money the way it used to be; in the most recent federal filings, the GOP's House campaign strategy arm, the National Republican Campaign Committee, reported that it had only $1.6 million cash on hand - whereas the NRCC's rival, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reported $28.3 million cash on hand. That is a stunning reversal of the usual pattern, and further evidence of a dispirited Republican community.

But perhaps the Republicans should not despair. One party strategist is offering these tips to '08 GOP House candidates: "Create a narrative that explains your life and commitments. Every presidential election is about change and the future, not the past. So show them who you are in a way that gives the American people hope, optimism and insight. That's the best antidote to the low approval ratings of the Republican president. Those numbers will not help the GOP candidate..."

There's the advice in a nutshell: Run as far away from Bush as possible.

What's ironic is that the advisor happens to be...Karl Rove, the Bush political architect who has done so much to debase the Republican brand and spark this Republican rush to the exits. When Bush's own Svengali (now improbably reincarnated as a Newsweek columnist) is advising candidates to distance themselves from Bush, that tells you all you need to know about the current Republican state of play.

The Huck and the Chuck

I often ignore the 30-second candidate TV ads, probably because they're so predictable -- the tinkling piano, the stars and stripes, the family tableaus, the vaporous bromides about fighting for a better tomorrow. But GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, the rock n' rolling religious conservative, did catch my attention yesterday, with the unveiling of his first campaign commercial, an exclusive on Fox News.

But first, some background: Huckabee, who is gaining strength in Iowa, breathing down Mitt Romney's neck, and therefore threatening to scramble the GOP race, nevertheless has a couple handicaps. Even though he is attracting some Christian conservatives who like his purist positions on gay marriage and abortion, and gaining support from working-class Republicans who like his populist attacks on corporations and Wall Street, he still faces resistance from the party base. A lot of base voters want a post-9/11 tough guy who will also crack down on illegal immigrants - yet this ex-Arkansas governor has no foreign policy/national security experience, unless you count overseeing the National Guard; and as governor he championed a plan to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants and their children.

So here's his solution to appearing soft. From the TV ad...

Huckabee: "My plan to secure the border. Two words: Chuck. Norris."

(Cut to Chuck Norris, sitting beside him.) Norris: "Mike Huckabee is a lifelong hunter who'll protect our Second Amendment rights."

(Cut back to Huckabee.) Huckabee: "There's no chin behind Chuck Norris' beard, only another fist."

Norris: "Mike Huckabee wants to put the IRS out of business."

Huckabee: "When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the earth down."

Norris: "Mike's a principled, authentic conservative."

Huckabee: "Chuck Norris doesn't endorse. He tells America how it's going to be. I'm Mike Huckabee and I approved this message. So did Chuck."

Is it really feasible that the conservative base will begin to view Huckabee as a tough guy, just because he signed up an '80s celluloid pugilist? Will Norris' success in scripted bar fights matter more to the base than the fact that, while Huckabee was Arkansas governor, the per capita state and local tax burden increased by roughly 47 percent? Or the fact that he doubled state spending?

Indeed, does the presence of Chuck Norris trump the Huck's continued support for using taxpayer money to educate the kids of illegal immigrants? As recently as last Friday, on Fox News, he was getting grief from Sean Hannity about that. Hannity asked him, "If people that have entered this country illegally, if we give them in-state tuition breaks, isn't that some type of reward for law-breaking? In other words, we know the impact that immigration has had on our educational system, our criminal justice system, and our health care system. So if we offer in-state tuition breaks for families that broke the law and didn't respect our laws, isn't that some type of reward?"

And Huckabee replied, "I'm sure it will be an argument that will be made. But my point is, if a kid is (brought) here when he is five or six years old by his parents and he had no choice whether he was here or not, do you continue to push him down?" That kind of reply might strike many conservatives as evidence of a bleeding heart.

So the question is, does Chuck Norris level the playing field for Huckabee? (Conservative commentator Matthew Continetti writes today, "To me, this ad represents both the good and the bad about Huckabee: It's funny and fresh, but in terms of substance it's lighter than air.") Do most voters really care about TV ad endorsements from B-list macho movie guys, even if they're still idolized on the Internet?

I suppose we'll know that the Huck has hit paydirt when one of his rivals signs up Steven Seagal.

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There's a bit of a flap this morning about Rudy Giuliani's penchant for using a corporate jet owned by a casino gambling magnate. Some GOP activists think that it's a tad hypocritical for Rudy to preach moral values in his pursuit of religious conservatives, while at the same time ponying up $122,000 in summer plane fare to Sheldon Adelson, scion of the Las Vegas Sands empire. After all, isn't gambling an immoral act that often leads to vice and crime?

"You have to follow the money and ask, 'Why is Sheldon Adelson partnering with Rudy Giuliani?'" asked Stacey Cargill, an anti-gambling and Republican Party activist in Iowa. Cargill told the New York Daily News, "If Rudy Giuliani wants to be the crimefighting candidate, why is he partnering with a large and growing gambling empire?" (Adelson, who wants the state of Massachusetts to legalize casino gambling, has also helped bankroll Freedom's Watch, the hawkish White House front group.)

But Rudy will barely get scratched by this story. Republicans, who see themselves as the exemplars of "moral values," have long tolerated casino gambling, and thus made peace with their hypocrisy. Some religious conservative leaders, notably James Dobson, have made sporadic attempts to inveigh against the moral sin of gambling (Dobson, 2006: "Gambling--all types of gambling--is driven by greed and subsists on greed"), but many have simply chosen to ignore it.

I was struck by this disconnect back in February 1998, when the Republicans staged a big confab in Biloxi, Mississippi, spending most of their time condemning President Clinton's moral sins. Then, when the sessions ended, everybody would go back to their hotel rooms...at the gaudy casinos that dotted the Gulf coastline.

A parade of potential presidential candidates showed up to strut their wares and talk up moral values, yet virtually none thought it odd that the party was meeting in the Grand Casino Biloxi Hotel. Only one '00 prospect spoke up - John Ashcroft. I still have my notes. He said: "We meet this afternoon in a place surrounded by money changers and risk takers. I think it's wrong. Our party should not sell its soul to the gambling lobby of this country...The truth is that gambling is a cancer on the soul of our nation."

Ashcroft, of course, got nowhere with that argument. Candidate George W. Bush would soon insist that he hated casino gambling; then, after he secured the '00 nomination, he took a quarter of a million bucks from gambling industry donors in Nevada.

In other words, few Republicans will care about Rudy's consorting with a casino tycoon. On the gambling issue, most in the party amended their moral principles a long time ago.

Hillary bosses around the boys

Hillary Clinton triumphed in last night's Democratic presidential debate - big time, as Dick Cheney might put it.

She abandoned her longstanding pose of regal detachment; instead, she waded into the fray, took on her assailants, and basically took them apart. She didn't go after them on character, she did it on the issues. She fought cleanly, and it put her chief rivals back on their heels.

Referring to Barack Obama, she said at the start of the debate: "He talks a lot about stepping up and taking responsibility and taking strong positions. But when it came time to step up and decide whether or not he would support universal health care coverage, he chose not to do that. His plan would leave 15 million Americans out. That's about the population of Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone. I've been fighting this battle against the special interests for more than 15 years, and I am proud to fight this battle....You know, the most important thing here is to level with the American people. Senator Obama's health care plan does not cover everyone."

Obama disputed her, of course, but the fact is that a number of health experts agree with Hillary on this. The point is, within the frame of the debate, she had quickly signaled her intention to counterattack, using policy to mock the criticisms that are usually flung her way (such as Obama's charge that she doesn't level with the American people).

She went after John Edwards, in similar fashion: "I don't mind taking hits on my record on issues, but when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it's both accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook. Because what I believe is important is that we put forth what we stand for....Senator Edwards raised health care again -- when Senator Edwards ran (for president) in 2004, he wasn't for universal health care. I'm glad he is now."

OK, the "mud" line might have been a tad strong - my idea of "mud" is the stuff that lands in my email box, from right-wingers who paint her as a lesbian murderer - but she was accurate about Edwards changing his stance on health care. She was also greatly aided, shortly thereafter, by CNN questioner John Roberts, who suggested to Edwards that it was unfair to assail Hillary for flip-flopping on issues, when in fact he has done the same. As Roberts noted, "You were for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository before you were against it. You were for the Iraq war before you were against it." (This debate took place in Nevada, where the big local issue is whether nuclear wastes should be stored inside that mountain. Edwards once said yes, now he says no.)

Perhaps it's sheer coincidence, but, after taking these hits from Hillary and Roberts, Edwards was fairly tame for the rest of the debate. Much later, when the questioners virtually invited him to attack Hillary for a recent hawkish vote on Iran, he demurred. Perhaps he didn't want to get booed again. Shortly before the Iran issue resurfaced, he had taken a drive-by swipe at Hillary, basically calling her a corporate Democrat, and the audience loudly voiced its disapproval. He was reduced to pleading, "No, wait a minute..." Clearly, the Democrats in the seats didn't want to see their candidates fight among themselves; that, by definition, helped the frontrunner.

Obama learned the same lesson late in the debate. While he and Hillary were fencing over the future of Social Security, and whether the cap on the Social Security tax should be raised, Obama cut loose with a line that sounded like it had been cooked up in advance. After Hillary voiced reluctance on raising the cap, Obama said, "You know, this is the kind of thing that I would expect from Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani," and the crowd didn't go for that, either. Hearing the boos, he was forced to plead, "no, no, no, this is important."

By that point in the debate, however, Obama had already ceded some valuable ground to Hillary. Early on, he was asked to explain his stance on the issue that had tripped her up at the Philadelphia debate two weeks ago: whether illegal immigrants should be given drivers' licenses. She has since honed her stance down to one word - "No" - whereas Obama, who always zaps her for not talking straight, proceeded last night to talk in circles.

At first he said, "When I was a state senator in Illinois, I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention." But moments later he said, "I am not proposing that that's what we do. What I'm saying is that we can't" - now the audience was laughing - "No, no, no, no. Look, I have already said, I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety and that driver's licenses at the same level can make that happen. But what I also know is that if we keep on getting distracted by this problem, then we are not solving it."

Say, what? Hillary won that round simply by standing aside.

She even managed to have it both ways on the "gender" factor. When asked whether she has been portraying herself as a girl being unfairly beaten up by the boys, she said: "I'm not playing, as some people say, the gender card here in Las Vegas. I'm just trying to play the winning card. And I understand, very well, that people are not attacking me because I'm a woman; they're attacking me because I'm ahead." (She may not have been playing the gender card "here in Las Vegas," but she dealt it often, pre-Vegas. Anyway, the audience loved the "because I'm ahead" line.)

But then, seizing on an invitation from CNN questioner Campbell Brown, she proceeded to fly the banner of sisterhood: "Well, it is clear, I think, from women's experiences that from time to time, there may be some impediments. (Laughter from the appreciate women in the hall.) And it has been my goal over the course of my lifetime to be part of this great movement of progress that includes all of us, but has particularly been significant to me as a woman. And to be able to aim toward the highest, hardest glass ceiling is history-making. Now, I'm not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running, but it's humbling. (Applause from the women in the hall.) It's been inspiring. And I have to tell you, as I travel around the country, you know, fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. And so many women in their 90s wait to shake my hand. And they say something like: I'm 95 years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House."

None of her rivals dented her after that. The two booing incidents occurred after that. I got the sense that Obama and Edwards are back in their old rut: They can't rise in the Democratic polls without attacking Hillary and creating doubt about her credentials, yet Democratic audiences are not receptive to seeing her under attack. And now that she is defending herself - rather than acting as if she was cruising toward her convention coronation - the audiences might support her even more.

As time ran out, a college student playfully inquired, "This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?" And Hillary replied, "Now, I know I'm sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice. I want both."

Hey, it's that gender card again! But thanks to her performance last night, finishing with that dash of self deprecation, her candidacy is probably stronger this morning. And that's probably the gift she wanted most.

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There's news on the conservative "family values" hypocrisy front. No, this isn't about Larry Craig, the anti-gay senator who got busted in the Minneapolis bathroom. And no, this isn't about Richard Curtis, the anti-gay legislator in Washington state who was caught wearing women's clothing in a gay porn store. And no, this isn't about
Glenn Murphy Jr., the (now departed) GOP chairman in Clark County, Indiana, and (now departed) chair of the Young Republican National Federation, who was recently being investigated for criminal deviate conduct, after a young associate told police that the GOP chairman had sought to perform an X-rated act upon his person.

This entry is actually about the other "family values" conservative, Florida state legislator Bob Allen, who, notwithstanding his consistent anti-gay voting record, was caught at a highway rest stop in July while offering to perform a sex act on a male cop for $20.

Yesterday, a county judge put Allen on six-months probation, ordered him to take an HIV-awareness course, and told him to stay away from the rest stop. My favorite line in today's Florida newspaper story: "Allen's future in politics remains uncertain." Apparently the Florida Republicans have yet to decide whether the chasm between Allen's voting record and his personal behavior warrants a call for his ouster.

And this is the party that claims to hold the moral high ground?

Lost pages from the Hillary script

Now that the control freaks in the Hillary Clinton campaign have been busted for planting questions at the candidate's "town hall" meetings, and have vowed to never ever do it again, perhaps a new era of spontaneity is at hand. If the Hillary people really do junk their scripts, here are the YouTube moments that you'll probably never get to see:

1. "I'm honored that you are calling on me, Senator Clinton, and picking me out of the crowd at random. My question is about your husband, who was such a wonderful president and inspiration to so many Americans. Some members of the vast right-wing conspiracy seem to insist that he has flaws - and that even you do, as well. (Spontaneous laughter.) Do you think that these conspirators are willfully delusional, or simply motivated by their envy of your demonstrable success, ever since your middle-class childhood, in working your heart out for middle-class Americans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue?"

2. "Yes, hi, and welcome to our community. I want to ask about your 2002 vote on Iraq, when you specifically authorized President Bush to pursue a course of peace rather than war. Some of your pile-on male Democratic rivals claim that you did something 'political,' like maybe you were just thinking of some future election. As if. Isn't it true that your decision to vote Yes was actually a laudable profile in courage, the product of countless hours of wise reflection, and a testament to your seasoned leadership and experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue?"

3. "OhmyGod, like, thanks so much for letting me ask you something. Some media pile-on-ers, and I won't mention Tim Russert by name, seem to believe that your husband's decision to safeguard your First Lady papers, and keep them away from the public 'til after the election, is, like, a bad thing or something, like we might actually care what's in them. Like, aren't these pile-on-ers mostly men who would rather sit around watching football and Fox News instead of standing up and fighting each and every day for Americans who work hard and play by the rules?"

4. "Yes, oh wow, this is great, thanks for calling on me. As a woman, I am heartened by your courageous insistence that there's no need to talk in specifics about the future of the Social Security program. Thank you for using your experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to come up with the idea of forming a brand-new bipartisan commission to study the issue further. One of my gym friends this morning - she was on the Stairmaster right next to me - she said, 'Hey, how about that wonderful bipartisan commission idea?' So I know it's catching on. My question is, aren't your Democratic rivals, by clinging to their specific reform proposals, and by refusing to see the wisdom of bipartisan commissions, demonstrating that their cognitive skills are sorely limited by their male gender?"

5. "First of all, Hillary, thank you for giving us hope again. I say that because of the inspiring way you have handled the issue of giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. How rare it is to find a candidate who can be so consistent - seemingly saying yes to the concept one week, then seemingly saying no to the concept another week, but, in truth, demonstrating the kind of brilliant intellectual flexibility that we have yearned for these past seven years. So my question is about the people out there who claim you're a calculating flip-flopper. Besides the fact they never worked at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, why is it true that they all have the same morals as the Swift Boaters?"

6. "I do have a question for you, Mrs. Clinton, but since I can't seem to remember it, I'll have to read it to you. I forgot my glasses this morning, so please bear with me. It says right here: 'Dear senior citizen. When the senator begins to turn in your direction, raise right hand precisely six inches above right shoulder. Keep hand vertical, at 90-degree angle to the ceiling, fingers close together, do not bend wrist, nod head once, keep face in friendly mode' -- WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU FELLOWS TAKING ME? LET ME GO, I STILL HAVE A QUESTION FOR MRS. CLINTON, IT SAYS RIGHT HERE THAT......."

"Bernie, you're a good man"

The Rudy Giuliani campaign would dearly love to see the Bernie Kerik story go away. After all, it's tougher to make a case for Rudy's alleged post-9/11 leadership prowess if people are focusing on the fact that Rudy promoted his former chauffeur all the way to city police commissioner and to a brief nomination as federal Homeland Security director - all the while ignoring evidence that his underqualified pal was (among many other things) mixed up with a Jersey "waste management" company suspected of having ties to the mob.

Late last week, meanwhile, Kerik was indicted by the feds on 16 counts of tax evasion (allegedly hiding half a million bucks worth of income) and other crimes (including taking bribes while in public office). Kerik has pleaded not guilty to all charges. But Kerik and his indictment remain in the news, because yesterday one of his former lovers, the deposed book publisher Judith Regan, filed a lawsuit against her former employer, HarperCollins, and its parent company, the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, alleging that the media conglomerate had urged her to lie to federal sleuths about her recent affair with Kerik in order to protect the prospective potential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy skeptics will love that allegation - Murdoch's News Corporation also owns Fox News, which is headed by Roger Ailes, a longtime Rudy buddy who ran Rudy's first mayoral campaign - but...I digress. Kerik has the potential to stay in the news simply because of one largely-overlooked episode in his checkered career:

His failed, truncated stint as a top American official in post-invasion Iraq.

In May 2003, President Bush asked Kerik to journey to the newly liberated land, and train the Iraqi police force. (The indictment alleges that Kerik filed false statements about his suspicious personal finances while applying for that job.) Anyway, Kerik proved to be a disaster. He's a virtual metaphor for the Bush administration's well-documented incompetence in Iraq.

He is Rudy's gift to the Bush track record - which doesn't reflect too well on Rudy, who has been trying to sell voters on the notion that he has the best credentials and leadership skills to fight the war on terror.

Thumbing through my copy of George Packer's fine work on the American occupation, entitled The Assassin's Gate, I found only one passage about Kerik. That's because he was so inconsequential. American officials in Iraq were anticipating that Kerik would announce his national plan for training the Iraqi police, but, Packer writes, "instead, Kerik spent his time in Baghdad going on raids with South African mercenaries while his house in New Jersey underwent renovation. He went home after just three months, leaving almost nothing behind."

But Kerik gets close scrutiny in Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. It's not a pretty picture. Kerik was barely off the plane, in that spring of 2003, when he told a State Department official that "the situation (in Iraq) is probably not as bad as people think it is."

The author recounts: "Kerik wasn't a details guy...Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad 'is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes.' He went on NBC's Today show to pronounce the situation 'better than I expected.'"

Kerik was so busy going out on late-night raids (which was not part of his job) that he couldn't function in daylight (when he was supposed to do his job). As the author writes, "the all nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping."

More from the book: "Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter...Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers...'He was the wrong guy at the wrong time,' (an American official) said later. 'Bernie didn't have the skills.'"

Bernie didn't have the skills...That kind of assessment sounds familiar. Think of Michael Brown, who didn't have the skills to run FEMA because he'd previously been a lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association. Or George Deutsch, a kid with no science background who was handed the job of supervising NASA's top scientists, despite the fact that his skills consisted of working as an intern on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.

We're all familiar with the Bush credo of favoring loyalty over competence. It's worth noting that Rudy shares that credo, with Bernie as Exhibit A.

By the way, there's a fitting epilogue to the Bernie adventure in Iraq. Upon his return to America after only three months, having done little to train anybody, he was warmly welcomed at the White House, on Oct. 3, 2003, with these words of presidential praise: "He showed up (in Iraq) at times of chaos and confusion. Because of his leadership, his knowledge, and his experience, he was able to stand up a police force in Baghdad in a very quick period of time...Bernie went there and made a big difference. And for that our nation is very grateful...We're making great progress...Bernie, you're a good man."

Or, as Bush might just as easily have put it, "Heckuva job, Bernie."

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I see that Mike Huckabee continues to rise in Iowa. The latest CBS News-New York Times poll has the underdog Republican candidate nipping at Mitt Romney's heels, just 50 days before the GOP caucuses. He's up to 21 percent of likely caucus-goers; Romney sits at 27.

No wonder Rudy's spinners, in their Monday conference call with reporters, were talking up Huckabee ("He's been putting together, I think, a reasonably good campaign, with the resources they have and the start they had. They've really, kind of, put things together in the last weeks, I think, very well"). They'd love it if Huckabee and Romney split the religious conservative vote.

But, as I indicated recently, a Huckabee boomlet might merely prompt the press to look more closely at Huckabee, who is more than merely a folksy, silver-tongued, guitar-playing ex-governor from Arkansas. A conservative commentator has already warned that if political reporters "only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics."

Can Rudy spin losses into a win?

With a mere 51 days remaining before the Iowa caucuses, we have entered a new phase in the election spin cycle.

During this sprint to Jan. 3, various candidates will try to finesse expectations about the impending horserace. Those who seem destined to do poorly in the earliest key contests - Iowa and New Hampshire - will seek to persuade the media, far in advance of the actual voting, that any stumbles out of the starting gate are no big deal. Indeed, regardless of the realities on the ground, the candidate's spinners will invoke variations of this time-honored cliche: "We feel very good about where we are."

And so it went yesterday with the spinners for Rudy Giuliani, during a conference call with reporters. They basically signaled that Rudy was going to lose both Iowa and New Hampshire to Mitt Romney - a somewhat startling admission, given the fact that no Republican during the presidential primary era has won the nomination without first winning at least one of those early states - but they hastened to add that, even if Rudy does lose to Romney, it would be no big deal anyway.

And, of course, we had these lines: "We feel extraordinarily good about where we are...we feel very good about where we are positioned right now...I think we feel good about where we're at in Iowa...We feel like we're in a pretty good place. We're comfortable about where we're at....So right now, I feel very good about where we are..."

Can a national frontrunner (Rudy leads the GOP field in the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, with 33 percent of likely primary voters) win the nomination even while losing the traditional gatekeeper states? The essence of the Rudy argument, from campaign manager Michael DuHaime, is that "there are multiple paths to victory," that Rudy can win the nomination by racking up delegates in the big states that vote on Jan. 29 (Florida) and Feb. 5 (notably New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois), even if he whiffs in the early-January voting in Iowa and New Hampshire.

DuHaime basically argued that because Rudy is so strong in these big states, and that because these big states are holding their contests so early in the calendar for the first time, there's little chance that a rival will get much momentum from winning Iowa and New Hampshire. He said that Rudy's advantage in these big states is "momentum-proof."

In his words, "We certainly recognize the ability for a candidate or candidates to get momentum or to be hurt by the early states. But we also recognize that this (primary season) is not the same as, say, 2000 or 1996 or '92 or '88 or '80."

We'll soon see whether this theory has any merit. It might not. The Rudy people are assuming that the enormous free publicity benefits of winning Iowa and New Hampshire will have no impact on the GOP voters in subsequent contests. Romney, who has outspent and out-organized Rudy in both those early states, also has the financial resources (personal and otherwise) to compete strongly with Rudy in the big states. Is it credible to assume that Rudy will remain "momentum-proof" if he scores lower than Romney and Mike Huckabee in Iowa (a very real possibility) and scores lower than Romney, John McCain, and Ron Paul in New Hampshire (also a real possibility)?

Two new polls show Romney widening his lead in New Hampshire. Not so coincidentally yesterday, the Rudy team's spin to lower the bar for Rudy in New Hampshire was truly creative. DuHaime said, "I mean, this is Governor Romney's backyard, and people should recognize that...If you live in New Hampshire, you know who Governor Romney is and you've seen him as (Massachusetts) governor, you've seen his campaigns for governor (in Boston TV ads)...So he should have an institutional advantage there." And as for Rudy, "this is his first political campaign in New Hampshire."

But are we really supposed to believe that, in terms of media exposure, Romney's four years as Massachusetts governor trump Rudy's eight years as "America's mayor" in the city that suffered 9/11?

And if we leave the Northeast and journey to the South, we see other potential flaws in Rudy's spin. Another key early GOP contest, on Jan. 19, is South Carolina. Rudy is by no means a lock on winning there, either. He is competing there with Romney (who is reportedly picking up religious conservative support), and Fred Thompson (a southern home boy who yesterday won the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion group, which has grassroots clout in states such as South Carolina). Also, the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reports that the South is Rudy's weakest region. Is it plausible to think that Florida on Jan. 29 would rescue Rudy if he first loses Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina?

Actually, it might be worse than that. It's possible that the Michigan Republicans will vote on Jan. 15, and that too could be rough for Rudy. The Romney family has ties to Michigan - Mitt's dad was governor there - and John McCain has a track record in Michigan, having won the 2000 GOP primary. So I'll amend the question: Is it plausible that big-state GOP voters will still see Rudy as the most viable candidate if he starts the primary season with an 0-4 record? As GOP strategist Scott Reed, who is not affiliated with any candidate, reportedly remarked the other day, the Rudy team "can't just have a Florida strategy and lose four straight races before then."

One other caveat that potentially undercuts the Rudy spin: He has largely coasted thus far, benefiting from his universal name ID, but he will be increasingly attacked by his rivals as voting time draws near. For instance, we'll see whether Republican voters remain besotted by Rudy's alleged 9/11 leadership credentials, when they learn more about how Rudy turned a blind eye to his police chief's mob affiliations and championed the guy to become director of Homeland Security...the same guy who was tapped by President Bush to train the Iraqi police in 2003, only to return as a failure within three months.

I'll look at the latter episode in detail tomorrow. Although I assume that the Rudy team's spin would be, "We're comfortable where we are right now with Bernie Kerik."

Norman Mailer, political blogger emeritus

I had not somehow divined that literary lion Norman Mailer was near death when, several weeks ago, I bought a 50th-anniversary edition of his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead. I had only intended to reacquaint myself with a book that I had devoured as a college student, and to read the new introduction, penned by the elderly Mailer, offering a wry assessment of his auspicious debut. Now that he’s gone, of course, his words seem to carry extra weight. “Life,” he writes in the introduction, “is like a gladiator’s arena for the soul” - a line that evokes his trademark pugilism and feels true besides.

Yesterday, every obituary and sidebar "appraisal" invoked The Naked and the Dead, deservedly so. But few mentioned that Mailer had written a seminal piece of political journalism for Esquire magazine, way back in November 1960 - an article stuffed with edgy and prophetic commentary about politics and the postwar celebrity culture. It was entitled “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” and, for many aspiring scribes, reading the piece (in the words of the late New York journalist Jack Newfield) “was like the first time I heard Bob Dylan and Charlie Parker.”

Mailer’s piece has resonated down the decades. He bypassed the he-said/she-said “objectivity” paradigm and basically signaled that it was OK for a reporter to exercise the intellect rather than simply collect quotes, that it was OK to have a point of view (albeit well argued) at the expense of artificial balance. And at a time when much political reporting was two-dimensional, he offered sight and sound. His piece was as long as a novella, but I prefer to think of it as an extended post on the world’s first blog.

From “Superman,” here’s his description of John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, arriving at his hotel in Los Angeles, for the 1960 Democratic convention:

“He had the deep orange-brown suntan of a ski instructor, and when he smiled at the crowd his teeth were amazingly white and clearly visible at a distance of fifty yards. For one moment he saluted Pershing Square, and Pershing Square saluted him back, the prince and the beggars of glamour staring at one another across a city street….All the while the band kept playing the campaign tunes, sashaying circus music, and one had a moment of clarity, intense as a déjà vu, for the scene which had taken place had been glimpsed before in a dozen musical comedies; it was the scene where the hero, the matinee idol, the movie star comes to the palace to claim the princess, or what is the same, and more to our soil, the football hero, the campus king, arrives at the dean's home surrounded by a court of open-singing students to plead with the dean for his daughter's kiss and permission to put on the big musical that night. And suddenly I saw the convention, it came into focus for me…finally it was simple: the Democrats were going to nominate a man who, no matter how serious his political dedication might be, was indisputably and willy-nilly going to be seen as a great box-office actor, and the consequences of that were staggering and not at all easy to calculate.”

“The prince and the beggars of glamour”…Mailer was virtually the first to write about the influence of celebrity marketing in American postwar politics, and about how the Kennedy candidacy was built not on its policy stances (what Mailer dismissively called “housing projects of fact and issue”), but on its mastery of image. As Mailer saw it, Kennedy was being marketed as a dream hero for a citizenry that dreams of heroes. He explained this with a pop history riff:

“America was also the country in which the dynamic myth of the Renaissance—that every man was potentially extraordinary—knew its most passionate persistence. Simply, America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington; Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson; Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway; Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; America believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators; even lovers, by the time Valentino died. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another…And when the West was filled, the expansion turned inward, became part of an agitated, overexcited, superheated dream life. The film studios threw up their searchlights as the frontier was finally sealed, and the romantic possibilities of the old conquest of land turned into a vertical myth, trapped within the skull, of a new kind of heroic life, each choosing his own archetype of a neo-renaissance man, be it Barrymore, Cagney, Flynn, Bogart, Brando or Sinatra, but it was almost as if there were no peace unless one could fight well, kill well (if always with honor), love well and love many, be cool, be daring, be dashing, be wild, be wily, be resourceful, be a brave gun.

“And this myth, that each of us was born to be free, to wander, to have adventure and to grow on the waves of the violent, the perfumed, and the unexpected, had a force which could not be tamed…The myth would not die.”

Mailer was ambivalent about Kennedy, whom he also described as “handsome as a prince in the unstated aristocracy of the American dream.” After watching Kennedy duel with the press and press the flesh, he decided that “there was an elusive detachment to everything he did…you were aware all the time that the role was one thing and the man another…the actor seemed a touch too aloof…one had little sense of whether to value this elusiveness, to be beware of it.”

More importantly, Mailer pondered whether the hunger for a celebrity president, for a leader invested with the glamorous trappings of heroism, might eventually hamper those who held the office. As he put it, “One could pause: it might be more difficult to be a President than it ever had before. Nothing less than greatness would do.”

I’ll willingly stipulate that hefty chunks of “Superman” are overwritten and pretentious, that Mailer sometimes strays into the thickets of his own verbiage and emerges with cuts and bruises, that he himself was a celebrity thirsting for attention and probably authored this piece with the expectation of gaining more. But he would have produced far less of value if he had merely followed conventional journalistic practices. Instead, he employed all his active senses and gave us indelible impressions (of Los Angeles itself, “one has the feeling it was built by television sets giving orders to men”), along with sharp character sketches, vivid visuals, and prescient analysis. He challenged journalists to think outside the box, long before Tom Wolfe got the credit.

His style and approach are tough to replicate. They are also easy to abuse. And I also acknowledge that political news consumers will always need the wire services, and similar outlets where the facts are served up straight. But Mailer, still early in his career, set a new standard for observation, for the strenuous exercise of the intellect, and something he said in 1974 still rings true today: “Journalism is bondage, unless you can see yourself as a private eye inquiring into the mysteries of a new phenomenon.”

Spoken like our first honorary blogger. Rest in peace.

Straight talk, bad behavior, reality check

At week’s end, let’s bestow a few awards:

Spiciest Straight Talk...Joe Biden. When he was asked last Sunday whether he would like to be considered as Democratic running mate on a ticket headed by Hillary Clinton, he dispensed with the usual variations of evasion (“I haven’t thought about it” or “I’m focused on getting out my own message,” or “There are larger issues in this campaign”). Instead, he opted for candor mode.

No frickin way, he said. Even more startling was his willingness to say why he wouldn't want the job:

"I love Bill Clinton, but can you imagine being vice president? (Bill) is such a dominant and powerful and positive force that I think the question is if you're going to stay in public life, do you want to be a contributor...I'm not looking for a ceremonial post."

Translation: Joe Biden has no desire to play second fiddle to the First Spouse.

Politicians rarely talk this brazenly, especially about a former president. But it so happens that Biden may well be right. Al Gore discovered, when he was veep to Bill, that he had to constantly compete with the First Lady for attention, access, and resources. Getting caught between the Clintons is not necessarily a dream situation, especially for somebody with Biden's expansive personality - which is why, if Hillary does become the nominee, it's probably unlikely she'd pick him anyway.

Scuzziest Campaign Behavior...Ernie Fletcher and his surrogates. That’s not the name of a ‘60s AM radio rock band. That’s the Republican governor of Kentucky, who was decimated last Tuesday night in a landslide re-election defeat. But on his way out the door, he practiced the politics of desperation, GOP-style.

He couldn't run on his record, because the Kentucky electorate already knew he was corrupt. (He was indicted while in office, after trying to fill state jobs with his political cronies, in violation of the state's merit-based hiring laws - a scheme that the grand jury called "a widespread and coordinated plan.")

Since he couldn't run on his record, he tried to run on God. But that didn't work, either. (On the eve of election day, he ordered that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the State Capitol.)

So since he couldn't run on his record, and he couldn't run on God, he went to the last option. He decided to run against gays.

His running mate, lieutenant governor candidate Robbie Rudolph, assailed the Democratic candidates (gubernatorial hopeful Steve Beshear and running mate Daniel Mongiardo) as "a couple of San Francisco treats." This was because Beshear and Mongiardo had won the endorsement of a group that advocates equal treatment for gays.

Meanwhile, singer Pat Boone, working for Fletcher, recorded a phone message that reached tens of thousands of Kentuckyians; he told them that the Democrats wanted Kentucky "to be another San Francisco." That was actually Boone's second robocall. The first one told voters that Democrat Beshear would use the governor's job to work for "every homosexual cause."

Then came the mysterious robocall that purported to be from a gay group, praising Beshear as a champion of "the homosexual lobby." The gay group denied authorship, and its denial is credible, because gays never refer to themselves as "the homosexual lobby." That's how conservatives refer to them. Anyway, nobody this week stepped forward to claim authorship of that robocall.

Even in defeat, the Fletcher folks played innocent about everything. A spokesman explained that the line about "San Francisco treats" was "not in any way an allegation of their being homosexuals." Yeah, maybe Fletcher's running mate was merely referring to Rice-a-Roni.

Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century British man of letters, once said that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." But for desperate 21st-century Republicans, the last refuge is apparently gay-baiting.

Biggest Reality Check...from New Jersey's voters, who decisively rejected a referendum on stem-cell research. The state's reigning Democrats figured it was a slam-dunk that voters would OK this proposal to borrow $450 million for scientific research. Brad Pitt was for it, Nancy Reagan was for it, and the polls always show that most Americans favor stem-cell research. Yet the voters said no, by a margin of 53 to 47 percent.

Democrats generally view stem-cell research as one of their best wedge issues, a way to rally their base and divide Republicans by pulling moderates to their side. And the issue appeared to work for them last November in Missouri, where a Republican senator was kicked out of office. So what happened in Jersey? Was it just that the stem-cell advocates got lazy?

The bottom line was, Jersey voters are ticked off about the state's bleak financial picture (the government is $30 billion in debt). They were in no mood to essentially give the Democrats any more money, because they clearly don't trust the Democrats to spend it well.

This is vivid proof that the Democrats' apple pie issue is more fragile than it seems. The Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, which polls on the issue, found 57 percent nationwide support two years ago, and only 51 percent support this past summer. Perhaps the benefits of government-financed stem-cell research need to be explained better (as Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is now saying), and perhaps that can boost the numbers. But this referendum demonstrates that the issue is not necessarily strong enough to trump the passions of an angry local electorate.

And, as experience has long shown, when New Jersey voters get angry about money, no issue or politician is safe.

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More radio this morning. I'm talking national politics on Philadelphia NPR, along with Philadelphia Inquirer foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin, hosted by Marty Moss-Coane. For interested Friday slackers, the listening links are here.

Rudy and McCain, macho together

In the long-running testosterone contest better known as the '08 Republican presidential race, it's worth checking in on Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, each of whom is endeavoring, at the expense of the other, to scale new heights of machismo.

Rudy essentially says: I support torture, and not only that, I tortured Mafia tough guys in New York, and that makes me a tough guy too.

And McCain essentially says: If that guy thinks he tortured Mafia tough guys, it proves he doesn't know jack about torture, whereas I was really tortured and he wasn't, which makes me tougher than him, and means I can lead the military and he can't.

And Rudy essentially says: I don't know why anybody would object to sleep deprivation as a form of torture, because I'm sleep deprived as a candidate, so what's the big deal?

And McCain essentially says: That's a mockery and a sham and he should apologize to all insulted American solidiers who have been truly tortured, as opposed to this guy who has never even been a soldier, and therefore is not tough.

This has been going on for a number of days now, and it's symptomatic of a changing dynamic within the GOP race. John McCain is apparently back from the dead after his recent organizational implosion; he has made gains in two new national polls (at Fred Thompson's expense), and while he may never regain full political health, he is sufficiently ambulatory to poach on Rudy in the early primaries.

With Mitt Romney looking strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, Rudy dearly wants to score as a respectable runner-up in both locales on the eve of the big-state contests. But McCain is complicating Rudy's plans, particularly in New Hampshire, where the war hero peaked during the 2000 race.

Hence the macho jousting, some of which I find amusing. Giuliani is a guy who enjoyed multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam war - one author has quipped that he received one deferment for each year that McCain was stuck in captivity - and he has ever set foot in Iraq, nor has he visited Guantanamo. As for supposedly torturing Mafia guys, it appears that his vigilance did not extend to his close buddy and police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, who was mobbed up for years right under Rudy's nose, and who now faces possible indictment.

As for McCain's POW history, he needs to invoke it with great frequency only because he has so few weapons in his arsenal anymore. After pandering for months to the religious right, and feeling little love in return, and after being stiffed by the GOP base because of his support for path-to-citizenship immigration reform, and after alienating many independents by going to Iraq and wearing rose-colored glasses, MCain's war hero status is all he has left - particularly as a potential trump card against Rudy.

So which tough guy scores heaviest on the macho/torture scale? They may need to call in Jack Bauer to referee.

A whole hour on Fred

Today I joined an hour-long NPR discussion of Fred Thompson's prospects. If you're really anxious to spend an entire hour pondering Fred Thompson, you can soon find the audio here. "On Point," which originates in Boston, also signed up several allegedly sage observers besides me, most notably John Geer of Vanderbilt University.

Pat and Rudy, perfect together

What better way to honor the old adage, about how politics makes strange bedfellows, than to ponder this morning's marriage of Pat Robertson and Rudy Giuliani?

You heard right: The founder of the Christian Coalition, an inveterate foe of gays, abortion, and sinful living, has decided to endorse the guy who has defended gays, defended abortion, and squired three wives. Yes, the longtime religious right leader who once warned on TV that a Florida gay pride parade would trigger earthquakes and tornadoes ("I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you") has decided to endorse the guy who has repeatedly marched in Manhattan gay pride parades.

And yes, the defender of the faith, who once intimated on his radio show that 9/11 was God's way of punishing America for its sins ("We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government, and then we say, 'why does this happen?' Why it's happening is, God almighty is lifting his protection from us"), has opted to support the guy who presided over the culturally diverse city that was hit on 9/11.

But, in some respects, the Robertson endorsement makes perfect sense. He and Giuliani are war-on-terror hawks who see America as engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with radical Islamists; indeed, many Christian conservatives believe that this us-versus-them paradigm trumps any disagreements over the social issues. Robertson and Giuliani also bond on the importance of Israel.

There's also another important factor: Robertson has long been known as one of the more pragmatic Christian right leaders, someone who focuses on candidate electability even at the expense of prioritizing the movement's pet issues. This endorsement appears to reflect his conclusion that Giuliani, whatever his flaws, is more likely than this GOP rivals to win the general election.

The son of a congressman, Robertson has long had an instinct for the compromises of mainstream politics. He once told National Public Radio that "in terms of (making gains through) politics, it's incremental. You give a little bit and a little bit more...Politics is the give and take of a vast nation, and anybody who is absolute in their view of politics just doesn't know how the game is played."

I saw this instinct first-hand back in 2000, when Robertson was backing George W. Bush. Five weeks before the election, the Food and Drug Administrated ruled that the abortion pill could be legally marketed nationwide. Some Christian conservatives wanted Bush, an abortion foe, to loudly denounce the ruling. But Robertson didn't utter a peep about the pill, and he was pleased when Bush barely said a word. I interviewed Robertson during this episode, and asked why he had stayed silent about such a major moral issue. He explained that most Americans supported the abortion pill; therefore, he didn't want to talk about an issue that might imperil Bush's chances of winning: "If Bush gets 'off message' - and this issue would take him way off message - he'd be talking about something which, frankly, the vast majority of people don't think is a big deal...I'd just like to get (him) elected."

The question here is, can Pat Robertson help Giuliani get elected? Notwithstanding his status as a pillar of the religious right dating back several decades, Robertson is not exactly universally renowned within the movement. Many are uncomfortable with his frequent invocations of a wrathful God (who, in Robertson's view, not only triggered 9/11, but also may have prompted Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's fatal illness).

Michael Cromartie, director of an evangelical studies project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told NPR last year: "I don't know a religious conservative leader - Protestant, Catholic or Jewish - who has not run out of patience with Mr. Robertson's comments. It is really dangerous when religious leaders come out and try to tell us exactly what God is up to. This is inappropriate theologically, as a Christian leader."

In other words, the Robertson endorsement might not mean much to the grassroots Christian conservatives in the key early primary state of South Carolina, where Giuliani is locked in a struggle with Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Indeed, he has plenty of competition in the endorsement game. Bob Jones III, chancellor of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University, has signed up with Romney (as has Paul Weyrich, a founder of Moral Majority, one of the first groups in the movement); meanwhile, Sam Brownback, the ex-candidate and friend of the religious right, has just endorsed John McCain.

The failure to coalesce around one candidate demonstrates the unusual fluidity of the Republican race. One can argue that Robertson's endorsement trumps the others, simply on the basis of his fame and prominence, but the Robertson baggage may weigh heavily in the longer run.

If Rudy wins the nomination, here's something that independent swing voters might want to know: Does the candidate agree with his Christian conservative patron's view that Islam is "a bloody, brutal type of religion," and that America must be prepared to wage "a holy war between Islam and Christianity?"

Playing the victim, just like the boys do

With respect to the burning question of whether Hillary Clinton has been playing the "gender card" since her wobbly debate performance last Tuesday, I offer these observations (borrowing the rhetorical flourishes of Donald Rumsfeld):

Do I think that she's trying to play the victim, depicting herself as a girl who's being unfairly beaten up by the boys? Oh my, yes.

Do I think that her claim of victimhood is justified? Goodness gracious, no.

But do I understand her political reasons for playing the gender card? Yes.

It's indisputable that Hillary and her campaign team went into damage control mode after the Tuesday debate in Philadelphia, and sought to shift the focus away from her evasive and confusing answers by claiming instead that the boys on stage had ganged up on her in sexist fashion.

Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, reportedly told supporters in a Wednesday conference call that the Democratic campaign had become "this six-on-one to try to bring her down." That same day, Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, the prto-Hillary public service union, complained that the Philadelphia debate was "six guys against Hillary." Meanwhile, unnamed Clinton advisers told the Associated Press that the campaign had long planned to play the gender card, as a general strategy, in order to deflect attacks by accusing her male rivals of boorish behavior. Then Hillary went to Wellesley, her alma mater, and played the gender card herself, referring to her solitary status inside "the all-boys club of presidential politics."

Hillary shifted gears on Sunday in Iowa, claiming this time that she was not playing the gender card - "I don't think they piled on me the other night because I'm a woman. I think they piled on me because I'm winning" - but that argument (the correct one, by the way) was promptly contradicted by one of Hillary's most prominent supporters, 1984 vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro...who told The New York Times, in the Monday edition, that the boys had been "sexist." Or, more specifically, "it's OK in this country to be sexist."

This was my favorite Ferraro quote: "We can’t let them do this in a presidential race. They say we’re playing the gender card. We are not. We are not. We have got to stand up. It’s discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman.” First she claims that Hillary's campaign is not playing the gender card; then, in the next breath, she complains about discrimination on the basis of gender.

I'm not quite clear how all this whining about allegedly unfair treatment squares with the Hillary campaign's depiction of the candidate as a "strong woman" - it seems they want to have it both ways - although I can see why they are taking this tack. It's probably smart politics.

By all accounts, 54 percent of the Democratic primary voters are expected to be women, particularly blue-collar working women (Hillary's strongest base of support) who may often feel oppressed by guys in the workplace. Hillary wants to ensure a big turnout from those women. Simply put, she's playing the gender card because she wants to win. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted yesterday by abcnews.com, recognized the strategy: "I think the campaign is trying to (reach) people who didn't even watch the debate, to say, 'Oh, they were really rude,' or something like that, and that has some salience. You know, every vote counts."

A politician can be right on the politics and wrong on the facts, however. And this claim that Hillary is being picked on because of her gender is preposterous. Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a feminist herself (as well as a John Edwards supporter), got it right in a blog post over the weekend: "At one minute, (Hillary is) the strong woman ready to lead; the next, she's the woman under attack, disingenuously playing the victim card as a means of trying to avoid giving honest, direct answers to legitimate questions."

Actually, Hillary seems to have much in common with members of the all-boys club. Prominent males have been notorious for playing the victim. Lyndon Johnson played the Texas card, depicting himself as a country boy under seige from the smart academic elitists whom he called "the Harvards." Richard Nixon felt he was being victimized by the eastern establishment, and by one group in particular (from the White House tapes: "the Jews! left-wing! stay away!"). Bill Clinton whined about his press coverage and complained that he was being victimized by a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (his wife coined that one).

In other words, Hillary is acting just like lots of guy politicians who find themselves in a fix. Acting aggrieved, and playing for sympathy, is standard stuff; the gender card is merely the latest incarnation. It might not be particularly noble or justified, but, as Donald Rumsfeld might say to Democratic primary voters, you go to battle with the candidate you have, not with the candidate you might want or wish to have.

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On the other hand, what does it say about the '08 Republican presidential field, when the guy who sets the party record for Most Money Raised in 24 Hours turns out to be...Ron Paul?

Yes, the antiwar libertarian long-shot candidate raised $4.2 million yesterday, topping any 24-hour hauls by Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and the rest of the pro-war field. I emphasize the Iraq war here, because it's clear that Paul has a market for his views within the GOP base. As reported in the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll, 35 percent of Republicans now believe that the war was not worth fighting, and virtually the same percentage favors troop withdrawals.

Obviously, that's not nearly enough to propel Paul to the nomination, but I would not rule out the possibility that Paul could spring a surprise somewhere along the way, perhaps in contrarian New Hampshire.

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When I saw this story today, I first wanted to ensure that I was not reading a transcript from "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live. And, yes, the story is indeed for real:

John Kerry wants everybody to know that if he runs for president again in the future, he's really gonna fire back at those Swift Boaters next time.

He's starting to sound like Brando, playing the ex-boxer who missed his shot at the big time in On the Waterfront: "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody..."

Fred's blasphemies, Bush's fantasies

It’s hard to believe that Fred Thompson was once ballyhooed as the ’08 conservative savior who would galvanize the GOP’s Christian conservatives. Those summer days seem like eons ago, because every time this guy opines on an issue near and dear to the religious right, he probably loses another congregation.

A week ago, for instance, Thompson declared that the GOP Congress had no business intruding in the Terri Schiavo case back in 2005 - a stance that is deemed anathema by social and religious conservatives, who believe that President Bush and the reigning Republicans were correct when they endeavored to dictate their view of morality to a grieving Florida family.

Thompson has also refused to endorse a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gat marriage – another staple of the religious right agenda – because he happens to believe (it sounds so quaint) that true conservatism requires respect for state’s rights. That’s the doctrine of federalism. As Thompson explained yesterday on Meet the Press, during his first appearance on the show as a presidential candidate, “(A)t the end of the day, if a state legislator and a governor decide that (gay marriage) is what they want to do, yes, they should have the freedom to do what Fred Thompson thinks is a very bad idea.”

But perhaps the clincher was his lengthy explanation yesterday about why he opposes the official Republican position of abortion.

For more than a generation, the GOP platform has articulated support for a U.S. constitutional amendment – better known as a Human Life Amendment – that would impose a blanket ban on the practice; as the plank puts it, “We say the unborn child had a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” But when Tim Russert asked yesterday whether Thompson was on board, the candidate twice replied, “No.”

It’s that darn federalism doctrine again. Here’s Fred: “I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That’s what freedom is all about. And I think the diversity we have among the states, the system of federalism we have where power is divided between the state and the federal government serves is very, very well.” (Why do these politicians constantly refer to themselves in the third person?)

Well, that kind of answer just won’t do, because the party’s social and religious conservatives don’t endorse that concept of freedom. They believe in Conservatism 2.0, the updated model, whereby the federal government in Washington shall be free to dictate what people at the local level can or cannot do in their private lives. They’re fans of top-down morality, whereas Thompson was talking yesterday about bottom-up morality - allowing the locals to decide on the definitions of right and wrong.

In fact, from the perspective of the average religious conservative, the longer Thompson talked, the more blasphemous he sounded. He’s not even wild about the idea of the states enacting restrictions on abortion – not even to ban the practice for minors:

“People ask me hypothetically, you know, ‘OK, it goes back to the states. Somebody comes up with a bill, and they say we’re going to outlaw this, that or the other.’ And my response was, I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors, or perhaps their family physician. And that’s what you’re talking about…You can’t have a law that cuts off an age group or something like that, which potentially would take young, young girls in extreme situations and say, basically, ‘we’re going to put them in jail to do that.’ I just don’t think that that’s the right thing to do. It cannot change the way I feel about it morally, but legally and practically, I’ve got to recognize that fact. It is a dilemma that I’m not totally comfortable with, but that’s the best I can do in resolving it in my own mind.”

Indeed, after hearing Thompson declare yesterday that he didn’t believe in using the power of government to criminalize sinners, Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody wondered, “Is this too much federalism, to the point of alienating social conservatives?”

To which I say...Ya think?

On the other hand, maybe he mollified some of them with his Iraq talk. There is still strong support for the war among social and religious conservatives (although not as much as previously), and Thompson might have pushed their buttons by toeing the company line. Check out these phrases:

“There’ve been a lot of good things happening there…I think that we’re making substantial progress…(The surge) is giving us an opportunity to succeed…things are turning…this is a front in a much larger war…we ought to stay on the course we’re on…”

Does that sound like anybody we know? With the same propensity for quoting military statistics, while saying nothing about the dearth of political reconciliation in Baghdad – which was why the surge was launched in the first place? This is Thompson’s dilemma, one he shares with his rivals: whoever does manage to mollify the religious/social conservative base, and win the nomination, must then compete in the general election. And parroting President Bush on Iraq, as Thompson did yesterday, will be bad salesmanship.

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Speaking of Iraq and the death of political reconciliation...

The Orwellian Ministry of Truth – excuse me, the Bush White House - tried to pull off a neat trick last Thursday night, by making it appear that an ABC News journalist had filed a puff piece extolling the war. It was simple, really. The fact-challenged apparatchiks simply scissored all the parts of the report they didn’t like. The result was an ABC dispatch that mirrored their fantasies.

The National Security Council puts out something called “The White House Iraq Update,” and emails it to government officials, congressional staffers, radio and TV talk show types, journalists and various foreign policy mavens. Tapped for inclusion, the other night, was a transcript from Jonathan Karl’s status report on the war. Here’s what made the cut.

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS: "At the Pentagon today, military officials gave one of the most upbeat assessments of the security situation in Iraq that we have heard since the opening months of the war. Jonathan Karl is at the Pentagon tonight. Jon?"

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: "Charlie, nobody over here is anywhere near ready to declare victory. But the military statistics tell an unmistakable story. Violence in Iraq is down. And down considerably. Baghdad's marketplaces are slowly coming back to life, as violent attacks in Iraq have fallen to less than half of what they were a year ago. Until recently, the trends had been deadly and consistent, violence steadily increasing to an all-time high in June. Since then, however, attacks have fallen four straight months -- in every category."

LT. GEN. RAY ODIERNO: "What I'm confident about, is the progress we're making I think is real."

KARL: "Roadside bombs fell in October to an average of 20 a day. Still high, but the lowest level since October 2004. Iraqi civilian deaths have fallen to a third of where they were a year ago. And after the deadliest summer ever for US forces in Iraq, US combat deaths fell to 29 last month, the lowest level in more than 3 years."

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: "The fact that we're seeing a durable trend over half a year time period tells us something real is going on. It doesn't mean, however, that it's guaranteed to last."

But, as Karl himself now points out, the following passages were apparently deemed unfit for White House inclusion.

O'HANLON: “... and it doesn't answer the questions about political progress.”

KARL: “In fact, there's been almost no political progress on the national level, and U.S. officials know military gains won't mean much if the Iraqi government doesn't get its act together, which is one reason the Pentagon doesn't even want to use the word ‘winning.’”

(Question to Defense Secretary Robert Gates): “You're not ready to say we're winning, that the surge is working – "

ROBERT GATES: “I think that those end up being loaded words. I think we have been very successful. We need to continue being successful.”

KARL: “Today, Defense Secretary Gates said that the reduction in violence would not have been possible without the surge of 30,000 additional troops into Iraq, but, Charlie, those troops are going home in the coming months, raising the question of whether the violence will go up when they leave.”

When ABC noticed the White House excisions, it lodged an official complaint. Caught in the act, the White House promised to send out the whole transcript. But the episode speaks volumes. It is sufficiently regrettable when an administration repeatedly defies factual reality and forfeits its credibility. It’s even worse when an administration feels compelled to twist a journalist’s work for the purposes of propaganda.