The week

National Review, Nov 20, 2006

* If the first Bush was "born with a silver foot in his mouth," did Senator Kerry acquire one when he married Teresa?

* The White House has now completed a repudiation of its "stay the course" rhetoric--a repudiation that began, fitfully, months ago. Since no one--not even hawks--has much interest in staying the course if that means continuing to do exactly the same things we have been doing in Iraq, the administration's rhetorical adjustment is shrewd. Bush also gave a frank press conference, acknowledging the disappointments and failures in Iraq and vowing to find new ways to address them. Since people had begun to suspect that his optimism on Iraq was detached from reality, this adjustment too was necessary. But, as ever, the most important events are on the ground. The Baghdad security plan has, predictably, failed. General Casey says he is considering asking for more troops for Baghdad, and he should. Meanwhile, we are creating benchmarks for Iraqi political performance as a way of pressuring Prime Minister Maliki to make the difficult choice to confront the Shiite militias that are helping drive Iraq into the abyss. It is often said that there is no purely military solution to Iraq's problems. But neither is there a purely political one. We need to try to do a better job on the security front so that the Iraqi government has the breathing room it needs to do the necessary work on the political front. This will take time, and we hope the White House bought itself some with its repositioning.

* "All-Hands-on-Deck MSM Drive for Victory!" That's how rambunctious liberal blogger Mickey Kaus characterized the media's big push this election season, from specific races (All macaca, all the time--the Washington Post on Allen vs. Webb) to the airbrushed background in which the campaign proceeds (Dow at 12,000? Gas prices sinking? Shhhh). Everyone can find his favorite parallels, but ours is the big push to get the Republican nomination for Wendell Willkie in 1940. Willkie was a political tyro and a recent Democrat who faced a crowded GOP field. The MSM of the day carried him through--Time, Life, Newsweek, Look, The Saturday Evening Post. The book-review editor of the New York Herald Tribune was Willkie's lover. When Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who supported Ohio senator Robert Taft, heard someone going on about Willkie's "grass roots" effort, she snapped, "Yes--from grass roots of a thousand country clubs." Make that the alfalfa sprouts of a thousand salads--same deal.

* Sen. Barack Obama has been urged to run for president by David Brooks and by Barack Obama ("given the responses that I've been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility"). Obama seems to be a nice young man. He wrote a candid political memoir, Dreams from My Father, which is to say it had some traces of candor in it. He has served eight years in the Illinois state legislature, and not quite two in the Senate. In short, he has done nothing at all. His only qualifications for the White House are his skin and the fact that he is not a rapper. Americans yearn to vote for such a person: The Colin Powell boomlet of 1995 was fueled by little else, although he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. America's obsession with race is odd, and opportunists manipulate it for their own advantage. But there it is, our history. Perhaps Obama will benefit from our concerns; perhaps he will even do something first. Since he is only 45, we have years to wait and see.

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* The Tennessee Senate race, between former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker (R.) and Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D.), was enlivened, beyond the excitement of its closeness, by an anti-Ford spot from the Republican National Committee. In a montage of "ordinary" folk, a sweet young thing says, "I met Harold at the Playboy party!" then returns at the end to purr, "Harold, call me." The lady refers to the fact that Ford attended a party thrown by the venerable skin mag at the 2005 Super Bowl. The ad sought to puncture Ford's image as a pious conservative Democrat; the angle of attack was petty, real petty. But since Ford is black and the actress is white, Ford supporters accused the RNC of race-baiting. The ad "makes the Willie Horton ad look like child's play," said a Vanderbilt professor. This is crazy, and (sadly) customary. Black public figures across the spectrum, from Justice Clarence Thomas to Sen. Barack Obama, have white wives or mothers. America shrugs its collective shoulders. If, to avoid the accusation, the RNC had paired Ford with a black cutie, they would have been accused of aping blaxploitation flicks. The rule is: Republicans may not accuse black Democrats of anything. Ever.

* When the reelection campaign of Sen. George Allen (R., Va.) pointed out that the novels of his opponent James Webb contained some lurid sexual bits, Democrats scuttled to the heights of l'art pour l'art. "I seriously doubt George Allen is much of a reader," huffed John Grisham. We know John Grisham isn't much of a writer and, based on Allen's anthology of excerpts, neither is Webb. Art does not exist in a hermetic realm; it is possible to speculate what Homer and Shakespeare thought about war or politics, though not in a 30-second spot. Yet politics is a contact sport; everything one does in public, as George Allen has surely learned, is fair game. The depressing thing about this race is that, thanks partly to the toxic media environment created by the Washington Post, and partly to his own incompetence, Allen has been unable to focus on serious issues, on which he would surely prevail. So what would be our bumper sticker? GEORGE ALLEN--VOTE FOR HAM-FIST.