Regardless of her headgear during her excellent adventure to Syria, the Washington Post agrees with me that Nancy Pelosi is an idiot. The kind that Uncle Joe Stalin used to call a useful one, for the Assad regime.

"What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

As Glenn writes:

If Bush and Cheney were really evil, they'd both resign and stick the Democrats with a Pelosi Presidency for the next two years. The Democratic Party would never recover. Alas, neither would the country.

One can only imagine what Democrats would have said had the Republican Speaker gone to Serbia and tried to broker a peace, undermining the policies of the Democrat President.

After all, peace comes only through diplomacy, not the end of a gun, as they like to remind bellicose Republicans. They seem to forget that bromide when a Democrat goes to war.

If Bush and Cheney were really evil, they'd both resign and stick the Democrats with a Pelosi Presidency for the next two years. The Democratic Party would never recover. Alas, neither would the country.

And that's what scares me the most about the amount of fundraising done by Democrats already for November, 2008.

Don't worry John, Wait till Fred gets in the race.

Well, we have three Republican House members there as well.

Ugg.

Yours,
Wince

You know, what really astonishes me about this race is the poverty of the candidates on the Democratic side. You'd think the win in 2006 would have really energized them, caused some great Democratic leader to come out of the shadows.

But here we've got the old, tired, machine candidate, Hillary Clinton, the Mario Cuomo of the 00s, who has been scheming for this moment for a decade or more. What's she got to say, or do, that could possibly be new, that isn't the typical plodding mixture of thoroughly poll-tested bromides and Lady Macbeth-like cynical personal ambition? Even the left doesn't really like her. She is unutterably boring.

Then we've got Obama, or should I say !*O*B*A*M*A*!!, the circus side-show candidate, the media darling bottle rocket that will shower sparks all over everbody when he colorfully explodes at the height of his very short trajectory. You'd have to be a newsman or other ignorant dreamer to think he has any staying power. Nice guy and all that, and he may actually be a convincing possibility in 20 or 30 years, when he's grown a bit.

Then what? Edwards, who at this point is more of a sympathy candidate than a serious contender. You vote for him because you feel guiltily sorry for him. Bill Richardson, or as most American refer to him Bill Who? Always got to have an unknown who polls at 1% or less, for future trivia contests...

By contrast I would have thought the Republicans were in disarray, discouraged. But the three top candidates (Guiliani, Romney, and McCain) are all very strong. Guiliani and Romney have nationally-known, bipartisanly-praised success as executives in difficult situations. McCain is at the least an old campaigner and warhorse, sort of the LBJ of our day. Not a light-weight. All three are able, tough campaigners, with plausible appeal to centrist and even lefty voters. I wouldn't leave the country if any of them were elected.

I wouldn't choose McCain, because of his McCain-Feingold folly, but I'm having a hard time knowing whether Rudy or Mitt is a better choice. And what's amazing about that is that it's not, so far, a question of holding my nose and picking the lesser evil.

Wait a bit Carl, Fred will announce soon.

But Mike...he seems to say sensible stuff, too.

I can't take it! I need some self-obsessed hypocritical flaming fruitcake to jump in the Republican race so that I can maintain my healthy contempt for politicians of all stripes.

Someone who says women who have abortions should be put in the stocks, say, or NASA's planetary exploration budget should be redirected to a massive mandatory Sunday School program for tots. I know they must be out there. Why won't they run. damn them?