It seems to me completely possible that president Bush will have to make a critical decision in the next week or so on the U.N. and Iraq. Colin Powell said yesterday with respect to the ongoing diplomacy: “We’re getting close to a point where we’ll have to see whether or not we can bridge these remaining differences in the very near future. I don’t want to give you days or a week, but it certainly isn’t much longer than that.” That time-line places the president’s announcement of a U.N. decision and the U.S. response smack bang in line with the Congressional elections. The timing isn’t Bush’s fault. Russia and France are the culprits for dragging their feet for so long. But think of two possible scenarios: the U.S. secures a diplomatic victory and gets U.N. support for its Iraq strategy or the president tells the country we’re going to put together the kind of non-U.N.-sponsored coalition that made the Kosovo intervention possible. Either way, it’s huge news. I’d say it could be enough to swing the election. If Bush gives the U.N. till Friday and the war news dominates the weekend, then we’ll have a highly volatile final day or two. This may not happen of course. But in some ways, I think Bush ought to wrap this up before November 5. The war on terror is a critical issue in the country – I’d argue far and away the most critical issue right now – and the voters should know what the executive branch plans before they vote for the legislature. Maybe it will help Republicans. Maybe it will strengthen the argument for divided government, in order to temper a White House going to war. But either way, any decision will knock everything else out of the news cycle. Won’t it?
TRASH PICK-UP: Check out The New Republic’s cover-story this week on the tawdry British exports now transforming American culture. It’s written by a tawdry British export … well, I thought I’d say it before Eric Alterman does.
YESTERDAY’S LILEKS: A corker. Not only does he praise the Pet Shop Boys, whose last album, Release, is firmly embedded in my iPod as a lyrical Xanax, but he burrows in on arguably the worst presidential candidate in recent memory, Walter Mondale. My fave passage:
In doing some research for today’s Mondale column, I reread his speech at the 1984 Democratic convention. Here’s a real time-capsule moment for you: ‘When we speak of change, the words are Gary Hart’s. When we speak of hope, the fire is Jesse Jackson’s. When we speak of caring, the spirit is Ted Kennedy’s. When we speak of the future, the message is Geraldine Ferraro.’ Well, at least one out of four didn’t cheat on his wife. What a snapshot of 1984: a time when Gary Hart was the 845th blurry photocopy of JFK to be handed around, when Jesse Jackson was regarded as a bulwark of righteous enlightenment instead of a self-aggrandizing shakedown artist; when Ted Kennedy was a big pickled Care Bear, and Geraldine Ferraro was the future, not a footnote-to-be. I was a hardcore Democrat at the time, and I remember watching the speech and thinking: we are going to lose. We are going to lose 51 states. Puerto Rico will demand statehood just for the chance not to vote for this guy.
And I keep remembering Dana Carvey’s SNL sketch on the guy. Wellstone’s death is indeed a tragedy. But why compound it by voting for this misguided relic?
“DEAR LENIN,
(I never thought I would end up addressing an email in this manner…)
Nice to meet a fellow buff. Orwell more than once said that he doubted things in the USSR would have been much better if Trotsky had won over Stalin, but he did have a slight sympathy with the Left Opposition and a close friendship with some of its intellectual diaspora, and would never have thought of the accusation “Trotskyist” as a damning one. He had, I think, the same ambivalence about Lenin that you indicate…” Hitchens spars with readers in the latest Book Club installment. Don’t miss it.
MY SPECIAL RIGHTS: “Indeed, Mr. Sullivan, I am sure you do not like to hear this, but you get the attention you get because you are a gay conservative. If you were a liberal, you would have to compete with many other thinkers, many of whom write better than you, are more intelligent than you are, and produce work that is much deeper than reflexive support for the Bush administration that you pass off as work.” A reader objects to my objection to Harry Belafonte, why the Dems don’t gay-bait, why the anti-war movement is right to single out Israel, and other viewpoints on the Letters Page, edited by Reihan Salam.
The Dish 