Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru do their best to make the case that Bush hasn’t lowered the bar on firing a leaker in his administration. They’re not crazy or wrong. You make your own mind up. But this is surely finesse worthy of the 42d president, not the official version of the 43d.
HEATH AND THE TORIES: An emailer recalls:
For what it’s worth, at the time when the Tories rose up against Mrs. Thatcher and forced her out as party leader and PM, I saw Jeffrey Archer, speaking for the Tories, debate a Labour MP on a news program. Whatever you may say about Archer, he is a very quick-witted speaker, quite witty and sharp in a way that the English pull off and Americans rarely do. Anyway, Archer was saying at one point that the Tories should not be considered ‘conservative’ but progressive in some ways. As he put it, to the Tories credit must be given for ‘the first Jewish prime minister, the first lady prime minister, the first bachelor prime minister.’ The way he emphasized the word ‘bachelor’ left no ambiguity about what he meant. Clearly he was referring to Mr. Heath, and clearly he was saying Heath was gay.
All of which is to say, I too wish the obituaries had made more of his private life, because quite clearly it is something that distinguished him – and something some Tories (or at the very least, Jeremy Archer) felt was worth celebrating.
Maybe the bachelor thing is really the astonishing part. A bachelor president is pretty much unthinkable, isn’t it? Far more transgressive than a woman or an African-American or a Jew or even a married gay man.
The Dish 