"He always understood what he knew and what he didn’t know," – Alan Greenspan in describing Gerald Ford as the best president he worked with.
"The defining characteristic of the conservative is that he knows what he doesn’t know," – my attempt at a definition of the best kind of conservatism in "The Conservative Soul."
It’s hard, as Captain Ed discovers. The reader comments from loyal but non-Malkinite Republicans are a little sad:
Doggone it; I really WANT to like Fred but he’s just GOT to deliver.
I find myself wondering why he didn’t give more detail. Did he just run out of time for the answer? Is he not familiar with one or more of the plans proposed? Does he want to leave things open, because it all depends on the party balance in Congress? Is he trying not to sound policy-wonkish? A little more meat, instead of "I agree with you" would have been better.
I want to like Fred, but he’s not going to make it easy. The main thing he has going for him is that he’s not Guiliani (= Hillary in my book, and WON’T get my vote), McCain, or Romney. Looks like we still need a conservative candidate. C’mon, Newt! There’s still room!
One sliver of hope:
I like Fred. Whether practiced or not, the response appeared genuine. You can tell he’s traveling in a motor home, and that he’s taking time on his tour to read and respond to email. Compared to all the other candidates, he still smells the best to me – good speaking voice, says enough to answer a question, without saying so much he’ll have to explain things away tomorrow. He’s probably the first lawyer I could relate to.
I haven’t registered yet, but Fred’s getting a check from me this week.
An American soldier-surgeon reflects on his time in Iraq saving newborns. The troops don’t only kill; they also save.
Another lovely Republican.
"Change starts by making sure a Democrat is in the White House. Change doesn’t end just because a Democrat is in the White House. It’s time to turn the page on the old way of doing business," – Barack Obama, yesterday, at the SEIU confab. Gallup has some encouraging data on this front. He’ll be talking taxes at lunchtime today. I’m going and will blog.
Drum likes it:
[A]lthough the three leading Democratic presidential candidates have proposed healthcare plans that are similar in a lot of ways, Hillary’s strikes me as not just substantively as good as any of them (and better in some ways), but also the politically savviest and most practical of the lot. Given her experience in 1994 (she knows what won’t work) combined with the legislative canniness she seems to have developed in the Senate (she know what will work), that’s not too surprising.
The Palestinian Authority – the moderates, remember? – celebrate.
A new review of my book from Monsters and Critics:
In the end, Sullivan is – if one only looks at existing conservative philosophies/theories – a Burkean conservative. If one wants to understand where Sullivan’s coming from, and where he’s most likely headed, one has to look at conservatism in America today from the perspective, not of a Reagan conservative, but of a Burkean one.
Megan tackles some economic revisionism.
I didn’t blog about it much because I couldn’t make a great deal of sense out of it. The blogosphere has a lot of chatter on the Israeli strike in Syria, much of it an attempt to clear up major MSM confusion. Arms Control Wonk sorts through the crap and offers a helpful time-line "outlining how two separate stories about a Syrian airstrike and Syria-DPRK nuclear cooperation merged into the big mess we have today." Blake Hounshell targets WaPo’s reporting, citing Joseph Cirincione’s response to a Glenn Kessler piece:
This story is nonsense. The Washington Post story should have been headlined "White House Officials Try to Push North Korea-Syria Connection." This is a political story, not a threat story. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from the run-up to war in Iraq. It is a sad commentary on how selective leaks from administration officials who have repeatedly misled the press are still treated as if they were absolute truth.
Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted "intelligence" to key reporters in order to promote a preexisting political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should.
Uh-oh. A helpful round-up here. The much-disputed Times of London piece is here. Israellycool does some backtracking – and clarifying – here. Clear now?
