The Dish

Both Gallup and CBS now have Bush at all-time lows in approval numbers; and the ratings for the GOP appear to be way below the water-line for November. Things can change. But I have a feeling that Bush has now become Carterized. It is very hard to see how he can regain his footing at this late stage. After six years or so, the public knows who you are; and they have come to a judgment. With the economy now booming, who can imagine where his polling might be headed if his reckless fiscal policies bring disaster sooner rather than later? Ironically, his main hope might be Iraq. It’s possible that things will improve – and any halfway decent outcome will seem like good news given the recent past. The NYT had a helpful piece today on a place where things are going right. Maliki may exceed expectations. I sure hope he does. On Maliki, Bush’s future hinges. And it’s not much within the White House’s control.

The more successful integration of deaf people into mainstream society is a hugely beneficial development for all of us. And the debates within the deaf world – about identity, "normality", and "disability" – are fascinating to me. The first deaf president of Gallaudet, an immense figure, is now retiring. And students are up in arms about his successor. I take it as a good sign that the issue now is simply whether she is up to the job from the students’ point of view. Isn’t that in itself a positive development?

The great theme of the Bush administration’s war on terror is that the executive needs to break or ignore or side-step the law at times in order to defeat our deadly enemy. Hence the relaxation of strict legal bars on torture; hence the NSA warrant-less wire-tapping, which circumvented the law; hence the several hundred laws that the Bush administration has insisted it does not have to enforce or execute. A reader recently watched the great movie, "A Man For All Seasons," by Robert Bolt about St Thomas More’s resistance to lawless executive power and the fusion of church and state in Henrician England. ("This is not Spain," Cromwell keeps reassuring us, as torture is practised, and property confiscated. Sound familiar?) Back from England, we rented the movie last week again. The great family group portrait of More stands in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and my confirmation saint was on my mind. In the screenplay, Bolt gives us the classic debate about whether it is permissible, as Rumsfeld and Cheney believe, to break the law to pursue and defeat evil. The conversation is between the hot-headed future son-in-law Roper and one of the great lawyers of his time, More. More sticks up for legal procedures in every case. Roper objects.

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes.  What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

It’s rarely been put better. Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo should be forced to sit through it.

(Portrait of Thomas More, sketch by Hans Holbein.)

An ideological dispute has broken out in the blogosphere about the various merits of Coke Zero and Diet Coke. As Eric Cartman would put it, you can follow this debate hyah, hyah and hyah.

This is a subjective call, hence my certainty that Jonah Goldberg is correct and Matt Yglesias should go back to Tab. Diet Coke is an excrescence, a vile concoction that leaves a sickly, Rumsfeldian taste in the mouth (his company created Nutrasweet), and deyhdrates the soul. Coke Zero is a diet drink that simply doesn’t taste like one. The fiance orders it in large boxes, which fill up the bottom third of the fridge. If I have to, I drink it as well. But I’m a Coke Classic man myself. So who’s the real conservative now, Jonah? Huh? Yeah?

"There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it," – David Remnick, the New Yorker.

I don’t mean to belittle climate change. It’s real; much of it is almost certainly man-made; I’m open to arguments about how best to slow or deal with it. (I don’t believe that in a world where India and China are fast developing, we have any serious chance of stopping or reversing it.) But I have yet to hear of any predictions that it is "likely" that global warming will make the earth "uninhabitable" by humans. Is there any basis in fact for this assertion? (A different take on Al Gore can be found here.)

"If illegal aliens had stayed home the twin towers would still be standing," – Lucianne.com, the website created and run by Lucianne Goldberg. (Hat tip: Pete.)

It is encouraging to see the extreme abstraction of theoconservatism beginning to collide with the reality we all live in. The Pope has commissioned a study to see whether, in a serodiscordant marriage, condoms are morally a lesser evil than infecting your spouse with a serious virus. Yes, they actually need a study to figure that one out. Nick Kristof (TimesDelete) also makes the very important point that in secular, liberal, post-Communist Germany, the abortion rate is a fraction of America’s. Hmmm. That couldn’t have anything to do with much better contraception availability, counseling and over-the-counter availability of the morning after pill, could it? The great tragedy of the extremism of the current pro-life forces is that they have become de facto pro-death. They allow for the early deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the developing world by opposing condoms in a health emergency; and they add to the number of abortions in America by making emergency contraception hard to find. In their theological abstraction, the logic is perfect and circular. On the ground, they are abetting death. They need to get a better grip on their own good intentions and see how their extremism has led them astray.

His government is reeling from a near-perfect storm of scandals two days ahead of local elections. The odds of his remaining at Number 10, Downing Street, for more than a few more months strike me as much longer than they were a week ago.

It’s three years since the president’s victory speech on an aircraft carrier. I got a lot wrong back then and still trusted the president to make the right decisions in wartime. But something about that speech unnerved me, and for the first time, I used the H-word:

I agree with Glenn Reynolds that the whole backdrop, including the fighter-pilot entrance, was – how do I put this politely? – hubristic … It was an address to the nation at the conclusion of a conflict, one that shouldn’t be interrupted by foot-stomping and cheering. It made it look as if the president was using the military for partisan purposes – and that’s not right.

"Conclusion of a conflict"? If only I’d known. But a couple of weeks later, I was writing the following:

Iraq needs order. We’ll get criticized for being too heavy-handed whatever we do. So why aren’t American troops in large numbers being deployed to keep the peace, restore order and exercise credible authority? If we do not show our commitment now to the country, what message are we sending a future Iraqi government about our commitment to a stable and long-lasting democracy?

I fear we were sending the message Rumsfeld always intended to send: you’re on your own now. Rummy never wanted nation-building; and he feared that Iraq would disprove his theories about a smaller, more high-tech military. So he refused to budge. And we are where we now are.

It exists! Reading your emails and the blogospheric response, it seems the humor is not really the issue. Colbert has become a popular hero simply for sticking it to the president in public. One emailer writes:

Colbert said what he said to the president’s face.  That’s the significance of it.  And it’s significant because the president never stands for criticism from anyone.

Others are more paranoid:

Do you think that maybe the media was once again protecting the president from humiliation? I think it was supposed to be a light and humorous night and Colbert cut a bit too deep for the image that the press (and the administration) wanted to give. Whether you believe he bombed or not does not matter. Colbert went up there and told president Bush to his face what he thought, and the fact that so many bloggers are cheering him on suggests that this is a sentiment that people around the country (world) have. If nothing else the press should report that someone had the courage to speak for the way a large group of people feel, even if the comedy bombed. That is newsworthy! People want this to be news but news outlets are not providing it as news. There is an imbalance whether you think it deserves press or not.

I think Colbert played the role of the court jester. That’s an important and significant role. Watching part of the routine online, I can see the point. A British reader adds:

I’ve seen the video. He didn’t misfire – he punctured a bubble. If only for a moment. Good on him.

I concur.