The Dish

Lawrence Kaplan celebrates the vindication of neo-neo-conservatism in the removal of Colin Powell. Money quote:

With Condoleezza Rice at the helm–and, in all likelihood, with Undersecretary of State John Bolton as her deputy–the State Department will now be run by a team known for its rigid loyalty to the president. They, more than any other administration officials, represent authentic expressions of Bush’s foreign policy–more realistic than the Bush team’s neoconservatives but far more aggressive than its self-described “realists.” Rice, to be sure, is neither a great thinker nor a great manager. But she is a great lieutenant–that is, someone who can be relied on to convey and translate the president’s inclinations into official policy. For his part, Bolton is all of these things, plus a fierce conservative. Between the two of them, they could well transform Foggy Bottom into something that looks more like the Pentagon–only competently run.

Lawrence thinks Rumsfeld is staying on for only a little while longer – just to stick it to Powell – and that Lieberman may eventually replace him. We can dream.

THE COST OF DEMONIZATION: A powerful op-ed in the Washington Post today that does indeed lay bare the ugly dangers of the below-the-radar gay-baiting that Karl Rove unleashed in the campaign just ended. Meanwhile, Rich Lowry seems to imply that African-Americans are incapable of bigotry. Huh? I thought that was the position of the Afrocentric left.

“The decision was made to keep Rumsfeld and drop Powell because if they would have kept Powell and let [the Rumsfeld team] go, that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of failure in Iraq and our policies there. Powell is the expendable one.” – an anonymous government official in the Washington Post. Keep the denial going, guys. Keep it going.

ONE SENTENCE: From Roger Ebert. And a good piece on NPR. That’s my summary so far of liberal outrage about the murder of Theo van Gogh. Do you think if a member of the religious right had killed a Hollywood director they would have managed to say something?

YES: I meant Oprah.

It’s hard to know what her actual foreign policy instincts will be once she comes out from under the pincer movement of Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Will her Scowcroftian background re-emerge? I doubt it. If Rumsfeld leaves, we might get a better idea. But my guess is that he won’t. Now that Powell has gone, Rummy will see it as a matter of cojones that he stay for a while, if only to prevent sufficient manpower being deployed to win the war in Iraq, and to let memories of Abu Ghraib fade. (Sorry, Rummy, but mine won’t.) So: no change with the appearance of real change. In fact, the likelihood of any new tack in foreign affairs just collapsed. But the real genius of the Rice appointment is domestic. She will become the second most powerful African-American woman in America. And she will become that as a Republican icon. That has to have an impact on the way at least a small minority of black voters will view Bush (and not a few other minority voters). Add in Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Chief Justice, and you have a diversity record in top appointments that puts every previous Democrat to shame. That’s partly what Bush is doing. He won’t admit it, of course. But then it only works if he doesn’t.

An account of the untruths Colin Powell laid before the U.N. Security Council in arguing for war against Saddam. Money quote:

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources.

It was almost all crap, as we now know. Any self-respecting public official would have resigned as soon as that became clear – or at least apologized, as Blair has done. But Powell was in the Bush administration.

“NOT DESPERATE”: But “tense.” That’s the view of an American general in Mosul. Reassured about the situation? A large Kurdish contingent is being deployed to try and restore order in a critical Iraqi city with a very delicate ethnic mix. The barbarians keeping the over-stretched coalition forces on their toes also dismembered the body of a Mosul police officer and then displayed the limbs in the public square. Saddam Redux.

IT GETS WORSE: The amount of money siphoned from the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program in Iraq may be double what we originally feared. No surprise. Just the usual sickening feeling when it comes to the U.N.’s treatment of developing world thugs.

VAN GOGH BLEG: Can anyone point me to a single liberal American columnist who has written about the Theo van Gogh murder? Hitch doesn’t count. I’ve been a bit stunned by the silence. But maybe I’ve missed some.

That’s how many votes political scientist Alan Abramowitz believes George W. Bush won in Ohio on the marriage rights issue. Not enough to swing the state to Kerry. Nationally, the issue didn’t work for Republicans. Interestingly, of those in exit polls who favored civil unions for gay couples, most were Bush voters. The Economist explores some of the nuances here.

PRO-GAY CONSERVATIVES: No, I’m not the only one.

BEAGLE NEWS UPDATE: Not only Muslims can gain from getting beagles. here’s an email I just received:

I empathize with Ahmed Tharwat’s beagle experience, and agree that maybe beagles are the answer to cross-cultural understanding. It may even bridge the red state/blue state gap and bring about the time for healing that seems to be evading us.
As a Republican living smack between in the Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan neighborhoods here in Washington, D.C., I had grown accustomed to dirty looks and rolled eyes sent my way whenever I stepped out wearing my “W 2004” hat.
But at the worst, most frenzied depths of Campaign 2004, I adopted my beagle, Shorty. Suddenly, regardless of the W hat, partisan politics was tossed aside among the Kerry/Edwards lawn signs and window stickers of Dupont Circle. Men and women of all stripes stopped me to make a fuss over Shorty and chat about dogs. The best example is the young woman in a DNC t-shirt who, clipboard in hand, began to ask me if I wanted to help kick George W. Bush out of the Oval Office, saw my hat, then saw my dog, and said, “Oh never mind. What kind of dog is that?”

Works every time.

Finally, a pragmatic proposal to overcome racial, ethnic, religious and ideological divides. Get a beagle. And I say this on the day my own fair beagle pooped next to my desk over night. She’s six years’ old and still refuses to be completely toilet trained. Her excuse? She’s a beagle.

“Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiased opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.” – Oscar Wilde.

Another electoral map showing what unites us as well as what is tearing us apart. Yes, there are blue-staters in Wyoming!

A NEW GROUP BLOG: Here’s one worth looking out for. I wonder if group blogs aren’t becoming the 21st Century version of a magazine. You get a bunch of like-minded people together; they offer divergent, but not too-divergent, views; they generate a view of the world and encourage others to share it; all they lack is the longer form, the essay, the article, etc. But that can be provided by others or might, at some point, be generated from within, if the blogs provide enough income to pay a real staff. Also: no editor. And no need for massive financing for paper, printing, etc etc. What’s not to like? On a personal note: this blog saw an explosion of traffic last month, like many others. It will subside, I expect, after the election. But it’s great to have so many new readers – close to 100,000 a day. It would be a bandwidth nightmare if we didn’t also have the white knight of Henry Copeland’s Blogads. Again, the ads have retreated after a bumper election month. But they’re still there. And the income has made it possible for me to keep on blogging. If you want to advertize to one of the smartest and most influential readerships on the web, contact Henry at henry@blogads.com.

Let me second Bruce Bartlett’s argument for avoiding two huge reforms at the same time. If the flat tax is pitched in as populist a manner as possible, if the poor are exempted as much as possible, then it could revitalize conservatism as a low-tax and fair-tax movement. It could do for Bush Republicans what welfare reform did for Clinton Democrats. Emphasize the way in which it gets rid of countless bureaucrats and disempowers countless lobbyists. Get McCain on board.

“We’re very proud of ‘Polar Express.’ The movie talks about leadership, about friendship, spirituality, humility. I like that stuff.” – Alan Horn, the Warner Bros president, New York Times.