The Dish

"We know from past campaigns that presidential candidates will say many things. But once they have the responsibility to govern the country and lead the world, that difference between what they said and what responsibilities they have to fulfill are vastly different. I’m very upset with John with some of the things he’s been saying. And I can’t get into the psychoanalysis of it. But I believe that John is smarter than some of the things he is saying. He is, he understands it more. John is a man who reads a lot, he’s been around the world. I want him to get above that and maybe when he gets into the general election, and becomes the general election candidate he will have a higher-level discourse on these things," – Senator Chuck Hagel.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

Drum counters Conor’s article on the lack of conservative narratives.

The US govertnment cannot get the benefit of the doubt with interrogation any more:

I was reading your post on Murat Kurnaz and I can’t help but think that the biggest tragedy in all of this is that we can’t feel certain about who is right.  It is fair to say that if we went about detaining numerous terrorist suspects and treated them as honored guests we’d have to deal with some allegation of torture regardless.  But with a track record of fair and just treatment, we could readily prove that these were lies to tarnish our image.  Unfortunately, our image has been tarnished through our own actions and thus, any allegation, no matter how outlandish, becomes believable.

We can only hope that after Bush is removed from power that the world will believe that these actions were an aberration launched by one failed presidency and that we are a better nation going forward.  If they do not, I cannot fathom the cost to our nation’s image.

Last night, the Dish’s discussion of the Kentucky exit polls asked: did some Kentucky voters just refuse to vote for a black man? Or are they just leery of candidates they don’t know well enough? And why doesn’t Clinton openly urge people not to vote for her on racist grounds?

Jim Baker, c/o the Economist:

The rebuilding may have benefited from government incompetence:

The people of New Orleans, Nicole Gelinas writes, have "been building and rebuilding on their own or with small-scale help, rather than under top-down decree–and, in the process, showing that thousands of individual planners are better than one master."

Obviously a small donor:

That’s the Clintons’ campaign right now. How many little boys’ video games will have to be donated to pay it off?

Michael Goldfarb gets all catty about Barack Obama.

Poulos wades into some thickets:

A conservative equipped with Bramwell’s Weberian rulebook, then, is left utterly out in the cold when legitimate institutions fail. A conservative — or anyone else — bumbling along with one of Matt Yglesias’ fig leaves, however, can at least take refuge among the shards convention, hoping to shore them up against our ruin. The coalition of the willing that invaded Iraq, the NATO coalition that bombed Serbia, and Lincoln’s Grand Army of the Republic all advanced an interpretation of legitimacy, which had its logic to it under the circumstances but also fell significantly short of ‘real’ legitimacy. The real argument about all three of these military bodies, and the wars they fought, is whether, in the absence of true legitimacy, they were justified by power or by authority.

One favorite Oakeshott anecdote: at a National Review confab where Oakeshott was unfortunate enough to speak, his address received utter bewilderment from the muckety-mucks and Buckley proteges in the crowd. In the end, one of them mustered a question: "Excuse me, Mr Professor. But what does any of this have to do with the power of the president of the United States?" "Oh," Oakeshott reportedly replied. "The president of the United States has no power. He has authority."