The Dish

Ella’s "Angel Eyes." About as eternal as it gets:

""She misspoke about the exit from the plane," – Howard Wolfson on Clinton’s lie or poor memory about Tuzla.

That word "misspoke" is such a weasel Clinton word. You can say you genuinely forgot, or got muddled up. But Clinton cannot ever admit a mistake or confess a deliberate exaggeration. It was the same way in which Bill Clinton could never actually say that anything he did was ever wrong. At most it was always "inappropriate."

In this respect alone, in their pathological incapacity to actually concede error – real error – the Clintons really are running for a third Bush term.

If you live in Pennsylvania, today is the last day you can change your registration for the Democratic primary.

"He almost seemed to celebrate,
The bodies fell,
His shoulders swayed…"

– Stanley Kurtz, apparently accusing Jeremiah Wright of "almost seeming" to celebrate the Islamist massacre of 9/11.

"Now I asked the Lord, what should our response be in light of such an unthinkable act … I was stuck in Newark, New Jersey. No flights were leaving La Guardia, JFK, or Newark Airport.  On the day that the FAA opened up the airports to bring into the destinations of cities those flights that had been diverted because of the hijacking, a scare in New York close all three regional airports and I couldn’t even get her for Mr. Radford’s father’s funeral.  And I asked God, "What should our response be?

I saw pictures of the incredible. People jumping from the 110th floor; people jumping from the roof because the stair wells and elevators above the 89th floor were gone– no more. Black people, jumping to a certain death; people holding hands jumping; people on fire jumping. And I asked the Lord, "What should our response be?" I read what the people of faith felt in 551BC. But this is a different time, this is a different enemy, a different world,  a different terror. This is a different reality," – Jeremiah Wright, on his response to the massacre, in his now infamous 9/11 sermon.

There is plenty to criticize in that sermon. But saying that Wright "almost seemed to celebrate" the agonizing, terrifying deaths of 3,000 Americans is not one of them.

Bill Kristol thinks racism is essentially over in the younger generation:

With respect to having a national conversation on race, my recommendation is: Let’s not, and say we did.

But let’s keep using coded racist messages to goad people to vote Republican. But on the downlow. Ofr course, not all Republicans seem to agree. Heilemann:

In GOP circles, the incendiary video clips of Obama’s former pastor are seen, not surprisingly, as a gift that will keep on giving.

Actually discussing race frankly and candidly would wound this kind of strategy. Which is why Kristol wants to avoid it.

War criminal John Yoo, a man who has defended the right of George W. Bush to crush the testicles of an innocent child as part of his presidential powers as commander-in-chief, and who defined torture out of existence in a non-infamous memo, lectures the Democrats on the dangers of unelected unaccountable "super-delegates."

Howell Raines is back and worrying.

Andy Bacevich joins a growing, if still fledgling, throng. Money quote:

The Iraq War represents the ultimate manifestation of the American expectation that the exercise of power abroad offers a corrective to whatever ailments afflict us at home. Rather than setting our own house in order, we insist on the world accommodating itself to our requirements. The problem is not that we are profligate or self-absorbed; it is that others are obstinate and bigoted. Therefore, they must change so that our own habits will remain beyond scrutiny.

Of all the obstacles to a revival of genuine conservatism, this absence of self-awareness constitutes the greatest. As long as we refuse to see ourselves as we really are, the status quo will persist, and conservative values will continue to be marginalized. Here, too, recognition that the Iraq War has been a fool’s errand—that cheap oil, the essential lubricant of the American way of life, is gone for good—may have a salutary effect. Acknowledging failure just might open the door to self-reflection.

Conservatism, at its core, is about the frailty of human goodness, the limits of human knowledge, the virtue of self-doubt when that is required, restraint on government executive power, and the correction and admission of error when necessary. What has happened to conservatism under Bush is that it has become a messianic, ruthless, totally certain imposition of ideology (fused even more lethally with theology). Obama is not the answer to this conservative predicament. He is a "progressive" liberal – but his liberalism contains more conservative elements of reason and prudence and restraint than the current Republican party. And although I admire John McCain immensely, and he is far and away one of the more principled and decent conservatives around, I fear that doubt, complexity, restraint and an understanding of the need for government to do less rather than more at times are not the strongest impulses in his make-up. To put it mildly.

Supporting Obama may well empower liberalism for a generation. I’ve said that for almost a year now. But it might also help defeat the corruption and degeneracy of "conservatism" that now dominates the Republican Party. That I once gave this faux conservatism too much benefit of the doubt and enabled it in part myself does not lessen the fact that I now believe it’s the obligation for many thinking conservatives to repudiate it. That was the core of my book, "The Conservative Soul." Other conservatives have seen this and will continue to see this – and do the right thing by putting the long-term interests of a more responsible Burkean conservatism before the narrow short-term interest of their party.

A reader writes:

Howard Wolfson was on MSNBC this morning and, based upon his response to the incredibly tepid questioning he received on this matter, you shouldn’t be giving the Clintons "the benefit of the doubt" on it. Wolfson, in a stunning illustration of the cliche of "the pot calling the kettle black," attempted to put the issue "in context" by complaining that since Obama’s "stinging defeats" in Texas and Ohio, his campaign has done nothing "question Clinton’s character" over whether "she could be Commander in Chief".  He then pulled out a handful of old press clippings (including one from the White House press office) to prove that Clinton had flown into a "war zone", and that she had been "protected by a machine gun" emplacement.  He said nothing (and he wasn’t challenged by the zombie like anchors) about Hillary’s claim that she was "under sniper fire", had to nix a welcoming ceremony, and "run" to her car under fire!

Just for the record – her recent speech:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

And from her own book:

"Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes…"

The video of her arrival in Tuzla. No sniper fire. No running with heads down. A clear greeting ceremony with the acting Bosnian president. Chelsea is also walking, smiling, easily walking toward the entourage.  Last week: "There was no greeting ceremony, and basically we were told to run to our cars." Whan asked about Sinbad’s recollection that the only thing he was scared of was the food, Clinton said," Well, he’s a comedian." He’s not the only one.