The Dish

Jamie Kirchick’s latest – and final – word on the subject.

"At the moment the public is not fully sure what you stand for. In time this will change of its own accord but it should change radically. I am convinced that so much political failure reflects weak and erratic definition.

No one should have any doubt about what you stand for, what you want to achieve, what is your plan. You need absolute clarity in this," – from a secret memo to new prime minister Gordon Brown from Labour party guru, Philip Gould (an Oakeshott student).

A caveat for the Weekly Standard.

He’s the featured candidate on YouTube’s YouChoose08 this week. Get your fix here. An amuse-bouche:

"Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads." "Back To The Future."

Kevin Sullivan ponders what the death of Ali Meshkini means for Iran:

The Iranian government serves as a collection of checks upon checks upon checks. … Ahmadinejad is without question the most ambitious, and most autonomous post-revolution president Iran has seen so far. He has close allies in both the Assembly of Experts and the Guardian Council. He is tied in with all of the Principlist factions in Iran, and shares their vision for a return to Islamic government, as opposed to Islamic republicanism …

The time for power grabs in Iran may be upon us, but it just might be the skilled politician who walks away from this on top. An economy in decline, and a factitious government in turmoil, may leave a vacuum for Ahmadinejad to fill.  Whether he acts upon this for himself, or for his fundamentalist taskmasters, is irrelevant. The results would be the same, and none of it would be good for the people of Iran.

Larison is concerned:

I think Obama is pushing exactly the wrong line here, threatening to effectively destabilise the existing regime without having any idea of what would come next.  This is a combination of soundbite foreign policy and a "pour oil on fire to see what happens" approach to international relations.  Obama’s foreign policy position is beginning to give me an eerie feeling of deja vu. Who was the last presidential candidate with no real foreign policy experience who set his policies according to whatever was perceived to be the opposite of the sitting President?  Who was it who framed his foreign policy pitch as that of someone who would provide leadership and measured action where his predecessor had dithered and wasted opportunities?  Oh, yes, it was Mr. Bush.  At the time, it sounded reasonably attractive to those of us fed up with Clintonian interventions. If Bush’s "humble" foreign policy yielded Iraq, just imagine the nightmare that might come from a candidacy founded on audacity!

How can you write an entire piece on the Iowa straw poll and not mention Ron Paul once? Is the GOP establishment that rattled? I guess we’ll find out.

Do you know someone "really smart, arrogant beyond measure, [who] tends to be an asshole or otherwise impossible to converse with in a normal way"? Is it you? Are you a geek or do you have Asperger’s Syndrome? Here’s an online test designed to help you decide. One blogger is relieved by his results:

"So there. I don’t have Asperger’s, I’m just cruel and insensitive."

A reader writes:

My first book was just published this summer, by an indie house called Sourcebooks. My experience seems drastically different from you and your readers’ by comparison.

I had an editor who read through every page and had lovingly smart notes, a copyeditor, a proofreader, and in the end, the book wouldn’t be released for production until I proofed the galleys. My book was sold to B&N and Borders before there was a cover, on the strength of two essays and a sales pitch.

It appears that selling to an independent is better for the writer, since the publisher has far more at stake in making sure the book is successful. The advances are smaller, definitely, but from what I’ve read and heard, there’s more respect given to the author. I wasn’t treated like a widget, I was treated like a partner.

I guess that’s the free market of it. The Big Boys can pay, but you risk being treated like a mule and perhaps seeing your work mangled. The Little Guys can’t quite pay the big bucks yet, but they treat authors like gold. Plus, they’ll take on some of the "riskier" gems that the major publishers toss in the slush pile. The readers win by having these books available to purchase. This whole experience has been something I’ll never forget, for all the right reasons.