You need this book: or you might come down with something...Brian Frazer has used his week of Jewcy blogging to expel some common and very current political frustration.  He began with a peek at his book, telling an introspective yet entertaining tale about his brother's wedding.  Then he turned to politics, putting wrinkles on the faces of Biden's botox obsessors, reacted to the second presidential debate, begged the forgiveness of those he has insulted, and devised a painfully amusing plan for preventing another economic meltdown.  Want more of Frazer's frenzy?  Buy his book!

Does your blood pressure surge if the car in front of you turns without signaling? Do your neck veins pulsate when a cashier takes too long to ring you up? Does relaxing seem like it'll have to wait until you're dead? Then your name could very well be Brian Frazer.  On paper, Frazer is the world's healthiest guy. He eats right, exercises regularly, gets plenty of sleep, has never smoked and has missed only one day of flossing in the last five years. But inside he's a swirling vortex of angst, capable of contracting a new malady every month. Once Frazer realized that all his ills were tied to stress, he went on a quixotic quest for calm, venturing into everything from Tai Chi, serotonin blockers and Kabbalah to an unfortunate incident involving pineapple-chicken curry at a Craniosacral therapy session. Never has the road to wellville taken so many unforeseen turns.  Achingly funny, uncomfortably true and always entertaining, Hyperchondriac is just the medicine for anyone who wants to take it down a notch.
A- Entertainment Weekly

You'd be hard pressed to find a decent amount of medicare-qualifying folks who know what a blog is... But a vlog?  Now, that's pushing it.  Nevertheless, old school Jewish comedian Jackie Mason has tapped into the new-fangled youngsters' technology like few of his peers.  But don't let him fool you.  When it comes to politics, the generation gap is clear.  Jewcy recently featured a video and a follow-up of Sarah Silverman's, "The Great Shlep."  While it surely produced many Yiddish-intoned guffaws over Rosh Hashanah dinner, it has also sparked a backlash from the aforementioned grandpa of Jewish comedy.  Mason's take: Sarah's got some chutzpah telling you how to vote.  She's a sick yenta! (His words...)  We'll let him tell you directly, and see what you think, since you're the boss of your ballot.

Just to give a clear picture of Mason's record on political commentary, have a look at this previous vlog entry of his, and then ask yourself what gap he's closing.

The N.Y. Times reports this nice bit of news, that Obama has opened up a sizable lead over McCain in the latest CBS poll. Obama’s favorables are up to the highest they’ve ever been, McCain’s are down to the lowest they’ve ever been.John McCain: Reppin' on the mic

I’m not foolish enough to believe that this is the end of the campaign or even the beginning of the end. There is a long way to go till November 4th and five weeks is a lifetime in presidential politics. After all, the bailout fiasco which apparently did so much damage to McCain’s image, was a very unusual development. One doesn’t know how the fallout will play out from this. Does the bailout have “legs” as a political issue (as I suspect it does)? Or will it recede into the political woodwork as Katrina did for Bush, in a few days or weeks? As long as it continues to occupy the public’s attention, McCain remains wounded.

And this is not a helpless candidate by any means. He can still land serious blows on Obama and potentially derail his campaign in any number of ways.

Bush's favorability rating is down to 22%! The lowest since Harry Truman in the Korean War. Who'd a thunk it only five years ago when he rode high in the saddle into the Iraq War?

One of the most delicious pieces of news from this story concerns Sarah Palin’s receding prospects:

The Pew poll found that 51 percent of respondents said she was not qualified to be president, compared with 37 percent who said she was. That is a reversal from early last month, when 52 percent of respondents said Ms. Palin was qualified to be president.

She’s lost 15 percentage points in less than a month. That’s a candidate in free fall, perhaps without a parachute given her recent performance in Katie Couric’s CBS interview. When I first started writing about her after McCain chose her I wondered why the American public wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. My hope and conviction was that this would be a process that wouldn’t happen instantaneously. But that a campaign of a thousand paper cuts, perhaps inflicted by liberal bloggers and her own hubris, would eventually bring her to her knees, which is more or less what has happened. Now, let’s see if this impression is reinforced in tomorrow’s V.P. debate.

Like many people who have covered John McCain, I think of him as a deeply serious man, preoccupied with America's defense and its position in the world. So I've been confused for the past few days, trying to figure out why he's allowing his campaign to make a circus of this election, leveling unserious and dishonest accusations about Barack Obama's positions on sex education and Sarah Palin.

Then it came to me: The answer can be found in my new Atlantic cover story! (How's that for Washington-based solipsism?) The story grapples with John McCain's philosophy of war, and in particular with the doctrine of preemption, which McCain still endorses. So do I, in certain cases, but that's not the point. The point is that McCain knows that preemption isn't the easiest sell these days: "It's very hard to run for president on this idea right now," he told me.

So, what do you do when one of your core ideas is out of sync with the predispositions of the American public? You spend your days talking about lipstick on pigs. This might win him the election, but I'd rather see him debate preemption.

Michael Chabon: contemplates sarah palinMichael Chabon is an expert on a great many things, especially hummus and Alaska. He seemed like the perfect person to turn to for a conversation about Sarah Palin:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Isn't it great that Michael Palin's sister is running for vice president?

Michael Chabon: Jeffrey, I fear it might actually be kind of sad that I had exactly the same thought when I first heard her name. At least we can safely assume, at this point, that Governor Palin fully appreciates the deep wisdom contained in that old axiom: nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

JG: Is Sarah Palin Jewish? Her husband was in the Yiddish Policemen's Union. Or maybe the Steelworkers, I forget.

MC: It's unlikely and, I feel, sort of weird the way this Alaskan lady's fortunes have become caught up, and so quickly, with those of the Jews. An exhaustive search of press mentions on Lexis-Nexis reveals that, until very recently, "Alaska" and "Jews" had been included in the same sentence only 18 times, ever. I know I probably deserve some of the credit for this uptick, but I decline to accept it.

JG: What's your favorite Alaskan food?

MC: I know you want me to say moose. You probably also want me to point out that moose (properly slaughtered of course) is kosher. Same goes for reindeer. I have eaten both, in Juneau, Sitka and Wrangell. Reindeer sausage. Mooseburger. Also fiddlehead ferns and lingonberries. But I'm going to have to go with lox.

JG: Alaska. Crazy place, or what?

MC: It's crazy beautiful, that's for sure. I found it a dark place, and not just because it was literally dark much of time, during my second visit, in late winter. Also, I found it (the place, not the people) hostile, and not just in the sense that wilderness is generally said to be hostile. I kept thinking of that bit from Twin Peaks, where the sheriff says, "There is something very, very strange in these old woods. Call it what you want, a darkness, a presence." Almost everything humans have built there is unbelievably ugly. That might have something to do with the air of resentment given off by the underlying terrain.

JG: Do you think Barack Obama has placated whatever fears elderly Jews have of him?

MC: Huh, I don't know, can elderly Jews actually be placated? The Israeli government, as you know, has squandered billions of shekels to date on one ill-starred placation program after another, with results that have been uniformly disappointing, leading it to issue the famous finding: You just can't alter a kocker.

But if anyone can do it, Obama can.

JG: Do you think McCain was a) smart, or b) stupid, to pick Palin as his running mate?

MC: I think the answer is probably both more pathetic and more chutzpadich than either a) or b) would imply.

JG: Are any of your children named Bristol, Willow or Track?

MC: I was kind of excited when I thought Willow was a Buffy shout-out. Like, how cool, she named her kid after a Jewish lesbian witch! It was part of this weird, innocent spasm of credit-extending that I experienced on first seeing the Governor in action last Friday. But the moment was very short-lived, alas. I bet she doesn't even watch Buffy. The names are kind of awesome, in my opinion. But then I have a son named Ezekiel Napoleon Waldman Chabon.

[This is cross-posted from Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic blog, which we think is great, and you should visit often]

V.S. Naipaul: saw the evangelical train a'coming Evangelical influence in the Unites states is not a secret. Intellectuals like Naipaul identified its ascent in the mid 80's. Of the four living presidents, two are avowedly evangelical. The public sphere is full of leading evangelical personalities, both on the left and right. Evangelical books are some of the biggest sellers in American publishing. Evangelicals have so thoroughly dominated the US that they have now set themselves up for a worldwide expansion and are exporting churches and the myth of intelligent design with considerable gusto (even to Muslims).

Just last week, pastor Rick Warren of California, author of the Purpose Driven Life, and head of the 22,000 strong Saddlebrook Church, held a conversation about religion and values with the two presidential candidates. The event was covered by every major news station. Among pundits and bloggers it was critiqued and evaluated as if it was a proper presidential debate. Barack Obama and John McCain talked about Jesus Christ and abortion and homosexuality; partly in neutral terms, and partly within the context of Christian theology.

Rick Warren, Barack Obama, and John McCain: seek a purpose driven life through jesus We are religiously permissive in the United States and over the last decade the general view has been to let religious people bring religion into the public sphere. For example, Bush introduced the Faith Based Initiative in 2000 without much opposition and Obama recently suggested that he'd be willing to continue it albeit with a overhaul (probably since most of the money in the Bush initiative behaved very racially), and was again met with little opposition.

Having said that, it seems that the days of such permissiveness towards bringing religion into the public sphere might be coming to an end. The Rick Warren debate, in other words, might be a farewell party for American Christianity in the political sphere. To substantiate this assertion I direct your attention to the Pew Forum which recently concluded a survey about Americans' views about religion in politics.

Thomas Jefferson: once said something about keeping religion and government separate It shows that in 1996, 43% of Americans felt that Churches should stay out of politics; today, that number is at 52% and its trending upward. In other words, the more religion gets introduced into the public sphere, the more Americans want it out (the survey notes that conservatives are the ones most changing their views about this, now at levels similar to moderates and liberals).

It seems that religious Americans are remembering again Jefferson's idea that the wall of separation between religion and state exists in order to protect religion. What happens when religion stuffs itself into the political sphere too long? You may want to ask a theocratic state like Iran. Only 1.4% of the population attends the Friday prayer in the Islamic Oligarchy. (This number is actually lower than the Church attendance number in those purportedly hedonistic European nations).

In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte of France, head of the largest army in the world, began the worst military campaign in history. His ill-fated and tragic invasion of Russia led to nearly two thirds of the French army getting killed. The effects of the doomed maneuver were so long-standing that France never again recovered its military potency. Senator Barack Obama recently stated that if he's elected president the US will engage in a military maneuver just as foolish.

Within Senator Obama's recent pronouncements on Iraq is an ominous and troubling prescription about the small land-locked country of Afghanistan. The proposal involves sending "at least" two additional combat brigades to support the 50,000 NATO troops already present in Afghanistan. He goes on to ask for more helicopters, more nonmilitary assistance, and more intelligence gathering.

All of this, in Senator Obama's eyes, is supposed to suggest his greater military aptitude; his attempt to show that he will finish the job -- capturing Bin Laden and defeating the Taliban -- that his Republican predecessor was unable to finish. It is also a lot of politics, because increasing troop presence in Afghanistan allows Obama to say that he supports troop withdrawal from Iraq without appearing like the "surrender monkey" that the Republican opposition will inevitably try to paint him as around election time.

Yet Senator Obama's proposal is one of the worst military ideas in recent history. Here is why:

Afghanistan is considered the "graveyard of empires." Shortly after 9/11, in his 2001 Foreign Affairs essay, Milton Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan in the 1980's, stated that unless the US proceeded with caution it would end up "on the ash heap of Afghan history."

The list of emperors and nations that have tried to hold Afghanistan is long and there is not a single success story. The Soviet Union spent ten years there, with helicopter gunships and tactical nuclear weapons, and failed. The British Empire spent nearly a hundred years trying to alternatively invade and control Afghanistan and veritably failed at both. The Ottoman Empire, which considered itself the inheritor of Roman power, never bothered with Afghanistan. In fact, they were actually dealt crippling blows by invaders from Afghanistan. In the seventh century, even the heaving Arab armies that had been able to take over then world power Persia in a mere five years after the death of Muhammad were unable to take Afghanistan. For Afghanistan to become Muslim more than a hundred years later it took a local ruler from within, and even then power was not centralized in one man. In other words, Senator Obama is setting the US up for failure of world-historical proportions.

Unfortunately most American policy makers don't quite understand the difficulty associated with holding Afghanistan because they think that successful invasion is tantamount to a successful occupation. That, of course, is the same tragedy that befell everyone from the Soviets to the armies of Muhammad. Afghanistan allows itself to be invaded. It doesn't allow itself to be held. Testament of this lies in the fact that it has now been seven years since the US military entered Afghanistan and yet just the other day an American base was actually infiltrated and 9 marines were killed. It will only get worse.

The reasons that Afghanistan is impossible to hold have to do with geography. Because of its centralized and landlocked location insurgents can disappear into any number of neighboring countries and use them as a base to launch attacks on the occupier. These days the base of insurgent operation are the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even if, miraculously, the US is able to clean out the tribal areas - an operation to which no sane Pakistani politician or military dictator would agree - it would simply mean that the Taliban would move to another one of the neighboring countries. It could be Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or most likely, Uzbekistan, which is now, as the noted journalist Ahmed Rashid pointed out in his aptly titled book Descent Into Chaos, producing militants at an alarming rate.

It would perhaps behoove Senator Obama to look at some of the ways the current Afghan insurgency uses the Afghan geography to its advantage:

- Recently US and UK forces captured one stash of Taliban heroin worth nearly two billion dollars going out from an Iranian port.

- Before that, an investigation by the Independent UK discovered that the Taliban are going to the northern border to purchase weapons directly from the Russians.

- Simultaneously an investigation by the NYTimes revealed that the Taliban have taken control of the marble mines in Pakistan's tribal areas.

All this doesn't even include any mention of the vast number of foreign fighters that come to Afghanistan from across the world, using the countless entry points into the country.

Historically, issues of geography have perhaps been at forefront of any military planning with respect to Afghanistan, but with Senator Obama, they barely register.

For someone who previously disparaged the Iraq war as a "dumb war" and a "rash war" his suggestions about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan is a mistake. It is the sort of thing that led Napolean Bonaparte to destroy France.

But perhaps the only thing worse than Senator Obama's ideas are those of Senator McCain. No doubt dueling with his opponent, he recently announced that under his plan the US will commit even more troops to Afghanistan than it would under Senator Obama's plan. Such breathless scheming taking place by the leading presidential contenders will lead to disaster.

Getting bogged down in Afghanistan would be infinitely worse for the national interest than any Iraq.

Edward Schwarzschild, the investigative journalist who brought to light a tranche ofMcCain Wolfe 'O8?: Just picture the white suit against a green backdrop correspondence between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his American penpals (some of it allegedly posted to the Ahmadine-blog), has uncovered a secret strategy memo in the John McCain campaign. Apparently, the McCainiacs have internal polling showing that a Barack Obama-Philip Roth ticket could be electoral dynamite. But McCain might be able to parry that dynamic duo by putting a novelist on their ticket:

TOM CLANCY

Strengths: Gets all the conservatives and Jack Ryan fans running back into our arms. Wrote the book, several times, on how to fight terrorists.

Weaknesses: According to Time, prefers keeping his "virtue intact" to working toward a political career. More importantly, can he love another president as much as he loved Reagan? Dedicated books to him and said, "Ronald Reagan will always be 'my' president. He was instrumental in making me a bestseller." What quid pro quo would he expect from us? Also, Bill Maher created a McCain/Clancy image confusion problem when he said, "Some people look at McCain and see a tough guy who's going to protect us from the Islamofascists. I look at him and see a walking Tom Clancy action figure who's going to get us all killed." Sell it as a good cop/bad cop negotiating strength? Maybe better in poet laureate role?

Level of interest: He called our office first. Said he had a video game that could help us.

ERICA JONG

Strengths: Carrying substantial anger against Obama. Recently wrote this witchy threat: "Okay sweetie, we'll step aside. Watch your own cauldron bubble. You're in a heap of trouble—and you don't even know it." Women wouldn't fear flying our way! Ditto HRC supporters. Ditto perhaps the Clintons themselves. Big help in New York. Perfect debate matchup with Roth. Isadora Wing could take down Nathan Zuckerman anytime. And Roth has never been mentioned in a Bob Dylan song (see: "Highlands").

Weaknesses: What would Cindy say? And press might have field day with political commentary like this: "We need beavers and we need stallions. Beavers get the work done. Stallions inspire us." She also claims that the "job of the writer is to seduce... demons." Appeasement?

Level of interest: Waiting to see if HRC runs as an independent.

TONI MORRISON

Strengths: Unlike Roth, has actually won a Nobel Prize. Friend of Oprah. A maverick woman for a maverick man: "I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access." Brings gender and racial balance to the ticket, but also a published expert on Whiteness (see: Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination). Her belief that Bill Clinton was the first black president helps us. Beloved in Ohio!

Weaknesses: Even older than we are. Also has endorsed Obama early and often. Called him "the man for this time." But that was back in January.

Level of interest: Zero, but never surrender.

LYNNE CHENEY

Strengths: Brings at least as many conservatives as Clancy, and strong female support. Background as Mormon, Presbyterian and Methodist. Already answered the Red Phone at 3 a.m. on several occasions.

Weaknesses: Not yet well-known as a writer of literary fiction, despite her novels Executive Privilege and Sisters. But signs of change there. Elaine Showalter, Avalon Foundation professor emerita at Princeton, calls Cheney's novels "skillful and fascinating." Admittedly, some trouble lurks in lines like this, from Sisters: "The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage—no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were." Problematic, but if we put it out there ourselves, might make our GOP tent look warmer and bigger.

Level of interest: Was on the shortlist in 2000 and very unhappy about not being chosen. Could with good reason believe it's her turn this time. I think she remains interested. Just to be sure, I'll ask her tonight during our ride over to the in-laws for dinner.

On a serious note, Jim Webb, who really is a celebrated novelist, is the favorite to be Obama's running mate according to the punters at Intrade (the second favorite is Hillary Clinton, who won't be the nominee).

How could Team McCain counter that? David Frum argues for Rudy Giuliani, which would set up, for the first time in American history, a contest between a ticket composed entirely of compelling memoirists and a ticket composed entirely of people who had (rather forgettable) memoirs ghostwritten for them. That's just bad politics. I suggest McCain draft Tom Wolfe, who poses the triple threat to the Dems of being a more prominent writer than either of them, makes McCain look younger, and can make inroads among the latte-sippers to offset the God and guns voters Webb can tip back over to his side.

Torture fetishist Michael Goldfarb recently transferred duties from shilling for John McCain on the Weekly Standard website to shilling for John McCain on the John McCain website. Part of Goldfarb's new job is trying to win over Hillary Clinton supporters who have misgivings about voting for an inadequate black male. Hence he serves up this sort of treacle:

Senator Clinton has really grown on us over here in Crystal City over the past few months. She ran an impressive campaign, and proved herself to be an impressive candidate and as John McCain has said, inspired a generation of women...[I]t's clear that John McCain and Hillary Clinton respect each other -- and there is a genuine affection for her here at McCain HQ.

Moving, no? Of course, for most of the period in which Senator Clinton is alleged to have grown on McCain staffers, Michael Goldfarb was a safe distance from Crystal City writing, of Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a monster, "tell us something that we don't know." Still, he at least has been consistent in preferring Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama:

I'm surprised that anyone can be surprised by the Clinton's [sic] lies anymore. Frankly, I find them rather comforting in comparison to Obama's new kind of politics, which best I can tell seems to be the same old politics in a new self-righteous package. All politicians lie, and the Clintons more than most.

All together now: That's not change we can believe in!

(h/t: Frank Rich)

Early yesterday, Jonathan Martin filed a report on the McCain campaign's growingJohn And Cindy in 2000: When the press was still their base frustration with what they feel are double standards in the way the media are covering John McCain versus the way they're covering Barack Obama. Is there a precise antonym of 'serendipity'? Because something tells me there won't be too many more Sedona cookouts for the "base" if articles like this Mail on Sunday piece --- complete with Shymalanian Ross Perot cameo! --- migrate across the pond and proliferate :

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering...

'My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does' [Carol McCain said].

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to 'play the field'. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.

McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.

It gets more unflattering from there. For the record, I'm not endorsing this; dumpster-diving is a poor substitute for journalism. The point, though, is that angrily lashing out at the press, as the Martin piece suggests is the McCain camp's strategy, is just going to lead to a negative feedback cycle in which only McCain stands to lose. You'd think their savvy new communications expert, Michael Goldfarb, would know that. If the McCainiacs don't want to face a spiral of hostility, leading questions, and sensationalism from the media, the solution is fairly straightforward: They can work with the Obama campaign to apply bipartisan pressure to keep coverage clean and focused on issues (good on both sides for shutting ABC out of future debates, by the way; the way to deter future McCarthyite spectacles like the Philadelphia debate is to punish the parties responsible).

Alternatively, they can try to overcome deplorable, barely-sourced snooping into McCain's private life, by paying Michael Goldfarb $X more than he's worth (where X = his total salary) to win over hardline militarists who supported Hillary Clinton by regaling them with tales of McCain's fondness for ABBA. Whatever works.

John Schwenkler replies to my post yesterday and he's got a good point: Bill Kristol's weaseliness doesn't bear on the truth of his claim that John McCain and Barack Obama have no significant foreign policy disputes except for Iraq --- though taking Iraq as a discountable exception is a strong token of Kristol's weaseliness. John provides a number of reasons to think Kristol might be right. Some of them don't strike me as all that revealing. Obama's campaigning for Joe Lieberman in the '06 Connecticut Democratic primary was almost certainly party, senate, and incumbency hackery rather than an endorsement of Lieberman's views; Obama did, after all, endorse Ned Lamont in the general election, and who among us can't cheer Obama literally putting Lieberman in a corner and giving him a time-out as the greatest thing to happen on Capitol Hill since the Gingrich-Clinton government shutdown?

But John's general point is well-taken. Obama has indeed been shading one way, thenZoroaster: The original neocon prophet the other, sending disparate signals to disparate constituencies, with national security and foreign policy issues as much as with everything else. So somebody is bound to be disappointed by an Obama administration and it could well be me.

Still, there are reasons for anti-warriors to have the audacity of hope. If you look at Obama's rhetorically bellicose speech to AIPAC, for example, you get a clear sense of his overall political goals: first and foremost, given the venue, placating Jews who fear he might be insufficiently pro-Israeli. As Bernard Avishai notes here at Jewcy, coming out for an "undivided Jerusalem" sounds like Israeli maximalism to an American ear, but in Israel is code for the moderate peacenik position of the Labor party, whereas Likudniks speak of "united Jerusalem" (that's pretty sly if deliberate, though it doesn't get around the downside of pissing off Arabs). And his immediate climb-down with its clarification of 'undivided' should allay worries that he thinks the American government has any right or duty to intervene against the Israelis and Palestinians coming to peace on whatever terms they agree upon. But more broadly, he was trying to invert the Republicans' Bitch-Slap Theory of Electoral Politics (to use the technical term); specifically, his attack on McCain and the Republicans' obstinate refusal to engage adversarial powers diplomatically was a proxy for attacking their manhood as well as their intelligence --- overly cerebral Democrats tend to do the latter and allow the former to be done to them, which is why they keep losing. That's the point, also, of comparing the scale of the Iranian threat to the Soviet Union; the implicit message is, "what are you bed-wetters afraid of?" (it's easier to get behind this sort of thing when it has truth on its side).

There's one other reason I don't share Daniel Larison and Brendan O'Neill's pessimism about Obama's foreign policy views, namely that I don't uniformly share Daniel, Brendan, and (I suspect) John's foreign policy views. Which highlights the significance of John's last example of Obama disappointing anti-warriors, albeit not for the reason (I think) John cited it. Robert Kagan claims Obama as an ideological comrade in this op-ed. And Kagan, unlike Kristol, is an honest man; but let us not forget that Kagan claims everyone in American history who doesn't see eye-to-eye with Pat Buchanan as an ideological comrade. While Kagan identifies Obama as a kindred spirit in the Washington Post, Eric Trager of Commentary pens this woeful op-ed in the New York Post rubbishing Obama as an "isolationist" (Trager's "beg the question" error is only the fourth or fifth most embarrassing, which tells you something). To be sure, the term 'isolationism', as used in contemporary neoconservative journalism, is strictly and literally meaningless, but we have a clear enough sense of what meaning the neocons who employ it are gesturing at, i.e., finding an all-purpose epithet with which to pronounce anathema anyone who dissents from their foreign policy views, however diverse those dissents. Which is exactly what's going on with Kagan, only mean-spirited where Kagan is empathetic.

The bottom line is that the Zoroastrianism that marks all the other particulars of neoconservative thought (at least, the thoughts of actually existing neoconservatives) also marks their assessments of who is and isn't playing for their team. If you're not a neocon, you're an isolationist, and vice versa. There is no greyscale, no nuance, no universe of ideas at all more plentiful than two equal and opposite spheres in a void, just unsolicited, smothering camaraderie, or else execration. That's what animated George Bush's counterproductive "with us or against us" nonsense; and because these people take it as a point of intellectual sophistication as well as pride never to learn anything from their mistakes (or at all), it animates John McCain's platform of giving everyone on earth a choice of a black hat or a white hat, fatally undermining any international institution that won't submit to blunt force, throwing Russia and China out of the G-8, and inaugurating a new cold war.

Such reductive, binary dogmatism pervades neoconservative thinking at every level. Here's Eli Lake, "one of the reasonable ones," ditching 'Islamofascism' in favor of 'Islamic supremacism', because there simply has to be some singular common concept binding all politically-engaged Muslim fundamentalists, regardless of insuperable doctrinal and ethnic discrepancies and antipathies. What would neoconservatives who aren't as reasonable as Eli --- the ones who go apoplectic over what they think is taught in a madrassa (Perso-Arabic: 'school') --- make of the fact that Iraqi schoolchildren of the early 80s, i.e. the young Iraqi adults of today, were taught that Persians are "animals...created in the shape of humans," whom, like Jews and flies, God should not have created? To those of us outside the cocoon with a broad view of the historical and strategic picture, claims of an axis running through al Qaeda from Pyongyang to Tehran and thither to Baghdad look patently absurd, and attempts to prove its existence at this late stage laughable. But if you're as certain of The Connection as you are that you have two hands, any instance, real or imagined, of diverse actors with diverse views cooperating tactically on any scale no matter how small, no matter how briefly, no matter how many degrees separate them, no matter whether they resume fighting immediately thereafter, is bound to strike you as impressive confirmation of the pre-theoretical beliefs you can scarcely bring yourself to doubt.

The point, to make a long story short, is that what we're dealing with is not so much an ideology as an epistemic pathology whose varieties are a range of more and less virulent strains. And though there are reasons to doubt the depth and sincerity of Barack Obama's commitment not to instigate any new wars of imperialism --- including the political pressures he'll experience regardless of his sincerity; though if the career-minded pragmatic calculus doesn't favor anti-warriors now, it never will --- what Kristol and Kagan have to say isn't one of those reasons. The fact that a neoconservative asserts that anyone agrees or disagrees with his views should affect your credence exactly as much as the fact that a neoconservative asserts anything at all.

As I've noted before, taking Bill Kristol at face value, rather than with a view to theBill Kristol: Would that grin lie? agenda he's trying to advance, is perilous. So Kristol's remarks at AIPAC arguing that "[t]here are actually no [significant foreign policy] disputes...with the exception of Iraq" between Barack Obama and John McCain --- a scant month and a half after Kristol accused Obama of being a crypto-Communist, and the very same day that he accused Obama of being insufficiently patriotic --- are baffling on several levels. Fortunately, John Schwenkler very nearly found the decoder ring:

[C]ould it be - could it be? - that, sly, unscrupulous, and politically sensitive weasel that he is, Mr. Kristol is aware that, on pretty much every foreign policy issue at stake in this election (including, of course, those issues with respect to which the candidates' disagreements are obviously inescapable), the voting populace is largely in sympathy with (what are at least perceived to be) the views of Senator Obama? Could it be that Ezra Klein's greatest dream - that the media will actually report on the differences between the presidential candidates - is Bill Kristol's worst nightmare, and that for this reason he is taking steps to prevent this from happening?

That's almost exactly right up until the last point. Yes, it's true that throwing up a wall of bullshit to deflect attention from your candidate's deeply unpopular views is a potentially effective means of helping him creep to victory on the strength of contentless non-issues --- like, say, whether his opponent is an insufficiently patriotic crypto-Communist. But to conclude that's all Kristol is up to doesn't give him nearly enough credit for a long-term vision, at least when it comes to tactical moves in the Republican party's internal turf wars. Campaigning on xenophobia, guilt by association, and red-baiting has desperate and unintentionally self-parodic qualities this year that it didn't have as recently as 2004. The likelihood is that John McCain will lose; if and when he loses, the multilateral truce among neos, paleos, reformists, and GOP hacks --- which is about as fragile as the truce in Basra to begin with --- is going to shatter before Obama's victory speech ends.

The neocons are in a decidedly weak position. Fairly or not, it's their foreign policy more than anything else that has made the name of the GOP radioactive --- and even worse for Republican partisans, has destroyed the party's nearly 40-year-old, frequently decisive advantage on national security. And though the Republicans somehow stumbled into nominating their only candidate with a prayer of victory, they exposed the neocons to even more risk by choosing, in John McCain, the most prominent exponent of their philosophy in American politics. Honest neocons like Lawrence Kaplan readily concede that neoconservatism's future rests on McCain's shoulders. Kristol, on the other hand, is trying to reframe the debate to obscure its ramifications for his ideology in case McCain loses.

How bad was John McCain's speech in New Orleans Tuesday night? Here are some reviews:

(1) [T]his speech is a mash and tough to digest. You have to get through the self-congratulatory praise of independence and commander-in-chief pose....

(2) McCain’s speeches don’t have to sound this bad, and don’t always sound this bad.

(3) McCain's speech was creaky, ungracious, and unnecessary.

(4) [H]is refrain punctuated with a forced smile just isn't working.

(5) McCain's delivery deadens [the speech] somehow.

(6) As a performance, it's a little painful.

(7) Question: Would you rather: a) watch last night's McCain speech? Or b) be waterboarded?

The New McCain Aesthetic: Seasickness Okay, but those are all lefty partisans, right? Actually, it's all from National Review. Rolling Stone's take is pitch-perfect: "It's like watching the out-takes from an Andy Rooney kvetch."

McCain's stilted delivery, unfortunately nasal timbre, and creepy grin are problems beyond his campaign's control, but other problems are entirely unforced. His handlers seem unwilling to restrain their candidates' obvious loathing of his opponent and unable to distinguish between a clear, incisive point and incessant, petty sneering -- the kind that's incomprehensible to anybody who doesn't closely follow political inside baseball. Both these campaign flaws make McCain deeply and viscerally unappealing. (The toxic influence of Michael Goldfarb already taking hold?)

And their choice of visual presentation is simply inexplicable. Matthew Yglesias notes "he's shifted his aesthetic from his old black and white 'fascist' aesthetic [see here] to a new green and white Islamofascist aesthetic [see right]." Okay, that's unfair, but a campaign in 2008 that would deliberately choose anything other than a red, white, and (especially) blue color palette clearly has screws loose.

But the McCain campaign's worst decision of all was to try to have their guy deliver their awful speech awfully in front of a tiny audience, minutes before this happened:

The review of Obama's speech from National Review went like this: "Aesthetically, politically, rhetorically etc, it boiled down to Godzilla versus Bambi. And, amazingly enough, McCain was Bambi." And here's their criticism: "U2's 'Beautiful Day'... is playing at the Barack Obama rally. No Americans write music Obama likes?" In other words, it's not going to be a close election.

On Monday, John McCain addressed the AIPAC conference (video is here). McCain attacked early, often, and hyper-aggressively, attempting to portray Obama as a dangerously inexperienced, pacifistic simpleton ready to sign over control of the Middle East to Iran. One of McCain's isolated positive notes was a proposal for large-scale global divestment from Iran by both governments and private firms.

Obama At AIPAC This morning, Barack Obama took the podium at AIPAC and counterattacked. Substantively, he positioned himself squarely on the center-right of Israeli foreign policy views, reiterating an unwavering commitment to Israeli security and to the American-Israeli alliance, and pledged to work towards peace through a two-state solution in which the status of Israel as a Jewish state with an undivided Jerusalem as its capital is non-negotiable. He proposed a new $30 billion in annual aid to Israel that would not be tied to aid for any other country. Attacking the Bush administration from the right for pushing for elections in Palestine that Hamas was bound to win, he swore that in his administration, there would be no room for terrorists at the negotiating table. (See Michael Walzer here on the difference between negotiating with adversarial states and terrorist organizations; it's really not as complicated distinction as some people have decided to believe it is.)

He also attacked both Bush and John McCain from the right for pursuing a war policy that has vastly amplified Iranian power (and repeated the "wipe off the map" lie himself; I really don't get why Ahmadinejad-bashing can't be faithful to things Ahmadinejad has said). Attempting to drastically shift the terms and assumptions of the debate over Iran and his own positon, he argued that "[t]here's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran...The danger from Iran is grave and real and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."

In what's sure to be a preview of the general election debate, he framed diplomatic engagement as "tough" and as the policy of a strong, confident nation --- implicitly (and rightfully) calling McCain, Lieberman et al. chickens. And he called out McCain's bluster on Iran-divestment, noting that he had proposed just such a bill a year ago, which McCain voted against.

As with most Obama speeches, the oratorical presentation greatly outstripped the same language on the page. He went off-script at several points, particularly discussing the historic ties between the African-American and Jewish-American communities, the outsized role the latter played in the civil rights movement (and his own personal debt to Jewish civil rights activists), reaching a crescendo by recalling [from my notes] "Jewish-Americans like Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who were willing to fight and die alongside an African-American." At both the beginning and end of the speech, he received a sustained, loud, standing ovation. Several hours later, the Orthodox Union confirmed him as glatt.

While somewhere else, Joe Lieberman, speaking on behalf of the McCain camp, intoned lugubriously that "Senator Obama argued today that American foreign policy in recent years has essentially sort of strengthened Iran. At one point he almost seemed to suggest it helped elect Ahmedinejad and has made Israel less safe, and I disagree with that." Got it. Lieberman denies that the invasion of Iraq, deposition of Iran's most significant regional enemy, and establishment of a Shia-dominated government beholden to Iran "sort of" strengthened Iran. Not even "sort of"? It seems the McCain campaign is going to use the DSM-IV as a playbook.

A bit more than a week ago, Barack Obama stepped in to take Ted Kennedy's place as the Commencement speaker at Wesleyan. Liberal commentators like James Fallows, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein raved about the speech --- particularly the section where Obama called on the new graduates to enter national service:

[I]t’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.

Dear John McCain and Barack Obama: How about we don't all sacrifice ourselves to the greater good? It's stuff like this that constitutes the tiny (repeat: tiny) kernel of truth to what Jonah Goldberg says. The idea is that a life unmarked by the sacrifice of individual interests, desires, and aspirations to a collective good, is a life unfulfilled. Which is simply false: There are as many ways to lead a flourishing life as there are people living, and though some people may find their greatest possible satisfaction in collective pursuits, others won't and there is nothing wrong or lesser about that. Each of us is staggering around in the dark looking for meaning. The paths we go down are our own to decide; if we choose the wrong path, at least we chose for ourselves. As long as someone doesn't violate the rights of others in her pursuit of flourishing, she doesn't require the approval of the crowd to continue her pursuit in the manner she decides is best for her. And it's up to the government less than any other person or institution to confer approval or disapproval on any particular pursuit of flourishing.

Obama made a related argument that declining to subordinate one's life to a higher good amounts to a decision to "narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America's." This, too, is wrong on the facts. There is nothing a priori noble about joining the Peace Corps or a community service project rather than joining the private sector. Some people will make the former choice out of sheer altruism, others in order to lay the foundations for a political career; likewise, some people will go into business out of sheer greed, and others because they're doing what they love and makes them happy. Moreover, there is no essential conflict between living a private, for-profit life, and improving life in your community or nation. The private sector researcher who discovers a vaccine for HIV will become a very rich man or woman --- and will have done more to improve the quality of human life than almost anyone else in history. The great Norman Borlaug, perhaps the most undersung hero in our history, is estimated to have saved over one billion lives through his agricultural research. That's even more impressive --- and more valuable a contribution to human society --- than helping organize workers fired from Chicago steel mills.

At least for Obama, sacrificing one's individuality for the sake of collective good doesn't seem to mean much more in practice than giving up a few prime income-earning years to community service projects. John McCain agrees with Obama's general sentiment --- "[g]lory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself," he says --- but for him, the call to national greatness seems to entail leaving behind part or all of one's body on a foreign battlefield.

So whoever wins the election, come January, we can look forward to a president spouting collectivist, authoritarian claptrap. The choice is (a) a leader who rhetorically inflates stuff white people do in their gap years into world-historical, Hegelian acts of self-sacrifice, or (b) a leader who thinks the only worthy way to live is by dying in battle and going to Valhalla, and leaves little doubt he'll offer the young people of America the opportunity to do just that.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iranians call him "Ahmaghinejad" (meaning "son of an ass") One more thing about Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with John McCain: It was an object lesson in how completely John McCain's position on Iran depends on blatantly lying. First and foremost, there is McCain's fixation on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad holds no power and has no influence in formulating policy except at the discretion of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; and since Khamenei and the clerical leadership detests Ahmadinejad, he in fact holds no power and has no influence in shaping Iranian policy in any respect relevant to American policy. McCain had no excuse for not knowing that before Joe Klein confronted him with the facts two weeks ago, and he certainly has no excuse for repeating the lie after he has been publicly corrected. Yet there he went, presenting a case against diplomatic engagement with Iran that rests on the personal odiousness of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

What McCain has, in lieu of an excuse for continuing to lie about Ahmadinejad's importance, is a tactical rationale for doing so, namely that Ahmadinejad is a loon who says frightening things. (Indeed, he has said so many loony, frightening things that one would think McCain wouldn't have to resort to lying about what Ahmadinejad has said.) The evident goal is to scare people into voting for him by conning them into believing that Iran, like Nazi Germany and unlike any other foreign adversary of the United States in its 230 year history, is governed by an ideology immune to rational deterrence.

Note that even if that were true, what made Nazi Germany a threat that had to be defeated by war was the combination of its ideology and its possession of the most powerful war machine in human history up to that point. Hence McCain also lies endlessly about Iran's capacities, breezily mentioning to Goldberg that Iran, a nation without any nuclear weapons, existentially threatens Israel, a nation with a large nuclear arsenal. He lies about the scale of the Iranian threat relative to the Soviet Union, augments that lie by lying about his opponent's uncontroversially true observation that there is no reason for a national panic attack over Iran, and bolsters his case for a national panic attack by reference to his distinct lies about Ahmadinejad and his (non-)role in formulating Iranian policy. What's so pitiful about this mendacity is that Iran really does pose a major national security and foreign policy challenge --- not every threat has to be existential to count as a threat! --- which McCain's fabulism obscures.

Just as it obscures the tremendous opportunity the next president may have in light of Khamenei and the clerics' decision to geld Ahmadinejad and elevate his rival, Ali Larijani, as well as the general affection of the Iranian people for the United States (but wariness about blowhards threatening war). If he doesn't understand Iranian politics and can't be bothered to educate himself, the least McCain could do, for the sake of his own credibility, is quit trying to frame the election as a contest between experience and naivete.

The Straight Talk Skullcap Jeffrey Goldberg's interview with John McCain, like his interview with Barack Obama, was centered on Israel and US-Israeli relations. Both candidates would reverse the Bush administration's neglect of the Israel-Palestine conflict and take "a hands-on approach" to diplomacy in which they would be "the chief negotiator" (McCain's phrasing). Both made clear to the world that "if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional...our commitment...to Israel’s security is non-negotiable" (Obama's phrasing). Both of them oppose Israeli settlements, albeit sotto voce e pianissimo --- McCain conceded in passing that the settlements "keep Israel and the Palestinians from making peace" (Goldberg's phrase), while Obama merely observed that "[s]ettlements at this juncture are not helpful." Yet both reckoned aggressive Israeli defense policy as a justified response to extraordinary circumstances rare if not unique on earth. In other words, it would take a microscope to find any substantive differences between their positions on Israeli security and on Zionism in general.

Their differences of rhetoric, emphasis, and temperament, however, are abundant. Obama mentioned McCain exactly once to Goldberg, in order to state his agreement with McCain about Hamas. McCain, on the other hand, squandered a good chunk of his interview time peevishly reiterating canned, content-free attack lines. He's "amused by Senator Obama’s dramatic change," noted with interest Obama's "naivete and inexperience on national security issues" and also that he "is totally lacking in experience," and even indulged a preposterous misinterpretation of Obama's remarks to Goldberg before Goldberg cut him off. Etc., yawn.

McCain's positive case for himself, moreover, rested on some real logical whoppers. He assured us that "I don’t try to divine people’s motives" in a sentence immediately succeeding an unequivocal declaration that what motivates Iran is "hatred." He'll leave it to someone "who engages in this psycho stuff to talk about" the intent of foreign adversaries, at the same time that his anti-terror policy rests entirely on reckoning the intent of Islamic radicals as something uniquely pernicious in the world. In particular, the capacity of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran to execute their plans --- or lack thereof --- doesn't register as a factor on McCain's approach to the middle East. One would expect at least internal consistency in foreign and national security policy from someone whose candidacy begins and ends with the duration of his experience.

The final striking difference between McCain and Obama's Goldberg variations was the former's complete inability, and in its way, admirable unwillingness to try to win recognition as an honorary Chosen Person. (The depth and breadth of Obama's affinity for Jewish culture was stunning.) The closest McCain came to identifying with Jewish culture was touting his friendship with Joe "What's a little Hitler-loving between friends?" Lieberman and mentioning the Jewish authors he likes (Wiesel, Frankl, and Uris; emphatically not Philip Roth). McCain does have ample material to connect his own experiences to the historical experiences of the Jews, but they are so emotionally raw that it was both wise and tactful of McCain to decline the opportunity. Instead, the lesson he took from reading Frankl is that even in the Hanoi Hilton, things could still get vastly worse. Which is an awfully Jewish thought.

So what did the chatterers think? Michael Goldfarb is elated to see a "presidential candidate who publicly recognizes Philip Roth’s pretentious drivel for what it is." Meanwhile Foreign Policy and the Economist focus on McCain's aggressive hardline on Iran. Andrew Sullivan thinks the Jewy angle is more salient.

Two weeks ago, I spoke with Barack Obama about the Middle East, Zionism, and his favorite Jewish writers. Since my blog is both fair and balanced, I had a lengthy conversation with Senator John McCain earlier this week about many of the same subjects.

The two candidates, who are scheduled to address the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C. early next week, have well-developed thoughts on the Middle East, and their differences are stark. Obama sees the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as one of America’s central challenges in the Middle East; McCain names Islamic extremism as the most formidable challenge. Obama sees Jewish settlements as "not helpful" to peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians; McCain does not offer a critique of the settlements, instead identifying Hamas’ rocket attacks on the Israeli town of Sderot as the most pressing problem. And both men take very different positions on the issue of Philip Roth.

In our conversation, McCain took a vociferously hard line on Iran (and a similarly hard line on Senator Obama’s understanding of the challenge posed by Iran). He accused Iran of not only seeking the destruction of Israel, but of sponsoring terrorist groups – Hamas and Hezbollah – that are bent on the destruction of the United States. And he said that the defense of Israel is a central tenet of American foreign policy. When I asked him why he is so concerned about Iranian threats against Israel, he said – in a statement that will surely placate Jewish voters who are particularly concerned about existential threats facing Israel – “The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust.”

Here is an edited transcript of my talk with McCain:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is the Zionist cause just, and has it succeeded?

John McCain: I think so. I’m a student of history and anybody who is familiar with the history of the Jewish people and with the Zionist idea can’t help but admire those who established the Jewish homeland. I think it’s remarkable that Zionism has been in the middle of wars and great trials and it has held fast to the ideals of democracy and social justice and human rights. I think that the State of Israel remains under significant threat from terrorist organizations as well as the continued advocacy of the Iranians to wipe Israel off the map.

JG: Do you think the Palestinian cause is just?

JM: In respect to people like Mahmoud Abbas, who want to have a peaceful settlement with the government of Israel, to settle their differences in a peaceful and amicable fashion. If you are talking about Hamas or Hezbollah, which are dedicated to the extinction of the state of Israel, then no. It depends on who you’re talking about.

JG: Senator Obama told me that the Arab-Israeli dispute is a “constant sore” that infects our foreign policy. Do you think this is true, and do you think that the Arab-Israeli dispute is central to our challenges in the Middle East?
JM: Well, I certainly would not describe it the way Senator Obama did –

JG: He wasn’t referring to Israel as an “open sore,” he was referring to the conflict.

JM: I don’t think the conflict is a sore. I think it’s a national security challenge. I think it’s important to achieve peace in the Middle East on a broad variety of fronts and I think that if the Israeli-Palestinian issue were decided tomorrow, we would still face the enormous threat of radical Islamic extremism.

I think it’s very vital, don’t get me wrong. That’s why I’ve spent so much time there. The first time I visited Israel was thirty years ago, with Scoop Jackson and other senators, when I was in the Navy. I visited Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust memorial) with Joe Lieberman the last time I was in Israel. So my absolute commitment is to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But the dangers that we face in the Middle East are incredibly severe, in the form of radical Islamic extremists.

JG: Do you think that Israel is better off today than it was eight years ago?

JM: I think Israel, in many respects, is stronger economically, their political process shows progress – when there is corruption, they punish people who are corrupt. The economy is booming, they have a robust democracy, to say the least. Bin Laden has not limited his hatred and desire to destroy the United States to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, though Israel is one of the objects of his jihadist attitude. What you’re trying to do is get me to criticize the Bush Administration.

JG: No, I'm not, what I'm --

JM: Yeah, you are, but I’ll try to answer your question. Because of the rise of Islamic extremism, because of the failure of human rights and democracy in the Middle East, or whether there are a myriad of challenges we face in the Middle East, all of them severe, all of them pose a threat to the existence to the state of Israel, including and especially the Iranians, who have as a national policy the destruction of the state of Israel, something they’ve been dedicated to since before President Bush came to office.

JG: What do you think motivates Iran?

JM: Hatred. I don’t try to divine people’s motives. I look at their actions and what they say. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the state of their emotions. I do know what their nation’s stated purpose is, I do know they continue in the development of nuclear weapons, and I know that they continue to support terrorists who are bent on the destruction of the state of Israel. You’ll have to ask someone who engages in this psycho stuff to talk about their emotions.

JG: Senator Obama has calibrated his views on unconditional negotiations. Do you see any circumstance in which you could negotiate with Iran, or do you believe that it’s leadership is impervious to rational dialogue?

JM: I’m amused by Senator Obama’s dramatic change since he’s gone from a candidate in the primary to a candidate in the general election. I’ve seen him do that on a number of issues that show his naivete and inexperience on national security issues. I believe that the history of the successful conduct of national security policy is that, one, you don’t sit down face-to-face with people who are behave the way they do, who are state sponsors of terrorism.

Senator Obama likes to refer to President Kennedy going to Vienna. Most historians see that as a serious mistake, which encouraged Khrushchev to build the Berlin Wall and to send missiles to Cuba. Another example is Richard Nixon going to China. I’ve forgotten how many visits Henry Kissinger made to China, and how every single word was dictated beforehand. More importantly, he went to China because China was then a counterweight to a greater threat, the Soviet Union. What is a greater threat in the Middle East than Iran today?

Senator Obama is totally lacking in experience, so therefore he makes judgments such as saying he would sit down with someone like Ahmadinejad without comprehending the impact of such a meeting. I know that his naivete and lack of experience is on display when he talks about sitting down opposite Hugo Chavez or Raul Castro or Ahmadinejad.

JG: There’s no rationale for sitting down with Iran?

JM: Yes. I could see a situation hopefully in the future if the Iranians would change the policies that you and I have just talked about, but there would have to be negotiations and discussions and all kinds of things happening before you lend them the prestige of a face-to-face meeting with the President of the United States of America. As you know, our ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has met with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad on a couple of occasions. Those discussions, according to Ambassador Crocker, have been totally unproductive, because Iran is hell-bent on the destruction of Israel, they’re hell-bent on driving us out of Iraq, they’re hell-bent on supporting terrorist organizations, and as serious as anything to American families, they’re sending explosive devices into Iraq that are killing American soldiers.

JG: Tell me how engaged you would be as President in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and give me a couple of names of plausible Middle East envoys.

JM: I would have a hands-on approach. I would be the chief negotiator. I have been there for thirty years. I know the leaders, I know them extremely well. Ehud Barak and I have gone back thirty years. I knew Olmert when he was mayor of Jerusalem. I’ve met many times with Netanyahu. I’ve met with Mahmoud Abbas.

In terms of envoys, there are a large number of people who could be extremely effective, and I apologize for ducking the question, but it would have to be dictated by the state of relations at the time. For example, we know that there were behind-the-scenes conversations Israel was having with Syria. Now it’s broken into the public arena. So it would depend on the state of things. If they were more advanced in talks, which they are not, with Hamas, then you need someone like a mechanic. If it’s someone who needs to lay out a whole framework, it would have to be someone who commands the respect of both sides, someone who has an impact on world opinion.

JG: What is the difference between an American president negotiating with Ahmadinejad and Ehud Olmert negotiating with the Syrians?

JM: You don’t see him sitting down opposite Bashar, do you? (Bashar al-Assad is president of Syria.) I mean, that’s the point here. It was perfectly fine that Ryan Crocker spoke with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad. The point is you don’t give legitimacy by lending prestige of a face-to-face meeting, with no preconditions.

JG: But Obama has shifted off that position.

JM: Sure, and the next time he sees where he’s wrong, maybe he’ll shift again. The point is is that he doesn’t understand. Look, in the primary, he was unequivocal in his statements. And now he realizes that it’s not a smart thing to say. I didn’t say he wasn’t a smart politician.

JG: Do you think that settlements keep Israel and the Palestinians from making peace?

JM: There’s a list of issues that separate them, from water, to the right of return, to settlements. Look at the Oslo Accords, which basically laid out a roadmap for addressing these major issues. And settlements is one of them, but certainl