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 certainly one of the issues right now is the shelling of Sderot, which I visited. As you know, they’re shelling from across the border. If the United States was being rocketed across one of our borders, that would probably gain prominence as an issue.

JG: Do you believe that Israel will have to go into Gaza in force to deal with the rockets, and if Israel did, would you support it?

JM: It depends on what you mean by force. They’ve responded with air strikes, and identifying Hamas leaders and, you know, quote, responding. Would they respond with massive force? I don’t know. I know from my conversations with them that they are deeply concerned. They’re a democracy. How would an American government, how would American public opinion respond, if there were constant shelling, and kids had fifteen seconds – fifteen seconds – to get into a bomb shelter. I don’t know what the government of Israel is going to do. It somewhat depends on whether these attacks will discontinue or if other things happen. I did get the distinct impression, nothing specific, but I got the impression that the patience of the Israeli government and the people is growing short.

JG: Let’s go back to Iran. Some critics say that America conflates its problem with Iran with Israel’s problem with Iran. Iran is not threatening the extinction of America, it’s threatening the extinction of Israel. Why should America have a military option for dealing with Iran when the threat is mainly directed against Israel?

JM: The United States of America has committed itself to never allowing another Holocaust. That’s a commitment that the United States has made ever since we discovered the horrendous aspects of the Holocaust.

In addition to that, I would respond by saying that I think these terrorist organizations that they sponsor, Hamas and the others, are also bent, at least long-term, on the destruction of the United States of America. That’s why I agree with General Petraeus that Iraq is a central battleground. Because these Shiite militias are sending in these special groups, as they call them, sending weapons in, to remove United States influence and to drive us out of Iraq and thereby achieve their ultimate goals. We’ve heard the rhetoric -- the Great Satan, etc. It’s a nuance, their being committed to the destruction of the State of Israel, and their long-term intentions toward us.

JG: Do you think their intention is the actual destruction of America?

JM: It’s hard for me to say what their intentions are, but the effect – If they were able to drive us out of Iraq, and al Qaeda established a base there, and the Shiite militias erupted and the Iranian influence was expanded, which to my mind is what would happen, then the consequences for American national security would be profound. I don’t know if their intention is to destroy America and what we stand for, but I think the consequences of them succeeding in the destruction of the state of Israel and their continued support for terrorist organizations – all of these would have profound national security consequences.

JG: A question about democratization in the Middle East. Imagine a continuum, Brent Scowcroft on one end, Paul Wolfowitz on the other. Where do you fall on that continuum, five years after the invasion of Iraq?

JM: I think that we’ve got to always balance the realism of a situation with idealism. I’m committed to that fundamental belief that we’re all created equal and endowed with inalienable rights. But there are times when realism has to enter into the equation as well. If you look at Darfur, we don’t want this to go on, but how do we stop it? And what would the consequences of our initial intrusion be? After the initial success, what are the long-term consequences?

I enjoy hearing this debate. There’s no one I love more in the world than Brent Scowcroft. He’s one of the most selfless people I’ve ever seen, never a trace of personal ambition, which is the rarest thing in Washington. But I lean also toward the historic idealism of America. Which means that every situation that confronts us, we have to try to maintain that balance. Have I always been right? No. But I try to learn from the lessons of history.

JG: You bring up an interesting question about the Holocaust, to which you say never again. But do you have an absolute commitment to stop genocide wherever it occurs?

JM: That has to be the fundamental goal, but it has to be tempered by the idea that you have to actually be able to do it, that you can succeed. If you fail in one of these efforts, that encourages others, and increases feelings of isolationism and protectionism in America. It’s hard to convince Americans to send young Americans into harm’s way, as it should be.

JG: It sounds like you’re talking about Iraq.

JM: Well, we haven’t talked about the four years of mishandling this war, which has been devastating, in particular to the families.

JG: A final question: Senator Obama talked about how his life was influenced by Jewish writers, Philip Roth, Leon Uris. How about you?

JM: There’s Elie Wiesel, and Victor Frankl. I think about Frankl all the time. “Man’s Search for Meaning” is one of the most profound things I’ve ever read in my life. And maybe on a little lighter note, “War and Remembrance” and “Winds of War” are my two absolute favorite books. I can tell you that one of my life’s ambitions is to meet Herman Wouk. “War and Remembrance” for me, it’s the whole thing.

Then there’s Joe Lieberman, who lives a life of his religion, and who does it in the most humble way.

JG: Not a big Philip Roth fan?

JM: No, I’m not. Leon Uris I enjoyed. Victor Frankl, that’s important. I read it before my captivity. It made me feel a lot less sorry for myself, my friend. A fundamental difference between my experience and the Holocaust was that the Vietnamese didn’t want us to die. They viewed us as a very valuable asset at the bargaining table. It was the opposite in the Holocaust, because they wanted to exterminate you. Sometimes when I felt sorry for myself, which was very frequently, I thought, “This is nothing compared to what Victor Frankl experienced.”

[Cross-posted from The Atlantic]

Here are two Friday Afternoon Specials for Memorial Day Weekend. First, Hillary Clinton has news for the naysayers who think she should drop out of the race. What if Barack Obama is assassinated, ever think of that? "Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California," she reminded any members of the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader's editorial board who might have forgotten. (Video here.) Note the seamless blending of derangements: dynastic megalomania triggering fantasies about her opponent being snuffed.

Watch me free associate, Clinton-style: R.F.K. was slain by a militant Palestinian, which my esteemed rival for the nomination may or may not be, but Bill and I have friends in Boca who have questions that can only be answered by recognizing the Florida primary. Ready on day one. Ovaries of steel. Sis-boom-bah.

We'll be halfway through President Obama's goodwill hoops game with Ayatollah "No Mahdi, no foul" Khamenei before a glassy-eyed Hillary, her lipstick applied like Diane Ladd's in Wild at Heart, stands before her ten remaining supporters in a fortified compound in Michigan and simply mouthes the word, "nigger."

Second, John McCain's medical records were released today under a cloud of secrecy nearly thick enough to suggest there was something remotely eyebrow-raising about them. Mac is just fine, as it turns out. No signs of recurrence of his melanoma, and the worst of his problems are tantamount to yours and mine: "Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has kidney stones and takes medication to reduce his cholesterol but otherwise has a strong heart and is good shape, the doctors said." Fit as a fiddle, able to leap tall expectations in a single bound, and hungry for love and it's feedin' time.

Better still -- no, not really better still, but you know what I mean -- is the photograph The Drudge Report has been hosting of McCain (see inset), which shows him to be the scrappin'est sparkplug of a septuagenarian, who drinks not coffee but espresso and is very much that twanging advertisement for Viagra Bob Dole so hoped to be.

Can we be left in any doubt whatsoever that we have here, ladies and gentlemen, a man who sprinkles iron filings on his Corn Flakes, who shoots a falcon dead square in the eye at a hundred miles through a series of smoke rings he's exhaled from pure and legal Dominican cigars, who would ask only for a can of spinach and your humble support to make the world safe for democracy? Just keep your daughters at a safe distance; women who unwittingly step in the path of that wink have wound up pregnant.

For some reason, people are acting shocked about the news that John Hagee, the Three 'H's Of Zionism: Herzl, Hitler, and HageeTexas evangelical preacher who thinks buggery caused Hurricane Katrina, thinks Muslims are mindless, indiscriminate killers, thinks the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, thinks Harry Potter fans are Satanists, and thinks the suffering of the Jews over the centuries is divine punishment, also happens to believe that Hitler was God's proxy on earth in His plan to return the Jews to Israel. But that's hardly news at all.

Yet on TV and all through the blogosphere, people are going nuts over the revelation that Hagee sees the Final Solution as God's work. Here's an example of our crazy political culture: It's a sure bet that Joe Lieberman will describe you as a latter day Moses and an "Eesh Elo Kim" if you organize millions of "pro-Israel" Christians to agitate for a war with Iran (so that Israel can be utterly annihilated in accord with God's wishes and you and your flock can build a stairway to heaven with Jewish bodies). Mention Hitler, however, and you might find yourself suddenly anathema. But since Hagee did mention Hitler in conjunction with his otherwise perfectly kosher, and indeed, Mosaic fantasies about finishing the job Hitler started, McCain—who was endorsed by the controversial pastor—finds himself in a pretty awkward position.

Of course, nobody thinks McCain shares Hagee's theology, though McCain apparently believes that it's legitimate to target his opponents with equivalent innuendo. Still, McCain didn't just wake up one day to find himself endorsed by Hagee; he deliberately courted Hagee's endorsement as part of a general strategy of shoring up his support among Evangelicals. Which could simply be chalked up to a poor vetting procedure by his staff, except that McCain specifically "admires" Hagee's foreign policy vision. It would certainly behoove McCain to clearly explain the differences between the belligerent policy towards Iran, Russia, and China that he wants to pursue, and the belligerent policy Hagee favors, but that would entail embracing nuance, which McCain has already made clear is tantamount to appeasement.

Moreover, McCain's support among religious and social conservatives goes back no more than a few months and is extremely fragile, compared to their now-dormant mistrust and loathing of McCain which were built up over years. What can McCain say about the surrogate he recruited as an ambassador to the Christian right who turned out to have endorsed the Final Solution? That Hagee is "an agent of intolerance"?

My prediction: McCain will impress us all with a bold stroke of mavericking that nobody could have anticipated.

Yesterday, conservative LA radio host Kevin James appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews ostensibly to discuss George Bush and John McCain's decision to test whether repealing Godwin's Law is a winning issue.

James came on the air screaming --- literally --- that if George Bush wasn't, as Dana Perino assured us he was not, comparing the Democratic presidential nominee to Neville Chamberlain, "HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN" [that seems like the most faithful orthography -- ed]. After several minutes passed without James' wall of sound subsiding or giving any hint that it would soon, Matthews' bullshit meter went off.

So he asked James, "What did Chamberlain do wrong?" The result: A moment of television both entertaining and edifying. The fun starts at 4:10.

Before finally giving up and admitting he has no idea why it's unflattering to compare someone to Chamberlain, James let loose with several paroxysms that by all rights ought to have been co-scripted by George Orwell and Trey Parker:

"It all goes back to appeasement...It's the key term"; "His actions enabled, energized, legitimized ...It's the exact same thing" [presumably the subject is Chamberlain and the object Hitler, but that's far from clear -- ed.]; "'38, '39, what year do you want?...It's the exact same thing that happened"; "He's talking about appeasement!";

Best of all, in response to the specific question of what Chamberlain had done that James didn't like: "Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser."

That, of course, is the essence of Bush loyalism at this late stage (and what makes the clip so edifying): Parroting key phrases like an opera singer cantillating in a language she doesn't understand, and using language not as a medium of communication, but simply as a cudgel with which to beat political opposition.

Which highlights precisely what is so crazy not just about this latest display of classlessness from the president, but about the media-enabled codification of the idea that steadfastly holding to the principle of conducting diplomacy like a petulant kindergartner makes a politician "strong" on national security. Chris Matthews may have fun embarrassing a buffoon like James, but it's thanks to him and his colleagues that we consider someone like Joe Lieberman --- who has yet to encounter a foreign policy problem he wouldn't solve by getting other people killed, and has yet to encounter a domestic freedom he wouldn't consider restricting --- a moderate. Lieberman's reputation for moderation is diagnostic proof of a pathology in our political culture. The fact that a man can be comfortable going on national television to excoriate appeasement without having the slightest clue what 'appeasement' means is only a minor symptom.

But sane people who know words like 'appeasement' and what happened at Munich just don't sign off on this codicil of the Bush doctrine, or much of the rest of it for that matter.

Hence, back in the land of agitprop-free reality, there is virtually no one outside a faction within a faction of neoconservatives --- the clan that warned of Reagan selling us out to Gorbachev and presciently predicted a massive Soviet revival by the late 80s --- dumb or paranoid enough to confuse talking with appeasing. Not even John McCain, who as Jamie Rubin notes, favored negotiations with Hamas as recently as 2006. To be sure, Rubin has honesty issues of his own, but the Huffington Post found the video evidence to prove McCain was for negotiating with Hamas --- along with an admirably perspicuous explanation of what got Hamas elected (hint: it's not Palestinians' intractable hatred for Israel).

And why would McCain have taken that position? Because it's simply flipping nuts not to, that's why. Here we have a basic tool of diplomacy that comes with a negligible opportunity costs, a literally zero potential downside cost, and an enormous potential upside; and rather than use it, some people would rather impugn the fitness of others for leadership.

That's how you know they're full of shit. If their ancestors had faced such a decision and opted to throw a tantrum rather than use the low-cost, high-profit tool, they would have been culled by natural selection long before passing on their genetic material to our current crop of ostriches who think they're hawks.

The Republican party seems to think that the crucial swing voter in this election will be Apollo Braun. How else to explain their decision to abandon anything resembling a traditional political strategy --- including their recent instant classics of fearmongering --- in favor of a months-long extended violation of Godwin's Law at once hysterical in its desperation and overreach, and nearly impenetrably byzantine in its content. Apart from a certain minority of ignorant American Jews afraid of their own shadow, it's difficult to imagine any undecided voters who are on the right wavelength to pick up such rarefied dog-whistling.

George W. Bush has been in Israel this week to take part in 60th anniversaryGeorge Bush: "If my opponents are so smart, how come they're like Hitler? Riddle me that, Harvard." celebrations, and had a chance to address the Knesset earlier today. Rather than say anything remotely germane, he decided instead to denounce an unnamed American senator who reacted to the Nazi invasion of Poland by exclaiming, "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." The reference was to Sen. William Borah (R - ID), who left office in January 1940. Bush's press flack, Dana Perino, assured the press that any apparent comparison to another senator from a state starting with "I" is purely coincidental; but John McCain (and his pet soothsayer Joe Lieberman, natch) missed the memo about not unveiling veiled slanders. Hence he piled on:

If Senator Obama wants to sit down across the table from the leader of a country that calls Israel a stinking corpse, and comes to New York and says they're gonna, quote, "wipe Israel off the map," what is it that he wants to talk about? What is it that he wants to talk about with him?

Hmm. That is a real poser of a riddle, but let me take a crack at it. Obama would want to talk to Iranian leaders (not necessarily Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wields very little actual power) about negotiating Iran out of pursuing nuclear weapons, about nuclear non-proliferation generally, the stability of the Iraqi state, a resolution to the Kurdish national question, Lebanese sovereignty, shutting down anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite terrorist networks, opening up the Iranian economy to American goods and vice versa, trade and allocation of petroleum resources, relaxation of infringements of the rights of women and religious minorities, integrating Iran into western political institutions, setting up student exchange programs, and of course, Israeli security.

Part of the reason Obama would talk to Iran about all the foregoing is that George W. Bush --- unlike other American presidents since the fall of the Shah, who found uses for back-channels to Iran other than flipping them off --- has abdicated his responsibility. Bush's grounds for his foreign policy malfeasance is his belief that it's futile at best, Chamberlinian appeasement at worst, to talk to "terrorists and radicals" (note the elision of an important distinction) unless you can "persuade them they have been wrong all along." Which is a nice encapsulation of many of Bush and McCain's strategic blinders. It is possible to talk productively with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (or the actual leadership of Iran) --- for example, by negotiating a framework for Iraqi stability --- without convincing him that Israel is not, in fact, a stinking corpse. It's even possible to talk to Iran about curtailing their support of Hezbollah --- say, by offering something in return, perhaps something that could be revoked if the Iranians break the agreement --- without deciding one way or another whether Israel is a stinking corpse. Believe it or not, it's even possible to conduct diplomacy with Iran without giving away the Sudetenland.

Sure, it may sound nuts, or worse, like Chamberlain, to conceive of diplomacy as an exercise in anything other than demanding that other states bow to our will or else, but hey, since that approach hasn't worked out perfectly, maybe we should roll the dice.

Not if Mc