Ms. Hillary seems to me to have had the upper hand with Barack Obama in the debate on CNN this evening. Obama was more than a sideshow, but Ms. Hillary dominated the proceedings. Obama's repeated invocation of his work as a community organizer is thin gruel for the messianic campaign he is waging.

Clinton and Obama are nevertheless joined at the hip in the demagoguery and snake oil peddled by the McGovernized Democratic Party. Ms. Hillary revels in exploiting the stupidity of the Democratic base. Does anyone seriously think that "freezing interst rates for five years" (Clinton's proposal) will not have unintended consequences like other price controls?

Obama doesn't take issue with Ms. Hillary on any matter of principle. The journalists posing the questions share the assumptions of the Democratic candidates and the questions are therefore at the same low level as the candidates' answers.

Most dispiriting to me is the common ground John McCain would find with Clinton and Obama -- I can hear it now! -- on every issue except national security. Barring events which raise national security issues in the consciousness of the voters, either Clinton or Obama will crush McCain.

The final question asked the candidates whether they would share the ticket with the other. Before Obama announced his candidacy, I thought Clinton-Obama would be the Democratic ticket. Now it's hard for me to imagine why Obama would step down from the messianic station he occupies in the imagination of his Democratic followers in order to serve as vice president.

FOOTNOTE: In the course of the debate Ms. Hillary recycled the hardy Democratic perennial that George Bush sent the troops to war without body armor. Rich Lowry assigned my daughter the task of running down a variation of this story in 2004 when she was a summer intern for National Review. Her 2004 NRO column "Where's the yeast?" exposes the body armor story as a myth. It is sickening to hear Hillary Clinton recycling this old lie tonight while attempting to wriggle out of an uncomfortable question.

UPDATE: Lt. Col. John Kanaley writes:

In reference to your footnote to the Democratic debate post, if it helps your point at all, we received the body armor back in 2003 prior to deployment. Personally, I arrived in Baghdad a few months after the fall of the capital; however, even then the body armor was still part of the basic issue. Keep up the good work.

The compliment properly belongs to National Review, but the point stands.

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Mitt Romney unleashed the N-word on John McCain today, accusing him of using campaign tactics "reminiscent of the Nixon era." "I don't think I want to see our party go back to that kind of campaigning," Romney said. He was referring to McCain's misleading charge that Romney, like Congressional Democrats, had advocated a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.

I agree with Romney's complaint about McCain's attack, but I'm not sure the Nixon comparison is apt. My recollection of Nixon's career is that he was at least as often the target as the perpetrator of unfair attacks. For example, it's hard to think of a charge made in the midst of a Presidential campaign more misleading than John Kennedy's invocation of a fictitious "missile gap" with its attendant implication that Nixon was soft on Communism. I can understand why the Democrats like to demonize Nixon, but there isn't much to be gained by Republicans joining in the effort. Given that Romney is appealing to Republican primary voters, it would make more sense to call McCain's distortions "Clintonian."

UPDATE: Our friend Seth Leibsohn reminds me of something I'd forgotten: Romney's derogation of Nixon is especially inappropriate, given that his father served in Nixon's cabinet for four years.

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Top al Qaeda terrorist Abu Laith al-Libi was killed Monday night or early Tuesday in a missile strike by a Predator drone that demolished a "safe house" in North Waziristan, Pakistan. A number of other terrorists were also killed in the attack.

al-Libi may have ranked as high as third in the al Qaeda hierarchy, behind bin Laden and Zawahiri. A top operations chief, he planned the bombing at the U.S. base at Bagram in Afghanistan during a visit by Cheney in February 2007. Eric Rosenbach, executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, makes this interesting observation:

Rosenbach said militants who rise to No. 3 al-Qaida positions, like al-Libi, are often in charge of planning operations, exposing them to capture or death. Others he named included Mohammed Atef, who was killed, and Abu Faraj al-Libbi, who was captured.

"It has to be one of the most dangerous jobs on earth. They generally don't last longer than a year--mostly because the al-Qaida chief of operations has a large 'signature' resulting from planning operations," he said. "Our intelligence has done an excellent job in tracking them down."

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Jennifer Rubin reports that Ted Olson says he will endorse John McCain for president. With McCain now in the driver's seat for the nomination, it's not surprising that he's picking up major endorsements. Earlier today, I read that William Barr, the Attorney General during part of the Bush 41 administration, has endorsed McCain.

However, in Olson's case at least, the endorsement could have been expected quite apart from McCain's recent successes. Almost two years ago (I think), I attended a dinner at which McCain spoke. I can't remember whether Olson introduced him, but it was clear that he had great respect for McCain.

Olson ended up endorsing Rudy Giuliani, a friend dating back at least to the early days of the Reagan Justice Department. With Giuliani dropping out, it seems pretty natural that Olson would endorse McCain, who likely was his second choice all along.

but he almost certainly did differentiate between John Roberts and Samuel Alito, suggesting that the latter might be too conservative. He did so at a meeting with conservative lawyers in April 2007. Robert Novak writes:

I talked to two lawyers who were present whom I have known for years and who have never misled me. One is neutral in the presidential race, and the other recently endorsed Mitt Romney. Both said they were not Fund's source, and neither knew I was talking to the other. They gave me nearly identical accounts, as follows:

"Wouldn't it be great if you get a chance to name somebody like Roberts and Alito?" one lawyer commented. McCain replied, "Well, certainly Roberts." Jaws were described as dropping. My sources cannot remember exactly what McCain said next, but their recollection is that he described Alito as too conservative.

This, then, is the consistent recollection of a number of sources who were at the meeting.

It's no accident that while Giuliani, Thompson, and (to a lesser extent until recently) Romney built up impressive rosters of conservative lawyers who backed them, McCain came up largely empty.

UPDATE: This piece by Wendy Long helped me see a connection between the Alito flap and my prior post about how McCain makes decisions. How did McCain decide that Roberts was fine but Alito might be too conservative? I doubt that he read their opinions which, in any case, would not support that conclusion.

More likely, he picked up this view because it was "in the air" -- in the Senate, probably on the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc. But how did this view get into the air? Because, as Long points out, liberals cooked it up in order to bring Alito down. They had already tried to pin the "too conservative" label on Roberts but that failed mostly because Roberts did so well at his hearing. This put the burden on liberals to portray Alito as "worse" than Roberts. Not many Republicans bought this, but evidently McCain did.

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Why is it a problem that Mitt Romney didn't take a position on the surge in December 2006, when he was governor of Massachusetts? At that time, he hadn't been to Iraq and he had not been briefed on the subject. He also lacked access to classified information. Nor can Romney be blamed for not having become an expert on Iraq. Being governor of Massachusetts is, after all, a full time job.

I suppose Romney could have relied on some combination of prejudice and the views of others. But, while this may be sufficient for bloggers and pundits, it's not a sound basis for decisionmaking about whether to send 30,000 more troops into harm's way. Romney did not take a position until he had studied the situation, and I think that's to his credit.

John McCain rarely lets lack of information and expertise stand in his way. Iraq, of course, is a notable exception. McCain frequently visited Iraq and consulted with everyone he could. For this, and because he found the right answer, he deserves the great credit he claims.

But what about McCain's other positions? He opposes drilling in ANWR because, in his words, the area is "pristine" (which in this case means barren) and he "wouldn't drill in the Grand Canyon." Has any candidate ever presented a less serious analysis of an important policy question?

He opposes waterboarding in part because "torture doesn't work." Maybe the things the North Vietnamese did to him at the Hanoi Hilton didn't work, but we know from eye-witness accounts that waterboarding worked. When I asked McCain about this, he essentially accused the CIA of lying.

McCain's tendency to make snap judgments based on prejudice rather than information, and his hostility to information that doesn't conform to his prejudices, is perhaps the most frightening aspect of candidacy. It is also the most stark difference between McCain and Romney, outstripping any substantive disagreements in my view.

Neither the Romney's style -- "wallowing in the data" -- nor McCain's snap judgment style is ideal for a president. Great presidents rely at times on instinct and core beliefs, not just data. But a president who consistently relies on instinct and pooh-poohs data is likely to make major mistakes. Unless one thinks McCain is a genius (and I don't), we'd probably be better off with Romney's approach to making decisions.

UPDATE: My original post said that Romney had been briefed "little if at all" about Iraq at the time he declined to take a position. I hedged because I wasn't certain of the timing of the briefings Romney received from Fred Kagan. I changed the post after the Romney campaign informed me that Kagan briefed Romney in 2006 about the size of our military, but did not brief him about Iraq until January 2007. This is also what Romney said during the debate last night, I think.

Romney backed the surge on January 10, 2007, the day the adminstration announced it.

A FINAL THOUGHT: The ideal president probably would tend to rely more on instinct in areas of his or her expertise, and more on data and the views of others in areas of non-expertise. That's why I was glad to hear McCain say in November that he wasn't that strong in economics and as president would be particularly keen on obtaining expert guidance in this area.

Lately, McCain has backed away from that statement. I hope (and not just in this respect) that the real McCain is the fellow I met on the Straight Talk Express in November, not the guy who has been on display lately.

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John's reflections on politicians and businessmen would lead one to believe, not unreasonably, that Bill Clinton is the supreme politician of our time. No one excels at, or luxuriates in, the groin kick more than Clinton. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal recalled:

One of our favorite Bill Clinton anecdotes involves a confrontation he had with Bob Dole in the Oval Office after the 1996 election. Mr. Dole protested Mr. Clinton's attack ads claiming the Republican wanted to harm Medicare, but the President merely smiled that Bubba grin and said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

Yet, contrary to John's conclusions, Bill Clinton was not well suited to dealing with Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, to pick two foreign leaders who posed the most difficult challenges to the United States during his presidency. In dealing with Saddam and Osama, Clinton was the master of the empty gesture.

Let's return to John's first point about the necessity of mastering political skills to rise to the top of the American political system. Who among postwar American presidents has executed the low blow on his way to the top as John McCain has against Mitt Romney? Not Truman. Not Eisenhower or JFK -- the presidents whose military service gave them a prestige most like McCain's.

Johnson and Nixon present cases that conform more or less to John's description of political ambition and ruthlessness. With the 1964 daisy ad, LBJ struck the lowest blow in postwar American politics, but it was not struck by Johnson personally. Johnson himself barely acknowledged Goldwater's existence in the presidential campaign of 1964. Nixon's 1968 and 1972 campaigns also mostly performed their wiles through the services of third parties rather than through the candidate himself.

Given the circumstances of his ascent Ford is a special case. Carter, Reagan, and Bush all obviously displayed the ambition necessary to become president. In his winning 1976 primary campaign and in the national campaign against Ford, Carter struck no particulary low blows, though Carter's nastiness was visible, as it was in the 1980 campaign against Reagan. (Carter himself declared that he didn't "think [he] would ever take on the same frame of mind that Nixon or Johnson did -- lying, cheating, and distorting the truth.")

Reagan's 1980 campaign was mostly free of low blows. In his own way Carter tried to recycle the LBJ daisy ad, portraying Reagan as a man who could not be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. In the course of the campaign Reagan awkwardly responded to a heckler with a statement tying Carter to the Klan; Carter implied that Reagan was a racist. In retrospect, the campaign seems almost high-minded.

John's observation that success in politics at the highest level requires extreme ambition and ruthlessness is certainly correct. But does it require the kind of low blow that McCain has been administering to Romney? If so, the great politicians do a better job of it than McCain has.

Although McCain's military service provides some insulation against reaction to his low blows against Romney, it is not even clear to me that they have enhanced his candidacy in any way. On the contary, given his own record on the point in issue regarding support for the surge, I am struck by the lack of necessity for McCain's tactics, as well as by their revelation of the least attractive qualities of his otherwise sterling character.

McCain's low blows seem to me to betray his hatred of Romney more than his poltical skill. I doubt they are the mark of a great politician, and I doubt that he will hate his Democratic rival as much as he hates Romney.

JOHN adds: All interesting points. My claim would be more that Romney is an amateur, rather than that McCain is a particular master of the art. And I'm afraid Paul is right that when primary season is over, we will have seen the last of McCain's most aggressive side.

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I didn't see tonight's debate, and haven't read any account of it other than Paul's. (I deleted the 50 or 60 emails that came in to my Blackberry from the campaigns.) So I have nothing to say about tonight's event, but do have some broader comments on the general subject of politics and business.

I know many successful businessmen, and a number of successful politicians. In my experience, businessmen generally think that they are smarter and tougher than politicians. "Smarter" goes without saying, "tougher" means that they interpret politicians' equivocations and changes of position as weakness. I think the businessmen are wrong on both counts. Successful politicians, on the average, are both "smarter," i.e. abler, and tougher than successful businessmen.

In the business world, Mitt Romney is as successful as anyone can be. No one attains his level of achievement without enormous talents and an oversized ego. Yet, compared to John McCain, Romney is modest and self-effacing. As a businessman among politicians, he is a boy among men.

Politics attracts the most ambitious and ruthless of men. (That's the real reason why, at its upper levels, politics, much more than business, is dominated by men, not women.) In many countries, men with unnatural appetites go into politics because if they are successful, they will be able to have the people they don't like shot. Here in America, we don't shoot our political losers, and politics is not just a variety of organized crime. Still, many of the same sorts of people are attracted to it.

Businessmen, in my experience, are generally more idealistic than politicians. Businessmen really do make deals with a handshake. No one would dream of doing that with Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or the Clintons. Turning a businessman loose in the political world is basically a mismatch. That's the sense I get of McCain's reaction to having Romney as his last serious rival. He can't believe his good fortune; Romney is an amateur. McCain can poke him in the eye, knee him in the groin, and the rule-following businessman has no idea how to respond.

I don't view this as an argument in Romney's favor. As President, he wouldn't be dealing with honorable, law-abiding businesspeople. He would be going up against the Vladimir Putins, Osama bin Ladens and Harry Reids of the world. This is not a game for amateurs. I think we should recognize that professional politicians bring important experience and skills to the table, and that one of those skills is the ability to knee an opponent in the groin and get away with it. It's not pretty. But, compared to politics, business is beanbag, and politics is the game the Republican nominee will have to play.

PAUL adds: Self-control is an important quality in all leaders including political and business leaders. When presidents lack self-control their presidency often ends badly. Last night, John McCain showed very little self-control.

With any luck, few Americans tuned in to tonight's Republican debate. Those who did saw our likely nominee at his worst. McCain not only persisted in his dishonest claim that Mitt Romney supported a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq, he used one evasion after another to try to make it stick.

McCain’s first line of defense was that Romney had used the word timetable which was a “buzzword” for withdrawal. His evidence that “timetable” meant “withdrawal” was that Harry Reid, who favored withdrawal, used the word “timetable.” Guilt by association is, of course, the hallmark of a smear. McCain went one step further to allege guilt by word association. Never mind that, in the same answer upon which McCain bases his smear, Romney said he would veto any timetable for withdrawal. I bet Harry Reid never said that.

Next McCain pointed out that Romney declined as governor to take a position on the surge. But this in no way supports McCain’s claim that Romney supported withdrawal. No one disputes that McCain was way ahead of Romney (and nearly everyone else) on the question of how to succeed in Iraq. What’s now in dispute is McCain’s ability to tell the truth about this subject.

Romney noted that McCain never raised this issue against him in any debate, preferring instead to put it out there just before the people of Florida were getting ready to vote. McCain answered by saying he has questioned Romney’s experience many times. This response is too pathetic to require comment.

McCain completed his cycle of cheap evasion when he noted that Romney had engaged in negative advertising, not just against him but also against Mike Huckabee. But the issue is not negativity, it is accuracy and honesty. This where McCain suddenly and unexpectedly is struggling.

McCain’s desire to smear Romney so overwhelmed his judgment that he returned to this attack in response to a totally unrelated question about his ability to lead the economy. McCain answered the question by talking about his service in the U.S. military, during which he took another shot at Romney over his alleged proposal to withdraw from Iraq. This one had even my wife, who likes McCain and is skeptical about Romney, rolling her eyes.

More generally, if McCain thinks that invoking his military experience is going to persuade voters that he can be trusted on economic issues, he should reconsider. He’s starting to sound like Rudy Giuliani, who answered every hard question by talking about New York. McCain can probably skate past Super Tuesday with this sort of line – his persistent smirk certainly suggests he thinks he can – but it won’t work against Clinton or Obama. But then, McCain doesn’t hate them like he hates Romney, at least not yet.

McCain also took a ridiculously cheap shot at Romney when he talked about how some people at companies Romney helped turn around lost their jobs. This, along coupled with his shot at Romney for being concerned with "profit" as opposed to patriotism, makes me wonder whether even Phil Gramm can help McCain when it comes to economics -- capitalist economics, anyway.

The McCain campaign has been taking the position that, since their guy is the inevitable nominee, Romney’s attacks on the Senator can only help the Democratic nominee. Under our system, McCain cannot stop Romney from damaging him through political speech. He can, however refrain from damaging himself by revealing his darker instincts when he responds to Romney. Or maybe he can’t.

UPDATE: I don't put great stock in focus groups, but CNN's overwhelmingly agreed with me and my wife that McCain came across very badly in his exchanges with Romney about the surge.

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Rudy Giuliani appeared with John McCain today at the Reagan Library, where tonight's debate will take place, announced that he is dropping out of the race, and endorsed McCain. McCain's momentum appears unstoppable.

I was never as down on McCain, or his prospects, as many other conservatives, but as of last summer I certainly didn't expect I'd ever be writing that last sentence.

It's the last Republican debate before Super Tuesday, and Mitt Romney's last chance to slow John McCain's momentum. If you're watching the debate, there's no more fun way to do it than to participate in our group live blog. You can comment in real time and see what your fellow conservatives are making of the action. Or, if like me you won't be able to watch the debate--I'll be on an airplane--you can check in and see what others thought of it. The debate is at the Reagan Library in California and begins at 5:00 Pacific, 8:00 Eastern time.

Hugh Hewitt "does the math" for Super Tuesday and concludes that the Republican race is "far, far from over." Hugh shows that even if Romney doesn't do very well on Super Tuesday, McCain's likely delegate count at the end of that night will still fall well short of what he needs to capture the nomination.

The problem I see, though, is that unless Romney makes major strides in delegate collection he's doomed because Mike Huckabee would gleefully throw in with McCain in exchange for the vice presidency, and a majority of his delegates would likely follow. It would be unfortunate if Romney did just well enough to induce McCain to pick Huckabee (of whom McCain has often spoken kindly) for the number two spot.

That said, I hope that Romney perseveres. McCain should not be coronated based on winning three of the five races he competed in, and never with even 40 percent of the vote. The less than overwhelming wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida should be ratified on a large scale before McCain becomes the Republican standard bearer.

In all likelihood they will be. Absent some sort of McCain meltdown, Romney's one hope is that conservatives (including many Huckabee voters) recoil at the prospect of nominating McCain, now that he's on the doorstep. That hasn't happened yet, I think because McCain appeals to a decent fraction of the conservative base -- e.g. those who think character is most important, those (including many vets) who emphasize national security, and those concerned about electability. For his part, Romney simply turns off some in the base due to some combination of his wealth, his flip-flops, and perhaps his religion.

But none of this is cast in stone, so bring on Super Tuesday.

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John Edwards will drop out of the presidential race today. Chris Cillizza speculates that this will help Barack Obama because the anti-Clinton bloc will no longer have a second option.

I don't profess to have any deep understanding of Democratic politics (or, after this past month, Republican politics either), but one can make the oppositie case. Nearly all Edwards voters are white and I suspect his class-warfare theme may be attracting some lower income and union voters. Whites, low income voters, and union members have been part of Hillary Clinton's bloc.

If Edwards endorses Obama, that would probably have some impact. Cillizza reports that Edwards will not endorse either Clinton or Obama today and has no plans to weigh in for either candidate in the immediate future. But that certainly doesn't rule out an endorsement.

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When the twit moderating the World Economic Forum panel in Davos on Iran insulted America's fomer ambassador to the United Nations, America's current ambassador to the United Nations (Zalmay Khalilzad) should have said "so long." Instead he stuck around and participated in the proceedings, apparently in violation of administration policy. Will Secretary Rice see fit to put Khalilzad on double secret probation in any manner consistent with her badmouthing and subsequent "down the memory hole" treatment of Jay Lefkowitz?

McCain may not be gloating about his Florida victory (and least not personally and in public), but the Washington Post is. This front-page story by Jonathan Weisman and Paul Kane called "After Romney's Barrage, McCain Still Standing," is styled "Analysis," but would better be described as "Shilling."

The authors accuse Romney of launching "a negative onslaught" and, as early as the 12th line of the story, they turn the floor over to John Weaver, the "longtime political adviser to McCain" who was fired last summer by McCain for incompetence. Weaver adds, rather incoherently, the following:

You don't want to say it doesn't get you anywhere because a lot of campaigns are won on negativity, but if Romney wasn't born on third base, if he had to campaign and fundraise like everyone else, I'm sure he wouldn't be here anymore.

Let's try to sort through this "analysis." First, Romney did in Florida what campaigns are supposed to do -- he called attention to issues of legitimate concern, at least to conservatives. They included the fact that McCain consistently receives endorsement from liberal and leftist organs like the New York Times; the fact that, by his own admission, he's not strong in economics; and the fact that he joined with some of Senate's most liberal members to curb political speech (McCain-Feingold) and grant relief to illegal aliens (McCain-Kennedy). The McCain campaign and the liberal MSM would prefer it if McCain's deviations from conservatism were off-limits for discussion, but making them so would be a massive disservice to the conservative political cause.

Second, McCain dissembled his way through Florida. He smeared Romney a false claim about Romney's position about Iraq. He tried to walk away from his own past statements confessing lack of economic expertise. And he falsely asserted that the Gang of 14 deal he helped broker resulted in Bush nominees being hung out to dry only because the Republicans "ran out of time." In reality, the Gang of 14 knew that not all pending nominees would be confirmed and McCain was instrumental in seeing that at least one of them (Jim Haynes) wasn't.

The salient test for a campaign should not be "positive vs. negative," but "accurate vs. inaccurate." In my view, Romney's Florida campaign scores considerably higher on this scale than McCain's.

Third, Weaver's verbiage about Romney being "born on third base" is ridiculous. Romney isn't spending inherited money on his campaign, he's spending money he earned as perhaps the nation's top business consultant.

Weaver's views are irrelevant, even if the Post sees fit to print them on its front page. Hopefully, they don't reflect McCain's, but given his unwarranted contempt for Romney (which predates the current intensity of the campaign), I fear that they do.

A final point: no one should conclude from the MSM's current bias in favor of McCain that it will continue to carry his torch, or even treat him fairly, if he's nominated. McCain may be the MSM's favorite Republican, but he's still a Republican.

UPDATE: I know the official line is that Weaver "left" the McCain campaign but as the candidate would say "look, let's have some straight talk."

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This past Saturday United States Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad spoke on a panel with two Iranian officials at Davos (video below). Khalilzad's participation was apparently unauthorized. Today's New York Sun and the Los Angeles Times have interesting articles on the event. The moderator begins the panel with an insult to former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. Rice is apparently angry that Khalilzad participated in the panel without administration authorization. I am angry that Khalilzad participated after the insult to his predecessor in office. Disgusting.

UPDATE: We asked Ambassador Bolton to comment. He has kindly replied:

When I was at the UN, this would not have happened. Perhaps the State Department or the White House are sending a signal to Iran that our policy is weakening yet again. They should be asked to say one way or the other on the record.

Indeed they should, and they should also be asked about protocol regarding the insult to our former ambassador at a panel on foreign soil.

I've frequently noted the evolution of Bush administration foreign policy regarding North Korea, Iran and the Palestinian Authority into that of the Clinton administration. Previewing the president's State of the Union Address on Monday, ABC News made the comparison regarding the vaunted peace process:

Bush is optimistic about achieving some kind of agreement with the Israelis and Palestinians on a Palestinian state to live side-by-side with Israel, but the senior White House official said the president recognizes that the step would be affected by the waning political strength of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Former President Bill Clinton also attempted to broker a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Bush, who recently returned from a multi-country trip in the Middle East, believes history may be on his side.

In the words of an unnamed senior White House official (surely chief of staff Josh Bolten), the administration differentiates its diplomacy from that of the Clinton administration by reference to the substitution of Mahmoud Abbas for Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestinian Authority:

"The difference between now and the end of the Clinton administration is that [PLO leader Yasser] Arafat is gone. Arafat didn't deliver for Clinton, and now there are Palestinians who want a democratic Israel," said a senior White House official.

This is is an inelegant if ambiguously revealing formulation. Even the unnamed White House official does not assert that there are Palestinians who recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

The predicate for negotiations leading to the creation of a Palestinian state was to be the Palestinian Authority's dismantling of terorrist groups. As the Palestinian Authority never got around to dismantling terrorist groups, Condoleezza Rice deduced that diplomacy was "stuck in the sequentiality of the road map."

When President Bush announced the Annapolis conference in July, he provided that attendance was to to be limited to representatives of nations that support a two-state solution, reject violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and commit to all previous agreements between the parties. In the interest of securing the attendance of states that oppose Israel's existence, the administration abandoned the criteria it had enunciated for attendance.

The president of the Palestinian Authority has himself declined to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. If the administration had stood by the reasonable criteria President Bush had enunciated in July, Israel's putative peace partner wouldn't have been able to make it to the party. The administration even enlisted the attendance of an officially designated state sponsor of terror (Syria). The administration apparently did not want to get hung up on the "sequentiality" of its criteria for attending the peace conference. Now the administration is engaged in establishing the framework of a Palestinian state premised on the existence of "Palestinians who want a democratic Israel." Is anyone paying attention?

was good and, up to a point, gracious. McCain spoke warmly of Giuliani, whose collapse fueled this victory and whose endorsement would (will?) make McCain the strong front-runner. He also commended Huckabee, whose surprising strength has hurt Romney throughout. He made particular reference to the humor Huck has injected into the campaign.

As for Romney, McCain had nothing positive to say. He simply noted that Romney and his supporters ran a good, close race and that, speaking as someone who has been in their position, they shouldn't be discouraged. Of course, Romney's the one remaining barrier to McCain's nomination, so it would not be reasonable to expect anything glowing from McCain.

Since McCain has been in Romney's position, he should understand that losing is particularly galling when the winner has distorted your record, as McCain did in Florida. McCain's scarcely veiled contempt for Romney (something that McCain has not experienced) doesn't help either. I hope McCain will forbear from smearing his rival the rest of the way.

A victory by John McCain tonight of, say, 2 to 4 percent tonight would not, in itself, be anywhere near fatal for Mitt Romney. It would provide a small dose of evidence that, even though many rank-and-file Republicans don't like McCain, he may be a bit more popular than Mitt Romney among Republicans collectively, at least when he receives endorsements from a state's key politicians. But this would be his first victory in a state where only Republicans vote, and a narrow victory at that.

However, Rudy Giuliani's poor showing -- he's getting only about half the vote of McCain or Romney -- adds an important angle. Giuliani may well decide to pull out after tonight, and even if he doesn't he'll surely be a diminished force. This figures to help McCain, especially if Rudy endorses his friend.

In other words, McCain appears to have a small advantage on the existing playing field, and the playing field may be about to tilt his way.

UPDATE: Fox News now says McCain will win. His lead is up to 5 percentage points. Meanwhile, Giuliani has just given a speech in which he referred to his campaign in the past tense. Some sources speculate that he will endorse McCain as early as tomorrow.

Maybe this will look different to me tomorrow, but I think McCain is clearly in command now.

JOHN adds: I think McCain is very much in the driver's seat. He has engineered a remarkable comeback from last summer, when he was out of money, laying off staff, and counted out by just about everyone. With hindsight, the early skirmishing wasn't as important as we political junkies thought it was at the time. Most people just weren't paying attention, and when they started to choose up sides, they gravitated toward the early front-runner, John McCain. Of course, the success of the surge helped a little, too.

Paul wrote a long time ago about the "stature gap" between the Republican Presidential candidates and the Democrats. I think we're seeing that, in the eyes of most Americans, the real stature gap is between McCain and the rest of the field. Americans generally choose the person, not his policies. That's frustrating to many of us, but history suggests that it's usually wise. Those who remember Quemoy and Matsu know what I'm talking about. I'm still not sure what I hope will happen, but I'll be very surprised if McCain doesn't wrap up the nomination, for practical purposes, at least, a week from tonight.

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With about one third of the vote counted, the Florida primary is too close to call officially. However, McCain leads by about 20,000 votes and two percentage points. Perhaps more signifcantly, Michael Barone, having looked at the vote in two key counties, seems to think the tea leaves point in favor of McCain. In particular, Romney apparently failed to obtain the margin he probably needs in the Orlando area.

It may be, as I suggested Saturday night, that Gov. Crist's endorsement threw a dead-even race McCain's way. But that's just speculation at this point.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the winner by what looks like a 20 percentage point margin (50-30 at this point). She's winning on the strength of not just white women but also Hispanic and Jewish voters. These two groups make up about 20 percent of the Democratic vote in Florida. They have not been heard from much in prior primaries (except Hispanics in Nevada), but they're about to come into play in some crucial states.

To be sure, the Democratic candidates didn't campaign in Florida. But they are only going to be able to conduct limited campaigning in other states between now and next Tuesday.

UPDATE: Now it really looks like McCain's night. The Romney campaign told Fox News that a few weeks ago Romney was 10 points down and that, with the Crist and Martinez endorsements, McCain should be further ahead. That's loser talk.

JOHN adds: Whatever happens, McCain and Romney will duke it out a week from Tuesday. On the other hand, it looks as though Giuliani may drop out tonight. If that happens, we're down to McCain and Romney, with Huckabee as a niche player. Personally, I'm sorry to see the field winnowed down as much as it has been--assuming that Giuliani drops out--before Super Tuesday.

MORE: Fox News just called Florida for McCain.

In several posts last week, I presented information about Barack Obama that, in my view, should raise concerns for Jews, especially Jews who care about the security of Israel. Now, Obama has held a telephone conference with "the Jewish news media" in an attempt to address some of these concerns.

I'm not sure what constitutes the Jewish news media, but there is reason to believe that invitations to the call were tilted in favor of Obama-friendly journalists. For example, I understand that Jonathan Tobin, the conservative-leaning editor of the Jewish Exponent, was not informed of the call.

As to the call itself, Eric Trager provides this account:

He. . .declared his support for Israel “as a Jewish state”; expressed concern for continued rocket attacks from Gaza; stated that the Palestinian right of return could not be interpreted “in any literal way”; and opposed negotiations with Hamas so long as it denies Israel’s right to exist. He further denied that he had ever practiced Islam, and said that his church leader had made a “mistake of judgment” in honoring Louis Farrakhan. “My church has never issued anti-Semitic statements, nor have I heard my pastor utter anything anti-Semitic,” he said. “If I have, I would have left the church.”

That sounds good. However, as a correspondent who has heard a podcast of the call tells me, Obama's statement that he never "heard" his "pastor" express any anti-Semitism, "neatly elid[es] the whole issue of Wrights repeated anti-Israel comments over the years, Wright's trip to Libya, etc." Apparently, no one tried to pin Obama down on this, nor (I'm told) did anyone bring up the issue of Obama's anti-Israel advisers.

Moreover, as Trager points out (along with some on the left), Obama's recent pro-Israel positions almost surely amount to pandering of the most cyncial kind:

After all, Obama is on record as having called for an “even-handed approach” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2000, just as the Palestinians commenced the Second Intifada following Camp David. According to Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abunimah, Obama’s pro-Israel epiphany occurred shortly before his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign—an about-face for which Obama apologized to Abunimah. “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front,” Obama said at the time.

As Trager concludes, the mixture of Obama's advisers (at least two of whom -- Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samatha Power -- subscribe to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that that the U.S.-Israel relationship is the product of Jewish power politics, rather than strategic interest) and the candidate's own past statements "are hardly reassuring" when it comes to thinking about what an Obama presidency would mean for Israel.

UPDATE: Samatha Power has said this:

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the “national interest” as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America’s important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests–especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace–seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.

This view -- that we went into Iraq out of deference to Israel's interests, which "dictated" our view of the national interest -- channels Walt and Mearsheimer. As Martin Kramer has pointed out, they have claimed that "pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical."

This position cannot be defended. As Kramer has shown, Israel dissented from U.S. preoccupation with Iraq, fearing that Iran, its focus of concern, would benefit from the Iraq distraction. In the face of Kramer's evidence, Walt and Mearsheimer ended up retreating to the view that neo-conservatives within the Lobby, as opposed to Israel or the Lobby as a whole, played a "central" (but, it seems, not "critical") role in the invasion.

If anything, then, Walt and Mearsheimer seem like voices of moderation on this issue compared to the Obama-advising Samantha Power.

To comment on this post, go here.

This is the first election in which more than perhaps three people have had any curiosity at all about which candidate I support. Yet, to my great frustration, for the first time I've been unable to decide. The problem has been that the strengths and weaknesses of four candidates in a pretty good field seem to cancel each other out in an almost diabolical way.

After I attended a dinner event for Romney April 2006, I was ready to embrace his candidacy. But learning about his frequent changes in position gave me pause. Fred Thompson was a more consistent conservative, but his stumbling campaign reinforced doubts about his administrative ability, and his prospects for the general election did not seem bright.

No one could legitimately doubt Rudy Giuliani's administratively ability, and for a time he did well in head-to-head polls against Hillary Clinton. But, in addition to being a liberal on certain social issues, Rudy carries plenty of personal baggage making me wonder (as Scott put it) whether there would be anything left once the Clintons got done with him. Indeed, before long, Rudy was running well behind Hillary in the polls.

John McCain is a social conservative, and as close to invulnerable to the Clinton smear machine as one can be. He's the only Republican contender who still does well in head-to-head polls with Democrats. But he does well mostly because of his well-earned reputation as a maverick who is willing to reject key conservative positions with relish and fanfare.

Alone among the five top contenders, Mike Huckabee did not strike me presidential material, for reasons that I've often stated.

After tonight, the contest likely will be down to Romney vs. McCain. But, although the race has been simplified, for me the choice still isn't simple. Every time it looks like McCain will break away from the pack, I panic in anticipation of four years of watching him stick it to conservatives on a more than occasional basis. When things seem to be breaking Romney's way, I panic in anticipation of an electoral rout in November followed by four years of a Clinton or Obama presidency.

Today, Florida Republicans are asked to make this call, but my turn is coming soon.

To comment on this post, go here.

Last week Joe Cole, Chelsea's outstanding attacking midfielder, ended Everton's dream of participating in the Carling Cup final this year by scoring a brilliant goal just as the match seemed to turning in our favor. Nonetheless, Cole was sufficiently impressed by Everton's performance during the home-away semi-final to say:

I think you're looking at a top-four side here. They've got players like Arteta, Cahill, Johnson and Osman; top players. They're going to be pushing for a Champions League place. This is a top side.

I don't place great stock in these sorts of testimonials. The fact is, however, that for the moment at least, Everton is in the top four.

I link to this post from Mickey Kaus not because he cited what I wrote about John McCain's unfounded attack on Mitt Romney, or even because he wrote a clarification to make sure he got my meaning correct, but rather the post contains a great line about Lindsey Graham: "He's McCain with all the self-righteousness but none of the heroism."

The first half of President Bush's State of the Union swan song brought together a hodgepodge of disconnected themes and proposals. Devoted to domestic issues, the first half of the speech barely alluded to the war in which we are engaged. The discussion of taxes -- the proposal to make his tax cuts permanent, the vow of no new taxes, the request that those who support higher taxes send their checks and money orders to the IRS -- was the highlight of the first half.

But would an average citizen watching the first half of the speech even understand the subjects the president was addressing in such a telegraphic style? Earmarks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, No Child Left Behind, the Doha Round, clean energy technology (including advanced battery technology!), greenhouse gases, global climate change, increasing government funding for science, the prohibition of cloning, the confirmation of judges, charitable choice. As Churchill said of the dessert he asked to be removed, this pudding lacked a theme.

Indeed, the themeless first half of the speech belied the seriousness of the foreign policy issues addressed in the second half of the speech. Here President Bush took justifiable pride in the surge/counterinsurgency strategy that has produced incredible progress on the battlefield in the course of a year. In an act of magnanimity that his opponents will never reciprocate, he confined his derogation of the defeatists in the chamber with him to a single sentence: "When we met last year, many said containing the violence was impossible."

In year seven of the war against the United States, however, President Bush did not even name the enemy:

We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny.

But what does our enemy believe in? Surely something more was called for.

Beyond references to the Afghanistan and Iraq fronts, the second half of the speech was notable less for what it said than what it didn't say. Where the Bush administration has focused its diplomatic efforts, its diplomacy has traced a Clintonian arc. North Korea was not even mentioned. How go the efforts to hold North Korea to its commitment to declare its nuclear programs? Interested listeners will have to look elsewhere for an answer.

At least Iran was menioned. Indeed, a close listener could deduce that Iran's war against the United States continues in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet President Bush barely mustered a harsh word toward the powers-that-be in Iran:

We are also standing against the forces of extremism embodied by the regime in Tehran. Iran’s rulers oppress a good and talented people. And wherever freedom advances in the Middle East, it seems the Iranian regime is there to oppose it. Iran is funding and training militia groups in Iraq, supporting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and backing Hamas’ efforts to undermine peace in the Holy Land. Tehran is also developing ballistic missiles of increasing range and continues to develop its capability to enrich uranium, which could be used to create a nuclear weapon. Our message to the people of Iran is clear: We have no quarrel with you, we respect your traditions and your history, and we look forward to the day when you have your freedom. Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear: Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment, so negotiations can begin. And to rejoin the community of nations, come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions, stop your oppression at home, and cease your support for terror abroad. But above all, know this: America will confront those who threaten our troops, we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf.

To borrow the formulation of the first President Bush: "Message: I have thrown in the towel."

President Bush also promoted his efforts to create the framework for a Palestinian state by the end of the year:

We are also standing against the forces of extremism in the Holy Land, where we have new cause for hope. Palestinians have elected a president who recognizes that confronting terror is essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity and at peace with Israel. Israelis have leaders who recognize that a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state will be a source of lasting security. This month in Ramallah and Jerusalem, I assured leaders from both sides that America will do, and I will do, everything we can to help them achieve a peace agreement that defines a Palestinian state by the end of this year. The time has come for a Holy Land where a democratic Israel and a democratic Palestine live side-by-side in peace.

Has the Palestinan president ever "confronted" terror? If so, last night would have been a good time to reveal his efforts. Somehow President Bush omitted to mention that the Palestinian president was in the middle of the three-day mourning period he had declared to honor one of the most vile terrorist mass murderers in the history of the modern Middle East.

The president concluded his speech with an allusion to the Constitutional Convention and its handiwork. The president attributed America's greatness not to its government, but rather to the spirit and determination of the American people. "By trusting the people, our Founders wagered that a great and noble nation could be built on the liberty that resides in the hearts of all men and women." One can't help but reflect that if there is something distinctive in the spirit and determination of the American people, perhaps not all people can similarly be trusted with the rigors of free government. President Bush invokes a universal truth while paying tribute to the virtue of a particular people.

At the end of President Bush's first term, Charles Kesler reflected on Bush's problematic invocation of the human heart in support of free government. The constitutional system of limited government reflects both trust and distrust of the people. If the founders "trusted the people," why did they limit the power of the people to express their will through the government? It seems to me that even President Bush's peroration last night tends to show a speech divided against itself.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius gave the Democrats' lame response to President Bush's lame State of the Union address tonight. Michelle Malkin live blogged both the SOTU and the Democratic response. Michelle bitingly captured the governor's television persona:

Boy, is she stiff. Her neck muscles are really, really tense. She should get closer to the fire. She needs to be warmed up.

Governor Sebelius is in fact capable of animation. As we noted in "A Flippers postscript" back in January 2005, Dennis Loewen forwarded the photograph above of Governor Sebelius at the induction ceremony honoring the Fabulous Flippers into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

I missed President Bush's State of the Union speech tonight; we tuned in just in time to see Chuck Schumer standing and applauding. By then the speech was about over, but even the last five minutes were a useful reminder of the President's power, even in the last year of his administration.

We didn't live blog the speech tonight, but a number of our readers did, here. Their running commentary (including some by a handful of liberals) gives a pretty good sense of the evening.

I feel a bit guilty, by the way, because a number of referrals tonight came from Google searches on "live blog the state of the union." I trust that those Googlers figured out they had linked to another year's speech.

If you're looking for an alternative to SOTU commentary, check out Fred Barnes' cover story in this week's Weekly Standard: "How Bush Decided on the Surge." It's a riveting account of what was probably the most important decision of Bush's eight years. Here is the conclusion:

The 20-minute speech on January 10, 2007, was not Bush's most eloquent. And it wasn't greeted with applause. Democrats condemned the surge and Republicans were mostly silent. Polls showing strong public opposition to the war in Iraq were unaffected.

But the president, as best I could tell, wasn't looking for affirmation. He was focused solely on victory in Iraq. The surge may achieve that. And if it does, Bush's decision to spurn public opinion and the pressure of politics and intensify the war in Iraq will surely be regarded as the greatest of his presidency.

It's fascinating stuff; check it out.

John McCain held a blogger conference call today, mostly to respond to John Fund's claim in the Wall Street Journal that he might not appoint a judge like Sam Alito who "wore his conservatism on his sleeve." (Which, by the way, I don't think Alito did.) McCain said that he doesn't recall making the statement attributed to him by Fund, and doesn't know its source. McCain emphasized that he supported Alito enthusiastically, spoke in his favor on the Senate floor, and voted for his confirmation. He has said repeatedly that if elected President, he would nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of Roberts and Alito.

In response to a question, he said he could imagine a situation where a judge could "wear his politics too much on his sleeve," but said that for him, the key question is whether the nominee has a clear track record of strict construction.

Absent more information, I'm inclined to take McCain at his word, as he certainly supported Justice Alito's nomination and, like all or nearly all of the Republican candidates, has held up Roberts and Alito as model nominees.

For the rest of the call, the Senator was his usual charming self. He was asked about his battle with Mitt Romney; McCain noted the need to unify the party, but didn't back off any of his attacks on Romney. He portrayed Romney as the aggressor, having "spent millions," bought "robo-calls," and "thrown everything but the kitchen sink" at McCain. So McCain sees no alternative but to "respond." He ticked off a litany of negative statistics about Romney's performance as governor of Massachusetts and said that (unlike Mitt's) his charges are "accurate."

Frankly, I'm not sure where the animus between the McCain and Romney camps comes from. It's obvious that the ill will is real. In an interesting contrast, one of the participants on the call asked about McCain's falling out with Pat Buchanan, with whom he was formerly friendly but who is now criticizing him. McCain responded graciously, saying that he has always liked Buchanan, that Buchanan is one of the smartest political minds around, that they have had their differences over time, but the differences don't diminish his respect for Buchanan. Somehow, I don't think we'll ever hear McCain talking that way about Romney.

McCain also clarified his position on the Swift Boat Vets' 2004 ads. I've often seen McCain quoted as a critic of the Vets, but he was quick to say that he was only critical of the ad that questioned Kerry's combat record. McCain said he thought that was out of bounds. On the other hand, when the Vets went after Kerry's activities with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, his testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, his charges of atrocities and his antiwar activities generally, that was "legitimate" and "fair game."

On the topics that are close to his heart, national security and spending, McCain was impassioned as usual. He was gleeful over the President's impending crackdown on earmarks and predicted that the appropriators will react like "scalded apes."

The call was another reminder that John McCain at his best is very good indeed.

PAUL adds: McCain's portrayal of himself as the victim of attacks by Romney rings a bit hollow in light of his unfounded claim that Romney advocated setting a date for withdrawing from Iraq. As far as I've been able to determine, no one on today's call asked McCain to defend his statement on this matter. No wonder McCain likes blogger calls.

To comment on this post, go here.

Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute. Mark last reported for us on Code Pink's helping hand to Hugo Chavez. Today he writes:

The long term prospects of Chavez's "revolutionary" state in Venezuela are not good. A long report in the Spanish edition of today's Miami Herald lays it out. Since the same story does not appear in the English edition I thought I'd offer at least a summary of this important article.

Everyone knows that Chavez's "revolution"--his popularity with the poor of Venezuela and his influence in the region--is entirely mortgaged to the price of oil. But few realize that it is even more dependent on the efficiency (or lack of it) of his state oil company, which goes by the acronymn PDVSA.

Since Chavez took office in 1999 Venezuela's oil production has dropped by 28 percent and PDVSA's debt has risen significantly. Meanwhile, some major foreign oil producers have left the country and taken their cutting edge technology with them.

The Venezuelan government claims that between 2006 and 2012 it will reinvest $76 billion of its earnings to increase production, but analysts canvassed by the three reporters who wrote the story think that the figure comes closer to between $2 and $5 billion a year--a drastic short-fall. Moreover, many of PDVSA's activities are now unrelated to oil--it has hatched subsidiaries to distribute powdered milk, or to mill corn, or even to build boats. (Anyone who knows Venezuela can imagine the lush opportunities this offers for illicit enrichment by the agency officials or the military who work with them.) Meanwhile, as oil production falters, the state company has decided to take on more employees. When Chavez took office PDVSA had 48,000 workers. It now has nearly 75,000, and the president-dictator has announced plans to hire an additional 30,000 by the end of next year. (One cannot help recalling the case of the Argentine YPF, which was the only oil company in the world that lost money in the go-go 1970s!)

This kind of crony capitalism is pushing Venezuela to the edge. Under these circumstances it won't take much of a decline in oil prices to destabilize Chavez's regime. Contrary to what the bloated dictator says on his radio programs every Sunday, the "empire" (that's the US) doesn't need to do anything at all to get rid of him. Fortunately he's doing our work for us.

To comment on this post, go here.

John Fund reports on John McCain's opportunity to make peace with conservatives and wonders whether McCain will take advantage of it. Fund's column includes this tidbit:

Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because "he wore his conservatism on his sleeve."

No one will ever accuse McCain of that "offense."

UPDATE: McCain tells Byron York that he supported Alito without reservation, that he drew no distinction between Alito and Roberts, and that he's proud of judges who wear their conservatism on the sleave.

As to the conservative judges who were not confirmed following the Gang of 14 deal that McCain helped broker, McCain asserts: "The ones who were left aside, I continued to fight for. We just ran out of time and lost an election." But one of those "left aside" was Jim Haynes, and McCain didn't fight for him. In fact, he and his side-kick Lindsey Graham saw to it that Haynes couldn't get the 50 votes he needed for confirmation.

Moreover, Lindsey Graham said flat out during a press conference on the day the Gang of 14 deal was reached that some of Bush's pending nominees wouldn't be confirmed (I assume Haynes was one of those he had in mind, since Graham was on a mission to stop him). Thus, McCain and Graham entered into the Gang of 14 deal knowing that some nominees would be "left aside" and it is disingenous for McCain to assert that this occurred only because the Republicans "ran out of time and lost an election."

To comment on this post, go here.

Every indication is that Rudy Giuliani is sinking like a stone in Florida. Barring a miracle, he'll finish either a bit above or a bit below Mike Huckabee. Once Florida Republicans saw that Rudy was dropping in the polls, I think a lot of them jumped ship, thinking they'd rather make a choice between McCain and Romney than use their vote on a candidate who isn't going to win. Hence, I suspect, the continued downward slide.

If Florida is between McCain and Romney, then the nomination race is between McCain and Romney. It's too bad; I think Giuliani might have been our strongest candidate in the general election. He was expected to fight McCain to be the first choice of the party's moderate wing, and, given the problems McCain has had with the party's base, Rudy had every reason to think he could come out on top and be one of the last candidates standing, even if he skipped the early primaries.

That strategy was a huge gamble, and it doesn't appear to have paid off. One lesson, I think, is that Rudy's participation in the debates, in which he always performed well, wasn't enough to keep him in the public eye given his absence from the day-to-day headlines associated with the early primaries. It's too bad; at the same time, it's hard not to credit McCain for going out and wresting the finalist's slot through hard work in the early states.

Barring a surprise in Florida, Republican primary voters and caucus-goers on mega-Tuesday will face a stark but classic political choice: do they go with Romney, whose views across a broad range of issues are more palatable to conservatives and whose economic expertise may be badly needed, or with McCain, who seems pretty clearly more likely to prevent the Clintons from re-inhabiting the White House? It's not an easy choice. We'll have more to say about it in due course.

To comment on this post, go here.

Victor Davis Hanson nails five theses to the wall regarding Bill Clinton's stump speech for Ms. Hillary in South Carolina. He writes somewhat more bluntly than regular practitioners in the mainstream media. Here is thesis 5:

It would be cruel, but understandable to ask amid these long encomia on Hillary’s character, her talent, and her morality—prefaced by Bill’s commentary that he almost alone realized her singular gifts, why in the world, then, did he spend over thirty years trying to escape her in almost every way imaginable? Why if she walked on water, did he find company, carnality, conversation with Paula Jones or Gennifer Flowers, or feel the need to talk trash and more with Monica? In other words, he is asking the voter to take on a partnership, a political marriage if you will, that he, mutatis mutandis, never would or has. It reminds me of the last time I bought a Chevy S-10. The local Selma salesman went on at great length about its reliability, its power, and economy, its great price, and then I asked him whose small, like-sized Toyota Tacoma was parked nearby and was it for sale? No need to tell you to whom it belonged.

To comment on this post, go here.

President Bush gives his seventh and perhaps final State of the Union address tonight. The New York Times and the Washington Post provide unfriendly previews that note the challenging circumstances under which it is to be given. Fox News highlights the speech's expected themes.

Last night Fox ran Bret Baier's interview/special "Fighting to the finish." The special showed speechwriters Bill McGurn, Marc Thiessen and Chris Michel at work on the speech. The Washington Post also runs a sidebar on the speechwriters.

I'll be watching the speech with special attention to foreign policy issues. C-SPAN will live stream the speech and has invited me to comment by telephone in a brief segment with a lefty blogger after the speech around 10:45 p.m. (Eastern).

The death of terror master George Habash is worthy of note. Habash was the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist/terrorist group devoted to the destruction of Israel. After its founding in 1969, it helped pioneer the use of airplane hijackings as an instrument of terrorist propaganda. The PFLP joined the PLO and became its second largest faction after Fatah.

Habash's life and beliefs are difficult to sugarcoat in the usual style of the Western media. Even the BBC and AFP obituaries are somewhat less obfuscatory than might be expected. Arutz Sheva bluntly states:

His terror gang massacred dozens of Israeli adults, children and babies, assassinated Minister Ze'evi and plotted to kill Rabbi Ovadya Yosef.

Habash was an avid murderer who sought the destruction of Israel as long as his health permitted. The Los Angeles Times notes, for example:

In May 1972, the PFLP used Japanese Red Army guerrillas to conduct a machine-gun attack on the Tel Aviv airport's terminal building, resulting in the deaths of 27 civilians. Two years later, PFLP operatives threw hand grenades into a Tel Aviv theater, killing three and injuring 54.

And in June 1976, Habash's chief lieutenant, Wadia Haddad, directed the hijacking of a French A-300 Airbus to Entebbe, Uganda, with the aid of a transnational terrorist force. Four civilians were killed in a dramatic rescue operation undertaken by Israeli commandos, who killed all seven gunmen and about 30 Ugandan soldiers.

The Times obituary also notes Habash's tactical disagreement with Arafat over the Oslo Accords:

[H]e rejected Arafat's 1993 interim agreement with Israel that created an autonomous Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He refused to move there, claiming that Arafat was deluding Palestinians by making them think full independence was around the corner.

Palestinians, he said, must accept the idea that they might have to fight for the rest of their lives, to simply outlast the Israelis, so that their children might call Palestine home; and they must continuously remind the world that their demands are unchanged and unchangeable.

Habash spent a few years in Damascus working jointly with other terrorist soulmates including Hamas. Hamas paid tribute to Habash:

A senior Hamas official in Damascus, Mohammad Nazzal, called Habash's death a "huge loss."

"We had our ideological differences, but Dr. Habash shared Hamas' opposition to the peace deals the PLO signed with the Jewish state as a sellout of Palestinian rights," Nazzal said.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas has announced three days of mourning in honor of Habash's death. All PLO flags will be flown at half mast and there will be an official "house of mourning" in Abbas's Ramallah office. For those such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who hold out the PLO and its leaders as the harbingers of a hopeful future akin to the American civil rights movement, the unabashed tribute to this unapologetic mass murderer should provide a clarifying moment.

To comment on this post, go here.

When I traveled with John McCain in November, I found him quite gracious – not just to the reporters and bloggers, but also to his campaign rivals. McCain did not talk about them unless asked, and when asked he spoke well of Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and Fred Thompson, and respectfully of Hillary Clinton.

The only exception was Mitt Romney. As we settled into our seats in the back of the Straight Talk Express after a town hall meeting in Rochester, New Hampshire, McCain said, with a slight grin, that things must really be going well in Iraq because Mitt Romney had spoken enthusiastically about the surge. McCain then implied that Romney had not been a supporter of the surge. I pointed out that when I interviewed Romney in February, not long after the surge had been announced, he told me he did support it. McCain responded that Romney had not, however, been out front in advocating the surge. I conceded that this was true.

That’s pretty much been McCain’s line ever since – he alone among the presidential contenders saw that the “Rumsfeld” strategy wasn’t working and called for more forces; the rest of the field was passive, though his main Republican rivals supported the surge once the administration decided to implement it.

But if a person really wants to say something nasty about someone, he’s usually going to end up saying it. That’s especially true if that someone is his primary rival in a political campaign. John McCain really wanted to say that Mitt Romney advocated withdrawal from Iraq, and now he has finally said it.

In doing so, he relies on a statement which cannot fairly be construed as advocating withdrawal. This is the conclusion of virtually everyone who has looked at the issue, except for some of McCain’s supporters. McCain, in short, has smeared Romney.

As these sorts of transgressions go, we have certainly heard worse. In fact, McCain has heard worse about himself, though perhaps not directly from the lips of an opponent. Moreover, politics ain’t beanbag, and this is crunch time.

Still, McCain’s twisting of Romney’s words came during the same week that McCain falsely implied that he had not denigrated his own expertise in economics. Indeed, the smear on Romney may have been part of an attempt to change the subject from the economy, and to deflect attention from McCain’s past admissions about his level of knowledge in this area.

In any case, what we are now getting from McCain is less than straight talk.

To comment on this post, go here.

That's how the New York Times' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, describes his paper's multi-part series on homicides allegedly committed by veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. But what, exactly, does the story say? That's the rub, as the Times reporters--who, Hoyt reveals, worked for eight months on the series--plainly intended to create the impression that combat duty has so traumatized our military personnel that they are engaged in a nationwide crime wave.

We critiqued the first installment of the series here, pointing out that the 121 alleged homicides identified by the Times over a six-year period represented a much lower than normal homicide rate compared to the general population in the same age range. So why did the Times write that the veterans' murder spree, ostensibly the result of post-traumatic stress disorder, was a "quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak?" Why did the Times write that antisocial behavior by combat veterans is a centuries-old phenomenon, rather than acknowledging that today's American vets are remarkably peace-loving, and apparently benefit from excellent care by the armed services and, where appropriate, by the Veterans' Administration?

That's a good question which, needless to say, Hoyt doesn't try to answer. When I wrote the post linked above, it was obvious how the Times would defend its shoddy journalism. I suggested that the Times undertake a months-long investigation by a team of crack reporters to identify all of the cases in which a newspaper employee has been accused of homicide. I added:

No need to wonder whether reporters, editors and typesetters commit homicide at a rate any different from the rest of the population--a single murder is too many!

Sure enough, Hoyt writes:

A handful of killings caused by the stresses of war would be too many and cause for action.

One could say the same about a handful of killings caused by the stresses of the newsroom. In any event, Hoyt admits that the statistical analysis undertaken by his paper's reporters was embarrassingly amateurish. (They got "tangled...in numbers." Hey, no one expects reporters to understand math.) Hoyt, of course, isn't much better than the Times' reporters at analyzing data. He writes:

The individual stories the series has told so far are indeed sad, powerful and important. One hopes they will goad the military to figure out what went wrong and what needs fixing.

But what is the evidence that something is wrong and "needs fixing"? When you deal with a population of more than a million people, there will inevitably be some sad and powerful stories. That's a given. But to determine that something is "wrong and needs fixing," you have to put that handful of stories into context, and that requires statistical analysis. Do 121 alleged homicides, including driving offenses and other cases with no apparent relevance to military service, over a six-year period, prove that the armed services are doing something wrong? The answer, based on statistical analysis, appears to be: clearly not. Which is not to doubt that the military, having standards far higher than those of the New York Times, will continue working hard to deal even more effectively with those cases of stress disorder that do, undoubtedly, exist.

Along the way, Hoyt lets slip that Times has a "computer-assisted reporting unit [that] normally screens articles with statistical analyses." That unit, however, was not brought into the story on murderous vets, and its leader "shared some concerns" with the stories' editor, after the fact.

Let's pause here: Imagine that the Times were a manufacturing company that produced a defective product and got sued. Imagine further that the evidence showed that it had a unit that was capable of carrying out a statistical analysis that could have prevented the product--the series on murderous vets--from being defective, but the people selling the defective product didn't make use of that capability. Imagine further that the head of the unit that carries out statistical analyses to avoid product defects "shared some concerns," too late, about the company's defective product. This would be a case in which any plaintiff's lawyer (John Edwards, say) would demand millions of dollars in punitive damages. And the Times would cheer him on every step of the way. Fortunately, there is not a single major manufacturing company in the United States as incompetent as the New York Times.

So: based on Hoyt's article, do the reporters who portrayed veterans as responsible for a "cross-country trail of death and heartbreak" have a defense? They do, sort of, and it's an eye-opener:

The journalists most responsible for the series — reporters Lizette Alvarez and Deborah Sontag and their editor, Matthew Purdy — argued against trying to make a comparison to civilian homicide rates. The military does not accept people with mental problems or records of serious crimes — the likeliest killers in the civilian population — so its rate is likely to be lower and the comparison irrelevant.

Is that a scoop, or what? The New York Times has known all along that our armed forces consist of an elite population that cannot fairly be compared to civilians because its record will undoubtedly be superior. Who knew? Well, we knew, of course, but it could well be a secret from those who rely on the Times for their news. Maybe the paper could keep this in mind next time a Democratic politician says that our soldiers are poor dead-enders with no skills and no prospects in life. Or, as is often implied in the liberal blogosphere, that they are presumed sociopaths.

PAUL adds: So the reporters wrote the story believing (or claiming) that there was no objective means of determining whether the "quiet phenomenom" they were writing about actually was a phenomenon -- i.e., whether there was a story. That speaks for itself.

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This morning on Fox News Sunday, Mike Huckabee sucked up to John McCain while bashing Mitt Romney. Asked to comment on the dispute between McCain and Romney as to whether Romney had called for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Huckabee sided squarely with McCain:

“Dishonest? I’ve never seen John McCain say something that is just blatantly untrue,” Huckabee said. Huckabee later praised McCain, saying “we have a civil approach to presidential process. Neither of us has sought the office by cracking the kneecaps of the other.”

But then he figuratively cracked the kneecaps of Romney by questioning the former governor’s veracity.

“There are published reports that I’ve seen in which Mitt Romney did in fact talk about support for – not a public timetable – but a secret timetable that would be held by administration officials and members of Congress,” Huckabee said.

As Paul noted here, McCain's assertion that Romney advocated a timetable is misleading at best. Whereas McCain can legitimately claim to have been more steadfast on Iraq than Romney (or just about anyone else), Huckabee can't.

Huckabee also attacked Romney on the economy, saying that he "wasn't impressed" by Romney's experience in the private sector. From what we have learned about Huckabee, I have no trouble believing that statement. Huckabee claims prescience in foreseeing the market turmoil of the last couple of weeks:

“When Mitt Romney and the other Republicans a few months ago in Dearborn, Michigan, at the debate were talking about how great the economy was, I was jeered and sneered, but I was the one saying it may not be that great,” Huckabee said.

“I was understanding that, seeing it, predicting it. People were laughing at me then; now they have to admit that I was right.”

McCain has said that he'd like to find a Vice-Presidential candidate who understands economics better than he does. Maybe Huckabee thinks he fits that description.

PAUL adds: Since the early days of the campaign, McCain has shown disdain for Romney while having nothing but nice things to say about Huckabee. I assumed that this was mostly because McCain realized that Romney is a serious rival and Huckabee isn't. Then, again, McCain may just be a poor judge of character. After all, Lindsey Graham is his side-kick.

McCain's defender would probably say that their man was turned off by Romney's shifts of positions on a number of important issues. Fair enough. But Huckabee hasn't exactly been a model of steadfastness either. His positions on taxes and immigration, for example, are hard to reconcile with his policies as governor. He's also been all over the map on foreign policy -- an odd mixture of a Carterite "blame America first" tendencies and hard-line Reaganism. And, where Romney admits most of his shifts in position, Huckabee tries to cover them up with charm and evasion.

Huckabee, in short, is a smooth talker, not straight talker. But then, as I'll try to show in my next post, McCain isn't scoring very well in the straight talk category lately either.

SCOTT adds: Here's more mush from the Huck on the surge.

To comment on this post, go here.

Bobby "Blue" Bland is one of the greatest living practitioners of soul music and today is his birthday. He was born on January 27, 1930, in a little town called Rosemark just outside of Memphis. Wanting more for her son than Rosemark had to offer, Bland's mother moved to Memphis in 1947. There Bland started singing in a group that came to call itself the Beale Streeters. Its members at one time or another included B.B. King and Johnnny Ace. Between 1950 and 1952, Bland recorded to no great effect along with his fellow Beale Streeters on three independent labels, the last being Duke. When Bland was drafted by the Army in 1952, he was a completely undistinctive blues singer.

By the time Bland got out of the Army, Elvis had broken open the music scene in Memphis and Duke Records had been sold to Don Robey in Houston. Through the combination of Bland's maturation in the Army and Duke's production, the hits started coming almost immediately in 1955. In Peter Guralnick's profile of Bland in Lost Highway, Bland dates the discovery of his distinctive voice to the following year:

It was '57 before I got a style of my own. Well, I was listening to Franklin a lot at the time -- that's Reverend C.L. Franklin, Aretha's daddy -- and my favorite at the time was B.B. King, of course, that had the high falsetto. Well, actually I was listening to a whole lot of different things, whoever had the hottest record on the jukeboxes, really. See, I developed the softness by listening to different singers like Nat "King" Cole or Perry Como or Tony Bennett. Man, they have a lot of feeling in their voice, they have a lot of what I call soul....But the thing is, I'd been listening to Reverend Franklin a lot -- "The Eagle Stirreth His Nest" -- and that's where I got my squall from. After I had lost the high falsetto. You see, I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with. So I thought that was a good thing. And the first thing I tried it was in '56, I think it was, when I tried "Little Boy Blue." And I think it paid off.

Indeed it did. I learn from reading Guralnick that Joe Scott was the invaluable producer/arranger behind Bland's succession of Duke hits (as well as the composer of "Turn on Your Love Light," which is credited to Scott and Robey under Robey's pseudonym, Deadric Malone). Bland himself acknowledged Scott's contribution: "I would say he was everything." As Guralnick observes, however, Scott must have sensed a special potential in Bland.

Bland is responsible for a catalogue of lasting value. Among my favorites is "Stormy Monday Blues," combining Bland's vocal "softness" with his "squalls" (Guralnick calls it "Bobby's gargled vocal interpolations") as well as Wayne Bennett's crucial instrumental voicing on guitar. Listen up to "Stormy Monday Blues" and continue with Bland's classic attack on "Turn On Your Love Light."

Fourteen men, 12 Pakistanis and two Indians, have been charged in Barcelona with participating in a plot to blow up transportation facilities across Europe:

The group intended to carry out three attacks in Spain and one each in Portugal, France and Germany, an unnamed man who infiltrated the group told top-selling daily El Pais.

The preferred targets were public transportation networks, especially metro systems because of the difficulty which emergency services would have in reaching the injured there, according to the newspaper.

The attacks would be claimed in the name of al-Qaeda by Islamist warlord Baitullah Mehsud from Pakistan's tribal region of South Waziristan.

Fortunately, the gang's anti-Islamic activity was foiled.

Rasmussen now has Mitt Romney leading John McCain in Florida 33% to 27%. The poll was conducted yesterday afternoon, just before Governor Crist announced his endorsement of McCain. We could be in for a photo finish.

Jay Nordlinger has made his annual pilgrimage to the World Economic Forum in Davos and begun filing his on-the-scene reports. In part 2, Jay quotes extensively from Secretary Rice's well-received speech. The speech is available in its entirety here both in text and video.

Jay quotes extensively from the speech, pausing only to provide his mostly approving comments, with the occasional arched eyebrow. And there are good things in the speech. Yet Bush administration diplomacy has reached Clintonian dead ends in Iran, North Korea and the Palestinian Authority. Rice's efforts to create a Palestinian state seem to me the reductio ad absurdum of her post-9/11 Clintonism in several respects that I have previously noted here.

Rice now devotes herself to the creation of a Palestinian state that would inevitably constitute a terrorist enclave. Elsewhere she likens the cause of Palestinian statehood to the cause of civil rights for American blacks (such as in this 2006 speech and again in private remarks at the Annapolis conference). Yesterday the Ralph Abernathy of the Palestinan Authority declared a three-day mourning period to honor the passing of terrorist maestro George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to set up a mourner's tent within the Muqata compound in Ramallah to receive those mourning the death of the Palestinian leader. Abbas also order[ed] all Palestinian flags flying above PA buildings to be lowered to half-mast.

Among other of the PFLP's greatest hits was the 1976 Air France hijacking that ended up in Entebbe. Habash of course broke with the Martin Luther King of the Palestinan cause over the Oslo Accords, setting up shop in Damascus to go into business with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In her Davos remarks, Rice addressed the knotty problem of Hamas:

“The problem is not that a group like Hamas won one free election; it is that the leaders of Hamas still refuse to make the fundamental choice that is required for any democracy to function: You can be a political party, or you can be a terrorist group — you cannot be both.”

Yet it was Rice herself who demanded that Hamas be included in the elections that produced their electoral victory. Secretary Rice now professes to have seen "what a better future could look like when, improbably, I have watched the American president stand with elected leaders under the flags of a democratic Iraq, a democratic Afghanistan, and the democratic future state of Palestine." She omitted only to say that she has seen the future and it works.

In November we hosted a preview screening of "The KIte Runner." I wrote about the film here, mostly expressing my regard for the powerful story told in the film. I was disappointed to read earlier this month that the film had been banned in Afghanistan. At Pajamas Media, Josh Strawn reflects on the film's banning in "The Kite Runner won't fly in Afghanistan." I'm sure that Strawn's commentary is far from the last word on the subject, but so little notice has been taken of the film's banning that it is worth a look.

Another story out of Afghanistan that requires additonal consideration is that of journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhshwho. Kambakhshwho has been convicted of blasphemy and condemned to death for circulating a news article saying Mohammad had ignored the rights of women.

Star Tribune metro columnist Katherin Kersten devotes today's informative column to the student fee-supported offshoot of the University of Minnesota's Queer Student Cultural Center that goes under the name Kinky U. Kathy reports:

Kinky U aims to reach out to groups still not fully embraced (so to speak) by the university community. It's "a social and discussion group" for those interested in "all forms of kink, including roleplaying, leather, BDSM [bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism], and much more," according to QSCC's website.

"The term 'kinky' can include anything from biting and scratching, 'which is pretty common,' to power exchanges and bondage," said the [University of Minnesota] Daily, quoting Michael Lent, the group's facilitator.

Lent declined to be interviewed for this column. But the handcuffs pictured on Kinky U's Web page are worth a thousand words.

Reading the column, the British invasion group the Kinks inevitably comes to mind. The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" would seem to be the perfect fight song for Kinky U.

The crowd at Obama's victory party tonight chanted, "Race doesn't matter!" That's a bit disingenuous, since Obama won over 80% of the African-American vote in South Carolina, and only around a quarter of the white vote. So race was obviously a decisive factor. No doubt that's what CNN meant when it headlined, "Exit polls: Obama won across demographic lines".

Still, the sentiment is a good one, even if it doesn't reflect current reality in the Democratic Party. Less noble was Bill Clinton's effort, as reported by Jake Tapper, to type-cast Obama as a latter-day Jesse Jackson:

Said Bill Clinton today in Columbia, SC: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

This was in response to a question about Obama saying it "took two people to beat him." Jackson had not been mentioned.

Tapper suggests that this is race-baiting, which I think is fair. I'm no fan of Obama, but it is ridiculous to equate him with Jesse Jackson.

With hindsight, it seems clear that Bill did his wife no favors by playing the heavy in South Carolina. It will be interesting to see whether he backs off between now and mega-Tuesday.

To comment on this post, go here.

Barack Obama got a big win tonight, but what is most striking is how many votes were cast in today's Democratic primary. South Carolina has been a reliably red state, but compare the vote totals in the two parties' primaries. Obama almost exactly doubled John McCain's total in the Republican primary last week, and Hillary Clinton nearly equalled it. Overall, around 90,000 more votes were cast in the Democratic primary than the Republican. So the tide continues to flow strongly in the Democrats' direction.

Barack Obama gave a victory speech tonight; the text is here. No doubt some will characterize it as eloquent, but I think a better term is vapid. If you strip away the vaguely high-minded generalities, only two policy positions are (more or less) clearly stated. Obama wants to fail in Iraq, and he wants government-run medicine here at home. It's hard to see anything either noble or unifying in these goals.

Tonight, Obama indulged, as he often does, in a ritual denunciation of lobbyists. Since there is no pro-Iraq war lobby, one can only assume that he blames lobbyists for his party's failure, so far, to follow most European countries down the path of socialized medicine. Actually, though, the barrier to total government control of health care in the United States has been that a great many Americans understand that it is a terrible idea. Whether that is still the case, we likely will find out in November.

PAUL agrees: Obama's speech was virtually content free. Obama declared that "there are real differences between the candidates," but then failed to cite even one policy disagreement between him and his Democratic rivals. Instead, he made statements like the following:

There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes. But here’s what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day – an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.

It turns out that we can "have what we long for" after all. Yes, we can.

To comment on this post, go here.

A few minutes ago, Florida's governor Charles Crist endorsed John McCain. The Florida primary has been truly too close to call until now, but I've got to believe it has just swung in McCain's favor.

The following statement contains a number of assumptions, but I think Crist's endorsement may prove to be the worst development of the day for Hillary Clinton.

It looks like Barack Obama will rout Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary. AP has already called the race based on exit polls. These polls indicated that African-American voters, who made up about half of this electorate, favored Obana by a 4-1 ratio. Those are tough odds.

So Clinton and Obama have split the first four contested races. But things are going to be quite challenging for Obama from now on, since the race will be "national" the rest of the way. Clinton has a decent lead nationally, and will likely will benefit from machine politics in some of the key states.

UPDATE: Clinton and John Edwards are fighting it out for second place in South Carolina. The oily Edwards, according to Fox News, was trying to gin up turnout by Republican voters from rural areas who didn't vote last week because of the bad weather. These voters would likely be anti-Clinton (and possibly anti-Obama), and might not know that Edwards has become a raving left-wing ideologue.

By the way, Clinton jetted out of South Carolina early today, probably with the same relish with which she used to escape from Arkansas.

MORE: There's still some doubt, but it's likely now that Clinton will take second place. However, there's some solace for Edwards. According to Fox News, exit polling shows that he did well among voters who favor the war in Iraq and think the economy is in good shape.

Clearly, Edwards needs to remain in the race so his message will be heard.

To comment on this post, go here.

John McCain has accused Mitt Romney of having "wanted to set a date for withdrawal [from Iraq] that would have meant disaster." McCain apparently is referring to a statement Romney made last April in which he assumed President Bush and the head of the Iraqi government might discuss timetables and troop levels in Iraq. I don't think Romney's statement fairly can be construed as advocating setting a date for our withdrawal.

On the other hand, there’s little doubt that Romney was less resolute on Iraq than McCain. When I interviewed Romney around the time the administration had decided to surge, his position was that the surge was well worth trying, that we’d know in a few months whether it was working, and that if it wasn’t working we’d have to try something else. I wasn’t able to get Romney to say what his “Plan B” was, but he seemed clear that it wasn’t withdrawal.

The other thing that came through in my interview was Romney’s tendency to defer to experts in the government. He agreed, for example, that the Defense Department’s benchmarks for success were reasonable and added that without access to classified information it was difficult to make independent assessments.

It’s hard to fault Romney for taking something of a “wait-and-see” attitude towards the surge – that was certainly my attitude. It’s also hard to fault Romney for the deference he showed the government, given its superior access to information.

But the fact remains that, throughout the debate about Iraq, John McCain brought to the table an independence of judgment that Romney (and just about everyone else) did not. McCain refused to defer to the Defense Department when things were going badly in Iraq. Rather he kept advocating another approach – essentially the one that’s working now. And, though I doubt McCain would have advocated surging forever if the surge had been a clear failure, I think it’s fair to say that his commitment to the strategy ran deeper than Romney’s; certainly it was less tied to the judgment of the Bush administration.

So McCain has the better record, but that doesn't justify trying to make Romney’s record sound worse than it is.

UPDATE: Lindsey Graham was on with Sean Hannity this evening and misrepresented Romney's statement. Par for the course for this reprehensible politician.

What post do you think a President McCain would offer Lindsey Graham? I'm guessing Attorney General or Supreme Court Justice. Maybe both, if McCain gets two terms.

A WORD OF THANKS to Real Clear Politics for including this post in the early morning update, and right above a piece by Caroline Kennedy (endorsing Barack Obama). I never thought my name would appear on the same