Why Gore signed up with Dean
So why did Al Gore clamber aboard the Dean bandwagon on the day of the big television debate between Democratic candidates in New Hampshire? Easy. Gore knew that a new poll was coming that put Dean ahead of John Kerry by a margin of 39-14 in New Hampshire, and he knew that for the first time in its history, New Hampshire's biggest union (the teachers) was about to endorse a candidate for the primary - Dean. And Dean more than any other candidate has played the useful art of telephone diplomacy. He had called Gore more than anybody else - except Bill Clinton. Gore and Clinton have both thrilled to Dean's emotional call at his public rallies that people should join his campaign "to show that you have the power. Not Washington. You." Cynical old Democrats, meanwhile, are bouncing around an email from a senior party hack that explains that Gore had three reasons: "1) Dean will probably be the nominee. 2) It's a clear break for Gore to reinvent himself with the future rather than being dragged down by the past. 3) It's a fuck-you to all concerned. This is a man who never forgets, never forgives and has catalogued every wrong that he has ever been subjected to. And that is what he will be thinking about standing next to Dean." Also: Gore's daughters think Dean is terrific.
Jerry Bremer for Colin Powell's job?
At his convivial lunch meeting with the EU foreign ministers in Brussels in November, Colin Powell talked about the accession of Cyprus into the EU, and its impact on Turkish hopes of membership. That, he said, would "be a matter for my successor." EU ambassadors in Washington have thus been instructed to discover exactly when their only reliable ally in the Bush administration is leaving - will it be before or after next November's election? But Powell is playing coy. So Rita Byl, the wife of the EU's man in Washington, G?nter Burghardt, who gets on particularly well with Powell's wife Alma, has been asked to find out. The current indications are that Powell will stay on until after the election, against his wife's preferences. The battle for the Powell succession is under way. L Paul "Jerry" Bremer, the viceroy of Baghdad, thinks he has the inside track. He is certainly showing some cunning diplomatic moves. Bremer is supposed to report back directly to Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, but began to feel that the harsher nuances of his reports were not being conveyed to the president. So he organised an end run. Knowing that the CIA station chief in Baghdad was filing a gloomy and critical report on the strengthening resistance and the tough prospects for the American occupation, Bremer arranged for his own concurring comments to be included in the CIA report. The thrust of the 10th November report then got leaked to the Philadelphia Inquirer - guaranteeing that the document became a must-read inside the White House, just as Bremer was back in town.
Wolfowitz certainly won't get it
The US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill (who was Condy Rice's boss during the administration of Bush the elder), was brought back in the summer to help strengthen Condy's effort to wrest control of the Iraq mess from Rumsfeld's team at the Pentagon, and also to watch Condy's back against the constant pressure from the private national security staff of Dick Cheney. Blackwill, credited with giving the new US-India strategic alliance a very strong push from his perch in New Delhi, is a foreign policy realist and hardliner. He thrilled the Indian army high command during a briefing on the Kashmir crisis when the briefer referred to the Pakistan-backed infiltrators into Kashmir as "militants." Blackwill interrupted to assert, "They are terrorists pure and simple." So the current buzz suggests that if Bremer gets the state department, then Blackwill (his old pal of 30 years standing) might also step up to get the national security council. Where this leaves Condy, after the California recall allowed Arnold Schwarzenegger to grab the governorship that she had been eyeing, is another matter. One thing is for sure - nobody is talking these days about Paul Wolfowitz getting Powell's job.
Cheney's art of war
Should George W Bush ever fall under a bus, the US would be led by its first chief executive with serious academic pretensions since Woodrow Wilson. Dick Cheney almost got a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin, but made do with an MA before getting diverted into Washington politics. Still, the American capital counts him as a real intellectual. And he married one: his wife, Lynne, has a PhD in history. And the vice-president likes to snuggle down with heavyweight books. His latest favourite is Victor Davis Hanson's Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think. Hanson's tome draws on Herodotus to show that annihilation (like Carthage) and the targeting of enemy civilians have worthy antecedents. Osama bin Laden and recalcitrant Islamists please note. Cheney likes Hanson's stuff so much that the classical scholar turned military historian is now a regular guest and consultant at the Cheney bunker. Maybe if somebody sent Cheney a gently improving theological tome as a Christmas present.
