The neocons are back
Just when the British embassy (and most of Washington) assumed that the quicksands of Iraq had swallowed them up, the neocons are back with a vengeance. Bush's "Democracy for the middle east" speech came from the latest neocon recruit to the White House team, David Wurmser, who along with Richard Perle in 1996 wrote the celebrated "A clean break" strategy document for incoming Israeli premier Binyamin Netanyahu. In September, Wurmser was promoted from a mid-ranking job on the staff of the state department's token neocon John Bolton to running the middle east desk in vice-president Dick Cheney's personal national security council. Wurmser wrote the draft for the Bush speech and had it pushed by Cheney's chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, author (along with Paul Wolfowitz) of the original 1992 Pentagon policy statement asserting that the US would not permit the emergence of any strategic challenger. That policy was then officially dropped until it re-emerged in last year's national security strategy document. Wurmser was formerly with the American Enterprise Institute and the strongly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His Israeli-born wife Meyrav runs the middle east section of the very conservative Hudson Institute, a place that likes to think aloud about the possibilities of cutting out the middle man by ditching the Saudi monarchy and occupying the Saudi oilfields directly.
California, the Democrats' Verdun?
Conventional wisdom says that since "Gropenf?hrer" Schwarzenegger became governor of California, the most powerful single state in presidential politics with 55 out of the 538 votes in the electoral college is no longer safely Democratic. The Republicans should therefore target it in a big way. But the man who matters disagrees. Karl Rove's own polls suggest that five states carried by Al Gore in 2000 - Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Oregon - look far more winnable for the Republicans than California. But since Bush's re-election campaign looks like out-spending the Democrats by two or three to one, Rove can afford to make California into the Democratic Verdun. "It's the place to make them bleed money they haven't got to hang on to a state that we don't need," says Rove.
Wesley Clark impersonator in chief
With the economy now growing unhelpfully quickly for the Democrats, maybe they can charm their way back into the White House. Ex-general Wesley Clark does a very nice line in impersonation. His son Wes Junior reveals that dad can do a brilliant Slobodan Milosevic, an even better George Bush the elder, and can have small gatherings of consenting Democrats in stitches with his cruel imitation of the right-wing Fox News star Bill O'Reilly. But the "conqueror of Kosovo" unveiled a new impersonation recently, of the powerful New York black Democrat Chuck Rangel, to explain how he got recruited to run for the presidency. Rangel, whose deep and rasping tones have been compared to treacle-soaked iron filings, apparently called Clark to urge him to run. And in Clark's impersonation, Rangel said "This is sergeant Rangel. Where's my general?" Rangel got his three stripes in the Korean war. And as Clark tells it, he stood to attention as he answered the phone and replied, "Sergeant, anybody who's been in the military knows you hold the most important rank in any man's army."
But Wes Clark is getting worried by the number of ex-military men joining the Dean campaign - and cutting into Clark's advantage as the only Democratic candidate who can ripple national security muscles. The latest two to join Dean's foreign policy advisory team are ex-general Merrill "Tony" McPeak, former Air Force chief of staff, and Lt-General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of the US central command. Like many of his fellows in the army, Hoar has no liking for Clark, and tells the story of Clark's oldest friend and jogging mate since their days together as cadets at West Point. When they were promoted to colonel and assigned to the Pentagon, Clark told his oldest chum "We can't be friends any more - we're rivals for first to make general."
Clark may have to do an eyes-left for support, and can take heart at a hint of support from the wildly popular filmmaker and author of Dude Where's My Country, Michael Moore. Moore told Andrew Marr on Radio 4's Start the Week that he is considering giving up pacifism and throwing in his hat with the general. Anything to get rid of Bush, you see.
A poem for Laura
First Lady Laura Bush has been confiding to friends the poem her husband composed for her return from the European trip that saw her hand kissed by Jacques Chirac. Please note: this is not an invention. Here is the uncensored product of the president's pen:
Roses are red, violets are blue.
Oh my lump in the bed, how I've missed you.
Roses are redder, bluer am I,
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.
The dogs and the cat, they missed you too,
Barney's still mad you dropped him - he ate your shoe.
The distance, my dear, has been such abarrier.
Next time you want adventure, just land on a carrier.
