I Stand Corrected

You've certainly proven your point about T.V. in general being more pornographic, almost across-the-board, than it was in the past, Matt. Re-reading my post, and yours, I can't imagine what I was thinking. Maybe it was a perverse version of "remember the good old days."

I especially like the Monica quote. You could have pulled up the bit about the cigar, though. Even pornier.

The big news item today is Congress' Iraq supplemental bill that sets a date certain, though it should be the rush to toss Gonzales overboard. Despite all of his very many flaws, Bush is right when he calls the House's measure a bit of political theatre. Everyone involved knows that no similar bill will pass the Senate; and even in that extremely unlikely event it would be vetoed. Faced with the prospect of having the Army run out of money for operations, or passing the bill Bush asked for in the first place, the Democrats, neurotic about being Swift-Boated again, will cave and provide the money.

On the other hand, Gonzales is legitimately interesting news for two reasons. One, it shows that an endorsement by Bush means nothing at all. The Republicans at every level of the party have abandoned him despite a relatively strong show of support from Bush. Two, it illustrates the overall management sloppiness of this administration, which I think is, in the end, even more harmful to the country than their actual ideology. Bush has infected the career bureaucrats with whom he came to Washington with his own incompetence and passivity. As a result, even routine political punishment morphs into a legitimate scandal. It's unreal. We've been watching the federal government slowly fall apart since, if you want to put a specific date on it, Jay Garner showed up in Iraq and the infighting between Defense and State got brutal. By the time Katrina made it obvious to the average American, the disfunction of the administration was already horrifyingly clear in Washington.

To bring it back to my first post - that's why people will gravitate away from Senators in the upcoming presidential election. They're desperate not for someone to give good speeches but for someone to run the government. I've heard comparisons to Dukakis' failed campaign on that issue; but Dukakis was running after 8 years of government that was, compared to this administration, blissfully well-run. I think the Democrats need to field one of their many excellent Governors if they want to have a chance.