Issa Trope

Nixon library director Tim Naftali's critics claimed he was out out to get 37 because he was a leftist. Go run an Alger Hiss museum, one famously sneered.

But if you want to hear some real red meat, some classic Nixon-baiting, liberals are pikers these days compared to the new breed of conservatives. Listen to what Orange County's own Rep. Darrell Issa said on Monday evening while defending House Republicans' lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder over the so-called fast and furious debacle:

It's the Nixon standard. Are you entitled to cover up your own wrongdoing?...Nixon decided this a generation ago. You cannot commit crimes, including lying to Congress, and then cover it up and expect it to be covered by executive privilege.

Don't think Issa turned this trope to impress liberals. He said it on Fox News, and he made the point twice, in spite of two efforts by host Greta Van Susteren to quiet him and end the segment. Last year, he called the Obama administration "Nixonian." One assumes these talking points weren't composed by Ken Khachigian, former Issa consultant and Nixon factotum.

Romney's Disconcerting Speech In Israel

After a rough visit to England, when he said that some aspects of its preparations for the Olympics were "disconcerting," Mitt Romney went to Israel and rallied in the special relationship department. Standing with the Old City behind him, dappled with the light of a Jerusalem sunset, Romney said:

I believe that the enduring alliance between the State of Israel and the United States of America is more than a strategic alliance: it is a force for good in the world. America’s support of Israel should make every American proud. We should not allow the inevitable complexities of modern geopolitics to obscure fundamental touchstones. No country or organization or individual should ever doubt this basic truth: A free and strong America will always stand with a free and strong Israel.

All true. And this:

Hopefully, this new government understands that one true measure of democracy is how those elected by the majority respect the rights of those in the minority.

No, that wasn't Romney calling on Israel to respect the rights of Palestinians. He was calling on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood president to protect his political opponents. Romney didn't actually mention the Palestinians -- not a boilerplate line saying that his administration would support a peace agreement that guaranteed Israel's security or even a passing reference to the two-state solution, which has been explicitly endorsed by Presidents George W. Bush and Obama and was tacit U.S. policy for many years before that.

On the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre, I see no problem with a paean to U.S.-Israel ties. But Fox News and Romney's other supporters called this a major foreign policy address. Let's hope they're wrong, since ignoring the peace process and an entire people living under military occupation would be dangerously radical and destabilizing in a substantive speech. Let's just call it a play for Jewish votes and go back to watching the exquisitely-run London Olympics.

The Severity Of Our Disengagement

Defending himself against Bill O'Reilly's wacky accusation that he's a communist, Robert Reich says Fox News and their ilk are burying the nation in "doo-doo" -- an unintentional allusion to the late Seamus Romney, one assumes, since Reich adds:

The 2012 election doesn't seem likely to clarify any issue. At this moment the candidates and their surrogates are debating the treatment of dogs.

Across the nation, conservatives right-wingers and liberal or progressive lefties have stopped debating their respective views, or even listening to anyone they disagree with. They just find broadcasters and bloggers who confirm their views.

We're even sorting by belief according to where we live. Today your neighbors are more likely to agree with your politics than disagree. We've settled into like-minded enclaves where we don't need to think because everyone we meet confirms what we assume we already know.

It's not that the nation is more polarized than it's been in the past. America has been through searing conflicts, some within the living memories of most of us. The communist witch-hunts of the 1950s were followed by the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, battles over women's reproductive rights and gay marriage.

What makes America's current polarization remarkable isn't the severity of our disagreements but our utter lack of engagement debating them.

The Clintons Got Tired Of Him, Too

Contraception Contradiction

What's The Beef, Bolton?

The New York Times reports that the prospective GOP nominees -- except Ron Paul, who does a reliable impersonation of a sane person on this issue -- discern that they can derive a political benefit from criticizing the Obama administration for cautioning Israel against an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities:

Republicans hope that attacks on [Obama's] support of Israel could both appeal to Jewish voters — a small but important constituency, especially in some swing states, like Florida — and to other voters who are committed to protecting Israel.

Yes, you read that correctly. All Republicans save one are reported to be advocating a reckless policy to get votes. They will no doubt say that this is the liberal media talking, that the idea of advocating war to impress Jewish voters never crossed their minds. Whatever their motivation, the cravenness of Obama's partisan critics was on display last night when Fox News' Greta Van Susteren interviewed former UN ambassador John Bolton. She asked what he'd do if he were president. He replied that he'd let Israel attack Iran. Van Susteren said that experts believe that Iran's capability probably can't be so easily reduced. Bolton quickly agreed, saying that the mission would be at the outer reaches of Israel's capability, which is why Israel would be better off with the U.S. playing a tactical role -- which he most certainly didn't endorse.

In other words, an Israeli attack would be difficult and might well fail -- which will be one of Obama's key taking points when he meets Benyamin Netanyahu in early March. So Mr. Ambassador, please say again: What's your beef with Obama?

Right Guy, Wrong Choir

W. James Antle, an editor at the American Spectator, takes a measured view of Nixon hand Pat Buchanan's firing by MSNBC:

The casus belli of Buchanan's ouster was his most recent book, Suicide of a Superpower. It contains ideas, MSNBC president Phil Griffin told reporters, unfit for "national dialogue, much less on MSNBC."

Remaining on the network is Al Sharpton, whose denunciations of "white interlopers" and "diamond merchants" helped provoke violence against Freddy's Fashion Mart and the Jewish communities of Crown Heights. You will search Buchanan's oeuvre in vain for anything approaching Sharpton at his most hateful.

Many of the demographic claims made in Buchanan's book aren't particularly controversial. He borrowed the chapter titles about the end of Christian America and white America from cover stories in Newsweek and the Atlantic, respectively. His tone is generally wistful, not angry. His thesis is less that diversity is inherently undesirable than that it is difficult to manage without other bonds, values, or experiences that bring countrymen together.

Buchanan hasn't always succeeded in bringing his countrymen together either, often using words that wound people of colors and creeds who don't feel welcome in his vision of America. Despite that real shortcoming, he is a patriot who has consistently believed that his views are open to debate. Do his critics?

Not in the jungle of contemporary cable news, which has evolved from CNN's bold experiment in 24-hour TV journalism into a throwback to 19th century partisan broadsheets. To my knowledge, since Alan Colmes bailed a few years ago, Fox News hasn't had a liberal or progressive of Buchanan's stature appearing regularly. It may well be that MSNBC decided it shouldn't keep wearing Pat as a fair-and-balanced fig leaf if the other side didn't present compensatory foliage -- and that's what Fox and MSNBC are all about, Republicans vs. Democrats, tit for tat, in both cases ideology vs. substance. You don't even need to watch, because you usually know what they're going to say already. They're both streaming to the choir.

In short, Fox News' viewers don't want to watch a liberal, and MSNBC's don't want to listen to a conservative -- and even when it comes to TV news, as in any other market, what the customer wants, the customer gets.

The New Paternalism

Andrew Sullivan sticks up for Nixon speechwriter, presidential candidate, and pundit Pat Buchanan, fired this week by MSNBC:

Sixteen years ago, when I came out as HIV-positive and quit [The New Republic's] editorship, Buchanan, who had sparred relentlessly in public with me over gay equality, wrote me a personal hand-written note. He wrote he was saddened by what he heard - which was then regarded as an imminent death sentence - and wanted to say how he would pray that I would survive, if only so we could continue to argue and fight and debate for many more years. He was one of only two Washingtonians who did such a thing. I was moved beyond words. But he knew I loved a good argument as well. Over a gulf of ideological and philosophical difference, we could debate reasonably.

He's a complicated man and I will not defend for a second his views on many things. But he is also a compassionate and decent man in private and an honest intellectual in public. It says everything about the polarization of our discourse and the evolution of cable news into rival sources of propaganda that this ornery figure, still churning out ideas and books while others his age are well in retirement, is now banished.

For shame. Another step backward from real debate on cable "news".

Buchanan is indeed gracious in person, as I can attest from his and Shelley's periodic visits to the Nixon library when I was director. I haven't read the book that angered MSNBC, but I'm well aware of the broad outlines of his sometimes bizarre thinking -- diversity is hurting the United States, the U.S. shouldn't have have entered World War II, it would be better if we could return to the social and cultural conditions he remembers from his 1950s boyhood in Washington, D.C. He's also accused of antisemitism and excessively harsh criticism of Israel's allies in the U.S., although on this question his often-derided views about Jewish influence on our media and politics don't differ dramatically from those of Palestinians' advocates in progressive circles.

It's also important to remember his opposition to the Iraq war, a classic if lonely expression of conservative isolationism. Although in her memoirs Condi Rice makes a respectable case for the Bush administration's process in the run-up to war in 2003, I'm still not sure Buchanan was wrong.

I don't defend his more noxious views, which Howard Kurtz wrote had become too "radioactive" for a cable network that Kurtz says has moved sharply left, as it evidently grasps for Fox News' intellectual near-irrelevancy. It's funny Kurtz used that word. In the early 1980s I was part of a Nixon team reading through White House files to flag documents we felt should be kept secret on privacy and other grounds. The same adjective occurred to us as we read some of Buchanan's pugnacious prose on the antiwar movement and class politics, foundational expressions of what later became known as the culture wars. As I recall, I wrote a letter that Nixon signed and sent to Buchanan saying jokingly that he needn't worry, because we'd buried his memos in lead-lined drums under the National Archives. Of course Nixon also got memos from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ray Price, and other more moderate advisers and aides. He usually wanted to hear all perspectives on difficult questions before he made up his mind. On other occasions, such as when Buchanan was writing for Vice President Spiro Agnew, Nixon let Pat's right-wing freak flag fly. Here Buchanan seems to be quoting Agnew reading a script by Buchanan.

I also concur with Sullivan that one needn't agree with Buchanan to oppose his firing. Chris Matthews, who expressed regret about his bosses' move, isn't an apologist for racism, antisemitism, or homophobia. He's an advocate for vigorous debate as a hallmark of a healthy democracy. The man who fired Buchanan, Phil Griffin, exhibits more authoritarian impulses, believing that his views "should [not] be part of the national dialog." That reminds me of another example of the annoying new paternalism among our cultural and political elites: Rick Santorum saying that contraception is "not okay" and that as president he'd try to limit its availability. What happened to media tycoons and politicians who gave us credit for thinking for ourselves?

Not Okay

Responding to questions tonight from Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about his position on contraception, Rick Santorum blamed the media for the controversy and said he had voted in the Senate to provided contraceptive funding even to Planned Parenthood. And yet he made clear in an interview last October (perhaps Van Susteren didn't know about it) that as president he would reverse the effects of those earlier votes and get rid of government funding for contraception. He spoke about the "dangers of contraception in this country" and said it was "not okay."

Romney, Reform, Or Re-Reagan?

Was Jon Huntsman, who ended his campaign today and endorsed Mitt Romney, not ready for the Republican Party, or the other way around? "BuzzFeed":

The party Huntsman imagined -- modernizing, reforming, and youthful -- could still be born. That might be the reaction to a second smashing defeat at Obama's hands, or that might be where President Romney takes his re-election campaign. But it's now hard to see Huntsman leading that change. He bet, too early, on a fantasy, and ran for the nomination of a party that doesn't exist, at least not yet. His decision tonight to drop out just marks his recognition of that fact.

The second hypothetical, in which a President Romney maneuvers the party toward the center, is the worst nightmare of tea party and social conservatives. As president, Romney would likely marginalize the right with business-friendly, relatively moderate policies appealing to a congressional coalition of center-right Republicans and centrist Democrats. If you add anti-Mormon evangelicals to the mix, some predict that Romney's nomination would portend one of those fabled general elections when conservatives stay home.

"BuzzFeed" thinks an Obama win might trigger a Republican Reformation. But conservative bigwigs who may choose to give Romney faint support in 2012 would be aiming not to reform but re-Reagan. If Romney lost, they would continue to militate for someone more worthy to wear the pompadour in 2016. Four years ago, prominent strategist Ed Rollins hinted that a John McCain loss would at least give the GOP the advantage of returning to its Goldwater-Reagan roots. I have no doubt that this magical thinking will persist indefinitely among conservatives even though Americans elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 strictly because he wasn't Jimmy Carter. A far-right Republican won't ever win an election because she's far right, only because the country's in a ditch and she happens to be on the scene with a tow truck.

Calculating politicos are one thing. Would substantial numbers of actual right-wing voters spurn Romney in hopes of making sure that a Manchurian moderate doesn't become the de facto king of conservatism? Like most second terms, Obama's would be uneventful on the domestic policy front while he grappled with the coming storm over Iran and pushed for progress on Palestine. The tactical voter might construe this as the perfect opportunity to repair to the lab to work some more on Reaganstein. I just don't know very many people who actually think that way when they vote. Do you? Part of being an American is letting the parties do their best or worst and then pulling the lever in November, holding your nose if necessary.

That would make Romney's nomination an historic event in itself. From the tea party to Fox News, conservatives have never been as vocal or well organized, and yet they're on the verge of a massive failure. We may debate about who the real Romney is. I believe he's a diligent and relatively enlightened guy who fudged what he believes about abortion, gay rights, and the role of government in order to survive the Republican fire swamp. His alternatives were not running and switching parties. In any event, neither he nor Obama will be able to evade his record in the general election. Dare we hope for a substantive national conservation between serious people?

Moderately Overlooked

As historians such as Rick Perlstein and Sam Tanenhaus mull the rightward progression of the GOP and conservatism from the age of Nixon to the age of Beck and Hannity, historian Maarja Krusten starts with her mother, a Nixon fan right through Watergate's bitter end, especially because of his foreign policy. Today, she doesn't watch Fox News, and she reasons that you can't balance the budget without more revenue. Her daughter concludes:

Nixon was a moderate and a pragmatist. He was not a conservative. Nor were all his supporters. Did some Nixon voters later vote for Reagan and become Fox News fans? Absolutely. Yet there also were people such as my Mom. There’s a lot in the mix. As with all issues Nixonian, working through the motives and objectives requires discernment.

Among other things, one discerns that moderates are dissed, devalued, and demoted. We don't have a cable station. Few if any Republicans would dare utter the word "moderate" without swearing or spitting. At first blush, we indeed appear to be a dwindling tribe. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as moderates has fallen from 43% to 35% since 1992. During the same period, self-identified conservatives increased from 36% to 40%, while the liberals edged up from 17% to 21%. That means we've lost 4% each on both ends of the spectrum, a symptom, Gallup says, of our increasingly polarized politics.

But those numbers, while great news for Fox News' and MSNBC's ratings, aren't so great for the GOP's general election chances in 2012. Conservatives are prone to saying that moderates are really liberals. Spend three minutes on FreeRepublic, and you'll get the picture. Stipulating their point for the purposes of argument, that makes the U.S. electorate 56% (liberals plus moderates) to 40% conservatives. Nixon's oft-quoted dictum was that Republican candidates always had to scurry to the center to contend in general elections. This year, primary-season contenders will have had to spend so much time in birtherland and Obama-ignored-Easterland that reclaiming a sufficient share of the center back from the president may be impossible.

Foxes Have Dens (But No Dems)

Barack Obama preached the gospel at a Holy Week White House breakfast for ministers:

I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -- because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there's something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.

We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work... But then comes Holy Week. The triumph of Palm Sunday. The humility of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. His slow march up that hill, and the pain and the scorn and the shame of the cross. And we're reminded that in that moment, he took on the sins of the world -- past, present and future -- and he extended to us that unfathomable gift of grace and salvation through his death and resurrection.

In the words of the book of Isaiah: "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."

This magnificent grace, this expansive grace, this "Amazing Grace" calls me to reflect. And it calls me to pray. It calls me to ask God for forgiveness for the times that I've not shown grace to others, those times that I've fallen short. It calls me to praise God for the gift of our son -- his Son and our Savior.

Meanwhile Fox News published this misleading, provocative headline, with an ugly picture of the president: "WH Fails to Release Easter Proclamation." The same was true under Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and both Presidents Bush.

Five Presidents and Henry

In his next book, Bob Woodward will probably tell us everything we need to know about the deliberations leading to the U.S. intervention in Libya that President Obama announced this morning. I have no insider sources. I do get the feeling that he's been dancing in the corner since the Arab revolution became a global story in January and that he decided this week that Muammar Qaddafi had finally rung the bell.

I'm sure it's not that he's been itching to go to war. No president in his right mind has such impulses. But unlike the risings in Tunisia and Egypt, Libya offers the opportunity for what may seem to Obama to be a relatively low-risk move in a region where the U.S. has profound interests and therefore historic obligations.

I actually heard five presidents during his forceful if awkwardly written statement this morning. George H.W. Bush must admire Obama's stress on acting as the leading member of a broad coalition and on the basis of the UN Security Council's authorization. One can imagine the intense diplomacy -- conducted while Sean Hannity joked that Obama was wasting his time playing golf and filling out his brackets -- by which Russia and China were persuaded to abstain rather than exercise their vetoes.

Obama echoed Bush 43's freedom agenda when he said he feared "the democratic values we stand for would be overrun" unless Qaddafi was stopped. Where and when our values have ever stood tall in Libya, Obama didn't say.

His stress on protecting civilians, which defined the limited scope of intervention, also made me think of Bill Clinton's regret that he didn't try to stop the Rwandan genocide.

Then there was Obama's own doctrine, putting his action in the larger context of the year's unprecedented uprisings against authoritarian Arab regimes. After two months in which the U.S. stood by while historic events unfolded, we've finally got a chance to throw our weight behind the good guys (whoever they are). As for outcomes, Obama said, they're "the right and responsibility" of Arabs, not us.

The weakest part of Obama's statement was its claim that Qaddafi threatens "global peace and security." He doesn't. Some talking heads said they heard no reference from Obama to U.S.-driven regime change, but I did, when he spoke of holding Qaddafi's regime "accountable" for its brutality.

That's the kind of language Henry Kissinger (and maybe Richard Nixon) might've suggested leaving out. In a phoner with Fox News' Megyn Kelly a half-hour before Obama spoke, Kissinger warned against trying to bring down Qaddafi. "If you engage in regime change," Kissinger said, "you then assume some responsibility for the successor regime and how to bring it about." Obama promised to keep U.S. troops out. But one thing that doesn't change, no matter the president, is the law of unintended consequences during military interventions, especially when the dynamics and personalities are as murky as in tribal Libya. Good first round for Obama against the ruthless and wily veteran of the north African desert. Eleven to go.

For The Love Of Mike

Alarmed by Mike Huckabee's supergaffe about Barack Obama and his reckless parole policies when he was Arkansas governor, Timothy Egan suggests he keep his job at Fox News and skip running for president in 2012. Andrew Sullivan doesn't like Huckabee's recent statements, either, but he's afraid that if he doesn't run, he'll leaves the far-right (aka the GOP nomination) to Sarah Palin.

Huck Spin

In a radio interview on Tuesday, Mike Huckabee presented a detailed fantasy about a Kenyan boyhood of Barack Obama that never occurred. His spokesman quickly said that he'd meant to say that Obama was raised in Indonesia. With Andrew Sullivan, I can't understand how Huckabee could claim just to have made an error about the country, since his full statement doesn't track if you substitute Indonesia for Kenya:

One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American ... his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British are a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

Obama never lived in Kenya, and his father essentially abandoned him.

Tonight Huckabee went on Fox News (which employs him) to defend himself. He told Bill O'Reilly that he'd made a verbal gaffe after participating in 40 interviews in a row and that he'd written in the book he was promoting that Obama had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia. Without even the hint of an apology to Obama, he quickly went on the offensive, blaming the "left-wing media" for covering the story. He made a Palinesque reference to one of Obama's own microgaffes (the "57 states" one). He said that growing up in a foreign country meant that Obama had a "different world view," the result of not being a Boy Scout or playing Little League, a point which enabled Huckabee to minimize Obama's Hawaii years to the point of insignificance, just as his enormogaffe had done. (Obama, who plays basketball, lived in Indonesia between ages six and 10.) Huckabee concluded by saying that refusing to say that Obama hates America "makes me persona non grata with some conservatives."

Huckabee's performance on Fox added some credence to the idea that he said just what he meant to say during his radio interview -- or, at the very least, that he doesn't especially regret it. As he continues to ponder whether to announce for president later this year, he candidly admitted to O'Reilly that he's mindful of those members of the conservative base who think Obama is disloyal (what other construction can one put on "hates America")? Now he's got a twofer. His Kenyan kilogaffe gave him a little boost with the fringe right. His denial gave him a chance to claim victimization by the left (as though conservatives wouldn't have howled with rage at a leading Democrat's internally coherent, 15-second-long supergaffe about the upbringing of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush). Without being a Birther, he's won himself some Birther cred, an ambiguity that might help a candidate win the nomination and then actually contend in November.

When half of likely GOP voters believe Obama is a Muslim and liar, most candidates probably assume they have to go around the bend to be nominated. That's what Huckabee's doing, whether with his gigantogaffe or his Fox News defense of it. But thinking you have to do it doesn't make it right. You can choose not run. You can switch parties. You can even boldly denounce all toxic, paranoid fantasies, say, "I know the president loves our country no less than I do," and then disagree with him on every single issue. That's the way it used to be done.

Getting The Facts? No Big Deal

The source of the widely reported allegation today that Fox News chief Roger Ailes was about to be indicted for allegedly telling one of his executives to lie during a federal probe? According to "Salon," a blogger met some guy in an airport and published what he said without checking the facts. If it turns out to be wrong, the blogger says, "no big deal." That's the hackosphere for you -- until someone wins a libel suit against a blogger.

A Presidents Day Epiphany

Tonight Fox News' Sean Hannity used the bludgeon of his imaginary Ronald Reagan (the one who didn't enact $400 billion a year in tax increases) to try to get Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to attack Barack Obama on fiscal policy and stick up for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's attempt to limit public employees' collective bargaining rights. Brown said that he'd prefer to work with Obama than attack him and that Wisconsin's policies were Wisconsin's business.

While Hannity's contempt for Brown was palpable, the senator kept his cool -- which got me wondering whether Brown might have what it takes to sit at the poker table.

Read historian Maarja Krusten's thoughts on the virtue of keeping our cool here.

You Decide.

An anonymous former Fox News insider claims the network is totally focused on advancing the GOP agenda.

Living In Their Own Private Iowa

After a major Bill O'Reilly interview, such as yesterday's with Barack Obama, Fox News usually spends a considerable amount of time analyzing how Bill did, what an expert thought of Bill's body language, how about Bill for keeping his cool or getting under the guy's skin, what was Bill's best question, that kind of thing.

This evening the excitement washed over into Sean Hannity's hour, when producers assembled a focus group in Des Moines for a blow-by-blow analysis of Bill's triumph that was barreling right along until it developed that nearly half said they thought the president was a Muslim. This was startling enough that even Hannity felt he had to admit that Obama's a Christian, albeit the radical, Jeremiah Wright kind.

Is the Des Moines effect a manifestation of Sam Tanenhaus's vitally important insight -- evangelical Christians saying that the mainline variety (such as Obama, baptized in the United Church of Christ) aren't really Christians at all and therefore as good as Muslims? Or are they just conspiracy hounds? Either way, their candid admission makes me wonder how much voter delusion Republican candidates will have to indulge or embrace during the 2012 primaries, and after doing so, how they can possibly get elected.

Obama Is The New Kissinger

Ross Douthat on our realist president:

Obama’s response to the Egyptian crisis has crystallized [Barack Obama's] entire foreign policy vision. Switch on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and you would assume that there’s a terrible left-wing naïveté — or worse, a sneaking anticolonial sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood — at work in the White House’s attempts to usher Hosni Mubarak out the door. But look closer, and it’s clear that the administration’s real goal has been to dispense with Mubarak while keeping the dictator’s military subordinates very much in charge. If the Obama White House has its way, any opening to democracy will be carefully stage-managed by an insider like Omar Suleiman, the former general and Egyptian intelligence chief who’s best known in Washington for his cooperation with the C.I.A.’s rendition program. This isn’t softheaded peacenik dithering. It’s cold-blooded realpolitik.