In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Christopher Hitchens is his old gregarious self, taking apart Juan Cole, talking up the threat from Iran (and why nothing will be done about it) and giving a small pre-post mortem of the Bush administration.
The whole thing i worth reading or listening to, but I found this to be a very succint explanation of our current domestic situation:
MS: I think [the Bush administration] does seem to me exhausted. And in a strange way, a lot of the things that he's getting into trouble with over the moment, like the $3 a gas pump, is, I think, a reflection of...it doesn't even have the sort of strength of will to drag its own party with him. I mean, I thought the Senate bill, that the Senate Republicans proposed on energy, is completely preposterous. If the Republicans cave in on energy, which is a national security issue, and which is something where the Democrats are even more witless than usual, because they're not in favor of any kind of energy. If you were to say we should all go back to wood-fired steam trains on the Atchison, Topeka and the Sante Fe, they'd say oh, no, sorry. We're opposed to logging. We can't even have that. They're opposed to all kinds of energy. And if you've got a Democrat Party that's not serious, you've got a Republican Party that is frivolous in Congress more than half the time, then it's no wonder the administration is just exhausted.
While I was getting ready for a meeting this afternoon, I caught a few minutes of a Bush speech on immigration. It was a particularly weak speech and delivered weakly, as if he had been suddenly awakened and put behind a podium. I don't know if he was bird dogging or not, but if somebody actually wrote the line that "we are a nation of laws because we have laws" or whatever nonsensical pabulum that was, that person should be fired immediately.
I love Hitchens' poke at the Congress, and I know that he was answering Hewitt's narrow question (is there another man as still-cheery about Bush as Hewitt?) but I don't think that Bush's problems are all the Congress' fault. Congress is part of the problem, of course, but there is such a lack of focus and will in this administration that it should collectively be charged with neglect.
-Daniel
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