The Campaigns' Most Morbid Day

Death will not take a holiday this Memorial Day weekend, which starts with Hillary Clinton's bizarre invocation of Robert Kennedy's assassination as a reason for staying in the race and John McCain's release of his medical records in a scene straight out of "Citizen Kane."

Others may not go as ballistic as Keith Olbermann did over the RFK reference, but the former First Lady, who had to live for eight years with the specter of her husband's possible death as a condition of occupying the White House, was far out of bounds in raising the subject, as her own ensuing backpedaling and her campaign's multiple explanations indicate.

Mortality was an issue for Republicans as well with the carefully controlled viewing of 1,173 medical documents relating to John McCain's health.

As described by the New York Times Caucus blog, the circumstances resemble the "Citizen Kane" scene in which a newsweekly reporter is allowed to examine his deceased guardian's memoirs in a vault with an armed guard standing by:

"Senator McCain’s campaign is making the documents available in a limited way (they cannot be copied or taken out of a room at a resort in Phoenix; and only certain media organizations--not The Times--were allowed in as pool reporters). And they can only be reviewed for a few hours today."

Years ago, news media used to report predictions of the numbers of highway fatalities for holiday weekends like the odds on football games. Discretion ended that practice, but for this holiday weekend at least, potential death is back in the headlines again.

Package Deals of Prejudice for November

As vice-presidential searches start, Democrats and Republicans are in a position to offer voters full-course menus to express their fears and hatreds.

The growing clamor for a Clinton-Obama ticket would give mysogynists and racists a joint outlet, while ageism and anti-Mormon intolerance would be provided by McCain and Romney, who are sharing barbecue in Arizona this weekend.

When the issue of a Catholic president was up in 1960 or a divorced man in Reagan's 1980 run, discrimination was relatively primitive. Now, in the era of anything-goes, ballots can proffer demographic breakthroughs wholesale.

The only problem would be disentangling which prejudices drew the most votes for or against each ticket, but that will be a job for the pollsters and pundits.

Coalition of the Willing to Be Paid

If we're failing to win hearts and minds, it's not because we're cheapskates.

Recently, the US Army paid 1,000 Iraqis $320,800 each for "Services Other Than Personal” based on one signature and no further explanation. Such largesse is cited in a new audit of $8.2 billion that finds, according to the New York Times, "almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received."

In addition, the audit showed "a sometimes stunning lack of accountability in the way the United States military spent some $1.8 billion in seized or frozen Iraqi assets...often doled out in stacks or pallets of cash."

“It sounds like the coalition of the willing is the coalition of the willing to be paid,” said Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, who yesterday introduced a “clean contracting” amendment to a defense authorization bill being debated by the House. Accepted by voice vote, it institutes reforms that include whistleblower protections and strict requirements on competitive bidding.

But such measures will come too late to stop a $5.6 million Treasury check written to pay a Baghdad trading company for items that the voucher doesn't detail or $6.2 million to another contractor with even less explanation or a scrawl on another piece of paper for $8 million, described only as “Funds for the Benefit of the Iraqi People.”

At this rate, we shouldn't have had to fight to liberate Iraq. We could have just bought it, lock, stock and oil barrel.

McCain's Crosses to Bear

Now that he is being bedeviled by two embarrassing preachers, the Republican standard bearer may be thinking back wistfully to 2000 when he took a stronger stand on the separation of church and state.

Yesterday, McCain officially dumped Pastor John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church "the Great Whore" and claimed Hitler had been fulfilling God’s will by hastening the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.

But the candidate is still accepting the embrace of televangelist Rod Parsley, who calls on Christians to wage a "war" against the "false religion" of Islam with the aim of destroying it.

In 2000, when he was being pounded by evangelicals supporting George W. Bush, McCain said, "I recognize and celebrate that our country is founded upon Judeo-Christian values...but political intolerance by any political party is neither a Judeo-Christian nor an American value.

"The political tactics of division and slander are not our values, they are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country.

"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance, whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right."

In the intervening years, the driver of the Straight Talk Express has wooed those he was denouncing then and is now paying a political price for it by having to throw Hagee under the bus.

If this keeps up, McCain may have to rethink not inviting Mike Huckabee, a less controversial man of the cloth, as one of the possible running mates he is entertaining this weekend.

General Petraeus, Meet President Obama

The human shield that Bush and his true believers have used to prolong the war in Iraq is now speaking out against making the same mistake in Iran.

Gen. David Petraeus, nominated to lead US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee today that he supports continued engagement with international and regional partners to find diplomatic, economic and military leverage to deal with the challenge of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime.

The Washington Post reports that, in written answers to questions posed by the Committee, Petraeus said the possibility of military action against Iran should be retained as a "last resort" but that the US "should make every effort to engage by use of the whole of government, developing further leverage rather than simply targeting discrete threats."

This Senate testimony today may come as a shock to John McCain, Joe Lieberman et al who have been attacking their colleague Barack Obama for saying just that on the Presidential campaign trail.

Cynics may find Petraeus' attitude little more than a political adjustment to the inevitability of a Democratic Commander-in-Chief next year, but the General, despite his fronting for Bush-Cheney policies, has been a closet realist who has always maintained that we "can't kill our way out of Iraq."

It's encouraging to see him coming out of the closet.

The Can-Do Kennedy

Unlike his brothers, Ted Kennedy won't leave behind any soaring rhetoric for the history books, but colleagues in both parties this week are recalling his four decades as the Senate's most practical politician who "routinely reached across party lines on a wide number of issues to cut landmark deals."

In contrast to their public use of his name to signify woolly-headed liberalism, Republicans are talking about the "go-to guy" in getting laws on the books, practitioner of a lost bipartisan art in the era of Bush-Rove scorched-earth polarization.

“He’s a legislator’s legislator," says Sen. Jon Kyl. "At the end of the day, he wants to legislate, he understands how, and he understands compromise.”

“I’ve known and worked with him for 40 years," recalls GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander. "He’s results-oriented. He takes his positions, but he sits down and gets results,” Alexander said.

Jack and Bobby Kennedy were tough acts to follow, and their younger brother turned out not to have their talent for words to inspire voters. In 1980, his attempt to challenge Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination was undone when he fumbled the answer to Roger Mudd's question of why he wanted to be president in a TV interview.

Instead, Ted Kennedy fell back on the old-pol genes of his maternal grandfather, Honey Fitz Fitzgerald, who helped build modern Boston during four decades as mayor after his family came over from Ireland during the Potato Famine.

Now, Republicans like John McCain' sidekick Lindsey Graham are being wistful about cutting deals with Ted Kennedy with a handshake or promise when they hammered out laws such as one on policy toward foreign detainees.

“When we worked on the detainee bill it was just members of the Senate and members of the executive branch literally writing a bill, line by line,” Graham remembers. “He told me it was like the Civil Rights Bill, where you just put people in a room and you wouldn’t let them out.”

When a new American era starts next January, both Democrats and Republicans are hoping Ted Kennedy will still be there to show them how it's done.

Lieberman, Leper-to-Be

The former Democrat, then Independent, now Republican sheep dog for John McCain refuses to go gentle in that good night, today barking lies about Barack Obama in the Wall Street Journal.

Obama, Joe Lieberman says, proposes "a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet."

The Democratic nominee-to-be has proposed no such "without preconditions" thing, but that doesn't stop Lieberman from indicting his former party as having gone gutless, in contrast to the good old days of the Cold War when Kennedy was misled by hawks into the Bay of Pigs disaster and then, as Ted Sorensen tells it in his new memoirs, had to use an exquisite combination of brains, toughness and diplomacy to keep the world from blowing up during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But as Gilda Radner used to say, never mind. When Obama is in the Oval Office next January and Democrats have a solid majority in the Senate, Chairman Joe of the Homeland Security Committee may find himself a very lonely former Democrat, former McCain advisor and former Chairman.

Deciding Demographic: The Inattentive

Give or take Florida and Michigan, some 35 million American voters have determined that Barack Obama will contest John McCain to become the next president. Now comes the harder part.

Of all the demographic divisions--gender, race, age, economic status, education--Obama faces the most crucial of all, between those who have been paying attention and those who haven't.

With all the new registrations, this year's total of voters is sure to exceed the 122 million of 2004, and the Democratic candidate's challenge will be to make himself known to those like the woman in West Virginia who rejected him saying, "No More Hussein," and millions more who don't know even that much about him.

Presidential campaigns, for better or worse, come down to the perceived character of the candidates, and Obama has come a long way but is still relatively unknown to many, if not most, voters.

In Iowa last night, he asserted that the hard-fought battle for the nomination was good for his party, saying, "Now, some may see the millions upon millions of votes cast for each of us as evidence that our party is divided. But I see it as proof that we have never been more energized and united in our desire to take this country in a new direction."

For the next six months, the Obama campaign will be all about going beyond the energized and united to reach the apathetic, the uninformed and the fearful to persuade them that they and their families will be better off with him in the Oval Office than John McCain.

John F. Kennedy had the same problem in 1960, a young Senator running against a better-known, more experienced political figure, and he overcame it. Eleanor Roosevelt, late in life, compared him to her husband being energized by the campaign crowds of 1932.

In the era of TV and the Internet, Obama is capable of outdoing them both.

Now for Something Completely Different...

When it comes to political attacks, Americans are technologically as far behind the Russians in symbols of power as in the Sputnik days of the 1950s.

Giving a speech to unite opposition forces in Moscow this weekend, former chess champion Garry Kasparov was interrupted by a radio-controlled toy helicopter in the shape of a penis.

No word whether the missive was launched by Putin supporters or to promote Viagra.

McCain, the Goldilocks Candidate

Unnerving as the image may be, there is a contorted Three-Bearish quality to the tale of the Republican standard bearer this year.

After the party found Rudy Giuliani too hot and Mitt Romney too cold, Ron Paul too hard and Fred Thompson too soft, they reluctantly decided that John McCain was just right, albeit not far right enough to suit some of the more vocal party animals.

Pappa Bear Rush Limbaugh has been ignoring McCain and diverting himself by getting Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

Momma Bear Ann Coulter is still sulking about McCain sitting in her chair with threats to vote for Hillary in November because "she's more conservative than he is" and "would be stronger on the war on terrorism."

Only Baby Bear Bill Kristol, with the optimism of youth, has warmed up to the GOP Goldilocks, babbling that "Republican hopes of denying Democrats complete control of the federal government for the next couple of years may rest on the promise of 'McCain exceptionalism,'” which could result in "a return to this cold-war model--a strong-on-national-security and supporter-of-middle-American-values Republican presidential candidate prevailing, while at the same time voters choose a Democratic Congress."

As fairy tales go, that may be the most outlandish of all.

The Last of Our Kennedy Past

For my generation, the sadness over Ted Kennedy's diagnosis today goes deeper than the sudden awareness of one man's mortality. He is our last link to a time of youth and hope.

The youngest of Joe and Rose's nine children, he grew up in the shadow of not only Jack and Bobby, but the oldest brother Joe, who died in World War II. When JFK was elected president, Teddy had to wait two years before he turned thirty and could run for and win his brother's vacated Senate seat.

Over the next 44 years, he won eight more elections, survived both the accident at Chappaquiddick and the ensuing scandal, made a half-hearted attempt to run for the White House in 1980 and then worked hard and tirelessly to become a figure worthy of the Kennedy legend.

The shock and grief on the faces of his Congressional colleagues today testify to his accomplishments both as a keeper of the Kennedy flame and a figure of accomplishment in his own right.

As we prepare to turn a new page in our political history, Ted Kennedy is a living reminder of some of the best that preceded it. Millions will be praying for him.

Why Is NBC So Touchy?

Ed Gillespie only wants to help. Karl Rove's successor in the White House has embarked on a new career as media critic, judging NBC guilty of "deceitful editing to further a media-manufactured storyline" and create an "utterly misleading and irresponsible" impression of a Presidential interview about his speech to the Israeli Knesset.

In times like these, Americans need all the media criticism they can get, particularly corrective analysis coming from such an informed source as a lifelong lobbyist whose clients have included Enron and, perhaps more pertinent in this case, Viacom, owner of CBS.

In 2003, the watchdog group Public Citizen called Gillespie an "embedded lobbyist" to further the interests of his "corporate benefactors" as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In his new incarnation, the Counselor to the President is urging NBC news honcho Steve Capus to reassure Americans that "blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don't hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division."

Capus reassured him that the Presidential interview "has been available, unedited, in its entirety, for the past day, on our website. Our reporting accurately reflects the interview...NBC News, as part of a free press in a free society, makes its own editorial decisions."

But why can't they see that Gillespie just wants to help?

Obama-McCain Family Values

In warning Republicans to "lay off my wife" in their ads, Barack Obama yesterday was challenging John McCain to call off the dogs who are nipping at Michelle Obama just as they attacked Cindy McCain to give George W. Bush the nomination in 2000.

Opponents, Obama said on Good Morning America, "can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. I've been in public life for 20 years," then added that if "they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable."

The subtext of Obama's warning could be a reminder that, as late as last summer, Mrs. McCain was speaking out against such tactics, as the New York Times reported in an interview with her: "Ugly accusations about her family, she insisted, will not be tolerated this time. 'If that were to even bubble its head up again,' she said, "we’d knock that flat.'”

In 2000, the Rove smear machine attacked with slanders and push polls about everything from Mrs. McCain's one-time addiction to pain killers to rumors that their adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a black child McCain had fathered.

Eventually, Bridget, now 16, learned about that in a Google search of her name and went to her mother in tears. “She wanted to know why President Bush hated her,” Mrs. McCain said. “And I had to explain to her...how nasty campaigns can be.”

Now the question for the Republican candidate is: Can he control those same groups who also did the Swiftboat ads against John Kerry in 2004, which McCain publicly denounced?

On GMA, Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class...especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values."

McCain no doubt agrees, but will the man who claims to be strong enough to protect Americans from their enemies abroad be able to shield them from the sleazebags who make those commercials?

Senator Byrd's Decision

A 90-year-old man, who once wore the robes of the Ku Klux Klan and whose constituents voted for Hillary Clinton last week by a margin of more than 2-1, endorsed Barack Obama for president today.

Sen. Robert Byrd of West Viriginia, third in line of presidential succession, may well be the most superdelegate of them all, in deciding the Democratic nominee.

“I believe," he said, "Barack Obama is a shining young statesman, who possesses the personal temperament and courage necessary to extricate our country from this costly misadventure in Iraq, and to lead our nation at this challenging time in history...Barack Obama is a noble-hearted patriot and humble Christian, and he has my full faith and support.”

Byrd, who led the opposition to the 2002 Senate resolution giving George W. Bush a blank check to invade Iraq, was apparently not swayed by Hillary Clinton's conversion to his point of view and co-sponsoring a resolution last year to "de-authorize" the war.

More than four thousand lives and half a trillion dollars after her vote for the original authorization, the Senator from West Virginia must have decided that was too little and too late.

The Gender Agenda

"If many of Mrs. Clinton’s legions of female supporters believe she was undone even in part by gender discrimination," the New York Times asks today, "how eagerly will they embrace Senator Barack Obama, the man who beat her?"

The question underscores how crucial it is for Democrats to untangle the issue of what derailed America's first woman president from what seemed her clear path to the White House only a year ago. Was Hillary Clinton's campaign undone by the message or the messengers?

In the latter category, Sen. Clinton, although she bears ultimate responsibility, was clearly hampered not only by her husband but hot-shot strategist Mark Penn, who failed to see that voters would be turned off by a play-it-safe campaign fueled by what looked like a sense of entitlement. (They overlooked the lesson of what Harry Truman did to Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, a "sure" year for Republicans.)

"When people look at the arc of the campaign, it will be seen that being a woman, in the end, was not a detriment and if anything it was a help to her,” presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin points out. Her candidacy faltered as a result of “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman.”

No matter how true that may be, and even if they accept its validity, that will bring cold comfort to millions of women who have so much hope invested in what Hillary Clinton calls breaking "the highest and hardest glass ceiling" in American life.

All other calculations aside, and there are many, this frustration has to be taken into account in Barack Obama's choice of a running mate. With consideration and without condescension, the potential first African-American President has to think long and hard about the symbolic and practical value of breaking through American prejudice with two for the price of one.

"Because He's Black"

With Hillary Clinton's chances fading, the issue of race is boiling to the surface, as it did in West Virginia and will again in Kentucky tomorrow.

Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."

"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"

Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.

How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.

The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."

Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?

Feeding Frenzies, Here and There

The rising threat of childhood obesity in America is in the Washington Post spotlight this weekend offering a bizarre contrast to recent headlines about worldwide hunger and starvation.

"In ways only beginning to be understood," the Post reports, "overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life...

"Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians' offices; even a spike in child gallstones, also once a singularly adult affliction...

"With one in three children in this country overweight or worse, the future health and productivity of an entire generation--and a nation--could be in jeopardy."

The inequality mirrored in overfed children here and starving children elsewhere is complex on both sides of the equation.

Crop failures, hoarding, corruption, manipulated food prices, even natural disasters exacerbated by political stupidity (as in Myanmar) are part of the politics of starvation that resist humanitarian and financial aid efforts.

The alarming rise in American childhood obesity has roots in a culture of sedentary pastimes, among other causes, but fast food and nutritional ignorance contribute to an epidemic that may overwhelm our health care system in generations to come, even as increasing economic disparities of the Bush years leave pockets of hunger and malnutrition here that resemble Third World suffering.

If human beings can't get their act together on something as basic as rationally providing and consuming food for the survival of the species, what hope is there for progress on the knottier problems of civilization?

McCain's Backward Media March

For a campaign in which he faces a quarter-of-a-century age gap with Barack Obama, John McCain has been busy searching for the media's Fountain of Youth, last night on SNL and with a forthcoming interview in Glamour.

Taking a leaf from his hero, Ronald Reagan, who was even older when running for reelection in 1984, McCain is making jokes about his age. In a presidential debate back then, the 73-year-old Reagan deadpanned about Walter Mondale: "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

In a parody political ad on Saturday Night Live, McCain emoted, “Good evening, my fellow Americans. I ask you: what should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly, someone who is very, very, very old...I have the courage, the wisdom, the experience and most importantly, the oldness necessary."

He added that controlling government spending was about being able to look your children in the eye, “or in my case my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, great-great grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren--the youngest of whom are nearing retirement.’’

Interviewed by Glamour, whose readers are young women under 35, McCain says he finds the website, ThingsYoungerMcCain.com., "hilarious." Told that Scrabble, the Golden Gate Bridge and area codes are on the list, he added, "Yes indeed. Not to mention the Internet and...maybe even color TV."

Technically, experimental color sets predate him, but not cable TV. More importantly, he is senior to the whole generation of Baby Boomers, who now make up the majority of older voters.

But that won't faze the potentially most ancient President ever to take office, who has been one of Jon Stewart's most frequent Daily Show guests. Next stop: Sesame Street.

Abandoning Bush

The rush to get off the S.S. Bush turned into a stampede this week as John McCain, Congressional Republicans and even the Saudis headed for the lifeboats.

King Abdullah, who used to hold his hand, gave Bush the royal finger when asked to pump more oil to ease gas prices.

John McCain backed away from the Imperial Presidency, not only by promising to emulate British prime ministers and regularly going to both houses of Congress to answer questions but also, as a New York Times editorial put it:

"McCain said, if elected, he will...work in 'concerted action' with other nations to counter the nuclear threats of Iran and North Korea; and eliminate a tax meant for the rich that is crushing the upper-middle class. He promised to not 'subvert the purpose of legislation,' as Mr. Bush has done, with signing statements."

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans were jumping ship by joining Democrats in ignoring Bush's veto threats with lopsided votes to boost food stamps and farm subsidies and to order the Administration to stop pouring oil into the nation's emergency reserves.

Over vocal White House opposition, 35 of 49 Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to pass a $290 billion farm bill to increase food aid for the needy. A hundred House Republicans had voted the same way after the party's third straight loss of a long-held GOP seat on Tuesday.

After seeing the results of Dick Cheney's help in that special election, Congressional Republicans have a sinking feeling about November. If George W. Bush is looking for friends until then, he will have to turn to his dog Barney.

Crapshoot in Saudi Arabia

George W. Bush, who wants to talk about oil prices, is spending the day with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who wants to talk about pulverizing Iran.

Four months ago, when our President asked his Mideast friend for help, the price of crude was $91 a barrel. Yesterday it closed at $127. But the White House National Security Adviser says, "There are limits to how much that production can be ramped up without enormous investments of dollars and enormous investments of time."

Translation: The Saudis won't do much to help their lame-duck friend lower American gas prices between now and November unless they are spooked by the prospect of a President Obama. In 2004, they boosted Bush's reelection chances with a production surge.

On the Iranian front, the White House announced that Saudi Arabia will join the 70-nation Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and the 85-nation Proliferation Security Initiative, and the U.S. will " work with" the Saudis to help protect their energy resources and develop "civilian nuclear power" to be used in medicine, industry and power generation.

Translation: The Saudis get vague promises of help with nuclear weapons if Iran pushes on with efforts to get them.

As always, the dice are loaded against us in the Mideast crapshoot, no matter what we do. When the Democrats take power next year, they will have to figure out a new way to play the game.

Bush's Ultimate Indecency

Anyone looking for a new definition of "obscenity" should consult George W. Bush's remarks today at the 60th anniversary celebration of the birth of Israel.

The man who set off needless bloodshed in the Middle East five years ago chose to lecture survivors of the Holocaust about appeasement.

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush told the Israeli Knesset.

"We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

This President may not know much about appeasement, but he is the model of those who have been and will be discredited by history.

Barack Obama, who now seems America's only hope to begin to undo the Bush damage to America's moral standing in the world, had an answer:

"It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel.

"George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the president's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

It's sad that we have to wait until next January to rid ourselves of Bush's ignorant indecency.

Art News: No Freudian Slip

The world's record price for a painting by a living artist was set yesterday when the life-sized nude of a largish woman by Sigmund Freud's grandson was sold to an unknown buyer for $33.6 million at Christie's in New York.

Titled "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," the 1995 work by the 85-year-old Lucian Freud portrays Sue Tilley, now 51, reclining on a dilapidated sofa.

The money, the Freudian connection, the ample nudity, the subject's working class status may suggest a confluence of 21st century cultural themes, but the art world sees the sale only as a hopeful sign of vitality in the face of a slumping world economy. It reflects, according to a Christie's official, the "incredibly healthy" state of the art market.

Recognized as one of the world's great painters, Freud has been a subject of notoriety before. His recent unflattering portrait of Queen Elizabeth was widely criticized. "It makes her look like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke," the editor of an art journal complained.

But another subject, supermodel Kate Moss, painted nude and pregnant in 2002, was quoted as saying she found the artist, then 80, "very cool." Her portrait was sold at Christie's two year later for 3.9 million pounds.

The Tootsie Issue

Words seldom fail him, but one has tripped Barack Obama up.

Yesterday he apologized to a Michigan reporter for calling her "sweetie." In a voicemail message, he mea-culpaed, "That's a bad habit of mine. I do it sometimes with all kinds of people. I mean no disrespect and so I am duly chastened on that front. Feel free to call me back."

But he may be an habitual offender. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times points out that he used the word in addressing a Pennsylvania factory worker last month.

If Obama shares a ticket with Hillary Clinton, he'll have to watch his mouth