A tough commute and some other stuff

I’ve really been trying to stay away from politics lately, especially given how unpleasant our current politics are. But things are happening right now and you have to keep your eye on things.

• The hot story from yesterday was President Bush commuting the sentence of Scooter Libby, the former White House aide who took the fall in the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. The outrage from the Perennially Indignant (thanks to P.J. O’Rourke for this useful term) has been loud and predictable, while the Republicans are trying to pretend that it doesn’t matter. I suspect this does matter, but not for the reasons either side is proffering. The larger problem is this: George W. Bush’s most notable failure has not been the War on Terror, including the theatre in Iraq – that steaming pile was in front of him from the beginning. The larger failure has been that George W. Bush has not been able to change the culture in Washington. It may have been an impossible task; there are so many bureaucratic infighters and low-blow artists in our nation’s capital that it might take some sort of political Orkin Man to clean things out. But he promised to try and it’s clear that this was a promise he had no intention of keeping. If he had been serious about reform, he would never have allowed Scooter Libby, a long-time Washington operative who had the charming Marc Rich as a law client, anywhere near his inner circle. But he did. You can’t change Washington if you have people like Scooter on your team. Still, I’m glad Scooter got his sentence commuted, since it does provide an excellent opportunity for schadenfreude at the expense of the Perennially Indignant.
• Apparently there was an attempted attack on the Glasgow airport – the eyewitnesses were awfully hard to understand, even though I’ve heard enough Mike Meyers routines to recognize a brogue when I hear one. The terrorists are testing Gordon Brown, the new British PM. I’m guessing he won’t fold, even though a lot of his supporters would like him to. President Hillary or President Obama can expect a similar test, too.
• Score one for free speech – the Supreme Court’s decision in the Wisconsin Right to Life case was a hammer-blow against the McCain-Feingold regime. I want as much free speech, especially political speech, as possible. I sincerely hope that the Supremes blow the rest of McCain-Feingold away soon.