The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

See what happens when Enemy Central goes underground for a week? The worst and the dimmest come flying into our air space, confident that our radar has been shut off. No siree. Let us now refill those skies with our flak.

Where your average New Englander yesterday looked up and saw ice and nuclear winter, the once frigid Al Gore detected acid rain, volcanic heat and a cancerous sun. Sad how with each public appearance of his we learn more about his wife's craving for preventive mental health care. Ever the graceful winner of the Mr. Popularity vote of 2000, he now scoffs at the runner-up as a "moral coward," an apt term coming from someone whose sponsors reserve the right to compare the alleged coward to Mr. A. Hitler. So it must be true that Al Gore invented the Zeppelin.

The former general currently known as Mr. Wesley Clark has new campaign prayer. "I'm just a soul who's intentions are good," he laments, with no apologies to the Animals, "Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood." Naturally, Republicans and other word readers completely misconstrued his congressional testimony in which on paper it says he regarded Mr. Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi animal, as a "threat." Actually, that's a typo. He said, or meant to say, Saddam is a "treat," a great guy to know, to leave in power, to prop up. Wes would have installed him in Kosovo if only he'd had the ground troops available.

Mr. Clark appears to be beating ungovernable Howard Dean at his own game. At last report, Howie had veered to the right. There was the story that had him clinching the Arkansas vote, the gist of which was that he had a close friendship with a state trooper who was less than a model citizen, to put it mildly. Another story had him living a strange political marriage, in which the wife never appeared with him at any public event, never campaigned for him, never served as co-governor, never moved to another state to run for the Senate. More Neanderthal has been Dean's refusal to allow her walk alongside him, to bear his surname, or even to wear makeup. Then when a photographer caught him smiling, the jig was up. Jimmy Carter promptly endorsed him, though biographers of our greatest worst president who have delved deeper into his psyche know it's because he respects any man who escapes the clutches of his own Rosalynn.

Should anyone be surprised Sen. John He's Toast Kerry is standing tall in corn-bred Iowa? That's par for the course for someone whose support was knee-high on the Fourth of July. Farm states have their own logic and lore.

Whatever Frenchy's stature, it shrinks next to that of the Hon. Paul O'Neill. Ever since December 6, 2002, when for the good of the economy he resigned as Treasury secretary, O'Neill has enjoyed unprecedented respect and prominence in the media. In such venues as PBS's "NewsHour" or NBC's "Today" show his visage became more familiar than Jim Lehrer's or Katie Couric's. At the New York Times his commentary was more eagerly awaited and widely read than Paul Krugman's and Maureen Dowd's. His mystique surpassed Alan Greenspan's. How lucky for a media that couldn't get enough of him that O'Neill came through again with keen insights into Bush psychology and military planning. Until now we hadn't known he also served as White House physician and Donald Rumsfeld. Paul O'Neill -- isn't it time the Washington Monument be renamed for him?

This isn't a good sign. Barely several hundred words into the first EOW of Election Year 2004 and we've knocked down every Democratic worthy thought to be flying high (i.e. about as high as the swan with clipped wings at the neighborhood park). Again our copyrighted scenario begins to make complete sense. Face it Dems -- you're living on Mars. There's no life there, and nothing else out there. Save yourself further trauma and run no one against the unbeatable Bush. But, if you insist, certainly the RNC will be happy to lend you the services of the monumental O'Neill. He can head your ticket, even if he is one Enemy of the Week who's admitted that regardless of what he really thinks of Bush he's going to vote for him anyway. Perhaps he worries what Zell Miller will do to him if he doesn't.

topics:
Health Care, Military, Iraq