Try to imagine how Patrick Kennedy felt. He couldn’t unfasten
his safety belt. Next thing you know he’d earned himself a return
trip to Mayo, which his constituents back in Rhode Island think is
named after a sandwich condiment. Saddest was the comment by fellow
House member Jim Moran, no stranger himself to public displays of
intoxicated passion. “I think he wants more than anything to earn
his father’s respect,” Big Jim told the Washington Post,
evidently unaware that much as dad would like to help his primary
loyalties are to his Massachusetts constituents and not to escapees
from that state.
Democratic diva Valerie “Eternal” Plame has better hair than her
husband, we can now see, perhaps because his yellow streaks appear
elsewhere on his body. No matter. Mrs. Wilson was self-outed at the
White House Correspondents’ Dinner the other Saturday, setting in
motion a wild week that culminated with the announcement that she
had sold her story for a modest $2.5 million to a Random House
imprint. “We are all astonished by the richness of her
storytelling,” said the editor assigned to her book, a rather odd
comment which left open the possibility her memoir will appear
either in the fiction category or else as a loose-lipped nonfiction
product that puts all the rest of the CIA’s leakers to shame.
More reassuring was a little noticed report that at said Correspondents Dinner Mrs.
Plame Wilson was observed chatting with Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, giving
rise to informed speculation that all along Mrs. P-W has worked for
MI6. Her book may thus have the scoop on who was behind the deaths
of Princess Diana and her Egyptian escort. Not to mention who outed
T.E. Lawrence, costing Ambassador Wilson a great many Mideast
clients.
Faster than you could say Don Rumsfeld, opposition gathered to
the expected nomination of Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden to replace
Porter Goss as director of central intelligence. Hayden clearly
hasn’t gone through the appropriate vetting process. To qualify, he
would first have to retire, second, appear on This Week With
Georgie Boy, and third, demand Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Somewhere along the way he would also have to appear on 60
Minutes to plug the new book that had been written for
him.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has gone to the mattresses
against the Bush administration. (We suspect she’s chosen the Serta
Sleeper brand.) At this rate, the entire White House is likely to
tender its resignation before November 7, 2006, rather than face
the wrath of mobs Ms. Pelosi so formidably represents. It’s a
precedent we heartily endorse. Rather than worry about removing
anyone by resorting to impeachment or lawsuits or show trials, give
them a chance to do the right and tender thing: quit. Thus, we have
several choice candidates for resignation in mind, the targets
whittled down during the Rumsfeld resignation wars.
For starters — and all of these characters have been chosen at
random — Bill Clinton. It’s high time he retroactively resign now
for failing to do so before he got himself impeached. It would have
been peachy to have had Al Gore as our unelected president and our
nation spared the Florida 2000 ordeal and ever hotter summers and
Gore-directed documentaries. We think John Kerry should resign —
he really never has explained why he chose to celebrate Christmas
in Cambodia, a country that does not even observe the holiday. We
feel Senator Hillary Clinton should resign, simply for marrying the
wrong guy who’s now abusing her further by trying to use her to get
back into the White House. We think Barry Bonds should resign, and
Kobe Bryant, even though they’re not in the same league. Finally,
we know as well as anyone that Sen. Ted Kennedy should resign for
not bringing up his boy right, not to mention the boy himself for
taking driving lessons from a dad like that.
There’s another consideration: Can the Kennedy name ever recover
once a carpetbagging representative of its younger generation has
been marked for life as an Enemy of the Week?
