R-Whipped

James Walcott, ever elegant and eloquent, takes down Bernard Kerik better than the many others that are having a field day - but the contest is still rolling! Pile on, baby! Every black mark on Kerik is a black mark on Giuliani, and the less we see of that particular self-aggrandizing bloviator the better.

Of particular note in Walcott's column, though, is the following, which addresses a theme close to my heart:

I'm glad the press is having a dance party with this, because God knows the Democrats are frozen at the steering wheel. I just saw a segment on MSNBC (which has been all over the Kerik story today, bless Rick Kaplan's cyborg heart) pitting a Republican strategist against a Democratic one, and the Democratic spokesman--who goes by the name of Michael Brown--seemed to have washed down his weeny pills with warm Ovaltine. Instead of kicking Kerik and Giuliana between the uprights for three points, Brown fretted that vetting process for cabinet candidates was "going to far," and that we were in danger of discouraging people from public service. Oh no, we wouldn't want to discourage philandering, pocket-lining, deadbeat no-show bully-boys like Bernard Kerik from having the opportunity to muck around with our civil liberties in the name of "national security" and hold bigshot press conferences. I mean, if that sort of thing were to continue happening, people might start mistaking the Democrats for an opposition party and thinking that the press has an adversarial role to play, and we don't want that to happen, it might actually lead to signs of life in that mausoleum we call the nation's capital.
This Michael Brown wouldn't even criticize Alberto Gonzalez for botching the background check and vetting of Kerik. I don't understand the self-emasculation of so many Democratic strategists, what they're afraid of, why they concede so much in advance. Give them an opening, and they close it like a silk kimono, ever so demure. What are they in politics for, the professional grooming tips?

I am convinced that Bill Clinton won the White House because he had few DC Democratic operatives in his politburo, and that Al Gore managed to lose the White House despite winning the election because of his fealty to that hopeless eunch Bob Shrum and a coterie of other spineless insiders. The same is true for Kerry. It's time to clean house.