So says Eric Foner about George W Bush:

He's The Worst Ever

By Eric Foner
Sunday, December 3, 2006; B01

Ever since 1948, when Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr. asked 55 historians to rank U.S. presidents on a scale from "great" to "failure," such polls have been a favorite pastime for those of us who study the American past.

This is interesting:

The latest example of a lack of grace in Washington is the exchange between Jim Webb and President Bush at a White House Christmas party. Mr. Webb did not want to pose with the president and so didn't join the picture line. Fair enough, everyone feels silly on a picture line. Mr. Bush approached him later and asked after his son, a Marine. Mr. Webb said he'd like his son back from Iraq. Mr. Bush then, according to the Washington Post, said: "That's not what I asked you. How's your son?" Mr. Webb replied that's between him and his son.

For this Mr. Webb has been roundly criticized. And on reading the exchange I thought it had the sound of the rattling little aggressions of our day, but not on Mr. Webb's side. Imagine Lincoln saying, in such circumstances, "That's not what I asked you." Or JFK. Or Gerald Ford!

"That's not what I asked you" is a sentence straight from cable TV, from which many Americans are acquiring an attitude toward public and even private presentation.

The President of the United States should not behave like Sean Hannity. In public or private. Good for Noonan.

It may be time to file a commitment petition against Rep. Tom Tancredo. The man needs some serious medication.

Tancredo managed to cheese off Jeb Bush, of all people, with this remark:

"Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you're in the United States of America. You would certainly say you're in a Third World country."

Although Bush omitted the obvious argument that third world countries aren't as populated with Starbucks as Miami, he made a good point nonetheless: "Miami is a wonderful city filled with diversity and heritage that we choose to celebrate, not insult." You know the end is near when Jeb Bush is the voice of sanity.

"Values":

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran. He should not be allowed to do so — not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization. . . . Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison’s favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible.

James Joyner discusses rights:

I would point Mr. Prager to Article VI of the Constitution of the United States, specifically the third paragraph:

. . . [N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Nothing in the Constitution requires the taking of the Oath on a Bible, or any other book. Indeed, doing so would obviously constitute a “religious test.” There’s also the little matter of the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . .

What would Jim Wallis say?

After the Radical Right spent years attacking progressives as the "Loony Left" and "moonbats," I can't say this is not making me smile:

It's the wrong strategy, being pursued and driven by all the usual suspects: social conservatives; immigration fanatics; ethically-challenged pork addicts who the former two groups are now calling "moderates" in a fatuous and cynical attempt to portray themselves as the party's real standard bearers, which they are not (please remind me just when Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan proposed amending the Constitution to deal with a social concern, or when either claimed that there was simply no more fat to trim from the federal budget). As Silver suggests in his post, too many moderate and libertarian-leaning Republicans are staying silent on this subject, instead of standing up and pointing the finger for our loss squarely where it belongs: not with the Arnold Schwarzeneggers, John McCains, Rudy Giulianis, Susan Collinses, Jim Kolbes or Mary Bonos of this world, but rather with the Tom DeLays, Rick Santorums, Marilyn Musgraves, John Kyls, Jim Inhofes and Conrad Burnses-- a.k.a., the loss-makers.

The extremist elements of the GOP hoisted on its own petard. Delicious.

Our great friend Chris Bowers writes about our good friends Ed Kilgore and Tom Schaller, and Dems and Dixie:

During my four years in the netroots, I have become a firm believer in coalition politics, and that it takes a wide range of people to form a governing majority. . . One of the keys to building this coalition is that we work together. . . . Ed Kilgore is someone who recognizes these needs. . .

I have been good friends with Ed since early 2005 and have long enjoyed discussing all manner of political issues with him, but especially about the South. And while Ed's post is presented as a counter to Tom Schaller's, I think their views are more similar than Tom, Ed AND Chris think. I'll explain on the flip.

Here is a response to Barack Obama's reachout to "values voters":

As the Chicago Tribune reported recently, Obama is set to attend a huge evangelical gathering in California on Dec. 1, at the invitation of megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, the evangelical superstar who wrote The Purpose-Driven Life. Analysts have interpreted Obama's scheduled appearance as a sign he's working much harder than Dems ordinarily do to win over Evangelicals.

But the appearance is now provoking an intense backlash from leaders of the Christian right. They are calling on Warren to disinvite Obama from the event because of his liberal positions, especially abortion rights — or as one of those leaders put it, Obama's support of "the murder of babies in the womb."

Obama's efforts are running into fierce resistance. For instance, an open letter from a group of Christian-Right figures — including Phylis Schlafly, Tim Wildmon and others — criticizes the invitiation by citing Obama's pro-choice stance and his support for condom distribution in answer to the AIDS epidemic, "not chaste behavior as directed by the Bible." The letter ends, "No, Mr. Warren, Mr. Obama, we will never work with those can support the murder of babies in the womb."

I told you so:

[T]there is only one thing that will satisfy "values" voters enough to put them in play for Democrats -- he knows it, Amy Sullivan knows it, you know it. Abandon a woman's right to choose.

So what say you now Senator Obama? What does Jim Wallis, who is anti-choice, think of this? Reality bites. More.

Kevin Drum adopts a straw man:

CENTRISM....Yes, centrism can be a tic. Yes, it's often favored by DC pundits who automatically assume that bipartisanship is an inherent good regardless of its outcome. Yes, it can sometimes be a substitute for real thought. That said, I hope the liberal blogosphere doesn't get into the habit of automatically trashing centrist positions simply out of pique against some of centrism's more annoying practitioners. After all, trying to govern solely via populist intuition won't work any better than relying on a bunch of blue ribbon commissions.

Centrism is not a tic - it is a myth. A myth with political benefits. I am a centrist I proclaim and have for years.

I tell you who is not a centrist - John McCain, Joe Lieberman, David Broder, Joe Klien, et al. These are Republicans and Republican apologists.

I wish Kevin would not buy into these things. He is a sharp guy with a centrist reputation and can help us on this. I bet I agree with Kevin on issues as much as I agree with any other blogger. I really believe that. The differences between us are stylistic not substantive. And also I am much more critical of self-styled Centrists than he is.

I have no use for Jim Wallis and I begin to wonder if he really has the interests of Democrats and progressives at heart:

"When the Democrats became just the party of rights, they lost something, a moral appeal," Wallis contends. The Democratic patchwork frayed as some of its largest constituencies, particularly working-class whites, began to feel culturally estranged from the party. The breaking point was in 1972, when Republican Richard M. Nixon argued that a vote for Democrat George McGovern was a vote for "acid, amnesty and abortion." To many voters, McGovern embodied an emerging perception that liberals were outside the American mainstream.

Anyone who does not see the moral value in civil rights and liberties is not moral in my book. If Wallis does not share our Democratic values, if he prefers the imposition of his personal religious values on the country, instead of finding common ground with those who do not share his views, then he should be looking for a new party. We will not change our deeply held and cherished values, our love of the Constitution, for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Jim Wallis. It's great that he is for a progressive economic agenda but that does not mean Dems will accept his recalcitrant views on social issues.

Moreover, he is advocating stupid politics. Dems finally put the extremist label on the GOP because it is beholden to the Radical Religious Right. Wallis would throw that away. Do not listen to him Democrats. Ever. He does not believe in what we believe in. He does not even know what we believe in. He is a fool.

A necessary and fascinating debate is now beginning to emerge in the Left blogs about the role of populism in politics and governance. Max Sawicky, Matt Yglesias and atrios have interesting thoughts on this. But I really like Stirling Newberry's take:

Populism is the easiest to make the case for, we would all like to believe that what we do is for "the people". But history . . . shows - it is far from easy to separate out what is good for "the people" from what is good for "my people", who are not "your people". . . The reason for this is that populism desires, even demands, that actions taken be consonant with the emotional logic of the public at large. . . .

I liked this from Stanley Fish on the emptiness of "bipartisanship:"

the phrase “common ground” is trickier than might first appear, for there are (at least) two kinds of common ground – one philosophical and one pragmatic – and the odds of success will change dramatically depending on which you are hoping to find. If you are seeking the philosophical version of common ground, you have entered a conversation that has been going on for thousands of years. The aim of that conversation is to identify the values or needs all men and women share simply by virtue of being human.

Countries, customs, economies and political systems differ greatly, but if there were something common to all of them – something cross-cultural or even trans-cultural – it could serve as the basis of cooperation even between those who disagree on almost everything. Even in the midst of conflict that appears to hold out no hope of resolution, the gridlock (one of our favorite words these days) could be broken if the warring parties reminded themselves that although they are divided on many issues, something basic unites them. Invoking “the welfare of the American people” (or some other facile piety) won’t do it, because what best promotes that welfare is precisely what people are arguing about. It has to be something at once deeper and more precise, something with an appeal so universal that merely to name it is enough to get combatants to lay down their swords and beat them into plowshares.

What Broder and Lieberman and Klein and Obama think is by merely invoking "common ground" and "bipartisanship" you have done something meaningful. Anyone not an idiot knows this is nonsense. Lieberman and Obama certainly know this. I doubt Broder does. Klein may not either. It is just political posturing. The essential emptiness of Broder-ism, Lieberman-ism and Obama-ism.

The funny thing about the Media and Republicans is how little they seemed to have learned from this most recent election.

For two years they, Media and Republicans, forecast that the Democratic Party was self destructing by (1) paying attention to the blogs, (2) focusing on Iraq, (3) being harshly critical of the Bush Administration; (4) fighting against social security privatization; (5) not reaching out to "values" voters; (6) not "compromising" on choice; (7) opposing torture; (8) listening to Murtha; etc.

The elections seemed to prove them wrong to reasonable people. But here they go again:

Having been distracted from the message they wanted to convey in the wake of the midterm elections by Nancy Pelosi's bizarre decision to throw her weight behind John Murtha in his futile campaign against Steny Hoyer for the Majority Leader's position, House Democrats can be forgiven for being quite angry at Charlie Rangel for disrupting their message anew.

Oy. They never learn. Rangel's Modest Proposal, as Josh Marshall cleverly labels it, is about Iraq. There will be no draft. Because our country will not sacrifice more blood and treasure on this Debacle.

The funniest thing is the idea that Democrats might be labelled a warmongering party because of Rangel's proposal. Can you imagine that? Cutting and running and warmongering at the same time?

Sure Republicans. You go with that.