Columnist.
WASHINGTON -- I have been defamed by Taylor Branch, and he will not reply to my repeated calls for clarification. The defamation takes place in his new book, "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President." The defamation he printed comes from the Boy President himself, so perhaps my reputation will emerge immaculate. By now, I think it is pretty clear to all Americans that Clinton tells the truth only when he misspeaks.
WASHINGTON -- If you happen to be in Manhattan on Monday, do not miss the Columbus Day parade gliding up Fifth Avenue. It will be a gaudy, joyful affair as always, but it will feature something especially timely. Its grand marshal is a brassy gent who took on Eliot Spitzer when the former New York governor as attorney general was at the height of his reckless powers, publicly slandering private citizens in the hopes of intimidating them into plea bargains while privately employing ladies of delight for what the FBI reported was "unsafe sex," perhaps undertaken at breakneck speed and without a seat belt. Let us pass on; "unsafe sex" does not invite prolonged contemplation in a serious column, and in this column, I am particularly serious. The Columbus Day grand marshal did something uniquely honorable and courageous.
WASHINGTON -- Boone Pickens likes to call it a "game changer," and the game he has in mind is a big one: the game for our global energy security. Boone is the billionaire Texas oilman who years ago warned that the price of oil will continue to go up, price plateau by price plateau -- each plateau being higher and more expensive for the American consumer. Sure, the price of oil will dip from its highs, but then it will go up again to a higher plateau. As the years pass, the price of oil has been climbing and will continue to climb. That is because the supply of oil is finite, and the demand is always growing. Worse, the United States, which uses 25 percent of the world's oil with only 4 percent of the world's population, has only 3 percent of the world's reserves, and that is being exhausted. We now depend on foreign oil for almost 70 percent of our oil needs. Our suppliers are countries such as Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Russia, which is to say, countries that are unfriendly or unstable or both.
WASHINGTON -- Was I wrong about him? I have voiced a low opinion of the Hon. Newt Gingrich since the mid-1990s. It was then that I concluded Newt was the Republican equivalent of Boy Clinton. That is to say, Newt was a 1960s narcissist of the student government variety. A rather good book on these two lovable lugs, "The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation," by historian Steven M. Gillon, confirmed my assessment, right down to their early campaigns as campus Machiavels when the rest of us were drinking beer and avoiding the library. Yet possibly I was wrong about Newt, or possibly he has grown. The other day in The Good Times -- also known as The Washington Times -- Newt published a very important piece revealing that Newt has given sustained intelligent thought to the Prophet Obama's present Carousel of Incompetence. Newt is not the only observer to recognize that we face four years of high seas, after which a Reagan or a Roosevelt (any Roosevelt) will be exigent. Even the left is catching on. Recently in the U.K., Steven Hill, writing in the left-wing Guardian, lamented: "Beyond Obama's oratorical skills, which excited not only American voters but people all over the world, he is mostly untested as a politician. His previous experience was only a few years in the US Senate and a few years more as a state senator. A sinking feeling is arising (can a sinking feeling arise?) among many that President Obama may not be up to the task." Hill's gloomy appraisal reminds me of me ... and of Newt.
WASHINGTON -- My absurdity meter has blown up. The current news has been simply too much for this frail device, which I attach to my television set to give me a daily reading of the news' absurdity content. First, two wholesome young people conduct a sting operation in the offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, presenting themselves as dealers in the sex business and receiving practical advice as to how to successfully conduct business and launder money. Then former President Jimmy Carter claims a congressman's terse, albeit ill-tempered, declamation was "based on racism." Finally, a United Nations "fact-finding" mission reports that Israel is morally equivalent to the terrorists who have lobbed 8,000 rockets and mortars into southern Israel since 2001. It was all too much for my little absurdity meter. Its dial spun madly. Its buzzer began to scream. Then it simply went pop and expired. I shall have to return it to Andrew Breitbart for repairs.
WASHINGTON -- Sept. 1 was the 70th anniversary of Hitler's blitzkrieg into Poland and the beginning of World War II. Fifty million people died. Western Europe was devastated. Eastern Europe was more thoroughly devastated and subjected to communist tyranny that for decades seemed invincible and a threat to the Free World, which remained armed and vigilant. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt emerged from that war as legendary heroes who saved our civilization. Almost immediately, there were skeptics. Some claimed that both were responsible for the war. Some claimed that Roosevelt provoked the Pearl Harbor attack and failed to notify our doomed soldiers and sailors. These skeptics were, of course, cranks.
WASHINGTON -- Why is the governor of South Carolina still a national news story? This past week, Gov. Mark Sanford was again in the news, and neither sex nor romance had anything to do with it. I can understand his first great news splash, after he completely vanished from the face of the earth. Then he duped his staff into announcing that he was communing with the birds and the bees along the Appalachian Trail. Then it was discovered that he had actually been emulating the birds and the bees down in Argentina with a secret Argentine inamorata. She is easy on the eyes and certainly would have been worth the trip, if only he were not married with four children and if that bizarre deception about woodsy trails had not been attempted.
WASHINGTON -- According to the Gallup Poll, the Prophet Obama's job approval is now at its lowest since his coronation. It began at 70 percent. Now it is at 51 percent. Equally glum, his disapproval rating has climbed from 11 percent to 42 percent. So what about his golf game up there at Martha's Vineyard? From all I have been able to ascertain, it is mediocre. In other words, Mr. Obama, you are no Dan Quayle. Former Vice President Quayle was a really superb golfer. Moreover, he ran a competent staff. Naturally, it was smaller than Mr. Obama's, but it was run competently.
It took cancer longer than a year to kill Bob Novak, and actually, this was the fifth cancer that tried to kill him. Let that stand as testimony as to how tough this guy was. He was very tough. He worked long hours as a reporter and columnist. He always was on call to pop onto a TV set and comment on breaking news. He prepared diligently for the two cable shows he appeared on, CNN's "Crossfire" and "Capital Gang." On those shows, he earned the widely known sobriquet "The Prince of Darkness," which was nonsense. He was tough, but he was fair, objective and a thoroughly decent man.
WASHINGTON -- Allow me a word of encouragement to our president. Mr. Obama, you are doing just fine. You wanted to set a new tone in Washington, and you have. You wanted an open debate on health care, and you have it. Admittedly, the tone is astoundingly rancorous, and not incidentally, your approval ratings continue to decline. Then, too, support for your health care reform is dropping, especially among independents. Yet I believe you can take heart. You have roused the interest of the American people in you, the Democratic Party, the Congress and health care. That is good news, at least for us conservatives. Again, you are doing fine. Ever-larger numbers of Americans are alarmed by you, your party, the Congress and your health care monstrosity. Mr. President, you are doing fine. Keep it up. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
