by JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, June 3, 2003 2:23 P.M. EDT

Honesty Is the Left Policy?
When someone says a politician is "dishonest," it usually means one of two things. One is that he is corrupt--that he uses his office to enrich himself or otherwise breaks the law. An example is a recent president who committed perjury in a sexual-harassment lawsuit and as a consequence was impeached. (We won't name the pol in question, believing as we do that it's long past time to move on.)

The other meaning has to do with policy: A politician is dishonest if he breaks his promises. The first President Bush, for example, emphatically promised "no new taxes" and then went along with tax hikes anyway. One may argue it's harsh to characterize this as dishonest--Bush may simply have changed his mind, or bowed to political reality--but his supporters certainly viewed it as a breach of faith, and he paid for it in 1992.

By both these standards, the current President Bush would have to be judged one of the more honest politicians of our time. He's untouched by scandal, and he keeps his promises. He said he'd cut taxes, and he did. He vowed to liberate Iraq, and he did. But now an argument is developing on the Democratic left that somehow the policies themselves are corrupt--that because Bush doesn't agree with liberal ideas, he is a liar.

In an unusually deranged column even by his standards, former Enron adviser Paul Krugman declares that because coalition forces have not yet found large stocks of weapons in Iraq, that nation's liberation is "arguably the worst scandal in American political history--worse than Watergate." Bush's latest tax cut is "a lie," too, because people who don't pay federal income taxes, including "eight million children," don't get a federal income-tax cut.

Krugman opines that if Bush is re-elected, it will mean that "our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted." This is addlebrained beyond belief. Bush has pursued popular policies, or policies he has made popular by presenting voters with an argument for them. (Example: A Gallup poll finds 56% of Americans agree the liberation of Iraq was justified even if no conclusive evidence is ever found of weapons of mass destruction.)

Rather than grapple with the president's arguments and offer alternatives of their own, the Democratic left--of which Krugman is only the most embarrassing example--is reduced to name-calling: Anyone who disagrees with me is a liar. The liberal but lucid Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne sums up the Democrats' dilemma nicely:

The contest for the 2004 Democratic nomination cannot be understood apart from two factors. One is the intense opposition to Bush at the Democratic grass roots. The other is the widely held sense that the party's older strategies and internal arguments are inadequate to its current problems. Candidates can't win if they address only one of these concerns. But addressing both at the same time will require a political magic that Democrats haven't seen yet.

If Bush is re-elected, it will reflect not the corruption of the country but the intellectual bankruptcy of the opposition.

America Wins the Space Race

"On major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less."--Robert Kagan, Policy Review, June 2002

"Europe Goes to Mars"--headline, BBC Web site, June 3, 2003

Tehran Goes Fission
"Iran invited the United States on Monday to take part in building its nuclear program," the Associated Press reports. The U.S. is likely to decline the "invitation" tendered by Hamid Reza Asefi, a spokesman for the axis of evil member's Foreign Ministry. Asefi said that when the shah ruled, "the United States offered to build nuclear power plants for Iran, and it knew Iran had oil. What has happened so that they are taking a different line now?"

Actually, a lot has happened. Little Green Footballs notes a Middle East Media Research Institute report from January 2002 that sums matters up nicely:

[Former Iranian president Hashemi] Rafsanjani said that Muslims must surround colonialism and force them [the colonialists] to see whether Israel is beneficial to them or not. If one day, he said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons]--on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

How Saddam Hides
The CIA believes Saddam Hussein is still alive, reports United Press International. He's survived thus far by moving around between various homes:

According to U.S. intelligence officials, Saddam and his entourage simply move in with a private family. Members of the family, including children, are taken as hostages so that no other family member will be tempted to inform on Saddam's whereabouts.

These sources said that when Saddam is ready to move to another safe house, the hostages are returned and the family is paid as much as $50,000 for the temporary use of their home.

Why doesn't the U.S. simply outbid the Baathists? If we were to offer, say, a $500,000 or $1 million reward, surely some Iraqi would be willing to sell out his family.

Peace Prospects
We haven't had much to say about the impending "roadmap" talks on Middle East peace, because we're of two minds about the matter. The likelihood of reaching a real settlement in the short term seems not great. On the other hand, if Bush sticks to his principles and demands that the Arabs behave in a civilized way before the Israelis make any concessions, then there's no harm in trying. Here are a pair of articles that nicely capture the ambiguity of the situation. The Washington Post's Richard Cohen explains why peace may be a more realistic hope than ever before:

Bush changed the facts on the ground. At one time, the most critical of them was that Israel was surrounded by hostile nations. One by one, though, Arab state after Arab state dropped out of what was once a united front. . . . Jordan is not about to attack. Saudi Arabia has internal problems. Egypt has other concerns. Lebanon is a basket case. Syria remains menacing, but by itself it is no dire threat to Israel, and Iraq--once fearsome--is now, like the District of Columbia, run by the federal government. All has changed.

But a report in the New York Times Paris edition, on a poll in various Muslim countries, shows that not all has changed:

The conviction that no way can be found for Israel and the Palestinians to coexist is strongest in Morocco (90 percent), followed by Jordan (85 percent), the Palestinian Authority (80 percent), Kuwait (72 percent), Lebanon (65 percent), Indonesia (58 percent) and Pakistan (57 percent).

The Muslim states may be impotent, but they remain hostile, and that's the fundamental problem. How can there be peace when Israel's neighbors refuse to accept its very existence?

Reuters has excerpts from statements issued by the Group of Eight summit in Evian, France, including this:

The international community has been united in fighting against international terrorism since the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The threat of terrorism still, however, remains serious as has been seen in a series of terrorist incidents including in Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Yemen over the past year.

Notice which country is missing? It might help the situation in the Mideast if the world's leading nations recognized Israel.

This Just In
"Many Arab League Members Shun Israel"--headline, Associated Press, June 2

'Salmon-Eating Busybodies'
Norway is making a lot of enemies these days. First there was the al Qaeda threat, and now it's the Sri Lankans. It seems that, as the BBC puts it, Norway's prime minister "reportedly said he hoped some politicians could be more flexible in dealing with Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels." That prompted this retort from Samaraweera, a uninominal aide to President Chandrika Kumaratunga: "Of course we can't expect anything better from a nation of salmon-eaters who turned into international busybodies."

Hmm, first we had Groundskeeper Willie calling the French "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Now it's Samaraweera calling the Norwegians "salmon-eating busybodies." If you have any ideas for similar characterizations of other nationalities, please e-mail them to us (our address is after the credits at the bottom of this column). Although we are open to all the world's cuisines, we reserve the right not to use entries that are in poor taste.

Metaphor Alert
From a letter to the editor of the New York Times by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York (italics ours):

Re "Stating the Obvious," by Paul Krugman (column, May 27): Many Democrats have been saying for months that the president's tax cuts are part of a deliberate plan to starve government of all resources to do anything other than defense. . . .

The Social Security and Medicare trust funds--financed through the payroll tax on workers--are being rapidly funneled out to "give the money back" to wealthy taxpayers. This lays the groundwork for the end of those two programs--not reform, end--because the money will simply not be there.

The runaway debt and erosion of confidence in our economy will eventually shipwreck our entire society, and all the money in the world won't buy a life raft.

Everywhere but New Jersey, the Sun Is Big and Hot
"Cold, Little Sun Hurting N.J. Farms"--headline, Associated Press, June 3

Wow, This Newfangled Gizmo Has Pictures Too!
"TV Channels Compete as Radio Alternatives"--headline, Associated Press, June 1

What Would We Do Without Experts?
"Dill Pickles on Decline, Experts Say"--headline, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 2

What Would We Do Without Investigators?
"Investigators: Flaming Car With Body Inside 'Suspicious' "--headline, WJLA-TV Web site (Washington), June 3

Not Too Brite--LXXXII
"A German woman has partially severed her husband's penis during a quarrel after sex," Reuters reports from Berlin.

Oddly Enough!

Truly Tragic News
" 'Bust-Enhancing' Pills Are Bogus: Researcher"--headline, Reuters, June 2

The Robert C. Byrd Mummy Display
In Philippi, W.Va., "the bodies of two women who were held during their earthly lives at the Weston Hospital for the Insane" are now "part of a freaky tourist sideshow," reports the Charleston Daily Mail:

But the weirdest, if not most interesting, part of the town's history is found in the bathroom of the old train station. . . . For $1, visitors can enter the tiny, white-tiled bathroom to see glass-lidded wooden coffins and two preserved bodies from 1888.

The faces are gray and the skin is a pulled, leathery brown. The bodies are not wrapped as you would see in movies, and the glass tops of the coffins do not seal in the stale, sulfur-like odor.

"I warn children that they are not your usual mummies," said Olivia Sue Lambert, the volunteer curator of the museum. "Our little ladies have a powerful influence on the children."

This is pretty weird, but we suppose it beats electing them to the Senate.

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Even more duckies don't pay taxes, but liberals say they're not lucky enough.
• Brendan Miniter: A brutal murderer tries to hide behind the Bible.
• John McDohough: Bob Hope, film star and postmodern pioneer.