Clarke a fallen angel

Clarke a fallen angel

Richard Clarke either is shoveling the hoo-hah now or was shoveling it two years ago. In the fun of pointing out the inconsistencies (see this fine dissection at Useful Fools ), it is important to remember that in 2002 he was on the side of the angels. Rich Lowry makes this point well in NRO. It has also started to seep into the mainstream group-think. On Monday, Dick Polman in a front-page Philadelphia Inquirer thumbsucker judged that Clarke is a particular problem for the administration because "Clarke hits Bush from the right".

Perhaps Clarke for some reason has projected his long-simmering frustration with Clinton's gormless inaction on terrorism onto Bush. He certainly seems to have been infected with the Democratic mind virus. It would be fun to speculate that he caught it from his association team-teaching a course with Rand Beers, John F. "Band of Mongols" Kerry's chief national security adviser. He is showing the symptoms, such as free-floating self-righteous outrage and charging that the Bush White House is conducting a "taxpayer-paid character assassination campaign" to wreck his reputation. Projection is part of the Democratic pathology. Whatever the Democrats are up to, they accuse someone else of doing.

But maybe he is just a victim of Bill Clinton's uncanny ability to drive good men around the bend.