Could there have been a better line in today’s Washington Post op-ed section than from George F. Will’s column?
On ABC’s “This Week,” Richardson, auditioning to be Barack Obama’s running mate, disqualified himself. Clinging to the Obama campaign’s talking points like a drunk to a lamppost, Richardson said that this crisis proves the wisdom of Obama’s zest for diplomacy and that America should get the U.N. Security Council “to pass a strong resolution getting the Russians to show some restraint.” Apparently Richardson was ambassador to the United Nations for 19 months without noticing that Russia has a Security Council veto.
But there is also this snippet from Ruth Marcus’s scathing analysis of the John Edwards fiasco:
In Edwards’s exact words, explaining why he denied tabloid stories about his affair because, he says, they weren’t completely true: “Being 99 percent honest is no longer enough.” He was once derided as the Breck girl. Now it turns out we’re talking Ivory soap, 99 and 44/100ths percent pure. But the thing about honesty: It’s the last 1 percent–even that last .56 percent–that’s the tough part.<</blockquote> Marcus later elaborates on “John Edwards’s resort to the exculpatory language of pop psychology to explain his behavior. ‘I went from being a senator, a young senator to being considered for vice president, running for president, being a vice presidential candidate and becoming a national public figure. All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want.'” She adds, “Right. The adulation made him do it. I don’t think this man is anywhere in the neighborhood of 99 percent honesty.” Okay, there was one other sentence that topped the entire section: “Tom Toles is away.”
