Okay, One Last Thing About The Debate

I'll hold off on any predictions...let's just see what the polls show next week. (Hint: this bodes well. OTOH, this is wierd.)

The prize for strangest moment of the debate (excluding the "leash" comment) was Bush's decision to stand his ground on rejecting bilateral talks with North Korea.

Neither Kerry nor Lehrer saw fit to point out that Bush's administration has been thoroughly outwitted by Kim Jong-Il. Nor did they point out that the Chinese and the South Koreans want the US to re-engage in talks with North Korea. In fact, Bush's position was to reject all negotiations with North Korea period end of story, and to mask such transparently hollow sabre rattling (exactly the same thing that's gotten us into this jam) with false dichotomy between multilateral and bilateral talks.

Kerry did reference Bush's double humiliation of Colin Powell and Kim Dae-Jong in early 2001, and put the whole issue to rest, rather succinctly, by pointing out that exactly 0 of Bush's foreign policy predictions over the last four years have proven accurate, and (think inductively for a moment) that only suggests that further Bush estimates of foreign policy outcomes will be wrong.

The reason, however, that it was so bizarre for Bush to place such emphasis on diplomatic tactics vis-a-vis North Korea is this:

Q: What is the average American's response to the question, "Should we prefer bilateral or multilateral negotiations with North Korea?"

A: "I don't know, faggot."

The second place finisher in the "strangest moment" category was Bush deciding to brag about working closely with the foreign ministers of France and Germany.

RELATED: James Lileks is against summits. Presumably, then, he prefers Kerry's North Korea and Iran policies. Since he also, apparently, is against any sort of constructive engagement with the Arab world, I have a Gordian solution that might be even more efficacious than his proposal of evacuating all women out of Saudi Arabia: dissolve the Saudi people and elect a new one. So simple (hat tip: Bertolt Brecht).