As a political geek, one of my favorite months has always been the August of a non-Pesidential election year when, so I'm told, Washington empties out, Presidents go on their weeks-long vacations and reporters start re-typing one another's columns.
So I'm told.
One of the great traditions of August in years not divisible by four is the boomlet story, something that in March (first votes on bills) or June (major Supreme Court decisions) or October (Supreme Court hearings, appropriation bill stand-offs, Congressional elections) would barely be noticed. In 1983 the August story was the burning question: did someone from Ronald Reagan's staff steal Jimmy Carter's prep book prior to their October, 1980, debate? (I wondered before, and wonder now, what secrets of Jimmy Carter's the Republicans would ever want to steal, but that was neither here nor there.
Last year, the story was Cindy Sheehan, given attention by a press corps grown hot and grumpy, used to summer residences in Martha's Vineyard, coastal Maine, or the Pacific Palisades, and having to endure hot, excruciatingly boring Crawford, Texas.
This year, unfortunately, no silliness. I'm as pessimistic as I've been in a long time. See here and here. Baghdad is in flames, and the whole world (less the U.S., Canada, Australia and Israel) is viewing Lebanon through the prism of Hezbollah, a puppet running on strings back to Iran.
All-out war may be coming soon--soon, if we're lucky. Not-so-soon (read: a nuclear attack, Hezbollah run wild, an even stronger Iranian-Syrian alliance) if we're not.
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