When The Review is Probably More Interesting Than The Book

Instead of being able to cover the political horse race with the up-to-the-minute obsessiveness of the major blogs, I like to think I bring a little depth to the project. In that spirit, here is a must-read review of a recent book on Bush's presidency (not, mind you, Bush the man) written by a Grand Poobah of the conservative movement who was fired from his cushy and evil job for having written it. A sample (of the review, not the book):

In the same vein, the problem on the right is that conservatives have failed miserably whenever they've tried to take a serious chainsaw to modern liberalism. Cutting taxes is just about all they have left, and as Bartlett concedes, taxes can't be cut forever. This has mostly reduced conservatives to nibbling modestly around the edges of the contemporary liberal edifice while simultaneously passing out enough goodies to keep their supporters happy and the rubes, if not happy, at least scared enough to keep voting for them. This means that unlike the '30s or the '60s, when politics was vitriolic because the stakes were high and society was undergoing dramatic changes, the source of today's vitriol is precisely the opposite. As with World War I trench warfare, it's the result of two evenly matched sides beating each other bloody year after year but neither being able to claim victory. Bill Clinton couldn't get national health care passed, but George Bush couldn't gut Social Security either.

Although the heat of battle often obscures this, the unhappy reality is that modern American politics is mostly played at the margins.

And incidentally, for those of you who made it all the way through the post, here's a reward not unlike the sweetest candy: http://www.accuradio.com makes it fun and easy to hang out and listen to music on your computer. And it's what the Germans call kostenlos, which is the opposite of teuer, which in turn rhymes with Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer. Look it up.