Winston Churchill said that a decision not taken was nonetheless a decision. The decision to bomb Iran has not been taken, and President Bush’s tightening of sanctions against Iran may be a decision not to decide.

Here in Washington, debate about Iran is dominant. Unlike the debate that preceded the invasion of Iraq, this one features a much greater emphasis on what happens after striking as many as 20 Iranian nuclear sites. Ergo, lessons have been learned.

The hawkish argument is pretty simple: If you delay Iran’s production of an indigenous weapon for decades, you will not only protect Israel from a future horror, but you will also send a categorical message to other proliferators that there will be consequences for defying the United States. It is an argument about the future.

The dovish argument is about the day after. It is an argument over what happens immediately, and how catastrophic the consequences will be in the months after a unilateral aerial assault. With the Iranian street aflame, will Iran send its conventional forces across the Iraq border to engage the U.S. forces in formal warfare, even as they are fully engaged in fighting the insurgency? Will Iraq succeed in disrupting tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz, pushing world oil prices to $150 a barrel? Will Iran endeavor to engage Israel directly rather than through its surrogate Hezbollah?

Then there is the unknown reaction of Russia and China, both of which are cozy with Iran. And again, will Turkey take advantage of the chaos to invade Northern Iraq to suppress Kurdish terrorists, even to commandeer Kurdish oil? Will the whole of the Middle East go up in flames, as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack has warned?

The administration has sent every warning to Tehran that it will not abide continued uranium enrichment. While Bush talks diplomacy, Vice President Dick Cheney continues to beat the war drums with tough rhetoric. Additionally, the administration has asked for money from Congress to modify B-2 stealth bombers to carry “bunker-buster” bombs. Because Iranian air defenses are fairly good, this says two things: We’re preparing to come after your underground facilities, but not before we modify our weapons. A strong signal, but a mixed one.

Inside the administration, it is believed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are dovish, while Cheney and those outside the government but with influence in decision-making, and who supported the Iraq invasion, are keen on striking Iran. The military is known to believe that it has its hands full, and is concerned about the safety of its forces in Iraq should conventional Iranian divisions pour across the border.

Another wild card is Saudi Arabia. Its armed forces are well-equipped with American gear, but it has no record in serious combat. The Saudis do not like the Iranian strength in the region, and Saudi Arabia is predominantly Sunni while Iran is Shia. The Saudis have told Cheney that if the United States withdraws from Iraq, Saudi Arabia will go in to bolster the Sunni minority, but they would not want to be at war with Iran. There are only about 5 million Saudis, but there are 80 million Iranians.

A small but not insignificant light on the state of play in the administration and the military comes from Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. When journalist Juan Williams said on “Fox News Sunday” that Petreaus was seeking permission to follow Iranian insurgents across the border into Iran, Petraeus had his spokesman call Williams to say that the general did not want that authority and had not sought it. In other words: I have got enough war to manage, I do not need to add hot pursuit.

The problem comes back to Iraq. If there were no U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq, we could probably bomb Iranian nuclear installations with little consequence. As it is, we would have to bomb the nuclear targets and if Iran reacts by invading Iraq, escalate the air war, bombing conventional military targets like missile silos. If things continued to deteriorate, we would have to go after infrastructural targets like bridges, power plants and oil installations.

There is third line of argument that says the Iran bombing could be carried out by Israel, which, after all, took out Saddam Hussein’s reactors in l981 and has just taken out a presumed nuclear target in Syria. The problem is that Israeli bombers, and fighters, do not have the range to reach Iran and get back without in-air refueling. That would require U.S. tankers flying from U.S. bases in places like Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, etc. And that would not sit well with those countries and would Americanize the attacks anyway.

No wonder a third bird has joined the hawks and doves of old. It is the ostrich.

The much-awaited Fox Business Network launched on cable television last week. It was also the week in which the stock market took its worst drubbing in years. No matter. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. clearly plans a channel that is relentlessly upbeat, populist and with a broader viewer base than its competitors, Bloomberg and CNBC. Call it “The Joy of Capitalism.”

Given Murdoch’s recent purchase of The Wall Street Journal, some expected Fox Business Network to be The Journal with moving pictures. But the first week suggested that the creators of the new channel want something with much broader appeal: “Business for Dummies.”

The serious, staid Journal was not in evidence in FBN’s first week. No. The first week of the new channel owed little to established business broadcasting. It is closer to its stable mate, Fox News, than to any existing business news outlet on the air or in print. It is a mixture of personal finance and discussion with occasional recognition that the world of money is also a world of big money and big players—a feature on budget dating contrasted with an interview with Warren Buffet.

Murdoch has fathered FBN, but Roger Ailes has been its midwife. Ailes, a large man who worries about his weight, even as it increases, is a television genius. He understands that television is the most powerful medium, and that it is still evolving. It was an Ailes acolyte, Larry McCarthy, who created the deadly effective “Willie Horton” ad, which George H.W. Bush used in his 1988 presidential campaign to depict Michael Dukakis as soft on crime. And it was Ailes who created CNBC.

Ailes’s special talent is pace, or what TV people call “production values.” Fox television has high energy: It is all snap, crackle and pop–and very political. Ailes and Murdoch both understand than you can bond with an audience if you play to its prejudices. Murdoch learned that when he relaunched The Sun, a liberal London newspaper, as a right-wing, jingo and bellicose conservatism-for-the-working-class title. But not too socially conservative– it features a topless girl on Page Three most days.

In the media, there are no secrets: Your formula is there for everyone to see. The trick is in a blend of vision and execution. Ailes has been the master of executing Murdoch’s vision. Can Ailes pull it off one more time? Can he take business news to a wide audience at a time of stock market volatility; and, more of a challenge, at a time when most small investors are invested not directly in blue chips, but in mutual funds, through vehicles like 401ks or pension funds?

When I met Ailes, more than a decade ago, Fox News was still struggling against CNN, the market leader, which had just overhauled its Headline News. Ailes, who is affable, despite his reputation as ogre, was seeking to unseat the king. And he was relishing the fight.

Like many journalists, I did not know that Fox politics would carry the day. Indeed, the relentless right-winged formula at Fox not only carried the day, but also vanquished CNN, leaving it a confused corps of news, personalities and viewpoints.

I do know that if Fox starts losing in the business news ratings, Murdoch will turn away and try something else. He turned away from most of his U.S. newspaper and periodical holdings when they failed to perform to his expectations. Part of Murdoch’s success has been his courage to abandon mistakes. He does not fight wars of attrition.

While old-line media companies are trying to repel the forces of the Internet, Murdoch has bought in, laying down $580 million for MySpace. Rather than watching the birth of his business news baby, the wily Murdoch attended an Internet conference.

While I abhor what Murdoch has done to journalism (the politicization, the vulgarity and the trashing of objectivity), I am also lost in admiration. In Britain, he tamed the malicious and destructive trade unions by making an end-run around them. In movies, in book publishing and, above all, in television, Murdoch has been the greatest force of his time–if a little scary. Stay tuned. I will.

A dog has died: a big, happy white dog; a dedicated pacifist; a dog with the manners and the ways of an Edwardian gentleman. He came to our house in need of a family. But, in the way of these things, my wife and I needed him. Strange how every dog fills a need we did not know we had.

Someone had appropriately named the lover boy Sunny. He did not do tricks, give a paw, or beg at the table. Although, truth be told, he had a what-about-me stare that could penetrate hardened steel.

When age and infirmity sounded their knell, Sunny had to be gurneyed into the veterinary hospital, where kind hands did the dread thing. As he lay on the table, I kissed him goodbye, and I cried for him and for myself. The mortality of our dogs–their lives and assigned span of years–is so out of step with our own pilgrimage.

Why do dogs commandeer our hearts and minds, and shatter us with their departure–each one so different from the others, and yet as dear, as precious, as intriguing and as beguiling? Do dogs live with us, or do we live with them, even through them? Do we escape into their being–so much simpler and nobler than our own? We pamper them and they fawn on us; we corrupt and transmogrify them, and they accommodate. Their sins are few, by comparison with the panoply of our own. What is a little jealousy, or a smidgen of disobedience, compared with the human capacity for evil?

Some people are much like other people, but the variety of canine personality is one of the miracles of Creation.

I have been pondering the many dogs who have favored me over the decades. There was Monty, the fox terrier, who got lost in the African bush and journeyed 200 miles home. There was Healthcliff, the Jack Russell terrier, who thought all children in swimming pools were in such mortal danger that he belly-flopped in and tried to drag them out–by the hair, if they were girls.

And there was Overset. I named him Overset, which is what newspapermen call articles for which there is no room in the paper. Overset was an ingratiating stray who was surplus to my living requirements. He showed up at the hotel where I lived in Washington, D.C., back in the late l960s. The hotel frowned on his presence, so I took him to work at the old Washington Daily News.

Overset adopted the paper and it adopted him. His day began on the editorial floor, where he would jump on the copy desk, and walk up and down while the first edition was being prepared. Then he went down to the composing room to hurry on the printers. Even the noise of the presses did not faze him. His last stop was the loading dock, where he would bark, if he thought newspaper bundles were not being loaded fast enough. Six unions claimed he had honorary membership.

In what, I think, is John Le Carre’s greatest novel, “A Perfect Spy,” the old, professional spy, Broadbent, loses his beloved dog. Broadbent takes his favorite tweed coat and wraps his dog in it before he buries him. There were many poignant moments in the book, but that one stands out.

Many poets have memorialized dogs, but none more so than Rudyard Kipling. The imperial poet went sentimental about dogs. Prolific, too.

When a dog’s last day close, and we are bereft, it is time to read again Kipling’s lament, “There is sorrow enough in the natural way/ From men and women to fill our day/ … Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware/ Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.”

Beware, indeed. Even the runt of a litter of uncertain parentage is born with the keys to human hearts.

This week, the Department of Energy (DOE) is celebrating its 30th anniversary. I hope they hold it down. There is not too much to cheer about. When creation of a department was first bruited, the United States was importing 30 percent of its oil needs. Now it imports 60 percent. Keep the champagne on ice.

Over the course of its history, DOE has spent hundreds of billions of dollars with little to show for it. If as President Jimmy Carter, who created the department, imagined its purpose was to improve energy supply, then it has failed absolutely.

I believe, but do not know, that DOE has succeeded in the stewardship and renewal of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. I do know that the department has helped to improve some energy technologies, such as a better drill bit for oil extraction and better nuclear plant controls. And it has developed some wonderful materials and technologies, which were cold-shouldered by industry–ceramic exhaust ports and valves for the automobile industry come to mind.

But DOE has failed to develop a commercially viable technology for using dry hot rock in geothermal electric production. It also has failed to develop a workable model for in situ gasification of coal. Unintentionally, the department found the limits of direct solar electric generation with power towers and mirrors.

Where DOE invention did work was through a program, now phased out, of cooperative research and development agreements. These helped many manufacturers, including fiber extruders, improve their operations.

In the 1980s, it was hoped that DOE and its network of 25 major laboratories would lead a technological revolution that would take the United States to unimagined heights of creativity. That happened, but it happened in Silicon Valley. So DOE fell back on cleaning up the nuclear waste sites of earlier generations; dismantling old nuclear weapons; and pleasing politicians by accommodating their feel-good projects—think the Clinton-Gore smart car and the Bush hydrogen car.

Importantly, DOE monitors nuclear testing around the world and is a lead agency in issues of treaty verification.

In the beginning, there was the Atomic Energy Agency: a swaggering promoter and defender of all things nuclear. When environmentalists objected to its role as promoter and regulator, it was swept into a new organization of mismatched agencies called the Energy Research and Development Administration. That agency brought together such disparate things as nuclear weapons manufacture, desalination, and coal research–each with its own political constituency on Capitol Hill. It even enriched uranium: something that was later hived off to the private sector.

The core of DOE, and its predecessors, is the national laboratory system: an archipelago of gifted institutions that employ around 100,000 people. While the genius of the national labs is uncontested, so is the duplication of their effort and their own bulwarks against reform. Do we need so many of them? Is something learned by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. studying hybrid vehicles, when they are being studied in Oak Ridge, Tenn., at the National Transportation Laboratory? And why is government investing in technologies that are established in the market?

The first secretary of the nascent department was James Schlesinger, who had already distinguished himself as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, director of the CIA, and secretary of defense. Had this rock-ribbed Republican been secretary of energy at a different time, he might have advanced the streamlining of the national lab system.

Like Department of Homeland Security, DOE is a political semantic creation. There are too many leaves in its portfolio for it to deliver to the full extent of its talent or the national need.

I was there at DOE’s planting. I would like to be there at its pruning. And I would like to be there when a secretary, both with the ability and the mandate, transforms the department to something that might be called “mission critical.” The current secretary, Samuel Bodman, appears to have the credentials but not the mandate.

Certainly, there are islands of excellence in the DOE archipelago. But they are set in a sea of dysfunctional bureaucracy.

 

The philanthropist billionaire George Soros is a fiend to Republicans and an awkward ally to Democrats. The immediate cause of Soros’s unpopularity is his funding of the left-wing organization MoveOn.org.

It was not always thus. When the Berlin Wall fell, Soros was a hero across the board. He had funded and worked with groups opposed to the Soviet Union in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Soros was the embodiment of the American Dream: a Hungarian refugee who had amassed a fortune, estimated at $8 billion, through currency speculation. He had used his wealth aggressively to oppose communism and to support democratic initiatives around the globe. He was not your ordinary billionaire liberal: Soros put his money where his mouth was.

At the time of his acclaim, I met Soros. He was the most unpretentious, modest man-of-means I have ever met.

I was running a series of conferences on landmine detection and removal, and Soros had put money into some non-governmental organizations seeking to eradicate landmines in Africa and Asia. A colleague of mine suggested that I invite Soros to speak. I did not think he would have the time, but he agreed willingly.

The conference was held in a suburban Virginia hotel, a short distance from Washington, D.C. I waited by the entrance for Soros, examining every luxury automobile that pulled up. Soros emerged alone from a dilapidated Washington taxi, paid the fare and entered the hotel. He appeared disheveled, in need of a shave and a fresh suit.

At the lunch, I arranged for him to sit at a special table with some of the young people from the NGOs. He was fascinated by their idealism and their field work.

The problem with clearing landmines is that there is no technology that will remove all of them in a given area. Technologies vary from the crude—driving animals across a field—to advance sensor devices.

One American de-mining technology involved mounting a sensor under a helicopter, avoiding interference from its rotors. Soros asked me whether this device worked. I said I did not know, but I could introduce him to the inventor, who was attending the conference. Soros said, “Don’t do that. He’ll say it works 100-percent. Let’s ask somebody else.”

So it was that Soros met a U.S. Army officer working in the field. This expert said that it was unlikely that the device could detect all the mines in a given area, making it no better than any of the other technologies in use. (The problem with clearing 90 percent of the landmines in a given area is that it gives farmers and children a false sense of security.)

Public speaking is not one of Soros’s great talents–his English is heavily accented and his delivery is conversational. When he went to the podium, he referred to the young people doing field work, praising their bravery and commitment. Then Soros said that he really should not have been invited to speak. “I am not a big player in this effort,” he said. “I only give $4 million a year to humanitarian landmine clearance because there is no technology for 100-percent removal of landmines.”

When it came to question time, Soros was asked how much money he would give if there were a 100-percent removal technology. “I would write a check for $100 million in the morning,” Soros said. A great silence fell on the room.

Soros’s political problems derive from the multitude of his causes. He has differentiated himself from other liberal billionaires, like Bill Gates and Steven Rattner, by supporting non-establishment political groups, such as MoveOn.org. Missed in the furor over MoveOn, is the fact that Soros continues to support democratic endeavors around the world, and has been a massive force for establishing democratic institutions in the former Soviet satellites.

After he escaped Hungary, Soros worked as a railway porter and a waiter in England to finance his attendance at the London School of Economics. It was there that he fell under the influence of Karl Popper, the open society guru. Since his accumulation of vast wealth, Soros has made open society his own philosophy. He defines it as free markets, democracy and social balance.

Soros’s critics have painted him as some kind of international fiend; a world government man who is, to boot, an atheist and a proponent of legalized drugs. The former House speaker, Dennis Hastert, went so far as to imply that Soros’s wealth came from world government conspirators. Soros has not behaved the way billionaires are supposed to. Instead of enjoying social status, global recognition, and discreetly sending checks to good causes, he has chosen to get his hands dirty. The Irish financier, Peter Sutherland, now chairman of British Petroleum, once told me that Soros was not easy to work with; that he micromanaged projects, including one in Africa in which both men were involved.

Soros, now 77, is minting enemies as fast as he once minted money. I might take issue with some of his stands, but I remember him as one of the humblest of men. After his speech at my conference, I offered to drive him back to Washington. “No, no,” he said. “They have taxis outside. I will just take one.” And he did.

Gordon Brown, Britain’s new prime minister, is facing a political dilemma: Should he call an election this year or early next year, or should he serve out the full time left–two and a half years–to this parliament? It is a tricky question.

It is not whether he would win this election: The polls show his Labor Party would be returned with a reduced majority, energizing the Liberal Party and positioning the major opposition party, the Conservatives, for a win in five years. Any weakness in an election would suggest that the Labor administration is losing favor with the British public.

Labor has had a long and successful run, most of it under Tony Blair, but there are problems building in Britain. Putting aside the unpopularity of the Iraq war, there are social issues, long-term concerns about the economy, and simple weariness with a party that has ruled for more than a decade. Electorates get restless and bored if the same party stays in power too long. The Conservatives found this after Margaret Thatcher left office, and the same may be true for Brown’s government.

The smart money is on a new election. If Brown wins it easily, he will be confirmed as his own man, rather than Blair’s designated successor, and he will be empowered to pursue goals close to his own heart. These include putting more space between himself and the United States, and a serious commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He also would like to pursue goals of social justice for the British by modernizing, and possible extending, the programs of the welfare society.

At the top of this list is the National Health Service (NHS). During Blair’s government, when Brown was the finance minister, substantial new money was allocated to the health service and it has shown some improvement. But recent studies indicate that much of this improvement was to doctors’ and NHS administrators’ salaries. The speed of health care delivery improved, but not as much as Brown had hoped. It is said in Britain that the health service is great if you have a heart attack, and a disaster if you have an ingrown toenail. Brown would like to see a more efficient health service. But he has learned that it can absorb money with little improvement, if the structure goes unchanged.

Brown is brilliant, reserved, and does not have his predecessor’s capacity to suffer fools. He can appear rude and uninterested if his intellectual standards are not met.

A Scottish socialist, who came up in the trade union movement, Brown is all business, sometimes humorless, and notably lacking in political small talk. When I met Brown, I found him to be a man interested in big projects and very confident of his own judgment. At the time, he was pushing for a $50-billion relief fund for Africa. When I asked him how this money would not be wasted, as so much else has been, he snapped, “We’ll give it to the right people.” He does not care to have grand schemes he endorses questioned. Yet, you get the feeling that there is something wise about Brown, that he is more genuine than Blair, and more removed than most politicians from the day-to-day business of politics.

It is not difficult to imagine Brown as an American businessman. It is much harder to imagine Brown as an American politician, negotiating the frothy waters of sound bites and political correctness.

Where Brown may differ most profoundly from contemporary politicians, including his former leader, is that he believes that the state can deliver. Brown has shown none of Blair’s enthusiasm for private business. Nor has he shown any of Blair’s enthusiasm for the world stage, leaving the business of government to his cabinet.

For domestic political reasons, Brown appears intent on setting a course away from America, although it would be wrong to say that he is anti-American. He has traveled here often, and has vacationed on Cape Cod. “He likes the place, but doesn’t always agree with it,” a British political observer told me.

Domestically, Brown has the problem of coming to power at the end of a long period of economic prosperity. The pound is strong and unemployment is low. But the country has been seriously shaken by the collapse of one of its large mortgage lenders, Northern Rock. The Rock took a beating in the liquidity crunch that followed the sub-prime mortgage debacle in the United States. Brown also has to deal with divisive issues of immigration, Islamic terrorism, and public loutishness, which are causing native Britons to leave in droves.

While Labor Party faithfuls feel Brown should ensure five years of government by calling an election right away, the canny prime minister may be worried about the danger of opening so many wounds at this time.

There is a general assumption in Washington (where assumptions are often wrong), that the Democrats will sweep the board next year. If so they will come to power with ideas about immigration, the Iraq war, health insurance, and energy. They will have ideas about all of these that show some flexibility, except energy. Here, the Democrats are slaved to certain dangerous orthodoxies that may be their Achilles’ heel–myth-based beliefs and ideological rigidities that we may all come to rue.

Since the Carter administration, the Democrats have absorbed and taken as their own the views of the environmental activists: people who are clear-headed about what they are against and fuzzy about what they are for. Though noble in purpose, the environmental movement is structured to oppose; never to implement. It can afford to be irresponsible and sometimes downright silly. Sadly, the Democrats have convinced themselves that the environmental activists’ views are the basis for an implementable policy, a course of action, a road map.

Ideology in government is dangerous because it presumes that right-thinking (thinking that accords with a belief system) must produce a good result. Hence the failure of socialism, and the failure of the Bush administration in Iraq.

The Democrats are at their ideological worst in pronouncing energy policy. This ideology–adopted from the environmental movement–posits that there are untapped resources that have been bottled up by bad government policy and corporate greed. These resources are wind, solar, geothermal, wave power, and biomass. In the wacky world of environmental thinking, they are going to supplant coal, nuclear, and natural gas in producing electricity. The only one that is deployed on a measurable scale is wind, and its deployment depends on ideal geographic location: plenty of land, lots of wind, and few migratory birds.

To bring about this change from major to minor, from big central station to diverse remote generating, the energy bill now before Congress seeks to impose “renewable portfolio standards” on utilities, whereby they are obliged to buy or generate 15 percent of their power from “renewable.” Some states have their own laws which take into account local factors. The Democrats want a national standard with penalties for non-compliance.

When it comes to transportation, the Democrats are also sure of what they will not do. They will neither allow oil drilling off parts of California’s coast nor in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they are reluctant about the Bush administration’s opening up of environmentally sensitive areas in the inter-mountain West. Yet they talk about energy independence–talk that has been around since the Nixon administration. Since that time oil imports have doubled from 30 percent of consumption to over 60 percent, and natural gas imports have begun.

Not to worry. There is hydrogen on the way and ethanol is taking off. Trouble is hydrogen has to be released from water or reformed from natural gas. Natural gas is already in short supply and cracking water will require great quantities of electricity, at a time when coal is seen as environmentally unacceptable and there is a pathological left-wing antipathy to nuclear power.

The other savior fuel, ethanol, uses nearly as much energy to produce as it yields and requires subsidies which have already reached billions of dollars. Ethanol is now pushing up the price of food.

Certainly, the Democrats are right to talk about conservation. But the last Democratic administration fought to lower the price of oil when it spiked because that was politically popular. Dear Democrats, we have coal and nuclear. The rest is idealism. Get real.

They slice, they dice, they dissect, they puree, they aggregate and they disaggregate. They examine, they analyze, they probe and they speculate. They create myths and they destroy legends. They are the new breed of political reporters in Washington and their ranks are swelling.

At one time, the coverage of national political news was the prerogative of large newspapers–especially the hometown journal, The Washington Post and its big Eastern rival, The New York Times. The news services, mostly the Associated Press, filled in the gaps. They did not aspire to lead the pack.

The coterie of political reporters was fairly small, specialized and exclusive. With occasional exceptions like Hearst’s Marianne Means, they were all men. Those were the days of “The Boys on the Bus.” Young and ambitious journalists longed to be foreign correspondents and to work for New York newspapers. A job in Washington was a good job, but it was still the first row of the second rate.

Then the center of gravity moved to Washington. New York newspapers declined in number and Watergate glamorized Washington journalism. Also, a secondary industry sprouted in Washington: serious, well-researched newsletters, covering everything from nuclear power to higher education. They provided jobs in the press corps and stepping stones.

More, political talk shows on television made national names of some reporters. That was an additional reason to join the Washington press corps. Why be respected in Chicago when you could have national attention from the nation’s capital?

By l975, Washington was the place to be and politics was the subject.

After the surge of ambitions ignited by Watergate, things settled down for a while as interest in science, energy, medical and environmental reporting rose. Equilibrium returned.

In the 1990s, money came to tip the balance toward political journalism, again. As lobbyists proliferated (there are more than 30,000 registered), they had money to spend on political “issue” advertising. They had to get their messages to the members of Congress. To use The Washington Post and The Washington Times for this was expensive and wasteful. Specialized media had to be found.

The first beneficiary of this new wealth was Roll Call: the sleepy local newspaper of Congress, then published once a week when Congress was in session. It was joined, a decade and a half ago, by The Hill, founded as a weekly by Martin Tolchin, a veteran New York Times reporter. Both are now published three times week, more to accommodate the new advertising than the news. Another commonality: They paid low wages to beginning reporters and relied on experienced editors to cleanup the reporting.

Now that business model is under attack. This year, a third paper–a cross between a Web site and a printed paper–appeared. It is The Politico: the entrant of Robert Allbritton, a wealthy banker and television station owner, who is spewing money.

Allbritton has stirred up the salary structure in Washington journalism in a way that has never happened before. Whereas Roll Call, and more so The Hill, paid reporters the lowest possible wages, Allbritton has thrown open Ft. Knox. Instead of starting reporters at $30,000 a year, Allbritton has hired big names from The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal at salaries of up to $300,000.

In addition to the three aforementioned newspapers, the lobbying boom has also generated new Web-based daily publications from older publishers like Congressional Quarterly and its rival, The National Journal.

No wonder spontaneity has been wrung out of politics. If a member of Congress so much as eats peas off a knife, it will be reported somewhere and commented upon somewhere else. In the old days, reporters and congressmen knew each other–and reporters cut their subjects some slack, especially in irrelevant matters of personal conduct. Now the microscope is never off, let alone the searchlight.

President Bush has been criticized for the number of signing statements—more than 750 between 2001 and 2007–he has added to laws passed by Congress. A new review of these signing statements by Neil Kinkopf, associate professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law, shows that “they are treated in a mechanical fashion, with boilerplate objections phrased over and over again.”

Indeed, Kinkopf writes in a brief accompanying the 269-page index (available at http://acslaw.org/node/5309), the Bush administration’s “contempt for constitutional limits on its own power is nowhere more evident than in the statement accompanying the signing of the McCain Amendment,” which forbids United States personnel from engaging in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees, adding these prohibitions to the existing prohibition on the use of torture. In a signing statement, Bush declared that the executive branch would interpret it “in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, … ”

Kinkopf, a former special assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, writes that Bush cannot have concluded that his view would likely be vindicated by the Supreme Court. “The ‘unitary executive’ view of presidential power is an extreme construction that lacks judicial sanction. Moreover, it is precisely this view that supported the Administration’s infamous torture memo, which the Bush Administration itself pointedly refused to defend, and ultimately repudiated, after it became public.”

It is even more remarkable, Kinkopf writes, that “the language of the McCain Amendment signing statement is itself boilerplate. This ‘power to supervise the unitary executive’ objection was raised, essentially verbatim, against 82 separate provisions of law during the first term of the Bush Administration alone, according to [Portland State University Professor] Phillip. J. Cooper’s study. This simply cannot be the result of a careful balancing of constitutional considerations.”

Moreover, Kinkopf writes, “the clinching phrase about constitutional limitations of the judicial power speaks volumes about the Administration’s contempt for the judiciary’s role in constraining executive power, coming as it did on the heels of the Supreme Court’s declaration in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, that ‘a state of war is not a blank check for the President … ’ ”

Bush has also used boilerplate language for objecting to laws that he recommend legislation to Congress, that he disclose information to Congress or the public, that set qualifications for federal officeholders, or that so much as mention race, Kinkopf writes. “For example, the President signed into law a bill establishing an Institute of Education Sciences. The signing statement pertaining to this law raised a constitutional objection in what seems like a laudable and unobjectional goal for the new institute: ‘closing the achievement gap between high-performing and low-performing children, especially achievement gaps between minority and non-minority children and between disadvantaged children and such children’s more advantaged peers.’ The signing statement questions this provision’s conformity with ‘the requirements of equal protection and due process under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.’ ”

However, Kinkopf writes, there is no judicial precedent that would question the validity of this law under the Fifth–or any other–Amendment. “Only under a radical and unsupported reconceptualization of the idea of equality could working to eliminate the achievement gap be considered constitutionally suspect.”

This is not a president wrestling to resolve a conflict between statutory and constitutional law, he writes. “The posture of the Bush Administration is that of an administration that is wrestling to create conflicts in order to support the assertion of power to dispense with the execution of the law.”

James Madison famously regarded Congress to be the most dangerous branch of government because of its power to legislate rules that govern everyone, including the president himself, Kinkopf writes. “If the president may dispense with application of laws by concocting a constitutional objection, we will quickly cease to live under the rule of law.”

The White House press corps can be surprisingly sentimental. Take the case of Tony Snow, the departing press secretary. When Snow announced the return of his cancer, dry eyes in the briefing room were few.

The ultra-conservative Snow has been much loved by the mostly liberal White House media. Why? First, Snow is one of us. He is a journalist, albeit more commentator than reporter. Second, Snow is just a hugely likable man; that has nothing to do with politics or journalism, that is just the human dimension of the man.

Like many correspondents, I have known Snow for a long time. I first met him when he was editorial page editor of The Washington Times–a blithe spirit in a somber newspaper. This quality of being in some way lighter-than-air is the essential core of Snow, it seems it seems to me. It has enabled him to float above controversy, and to be forgiven views far out of the mainstream of even Washington conservative thought. That is Snow in his writing and broadcasting–especially the latter, where as a sit-in for Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, Snow was more radically conservative than such fixtures of the right as George Will and Charles Krauthammer.

The public work of the press secretary takes place, when the president is in Washington, twice a day at the “gaggle” and at the “briefing.” The former is an on-the-record curtain-raiser for the day, usually held around 9 a.m. The latter is the half-hour, on-camera briefing that has become a staple of C-SPAN.

The private work is counseling the president and the top echelon of his administration on press strategy and the collective mood of the fourth estate. The press secretary might advise a presidential press conference, an exclusive interview with a network, or a session with editorial writers.

For the president to understand the media mirror, he and his press secretary must have rapport; a merely correct and professional relationship will not do the job. Mike McCurry, another popular press secretary, was highly effective because he and President Clinton were pals. I watched them joshing together on presidential trips and was involved in an incident in which Clinton was embarrassed by something McCurry told me on the record. McCurry said that Clinton did not understand the media or the Congress. Tough stuff. When Tim Russert challenged Clinton with these accusations on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Clinton laughed them off. McCurry and Clinton had rapport. Snow has been a frequent player in the Oval Office. He and Bush have rapport.

Others have been much less successful. Most notably in recent years, Dee Dee Myers for Clinton and Scott McClellan for Bush. Myers floundered and McClellan was stiff and uncomfortable with the media, suggesting that neither enjoyed the full confidence of their master nor an organic understanding of the media.

One of the most successful relationships between spokesman and chief executive was not in Washington but London. That was the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and her spokesman, the irascible Bernard Ingham. His reverence for Thatcher was tender as well as supportive. He once told me, “I’m trying to get her to rest more.” Phew!

Clearly, Snow has been good for Bush in the dark days of his presidency. Snow said he is leaving because he needs more money. This does not convince. At $168,000 a year, Snow is paid more than most print journalists in the press corps, and many broadcast correspondents. Snow may have made very good money at Fox and with a radio show, but he knew the pay scale when he entered the White House. He clearly made less when he was a speech writer for President George H.W. Bush and not much at The Washington Times, which is known for the modesty of its pay scale.

Is there something else at work? Has Snow wearied of defending policies he has lost his faith in? Before signing up for the press secretary job, Snow had been critical of the competence of the administration. Has that been confirmed from within? It is a question worth asking.

But I think it is about money, health and family. I believe that despite Snow’s public assurances that his cancer is at bay, he is worried about the future of his young family. Not all of his arguments have had unassailable merit. That one does. Good luck, blithe spirit.