Ten days ago I took David Axelrod to task for speaking publicly on foreign affairs when that's not really his job description. 

I bring this up because I'm wondering if the reverse critricism applies -- should foreign policy leaders stick their beaks into domestic policymaking bailiwicks? 

Last week there was this nugget buried within Mark Landler and Helene Cooper's story on the Obama-Clinton relationship on foreign policy:  "Mrs. Clinton has also taken on duties that go beyond her job description. At the request of the White House, she made calls to wavering lawmakers to enlist their support for health care legislation late last year." 

Now The Hill's Molly K. Hopper reports that the Secretary of State was actively involved in health care lobbying over the weekend: 

Hillary Rodham Clinton attempted to persuade on-the-fence Democrats to vote for the healthcare reform bill that narrowly passed the House on Sunday.

Lawmakers told The Hill that Clinton, who failed to convince the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass healthcare reform in 1994, was active in whipping votes for the White House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

TMPDC's Rachel Slajda provides some context: 

The White House kept her in the bullpen, she told CNN in February, taking the mound only when needed.

"When I am asked, I am very happy to respond. I mean, it's not anything I have direct responsibility for, but I have had a number of conversations and both in the White House and on the Hill and with others who are playing a constructive role," she said.

This is a bit unusual, to say the least.  In recent history, Secretaries of State have refrained from active lobbying ands/or participation on matters of domestic policy.    

What I'm not sure about is whether this is a violation of an unspoken norm or just an unusual situation.  Hillary Clinton is not your ordinary Secretary of State.  Unlike Axelrod and foreign policy, I'm not about to claim that the Secretary of State lacks sufficient policy expertise on the issue at hand.  And let's face it, Hillary has a wee bit more political capital than, say, Warren Christopher did back in the day. 

So, question to readers:  is this a big deal?   

Commentary's Jennifer Rubin is reacting way out of proportion to David Axelrod's tour of the Sunday morning talk shows.  That said, she's got a germ of a good point:

David Axelrod — a political operative who now seems at the center of foreign-policy formulation (more on this later) — went on the Fox, ABC, and NBC Sunday talk shows to repeat how insulted the Obami were over Israeli building in Jerusalem and what an affront this was to them....

[I]t might have something to do with the fact that Axelrod and the Chicago pols are running foreign policy. It’s attack, attack, attack — just as they do any domestic critic.

Quibble away with Rubin's characterization of "Chicago pols," but she does raise a decent question:  why on God's green earth is the Obama equivalent of Karl Rove talking about foreign policy in public? 

Since the VP trip from Hell, it's clear that the Obama administration has ratcheted up the rhetoric in private, in public, in press leaks and through multilateral channels to their Israeli counterparts.  Given what transpired, it's entirely appropriate that the Obama administration make its displeasure felt publicly. 

Why Axelrod, however?  Sure, the Sunday morning talk shows wanted to talk health care as well.  And it's true that Axelrod, thought of as pro-Israel, could send a tough signal.  Still, couldn't the administration have sent Hillary Clinton to one of the Sunday morning talk shows instead?  Wouldn't she have been the more appropriate spokesman. 

I've spent enought time inside the Beltway to be leery of the gossipy tidbits I collect when I'm down there.  That said, there was one persistent drumbeat I heard during my last sojourn -- that Axelrod and the political advisors were acting as Obama's foreign policy gatekeepers.  

Now, I am shocked, shocked, that politicians are thinking about foreign policy in a political manner.  That said, there is a balance to be struck between political and policy advisors.  Even David Frum admitted that this balance got out of whack during the Bush administration.  I'd like to see things return to to the pre-21st century equilibrium.  It would be disturbing if the new equilibrium is that someone like David Axelrod becomes the foreign policy czar.

UPDATE:  You know what's particularly galling about this?  When the political operatives fail to do their job and point out politically useful things to do in order to augment American foreign policy:   

As an unusual public showdown between the Israeli and American administrations plays out, Hill sources say leading Congressional Democrats would be with the administration on this but would really like to get a phone call from Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, currently en route back to the Middle East to try to salvage Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks.

As former Senate Majority Leader, Mitchell has credibility with the Senators, one staffer said. It would be really helpful if he makes some phone calls from the plane, to say we really need you to stay with the administration, we are trying to push the peace process forward, and if he would articulate some sort of vision, of where this next sort of piece of tactical fight is going.

This is not the first time one has heard this from Hill Democrats that they are feeling a bit in the dark, but at such a tense moment, it is hard not to be astonished that the administration was not working the phones to the Hill all weekend. 

"Same exact mistake of the first two Clinton years with majorities in both Houses," one Washington Democratic foreign policy hand said. "You'd think they would have learned the lesson of 'never take your allies for granted' at least after this year." 

In a post over the weekend about John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's new book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder makes a very odd closing point:

Political scientists aren't going to like this book, because it portrays politics as it is actually lived by the candidates, their staff and the press, which is to say -- a messy, sweaty, ugly, arduous competition between flawed human beings -- a universe away from numbers and probabilities and theories.

I know a lot of political scientists, and let me take this opportunity to assure Marc that most political scientists love good, dishy books full of political gossip -- the uglier, the better.  I love Bob Woodward books and all the Making of the **** Campaign tomes as much as the rest of America seems to love John Grisham novels.  Many political scientists have similar feelings on this -- before people become political scientists, they're usually political junkies.  And anyone who studies this stuff for a living can't only be aware that politicians are flawed beings -- they have to love them just a little for their flaws.  As Seth Masket points out, "If we only cared about numbers and probabilities and theories, we'd have become mathematicians."

I suspect that the difference between my profession and Ambinder's is that while I love these canmpaign narratives,  I don't always buy their explanations for why things play out the way they do.  Structural factors like the economy matter a hell of a lot as well.  The chapter in Game Change on the Edwardses, for example, is really gripping stuff -- but it's gripping because of the tawdriness, not because it affected the campaign in any way whatsoever.  Even if theirs had been a fairy-tale marriage, John Edwards still wasn't going to be the president.  

Ambinder's passive-aggresive attitude towards my profession is not unique to him -- it flares up every once in a while among political journalists.  In some ways, this dust-up mirrors the occasional testiness that emerges between traditional baseball writers and sabermetricians.  Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy's recently complained about "the stat geeks, those get-a-lifers who are sucking all the joy out of our national pastime."  Yeah, because the last thing the sport would want is for informed people to be arguing passionately about it. 

Shaughnessy's assertion flabbergasted most sabermetricians, who clearly love baseball and all of its facets.  They just find it silly not to consider the utility of smart statistics when analyzing the support.  But a lot of sabermetricians tend to watch baseball with the television on mute so they don't have to hear broadcasters emphasize points that, to them, are superfluous -- just as many political scientists I know rarely watch the cable news shows. 

A good narrative, however?  We'll snap that up like popcorn. 

It turns out that Zhao Ziyang, China's Communist Party chief during the Tianamenn massacre (and who was outsted for opposing a violent crackdown), secretly recorded a memoir of his time in power.

This is very exciting -- as the New York Times' Erik Eckholm observes, "In a sharp break with Chinese Communist tradition, even for dismissed officials, Mr. Zhao provides personal details of tense party sessions."  In other words, there's some good dirt here for China scholars. 

One little thing nags me about Eckholm's story, however: 

One striking claim in the memoir, scholars who have seen it said, is that Mr. Zhao presses the case that he pioneered the opening of China’s economy to the world and the initial introduction of market forces in agriculture and industry — steps he says were fiercely opposed by hard-liners and not always fully supported by Mr. Deng, the paramount leader, who is often credited with championing market-oriented policies....

Roderick MacFarquhar, a China expert at Harvard who wrote an introduction to the new book, said it had given him a new appreciation of Mr. Zhao’s central role in devising economic strategies, including some, like promoting foreign trade in coastal provinces, that he had urged on Mr. Deng, rather than the other way around.

“Deng Xiaoping was the godfather, but on a day-to-day basis Zhao was the actual architect of the reforms,” Mr. MacFarquhar said in an interview.

I'm not a China expert, but I am a seasoned reader of political memoirs.  And, in my experience, memoirists do tend to paint a picture of their deeds that magnifies their accomplishments at the expense of others.  I see no reason why Chinese political memoirs should be any different from American political memoirs on this score.  So I'm going to take Zhao's claims on this point with juuuust a small grain of salt.

[Hmmm.... note to future version of you -- compile top ten list of best political memoirs--ed.  So noted.]   

Let's label this Drezner's Political Analogy of 2009: 

AIG bonuses are to the left side of the political spectrum as congressional earmarks are to the right side of the spectrum.

Why?  Well, these two things have a surprising amount in common. 

• Neither of them poll terribly well;
• Both of them reflect waste, inattention, and borderline corruption in handling the government's money;
• Both issues force the other party to say something to indicate that they don't support these things;
• Earmarks represent a very small percentage of the omnibus spending bill; bonuses represent a very small percentage of the AIG bailout;
• So, given the current economic situation, both of them are huge honking distractons and do not matter a whole hell of a lot. 

Consider this from today's Times write-up: 

New York’s efforts against A.I.G. have overshadowed those of the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, the official who is responsible for the financial bailout, along with the Federal Reserve. The White House and Treasury have been besieged by questions about why Mr. Geithner did not know sooner about the bonus payments due this month, and whether he could have done more to stop them, prompting White House officials to assert President Obama's continued confidence in Mr. Geithner.

If I was Mr. Geithner's press spokesman, here is what I would say in response to more media inquiries about this:

Mr. Geithner profusely apologizes for not devoting more attention to this matter.  He clearly devoted too much time to the G-20 summit, implementing the stimulus package, preparing the 2009 budget, and other piddling matters like that.  Clearly, instead, Mr. Geithner feels he should have devoted more attention to this issue, which does absolutely nothing to put the financial sector on a sounder financial footing.  I mean, it's not like he's the only guy in the building or anything.

Mr Geithner thanks the media and Congress for focusing so much on this dumb-ass issue.   

As you can see, there is very good reason why I'm not Tim Geithner's press spokesman. 

Let's be clear -- I'd like AIG officers not to get these bonuses, just as I'd like to see earmarks removed from the budget.  I just think the opportunity costs on focusing on these issues is pretty damn big. 

I've received a bunch of e-mail queries asking me what I think of the Charles Freeman affair.  One could argue that Freeman's actual policy positions got him into trouble.  (When a letter to the Wall Street Journal on his behalf allows that "Chas has controversial political views, not all of which we share," it suggests that something is amiss).  One could also argue pretty persuasively that the Israel Lobby flexed its muscle (as Freeman himself argues in his missive to FP's Laura Rozen). 

In the wake of Freeman's withdrawal, I think everyone is vastly overestimating the influence of outside forces and underestimating the idiosyncracies of Freeman in trying to interpret what the hell happened.  I don't mean his positions -- I mean his relative eagerness to get back into the game.  Freeman's statements on the matter suggests that he was not all that eager to re-enter government life: 

"As those who know me are well aware, I have greatly enjoyed life since retiring from government.  Nothing was further from my mind than a return to public service.  When Admiral Blair asked me to chair the NIC I responded that I understood he was “asking me to give my freedom of speech, my leisure, the greater part of my income, subject myself to the mental colonoscopy of a polygraph, and resume a daily commute to a job with long working hours and a daily ration of political abuse.”  I added that I wondered “whether there wasn’t some sort of downside to this offer.” 

"I wasn't so eager to go back to the government, anyway."

Sometimes these statements are boilerplate, but I don't get that sense from Freeman.  

To put it another way -- if Hillary Clinton had been in the same situation as Freeman, there's no way in hell that she withdraws her name. 

Steve Walt claims that, "this incident reinforces my suspicion that the Democratic Party is in fact a party of wimps."  He's got a point, but I'm not sure it's the one he intended to make.  Freeman is just one of a longer list of policy wonks -- Wendy Sherman, Caroline Atkinson, Robert Gallucci, etc. -- who have either declined or changed their minds about high-ranking postings.  While none of these other names were targeted by the Israel Lobby, they all found the opportunity costs of entering goverment service too onerous.  

Question to readers: Has the vetting process in DC become too absurd, or are Obama's subcabinet candidates too thin-skinned? 

I had only one thought as I drifted in and out of sleep while listening to President Obama's non-State of the Union -- he really is the second coming of Ronald Reagan.  I mean that in both good and bad ways.

Obama, like Reagan, has figured out how to drive the opposition party completely nuts without compromising his ability to govern.  Like Reagan, Obama is able to communicate effectively directly with the American people.  I suspect his "going public" strategy will net him significant legislative accomplishments. 

However, Reagan was elected on a platform of massive tax cuts, massive increases in defense spending, and balancing the federal budget.  Older readers of danieldrezner.com might recall that he was never able to reconcile all of these aims, and as a result the budget deficit ballooned. 

After listening to Obama's speech, I find it utterly implausible that the United States can fund energy alternatives, impose a "market-based cap" on carbon emissions, engage in comprehensive health care reform, and institute massive education subsidies, while also halving the federal budget deficit in four years. 

Seriously, am I missing something?  How does that circle get squared? 

From FoxNews.com: 

As the state Senate's impeachment trial for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich draws to a close, media relations pros say he might have been better off mounting a defense in the state capital rather than on the airwaves. 

Wow. 

I look forward to the follow-up stories:

• Media relations pros suggest that Tom Cruise stop talking about Scientology,
• Media relations pros suggest winning the Super Bowl is better for one's career than losing it.   

Readers are encouraged to suggest other pathbreaking predictions by media relations pros. 

Like many Americans, I'm looking forward to the end of the Bush era and the inauguration of Barack Obama.  Until this weekend, however, it hadn't occurred to me that this event was going to start prior to Tuesday.  Apparently, however, it's a several-day-long be-in. 

And a lot of out-of-towners are going to be crashing in DC.  My train from Boston to New York today was packed to the gills with Bostonians headed to DC for the inauguration.  Given the weather in the Northeast today, they chose the right mode of transportation. 

Let me be the first FP blogger to welcome Shadow Government into the fold. As the Democrats take over the executive branch, it will be good to have some critical voices around to push and prod their foreign policies.

That said, I'd also love it if Shadow Government could also provide some evaluation on any criticism provided by other former Bush officials as the changeover commences. Do these criticisms have validity, or are they merely tactical justifications given the GOP's minority status?

For example, consider today's New York Times op-ed by John Bolton and John Yoo:

The Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

Like past presidents, Mr. Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the requirement that treaties must be approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The usual methods around this constitutional constraint are executive agreements or a majority vote in the House and Senate to pass a treaty as a simple law (known as a Congressional-executive agreement).

Executive agreements have an acknowledged but limited place in our foreign affairs. Congressional-executive agreements are far more troubling.

Now, on the one hand, one could interpret this advice as a warning about the dangers of implementing international agreements without the broad support of Congress and the American people.

One could also, however, interpret this advice as awfully strange, as it emanates from officials who have, heretofore, been mostly concerned with the augmentation of the executive branch's power at all costs (and implemented plenty of congressional-executive agreements while in office).

It is terribly convenient, now that they are out of power, to be suddenly concerned with Obama running roughshod over the legislative branch. The domestic parallel would be if Bush officials who embraced No Child Left Behind and intervened in the case of Terry Schiavo suddenly developed a Strange New Respect for federalism.

So, Shadow Government, should one take Bolton and Yoo at face value?

UPDATE:  Drezner gets results from Shadow Government.  [Has the ten-year old in you has always wanted to type that sentence?--ed.  Yes.  Yes, he has.]

My latest column for Newsweek International is now up, and focuses on the ways in which fiscal policy can lead to renewed protectionism across the globe: 

What is truly worrisome, however, is that a lack of cooperation on trade could spill over into a lack of coordination on fiscal policy. Coordination on these two issues are linked. States running trade deficits worry that export engines like Germany and China will free ride off of their own fiscal expansions, boosting the growth prospects of these exporters without any serious fiscal expenditures on their part. Already, other Europeans are upset over Germany's inaction on the fiscal front. German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck's warning against "crass Keynesianism" to NEWSWEEK's Stefan Theil has merely stoked these concerns even more. If this fear persists, there is a danger that any Keynesian boost will come attached with protectionist provisions to ensure that the benefits remain within national borders. Some reputable economists are already advocating this kind of action in the absence of global policy coordination. As the global downturn persists, these political pressures will become harder to ignore. What has been a mild backlash against trade liberalization could quickly turn into a tsunami. If trade wars break out in the wake of the global financial crisis, they will not take the form of Smoot-Hawley—but they will be equally dangerous.

And, hey, on cue, the New York Times' Louis Uchitelle reports the following on the U.S. steel industry in the United States: 

The industry itself is turning to government for orders that, until the September collapse, had come from manufacturers and builders. Its executives are waiting anxiously for details of President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus plan, and adding their voices to pleas for a huge public investment program — up to $1 trillion over two years — intended to lift demand for steel to build highways, bridges, electric power grids, schools, hospitals, water treatment plants and rapid transit. “What we are asking,” said Daniel R. DiMicco, chairman and chief executive of the Nucor Corporation, a giant steel maker, “is that our government deal with the worst economic slowdown in our lifetime through a recovery program that has in every provision a ‘buy America’ clause.” (emphasis added)

What it truly disturbing about this request is that it contradicts the narrative about the U.S. steel sector in recent years, a narrative tat Uchitelle comments on later in his story: 

Not since the 1980s has American steel production been as low as it is today. Those were the Rust Belt years when many steel companies were failing and imports of better quality, lower cost steel were rising. Foreign producers no longer have an advantage over the refurbished American companies. Indeed, imports, which represent about 30 percent of all steel sales in the United States, also are hurting as customers disappear.

The political economy implications of this are pretty disturbing.  Steel, which can compete with the rest of the world, should be one of the last sectors to seek protection from foreign competition.  With its mini-mills, Nuxor is one of the most competitive firms within the U.S. steel sector.  If this is how Nuxor is behaving, however, how much protectionist lobbying will come from the less competitive sectors of the U.S. economy? Developing.....

Christopher Beam has an entertaining story in Slate about the various backroom machinations TV bookers must undergo in order to get the right set of talking heads.  

There are some guests who simply refuse to go on the air with other particular people or with anyone at all. Likewise, there are some people who no one else wants to appear with. It's rarely discussed, because the bookers who mediate these ego wars are bound by contract—and their own interests—to keep quiet. And hosts rarely mention the snubs on-air, since they want guests to come back. But snubbing happens all the time, and conversations with bookers, producers, and guests reveal that some divas are especially notorious.

This part stood out for me: 

The biggest offenders are usually the ones whose egos are too big to accommodate any company: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Haig, and others who figure they have better uses for their time than debating some flack on the air. "They would only go on if they could do the show alone," says a former producer for Crossfire. "Brzezinski won't debase his cable currency by being a two-box," explained a current booker, referring to the practice of displaying guests on a split screen. Another booker cited Brzezinski's refusal to go on with Pat Buchanan—"probably because he thinks he's an anti-Semite." (An assistant to Brzezinski says: "It isn't true that he will only appear alone. He has appeared many, many times with other guests." Maybe so. But bookers say he doesn't do so willingly.)

Here's a piece of advice to TV bookers -- surprise these mooseheads with another guest just before they're going to go on.  Why?  Because, in my experience, when mooseheads at the Kissinger-Brzezinski level are alllowed to pontificate at will, they are unbelievably boring and rote.  On the other hand, they are at their best precisely when they are challenged by someone.  Maybe they get riled up at having their authority questioned, or maybe they want to smack down the young whippersnapper tring to unseat the Pundit King.  All I know is, when they are poked and prodded, the analytical sharpness that got them to their exalted position comes out, and then the fun starts.  I've seen this in person -- but Josh Marshall David Kurtz captures an example of this on video.  Zbigniew Brzezinski doesn't like it when he's challenged on the Middle East -- watch what happens: 

 

Oh, and it makes for good TV -- though in this case it has the added frisson of Mika Brzezinski's uncomfortable body language. 

This blog has been silent about Caroline Kennedy's shadow campaign for a Senate appointment, mostly because he was convinced that this was just some effort by karma to tap dance on those partisans who took too much glee mocking the qualifications of Sarah Palin.  As someone who thought Palin was unqualified for VP-dom and thinks Kennedy is unqualified for the Senate, I nevertheless feel a massive twinge of sympathy for Caroline Kennedy after her New York Times interview.  Several media outlets are mocking her verbal tic of saying "you know" a lot in that interview.  Longtime watchers of my bloggingheads and other media appearances are well aware that I've owned that tic for several years now.  That's my thing.  That I do.  When I'm formulating what I am about to say.  When a live mic is close by.  Anything Kennedy can do to make it acceptable to the mainstream would be good for my media whoredom, and therefore a Manifestly Good Thing for the Republic. 

Matt Yglesias got into a little bit of trouble over the weekend by posting an Yglesias-like swipe at the Third Way.  This would be unremakable, were it not for the fact that acting CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund Jennifer Palmieri comandeered authored a guest-post on Matt's blog and wrote the following: 

Most readers know that the views expressed on Matt’s blog are his own and don’t always reflect the views of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Such is the case with regard to Matt’s comments about Third Way. Our institution has partnered with Third Way on a number of important projects - including a homeland security transition project - and have a great deal of respect for their critical thinking and excellent work product. They are key leaders in the progressive movement and we look forward to working with them in the future.

This action has provoked a fair amount of blog reaction/rebuke -- check out William Beutler, Brad DeLong, Belle Waring, Ann Althouse, James Joyner, Brendan Nyhan, Julian Sanchez, and many more -- as well as follow-up posts from Yglesias himself and CAP's Faiz Shakir.  Yglesias gets the understatement of the day:  "I wish the guest post from Jennifer Palmieri that I put up Sunday evening had been handled differently in a variety of ways since just sticking it on the blog and then going to bed seems to have given people a lot of misleading notions about the site being somehow 'hijacked.'” As near as I can figure it, bloggers are very annoyed at the Center for American Progress, but they're angry for two very different reasons:

1. What Palmieri did appears to infringe on Yglesias' independence as a blogger.  To quote Nyhan: "There's no way that this sort of reaction won't create a chilling effect on Yglesias. How could he not think twice about criticizing Third Way or other CAP partners in the future?" 
2. What Palmieri did was politically ham-handed.  It would have been much better if she had taken Yglesias aside and leaned on him in a much more quiet but politically effective manner.  [Where's Karl Rove when you need him?--ed.  Quiet, you.] 

On the first point... meh.  Way too many bloggers are giving Yglesias a pass on this.  He is the one who chose to move from the Atlantic to CAP, and he did so because he wanted to advance a political agenda rather than continue to be an observer on the sidelines.  Not that there's anything wrong with that -- but this is clearly an example of one of the downsides that come with that move.  Regardless of how many follow-up posts he writes on the Third Way, the scar ain't going away anytime soon.  He claims that, "all [Palmieri] was doing was reiterating what’s always been the case — I’m posting un-screened posts on an un-edited blog and covering every issue under the sun."  Similarly, Shakir writes that, "Palmieri’s post was meant to clarify that ThinkProgress blogs don’t speak for the entire institution all the time — as has always been the policy."  Well, since this was so manifestly clear to anyone inside the Beltway who knows what the word "blog" means, then why did Palmieri feel like her little post was even necessary?  Will Palmieri be posting "clarifications" like this every time Yglesias deviates from the official CAP line?  Politico's Ben Smith gets at this point clearly: 

The reason an online jab gets elevated like this is that CAP is no longer just a think tank: It's interwoven with the transition, and expected to be close to the Obama White House. The perception that it was hostile to Third Way could have damaged Third Way's ability to raise money, among other things. It's an early sign of how the new Democratic infrastructure faces a new set of challenges with Democrats controlling the government.

Glenn Reynolds has a point here:  "Sorry, if you can’t stand what bloggers blog, don’t pretend you’re cool enough to hire bloggers."  Or, if you allow "clarifications" on posts that deviate from your parent institutions' views, don't pretend that you're a cool blogger any more.  UPDATE:  I see that Palmieri is being considered for assistant secretary of defense for public affairs.  While Palmieri is getting a little too much blame for an act that Yglesias was complicit in, I have to think that this whole brouhaha is not a point in her favor.  For sheer theater value, however, I would love for this to come up in a confirmation hearing:  "Ms. Palmieri, I'd like to bring up the CAPping incident with Mr. Yglesias...." ANOTHER UPDATE:  Uh-oh... it's spreading.