Once an adman, always an adman. When reading Bill Safire's columns I sometimes wonder when and how he distinguishes between things he actually believes to be true and those which he simply makes up in order to craft a cleaner argument.

Eventually you realize that it's not a distinction he makes.

Read his column today on Wes Clark, in which he unveils the grand-plan of the Clinton's to use Clark to knock Dean out of the race and weaken the other candidates to prepare the way for Hillary's eventual entrance into the race sometime in early 2004. Clark, says Safire, will then be rewarded with the #2 slot.

There are a lot of Clinton folks around Clark right now. And there are more than a couple Clinton insiders who don't realize, to my undying surprise, that she will never be president of the United States or, I think, even run.

Those details aside, you'd think Safire would steer clear of these double-bank-shot conspiracy theories after all the Clinton hokum he got caught peddling in the 1990s.