Joe Wilson: “Chronic liar” Bob Novak is “going straight to Hell.”

Thompson campaign decides having George “Macaca” Allen and Dick Cheney’s daughter as his chief press spinners after tomorrow nights debate ain’t such a bright idea after all.

Rudy Giuliani will venture before the Family Research Council’s “values voter” summit this weekend in D.C.

Obama attacks Hillary over Iran vote; her camp hits back against his “flagging campaign.”

That’s great. Racist candidate Tancredo says that border towns that are against his nutso border fence idea should be made part of Mexico.

Everything you need to know about the Democrats’ rolling over on FISA is contained in the bill’s name: Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed and Effective Act of 2007, a.k.a, the RESTORE Act.

It’s is so painfully obvious when the Democrats are playing someone else’s game, right down to the propagandistic title.

For months I’ve been quietly hoping that Barack Obama would at least make a race of it with Hillary Clinton. So I was more than a little disappointed when all the metrics of conventional wisdom (in the wise and foolish senses) started showing Hillary leaving Obama in the dust and becoming the dominant frontrunner and presumptive nominee.

Folks who’ve been watching all this closer than I have, like Matt Yglesias, say part of the issue is that Obama just won’t come out and say what his campaign is about. Says Matt, “Watching the primary campaign, it keeps seeming to me as if Barack Obama is making arguments that, while fairly clear to me, must go over the heads of at least half of political junkies, to say nothing of normal people going about their lives.”

But the whole thing kind of crystallized for me this weekend when I was reading Maureen Dowd’s review of Arthur Schlesinger’s diaries in the Times. And, yes, it makes me wonder about myself too that I’m picking up political insights from Maureen Dowd. But here goes. It’s her riff on Schlesinger’s pained (or perhaps self-indulgent reflection) on his defection from Adlai Stevenson to Jack Kennedy …

Kennedy has not been “consecrated by inner conviction,” he writes, adding, “I also believe him to be a devious, and if necessary, ruthless man.” But he suspects that his friend Lauren Bacall is right that Stevenson has “a political death wish.”

“The thought of power induces in Stevenson doubt, reluctance, even guilt,” he says. The diaries from the ’50s are an inadvertently hilarious record of the prissy Stevenson’s coy tango with his party. The year after Adlai loses to Ike, he has dinner with Truman, who urges him to take hold of the party. Adlai disingenuously demurs about a lack of qualifications. “Well, if a knucklehead like me can be a successful president,” Truman replies briskly, “I guess you can do it all right.”

But Stevenson is stuck on the same mental pedestal that Barack Obama is on — “split between his desire to win and his desire to live up to the noble image of himself.”

John Kennedy, by contrast, “takes power in his stride,” showing with the choice of Lyndon Johnson — unpalatable to Schlesinger and Bobby Kennedy — that he is “grasping the nettle.”

I don’t know if she ‘gets’ Obama. But I think she’s on to some of what’s got his campaign stuck in second gear. And I think it’s what Matt’s talking about too. Obama isn’t so much running for the nomination in the sense of reaching out and taking it. He’s trying to show us how marvelous he is (and this isn’t snark, he’s really pretty marvelous) so that Democratic voters will recognize it and give him the nomination.

But that’s not how it works in this country. I don’t know if it really works otherwise anywhere else. But you have to really want it, come out and say it, take it. I thought about qualities that describe what is at issue. ‘Toughness’ seems to bound up in meta-national security mumbojumbo. ‘Ruthlessness’ sounds too, well, ruthless. You have to want it enough that you reach out and take it. Which isn’t always pretty and admirable. But that’s what it takes.

Richard Nixon on Fred Thompson: Dumb but friendly.

From The Blotter:

“Oh sh–, he’s dumb as hell. Fred Thompson,” Nixon interjects. “Who is he? He won’t say anything.”

In another conversation some weeks later, Nixon and his advisers were still describing Thompson as not very smart but at least beginning to play ball.

“Our approach is now, we’ve got a pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson. He came through fine for us this morning,” White House counsel Fred Buzhardt says on a tape from June 6.

“He isn’t very smart, is he?” Nixon asks.

“Not extremely so, but –,” Buzhardt says, interrupted by the president.

“But he’s friendly,” Nixon says.

“But he’s, he’s friendly,” Buzhardt echoes.

“Good.”

Set aside the three marriages, his pro-choice and anti-gun positions, the gay roommates, and the pictures of Rudy in drag. Let’s be honest. By and large, the only thing interesting about any of those things is the discomfort it causes his fellow Republicans. It ties them in knots and that’s fun to watch.

But on the substance of things, there is much about Giuliani’s past that doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, especially his business dealings and some of the cronies he’s appointed, like Bernie Kerik. Today comes word (via The Politico) of a big lawsuit by a prominent Texas GOPer against Giuliani’s law firm and his business partner and close friend and adviser Kenneth Caruso, alleging that they defrauded the plaintiff out of $10 million in a complicated investment deal involving an offshore bank later shutdown amid charges of money laundering.

Giuliani has been around and involved with some pretty mucky characters. It’s still not clear the extent to which some of that muck has rubbed off onto Rudy directly. But it’s hard to stay clean next to a steady drip of muckiness.

Late Update: Steven Benen has compiled a list of the company Rudy keeps.

I don’t know how Fred Thompson’s naming of former Virginia Sen. George Allen as one his three campaign co-chairs can be seen as anything other than a nod and a wink to a certain brand of racially-charged Republican voters.

As for Allen, he’s apparently focused on another run for Virginia governor–and on escaping the shadow of his macaca comment:

“I’m trying to help out candidates in Virginia,” [Allen] said, mentioning GOP House member Dave Nutter in the New River Valley and “a fella named Omarh Rajah running for the school board in Chesterfield. We’ve got some really good folks running.”

A fella named Omarh Rajah. Does it make me a cynic if I think Allen didn’t slip that name in there by accident?

Late Update: The Omarh Rajah campaign website lists his endorsements. Allen’s is not among them.