We learned this week that former Sen. Sam Nunn, a conservative Democrat from Georgia who voluntarily left politics more than a decade ago, is considering teaming up with Unity08 as a way of returning to the national stage. “My own thinking is, it may be a time for the country to say, ‘Timeout. The two-party system has served us well, historically, but it’s not serving us now,'” Nunn said.

OK, so what would this third party offer the voters? TNR’s Britt Peterson sat down with the long-time Washington insiders behind the project to hear their pitch about the problems with Washington insiders. Their vision for a party is surprisingly thin.

Anyone looking for larger ideas than a return to civility won’t get much from Unity ’08, however. In our conversation, [Douglas Bailey, a former media advisor to Gerald Ford] and [Gerald Rafshoon, a former media advisor to Jimmy Carter] wouldn’t take any policy stands, deflecting questions until after a candidate has been chosen in a “Virtual Convention” slated for next summer. “We’re not interested in spelling out or even having the delegates spell out a precise platform, where, by God, you must meet these tests or we don’t want you to run,” Bailey tells me. “That doesn’t make much sense.” Doing so, he says, would repel candidates, not attract them. Rafshoon, too, focuses on process and ethics, rather than issues. “Campaigns are run on the negatives,” he tells me. “That’s the promise they make to the people: ‘He’s no good, vote for me!'”

But the issues they do discuss don’t even seem that compatible. Bailey mentions three times the only Unity ’08 issue that’s historically a Republican idée fixe: entitlements and the deficit. “Has there been an effort by a single candidate in either party to talk seriously about the deficit and entitlements?” he asks me. On the other side of the table, Rafshoon does seem sympathetic to the idea of a candidate focusing on the deficit (he mentions in passing that one of Ross Perot’s successes was to help set Clinton’s budget-balancing agenda). But balance this issue with Unity ’08’s other, admittedly spare, stated concerns, and the whole thing begins to look a little contradictory: cutting down on entitlements while also expanding health care, reducing income inequality, and cleaning up the environment? How well can a platform built on flimsy, mismatched legs stand?

Actually, it can’t.

Third parties, if they hope to compete, have to offer voters some kind of policy positions. Unity08, on the other hand, is a policy-free gimmick. It’s a “party” that will “nominate” a bipartisan ticket in ’08, simply for the sake of bipartisanship. What does the party think about the war? It doesn’t have a position. Culture war issues? Nada. Trade? Domestic security? The environment? Nothing but a blank page.

The party, apparently, believes that politicians should be more “civil.” Leaders should be more open to “compromise.” There should be less negative campaigning and more solution-oriented discussions.

It all sounds perfectly pleasant, just so long as you over look how vacuous and incoherent the whole undertaking is. It may be inconvenient, but Americans have substantive policy disagreements. Those differences matter. If Unity08’s leaders and enthusiasts want to join in that debate, terrific; the more the merrier.

But running a presidential campaign that intentionally prefers process and politeness over substance and policy isn’t going to do anyone any favors.

Reading William Kristol’s latest screed in the Weekly Standard, one is tempted to pause and double-check the source. Is the content from a random right-wing blog, some nutty talk-radio show, or a leading DC establishment player in one of the most widely-read conservative political magazines in the country?

I naively thought I could no longer be surprised by Kristol’s columns, but his latest gem pushes the envelope to new depths. Did you know, for example, that American liberals were not only responsible for Khmer Rouge’s crimes, but our withdrawal from Vietnam also created the conditions for the Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979?

Kristol concludes:

[A]ll honor to George W. Bush for following in Reagan’s footsteps, grasping the nettle, and confronting the real lessons and consequences of Vietnam. The liberal media and the PC academics are horrified. All the better.

As the left shudders, Bush leads.

There isn’t even an argument to refute here; it’s just childish cheerleading and empty sloganeering.

A couple of months ago, Kevin Drum noted, “The Bill Kristol phenomenon is a stellar example of what a nice suit and a sober tone of voice can do for you…. [H]e’s smart enough to talk in more soothing tones. As a result, he gets columns in Time magazine, edits his own widely-read magazine, and shows up constantly on television.”

But with columns like these, Kristol’s penchant for “soothing tones” is gone. He’s just a sycophant, blithely touting a dangerous policy that doesn’t work, and bashing those who dare to disagree.

Does Kristol actually believe his own fluff? I’m inclined to think so, but as Jonathan Chait explained this week, it may not matter: “Kristol’s good standing in the Washington establishment depends on the wink-and-nod awareness that he’s too smart to believe his own agitprop. Perhaps so. But, in the end, a fake thug is not much better than the real thing.”

Brookings’ Michael O’Hanlon’s support for the war in Iraq came under quite a bit of scrutiny a month ago with the publication of his now-infamous NYT op-ed, and today he tries to defend himself with a follow-up in the Washington Post.

There’s not much to it, I’m afraid. O’Hanlon noted that he and Ken Pollack did leave the Green Zone, despite several assertions to the contrary. He added that his perspective on the war is not based just on “dog-and-pony shows,” but rather “observations,” “years of study,” and solid military sources.

As for the one of the more controversial assertions in his original piece, on the alleged decline in Iraqi civilian fatalities, O’Hanlon argues today that the Pentagon “showed us data illustrating that overall death tallies from all forms of sectarian violence were down about one-third from last winter’s average.”

That, like the rest of today’s piece, is not particularly persuasive. As Matt Yglesias explained, O’Hanlon sidesteps some of the underlying criticism (seasonal adjustments) and points to data that the Pentagon won’t subject to public scrutiny. “Does it seem plausible that the Department of Defense has really solid, favorable data about its own activities that it’s keeping hidden from public scrutiny?” Yglesias asks. “Not to me.”

Kevin Drum was even less forgiving, noting that O’Hanlon has generally avoided arguments pertaining to measurable improvements in Iraq, both in today’s op-ed and in his latest Brookings report. “O’Hanlon and Pollack cite only two concrete security metrics, and of those, one appears to be flatly wrong and the other is unsubsantiated and highly doubtful,” Kevin noted. “Instead we get phrases like ‘signs of progress,’ ‘appear to be reducing,’ and ‘our observations suggest.’ Is it any wonder that a lot of us are unimpressed?

Kevin concluded:

Given all that, O’Hanlon’s entreaty in the Post today that we should believe him because “Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study” — well, that’s pretty weak tea, isn’t it? Considering how disastrous the political situation is, how poorly the infrastructure and the economy are doing, and the fact that most security metrics indicate that Iraq is doing worse this summer than last, I think it’s fair to ask O’Hanlon and Pollack for more evidence of progress than just regurgitation of Pentagon talking points. Whining about how unfairly they’re being treated is a poor substitute.

We’ve all heard the expression “no good deed goes unpunished,” but this is ridiculous.

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co. “It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Why has waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption flourished over the last several years in Iraq? This might have something to do with it.

Of particular interest, the AP noted that whistleblowers are offered an avenue under the federal False Claims Act to file what’s called a “qui tam” lawsuit, which allows private citizens to sue on the government’s behalf. (The policy was developed under Lincoln to help root out corrupt contractors selling defective products to the Union Army.)

The Justice Department has the option of signing onto these lawsuits, 12 of which have been filed dealing with alleged Iraq reconstruction abuse since 2004. To date, how many qui tam suits have the Bush administration endorsed? Zero.

Remember, it’s a “library,” not a “war room.”

Shaping the Bush administration’s message on the Iraq war has taken on new fervor, just as anticipation is building for the September progress report from top military advisers.

For the Pentagon, getting out Iraq information will now include a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week Iraq Communications Desk that will pump out data from Baghdad — serving as what could be considered a campaign war room.

According to a memo circulated Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant defense secretary for public affairs, is looking for personnel for what he called the high-priority effort to distribute Defense Department information on Iraq. […]

The Pentagon dismissed suggestions that the communications desk will be a message machine or propaganda tool, and instead said it is being set up to gather and distribute information from eight time zones away in a more efficient and timely manner.

When White House Press Secretary Tony Snow started pushing the “surge of facts” talking point last month, he was presumably referring to something like this.

The Defense Department insists it simply wants to disseminate reliable information quickly and efficiently, and this has nothing to do with serving any political agenda. Fine. Here’s a fairly straightforward test: will the “Iraq Communications Desk” be just as diligent in publicizing discouraging news as it is putting a positive spin on developments on the ground? Will it back up assertions with data that is open to public scrutiny? Will it steer clear of White House-approved political rhetoric?

If the answer is “yes,” it’s a helpful public resource. If “no,” it’s a propaganda tool. Time well tell.

Late last week, I returned to one of the my old hobby horses, New Bridge Strategies, the ‘make big money in Iraq’ consultancy that big GOP lobbying outfit Barbour Griffith & Rogers set up with Bush crony and former FEMA Director Joe Allbaugh. BGR, you’ll remember, is now in the news as the outfit that got the contract from Iyad Allawi to help him boot Prime Minster Maliki and take over as Prime Minister again.

As I mentioned yesterday, the New Bridge Strategies website has since disappeared into oblivion. But TPM Reader DR managed to find the last sign of the site at the Way Back Machine Internet library from 2006.

And I just had to reproduce the frontpage intro paragraph which you can read here.

New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the United States Government. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that companies seeking to work in that environment must have the very best advice and guidance available. The New Bridge Strategies team has been carefully constructed to fill that need.

It seemed pretty ridiculous when I first checked out the site back in September 2003. But not quite for the same reasons as now. And not quite as jarring.

It’s all there, the hubris, arrogance, the hot house imperialism of the post-9/11 euphoria.

When a rock band’s creativity grows stale, their songs become formulaic. They take an old hit, change the key, alter the lyrics a little, and voila. A new single.

When a newspaper columnist’s creativity grows stale, the same problem emerges. Take David Broder, for example, who’s been having a rough year. The formula is surprisingly straightforward: praise a politician who seems to break with a party’s orthodoxy, throw in some kind words for Michael Bloomberg and Arnold Schwarzenegger, allude to “post-partisan” politics, and express some disdain for “politics as usual,” and presto — another gem from the “dean” of the DC media establishment.

Today’s piece fits the mold.

Today, that tide may be carrying him away from his Republican Party and toward a third-party or independent ticket with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — a development that could reshape the dynamics of the 2008 presidential race.

Next month, Hagel will make a threshold decision — whether to run for a third term in the Senate. He gave me no definitive answer, but my guess is that he will say that 12 years of battling the institutional lethargy of Capitol Hill will be enough. Certainly he is under no illusions about how much he can achieve as one of 100 lawmakers.

On the contrary, while Washington is gridlocked in partisan battle between two equally spent parties, the country is moving rapidly, he thinks, to the conclusion that neither Republicans nor Democrats have the answers to the problems people see.

Broder seems to believe that a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket would meet some pressing national demand. Do they agree with one another on policy matters? Well, no. Do they have a shared vision on how government is supposed to work? Actually, they’re polar opposites. Does Broder see a scenario by which these two can win a national election? Not so much.

But, Broder says, they have “leadership” qualities. I wish I knew what Broder means by this; unfortunately, his column doesn’t tell me. It apparently has something to do with “national purpose,” though this, too, is just another vague platitude.

The column reads like a daydream of a writer who believes a liberal independent and a very conservative Republican will join forces, solve all of our problems, and “get something done.” Get what done? It doesn’t matter; it’ll be something.

It’s hard to see how this kind of analysis should be taken seriously.

Today is the fifth anniversary of Dick Cheney’s 2002 speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ national convention, which was the first instance of the White House making its case for a war with Iraq. Looking back, it’s quite an oration.

“The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts…. [W]e now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon….

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us….

“In the face of such a threat, we must proceed with care, deliberation, and consultation with our allies. I know our president very well. I’ve worked beside him as he directed our response to the events of 9/11. I know that he will proceed cautiously and deliberately to consider all possible options to deal with the threat that an Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein represents. And I am confident that he will, as he has said he would, consult widely with the Congress and with our friends and allies before deciding upon a course of action. He welcomes the debate that has now been joined here at home….

“As President Bush has said, time is not on our side. Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action.”

Commenting on the speech, Thomas Ricks said this week, “I think it will be remembered as close as there was to a declaration of war with Iraq. When the Vice President got up there, we had no other evidence of a decision within the Bush administration. This seemed to be it — the first time in history that a Vice President declared war.”

U.S. News’ Paul Bedard often does a good job keeping his ear to the ground, but his latest rumor is an odd one.

The buzz among top Bushies is that beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally plans to depart and will be replaced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Why Chertoff? Officials say he’s got fans on Capitol Hill, is untouched by the Justice prosecutor scandal, and has more experience than Gonzales did, having served as a federal judge and assistant attorney general.

For what it’s worth, Bob Novak reported a month ago that “there are a number of cabinet members who would like to leave,” but by all indications, Gonzales isn’t one of them. Indeed, the AG’s departure would likely be perceived as a defeat for the White House, which is perhaps the principal reason Gonzales is still the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer. (Am I suggesting the president would keep an incompetent and dishonest Attorney General on the job out of spite? Yes.)

What’s more, when Gonzales’ troubles really started hitting the fan in March, Mike Allen was the first to report Chertoff was on a short-list of possible replacements, so I suppose there’s some precedent to Bedard’s rumor.

Color me skeptical. I don’t doubt that if Bush were willing to replace Gonzales, he’d probably pick someone who stood a good chance of being confirmed, but I think it’s probably an overstatement to suggest Chertoff is popular among lawmakers. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already called on Chertoff to resign.

And while it’s certainly true that Chertoff is untainted by Gonzales’ multiple DoJ scandals, he is tainted by his own DHS scandals, including the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, his “gut feeling” fiasco, and some controversial staffing decisions.

Regardless, that’s the rumor. Take it with a grain of salt.

Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, three days ago:

“Let the president set the timetable; let’s not have the Congress set any timetable…. [T]he Congress has repeatedly tried to set timetables and a total plan by certain dates to have a withdrawal. I have voted against that, and I will continue to vote against that type of proposition.”

Warner, this morning:

GOP Sen. John Warner, who wants U.S. troops to start coming home from Iraq by Christmas, said Sunday he may support Democratic legislation ordering withdrawals if President Bush refuses to set a return timetable soon.

“I’m going to have to evaluate it,” Warner said. “I don’t say that as a threat. I say that as an option we’ll all have to consider.”

That’s at least mildly encouraging. To be sure, Warner is one of those lawmakers who’s talked a good game for years, but when push comes to shove, and Democrats are looking for GOP allies they can count on to take a stand against the president’s policy, Warner always sides with the Bush White House. Indeed, it was one of the more noticeable disappointments in his announcement this week — Warner wants the White House to start a troop withdrawal this year, but he quickly added that he’s unwilling to force Bush’s hand. In this sense, his announcement was little more than a polite suggestion for a president who ignores dissent.

As of this morning, however, Warner was at least open to the possibility that the Dems’ policy may be the right course, after all. It’s far short of a commitment, but it’s a start.