RE: KRISTOL. I think Dana and Goodrich are evaluating this Bill Kristol op-ed all wrong. When you see a piece this absurd, you have to move beyond it actual claims and begin thinking motives. Imagine, for instance, that you came across a mime on a unicycle. Would you assume that this mime was inexplicably wedded to an ineffective form of transportation? Or that he thought looking hilarious on a unicycle would be good for his career as a mime? Same with Kristol. You'd have to be a fool to look at the hornet's nest we've stirred up in the Middle East, the endless ground war we've entered in Iraq, the vast increase in Iranian influence we've enabled in the region, the proof we've offered of the limits of American military power, and the rocketing anti-American sentiment around the globe and conclude, as Kristol does, that "[a]s for foreign policy in general, it has mostly been the usual mixed bag." Mixed bag of what? Nails and explosives? But like the unicycle and the mime, this op-ed is good for Kristol's career. By establishing himself as one of the last forthright defenders of Bush's presidency, he becomes the media's go-to guy to provide balance on the endless panels examining whether Bush's presidency was a failure. By appearing in the center of the Washington Post's op-ed page with this bravely counterintuitive argument, he further establishes himself as the kind of guy who can set the agenda in the nation's major newspages. And by making this argument, he demonstrates that most relevant of all pundit qualities. No, not accuracy, but originality. The strength and predictive capacity of the article are entirely beside the point. No one will remember it. But they will remember the name Kristol, and how many times he appeared on television, and how he's a leading conservative intellectual. As it turns out, a unicycle is occasionally the fastest way to get where you want to go. --Ezra Klein