When No News Is Strange News

But Hagel's event was unusual because he attached such hoopla to an announcement he had no intention of making. On Sunday, the Omaha World Herald's Washington bureau chief told National Public Radio: "I think he wouldn't prolong this over a number of days to say that he's not running."

Or so people thought. But this is a man who, after championing a Senate resolution opposing an escalation of the Iraq war, voted last month to block the measure from being debated. And moments after Hagel appeared yesterday, wearing a dark suit and tired eyes, he took an unpresidential turn. "I want to welcome Dana Bash from CNN and others who came to Omaha looking for a good steak," he quipped. He gave Bash the first question as a consolation prize.

This didn't seem to satisfy the CNN congressional correspondent. "This trip was all steak and no sizzle," she reported after the (non) announcement.

Another reporter at the event asked Hagel why he didn't simply form a presidential exploratory committee, an oft-used method of procrastination.

"Because I'm not there yet," he said.

And another asked if a last-minute conference call with supporters yesterday changed Hagel's mind. "No," he said. "I sat at my kitchen table in McLean, Virginia, two weeks ago and wrote it on a piece of yellow paper."

What, then, to make of it? "That was one of the most bizarre political statements I have ever heard," GOP operative Brad Blakeman said on MSNBC as the cable network broke away from the event.

The senator's hometown paper, the World Herald, got a potential explanation from the state's Republican governor, Dave Heineman. "Chuck Hagel," he said, "was being himself today." It didn't make much sense, but, under the Hagelian dialectic, it doesn't have to.