Opinions Do Not Reflect Those of the Management

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

J ay Lefkowitz-- President Bush's special envoy on North Korean human rights, or lack thereof -- sure created a fuss last week when he said the Commie regime of Kim Jong Il isn't serious about disarming and probably will still have nukes when a new president takes over, despite four years of six-party talks involving Washington, both Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

Even worse, Lefkowitz, in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, called for "a new approach" to North Korea that would link human rights to security matters and, when asked if he was speaking on behalf of the Bush administration, said the policy is "under review right now."

Talk about off message! The State Department folks went ballistic.

Rather than rely on news accounts of Lefkowitz's heresy, we decided to read a transcript that had been posted on the State Department's Web site. We clicked and clicked to no avail. All we got was: "We're sorry. That page can't be found and may have been moved."

Unclear who airbrushed -- or as they say at Foggy Bottom, Trotskyed -- the transcript, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's sharp criticism yesterday of Lefkowitz gives a clue as to why they did the electronic white-out.

Lefkowitz "doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks," Rice told reporters traveling with her yesterday to Germany to discuss Iran's nuclear program.

Lefkowitz, she said, didn't speak for U.S. policy on that question and she doubted anyone in the talks would even recognize his name, according to the Associated Press.

Oh yes they would. The North Korean press yesterday blasted "hard-line" conservatives for trying to "stifle" North Korea. (Trust us, they're trying to do way more than that.) Meanwhile, buzz is that Lefkowitz told Bush two weeks ago that he wanted to resign, but Bush urged him to hang in there.

Despite the State Department's effort to delete Lefkowitz's views, we found the speech on the AEI Web site at http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1635,filter.all/event_detail.asp.

Tick, Tick, Tick

There's been talk of late among the chattering class of growing Bloomberg Speculation Fatigue. Seems the calls of "Run, Mike, Run" for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's much-anticipated third-party presidential bid have been supplanted by "enough, already" complaints.

The unexpectedly chaotic nomination battles in both parties may be part of the problem. Bloomberg supporters would have been far happier if the parties' nominees had been picked by now.

Then Bloomberg, with his private-sector and mayoral experience, along with his moderate views, could step forward. "The rationale for his running," said election expert Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, applies "if you have candidates on the ballot who are on the wings or people without experience" in foreign policy or governance. Perhaps something like a Mike Huckabee- John Edwards contest.

"But it's entirely possible we're not going to know the candidates until it's too late" for Bloomberg to use that rationale, Ornstein said. It's looking now as though the Republicans and maybe even the Democrats may go all the way to the conventions in August before choosing a nominee.

If Bloomberg were to run, he would have to gather enough petitions to get his name on the state ballots. Texas and several other states allow you to start getting petitions on March 5. Bloomberg, given his bottomless pockets, would have enough money to begin later than most candidates, but he'd have to be on state ballots by around the end of April, Ornstein noted.

The perceived wisdom is that Bloomberg will not run unless he thinks he has a serious chance of winning. In some matchups he might. In a John McCain- Barack Obama or a McCain- Hillary Clinton race, it's most unlikely.

While Bloomberg continues playing Hamlet, some people close to him think they may have picked up clues that he will run.

"He used to say he's a 5-foot-6-inch Jew," said former New York mayor Ed Koch, "and now he says he is 5-foot-7 -- though he continues to be Jewish."

If he adds one more inch . . .

The Primary Problem

Meanwhile, there are moves afoot on the Hill to try to do something about the expensive and ever-earlier primary lunacy.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), backed by Sen. Lamar! Alexander (Tenn.), a former GOP presidential candidate, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), a former Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidate, introduced a bill to move the primaries from January to March. The measure would keep Iowa and New Hampshire in the lead but then would shift to four regional primaries, ending in early June.

There's a question as to whether the Constitution bars Congress from enacting such legislation, but supporters say they've got an important 1981 article by a former law professor when the inevitable legal challenge reaches the Supreme Court.

"Congress must have at least authority to specify the dates of primaries," wrote the professor, now Justice Antonin Scalia.

So now if we don't like the way the primaries are conducted, we can blame Congress.