Loneliness, Lies & Videotape

Signs of Progress

Seven and a half months after being wounded in Iraq, Bob Woodruff is spending more time at ABC News and plans to work more regularly in the fall, starting with a report on his ordeal.

"If you haven't seen Bob, you would be amazed," the former anchor's wife, Lee, said in an e-mail that recounted the family's summer at Lake George. "His hair has grown in; he has been playing some killer tennis, driving the boat for the kids . . . doing some Pilates with my sister and playing Scrabble like a fiend. He looks and sounds so much more like himself each week."

Backing Away from Bush

More conservative pundits are hopping off what remains of the Bush bandwagon. Peggy Noonan says he's no longer changing any minds:

"I think that Americans have pretty much stopped listening to him. One reason is that you don't have to listen to get a sense of what's going on. He does not appear to rethink things based on new data. You don't have to tune in to see how he's shifting emphasis to address a trend, or tacking to accommodate new winds. For him there is no new data, only determination.

"He repeats old arguments because he believes they are right, because he has no choice--in for a penny, in for a pound--and because his people believe in the dogma of the magic of repetition: Say it, say it, to break through the clutter.

"There's another reason people don't listen to Mr. Bush as much as they did. It is that in some fundamental way they know they have already fully absorbed him. He's burned his brand into the American hide."

But, says Noonan, "the Democrats' mistake--ironically, in a year all about Mr. Bush--is obsessing on Mr. Bush. They've been sucker-punched by their own animosity . . . They heighten Bush by hating him. One of the oldest clichés in politics is, 'You can't beat something with nothing.' It's a cliché because it's true."

Andrew Sullivan , who long ago turned on Bush, sees the torture argument as telling:

"The sight of so many Republican senators and one former secretary of state finally standing up against the brutality and dishonor of this president's military detention policies is a sign of great hope. It turns out there is an opposition in this country - it's called what's left of the sane wing of the GOP. Slowly, real conservatives are speaking out loud what they have long said in private. The apparatchiks of the pro-torture blogosphere can vent, but it is hard to demonize the new opposition as 'leftist' or 'hysterical.'

"Warner? McCain? Graham? Powell? These men who have served their country are somehow less reliable on matters of war than a man who never went to the war of his own generation and has bungled the two critical wars on his own watch? Please. These men are less serious about confronting terror than Dick Cheney, whose own record of commentary in Iraq would be dismissed as unhinged and absurd if he were a lowly blogger? Please."

At Rightwing Nuthouse, though, Rick Moran trains his fire on the opposition party:

"Perfectly content with throwing rhetorical bombs on the issue of detainee rights for months, not offering any solutions but rather tossing exaggerated epithets at the president and Republicans, Congressional Democrats are cowering on the sidelines as the most important debate in the War on Terror unfolds on the Hill: