The Story of Wife No. 3

" 'I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges,' Obama will say, according to speech excerpts provided to ABC News by his campaign, 'but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.' . . . .

"In many ways, the speech is counterintuitive; Obama, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush. It comes at a time in Obama's campaign when the freshman senator is drawing more financial support from more voters than any other candidate, though he has yet to vault from his second-place position in the polls. One of the reasons for that is that the Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, is seen as more experienced and in some ways stronger, a perspective Obama wishes to change.

"One would hope that this would mark the end of Barack Obama's credibility as a presidential candidate. Given the other options available in the campaign, it probably won't. Too bad -- because of all the war plans floated by the Democrats in this primary campaign, this is easily the stupidest of all."

At Right Wing Nuthouse, Rick Moran is equally critical:

"What do you believe would happen if American forces invaded Pakistan to go after the Taliban without the permission of the Musharraf government?

"Most analysts expect the Pakistani people would pour into the streets in protest, destablizing that already fragile country to the point that it would be possible for a much more conservative, Taliban friendly government to emerge from the chaos. Pakistan is already the most anti-American country in the world following our invasion of Afghanistan. It would be stupid to invade and threaten Musharraf's hold on power."

But the view is quite different at American Prospect, where Sam Boyd gives a thumbs-up:

"BARACK OBAMA WILL PERSONALLY TRACK DOWN OSAMA BIN LADEN AND KILL HIM WITH HIS BARE HANDS. Not really, but that's the impression you get from the glowing coverage of Obama's speech. It was, indeed, very good and there's a good chance it will be remembered as the moment he finally dispelled worries about his foreign policy experience. Substantively, it contains pretty much everything you could ask for -- withdrawal from Iraq, non-proliferation, greater involvement in Afghanistan and so on.

"The most ballyhooed part is the suggestion that Obama might invade tribal areas just across the border from Afghanistan in Pakistan to root out Al Qaeda and even use US troops. Is this a good idea? I don't know, but the most likely criticism--that it would destabilize Musharraf--is likely not helpful because, the way things are going in Pakistan, we have no idea what the balance of power will be in 2009 or even who will be running the country. Ezra wonders whether we'd be able to convince Musharraf to cooperate, but the speech includes this line: 'If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will,' indicating that Obama wouldn't be relying on Pakistani help.

"Politically, this is quite a coup. ABC called it 'bold,' the AP headlined its coverage 'Obama Vows to Hunt Down Terrorists' and Reuters went with 'Obama talks tough.' The speech shows that Obama is capable of telling a powerful and all-encompassing story about his vision of foreign policy--something few other candidates can say. It's also a giant 'who you calling naive?' aimed at the Clinton campaign."

Beyond foreign policy, Andrew Sullivan detects a difference between the two front-runners that is hard to deny:

"They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in their defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder. She saw her view of feminism gutted in the 1992 campaign; she saw her healthcare plan destroyed by what she saw as a VRWC; she remains among the most risk-averse of Democrats on foreign policy and in the culture wars . . .

"Obama is different. He wasn't mugged by the 1980s and 1990s as Clinton was. He doesn't carry within him the liberal self-hatred and self-doubt that Clinton does. The traumatized Democrats fear the majority of Americans are bigoted, know-nothing, racist rubes from whom they need to conceal their true feelings and views. The non-traumatized Democrats are able to say what they think, make their case to potential supporters and act, well, like Republicans acted in the 1980s and 1990s. The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement."

As the world gets used to the idea of a Rupe Street Journal, Slate's Jack Shafer-- one of Murdoch's biggest critics--takes the bold step of predicting that the mogul will eventually dump his $5-billion prize:

"The last time Murdoch made a controversial purchase of a family-controlled operation was when he picked up the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1990s from the O'Malleys for $350 million. The team was supposed to be the basis of his big sports media thrust, but after a couple of years he dumped the team. At one point he was assembling a tabloid newspaper empire in the United States, with titles in San Antonio, Chicago, Boston, and New York. Switching gears, he dumped them all before returning to buy the oddly influential New York Post. He battled his way into satellite broadcasting, making a run on a couple of operations before acquiring a controlling interest in DirecTV. Now he's bailing out of it. He entered the American magazine market in a big way (Automobile, Mirabella, New York, Seventeen, et al.) and is now almost completely out . . .

"I've predicted that Murdoch will be a bad Wall Street Journal owner because of his instinct to foul every journalism nest in which he roosts. I need to reiterate my view that Murdoch fouls his nests not because he's a bad news man but because he's no sort of a news man. He's an impresario, a politician, and empire builder who pushes the truth only when it serves his business interests . . .

"The day will come that Murdoch decides that the newspaper and its parent company no longer fit in the colossus' ever-shifting plan to straddle all the world's media. After extracting a bit of the Journal's prestige value for his forthcoming cable business news channel, I predict he'll grow tired of the criticisms and sell it off."

Hmm . . . Is it against the law for Britney Spears to yell at a photographer, "I'm going to kill you!"?