Some of my readers are writing and saying, "Hey Steve, where are you?? Senator Hagel spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations and called this administration one of the most incompetent in American history! This is your stuff!" They have written, "Hagel had dinner again with Bloomberg! Is he gonna run?"

As regular readers of this blog know, I am a great fan of Senator Hagel's. The Chairman of my Director's Council at the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program, Rita Hauser, participated in the meeting and posed the first question to the Senator, etc. -- so I've been kept up to date.

But the real reason I haven't written more is that the Senator's comments are largely in line with what he has been saying already -- and his talk in New York actually began with his letter to President Bush which The Washington Note first got into the public domain.

But I am enthused by his comments, and I want him to remain engaged not just in public commentary about the administration but in serious efforts to undo the harm that has been done. That takes more than rhetoric. We need a bigger team of people pulling on legislative options to counter the mess in our foreign policy portfolio.

If you scroll down below, I moderated a very successful economic policy forum this morning -- which ran about three and a half hours. The meeting will air on C-Span today and throughout the next week I'm told. I'm in recovery mode now from the exciting but exhausting demands of this meeting.

And quite embarrassingly, while in the men's restroom at the Cosmos Club, I saw a bottle of colored liquid next to some small cups. The cups were clearly meant for mouthwash. The bottle, however, was full of toxic tasting aftershave which I thoroughly gargled with.

Don't try that at home -- I still feel sick from it.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Citizens for Global Solutions just launched an interactive web tool that TWN readers should find interesting. '08 Or Bust is a guide to foreign policy in the 2008 presidential elections. It allows users to compare candidates' direct quotes on some of the most important foreign policy issues with which the next president will have to grapple. Users can contribute quotes, both in text and embedded video format, to the site. Help filling in the blanks is much appreciated.

The coolest feature of the site is the Global Solutions candidate questionnaire. We have aggressively sought out in-depth responses from all candidates to our questions on important global issues. So far, four candidates, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson and Barack Obama, have stated their views for the record. These questionnaires expose some interesting divisions and are well worth a read.

We have spent the past few months trying to get responses from other candidates also. Some campaigns have blown us off, some campaigns are under-resourced and can't commit the time to doing it, and Mitt Romney's campaign refuses to answer because their candidate is "constantly developing new policies."

If a candidate you support (or can't stand) hasn't filled out a questionnaire and you would like to publicize his or her views, you can help us get a response.

Over the next month or so, I'll delve in to some of the more interesting divisions between the candidates who have responded to the questionnaire, issue by issue. For now, enjoy the site.

-- Scott Paul

I'll be moderating a conference focusing on the now and near term of the American economy, the housing bubble, and recession fears today in Washington. Here's the line up.

The entire meeting will be taped by C-Span today -- and broadcast later this afternoon and over the weekend.

The meeting is open to the public -- but it's at the Cosmos Club and guys need to wear ties if you stop in. What can I say? Clubs have rules -- and besides being a beautiful place, the Cosmos Club also has a wall dedicated to members who have been on postage stamps.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Praise where praise is due.

Today, I checked the transcript of Dana Perino's press gaggle held on November 20th -- which discusses some aspects of the planning then for the Annapolis Israel-Palestine Summit as well as mentions a letter that Brent Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton, Carla Hills, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski and many others signed with regard to the summit.

Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft's name was misspelled -- and it created a bit of a stir among some quarters on whether the White House could fix it or not if the questioner misspoke the name -- or whether the failure to fix the name was a sign of the White House's every-once-in-a-while frustration with General Scowcroft's views on national security policy.

I'm happy to report that "Snowcroft" is now "Scowcroft."

That was the right move -- and thanks to the White House press and web team for getting this done.

-- Steve Clemons

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced that the new US Envoy for Middle East Security is going to be former NATO Commander Jim Jones.

Here is an item that I posted on my blog from strategist Harlan Ullman and General Jim Jones earlier this year. Jones and Ullman were challenging Krauthammer, and that generally would be a sign of constructive, realist thinking.

-- Steve Clemons

While there have been fifteen U.S. Senators in American history who became President, only Warren Harding and John F. Kennedy went directly to the White House from the Senate.

Americans seem to want to see some kind of executive/management ability in their president typically, and thus all politics and political affiliations aside, candidates like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Bill Richardson, and Rudy Giuliani have something in their portfolio a bit different than those who vote but don't get the frills and problems of the buck stopping with them -- like Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, Fred Thompson, and Ron Paul.

But for those who were governors or generals, the spotlight will then go to how did they actually perform as chief executives, and were there any shenanigans that raise serious doubts about competence, self-dealing, or blurry ambiguities that simply ought not to be there.

Ben Smith and Politico have discovered under a Freedom of Information Act inquiry some material exposing Rudy Giuliani's bureaucratic technique of hiding and/or billing travel and security expenses incurred during a marital affair within what appear to be inappropriate agencies in New York.

Read the whole article, but here's the core of what's at issue:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents, obtained by Politico under New York's Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor's office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing "security."

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani's New York Police Department security detail.

Giuliani's relationship with Nathan is old news now, and Giuliani regularly asks voters on the campaign trail to forgive his "mistakes."

It's also impossible to know whether the purpose of all the Hamptons trips was to see Nathan. A Giuliani spokeswoman declined to discuss any aspect of this story, which was explained in detail to her earlier this week.

But the practice of transferring the travel expenses of Giuliani's security detail to the accounts of obscure mayoral offices has never been brought to light, despite behind-the-scenes criticism from the city comptroller weeks after Giuliani left office.

The expenses first surfaced as Giuliani's two terms as mayor of New York drew to a close in 2001, when a city auditor stumbled across something unusual: $34,000 worth of travel expenses buried in the accounts of the New York City Loft Board.

When the city's fiscal monitor asked for an explanation, Giuliani's aides refused, citing "security," said Jeff Simmons, a spokesman for the city comptroller.

But American Express bills and travel documents obtained by Politico suggest another reason City Hall may have considered the documents sensitive: They detail three summers of visits to Southampton, the Long Island town where Nathan had an apartment.

Auditors "were unable to verify that these expenses were for legitimate or necessary purposes," City Comptroller William Thompson wrote of the expenses from fiscal year 2000, which covers parts of 1999 and 2000.

The letter, whose existence has not been previously reported, was also obtained under the Freedom of Information Law.

I maintain my view that Romney would be a more formidable candidate for any of the Dems than Giuliani -- though a good number of Dems disagree with me.

However, I think that these kinds of shenanigans during Giuliani's term would help fill in the long, tedious months between February 6, 2008 and election day.

-- Steve Clemons

Earlier today, I wrote about the interesting press gaggle comment by White House spokesperson Dana Perino that Bush was not a "gambler."

When I read the original transcript of the meeting, I saw this line:

Q Is he familiar with the Snowcroft letter, I guess signed by a bunch of other folks, as well, saying basically that if there is either nothing accomplished at this session, or very little accomplished, it risks devastating consequences in the region?

Since I have helped get a great number of the signers for this letter -- and to get it pushed out into the public eye, I know that the questioner meant "Brent Scowcroft," not someone named "Snowcroft."

I don't know if the recorder of the meeting spelled it incorrectly or whether the questioner incorrectly pronounced Scowcroft -- but clearly, the "Scowcroft letter" is what was intended.

When Dana Perino responded though, she didn't call him "Snowcroft" or "Scowcroft"; she referred to him as "the gentleman you mentioned" in response to the questioner.

Since I succeeded yesterday in getting the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery of Art to fix the spelling of Bartlesville, Oklahoma -- I thought I'd try again on a similar front. I called the White House, informed two different staff of the error and was told that my "concern would be passed on." Tonight nothing has been fixed.

A former senior White House staff person in the Bush administration told me today that they may not be able to fix the spelling if the recording shows that the questioner pronounced it wrong.

But what do they do when Bush mispronounces something? And what did they do when few people actually knew how to pronounce and get the cadence of Ahmadenijad? Did they just go with what flowed verbally?

Or do they still just hold a grudge against Scowcroft -- and don't want to fix his name in the transcript -- just to dig at him a bit?

-- Steve Clemons

(Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky will lead the U.S. delegation to the UN climate change conference next month in Bali. White House Environment Czar James Connoughton will also be there for the high-level section, while chief climate obstructionist Harlan Watson will run the day-to-day negotiations)

Next month's conference on climate change in Bali will be the 13th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which includes the U.S.) and the third Meeting of the Parties (MOP) to the Kyoto Protocol (which excludes the U.S.).

Over the past few years, negotiations have moved at a frighteningly slow pace. I remember at the 11th COP in Montreal, it was considered a great success that countries agreed to establish an "open-ended working group" to discuss the next phase of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol.

These negotiations may be tedious, but they do forge progress over time. While the Bali conference is a crucial moment towards a climate agreement that can take effect after 2012 (when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires), no one should expect anything final to be hammered out next month.

With Australia now fully on board with global climate change efforts and even discussing immediate Kyoto Protocol ratification, the U.S. is more or less alone among industrialized countries in opposing internationally binding emissions limits - though it will, as usual, get some help from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states.

Since President Bush took office, there has been some minor evolution in his administration's rhetoric but almost no change in policy (the one notable positive change is its interest in helping communities adapt to the effects of climate change, but it's unclear how exactly the administration intends to move forward on that front). The Bush administration could go one of two ways in the upcoming climate conference.

The U.S. could continue its campaign of "hard obstruction" of the past seven years. This course entails preventing the creation of new binding rules on climate change. In other words, in addition to not participating in global efforts, the U.S. could attempt to block other countries from establishing new mechanisms with teeth. The stated rationale for this is that the U.S. opposes a "one size fits all" approach and believes no country should have to choose between economic development and environmental protection. More likely, the U.S. doesn't want any other agreement to be created that it will be forced to reject. This has been official U.S. policy since the beginning of the Bush administration and it has infuriated friends and foes alike.

Alternatively, the U.S. could try a "soft obstruction." It could state its reservations about international climate agreements but not protest their adoption by others. This would entail no formal turnaround by the Bush administration, but it would leave the door open for the next administration to participate fully in international efforts. From a long-term perspective, ignoring the Bush administration and creating a more durable, ambitious climate framework would probably be the most constructive path for the international community to take.

Both of these approaches are obstructionist. Neither are good. Ideally, President Bush would have a dramatic turnaround and take to international climate agreements with Schwarzenegger-like vigor, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll settle for some soft obstruction and a new administration that understands the importance of global warming and doing our share to solve global problems.

-- Scott Paul

Note: A shout out is due to the members of the SustainUS delegation, who are headed to Bali to represent the concerns of U.S. youth to other delegates. Read dispatches from youth delegates at the COP here and here. If you are a young person, send your message to the delegates here.

No kidding. White House spokesperson Dana Perina yesterday said that despite Bush's big gambles on Iraq, on his 'bring it on' battle against global terrorists, and possibly on Iran, "The President is not a gambler."

Although the next question was about the "Scowcroft Letter" which Daniel Levy, Robert Malley, Henry Siegman, and I have been helping to promulgate, the more appropriate question should have been:

When did the President actually stop gambling?

Here is the exchange on both the President's new aversion to gambling, particularly with regard to Middle East peace, and comments about our Annapolis Summit letter:

MS. PERINO: I would say it's an important initiative. The President is not a gambler. The President wants these parties to come together for the sake of peace and stability and democracy and freedom in the Middle East. He understands there's a root cause here, in that region, and he has dedicated a significant amount of time and resources and effort to bringing them together, and I think that it's well worth it.

Q Is he familiar with the Scowcroft letter, I guess signed by a bunch of other folks, as well, saying basically that if there is either nothing accomplished at this session, or very little accomplished, it risks devastating consequences in the region?

MS. PERINO: We are aware that there has been a lot of posturing and a lot of communication in the walk up to this conference, and there are people that have a lot of experience, like the gentleman you mentioned, who were here before, they've seen the difficulties of trying to establish peace in the Middle East. We recognize that at the Annapolis conference we are not going to have instant results. What you are going to have, however, we hope, is a discussion of the core issues, the substantive issues that can get the Palestinians and the Israelis to a place where they can have negotiations to get to the two-state solution that they say that they both want to get to.

There's a lot of difficult issues that come with that. There's a lot of history, and there's a lot of tension. But I think that the motivations on all sides have been genuine, and we are hopeful that we have a good conference. And I look forward to giving you more information about the President's participation as soon as I can.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This tidbit just appeared in Robin Wright's recent reporting on the Annapolis Summit in an article titled "Iran: The Uninvited Wildcard in Mideast Talks":

Iran will still have leverage in the event of peace, Arab officials concede. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said yesterday that any peace agreement would eventually have to include Hamas, since it controls Gaza and half the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, the two major Palestinian parties -- Hamas and Fatah, which controls the West Bank -- would need to join a national unity government, he said.

An agreement signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders would need ratification by their respective parliaments, and Hamas still controls the Palestinian parliament.

"Unless you bring Hamas in tune with what is happening on the peace side, you are really not fulfilling a basic requirement," Faisal said. "One man cannot make peace; not even half a people can make peace," he told a roundtable of U.S. journalists. "There has to be consensus about peace among the Palestinians for this to go smoothly."

I just thought it worth noting that people ranging from former Secretary of State Colin Powell to former New Jersey Governor and Bush administration cabinet member Christine Todd Whitman (who headed the National Democratic Institute election monitoring mission of the 2005 Palestinian elections) to former US Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki to former National Security Advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft to former Senators Nancy Kassebaum Baker, Gary Hart, Lincoln Chafee, Larry Pressler, Birch Bayh and many others from both sides of the aisle agree with the Saudi Foreign Minister.

-- Steve Clemons

Thanks for the good greetings from many friends and TWN readers who clocked in from China, Australia, Israel, and throughout Europe tonight regarding some comments I made on CNN International about the Annapolis Summit.

Tomorrow, at about 10:20 am, I'll be chatting with Brian Lehrer on WNYC New York Public Radio about Bush's chances of success in Annapolis -- and who loses if the effort fails (just a hint: everyone loses).

Also, here is an interesting tidbit in the New York Sun titled "Has Bloomberg Found his Condoleezza?" about Nancy Soderberg's alleged tutorials of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who continues to insist he's not going to run for the presidency.

I'm quoted in the piece, suggesting that it makes sense to me that Bloomberg would want a tutor who is progressive but practical, committed to good ends in the world but not in ways that undermine American interests -- sort of along the lines of Richard Holbrooke, whom Soderberg worked closely with. Unfortunately the piece mentions both Soderberg and Holbrooke, but not the strong connection between them, which must have been excised by an over eager editor.

And also greetings to the guys who said hello to me -- mentioning the blog -- on P Street and U Streets. Made my day.

-- Steve Clemons

On the eve of the Annapolis Summit, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General ERIC SHINSEKI has asked that his name be added to a letter to the President and Secretary of State about the fundamental requirements for a successful Israel-Palestine outcome.

Former New Jersey Governor and Bush Administration EPA Administrator CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN and Rice University James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy Director and former US Ambassador EDWARD DJEREJIAN has also agreed to sign the letter.

The New America Foundation, International Crisis Group, and US/Middle East Project helped draft and promulgate a letter to President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding the Annapolis Peace Summit several weeks ago.

The letter, as first drafted, calls for a process that is inclusive of all parties in the region, a process that has impact on the daily lives of Palestinians and Israelis, and is not a one-shot deal that ends with this Summit.

There are many signers of the letter now, but initial signatories included BRENT SCOWCROFT, ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, CARLA HILLS, NANCY KASSEBAUM BAKER, LEE HAMILTON, THOMAS PICKERING, THEODORE SORENSEN, and PAUL VOLCKER.

Other signatories in the subsequent weeks have "included" but are not limited to:

US AID Deputy Administrator HARRIET "HATTIE" BABBITT, former USIA Chief JOSEPH DUFFEY, former US Senator GARY HART, former US Senator LINCOLN CHAFEE, RAND Corporation Board Member and New America Foundation/American Strategy Program Chair RITA HAUSER, former Assistant Secretary of State JAMES DOBBINS, former State Department Policy Planning Director MORTON HALPERIN, former Deputy Ambassador to the UN WILLIAM VAN DEN HEUVEL, former Israel Foreign Minister SCHLOMO BEN-AMI. . .

former US Senator BIRCH BAYH, former Congressman and Corning CEO AMO HOUGHTON Jr., former National Intelligence Council Chairman ROBERT HUTCHINGS, Fletcher School Dean and former U.S. Ambassador STEPHEN BOSWORTH, former Assistant Secretary of Defense LAWRENCE KORB, former American Political Science Association President and Columbia University professor ROBERT JERVIS, Kings College Terrorism Chair and New America Foundation Senior Fellow ANATOL LIEVEN, former National Security Agency Director Lt. General WILLIAM ODOM. . .

Committee for the Republic President WILLIAM NITZE, Brookings Visiting Senior Fellow DIANA VILLIERS NEGROPONTE, Former CIA Deputy Director JOHN McLAUGHLIN, former US Ambassador JOHN MALOTT, former EU Commissioner for Foreign Relations CHRISTOPHER PATTEN, former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East PAUL PILLAR, former US Senator LARRY PRESSLER, former US Ambassador FELIX ROHATYN. . .

MIT Center for International Studies Director RICHARD SAMUELS, retired Marine Corps General JOHN J. "JACK" SHEEHAN, Princeton University Woodrow Wilson School Dean ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, Former Congressman STEPHEN SOLARZ, former First USA Bank CEO and Adagio Partners CEO RICHARD VAGUE, Former US Senator and UN Foundation President TIMOTHY WIRTH, and former US Ambassador and AIG Vice Chairman FRANK WISNER. . .

former New Jersey Governor and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN, Nixon Center President and National Interest Publisher DIMITRI SIMES, former National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore LEON FUERTH, Brookings Senior Fellow PHILIP GORDON, former US Ambassador to NATO ROBERT HUNTER, former Malaysia Deputy Prime Minister ANWAR IBRAHIM, former CIA Deputy Director JOHN McLAUGHLIN. . .

former State Department Chief of Staff LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Lehman Brothers Managing Director THEODORE ROOSEVELT IV, former US Ambassador JOSEPH WILSON, former Chief Monitor of the Middle East Roadmap at the Department of State JOHN S. WOLF -- among others.

The Annapolis Summit is actually an extraordinary meeting of global players -- including the foreign ministers of all P-5 nations not to mention a vast number of Arab states -- but more needs to be known on whether something tangible and transmittable to the next US President will emerge from this meeting.

While I have heard through the DC grapevine that the Palestinians are depressed after being cajoled into signing a joint declaration, they are hopeful and semi-confident that Bush's speech on Tuesday at the session will offer some greater specificity on his vision of various "final status" issues.

As one friend of mine close to the process told me today, it is vital that the White House understand that it is not only Ehud Ohlmert who needs to give a victory speech when he goes home -- but also Palestinian Authority President Abbas. If Palestinians on the street don't feel bolstered by the outcome tomorrow, Abbas will be politically crushed -- and Hamas, which is not included in this process, will emerge a victor.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

The counter-neocon crowd really should be taking notes on not only the chutzpah of neoconservatives who helped take this nation on a self-destructive course, but on the tactics and vehicles they use.

I think that David Frum's new book and the forthcoming December 10th Bradley Lecture by Douglas Feith deserve particularly close inspection.

-- Steve Clemons

If you even have a smidgen of interest in Japanese art, an afternoon well done is visiting the "Patterned Feathers and Piercing Eyes Exhibit" of the "Joe and Etsuko Price Collection" at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery. It's a great sampling of a huge collection that the Prices have amassed during fifty years of collecting Edo era screens and scrolls.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art Japan Pavilion used to house the collection, but lost it when the Museum decided to turn a scholar study center inside the building into a book store. Price had donated $5 million along with his collection to the Museum, which was matched by a similarly sized donation from the Japanese business community and Japan's Keidanren.

Joe and Etsuko Price were incensed that the Museum would do away with the only part of the institution really dedicated to serious research and revoked the collection and created an independent scholar study center near Newport Beach, California.

I had the privilege of attending the opening of the pavilion when I ran the Japan America Society of Southern California -- and really loved spending time with Joe Price and his family who like my family were from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. For a while, I tried to broker the increasingly tense relationship between the Museum and the Price family, but Joe Price was impressively committed to scholarship more than anything else. One of the interesting things about his collection -- which is not part of the Sackler exhibit -- was his eye for forgeries made in the Edo and post-Edo period of famous Japanese painters. Price bought the originals and then sought the forgeries as well so as to train contemporary students of these artists and their works.

Here is a peek at Joe Price's unusual, mushroom-looking Corona del Mar home and tea house -- which I saw during construction and for which the architect was Bart Prince, a student of Bruce Goff (who was the architect of the LACMA Japan Pavilion), who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Unfortunately, in a placard at the Sackler Gallery describing the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed skyscraper -- the Price Tower -- in Bartlesville, the museum misspelled the oil town's name as "Bartelsville."

On behalf of my fellow Bartians and Joe & Etsuko Price, I am made an email plea to the Sackler this morning to fix the spelling.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Good news. The Sackler Gallery emailed today and said that Bartlesville would soon have its spelling corrected in the Price exhibition.

Australia's Shadow Climate Change Minister and former Midnight Oil Singer Peter Garrett

Australia's election that has today elevated the Labor Party to majority status and Kevin Rudd to succeed the conservative John Howard may signal a major shift ahead in America's political order.

In the past, American elections that were the result of large political currents here also were reflected in political outcomes elsewhere. Bill Clinton and the early Tony Blair come to mind. So do George Bush and the now ousted Shinzo Abe.

But political currents elsewhere may also anticipate currents in the U.S. Gordon Brown in the UK and now Kevin Rudd in Australia may be good predictors that the next U.S. president will be a Democrat (or Independent if Bloomberg enters the race). However, Sarkozy's win in France though does pose a counter point, or at least a speedbump, to that prediction.

Beyond ending the lockstep dance between George Bush and John Howard, Kevin Rudd's win also means that Peter Garrett, former lead singer for Midnight Oil, will be Australia's next Climate Change Minister -- and Kim Beazley, former head of the Labor Party, will most likely be the next Australian Ambassador to the United States.

I think Beazley will become a real force in Washington circles and will be welcomed enthusiastically. I know he'll throw great parties.

And on climate change policy, I've never heard anyone more articulate and compelling than Peter Garrett who I met and listened to carefully last September in Melbourne.

-- Steve Clemons

This just in from Bloomberg's Lorraine Woellert:

Presidential candidate Ron Paul said he has raised more than $9 million in the past two months and he predicted his campaign will exceed its $12 million fourth-quarter goal.

Arianna Huffington has linked three interesting graphics in an essay titled "Posterizing the Modern GOP."

I like the poster to the right the best, but the politician roster above is also effective. One change I'd make if I had designed it is to have replaced George Tenet and Richard Armitage with David Addington and Ari Fleischer. Maybe even Elliott Abrams.

There are 17 names on the poster. If the Bush administration had not taken this country on the disastrous course it has, just think about a poster that had names something along the likes of:

GEORGE W. BUSH

COLIN POWELL

BRENT SCOWCROFT

RITA HAUSER

CHUCK HAGEL

ROBERT ZOELLICK

ROBERT KIMMITT

ERIC SHINSEKI

RICHARD ARMITAGE

SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR

CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN

RICHARD HAASS

JOHN BELLINGER

JOSHUA BOLTEN

JOHN DANFORTH

OLYMPIA SNOWE

WILLIAM FALLON

RON PAUL

RICHARD LUGAR

Some of these names -- particularly Richard Armitage's given his involvement in Valerie Plame's outing -- will not thrill progressives and liberals.

But my point is that the Republican Party has had a choice in who its prominent players are -- and has sculpted an image of pugnacious, anti-intellectualism, and anti-internationalism that has betrayed the classic Republican standard.

The Republican Party has options, and in the long run should re-sculpt its dominant features.

It would be interesting for someone to generate some posters that contrast Hillary Clinton's crowd and themes with Barack Obama's, or Edwards', or Dodd's, or Biden's, or Kucinich's, or Ron Paul's. . .

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Next Tuesday, a gaggle of nations will meet for one day in the Maryland City of Annapolis to discuss what it will take to generate a comprehensive solution to the Israel-Palestine standoff.

The Baltimore Sun caught my comment that in 1786 the Annapolis Convention was a mess. The various states of the Confederated States of America were trying to hammer out trade arrangements, and they were getting nowhere. Alexander Hamilton's own colleagues from New York abandoned him at the Convention leaving New York without a vote -- and yet amidst the low expectations and the overall bungling of the conference -- James Madison and Hamilton convinced delegates to exceed their authority and call for a federal convention the following year in Philadelphia. That meeting birthed the Constitution and the establishment of the United States.

I doubt that the Palestine-Israel summit, which shares so many characteristics of the 1786 Convention, can achieve a point of definitive and comprehensive success next week. However, Secretary Rice and President Bush seem ready to gamble what is left of their prestige on this venture.

Failure will hurt the US as well as the other parties involved as it will confirm in the minds of many around the world that America is no longer a superpower in the way it once was. If it fails in this, it will telegraph to many that we cannot achieve the objectives we set out for ourselves.

Doubt, cynicism, and low expectations about the 1786 Annapolis Convention are part of what helped generate the successful environment that it was for hatching the all important Philadelphia Federal Convention.

If Condoleezza Rice can harness doubt as well as the imperative of doing something to resolve this situation, this meeting next Tuesday could be historic.

-- Steve Clemons