Should old equivalence be forgot...

My '05 Hits and Misses

Broder puts together a navel-gazing year-end column, and this is the smelly lint that he picks out:

How do you match the trio of Republican misjudgments summoned up by the names Katrina, Harriet Miers and Terri Schiavo? How do you top the Democrats' decision to entrust their party leadership to that itinerant verbal blunderbuss, Howard Dean?

There is not a mathematical framework in existence that can explain how these matters are even remotely equivalent.

Schiavo - rank politicization of a difficult personal issue regarding a comatose woman's life, in which Lott performed his hocus-pocus diagnosis via video screen, and DeLay threatened judges with impeachment for ruling in a way that he didn't like.

Miers - Bubble Boy attempts to appoint a brown-nosing lightweight to the highest Court in the country, which I hear can issue some pretty important rulings, and then has her withdraw in embarrassment when his right wing decides that she is not right wing enough.

Katrina - the myth of Bubble Boy's leadership is torn and tattered and blown away with the wind, after the general public sees that his vacation is more important the response to a major disaster, and then sees that his PR attempts and photo ops are more important than the response to a major disaster, and then sees that he would prefer to blame the locals than actually respond to a major disaster.

Dean - in the position of head of a political party that controls no branch of federal government, Dean says stuff that causes faux outrage by Republican flaks.

Must ... have ... equivalence. Must ... criticize ... Democrats. Framework ... must ... be ... preserved.