Charles Krauthammer proclaims “Obamacare Version 1.0 is dead” and helpfully proposes a version 2.0.  Basically:  No public option, no death panels end-of-life counseling, softpeddle government “best practices,” abandon cost-cutting, and guaranteeing universal coverage.

What’s not to like? If you have insurance, you’ll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for preexisting conditions.

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

And here’s what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage — but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies. Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largess — subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy.

It’s the perfect finesse — government health care by proxy. And because it’s proxy, and because it will guarantee access to (supposedly) private health insurance — something that enjoys considerable Republican support — it will pass with wide bipartisan backing and give Obama a resounding political victory.

Krauthammer admits that “The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic” but figures it’s a smart way to force people to swallow real socialized medicine because, when the bills come due, “the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.”

Dave Schuler thinks this would “carefully preserve most of the worst features of our present system.”

There are virtually no incentives at any level for controlling costs. Unfortunately, since we already pay nearly twice as much for healthcare per capita as an other OECD country and in this form healthcare reform would do nothing to change that, that would all but certainly result in stunting the growth of every sector of the economy other than healthcare which employs fewer people per dollar spent than most other sectors of the economy do (that’s what it means when you say that pay is higher in one sector than in another). See my previous post this morning.

So far as I can tell, Krauthammer is being serious here.  But it may be the weirdest thing he’s ever written.

Update (Steve Verdon): My own personal view is that either way we will not address the real issue with health care, the costs. People are too obsessed with the side shows and partisan point scoring to tackle the actual issue. As such, things will continue on their unsustainable course for awhile, then “reform” will be forced on the country due to the unsustainable trajectory we are on. What will happen then? I don’t know, other than it probably wont be good.

Update (James Joyner):  Ronald Bailey thinks Krauthammer is merely “predicting” rather than advocating this chain of events. That makes more sense although the irony is clearly too subtle as I’m still not getting it. 

Meanwhile, Ezra Klein argues that “We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.” But, as Bailey explains, that’s not what rationing means.

Charles Krauthammer is getting a lot of attention for his observation on Fox’ Special Report that Sarah Palin “is not a serious candidate for the presidency.”

As regular readers know, I think he’s right on this score:

She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn’t. She has to stop speaking in clichés and platitudes. It won’t work. It could work for eight weeks if you’re the number two candidate, as she was last year. But even so, she got singed a lot in that campaign.

But I have to seriously question his observational skills for his next sentence:

You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency.

Yes. You. Can.

Charles Krauthammer contends that the remarkable continuity between the Obama foreign policy and the Bush foreign policy he campaigned against so vociferously is an example of “the genius of democracy” through which “a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.”  As a result, “The Bush policies in the war on terror won’t have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day.”

As I argue in my New Atlanticist piece “Obama Foreign Policy: Bush 2.0?” there’s a lot to this.

Whatever one thinks of a given president, the fact of the matter is that foreign policy is mostly crafted by career bureaucrats and a rotating Washington policy elite who share a remarkably similar vision of things regardless of political party or domestic ideology.  Because of a strange confluence of events (the dramatic shock of 9/11, the dissimilarity of the threat we faced from the state actors we’d traditionally fought, and a president wishing to break radically from what he perceived as the fecklessness of his predecessor’s approach) neophyte ideologues (in this case, the loudest of the neocons) managed to  briefly gain control.  Their approach was soon revealed to be radically flawed and the foreign policy elite got up to speed on the issues and reasserted their dominance.

So, yes, the realities of office mean President Obama is much less of a change than Candidate Obama promised and, yes, many of President Bush’s hard choices are thereby affirmed as necessary even if undesirable.  It does not, however, follow that those policies Bush himself abandoned are thus vindicated.

Your mileage may vary.

AP Photos

There’s quite a bit of outrage brewing in the blogosphere over Joe Klein’s alleged insinuation that Charles Krauthammer would be a better columnist if he weren’t a cripple.  The offending passage is in a profile by Politico’s Ben Smith:

“He became ground zero among the neo-cons, but he’s vastly smarter than most of them,” said Time’s Joe Klein, an admirer and critic who praised Krauthammer’s “writing skills and polemical skills” as “so far above almost anybody writing columns today.”

“There’s something tragic about him, too,” Klein said, referring to Krauthammer’s confinement to a wheelchair, the result of a diving accident during his first year of medical school. “His work would have a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he’s writing about.”

A bizarre and outrageous line of attack, prompting responses from many on the Right:

• Michael Goldfarb: “Klein’s attacks on neoconservatives usually center on their religion, but in Krauthammer’s case it seems his paralysis made for an easier target.”

• John Podheretz observes “The self-infatuation this quote reveals about Klein’s own celebration of his own passport stamps—the words of a lesser author and thinker about one who so surpasses him in clarity and insight that a wiser Klein would have been better off  just admitting that he can’t hold a candle to Krauthammer and let it go at that—is striking enough. But let’s face it. This is simply disgusting, no matter how you slice it” and adds: “Klein means small in German. Trollope could not have come up with a more apt name for a character.”

• Jules Crittenden coins a new word: “I think, due to the neo-con references, its actually a sort of modified chickenhawk argument. More of a cripplehawk argument, I guess.”

• Betsy Newmark snarks, “Can you imagine if a conservative said that about a disabled liberal? Is he saying that all people confined to wheelchairs have narrow, unenlightened views? Usually liberals want to say that the obstacles that someone has personally overcome broadens their views. How many times have we read that FDR’s polio made him a more sensitive and caring leader? I guess he was also lacking the nuance that Joe Klein admires.”

• Tom Maguire calls him a “classless buffoon.”

For his part, Klein denies saying what is being imputed to him.

Obviously, I didn’t mean to imply second-class status for disabled people. On the contrary, the distance and perspective that comes with physical deficits often leads to enhanced insight and abilities. The greatest President of the past 150 140 years–(Thanks, commenter flownover!)– sat in a wheelchair.

So it is possible to write brilliant, nuanced commentary—on the war in Iraq, for example—without visiting there. But it sure does help to understand a complicated situation in an unfamiliar culture if you can see it for yourself. Indeed, I believe the leavening effects of direct experience are especially valuable for those who are blinkered by ideology and debilitated by extreme views.

Upon first reading the quote, I was prepared to believe that Smith was reading between the lines about what Klein meant.  But in his non-apology apology, it’s clear Klein is in fact referring to Krauthammer’s inability to travel to conflict zones, a byproduct of his disability.  That’s not quite the same thing as making fun of Krauthammer for being paralyzed but it’s dangerous territory.

Crittenden’s “cripplehawk” comment and Podhoretz’ bit about the “passport stamps” come closest to capturing the essence of Klein’s argument.   Is it a fair one?   Do those, like Bill Roggio and Michael Totten, who actually travel to war zones that they’re writing about have an added perspective that those of us who write from the confort of our armchairs don’t?   Sure.

It’s a rather strange leap, though, to argue that there aren’t other avenues for gaining information about a subject.  And, indeed, when people do in fact go to the field and write stories or issue statements supporting the war effort, they’re often accused of having swallowed the propaganda of our military and having seen only the “good” things on their guided tours.  There’s really no winning.

Aside from the controversy at hand, this paragraph from Klein’s defense of himself is actually far more outrageous:

[W]hile Krauthammer’s skills are impressive, his commentary has been dangerously bellicose, arrogant and wrong.  Given his influence with the Bush Administration, his unflinching support for American unilateralism–his invention of the notion of  a unipolar world–did extensive damage to our nation’s security and reputation overseas, and caused the unnecessary loss of  life.

First off, Krauthammer “invented” the idea of a unipolar world nearly two decades ago.  It was a straightforward argument about the implications of the end of the Cold War and the usefulness of international organizations during the heydey of George H.W. Bush’s “New World Order.”  Second, he’s a pundit, not a policymaker.  The idea that he’s somehow weakened the nation’s security and gotten people killed by writing polemics is idiotic.

The Washington Post company continues its consolidation of the media universe with the hire of Ezra Klein.   Politico’s Michael Calderone breaks the news:

The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein, one of the top bloggers on politics and policy, is heading to the Washington Post.

Rumors about Klein’s upcoming move spread on Wednesday night during a reception thrown by The Nation magazine in honor of D.C. bureau chief Chris Hayes.

A Post spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO this morning that Klein was hired as a blogger at washingtonpost.com and is expected to start in about a month.

Klein, a 24-year-old associate editor at the Prospect, writes frequently on health care issues. And he also runs JournoList, an off-the-record listserv of mostly left-of-center bloggers and academics, along with nonpartisan reporters.

Matt Yglesias offers his congratulations, which I second.  I also concur with Matt’s praise for recent acquisitions at the Post, most notably the superb revamping of ForeignPolicy.com into a blog megaverse.

Matt is, however, a bit leery:

After all, one thing all decent progressive blogs do is point out semi-regularly that the Washington Post opinion section is a pretty rotten operation. You have liars like Charles Krauthammer and George Will penning regular columns, alongside less-egregious but still pretty pernicious stuff like David Ignatius’ apologia for war crimes and so forth. [...] People don’t go after their bosses with hatchets. So while hiring Ezra makes the Post less hatchet-worthy, it also means that we’re down a hatchet-wielder. That’s the dark lining in my silver cloud.

The Washington Post is a newspaper, not an ideological journal like TAP.  Ignatius is a highly respected moderate-left commentator who, in this instance, has written something that many on the Left (and a few of us on the Right) disagree with. So?

As to Will and Krauthammer, the criticism is largely overblown.  Will has repeated some dubious assertions about global warming and written some silly things about denim; he’s nonetheless a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and still pens more excellent pieces than bad ones.  Krauthammer has written some truly brilliant pieces over the years along with some junk.  Again, so?

Will Ezra be doing a lot of anti-WaPo blogging while on WaPo’s dime?  Likely not.  But WaPo’s editors aren’t likely to log into his account and write embarrassing disclaimers, either.  Life is trade-offs and the Post gives Ezra a much bigger megaphone to write about health care and other issues he cares about.  If that means we’re denied the incredibly rare Ezra Klein anti-WaPo rant, the world will go on.

Photo by Flickr user electoralmath, used under Creative Commons license.

The string of U.S. vice presidents caught saying the F-word on Capitol Hill now stands at two:

Joe Biden dropped a big F-bomb into a live mic at an event on Friday afternoon.

“Gimme a f–ing break,” the vice president said after a former Senate colleague referred to him as “Mr. Vice President.”

Biden was at Union Station in Washington, D.C. to announce $1.3 billion in stimulus money to expand passenger rail capacity.

The obvious comparison is Dick Cheney’s “frank exchange of views” with Pat Leahy in June 2004.  It’s not quite the same, of course, in that Cheney’s utterance was angry and insulting while Biden’s was good humored and self-deprecating.  And Union Station is one-minute Metro ride or five minute walk from the Capitol building.

In addition to quite a bit of outrage from the likely suspects, the Cheney incident spurred an eloquent defense of the F-word from, of all people, Charles Krauthammer that included a handy dandy guide to the variations and formulations and the occasions to which they’re most suited.  Interestingly, the Army’s first successful F-bomb test happened three years later.

Victor Davis Hanson has a piece out today that I suspect will be the first of many of its kind. Intermixed with some excellent points about the perception of McCain campaign negativity, the politics of race, and scandalmongering, he aims this cheap shot at Republicans who have expressed dismay at McCain or even endorsed his opponent.

Second, with Obama now with an 6-8 point lead, some in the DC/NY corridor these last three weeks figure it’s time now to jump or at least sort of jump, since the train they think is leaving the station and there might be still be some space at the dinner table on the caboose. They also believe as intellectuals that the similarly astute Obamians may on occasion inspire, or admire them as the like-minded who cultivate the life of the mind-in contrast to the “cancer” Sarah Palin, who, with her husband Todd, could hardly discuss Proust with them or could offer little if any sophisticated table-talk other than the proper chokes on shotguns or optimum RPMs on snow-machines.

This is such utter nonsense. Conservative intellectuals are, by definition, both conservative and intellectual. While many of us understand the practical realities of politics and campaigning, we are ideologues who are motivated by fundamental principles of governing, intellectual consistency, and the ability to coherently articulate the message. While we are “team players,” having generally chosen the GOP as the best vehicle for carrying those ideas into fruition, we’re not party hacks who will publicly adopt positions of convenience for our candidate at the expense of intellectual honesty.

Here at OTB, the authors have broad agreement on general principles but have different emphases and thus different preferences in this election. As is almost always the case with intellectuals, none of us is thrilled with the available choices. I continue to support McCain, albeit less enthusiastically than even a month ago. Alex Knapp continues to support Obama, although never with any great joy. Dave Schuler, a Scoop Jackson-Sam Nunn Democrat by inclination, hadn’t made up his mind as of last Wednesday evening. (The others haven’t, so far as I recall, weighed in.)

I don’t spend a lot of time discussing Proust. To the extent that I’m invited to dinners and parties with smart people, that’s not going to change based on whom I support in November. There are plenty of smart folks on both sides of this one. What would, however, ruin my credibility in those circles is carrying the water for my party in direct opposition to my previous intellectual positions.

I was never a McCain fan, having found his 2000 campaign self-righteous and off-putting. He has been flat out wrong on a number of issues, notably his signature issue of campaign finance “reform.” I came to admire him during this year’s primary campaign, though, for doubling down on Iraq and fighting his party on immigration at a time when both those positions appeared to be political suicide. Once it became clear that Rudy Giuliani was not who I thought he was, McCain became, as I expressed it in a June 2007 post, “my least unfavorite among the 2008 field.”

I’ve defended him against charges and “Outrage of the Day” scandals that I thought were dubious and noted that many things he was doing that I personally found distasteful were well within the bounds of the rough and tumble of the American political system. Then again, I’ve done the same for his opponent.

Yes, I’ve been pretty hard on him for choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. Not only did she undermine his core message of the importance of experience and “being ready on day one,” but she’s simply the kind of politician that makes me recoil. I object to Palin for the same reason I bitterly opposed the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court: neither was “qualified” by traditional standards for the exalted positions for which they were chosen. Miers and Palin were/are both nominally qualified and both probably had the tools to carry out their jobs but given the available talent pool, their selections made no sense.

George Will, Christopher Buckley, David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, Charles Krauthammer, David Frum, Kathleen Parker, and other conservative commentators who are criticizing McCain and Palin are doing so at a risk to their standing, not to bolster it.

So, while I agree with Hanson and others that, given the choices, the McCain-Palin ticket is more likely to preside over policies that conservatives like — or at least block those we don’t like — than the Obama-Biden ticket and, as a resident of suddenly-swing state Virginia will vote accordingly, I’m not going to pretend that it’s the second coming of Ronald Reagan and Morning in America, either.

Several commentators have objected to my characterization of Sarah Palin as an”ignoramus” in the post below. I’m simply using the term in its precise meaning as “an extremely ignorant person.”

The dictionary definition of ignorant:

1.    lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned: an ignorant man.
2.    lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact: ignorant of quantum physics.
3.    uninformed; unaware.
4.    due to or showing lack of knowledge or training: an ignorant statement.

She fits the bill in all those but especially 2.  She’s likable and, I presume, of above average intelligence.  She is, however, utterly lacking in knowledge or training about matters of public policy, law, or international affairs that one expects a vice presidential nominee to bring to the table.

I didn’t call her an idiot or a moron. I don’t think she’s too stupid to learn about any of those things but she’s demonstrably spent the first 44 years of her life without displaying the curiosity to do so.

Scott Adams (of “Dilbert” fame) says we’re all idiots, just about different things.  Sarah Palin knows more about moose hunting and snowmobiling than I’ll ever know.  Unfortunately, those things are of only tertiary help for one who could, in a little over four months, be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

I’m hardly an outlier in this view.  According to two national surveys taken after the VP debates, a plurality of Americans agree with my assessment:

• NBC News/Wall Street Journal: “Forty-nine percent say that Pali is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she’s qualified. By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree.”

• CNN/Opinion Research: “87 percent of the people polled said Biden is qualified while only 42 percent said Palin is qualified.”

So, incidentally, do a growing number of prominent conservative commenters.

• George Will: “The man who would be the oldest to embark on a first presidential term has chosen as his possible successor a person of negligible experience.”

• Christopher Buckley: “And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?”

• David Brooks: “She has not been engaged in national issues, does not have a repertoire of historic patterns and, like President Bush, she seems to compensate for her lack of experience with brashness and excessive decisiveness.”

• Peggy Noonan: “The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. “

• Charles Krauthammer: “Palin fatally undermines this entire line of attack. This is through no fault of her own. It is simply a function of her rookie status.”

• David Frum: “Ms. Palin’s experience in government makes Barack Obama look like George C. Marshall.”

• Kathleen Parker: “Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.”

There are many more where that came from.

Dan Qualye was, rather unfairly in my view, a national joke.  From very shortly after George H.W. Bush picked a rising star senator from Indiana that few outside his home state had ever heard of to be his vice presidential running mate in 1988, Quayle became the butt of late night comics, “Saturday Night Live,” and other culture-setting institutions and became generally thought of as a not-ready-for-prime-time nincompoop.  People are still recycling the “you’re no Jack Kennedy” zinger that Lloyd Bentsen uncorked in the debates and the man’s supposed inability to spell potato is infamous if untrue.

But here’s the thing:  It really didn’t matter.    Bush-Quayle won in a landslide over Dukakis-Bentsen and, while they lost to Clinton-Gore in 1992, it had nothing to do with Quayle.

Sarah Palin appears to be this year’s Dan Quayle but with a twist.  She was instantly lampooned, including by McCain supporters such as myself, but then quickly made a huge splash with her acceptance speech at the Republican convention.  For a brief, shining moment, it became a Palin-McCain ticket.  She was tremendously popular and it looked like McCain had connected on his Hail Mary pass.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, though, and the pick is looking like a disaster.  She has embarrassed herself with poor performances in media interviews and she’s apparently lost even the Republican commentariat.  In addition to be lampooned two weeks in a row on the “Saturday Night Live” opening skit, she’s the butt of cruel jokes from late-night comics.  Andrew Sullivan passes on a particularly clever line from Jimmy Kimmel:

John McCain showed up without running mate Sarah Palin, which is a shame because she actually has a lot of experience with financial matters. You know, she lives right next to a bank.

Fareed Zakaria has delivered this brutal assessment:

Can we now admit the obvious? Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president. She is a feisty, charismatic politician who has done some good things in Alaska. But she has never spent a day thinking about any important national or international issue, and this is a hell of a time to start.

As Kevin Drum observes, “it’s definitely a sign that Palin’s jig may be up.”

Zakaria frequently writes astutely, but he’s something of an establishment weathervane, reluctant to state firm opinions unless he’s got plenty of company. So if he’s willing to say flatly that Palin is “utterly unqualified,” it suggests that the center-right establishment pretty unanimously agrees about this. I don’t know for sure that this will have a noticeable effect on the campaign, but when you add it to the growing list of conservatives who have taken similar stands (George Will, David Frum, Rod Dreher, Kathleen Parker, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer), it suggests that dismay over Palin may be reaching critical mass.

Indeed.   The only good news for McCain-Palin is that the expectations are now absurdly low.  Palin can “win” Thursday night’s debate with Joe Biden simply by coming across as something other than an absolute moron.  I’m not at all confident at this juncture, however, that she can clear that hurdle.

Charles Krauthammer, who coined the phrase “Bush Doctrine” in July 2001, argues that the condescension of Charlie Gibson and others over Sarah Palin’s not knowing what “Bush Doctrine” meant is misplaced.

He notes that there have been four distinct meanings of the term, with Gibson’s being the third and thus obviated.  The first, from Krauthammer’s coinage, was a willingness to unlaterally abrograte treaties judged no longer to be in our national interest.  The second, immediately after 9/11, was the “with us or against us” idea.  The third, spawned by the Iraq War debate, was the right to strike preemptively.  The fourth, set forth in the second inaugural address, is a commitment to use American resources to spread democracy throughout the world.

Was Palin’s confusion as to which of these four formulations Gibson was referencing the problem?  My guess:  No.  But Krauthammer’s right that the sense of superiority this interview has brought out in so many is unjustified.  

Michael Seitzman, a screenwriter of some note who blogs at HuffPo, perhaps takes the cake on that score.  Writing under perhaps the best Google-bait headline ever, Sarah Palin Naked, he begins:

She said “nucular.” Twice.

I realized three things tonight. For one, if you are a McCain/Palin/Bush voter, you and I do not have a difference of opinion. We have a difference in brain power. Two, she really is as ignorant as I feared. And, three, she really is kinda hot. Basically, I want to have sex with her on my Barack Obama sheets while my wife reads aloud from the Constitution. (My wife is cool with this if I promise to “first wipe off Palin’s tranny makeup.” I married well.)

Now, I want to be clear and speak directly to those of you who LOVED that Palin interview. You’re an idiot. I mean that. This is not one of those cases where we’re going to agree to disagree. This isn’t one of those situations where we debate it passionately and then walk away thinking that the other guy is wrong but argued well. I’m not going to think of you as a thoughtful but misguided person with different ideas who still really cares about the country and the world. No, sorry, not this time. This time, if you watched those interview excerpts and weren’t scared out of your freakin’ mind, then you’re mentally ill, mentally disabled, or mentally disturbed. What you are NOT is responsible, informed, curious, thoughtful, mature, educated, empathetic, or remotely serious. I mean it.

While I think it’s a happy accident, it almost seems as if Team McCain picked Palin precisely in hopes of eliciting this kind of reaction from Obama and his supporters.

Charles Krauthammer has a scathing column this morning excoriating NATO for its weak response to the Georgia crisis.  He observes that NATO’s recent statement on the matter is “almost comically evenhanded.”

It’s not until paragraph six that NATO, a 26-nation alliance with 900 million people and nearly half of world GDP, unsheathes its mighty sword, boldly declaring “Russian military action” — not aggression, not invasion, not even incursion, but “action” — to be “inconsistent with its peacekeeping role.”

Having launched a fearsome tautology Moscow’s way, what further action does the Greatest Alliance of All Time take? Cancels the next NATO-Russia Council meeting.

That’s it. No dissolution of the G-8 (group of industrial democracies). No blocking of Russian entry to the World Trade Organization. No suspension of participation in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (15 miles from the Georgian border). No statement of support for the Saakashvili government.

Look, I would have preferred that NATO had been much bolder here.  They announced at Bucharest that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually become members of the Alliance.  That position has been reiterated in recent days by both Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who blocked Georgia’s admission to a Membership Action Plan at Bucharest. NATO membership, by definition, means that we would consider an attack on Georgian territory — which decidedly occurred here — to be an attack on all members.  It’s a very bad signal, then, that we’ve done so little in immediate response to Russia’s attack on a country we’ve made that declaration about.

That said, NATO is a consensus organization comprised of 26 members with decidedly varying national interests.  Krauthammer is quite right the New Europe has been much stronger here than Old Europe and about the reason for that: “Eastern Europe understands the stakes in Georgia. It is the ultimate target.” Contrariwise, Western Europe has little at stake in Georgia — let alone South Ossetia and Abkhazia — and much at stake with Russia.

Krauthammer is simply wrong when he says that the above measures would be “painless for the West.” Most of our European allies have much more to lose from further alienating Russia than we do because of their geographic proximity and greater economic ties. Most obviously, Russia is a huge energy supplier to the region.

The measures Krauthammer outlines should indeed be on the table. But lesser measures and a game of diplomatic kabuki is going to have to play out before we can achieve consensus on what are rather major steps.

Alliance politics are incredibly frustrating.  That was true in the midst of World War II, when the need for consensus was even more urgent.  Getting agreement from 26 parties on complex problems with significant risks and a decided lack of good options is next to impossible.  Even American experts are far from agreement on what approach is best here, so it’s not surprising that Western and Eastern Europeans don’t see eye to eye.  That means we muddle through and hope to get agreement as events play out.