Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Karl Rove

Lessons from TR

Karl Rove recently wrote an essay for Time magazine on the lessons to be learned from the life of Teddy Roosevelt. One lesson was not mentioned by Rove. Roosevelt not only served in the Spanish-American War, leading the famous charge up San Juan Hill, but offered to serve in World War I. All of his sons served in that war. Theodore Jr. was seriously wounded in 1918. He still managed to see action, even though his injury required him to walk with a cane, in the Normandy invasion in World War II 26 years later. And Quentin Roosevelt, flying one of those rickety World War I planes, was shot down and killed.

By contrast, David Stout of The New York Times reported in August of this year:

"A White House aide who requested anonymity ... said that he knew of no top Bush administration official who had a relative who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Change of Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a senior editor at the National Review, long a conservative bible. But whatever enthusiasm he had for George Bush appears to be fading last. He recently wrote:

"The common denominator of a successful president, liberal or conservative, has been that they were realists. Because Bush is an ideologue, removed from fact, he has failed comprehensively and surely is the worst president in American history--indeed in the damage he has caused the nation, without a rival in the race for the bottom. Because Bush is generally called a conservative, he will have poisoned the term for decades to come."

I agree with Hart--be sure to see his article on p.40--about the worst president, and pray that he is right about the fate of "conservative." It's time those guys paid the price for turning liberal into a dirty word.

Forgotten casualties

Most people know that the number of Americans killed in Iraq has passed 2,600. But, as I have often complained, we hear the wounded figure much less frequently. In fact, it may already have hit 20,000. The last figure I have from late August was 19,511--and many of their wounds are horrendous. Because of improved roadside bombs, the number of wounded each month almost doubled over the first seven months of this year, reports The New York Times.. Furthermore, The Washington Post gives a minimum estimate of 40,430 Iraqi fatalities and a maximum of 44,969. According to the latest figures, that number is now growing at the alarming rate of 3,500 a month.

Bush really is the worst president.

Another of Karl's omissions

Another of TR's lessons that seems to have escaped Rove is that as early as 1916, TR was urging President Wilson to raise taxes to pay for the war that was coming.

Interestingly enough, another hero of Rove's is Wendell Willkie. For a graduate class at the University of Texas, Rove wrote one of the best accounts I've seen of Willkie's amazing rush from nowhere to win the 1940 Republican nomination. Needless to say, however, it did not mention the fact that in 1943, Willkie urged Franklin Roosevelt to raise taxes even more than FDR was raising them to pay for World War II. This was when FDR was well on the way to a top rate of 90 percent, and was urging that all incomes be limited to $25,000 a year.

Smooth operators

Hospital executives were recently treated to a free trip to a luxury resort in Colorado featuring free golf and "harmonic" hot stone massages. They were also paid several thousand dollars each for advice.

Who were the generous hosts? Companies like Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and GE Healthcare. And what was the advice the executives were to give these companies? It concerned, according to Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times, how the companies could most effectively go about selling their products to the hospitals run by the executives. In other words, the chickens were being bribed by the foxes into providing the key to their coop.

Home alone

NPR's Margot Adler has discovered a new reason for the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon. It is the McMansions that have been going up all over the country in the last decade. One man explained to her that with everything he needed in the house, "there's no reason to go out."

Give Junior a break

When today's grandparents, a group that includes Beth and Charlie Peters, get together, one of the most common laments involves the over-scheduling of grandchildren. Today's parents seem to think they have to provide an hour by hour program of activities for...