Week of February 7, 2011

"If only Comrade Stalin knew!" ran through my head as Mubarak attempted to claim that he really thought the protesters, whom his security forces had earlier attacked, had legitimate demands. As though he didn't know what the security services were doing with those camels.

There were a string of commercials that referred back to earlier Super Bowl ads. The assumption by the advertisers was that Americans may not have much of a sense of history, but they do remember commercials from decades ago.

Every once in a while, I resurrect my Oveta Culp Hobby Award. Hobby was the Texas newspaper publisher who became Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of health, education and welfare. When she was asked to account for why she had failed to order enough of the new Salk polio vaccine, her response, uttered after countless years of polio epidemics and summers of sheer terror, was virtually immortal:"No one could have foreseen the public demand for the vaccine." This year's Hobby Award goes to the Obama administration for failing to foresee the upheaval in Egypt.

A modest proposal: Obama should invade Grenada for a few days. Perhaps we have reports that Al Qaeda’s number three man is vacationing there. Then Obama should pull out of Afghanistan. The right will howl in protest, but voters will happily reelect him to a second term.

[W]hatever one thinks of Reagan’s legacy, the fact that we are still arguing about the Gipper is an indication that he was a more significant leader than we thought when he left office.

Ten years ago the newly inaugurated Bush still seemed like an amiable, moderate, not especially ambitious figure—no genius, maybe, but hard (even after Bush v. Gore) to dislike. That was not how he was thought of as he was leaving office. Setting aside the substance of his presidency for a moment, it is noteworthy that Bush wound up setting off a great rethinking of the concept of presidential power, and even of the question of whether individuals can bend the course of history