Park Avenue Diplomacy

Maureen Dowd can be tiresome, but she can also be brilliant. Here, she's brilliant.

I don’t agree with those muttering darkly that the picture of Gov. Sarah Palin with a perky smile and shapely gams posing with a pleased Henry Kissinger, famous for calling power the ultimate aphrodisiac, is a sign of the apocalypse. It isn’t even a sign of the apocalipstick.How the mighty 85-year-old Henry the K has fallen from his days chasing Jill St. John and running the world to his hour briefing of a 44-year-old Wasilla hockey mom who may end up running the world.

One can imagine how Dr. K felt: pleased he could get a 44 year0old women in skirts genuflecting to him. yet possibly also incredulous that life has come to this boob running for VP. Well, K did see Spiro Agnew.

After losing its moral superiority abroad with phony evidence for attacking Iraq, the U.S. has now lost its moral superiority in the financial arena. Once more, W. took the ball, carried it off the cliff and went biking. Doctor K prolonged the war in Vietnam to help Nixon get re-elected and then advised W. on Iraq that the only way to beat an insurgency and save face is to stick it out, no matter how many American kids and foreign civilians die.

Once a cynic, always a cynic.

(A senior Palin campaign aide told CBS News’s Scott Conroy that the governor’s foreign-policy experience was atmospheric, akin to the way someone from Miami might obtain a feel for Latin America. “It is very much being able to look off the tip of Alaska,” the aide said. “Metaphorically, I’m talking about.”)

Atmospheric? How much Russian atmosphere is there in Juneau?

Kissinger probably explained détente and Metternich to Palin, while she explained the Iditarod and moose carving to him. They talked Russia, which is relevant.

Metternich and moose; what a combination.

Republicans, who have won so many elections painting Democrats as socialists and pinkos, have now done so much irresponsible deregulating and deficit spending that they have to avoid fiscal Armageddon by turning America into a socialist, pinko society with nationalized financial institutions and a financial czar accountable to no one and no law.

Socialism is dead, and so is the free market. Power to the people!

Even if she blows off the First Amendment — and lets McCain’s Rove, Steve Schmidt, demonize the press even though she disdains women politicians who whine — Bill Clinton is still a fan. Besides talking about what a great man John McCain is on “The View” and “David Letterman,” Bill praised Palin at his Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York and will receive her there on Thursday.

Bubba gets around.

On “The View,” he said he understood that some women might vote for Palin on the basis of gender, even if it was against their economic interest. “You can’t tell someone else that the ground on which they make their voting decision is irrational,” he said primly. Well, actually you could, if you weren’t still sulking and plotting for 2012.

I began to get that feeling a week or so ago, when Bam's numbers were getting weak. I'd dismissed that, especially after Hill's convention speech, but I'm not dismissing that any longer.