Update: Edited for clarity, and misatkes, and please note, it was Juan Williams, not Juan Cole, who "represented" liberalism on yesterdays All-Star panel.

Let me begin by clarifying the title of this post; it is not aimed at John Kerry, who, according to the SCLM was a has-been before he was a wanna-be and ultimately successful contender for the Democratic 2004 Presidential candidacy.

Still, it was hard to dispel thoughts of had-beens when confronted by the pairing of John Kerry and Newt Gingrich as Chris Wallace's only guests, outside of the Fox All-Stars, of course, and it seemed that Chris was meant to be taking the pulse of two politcal dead-man walking to illustrate Gingrich has escaped the hangman, while Kerry clearly won't be able to.

Speaking for those of us who are not fans of Fox News, I can report the hour didn't work as planned; oh, that depressing musty odor of hasbeenery was present through-out the hour, but it attached itself to Chris Wallace, himself, the Fox all-stars, and Newt, too, and even the very idea of the Fox News Channel as we come to know and loathe it.

Kerry appeared to have agreed to be a guest to show that he was still alive and kicking, and even, perhaps, still political viable, despite that monumental stumble of garbling a bad joke, and the even greater sin of failing to apologize for what he hadn't said.

You may be surprised to hear that Kerry succeeded.

Don't get me wrong; I have my doubts about another presidential run for this Senator, but Kerry showed himself to be a Democrat no one need make apologies for.

Wallace was there to insist that the major subject covered, in detail and at length, would be that manufactured dustup, hatched in the White House and carried out by the SCLM about Kerry's criticizing Bush for the disaster that is our Iraq policy by focusing on the President's lackadaisical study habits.

Kerry knew that was to be the agenda and he was ready to torpedo it by extending his answers well beyond the question asked. Thus, Chris might wonder if Kerry was in the penalty box, benched by his own party because of the incident, but Kerry would belittle the entire incident by placing it within the extraordinary win by Democrats in the mid-terms and its meaning for the problems faced by the country.

These extended arias of Kerry's had the effect of making Wallace's insistence that they had to get back to "the incident" and its many important implications seem ludicrous, as well as a transparent attempt to get yet more mileage out of portraying Kerry as unsupportive of "our troops."

Kerry was also meant to be humiliated by Wallace's constant attempt to get Kerry to admit that he'd been asked to disappear during the last days before the election by fellow Democrats; it didn't work because Kerry made an entirely credible claim that he had benched himself, knowing what it means when the White House attack machine gets you in its sights, which Kerry extended into an aria about the two years worth of work Kerry had put into helping get Democrats elected in November of 2006.

Kerry would say let's talk about what really matters to the American people, Wallace would find himself claiming that talking about what Kerry said, even if it was aimed at Bush and not the troops, was what was important.

It turned out there was a method in Wallace's maddening insistence; he was setting Kerry up for nasty surprise.

On such an such a date, Wallace began, such and such a woman wrote to Kerry to complain that her son, who had left some form of advanced studies in order to volunteer to go to Iraq, or perhaps it was Afghanistan - I don't have the details for you because by the time Wallace was able to spring the trap, it had to be done so awkwardly and hurriedly that I couldn't get them written down - the woman's son had died shortly before or after Kerry's comments, and as of today, this woman, who had clearly been in touch with Fox News, hadn't heard from Kerry.

You can bet your bottom dollar that no one at Fox News had done this woman or Kerry the courtesy of informing his office of this woman's letter and facilitating contact between them.

Kerry's answer was a bit more crowded than I would have liked it, but after reminding everyone that his words were not meant as commentary on the volunteer army but on President Bush's performance in leading this country's military into Iraq, ill considered and unprepared, Kerry said something I've been waiting for some Democrat to say. Why do some troops think that Kerry disparaged them? Why does this mother feel aggrieved in the same way? Because a White House who never for a moment believed that Kerry's joke and implied criticism was meant for anyone other than those in the White House, decided it was in their political interest to pretend otherwise, despite the impact that might have on our troops and their families.

Thank-you Senator Kerry for pointing that out. If there had ever been any real doubt on the part of Bush et al about what Kerry meant, they could have contacted him and once he clarified who the target was, Bush could have insisted that real support for the troops meant not using this incident in the cheapest political manner one can imagine. The fact that few Americans can imagine this President ever exercising such restraint tells you everything you need to know about his "support" for our troops.

Newt Gingrich was a riot. But his act is getting old. Real old. He spoke with that same authoritative tone, and he retains that canny ability to sound intelligent and thoughtful even while talking nonsense, as, for instance, in his pronouncement, delivered as if backed by scientific evidence, that had Bush fired Rumsfeld only weeks before the election, instead of after it, Republicans would have retained x number of house seats, and y number of Senate berths, and kept both houses of congress.

Oh, yes, Gingrich was highly critical of Bush and the mess he's made in Iraq, and yes, you'd never know for an instant how often Gingrich had appeared on Fox since our invasion of Iraq in 2003, backing Bush to the hilt. Gingrich talked eloquently about the need for soul-searching on the part of both White House and congressional Republicans, but something of his essential self slipped out when, in response to Wallace’s wondering what Republicans need to be asking themselves to reverse the trend of the 2006 election and Gingrich instinctively volunteered the crucial question needing an answer: "How do we get back on message."

When what Gingrich likes to refer to as "movement conservatives" talk about getting back to their core principles what they mean is, getting back on message.

The most interesting section of the interview was Gingrich’s analysis of the two potential ways to accomplish bi-partisanship. One way would be to work with the Democratic leadership to find a consensus agenda; that would be the bad way, according to Gingrich. The right way is to pursue a strictly Republican movement conservative agenda and peel off blue dog Democrats to support it. Well, that should tell you precisely how much soul-searching Gingrich has done. Nor, surprise, surprise, did it occur to Chris Wallace to ask Newt how Bush’s agenda differed from the most typically radical movement conservative agenda.

The All Stars this Sunday consisted of Brit Hume, William Kristol, Mara Liasson, and Juan Williams, and their discussion was as tired and familiar as Chris Wallace’s pretense that he isn’t just another Fox News puppet, and Newt Gingrich’s self-assured, knowing, profoundly cynical knownothingness. Worse still, I had the distinct impression they were boring themselves.

Iraq was the primary subject. It was one of the first times I’ve seen Hume and Kristol seem to understand how completely their predictions of success there have been betrayed by events on the ground. Still, neither of them was prepared to say it’s hopeless. Hume is a fan of Iraqification, with no glimpse I could see of any recognition on his part of the irony of using a phrase so similar to Vietniemization while the President is visiting our former enemies in the hope of expanding trade with them. Difficult as Iraq has become, if we have the will to go forward with standing up an Iraqi government with a national army and security apparatus, victory could still be ours, according to Brit.

Kristol, no less an optimist, had a different take on our options. Iraqification is precisely what is defeating us by putting first the principle of Iraqi sovereignty over our commitment to victory. According to Kristol, the reason that the Maliki government is so hesitant to move against the militias is that no one is sure that we will be there to back them up, (all this talk of getting out, don’t you know), so we need to increase our troop strength there and change our strategy to fighting our way not out of Iraq, but to a military victory over our enemies.

You may notice that absent from this discussion was any recognition of the reality that the violence in Iraq right now is primarily between Iraqis, and that factions in the government we have put together there are as determined to use violence to maintain and extend its power within the country as is the insurgency. Nor did either Mara or Juan point any of this out.

Listening to this group, it became crystal clear exactly why we now face the tragedy of an almost irresolvable situation in Iraq.