The Biggest LoserI prefer to keep this blog about the high life you wish I was living rather than the real life, I normally conceal. But in case you haven't pieced it together the elliptical hints or read through all the linked material, I have taken a job as an assistant editor at The American Conservative.

Also, I've recently appeared in my normal guise in the Washington Monthly. One excellent thing has come out of this piece. Tim Carney, recently dubbed my (unremarkable) observation about post-election recriminations, "The Dougherty Doctrine."

If it were more like me, the Republican Party would be better off. It’s failing because it’s like you.

Tim has even gone so far as to preach the Dougherty Doctrine to a former presidential speech-writer currently working on a book.  My readers here at Surfeited can say "I know him when he was an unemployed nobody." (That is to say, a mere blogger). Let's hope my new friends won't be soon saying "I knew him before he was just an unemployed blogger."

After the recent electoral repudiation of the Bush administration, several candidates have made clear their intentions. Some we knew: Romney, McCain, Guiliani -- and some we didn't: Tommy Thompson and Duncan Hunter.    If all these men survive until the primaries I'll be very much reminded the Democrats in 2004 -- a parade of mediocrities --men of high political status with no good ideas matched against men of low political status and poorly formed ideas that are vaguely interesting. Excepting Buchanan, the same could be said of the Republican primary in 1996. I recently noticed Mike Huckabee is releasing a book of feel-good psychobabble. I worry that there is an irreversible trend away from Southern politicians who shared folksy wisdom through entertaining metaphors towards Clintonian self-help-helplessness. I don't want a President whose primary qualification seems to be the self-mastery of weight loss, spurred by diabetes.  I fear also that this is exactly what the American people do want.