the British left will never like us

So rightward blogger Tom Smith said yesterday. I wonder what he thinks of the latest person to state doubts over the basis for the Iraq war. He'll find it in this column by Tina Brown. You can wade through some of Brown's gossipy style (in which case my condolences) or you can read what I think are the highlights here.

The healthiest aspect of the Harriet Miers nomination is that women haven't rallied to her cause. Ten years ago, there would have been a lot of reflexive solidarity about keeping the Sandra Day O'Connor spot on the Supreme Court from reverting to male type. But every female lawyer I've spoken with in the past week skips right past the sisterly support into a rant about Miers's meager qualifications or her abject obeisance to power. The good news is that for women, it seems, Miers's nomination is like the moment for blacks in Hollywood when it was suddenly okay to cast an African American actor as something other than a perfect hero. The Sidney Poitier phase is definitively over.

Twenty years or even 10 years ago ABC's "Commander in Chief" would have been a sitcom, not a drama. Now it's Bush who's the sitcom, though the laughs are bitter. He's the biggest reason why female leaders suddenly seem so relevant. He has debased the currency of machismo. From Iraq to New Orleans and back to Washington, his empty posturings, bonehead mistakes and panicky pratfalls have turned testosterone into Kryptonite. The cultural stage is being set for a woman president, even if the current understudies, from Hillary to Condi, end up stumbling over their own props or never come out of the wings.

Actually, "Hail To the Chief" was a sitcom, exactly 20 years ago, with Patty Duke in the Geena Davis role. Here though, is the scoop:

The former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, Lord Palumbo, who lunched with [Margaret Thatcher] six months ago, told me recently what she said when he asked her if, given the intelligence at the time, she would have made the decision to invade Iraq. "I was a scientist before I was a politician, Peter," she told him carefully. "And as a scientist I know you need facts, evidence and proof -- and then you check, recheck and check again. The fact was that there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof. As a politician the most serious decision you can take is to commit your armed services to war from which they may not return."

Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher saying there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof. So...yeah. I'm wondering how the right will take this...