Bill Whittle has a new essay up: Power. Just read it.

My friend Steve Stipp mentioned in passing a fascinating thought experiment. If you had to design some foreign power to dominate the planet, what would you want it to look like? If there is to be a hyperpower, how would you design one that was least likely to run haywire and plunge humanity into a new dark age?

Would you want its people to have untrammeled respect for authority, like Nazi Germany, with a lock-step willingness to follow its leaders blindly, or would you prefer that it had a deep and passionate anti-authoritarian bend, where the soul of the rebel and the outsider and the little guy fighting big powers was manifest in all of its art and music?

Would you want it to be racially homogenous, like Imperial Japan, advancing out into the mongrel world as the sons of heaven, or the most racially diverse blend of people ever to form a single nation?

Would you prefer that it be driven by a rigid and ironclad ideology, such as the Soviet Union, or rather a hodge-podge of wildly differing and competing ideals doing constant battle in the marketplace of ideas?

Would you want it to be a religious dictatorship with a state church, acting on what it perceived to be the revealed word of God, as is the case with Islamic fundamentalists, or a secular nation with strict and inviolate rules keeping religious fervor out of the decision-making process?

Should it be administered by a small group of hereditary elites, as with Great Britain, or rather have political power dispersed among its fractious citizenry?

And finally, should it be a product of a culture long isolated from the rest of the planet with a low tolerance of outside ideas and philosophy, such as China, or rather one composed of all the nations and histories the world has to offer?

I have my own opinion. Your mileage may vary.

There's been something nagging at me about the whole Wilson/Plame affair. The motive behind the leak of Valerie Plame's name always seemed a little screwy to me, and I wondered if everyone had gotten it wrong.

Think back to when Wilson's editorial came out: the main question was, how credible is this guy? The British seemed to think he'd been fed a line and had fallen for it; that his investigation was too shallow and credulous. And it wasn't clear why Wilson had been selected for the mission in the first place.

So what is the immediate effect of leaking the fact that his wife is a CIA employee -- possibly a covert operative -- who dealt in intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction?

Instant credibility, that's what. The implication is that he has information from, or at the very least can draw on the knowledge of, the WMD expert to whom he happens to be married.

Meaning that the leak came not from a Bush loyalist (much less Bush himself) wanting to punish Wilson for his apostacy, but from an internal opponent of Bush's policy, seeking to give Wilson a credibility transfusion. And many of the diplomats and other career people at State -- and the CIA is part of the State Department -- have been visibly displeased with Bush's policies.

I hadn't heard anyone mention this angle, and figured that I must be missing something, at least up until now. Mark Steyn was apparently thinking along the same lines:

On his own, Wilson comes over like a total flake — not a sober striped-pants diplomat but a shaggy-maned ideologically driven kook whose hippie-lyric quotes make a lot more sense than his neocon-bashing diatribes for leftie dronefests like the Nation. This is a guy who says things like, ‘Neoconservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both.’ He spends his days dreaming of the first sentence of his obituary: ‘Joseph C. Wilson IV, the Bush I administration political appointee who did the most damage to the Bush II administration.’ Imagine Michael Moore and his ego after dropping 300lbs on the Atkins diet and you’re close enough. By revealing the fact that Mrs Wilson is a cool blonde CIA agent, all you do is give her husband a credibility lacking in almost every aspect of his speech, mien and coiffure.

It's just an hypothesis, not a conclusion; I'm well aware I could be wrong. But this is the time for hypotheses and questions, not for conclusions.

The verifiable facts we have are scant and inconclusive, and the veracity of all players on all sides -- politicians, intelligence apparatchiks, and journalists -- is dubious. Anyone who has already made up their mind, based on what we have to work with at this stage, is acting from partisanship rather than any honest desire for sound security and responsible government.

Sofia Sideshow tells us a tale of merciless corporate imperialism. With cole slaw.

Amid a post about the Democratic Party and gun control, Jeff Soyer of Alphecca digresses on the subject of President Bush:

It would be SO WELCOME if he could just issue one speech the way Ronald Reagan used to, where he acknowledges the economic problems we (in America) are going through and offer us the Reagan optimism and encouragement needed to spur us on and get things going again. Yes, the markets aren't doing badly, but unemployment is a big problem and investment is still lethargic and we really need a vocal, eloquent "cheer-leader" rooting us on.

As I've stated before, Bush's lack of eloquence is not an indicator of stupidity -- we all know smart people who are fumblemouthed -- but it is a genuine shortcoming, an obstacle to effective leadership. Especially when it is necessary to take the country to war at a time when people simply aren't emotionally prepared for wartime, and dealing with a press whose skepticism often spills over into outright partisanship, persuasive public speaking is an indispensible political tool.

This is the real reason, I think, that the most successful politicians are lawyers: they are trained and experienced at making a strong case to a skeptical audience. (And actors: they are used to playing to an audience, telling a compelling story, and getting people to suspend their disbelief.)

That kind of politician -- the speechifier -- seems to have gone out of style, though. It's not just an affliction of the Bush family or the GOP, either: James Taranto at Best of the Web Today regularly lampoons how far Democratic Party rhetoric has fallen.

I wonder if this is a product of the pervasiveness of advertising: we are so used to be sold to -- and misled in the process -- that any presentation that is too smooth, too slick, or to emotional, immediately invokes our skepticism, and appears as obviously dishonest.

Still, one can listen to MLK's "I have a dream" speech, and be moved by it. The Gettysburg Address is as profound now as it ever was. There is still something in us that responds to lofty ideals, loftily expressed.

So why hasn't anyone since Mario Cuomo even bothered trying?