Sunday Reading

Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth: Some of the right-wing pundits are biting the hand that fed them.

For 10 minutes, the talk show host grilled his guests about whether "George Bush's mental weakness is damaging America's credibility at home and abroad." For 10 minutes, the caption across the bottom of the television screen read, "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

But the host was no liberal media elitist. It was Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman turned MSNBC political pundit. And his answer to the captioned question was hardly "no." While other presidents have been called stupid, Scarborough said: "I think George Bush is in a league by himself. I don't think he has the intellectual depth as these other people."

These have been tough days politically for President Bush, what with his popularity numbers mired in the 30s and Republican candidates distancing themselves as elections near. He can no longer even rely as much on once-friendly voices in the conservative media to stand by his side, as some columnists and television commentators lose faith in his leadership and lose heart in the war in Iraq.

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While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."

"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."

In a later telephone interview, Scarborough said he aired the segment because he kept hearing even fellow Republicans questioning Bush's capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq. Like others, he said, he supported the war but now thinks it is time to find a way to get out. "A lot of conservatives are saying, 'Enough's enough,' " he said. Asked about the reaction to his program, he said, "The White House is not happy about it."

Fearless: One of the reasons Mr. Scarborough probably felt emboldened to ask the question is that, as Frank Rich points out, the Bush administration has overplayed their fearful hand.

It’s not as if the White House didn’t pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in “24.” But Mr. Bush’s Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of “Top Gun.” By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on “The Daily Show.” June’s scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a “full ground war” and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat — though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair’s vacation — is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn’t stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday’s talk shows. “It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out,” he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn’t figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

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The hyperbole that has greeted the Lamont victory in some quarters is far more revealing than the victory itself. In 2006, the tired Rove strategy of equating any Democratic politician’s opposition to the Iraq war with cut-and-run defeatism in the war on terror looks desperate. The Republicans are protesting too much, methinks. A former Greenwich selectman like Mr. Lamont isn’t easily slimed as a reincarnation of Abbie Hoffman or an ally of Osama bin Laden. What Republicans really see in Mr. Lieberman’s loss is not a defeat in the war on terror but the specter of their own defeat. Mr. Lamont is but a passing embodiment of a fixed truth: most Americans think the war in Iraq was a mistake and want some plan for a measured withdrawal. That truth would prevail even had Mr. Lamont lost.

A similar panic can be found among the wave of pundits, some of them self-proclaimed liberals, who apoplectically fret that Mr. Lamont’s victory signals the hijacking of the Democratic Party by the far left (here represented by virulent bloggers) and a prospective replay of its electoral apocalypse of 1972. Whatever their political affiliation, almost all of these commentators suffer from the same syndrome: they supported the Iraq war and, with few exceptions (mainly at The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard), are now embarrassed that they did. Desperate to assert their moral superiority after misjudging a major issue of our time, they loftily declare that anyone who shares Mr. Lamont’s pronounced opposition to the Iraq war is not really serious about the war against the jihadists who attacked us on 9/11.

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As the election campaign quickens, genuine nightmares may well usurp the last gasps of Rovian fear-based politics. It’s hard to ignore the tragic reality that American troops are caught in the cross-fire of a sectarian bloodbath escalating daily, that botched American policy has strengthened Iran and Hezbollah and undermined Israel, and that our Department of Homeland Security is as ill-equipped now to prevent explosives (liquid or otherwise) in cargo as it was on 9/11. For those who’ve presided over this debacle and must face the voters in November, this is far scarier stuff than a foiled terrorist cell, nasty bloggers and Ned Lamont combined.

Glass Act: The Toledo Museum of Art opens a new pavillion to celebrate the art and craft of glass-making.

Six years of intense planning culminates in this week’s celebrations of the Toledo Museum of Art’s latest masterpiece: the Glass Pavilion, which opens to the public next Sunday and for a series of invitation-only previews and festivities beginning Tuesday.

A sleek whisper of a building, the pavilion is nestled in a grove of mature maples and oaks at the edge of the gracious Old West End neighborhood, across Monroe Street from the main museum. It showcases and stores one of the world’s finest collections of glass — 5,000 pieces spanning 4,000 years of glassmaking — painstakingly packed, moved, and unpacked from the vaults across the street.

Its unique dynamism is fire: In 2,400-degree furnaces, students and renowned artists alike will manipulate and blow molten gobs in glass-walled studios visible to visitors. And in a half-dozen, specially equipped classrooms on the main and lower levels, techniques such as flamework, stained glass, slumping, casting, and sandblasting will be taught to adults and children.

The vibrancy of making glass is complemented by serenity. Given the park-like setting they had to work with, architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa aimed to dissolve the barriers between inside and out. That meant creating lovely exterior views visible from nearly every spot in the building and incorporating three courtyards as well as a contemplative sitting room.

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The $30 million pavilion was paid for by a $60 million fund-raising campaign, the largest in the city’s history, led for three years by Waterville art lovers Georgia and David Welles, who were also largely responsible for the museum’s sculpture garden.

“I don’t like to do it,” Mrs. Welles told The Blade for a March article, speaking about asking people for money.

“I’ve done it a lot, but it’s something you need to do.”

The Glass Pavilion will surely elevate the city’s reputation as a glass center, which dates to August, 1888, when Toledoans turned out with fanfare to welcome 250 New England glass workers and their families at the train station.

They would work at the new glass factory built by young Edward Drummond Libbey, who was joined in a few years by glass blower and technological wizard Michael Owens.

The pair had extraordinary synergy and vision and led the area, which once had 70 glass companies, to world prominence.

Doonesbury: Summer dreams.