Entries for September 01, 2006

I have refrained so far from commenting on the less-than-astonishing revelation that Richard Armitage was the source who told Robert Novak that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, engineered his mission to Niger. This leak was hyped by opponents of the Bush administration as something like the greatest national security breach of all time. What is still astonishing to me is that Armitage did not come forward publicly early in the investigation to disclose that he was Novak's source and that, after special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said, inaccurately, last October 28 that Scooter Libby was the first government official to disclose Plame's name, Armitage did not disclose that he had mentioned it to Bob Woodward a month or more before he had mentioned it to Novak.

On the 10th anniversary of the signing of the federal welfare reform bill--one of the most successful public-policy initiatives of my lifetime--Susan Carleson has shared with me some reflections on the subject. Susan is the widow of Bob Carleson, who from a background as a city manager was put in charge of welfare reform by Gov. Ronald Reagan and contributed heavily to Reagan's successful California welfare reform of the early 1970s. Bob came to Washington in the 1980s, worked in the Reagan administration, and thereafter crusaded quietly and with good humor for welfare reform. He died recently--not famous but I am sure with the satisfaction that he had contributed mightily to the improvement of life in America.

Here is a very interesting essay on religion and American foreign policy by Walter Russell Mead in Foreign Affairs.