Mayhem in Iraq. Global warming on the warpath. National debt to the moon. There’s much to moan about. But it’s the little things that sometimes can tick one off the most. For instance, in the news today of Ned Lamont’s win over Joe Lieberman, there was the remark from Dick Cheney that suggested al Qaeda was buoyed by Lieberman’s defeat. The veep said that anti-American terrorists are “betting on the proposition that ultimately they can break the will of the American people in terms of our ability to stay in the fight and complete the task. And when they see the Democratic Party reject one of its own, a man they selected to be their vice presidential nominee just a few short years ago, it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today.”

Two points. First, it was Cheney’s boss, George W. Bush, who ran for the presidency in 2000 vowing to change the tone of partisan political discourse in Washington. I know that’s a promise that was never kept. But what a nasty shot from Cheney. Neither he nor Bush seem to realize that even though they are GOP partisans they are still president and the vice president of the entire nation and actually have a higher standard to meet than the usual political hacks (including those in their own employ). Yet they show no interest in doing so. Again, nothing new about that.

Second, the disruption of the latest suspected terrorist plot–the one to blow up airliners heading to the United States from London–illustrates that the evildoers are probably not developing their plans based on the outcome of primary elections in the Nutmeg State. Moreover, American policy should not be held hostage to what America’s enemies want or don’t want. The debate is over what’s best for the United States (and the rest of the world). To suggest one path or another would hearten the “terrorists” is to avoid a serious discussion. But what else would you expect from a fellow who still believes he was right to say a year ago that the Iraqi insurgency was in its “last throes”?