Condi? Have you met Sir Humphrey Appleby?

The new story about Secretary Rice is funny, except it is a bit disturbing.

AMERICAblog:

Okay, I'll admit it. I often get my news from reading the crawl on the t.v. while I'm working out. But, I'm not the Secretary of State during major international crises, including a war I helped start. But, in fact, your Secretary of State also gets news about major world developments from the t.v. while she's working out. And, bad news does not interfere with her exercise regimen.

Just in case anyone still wonders why U.S. foreign policy is such a disaster, this passage in Maureen Dowd's column is illustrative:

In 2006, when Israel invaded Lebanon and many civilians died, including children, Condi and W. drew Arab and U.N. ire for not forcing Ehud Olmert to broker a cease-fire faster.

That same year, in another instance of spectacular willful ignorance, she was blindsided by the Hamas win in the Palestinian elections.

As she described it to Bumiller, she went upstairs at 5 a.m. the morning after the Palestinian elections in 2006 to the gym in her Watergate apartment to exercise on her elliptical machine. She saw the news crawl reporting the Hamas victory.

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s not right,’ ” she said. She kept exercising for awhile but finally got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department. “I said, ‘What happened in the Palestinian elections?’ and they said, ‘Oh, Hamas won.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness! Hamas won?’ ”

When she couldn’t reach the State Department official on the ground in the Palestinian territories, she did what any loyal Bushie would do: She got back on the elliptical.

“I thought, might as well finish exercising,” Rice told Bumiller. “It’s going to be a really long day.” It was one of the few times she was prescient on the Middle East.

Wow.

This is like something out of comedy. It is almost exactly like the old brilliant and classic British comedy series, Yes, Minister/Yes, Prime Minister. It poked fun at incompetent, corrupt, and uncertain politicians and the entrenched and self-serving Civil Service. Quite fun.

In one episode we saw this very idea played out, but they were making an exaggerated joke!

In it, a major crisis is breaking out somewhere in the world, the main character, Jim Hacker, tries to find and talk with the Foreign Minister (the equivalent of Secretary of State) to find out what is really happening. But is shocked to learn he is clueless as his TV is broken and he can't watch the news to learn what is happening. Shocked, Hacker asks to be informed if he learns something, and the FM counters and ask that Hacker tell him as he has a TV tuned to the news.

It's supposed to be a punchline!

How come this administration is working so hard to live up to so many old punchlines? If they ever try to make a serious movie about this administration, it will be impossible. It will be the Wizard of Oz of political pictures (see Imperial Life in the Emerald City). Historically, it will be hard to believe it is real...but it is and we have to survive it.