Taking the high road is the high-minded approach to campaigning, but the high road can lead to disappointing places. That's why successful pols usually look for alternate routes, just in case.
Successful candidates are careful to create the illusion of traveling the high road. Richard Nixon campaigned as the man who would "bring us together." Jimmy Carter would "never tell a lie." Bill Clinton only pretended to search for the high road, taking frequent detours to look for the red-light district.
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The fact is that so far wars were largely ceremonial: military men used firearms (or bombs, despite the enemy anti-aircraft fire) as an aristocrat used arms to kill his opponent in a duel. But an opponent may die from myriads of causes. The now famous book, published by the Chinese military in 1999, is justifiably entitled “Unrestricted Warfare.”
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President Hu Jintao, the quintessential Chinese Communist Party apparatchik who made it to the top by relentless kowtowing to superiors and keeping his head down in controversies, doesn’t know much about the world of the Japanese geisha. Nor does anyone else these days since it is long since departed alas! with most of the other emoluments of Japanese feudalism.
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UNITED NATIONS — A summertime famine looms in North Korea as the reclusive communist country has again seen a precipitous shortfall in food production According to UN humanitarian officials, following a disastrous harvest, food deficits will double over last year’s already poor output and reach the most dangerous levels since 2001. And while food shortages plague the quaintly-titled Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) the Pyongyang leadership still pursues its nuclear proliferation despite polite warnings to cease from the international community.
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Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign avoided disaster Tuesday by squeezing out a win in Indiana, but she kept falling further behind Sen. Barack Obama by losing North Carolina. On balance, it was a bad though not totally calamitous night for Clinton.
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Mr. Obama looked America in the face and said: Who ya gonna believe? My "rhetorical magic" or your lyin' eyes? That's an easy choice for the swooning bobbysoxers of the media. With less impressionable types, such as voters, Mr. Obama is having a tougher time.
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