"Preemption Lite" commentary recalled to mind a section of Ron Suskind's chilling and coherent "One Percent Doctrine" where the author (for about the 10th time in the book) paints a portrait of the Bush administration's estrangement from the policy process upon which previous administrations have relied.

In speaking about what he calls the "Cheney Doctrine" (must be as reactive to a 1% probability of attack as with a higher likelihood), Suskind writes (p. 308):

"The Cheney Doctrine released George W. Bush from his area of greatest weakness -- the analytical abilities so prized in America's professional class -- and freed his decision making to rely on impulse and improvisation to a degree that was without precedent for a modern president...

The problem of implementing this model comes from a steady array of inconvenient facts -- the enemies of message discipline -- that vast policy arms of the government churn out and then refine for presidential consumption. For a President to have so little taste for such a product was a startling occurrence for those at the level of cabinet secretaries. In the years since Bush's election, hints of it leaked out, bit by bit, through places like Treasury, EPA, and Health and Human Services. Many of the government's leading analysts and experts...became convinced there was little point in even sending reports up the chain. Disgruntlement and concern about the irrelevance of the policy process prompted some damaging defections and public statements about the President's disengagement But, as Washington wonks, or members of the reviled 'bureaucracy,' dissenters were easy marks for White House counterattack.

Yet it was crucial to the White House that this portrait of the improvisational, faith-based presidency never expand to the central, high-intensity areas like the 'war on terror' or the Iraq war ... For the President to be so divorced from the actual policy apparatus in those matters could cause a panic, and a precipitous drop in public confidence, in America certainly, and in the rationality-rooted developed world...."

So -- my point? This:

All that Tony "Snows" onto the open field of the press cannot compensate for an utter lack of policy cohesion within this administration. He is hired to prevent that strangely missing "precipitous drop in public confidence" which would occur should the public really grasp the implications of an incoherence of American policy. (Safe bet: not a pressing likelihood). His operation is one tentacle of the still pulsing squid that has been created to substitute the illusion of public relations for the absence of hard thought policy. "Policy" in this administration is the cumulation of President Bush's impulses.

Katherine Farquhar, Ph.D.

American University

The flap over Hillary Clinton's confabulation (mis-remembering, opportunistic self-embellishment, ...lie) brought to mind the image of a picture puzzle. Well along on the card table, it shows the outline of final images. Somehow, a generous piece got left out in the rain, where it puffed up from the moisture.

That piece is the Bosnia helicopter landing story. Its shape is still defined, but it holds our attention because it just won't fit.

For political candidates, the excitement of stump rhetoric and the surge of followers' lusty approval takes on a self-driving momentum. We expect our candidates not to be seduced into untruths and to stay self-aware during live exchanges with their supporters. That's fair.

Reflecting our cynicism about politicians, we in the US are such inveterate fact-checkers. We gleefully out the lapses that are detected. The press is our agent in such endeavors -- and too often, the megaphone. To what end? So that the parts add to a predestined and moralistic whole?

When it's done, it's done. This piece of a much more complex puzzle was left out in the rain. The press pointed out that it was swollen beyond its proper place. Period.

So. Is the default logic that we press to collect all the swollen puzzle parts and see what image comes by just fitting these pieces together?

Help us out here. Put the process back into perspective. The default shouldn't be that the press simply collects and analyzes all pieces that don't fit well. That's random, as was the storm. Of course, it's cheaper and easier than putting everything back into perspective.

On our behalf -- restore a sense of proportionality and balance.