"But does he know how to sing it?"

At least UN AmbASSador John Bolton is consistent in his inability to be a diplomat. After attending a farewell dinner held at the White House for outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Bolton snidely joked that, "nobody sang 'Kumbaya.'" While a "joke," Bolton's comment is a clear window into why our nation's foreign policy is a disaster. President Bush has a knack for finding white guys with the distinct capacity for heaping scoops of hubris on top of ignorant indecency. Annan's laughing comment after being told Bolton's joke is a window into exactly how to handle these W. acolytes, and also the man's character: "But does he know how to sing it?"

Slate's John Dickerson trailed Obama in New Hampshire this weekend and filed a concise, interesting take on the visit and the choice facing the junior Senator from Illinois. In an age when our greatest sports stars enhance their performance with chemicals, when pop musicians are explicitly manufactured, and scripted television shows actually get called reality, it might be time to acknowledge charisma and clear-headed eloquence have been undervalued in American politics for too long, and that "experience" is too often a double-edged sword.

On the opposite end of this spectrum, the man with the most impressive and painfully excessive experience in American politics has not ruled out a run in 2008. I won't be the first to say this is an inconvenient truth for for Hillary and Barack, however far-fetched.

Ah, Dennis Kucinich returns to tag along. On one hand, why not, and on the other, kind of pathetic.