Weeks ago, I found myself in the green room of a cable show with Ed Koch, Bernard Kerik, and Joe Trippi. I had been looking forward to meeting Trippi, but when I stepped into the room and saw these two other slabs of supreme self-assurance taking up real estate, I figured this wasn't the time for chitchat. Since the three were doing a segment together in a matter of minutes, I didn't want to be inconsiderate and "break their concentration," and besides, I couldn't think of anything approriately obnoxious to say in the presence of two stalwart Bush supporters. A hard spherical object, Kerik is physically formidable, not someone you'd want to skirmish with over the last sticky bun on the tray. Upcoming were the Olympics, and Koch asked Kerik if he thought there might be terrorist trouble. Kerik intoned that the security in Athens, in Greece generally, was very porous, and let the subject drop with a combination of ominous understatement and quiet authority that made me suspect I was in the presence of a champion b-s'er.

Kerik exuded too much quiet authority and dramatic effect, trying a shade too hard to convey that he knew things he couldn't speak of and was working from the deep inside, privy to secrets that he carried locked inside the bank vault of his barrel chest. I could see how this tough-guy shtick--which obviously wasn't entirely shtick, but a tough streak that had been refined into an urban lawman persona--would impress fake swaggarts like, well, George Bush, who likes to play dress-up as a range hand and fighter pilot to show what a Hungry man entree he is.

Going Republican has been very good for Koch and Kerik, and Kerik seemed to earn his reward for lending Bush a little extra 9/11 aura on the campaign trail when he was picked to succeed Tom Ridge as head of that corporate boondoggle known as Homeland Security.

Then, in one of the most heartwarming holiday tales in many a year, it all unravelled and keeps unravelling even Kerik after withdrew his name from consideration. The juicy stories keep popping out of the NY tabloids and the blogs like clowns from a clown car. (See Steve Gilliard and Josh Marshall for the highlight reels.) Newsweek has also earned the right to polish its deputy's badge with pride. I was particularly taken with the last graf of today's installment of Bernie Does Doody-Squat:

"Kerik's somewhat cavalier attitude is best captured by his time in Iraq. After the invasion in the spring of 2003, Kerik was sent to Baghdad to organize the Iraqi police. But Kerik didn't seem to show much interest in Iraqis, said a senior U.S. official who worked with him. He appeared to enjoy going on night raids against "bad guys" with some South African mercenaries who were serving as bodyguards to U.S. officials. On his screen saver, Kerik had a photo of a big house he had just bought in New Jersey that he said was across the street from former New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms's. Kerik told his colleagues he planned to be in Baghdad for three months while the house was undergoing renovations. 'So,' the official says he told Kerik, 'you're here because you needed a place to go while they're doing renovations on your house.' Kerik grinned and cocked a finger as if to say, 'You got it.' A spokesman for Kerik said that story was 'absurd' and that Kerik was a patriot."

I believe Dr. Johnson had an epigram along these lines, something to do with patriotism, last refuge, scoundrel.

I'm glad the press is having a dance party with this, because God knows the Democrats are frozen at the steering wheel. I just saw a segment on MSNBC (which has been all over the Kerik story today, bless Rick Kaplan's cyborg heart) pitting a Republican strategist against a Democratic one, and the Democratic spokesman--who goes by the name of Michael Brown--seemed to have washed down his weeny pills with warm Ovaltine. Instead of kicking Kerik and Giuliana between the uprights for three points, Brown fretted that vetting process for cabinet candidates was "going to far," and that we were in danger of discouraging people from public service. Oh no, we wouldn't want to discourage philandering, pocket-lining, deadbeat no-show bully-boys like Bernard Kerik from having the opportunity to muck around with our civil liberties in the name of "national security" and hold bigshot press conferences. I mean, if that sort of thing were to continue happening, people might start mistaking the Democrats for an opposition party and thinking that the press has an adversarial role to play, and we don't want that to happen, it might actually lead to signs of life in that mausoleum we call the nation's capital.

This Michael Brown wouldn't even criticize Alberto Gonzalez for botching the background check and vetting of Kerik. I don't understand the self-emasculation of so many Democratic strategists, what they're afraid of, why they concede so much in advance. Give them an opening, and they close it like a silk kimono, ever so demure. What are they in politics for, the professional grooming tips?