The Bush Administration is frantic to protect the telecom industry from lawsuits because of its participation in FISA-less federal wiretapping. The telecoms themselves don’t seem to be fighting as hard, however. Kevin Drum speculates why —

… the telcos don’t care all that much about the lawsuits being pursued against them is because they almost certainly signed indemnification agreements with the feds back in 2001. Such agreements would force the federal government to pay any legal judgments awarded in suits against the telcos. …

… In the Washington Post today, Dan Eggen and Ellen Nakashima talk to some of the people behind the telco suits, and they don’t seem to think that potential payouts are the issue either — which is why the telcos are remaining fairly low key about the whole thing. Rather, it’s the Bush administration that wants immunity, and they want it because they’re trying to keep the scope of their wiretapping programs secret.

Makes sense to me. Bush wouldn’t be working this hard except to save himself. And if the Dems cave on this one, they are making one more huge mistake.

Update: Read Glenn Greenwald’s latest on the telecoms and Dems in Congress.

Although he’s still in the White House, George W. Bush has already faded from out national attention. It’s more fun to think about what shiny new President we might get in January than to have to deal with the clunker in the garage.

Turns out the rest of the world feels the same way. Glenn Kessler writes in today’s Washington Post that heads of state in the Middle East are pretty much tuning out the Bushies.

When Palestinians broke through the barrier dividing the Gaza Strip and Egypt in January and streamed across the border by the tens of thousands, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced a moment of crisis. His phone soon rang, but the world leader offering help on the other end was not President Bush — it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mubarak took the call, resulting in the first such contact between leaders of the two nations since relations were severed nearly three decades ago.

The conversation signaled a growing rapprochement between Egypt, which receives nearly $2 billion in annual aid from Washington, and Iran, a country that the Bush administration has tried to isolate as a possible threat to U.S. interests in the region.

Way to go, Bushies.

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice heads back to the Middle East this week, three months after Bush hosted a peace conference bringing together Israelis and Arabs in Annapolis, prospects for peace have shifted dramatically. There has been little clear movement in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, while the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas has shown increasingly that it can set the region’s agenda.

Hamas rockets have continued to rain down on Israeli towns, prompting deadly counterattacks by Israel amid increasing speculation that Israel will invade the narrow coastal strip housing 1.5 million Palestinians that it abandoned just two years ago.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration.

Get this:

“The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in,” he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. “Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians,” he added.

This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Pablo Bachelet writes for McClatchy Newspapers:

President Bush has increased aid to Latin America by record amounts and visited Latin America more than any of his predecessors, but his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.

He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.

”Requiem for the Monroe Doctrine” is how academic Daniel Erikson put it in an article for Current History, referring to the 1823 declaration by President James Monroe that put the Western Hemisphere off-limits to outside powers.

Meanwhile, as Dan Froomkin reports, the POTUS from Hell remains clueless but happy. “Does Bush not recognize what a mess he has created for his party?” Froomkin asks. I’m betting he doesn’t.

Sorry I’ve been scarce today. Here’s something to read to tide you over.

Today’s Frank Rich column:

Clinton fans don’t see their standard-bearer’s troubles this way. In their view, their highly substantive candidate was unfairly undone by a lightweight showboat who got a free ride from an often misogynist press and from naïve young people who lap up messianic language as if it were Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid. Or as Mrs. Clinton frames it, Senator Obama is all about empty words while she is all about action and hard work.

But it’s the Clinton strategists, not the Obama voters, who drank the Kool-Aid. The Obama campaign is not a vaporous cult; it’s a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done. The Clinton camp has been the slacker in this race, more words than action, and its candidate’s message, for all its purported high-mindedness, was and is self-immolating.

The gap in hard work between the two campaigns was clear well before Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton threw as much as $25 million at the Iowa caucuses without ever matching Mr. Obama’s organizational strength. In South Carolina, where last fall she was up 20 percentage points in the polls, she relied on top-down endorsements and the patina of inevitability, while the Obama campaign built a landslide-winning organization from scratch at the grass roots. In Kansas, three paid Obama organizers had the field to themselves for three months; ultimately Obama staff members outnumbered Clinton staff members there 18 to 3.

In the last battleground, Wisconsin, the Clinton campaign was six days behind Mr. Obama in putting up ads and had only four campaign offices to his 11. Even as Mrs. Clinton clings to her latest firewall — the March 4 contests — she is still being outhustled. Last week she told reporters that she “had no idea” that the Texas primary system was “so bizarre” (it’s a primary-caucus hybrid), adding that she had “people trying to understand it as we speak.” Perhaps her people can borrow the road map from Obama’s people. In Vermont, another March 4 contest, The Burlington Free Press reported that there were four Obama offices and no Clinton offices as of five days ago. For what will no doubt be the next firewall after March 4, Pennsylvania on April 22, the Clinton campaign is sufficiently disorganized that it couldn’t file a complete slate of delegates by even an extended ballot deadline.

This is the candidate who keeps telling us she’s so competent that she’ll be ready to govern from Day 1. Mrs. Clinton may be right that Mr. Obama has a thin résumé, but her disheveled campaign keeps reminding us that the biggest item on her thicker résumé is the health care task force that was as botched as her presidential bid.

What has struck me about the Clinton campaign is that the candidate seems to confuse “effort” with “accomplishment.” She tells us she has “fought for” this and that for many years — true enough — but how many of those battles have been won?

Last week there was much hoo-hawing among the Clintonistas about a fellow on MSNBC’s Hardball who could not list any legislative accomplishments of Senator Obama. The Clinton campaign pushed that episode hard, to contrast it with Senator Clinton’s glittering legislative record. But notice, no one actually challenged Senator Clinton to list her legislative accomplishments.

Last week Adam Hanft took a look at Senator Clinton’s legislative record, and found it to be “a track record of legislative failure and futility.”

I headed straight for her campaign website to see what glorious aspects of her vaunted experience I was missing.

Actually, I was missing nothing. There is not one single example of any legislation with her name appended to it. In fact, the page devoted to her Senate biography is a mush-mash, a laundry list of good intentions. When she talks about “sponsoring” and “introducing” and “fighting for” legislation that obviously hasn’t passed, that’s a smokescreen for failure. By introducing all that legislation that never makes it out of committee, she’s guilty of what she accuses Senator Obama of: confusing “hoping” with doing. [emphasis added]

This is what continues to drive me bats about Clinton supporters. They have bought the line that Obama and his supporters are space cadets who don’t appreciate substance. Yet Clinton’s record of accomplishment is nothing but padding, and they don’t notice.

Back to Adam Hanft:

Consider these examples:

• “…{she} worked with her colleagues to secure the funds New York needed to recover and rebuild.”

• “…she fought to provide compensation to the families of the victims.”

• “She is an original sponsor of legislation that expanded health benefit to members of the National Guard and Reserves.”

• “Some of Hillary’ proudest achievements have been her work to ensure the safety of prescription drugs for children, with legislation now included in the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act.” (What in God’s name does that mumbo-jumbo mean?)

Yes, it’s true that for many years, she was in the minority. But if she is the effective legislator she claims to be, she’d be able find co-sponsors across the aisle who share her commitment to specific issues, in the same way that John McCain found his doppelganger, Russ Feingold.

David Knowles wrote in January that in 2007, Senator Clinton introduced 100 pieces of legislation. Of those, six were enacted. These are:

1. support for the goals and ideals of “National Purple Heart Recognition Day”
2. a concurrent resolution recognizing the 75th anniversary of the Military Order of the Purple Heart
3. a bill to recognize the goals of Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
4. a bill to urge a international organization to allow access to Holocaust archives
5. a resolution calling for Hamas and Hezbollah to release Israeli soldiers held captive
6. recognition of the uncommon valor of Wesley Autrey, the man who jumped on to the subway tracks and saved a man’s life

Obama’s legislative record is similarly light. The plain fact is that both Clinton and Obama are junior senators, and their legislative accomplishments, or lack thereof, reflect that. Yet Clinton supporters continue to insist that their candidate is the one with experience and accomplishment who knows how to get things done. And Obama supporters are just caught up in a cult of personality.

On top of which, some Clinton supporters are still arguing that she would be the stronger candidate in the general election, even as her campaign for the nomination flounders.

Right. Um, who’s getting real, dears?

Update: Read Jeff Fecke.

Two op eds in today’s Boston Globe provide two fascinating points of view on the Democratic nomination race.

In one, Ellen Goodman writes that Hillary Clinton is disadvantaged by being a woman:

Women of Hillary’s generation were taught to don power suits and use their shoulder pads to push open corporate doors. In the 1970s, the lessons on making it in a man’s world were essentially primers on how to behave like men. As University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist Kathleen Dolan says, “They had to figure out a way to go undercover. They could only be taken seriously if they filled the male model with XX chromosomes.”

But the next generation of advice books urged women to do it their own way. The old stereotypes that defined women as more compassionate and collaborative were given a positive spin. They were framed and praised as women’s ways of leading.

Today’s shelves are still full of titles – from “Seducing the Boys Club” to “The Girl’s Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch)” to “Enlightened Power” – that tell us to act like a man or act like a woman. But in many ways, the transformative inspirational, collaborative, “female” style has become more attractive. Especially to a younger generation. And – here’s the rub – especially when it is modeled by a man.

Dolan sees Obama as “the embodiment of the gentle, collaborative style without threatening his masculine side.” But she adds, “He’s being more feminine than she can be. She is in a much tighter box.” …

…This too is a bit like what’s happened in business. Whatever advice they follow, women are still only 3 percent of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Meanwhile, it’s become more acceptable for a man to take an afternoon off to watch his kids play ball than for a woman.

Ilene Lang heads Catalyst, which surveyed more than 1,200 senior executives in the United States and Europe. This research calculated the tenacity of double binds and double standards. It showed how hard it still is for a woman to be seen as both competent and likable. And it led her to the conclusion that “What defines leadership to most people is one thing. It’s male.”

As for the Obama style? “Both men and women are much more likely to accept a collaborative style of leadership from men than from women. From women it seems too soft,” she adds ruefully.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that. I’ve seen social-psychological studies that show, for example, that when a man displays anger he’s seen as “strong” but when a woman displays the same anger she’s seen as shrewish or bitchy.

On the other hand, it might be telling that Senator Clinton’s most successful moments in the campaign are when she is most “feminine.” I’m thinking of the famous weepy episode in New Hampshire, and also of last night’s debate closing statement, which justifiably is being touted as her finest moment so far. The 1970s model may have passed its shelf-life date.

Derrick Jackson points out that Barack Obama also has a built-in disadvantage that turns out to be an advantage:

It was not just Hillary Clinton’s welling up in New Hampshire, and Bill Clinton’s racial put-down of Obama in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton has displayed a periodic reliance on white women as her safety net in town halls, saying things like “being the first woman president is a very big change.”

That would be no big thing, except that the nation’s demographics and racial history dictate that Obama dare not employ a parallel tactic by saying “being the first black president is a very big change.” Obama has automatically had to run as a more universal representative of the people, with one fruit being his current 10-state streak.

Further — y’know what I said above about angry women? I believe a whole lot of white America doesn’t take well to angry black Americans, either. Note that Obama is relentlessly cool and positive.

And, with respect to Ellen Goodman, let’s not forget that we’re not talking about Generic Woman. We’re talking about Hillary Clinton, who for many is baggage personified.

Eugene Robinson points out another distinction:

Humor me while we conduct a little thought experiment. Imagine that Barack Obama had lost 10 contests in a row. Imagine that he now trailed Hillary Clinton substantially in the number of Democratic primaries and caucuses won, in total votes cast, in pledged convention delegates, in the overall delegate count, in fundraising and in the ineffable attribute called mojo. Imagine that Obama was struggling, at this late hour, to come up with the right message. What would the conventional wisdom say?

That it was over, of course. That Obama was toast. That staking everything on the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas was a starry-eyed hope, not a plan, and that it was time to smell the coffee.

Today, however, I’m seeing a lot of pundits advising Clinton to smell the coffee. The Associated Press gives Clinton a small lead in Ohio, and in Texas they’re dead even. Conventional wisdom says Clinton must win both Ohio and Texas decisively to remain a credible candidate. She might do it, but at the moment it looks doubtful.

McClatchy is running a Clinton campaign postmortem. Steven Thomma writes,

Democrats say that Clinton, whose central theme is her readiness to be president, also made blunder after blunder. She chose an inexperienced campaign manager, crafted a message that didn’t match the moment, fielded poor organizations in key states and built a budget that ran dry just when she needed money most.

Michael Luo, Jo Becker and Patrick Healy write in today’s New York Times that the Clinton campaign mismanaged money rather badly. In particular, she’s been overpaying consultants who have given her bad advice.

Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

“We didn’t raise all of this money to keep paying consultants who have pursued basically the wrong strategy for a year now,” said a prominent New York donor. “So much about her campaign needs to change — but it may be too late.”

The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

See also Richard Adams, “Death by Xerox.”

Update: Also see Pam’s House Blend.