As time passed, the skeptical crowd seemed to warm to him. He spoke of his efforts in New York to clean up pornography (applause), his support of home schooling (applause), and his plans to nominate anti-Roe v. Wade judges like Justices Scalia and Thomas (lots of applause). He boasted of attempting to deny funding for a museum that showed a painting of the Virgin Mary made partly from elephant dung and girly mag money shots. He said he supported parental notification for abortion, a ban on partial-birth abortion, and the denial of taxpayer funding for abortion.

“I’ve made mistakes in my life,” Giuliani said, an allusion to his three marriages and estranged children. “I pray for forgiveness. I pray for strength. I pray for guidance. I feel my own faith deeply, although maybe more privately than some.”

Hours later, however, when the votes in a straw poll were counted, Giuliani had received less than 2 percent. The clear preference of those in attendance at the Values Voter Summit was former Arkansas Gov. (and ordained Baptist minister) Mike Huckabee, who finished second overall but a strong first among those casting their votes on-site. Giuliani, meanwhile, finished second in a diferent tally. He trailed only Hillary Clinton among contenders of both parties as the “least acceptable” candidate.

For weeks, socially conservative leaders have been gradually increasing their opposition to a Giuliani nomination, fearful of his continued lead in the mostly symbolic national polls. Some Republicans have threatened to form a third party if he wins, and they continued their conversations in a private meeting here Saturday afternoon. Others have threatened to stay home from the polls. Still more have promised to drop their traditional volunteer roles as Republican Party volunteers, leaving phone calls unmade and envelopes unstuffed.

But all the early agitation against Giuliani, including talk of a third party, has also provoked a backlash from some conservative leaders, which was on full display this weekend. “Social conservatives have always been against suicide and I think at the end of the day we are going to be against political suicide too,” Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate, told Salon when asked about the third-party threat. Ohio Rep. Jean Schmidt, who famously suggested that her Democratic House colleague Rep. Jack Murtha, a Marine veteran, was a coward, came down from the Capitol to plead for GOP unity. “When we get through the primary, stand behind the individual that is at least the better alternative to what we have on the other side,” she said.

Conservative jurist Robert Bork, the failed Supreme Court nominee echoed those sentiments during a Saturday morning speech. “The defection of enough conservatives to ensure victory for the Democrats will mean that for 20 or 30 years Roe will be entrenched,” Bork said of the Supreme Court ruling that ensures the legality of abortion. “It’s good to stand on principle, but it’s also good to understand what your ultimate objective is.”

All of them were talking about the prospect of a general election that pitted Giuliani against a pro-choice Democrat. But they were also getting ahead of themselves. The Republican nomination is still anybody’s fight, and no single candidate is likely to become a clear favorite for conservative evangelical voters before the end of the year. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the conference straw poll, but only because his supporters stuffed the ballots, so to speak, with more than 1,000 online votes from people who were not in attendance at the Washington Hilton. Mike Huckabee, who continues to run an underfunded campaign, garnered 51 percent of the in-person votes and earned the loudest cheers and the warmest reception from the conservative crowd. Meanwhile, a new poll from CBS News showed that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson has the most national support among Republicans who attend church each week.

“There was a moment of insanity about 18 months ago where we all thought that we could all agree,” Bauer said. “But that is about as likely as herding cats.” He added that if Giuliani won the nomination, he would be reluctantly willing to “lead a delegation” of pro-life leaders to see if they could reach some agreement that would allow religious voters to support the mayor. “Mayor Giuliani knows that he can’t be president without us,” Bauer added. “There is a lot of ground I think that we can stand on and negotiate and see if we can come up with something that is passable to everybody.”

All this strategizing and speculating took place amid the oddly carnivalesque atmosphere that tends to accompany the culture war. The exhibition hall offered “Pet your dog, not your date” T-shirts for the abstinence-minded, and handouts criticizing Huckabee for owning shares of Apple Computer, a company that allegedly “distributes pornography; supports homosexuality.” There were textbooks for Bible study in public schools and the displays of two different artisans who specialized in life-size metal sculptures of Jesus Christ. For much of the Friday evening, pamphleteers for the Log Cabin Republicans, a pro-gay group, worked the hallway just a few steps from Jeff Gannon, a former conservative White House reporter who was accused of moonlighting as a male escort. Minutes later, Ben Stein, the sometime actor and conservative gadfly, spoke to the crowd, ominously warning that “Darwinists are afraid — they are hiding something.”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum read from a floor debate he once had with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton about abortion. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted that the words “Laus Deo,” or “Glory to God,” are inscribed atop the Washington Monument. A former Miss Colorado named Deborah Flora warned of Hollywood’s liberal agenda. “Transsexuals are this season’s hot new thing,” she said. Perhaps the most surreal appearance came courtesy of the Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who declared “the Bible is our blueprint,” despite the fact that his organization, Towards Tradition, was used by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to funnel money secretly from an online gambling company to the wife of a convicted former advisor to the indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

But the highlight of the conference were the candidates, who each came to make their pitch. Arizona Sen. John McCain spoke movingly about his time as a prisoner of war. “I have been pro-life my entire public career,” he said. “I believe I am the only major candidate in either party who can make that claim.” Texas Rep. Ron Paul spoke out against the war in Iraq, an unpopular position at the conference, though he still placed third in the straw poll on the strength of online voting. Thompson delivered one of the most memorable lines of the conference, when he described his first act if he is elected president. “I would go into the Oval Office and close the door and pray for the wisdom to know what is right,” he said, a line that earned him a standing ovation. Mike Huckabee reminded attendees, “I come today not as one who comes to you, but as one who comes from you.”

When it was all over, it was not clear if values voters had any more direction or unanimity than before they met, making the winner Giuliani almost by default. Carol Franz, of Owego, N.Y., was among those few in attendance who said she planned to vote for Giuliani in the straw poll. “It’s not going to do me any good to be pro-life if I am blown up,” she told Salon. Her message — security can trump family values — brings joy to the Giuliani campaign, just as it strikes fear into the hearts of religious activists, who could see their hold on the GOP diminish if Giuliani wins the nomination. But it is still too early to read the tea leaves. One of the only things known for certain about the Republican nomination is that it will be decided by millions of voters across the country, not the 2,000 or so who gathered this weekend in Washington.

We’ve certainly got issues with the Salvation Army, but the Christian conservatives Romney is trying to win over don’t. Moreover, the group does claim that its “Red Kettle” campaign raised $117 million for Americans “in need” last year.

Update: In an e-mail message, Madden tells us that he made the comment, quoted in today’s New York Times, “in a joking manner.” “Nevertheless,” he writes, “it was a thoughtless remark and I should have been more careful. For that, I apologize.”

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“Turnaround: Crisis, Leadership and the Olympic Games” by Mitt Romney

We have had war hero presidents, cowboy presidents, presidents from academe and aristocratic presidents. Mitt Romney wants to be the first organization man president. So in his memoir, “Turnaround,” he thanks his “senior legal counsels” in the intro, and then follows with 384 triumphant pages of crisis management, marketing wizardry and audits.

In 1998, he was asked to leave his nine-figure job as a Boston buyout specialist to take over the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, which were reeling from a bribery scandal. As a proud Mormon, he felt the call of service from his great-great-grandfather’s homeland. By his own account, it was a transformative experience, yielding chapter titles like “Strategic Audit,” “Uncertain Revenues” and “The Budget.” He dictates the book as events happen, on his weekly commute from Park City to Salt Lake, detailing the highlights of his meetings with bankers and explaining his need to have his wife by his side at night. “I simply could not turn around the Olympics without her daily counsel,” he writes, after asking her to fly out from Massachusetts to join him. He also offers occasional insights into the passions that drive him. “McDonald’s was one of our best sponsors,” he confesses. “We loved the company as much as I loved their burgers. And that’s saying something.” Romney is not kidding. He really does love those burgers.

– Michael Scherer

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“The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” and “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” by Barack Obama

I read both of Barack Obama‘s books thinking: Would I be reading this if the author weren’t running for president? The answer is no for “Audacity,” yes for “Dreams.” As the title suggests, most of “Dreams” is of course about his father, a Kenyan goat-herder who scrounged a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, met and married Obama’s mother, and then took his education back to his family in Africa.

The story of Obama’s trip to Kenya to learn about his late father is fascinating and the heart of the book. But what was most interesting to me was his unglamorous stint as a community organizer in the poor, mostly black neighborhoods of Chicago. He draws a sympathetic but not always flattering picture of the array of black activists he got to know in that web. Through it all Obama is smart and never mean, as critical of himself as anyone else.

All the issues that come alive in “Dreams” are in “Audacity” too, but they’re often fairly lifeless on the page. I was also irked by a tic in his writing, in which he holds up two opposing groups or ideas and then shows how he reconciles them: gun owners and gun haters; Daily Kos readers and Democratic insiders. “Audacity” also suffers because it feels padded with constitutional law lecture notes and speech drafts. I wanted stories from real-life politics to illuminate the way out of our current political divide, the way stories from “Dreams” did for our racial divide. The contrast between the richness of the two books could give ammunition to people who worry about Obama’s lack of national political experience. But I’d still rather have the author of “Dreams” as president than many of his challengers in either party.

– Joan Walsh

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“A Prayer for America” by Dennis Kucinich

Have you texted Peace 73223? Do you advocate the abolition of all nuclear weapons? Are you a vegan? Yes? Then prepare to have your mind blown by the wacky stylings of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, in “A Prayer for America.” With a preface by Studs Terkel, who writes that Kucinich “is like Poe’s purloined letter — right there on the table as we helplessly play Inspector Clouseau goofily searching elsewhere,” the slim volume, mostly a collection of speeches, proves that Kucinich often represents the best in us. It is also a 141-page primer on why his candidacy is not even remotely plausible.

Kucinich quotes Carl Sandburg and James Russell Lowell! He composes a “Haiku of Hegemony”! And he sets down on paper the following passage, which might explain why he only lasted two years in his last executive position, mayor of Cleveland: “Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the universe. Matter transcends, to return to spirit. The interchangeability of matter and spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: one with the universe; whole and holy; from one source, endless creative energy, bursting forth, kinetic, elemental; we — the earth, air, water and fire-source of nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic spiraling.”

For. Real.

– Rebecca Traister

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“In Mortal Danger” by Tom Tancredo

You probably know two things about Tom Tancredo. One, that the Colorado congressman will not be the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Two, that he is really, really, really, really angry about illegal immigration.

There are only two things you need to know about the book in which he vents said anger, which is subtitled “The Battle for America’s Border and Security.” One, it’s dedicated to the late Madeleine Cosman, the pseudo-scientist whose phony stats about hordes of Mexican lepers swarming across the border were dutifully repeated on-air by CNN’s resident Know-Nothing, Lou Dobbs. (You can see video of Cosman ranting here.) Two, though Tancredo is sparing with his endnotes, he gives one to the late columnist Samuel Francis, who in 1994 made public comments so racist that even the Washington Times felt compelled to fire him. To repeat, Francis exceeded the RDA of wingnuttery at the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s newspaper.

You can stop right there.

– Alex Koppelman

“Living History,” by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Clinton‘s startlingly readable autobiography is one of those books that mostly sucks you in with the pictures.

Seriously, the photo of Hillary and Bill in college — he looking 12 feet tall and like an upmarket Seth Rogen — is alone worth the sticker price. And Hillaryland staffers worried about their candidate’s relatability should print up posters of the then-first lady staring darkly at a teenage Chelsea who is dressed in a miniskirt for her father’s second inauguration ceremony. “It was too late for her to change,” writes a still reproachful Clinton in the caption.

As for the book itself: Well, the woman — or collaborator Maryanne Vollers — can turn a phrase. There’s a surprising amount of what might charitably be called disclosure and realistically be called spin on topics from Whitewater to Vince Foster’s death to healthcare. Clinton comes off as most arrestingly candid when writing about her struggle to subsume her vivid identity in service to her husband’s presidency. As for what pass for the dirty bits, if you’re interested, you probably looked them up when the book came out: She first noticed his hands; they’ve been having a conversation for 30 years; she got real steamed about Monica … yada yada yada.

– Rebecca Traister

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“Worth the Fighting For: The Education of an American Maverick, and the Heroes Who Inspired Him” by John McCain with Mark Salter

Ever since the publication of his family’s military history, “Faith of My Fathers,” coincided with his spirited challenge to anointed candidate George W. Bush for the 2000 GOP nomination, John McCain has become the Republican most likely to scale the bestseller lists. Written, like four of his other books, with longtime top aide Mark Salter, “Worth the Fighting For” is as close as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has come to a standard political memoir. It begins not in a Vietnam POW camp, but in 1981 at the funeral of his father, an admiral who commanded the U.S. Pacific fleet. McCain’s strength as both a storyteller and a politician is his insight into his own failings, displayed in passages like this: “My [first] marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam.” When it comes to his ill-advised meetings with a shady savings-and-loan operator, McCain becomes a one-man self-criticism session. But from the ashes of the “Keating Five” scandal, McCain devised a shrewd and seldom emulated public-relations strategy: “I would henceforth accept every single request for an interview … and answer every question as completely and straightforwardly as I could.” That refreshing policy has served him well as a writer and as a longtime favorite of the traveling press corps; but it will be emulated only if McCain somehow straight-talks his way to the nomination.

– Walter Shapiro

“Four Trials” by John Edwards, with John Auchard

Written for Edwards’ last presidential campaign, this my-life-in-court memoir is better written (the invisible hand of book doctor Elizabeth Edwards) than the standard legislative chronicle about “how I almost passed the Dry-Cleaning Reform Act of 1999.” Medical malpractice litigation might have an improved public image if all plaintiffs were like the one in Edwards’ first big case. E.G. Sawyer lost the ability to speak and care for himself when a doctor in Asheville, N.C., cavalierly prescribed three times the recommended maximum dose of Antabuse to deal with Sawyer’s alcoholism. After an initial settlement conference, Edwards recalls, “I left the courtroom scared to death.” The judge had told him, “Mister Edwards, juries down here don’t award more than a hundred thousand dollars.” But in Horatio Alger fashion, the plucky young lawyer eventually won a settlement of $3.7 million and “E.G. had the care he needed [and] a sense of dignity back in his life.” And Edwards had a calling — and the beginnings of the personal fortune that would help finance the 1998 Senate campaign that launched his political career. But no matter how many courtroom victories, in “Four Trials” Edwards (surprise) always remains faithful to his campaign persona as “the small-town son of Bobbie and Wallace Edwards.”

– Walter Shapiro

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“A Foreign Policy of Freedom: ‘Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship’” by Ron Paul

I’d never say anything bad about Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, if only because I tremble at the thought of the avenging Paulista hordes summoned to their keyboards by the resulting Google alert. I do think, however, that the jacket of his latest book, “A Foreign Policy of Freedom,” might be a little enthusiastic in describing Paul as “the premier advocate for liberty in politics today.” Also, Paul couldn’t even get through 10 pages before referring to “The New World Order,” which is almost never a good thing.

But the book, which is really just a collection of writings and speeches about foreign policy, is a good introduction to the Ron Paul phenomenon, and gives some insight into his allure for voters who might otherwise be allergic to a Republican. Anyone who opposes the Iraq war can find something to agree with in his generally isolationist, libertarian, anti-neocon views about the role of the United States in the world. They’ll just have to ignore his views on a lof of the other topics not covered by this book, meaning the environment, civil rights, taxes, healthcare, abortion …

– Alex Koppelman

“Promises to Keep” by Joe Biden

In the early primary states, despite six terms in the U.S. Senate, Joe Biden polls neck-and-neck with Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. But on Amazon, on a very, very good day, he’s breathing down the necks of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Biden’s autobiography debuted in August to admiring reviews and respectable sales. If all the readers who’ve purchased “Promises to Keep” could move to New Hampshire, Biden might no longer be a second-tier candidate.

Biden undoubtedly wishes he did not have such a diverting story to tell. Most political junkies probably recall that his first run for the Democratic nomination 20 years ago was scuttled by his uncredited recycling of a speech by British Laborite Neil Kinnock, a disaster closely followed by a pair of cerebral aneurysms that nearly killed him. Fewer may remember that Biden’s remarkable election to the Senate at age 29 in November 1972, which made him one of the youngest senators-elect in U.S. history, was followed within weeks by a car crash that killed his wife and daughter. Fewer still know that Biden is a bootstraps case, whose first success in life was willing himself to overcome a terrible stutter. Biden’s description of his Irish Catholic upbringing is sentimental, but moving, and his response to tragedy and near death both admirable and likable. It’s ironic, but in 2008 Joe Biden, whose previous White House bid was derailed by charges of plagiarism, is now more viable as an author than as a presidential candidate.

— Mark Schone

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“Citizen Power” by Mike Gravel

Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska who’s making a longest-of-shots bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, is no Quixote come lately. He’s been floating the same extravagant, idealistic and utterly doomed proposals since the Nixon administration. That’s evident in his 1972 book, “Citizen Power: A People’s Platform,” a guide to his political philosophy, which is centered on his enduring passion for greater citizen participation in government. Included are ideas like a progressive flat tax and amending the Constitution to allow voters to enact federal laws by referendum.

Gravel has spent much of the past 20 years devoted to an outgrowth of the law-by-referendum idea, working for a group called the National Initiative for Democracy, which led in turn to his current improbable presidential bid. Should he bend space and time and become the Democratic presidential nominee, one scheme from his book that is sure to excite potential corporate backers is his proposal that all companies involved in interstate commerce be required to apply for a federal charter, and then adopt governing boards with equal representation for stockholders, workers and representatives of the public.

– Alex Koppelman

“Leadership,” by Rudy Giuliani

The first chapter of Rudy Giuliani’s 2002 bestseller is titled “September 11, 2001,” and begins, “It was an exceptionally clear summer morning.” The first plane has hit the World Trade Center by the second paragraph, and the brand that Giuliani hopes will carry him to the GOP nomination is launched.

But it is the succeeding chapters of “Leadership,” which purports to impart the accumulated wisdom of a successful leader of men, that should really interest potential Giuliani supporters. If they have not already read the book, longtime New York residents might find some of the chapter headings unintentionally amusing. Not so much Chapter 11, “Weddings Discretionary, Funerals Mandatory,” as “Surround Yourself With Great People,” “Stand Up to Bullies” and, most important, “Loyalty: The Vital Virtue.” Prior to 9/11, New Yorkers were prepared to remember their mayor as an effective manager who was also a bully and a poor judge of people. In the book, Giuliani describes Bernie Kerik, his last police commissioner and very nearly the present chief of the Department of Homeland Security, as a “forceful hands-on manager” with “strength of character.” Kerik, currently under federal investigation for bribery, obstruction of justice and tax evasion, is proof that for the former mayor, as with the unpopular, unsuccessful president he would replace, the chapter on loyalty trumps all.

– Mark Schone

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“From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion” by Sam Brownback

Back in 1995, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback was a lost soul, consumed by ambition and distant from his family. During the heady days of the Republican Revolution, he had risen rapidly from Kansas secretary of agriculture to the halls of the U.S. Congress. Brownback may not have been happy, but he loved the rush of real power. “We even attempted to shut down four cabinet-level agencies,” he boasts like a schoolkid, in this memoir, which lays out the thesis for his presidential campaign. But the thrill would not last. He was blindsided by personal crises — children who did not know him well, an unhappy wife, and the surprise diagnosis of skin cancer. “My soul was empty,” he admits. “I was in line for some major soul surgery.” So out went the skin cancer (with a hunk of flesh from his torso), and in rushed the healing power of Jesus. He was reborn as a true believer and decided to devote the rest of his life to serving God. Now, as he says on the campaign trail, he serves a single, clear purpose. “All for Jesus,” he says, quoting Mother Teresa. “All for Jesus. All for Jesus. All for Jesus.” For Brownback, that means battling Sudanese genocide, international sex trafficking, abortion and gay marriage.

– Michael Scherer

“Letters From Nuremberg” by Christopher Dodd

In 1970 Sen. Thomas Dodd of Connecticut, who had been censured by his colleagues for diverting campaign funds for personal use, lost his bid for reelection. He died of a heart attack not long after. Twenty years later, his son Christopher, by then himself a Democratic senator from Connecticut, found the letters that Thomas had written home to his wife in 1945 and 1946 while serving as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. In 2007, Chris Dodd published these love letters from his father to his mother as his unorthodox, poignant and oddly old-fashioned entry in the often-stultifying genre of campaign biographies.

“Letters From Nuremberg” is meant to be an object lesson, testimony by prior historical example as to how the United States can defeat and prosecute a fearsome, murderous ideological enemy without blemishing the Constitution or compromising human rights. But just as Dodd uses Nuremberg to indict Guantánamo, he would rather talk about his father than himself. His book is also an object lesson in who and what he admires — more “Profiles in Courage” than an Oprah-era exercise in self-advertisement. And in the end, though Dodd has denied it, it’s also an attempt to rescue his father’s tarnished reputation. As Dodd’s brother told the New York Times, “He said to me once, ‘Every time I walk on the Senate floor, I feel that he’s vindicated.’”

– Mark Schone

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“From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 Stops to Restoring America’s Greatness” by Mike Huckabee

A former Baptist minister with a penchant for Dr. Phil-speak, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee casts his presidential ambitions in the formula of a self-help book. Even before you crack the spine, he has already made a funny, writing “Stops” instead of “Steps” in the subtitle, because all his steps to a better tomorrow are actually things that should be stopped — Being Cynical, Abusing Our Planet, Robbing the Taxpayers, Cheating Our Children. You get the idea.

The structure is either oddly comforting or completely annoying, especially since there are not just 12 stops/steps. For each of the 12 macro “stops,” there are 12 micro steps to “prime the pump for personal and civic action,” making a total of 144 stops/steps. “Always say ‘Thank You,’” reads one. “Don’t use profanity,” goes another. “Travel abroad … Sleep more! … Visit a museum of local history … Tour a manufacturing plant in your area … Buy Girl Scout cookies.” It’s not clear what all these have to do with running the world’s most powerful country, but they all speak to Huckabee’s master narrative of basic goodness, which is, well, both basic and, er, good.

— Michael Scherer

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“Between Worlds” and “Leading by Example” by Bill Richardson

On paper, Bill Richardson was perfect. A popular, swing-state governor of undeniable accomplishment, whose Latino heritage would help herd crucial Rocky Mountain electors into the Democratic column, he sounded like a Democratic presidential candidate designed in a lab. When the résumé hit the road, however, Richardson fumbled his way through televised debates and other public appearances. So far voters have not felt the magic.

In Bill Richardson’s two books, the initial hype around his candidacy again becomes understandable. “Between Worlds” is Richardson’s engaging campaign autobiography, in which he warms up the crowd by explaining his bicultural roots and then lays out his qualifications for the presidency. He describes how he grew up in Mexico City and how his philandering American grandfather left him with unknown numbers of second cousins scattered across Latin America. The former congressman and United Nations ambassador also explains how he negotiated with dictators from Iraq to Cuba to North Korea. Book No. 2, “Leading by Example,” due out on Oct. 26, is the candidate’s obligatory policy statement, in which he reminds voters that he is also the ex-secretary of energy, and thus uniquely qualified to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. In short, the perfect candidate is back on paper, but perhaps that’s where he belongs.

– Mark Schone

“At That Point in Time: The Inside Story of the Senate Watergate Committee” by Fred D. Thompson

Before Fred Thompson began doing his Old Country Lawyer shtick, he had the Young Country Lawyer routine down cold as the minority counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee. Or as he put it in his precocious post-Watergate memoir more than three decades ago, “There in the midst of it all, seated at the committee table, blinded by the television lights … was a 30-year-old lawyer from Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, six years out of law school: me.” For all his hayseed posturing, Thompson learned lasting lessons about how Washington really works. Despite right-wing bleats that the liberal press corps was out to get Richard Nixon, Thompson shrewdly notes, “It was competition, not ideology, that drove them on — the instinct for survival, the need to get … faster information than the competition.” Ultimately, for all his partisan instincts, Thompson also claimed to be satisfied with the justice inherent in Nixon’s fate: “How could I explain to my children what the president had done? Any attempt to justify his actions would fly in the face of the standards that I hoped to instill in them.” But, after a fairly uneventful eight-year tenure in the Senate, followed by a second-career stint on “Law and Order,” it’s another revelation from his bio that seems more relevant to his current quest for the presidency. “I had not fully appreciated the power of television,” he wrote, “or the fact that anyone who gets sufficient television exposure as a newscaster, an actor, or the Pillsbury doughboy, is an overnight celebrity.”

– Walter Shapiro

The Republicans are competing to see who can wax most bellicose. The two candidates with the greatest need to compensate for their socially liberally pasts, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have been extra warlike. Giuliani in particular seems to be running for velociraptor-in-chief.

In an ABC interview on Sunday, Giuliani made fun of Romney for saying during the Dearborn debate that he would seek the advice of counsel before launching a war on Iran. Moderator Chris Matthews had asked, “If you were president of the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities?” Romney had replied that the president “has to do what’s in the best interest” of the country “to protect us against a potential threat.” He said nothing about needing a congressional declaration of war; indeed, he was clearly suggesting that for him to strike Iran it would suffice to get a legal opinion that such an act did not require a formal declaration of war.

During his Sunday interview, Giuliani attempted to portray Romney’s brazen end run around the Constitution as evidence of wimpiness. “That’s one of those moments in a debate,” he told ABC News, “where you say something and you go like this [wiping his mouth with the back of his hand] … wish I can get that one back.

“Basically, right out of the box,” Giuliani continued, “first thing, you’re faced with imminent attack on the United States, I don’t think you call in the lawyers first. I think maybe the generals, the ones you call in first, they’re the ones you want to talk to.”

But Matthews, of course, had not asked Romney what he would do were the U.S. attacked. His question concerned a sudden U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear energy facilities, and whether the president should seek congressional authorization for such an act of war.

During the debate itself, Romney also took heat for not mentioning the need for congressional authorization, although the rebuke came from a lonely voice out of the GOP’s isolationist past. “You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war,” said Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. Paul declared flatly that the Constitution was clear and that Romney’s talk about consulting attorneys was “baffling.” He also maintained that “the thought that the Iranians could pose an imminent attack on the United States is preposterous.” When Giuliani shot back that Sept. 11 had been such an attack, Paul interrupted him. “That was no country,” snapped Paul. “That was 19 thugs. It has nothing to do with a country.”

Sen. John McCain tried to present himself as the voice of reason in the debate, saying, “Of course you want to go to Congress; of course you want to get approval.” Last spring, however, when badgered by a belligerent audience member at a South Carolina campaign event about how long the U.S. should tolerate Iran’s alleged bad behavior, McCain had been caught on camera singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb/ Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit “Barbara Ann.” If any major Iranian political figure had made a similar jest about striking the U.S., it would not have been quickly forgotten in Washington. McCain’s ditty, and the relative lack of controversy about it, speak volumes about the aggressive mood in the U.S.

Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on the planet’s sole superpower. The third-world regime is led by a genocidal commander-in-chief who serves a global conspiracy; to stop him, the president of the superpower might be compelled, after a quick chat with a lawyer and a few bars of a golden oldie, to launch an aggressive war. (And even the part about a conversation with an attorney is seen by some of the candidates as an abdication of manhood.)

Perhaps because of his chest-thumping contest with Giuliani, Romney especially has shown a talent of late for putting the ignorant in fear-mongering. During the Dearborn debate, Romney alleged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had “spoken about genocide,” and said it was important not to “allow that individual to have the control of launching a nuclear weapon.” In an ad released after the debate, in a clear attempt to out-Giuliani Giuliani, Romney declaimed, “It’s this century’s nightmare, jihadism — violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism.” He told the cameras that the fundamentalists’ goal is to establish a “caliphate,” and wanted to “collapse” countries such as the United States as part of that goal. “We can and will stop Iran,” he added, “from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has never advocated “genocide,” and his expressed wish that the “occupation regime over Jerusalem” (i.e., the Israeli government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated.

As for the rest, the candidates simply assume that Iran has a nuclear weapons research program, which has not been proven. It certainly does not have a nuclear weapon at present, and the National Intelligence Estimate indicates that if it were trying to get one, it would take until at least 2016 — and then only if the international environment were conducive to the needed high-tech imports. (Ahmadinejad, by the way, will not be in power in 2016.) Also, someone really needs to let the Republicans know that Iran is Shiite, meaning it abhors Sunni fundamentalists and rejects the caliphate.

Iran has also become an obsession on the Democratic side of the aisle, albeit absent the rampant machismo. In fact, while many of their colleagues in Congress continue to second Republican saber-rattling, most of the Democrats who are running for president seem notably wary of rushing into war with Iran.

Of the four senators among the Democratic candidates, only Hillary Clinton voted for the non-binding Kyl-Lieberman resolution on Sept. 26. The Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which passed 76-to-22, with 29 Democrats voting in favor, says, “the United States should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization … and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists.” Jim Lobe, among the best journalists covering neoconservatism in Washington, wrote that unnamed “Capitol Hill sources” told him that the resolution was crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, interviewed on “Democracy Now,” concurred that the amendment was pushed by the Israel lobby.

It would be unprecedented to declare a military force of a state to be a “terrorist” organization, and illogical, since the formal definition of terrorism is that it is committed by non-state actors. It would also endanger U.S. troops, who might well be designated terrorists by some foreign governments. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she would not allow a similar resolution to be brought up for a vote in the House of Representatives, telling ABC’s “This Week,” “This has never happened before, that a Congress should determine one piece of someone’s military is [a threat].”

Sen. Chris Dodd voted against the resolution on the grounds that it would green-light a Bush administration attack on Iran. Sen. Joe Biden also opposed it, though he argued that it was just a resolution and could not authorize a war. Sen. Barack Obama missed the vote because it was abruptly rescheduled after he had already left on a campaign swing, but when he learned of the rescheduling he issued a statement against the resolution. Obama blasted Clinton’s vote for the resolution as a repeat of the mistake she made when she voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. (Clinton muddied the waters somewhat by backing a resolution by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb requiring that Bush seek Congressional authorization before attacking Iran.) Some analysts suggested that Clinton is already thinking past the primaries. They believe she is making her decisions on the assumption that she will face a Republican hawk in the presidential contest of 2008, and therefore has to guard against charges that she is weak on national security. According to this analysis, the other Democratic candidates, trailing her, are still playing to the party faithful, who are to the left of the general public.

In short, Clinton’s staffers must have read the Opinion Dynamics poll for Fox Cable News, which shows that 80 percent of the U.S. public believe that Iran’s nuclear program is for weapons purposes, and 50 percent believe that the U.S. should take a tougher line with Iran (as against 31 percent who do not). About 29 percent of the sample want Bush to go ahead and attack Iran before leaving office, while a bare majority thought he should leave the problem to the next president. Some 54 percent of respondents believed that if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been allowed to visit the site of the Sept. 11 attacks, he would have been intent on honoring the hijackers.

Since the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been carrying out regular inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities, still cannot find good evidence for a weapons program, the overwhelming consensus to this effect in the U.S. is evidence of successful propaganda by the Bush administration and its enablers in the media. That Ahmadinejad, an Iranian Shiite who has repeatedly denounced Sunni fundamentalism and its terrorist activities, should be viewed as an al-Qaida sympathizer by the American public is a testament to how effectively he has been demonized.

Iran has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak. Aside from the Republican Party’s long history of fear-mongering as a way to get power, throw public money to their corporate clients, and scare Americans into giving up their civil liberties, what is driving this obsession with Tehran?

Candidates may be talking about Iran as an indirect and politically safer way of speaking to voters’ anxieties about Iraq. As an issue in itself, Iraq contains many pitfalls. It is a quagmire about which a former commanding general in that country, Rick Sanchez, said last Friday, “There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end.”

The Iraq problem is so intractable that bringing it up with voters is dangerous, since they will then ask about policy prescriptions, and most experts agree that the U.S. has no good options. Iran, in contrast, looms as a vague sort of threat on the horizon and politicians can therefore pull out of their tool kits their favorite instrument — speaking hypothetically without committing to a particular course of action. The problem, as Chris Dodd and Barack Obama saw so clearly, is that in attempting to change the conversation to Iran, American politicians and their morbidly aggressive constituents may be vastly widening the quagmire, playing Katrina to the Middle East’s New Orleans.