Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Sundays are a great day to abbreviate.

Tom Friedman:

If Iraq can keep improving — still uncertain — and become a place where Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites can write their own social contract and live together with a modicum of stability, it could one day become a strategic asset for the United States in the post-9/11 effort to promote different politics in the Arab-Muslim world.

But even if it does, I was still wrong enough about Iraq that it would be despite what I've said, and not because of it.

Maureen Dowd: Maybe I, too, can be outsourced. It's just a matter of time.

Hugh Bailey:

"The people have spoken," read a recent letter to the editor. "It's too bad we in Connecticut never had that same opportunity to protect our families."

The writer was talking about California's Election Day passage of Proposition 8, which changed the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. Connecticut is now one of two states where same-sex couples can legally marry.

What the writer leaves unsaid is what we're supposed to be protecting our families from. Being gay? People either are or they aren't, and I can't imagine anyone thinks passing a law is going to change that.

Richard Reeves:

I'm sure there are legions of Obama supporters and voters gritting their teeth at his decision to offer Hillary Clinton appointment as secretary of state.

A short memory and inclination toward compromise may not be weakness but a sign of security and strength, something badly needed in Washington these days.

Amity Schlaes: Since I'm the hot topic in New Deal revisionism, let me take on Krugman. He's wrong, I'm right.

Why does all this matter today? Because lawmakers are considering new labor legislation containing "card check," which would strengthen organized labor and so its wage demands. Because employees continue to pressure firms to spend on health care, without considering they may be making the company unable to hire an unemployed friend. Piling on public-sector jobs or raising wages may take away jobs in the private sector, directly or indirectly.

And anyone who says otherwise is contributing to the next Depression.

Peggy Noonan:

Mr. Obama's cabinet picks and other nominations suggest moderation, also maturity, and his treatment of Joe Lieberman shows forbearance and shrewdness. Politics is a game of addition, take the long view, don't throw anyone out as you try to hit 60. Most of all, leave Mr. Lieberman having to prove every day to the Democratic caucus that he really is a Democrat.

Gov. Mark Sanford:

People usually think more about what went right and what went wrong after a loss than after a victory. Accordingly, Republicans will have a lot of thinking time over the holidays.