Your Abbreviated Pundit Round-up

Wednesday's a good day to abbreviate.

Thomas Friedman:

If the conflict in Georgia were an Olympic event, the gold medal for brutish stupidity would go to the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin. The silver medal for bone-headed recklessness would go to Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, and the bronze medal for rank short-sightedness would go to the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams.

So, basically, everyone was wrong except me. What did we expect?

Michael Gerson: I agree with Tom about the first two, but we did everything right. I never criticize my former boss, anyway. That's not why the WaPo gave me this column.

David Ignatius:

McCain likes zingers. We've all seen that mischievous look -- just before he shot a quip or sarcastic one-liner at GOP rivals such as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It's one of his appealing qualities, but in this case it worries me. Zingers don't make good foreign policy. They embolden friends and provoke adversaries -- and in the Georgia crisis, that has proved to be a deadly combination.

Maureen Dowd: What if Clinton and McCain each, for their own reasons, wanted Obama to lose? How clever of me to think of that all by myself.

Kathleen Parker: I agree with the mainstream Daily Kos; that church venue should never have happened. Thomas Jefferson's rolling over in his grave.

Ruth Marcus:

It's not that Obama has a problem with female voters. To the contrary, he does significantly better among women than among men. It sounds paradoxical, but the campaign, lagging badly among white men, may have its biggest growth potential among female voters. Women, especially women without a college education, tend to make up their minds later. Recent polls show twice as many women as men are undecided.

John Stossel:

The Idiocy of Energy Independence

It's amazing how ideas with no merit become popular merely because they sound good.

It's amazing how pundits with shit for brains become popular merely because they get column space.