Persuaders or Partisans (washingtonpost.com): "As for intensity, Tomasky cites a Journal editorial soon after the Clintonites arrived in Washington, describing administration figures as 'pod people from a 'Star Trek' episode . . . genetically bred to inhabit the public sector.' "

Howard Dean's campaign chief, Joe Trippi, offered his man some very Zen-like advice, reports Roger Simon in U.S. News:

" 'I tell him the only way he can win is to believe in his heart he cannot win,' Trippi says. 'We've got to act like we have nothing to lose.' . . .

"Dean has his own complex feelings about Bush. 'I think we were all sort of hoodwinked by George Bush,' Dean says. 'Everything he said he was going to do in the campaign he did the opposite of. He is a divider, not a uniter, there is nothing compassionate about him or about his presidency, and he just couldn't give a damn about the American people.' Anger? What anger?"

In London's Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan flirts -- ever so briefly -- with the Dean candidacy:

"It's hard not to root for him as a candidate. He feels alive; he seems fresh; he seems different. . . .

"Dean has also mastered the appearance at least of being a conviction politician. He is nationally most famous for backing the law in Vermont that granted gay couples identical benefits to straight married couples in a compromise called 'civil unions.' Far from running away from this, as other Democrats have done, Dean has defended it on simple equality grounds. And it doesn't seem to have hurt him much. . . .

"So where's the catch? In a word: national security. . . . When Baghdad was liberated, and Saddam removed from power, Dean came up with his most memorable line yet: 'I suppose it's a good thing.'

" 'I suppose.' How could anyone be that ambivalent about Saddam's removal? Even those who opposed the war acknowledge for the most part that Saddam was an evil monster. But for Dean, that huge humanitarian advance was balanced by dismay at a success for an administration he loathed. Of course, that naked partisanship is why he appeals