Two Men, Again. So very often comparisons between two people spark off thoughts. Yesterday Mark Steyn and Yohann Hari, today David Frum and Richard Clarke (caution, partisan bio). First of all you'd have to admit Frum's a Bush loyalist. Although he no longer works for the President as speechwriter, it was Frum who coined the term 'Axis of Evil'- the unnuanced phrase that has made Europeans froth and, to be fair, despots quake, ever since. Since abandoning the President's coin, Frum's gone freelance, writing for the NRO and hooking up with that spooky-looking Richard Perle to write books about the WoT- again, a phrase Frum endorsed as speechwriter to the GOP. Frum's a man who has helped and is helping to frame the future in terms of 'victory'- or 'defeat'.

And then we have Clarke- a man verging on retirement who had a twenty year career in counter-terrorism at the highest level under four Presidents- last night on Panorama quoted by Paxman as saying that the Bush Whitehouse didn't understand nuance, among other things (heh). Actually that Bush ignored the threat of Al Quaeda prior to Sept 11, was obsessed with Iraq, and yes, everything else you've heard levelled by Democrats and Europeans at GWB. If there was one word for the performance of Clarke on Panorama last night it was 'stereotypical'. That may be good enough for the BBC (although Paxman did look unstimulated), but when you hear Clarke saying that Bush 'ordered' him to find a link between Osama and Saddam, and you think back to the angry GWB that emerged, barrel-chested and defiant after Sept 11th, it's so easy to see this fellow as a shrivelled functionary with an outdated lexicon confronted by an incandescent President, and you see him now, petulantly playing his audience with whiny soundbytes, shifting blame and selling his book. It enables people who have a stake in the future of the WoT, like David Frum, to show gravitas and good sense in pointing out the obvious. The culmination of Frum's career may be yet to come; Clarke's culminated in Sept 11. That's a big difference to see between two men.