Way to go Bob!

Usually, when referring to Bob Schieffer, the title will say, "Smoking Reefer with Bob Schieffer" but today's Face the Nation was one of his better days. A shining moment of clarity.

In closing Bob had this to say...

Finally today, it is getting hard to miss the irony. Some guy who thinks he's Peter Pan gets arrested in Thailand and it looks like the JonBenet Ramsey case has finally been solved. Then the Peter Pan guy confesses and people say the case falls apart. Now that is a first: A suspect confesses and seems to help rather than hurt himself. It makes you wonder if the courts should stop making cops warn suspects that anything they say may be held against them. In this case, it seems clear it didn't hurt him.

In this summer of great irony, maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. Take the war in Lebanon. The Lebanese Hezbollah group started a war that left most of its country in ruins, then declared victory and now seems to be winning the hearts and minds of the homeless by handing out money--in some cases, US greenback dollars--to rebuild the bombed-out houses.

I remember the time during Vietnam when US forces leveled a village and an American officer said, 'We had to destroy the village to save it.' In Lebanon, that strategy actually seems to have worked, at least on many of the people there.

The Middle East, of course, is a poor example because nothing there ever comes out quite the way we expect, but this summer, right or wrong, everything seems to be coming out backwards. I mean, put aside the arguments about who the best candidate is and just consider this: How do you become a real favorite to win re-election to the Senate from Connecticut? This summer, the answer seems to be 'Lose your party primary.' This is some summer.

Bob Schieffer
Face the Nation
August 20, 2006

But Bob Schieffer's alright most of the time. He's not half the hack Dan Rather was.