Rota Fortuna

Consider the wheel of fortune, upon which all of us are passengers. The same movement that propels some toward the apogee simultaneously and inevitably sends others plummeting toward the nadir. This is nowhere truer than in politics.

Barack Obama's star is ascending, and never more rapidly than it did yesterday when the freshman senator finally revealed an unambiguous anti-Iraq War policy. He introduced a bill that would require the beginning of withdrawal of American troops very soon, with the withdrawal to be completed by March, 2008. As John Amato at Crooks and Liars notes, "Sen. Clinton has said she would consider it 'irresponsible' for Bush not to have withdrawn all troops by the end of his term in January 2009. Obama is now recommending making it a matter of law that troops be out ten months earlier than that."

It's too early to tell whether Obama's bill will have any effect. There are so many Iraq bills and Iraq resolutions circulating in the upper chamber right now it sometimes seems as if every senator's got one. But Obama has moved decisively to oppose the president's "surge" plan, to unambiguously call for an end to the war, and in doing so has opened up some ideological daylight between himself and Mrs. Clinton. His proposed legislation isn't guaranteed to gain him any traction, but it certainly will if it ends up being the rallying point for Senate Democrats, and there's no way such a policy could hurt him.

Mush-mouthed poltical triangulation is out of style, and Obama is smart enough to read the currents of public opinion, which at this point are aligned with his own, and act accordingly.

And Obama, this week's ascending star, is coincidentally the pretext for the bucket-footed tumble of another presidential hopeful, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware. Biden, who has a history of being hoist on his own petar, yesterday managed to simultaneously praise Obama and insult every other black candidate who ever lived in one thoughtless effusion of badly-chosen words when he said: "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man."

No, man, that's not a storybook. That's an idiotic gaffe. As John Aravosis at AmericaBlog remarks, "(W)ho isn't tired of of all those unclean, stupid, ebonics-speaking African-Americans in politics?"

Say "Good-Night," Joe.