• Did Missiles Win the Cold War?

• Why Americans Hate to Love the Government, by John B.

• How the Taliban and Al Qaeda Are Merging--And Why We Should Be Very Worried, by Peter Bergen
• Can R.

• Ten Things Worth Fighting For in a Health Care Bill, by Jonathan Cohn
• The New ‘Family Guy’ Spin-Off Isn’t Just Unfunny. It’s Offensive.

• My Term at Afghanistan’s Graduate School of War, by Ganesh Sitaraman
• Washington Diarist: The Trend in Dying, by Leon Wieseltier
• The Biggest Loser in the EU’s Report on the Russia-Georgia War Is … Europe. by Ronald D.

• How I Became a Keynesian: Second Thoughts in the Middle of a Crisis, by Richard Posner
• Meet Alan Grayson, the Blogosphere’s Man in Congress, by Marin Cogan
• What’s the Right Historical Analogy for Our Presence in Afghanistan

By all accounts Mitt Romney's 2012 bid for the presidency is moving full speed ahead. Last month, he gave a major address in which he laid out his view of international politics--and boy was it convoluted.

Dear Denizens of the Plank, 

It's time again for the official TNR March Madness pool, your opportunity to go bracket-to-bracket with, well, some of us. To join, set up a cbssports.com account here, click this link to join the pool, and then sign in using the password: Password52.

Scoring is as follows:

• First Round game winners: 1 point

• Second Round game winners: 2 points

Sam Tanenhaus's intellectual autopsy of the conservative movement has been attracting a lot of attention today. If you haven't already seen it, here's John O'Sullivan's respectful dissent.

 --Barron YoungSmith

Richard Holbrooke's clarion call in today's Washington Post is required reading. If there ever was a time when we needed a guy like Holbrooke, this is it.

--Barron YoungSmith

FiveThirtyEight has some evidence to back up williamyard's comment of the day, which predicts that Obama will get a bounce when the debate returns to domestic issues.

In a week full of soul-searching about offensive and semi-offensive jokes, the community standard I've most frequently heard invoked is: "If it's not even funny, then it's definitely not OK"

If that's the test, then it's pretty clear John McCain's gratuitous on-the-record gorilla rape joke was not OK, even if it was 1986.

While many of us find the Bush-McCain talk about "appeasement" backward-looking and anachronistic, it's worth noting (mostly in jest) one reason it may not seem so to McCain: Born in 1936, the man is older than appeasement itself.

--Barron YoungSmith

As Mike and Noam predicted on Monday, Obama's position on meeting with dictators has evolved. The newer position doesn't jettison Obama's core principles, but it is more practical.

--Barron YoungSmith

Ah, spring! The time when a TNR reader's thoughts turn to romance--or, failing that, to amassing excellent books.

For those drawing up a reading list, or just interested in browsing, I urge you to check out the TNR Bookshelf--an evolving online list of books by TNR-affiliated authors that mirrors an actual physical bookshelf in The New Republic's Washington, D.C. offices.

Enjoy!

Today's WSJ editorial about Obama's speech makes some decent points. But then there's this:

He dwelled on a lack of funding for inner-city schools and a general "lack of economic opportunity." But Mr. Obama neglected the massive failures of the government programs that were supposed to address these problems, as well as the culture of dependency they ingrained.

He's appearing on Hardball today shortly after 5pm ET (and a rerun at 7pm). Check him out.

(Cross posted on The Plank.)

 --Barron YoungSmith

As previously noted, Hawaii caucus turnout has never been above 5,000. The Obama camp's pie-in-the-sky prediction was 18,000.

Final tally? 37,247.

--Barron YoungSmith

He's going to announce in New Orleans at 1pm, Eastern. No immediate endorsements planned.

 --Barron YoungSmith