I think he was basically right in saying that conservatives were faulting the administration for following through on things that we all should have known were coming in 2000. The president did not “betray” us on shrinking the government, for example, since he never claimed he had any such intention; the entire GOP came out for a prescription-drug entitlement for seniors five years ago. There is an on-the-other-hand here, though. (During the 2000 primary, however, conservatives were told by a lot of Bushies that he would never sign the campaign-finance horrorshow that McCain was promoting; conservatives did expect more school choice in the education bill; nobody thought he would come out for as sweeping a pro-immigration proposal as he did; etc.)

I’m ambivalent about Podhoretz’s column in another respect. As flattering as the attention is, I don’t think a several-hours long stretch of the Corner is an accurate reflection of conservative sentiment on anything (or even a segment of conservative sentiment defined more broadly than “the sentiment held by the people who happen to be writing for the Corner at the moment in question”). Kate O’Beirne, Rich Lowry, Byron York, and I were all more favorably impressed by the “Meet the Press” interview than John Derbyshire was; we just didn’t happen to be in the Corner at the time. (York was doing CSPAN about the interview, and I was preparing for Diane Rehm on the same subject.) A few weeks ago, a liberal proponent of the president’s marriage initiative complained that it had taken some flak in the Corner; he seemed unaware that the magazine’s editorial position is for the initiative. The Corner is not always representative of the magazine, let alone some wider tendency. The Corner is a place for a fair amount of idiosyncrasy (zeta functions, anyone?), which helps to make it fun.