IT was late in the evening-actually, late in the early morning-on the NATIONAL REVIEW British Isles cruise, and in the piano bar I’d just finished up my rendition of “Hey, Big Spender!” I’m not saying this was a trenchant ideological taunt of George W. Bush, but by this stage of the voyage NR writers and readers were getting more than a little touchy about the various unsatisfactory elements of “compassionate conservatism.” At one question-and-answer session, Jonah Goldberg delivered a magnificent laundry list of differences with the Bush administration that filled most of the 36-hour sailing time between Belfast and Edinburgh. It was “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” of Bush denunciations: On and on rolled the grievances—immigration, farm subsidies, prescription drugs. You waited for the “but,” but the “but” it cameth not.
Until the early hours of the final day, that is, when-after my “Hey, Big Spender!”-a brave band of NR cruisers trooped in to the room next door. We were there to watch the president announce his Supreme Court pick live from the White House at 9 P.M. Eastern, 2
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