Frank Rich is perpetually atop the New York Times most e-mailed list, because he has a can’t-miss formula for delivering red meat to his anti-Bush readers. It’s a simple template, really, which I dissected in this post a while back. Rich just compares something about the Bush administration to A) Watergate, B) Vietnam, or C) Joe McCarthy. This week it’s Vietnam. Revisiting Rich’s last eight columns shows the Rich template at work:

Someone Tell the President the War Is Over: Vietnam

Eight Days In July: Watergate

Follow the Uranium: Watergate

We’re Not in Watergate Anymore: Clearly, Watergate; also Vietnam

Two Wars of the World: Vietnam

The Armstrong Williams NewsHour: Watergate, McCarthy

Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks: Rich breaks from the template to compare Bush’s “fakery that sold the war” to Orson Welles’s fictional “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast.

Don’t Follow the Money: Watergate, Vietnam

While this might lead one to think that the period between 1950-1975 is the only era of history Rich ever studied, one would be wrong. His comparisons, strained to the point of absurdity, indicate that he hasn’t studied any history at all. But that doesn’t matter — his red-meat template is a big winner for the Times.