WOTD runner-up: Sully

There are things I can actually respect about Andrew Sullivan: his willingness to question at least some of his own beliefs. His willingness to hash out some difficult issues in public in a process that sometimes borders on the masochistic. That makes him more honorable than the resolute wingnuts who cling ever more tightly to their delusions.

So what to make of this?

In the last few years, I have gone from lionizing this president's courage and fortitude to being dismayed at his incompetence and now to being resigned to mistrusting every word he speaks. I have never hated him. But now I can see, at least, that he is a liar on some of the gravest issues before the country. He doesn't trust us with the truth. Some lies, to be sure, are inevitable - even necessary - in wartime. But when you're lying not to keep the enemy off-balance, but to maximize your own political fortunes at home, you forfeit the respect of people who would otherwise support you - and the important battle you have been tasked to wage.

Credit Sully for half-insight. He sees that he was a fool to trust Bush. But like a dry drunk, he has not addressed the real problem, and remains vulnerable to the next demagogue. What he cannot yet see is his own pathology: the willingess to suspend disbelief in his tribal longing for a chief who will promise to protect him against all evil.

That makes him a salvageable wanker, but a wanker nonetheless.