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Several paragraphs later, DiIulio gave what might very well be the key to the Bush administration’s startling lack of accomplishment in the domestic sphere other than budget-busting, deficit-bloating tax cuts. “On social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking.”

According to DiIulio, Bush’s staff “consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing every issue to its simplest, black-and-white terms for public consumption, then steering legislative initiatives or policy proposals as far right as possible.”

Of Rove, DiIulio said, “Karl is enormously powerful, maybe the single most powerful person in the modern, post-Hoover era ever to occupy a political advisor post near the Oval Office.” (Evidently, DiIulio never met a poised young woman in the Clinton White House by the name of Dee Dee Myers!)

“We will fuck him. Do you hear me? We will fuck him. We will ruin him. Like no one has ever fucked him.” Now, I like a little dirty talk as much as the next fellow. The only difference between me and Karl Rove is that I like to keep it in the bedroom. Rove’s “fucking” quote was reported by Suskind, who overheard the meltdown while waiting outside Rove’s office. The name of the man about to be fucked may never be known, but it’s safe to say that he was fucked like no one had ever fucked him.

One person not afforded the courtesy of being fucked in private was Tom Daschle, who, because of Jeffords’s defection, was now Senate majority leader.

One GOP official told the Washington Post that orders to crush Daschle had come directly from the West Wing. Rush Limbaugh, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party, began referring to Daschle as “El Diablo.” Limbaugh’s Spanish-speaking listeners got the message. Daschle was either “a devil” or “the devil.” (No one on TeamFranken ever took Spanish.)

In the fall of 2001, ads began to appear comparing the somewhat liberal El Diablo to more radical political figures, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and American Taliban John Walker Lindh.

“What do Saddam Hussein and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle have in common?” asked a newspaper ad that juxtaposed the two men. “Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” (Also, both men are Libras.)

After 9/11, the balance between civil liberties and national security would be put to a severe test. Fortunately for those who came down heavily on the national security side, John Ashcroft was the one making most of the close calls. Could we round up immigrants and not let them see lawyers? Sure. Could we conduct all their hearings in secret? Yes. Could we detain Muslims who had done nothing wrong by calling them “material witnesses”? Fabulous idea. Could we keep people locked up for months in horrifying conditions without letting their families know they’d been detained? Why not?

Those who came down on the civil liberties side had to watch what they said. As Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee on December 6, 2001, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists—for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies.” This wasn’t a nutcase like Ann Coulter shouting, “Treason!” This was the attorney general of the United States.

Who is also something of a nutcase.

In his book Lessons from a Father to His Son, Ashcroft explains that he anointed himself with oil before being sworn in for each of his two terms as Missouri’s governor, in the tradition of “the ancient kings of Israel, David and Saul, [who] were anointed as they undertook their administrative duties.” Ashcroft also anointed himself before being sworn in as senator with—swear to God—a bowl of Crisco, a trick that used to be popular in gay bathhouses.

Then there was the thing with the statue.