Political America – red and blue – is puzzling.  Devoid of logic, consistency and originality, politicians daily run so fast to be interviewed by the media that what they say seems like nothing more than bees buzzing around the hive, absent the public benefit of honey production.

Were it not for the daily talking points provided by the Bureau of Talking Points, think how stupid most politicians would really sound.  Be that as it may, Nancy Pelosi does represent the home of the Twinkie Defense and sour bread, so there!

Several weeks ago, liberal politicians and the liberal media swooned over a group of not-so-distinguished retired generals who temporarily put aside their shuffleboard strategies to call for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.  That produced, as the Bard might today say, a hapless rap of sound and fury signifying.

Far less attention was paid to retired General Barry McCafferty, an early critic of the war in Iraq, who actually just returned from a tour of the battlefield saying it's going kinda well and we're doing kinda good Over There.

The political ADD regarding McCafferty may be excused on the basis that his timing wasn't all that providential, overlapping with the resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss and the nomination of General Michael Hayden as his replacement.

The liberal love of generals then mysteriously and quickly disappeared in a flurry of soundbites in which General Hayden's generalness became the thing to criticize.  Why, he is from the armed services, and maybe he can't be independent enough to run the CIA. 

For the sake of argument, let's assume that those worrying loudly just didn't know that six of the 19 previous Directors have been military men, and more than that if you count some who served their country in numerous different capacities, including the military (George H.W. Bush, for example). 

Ignorance is at least more excusable than the other explanations.  Still, one might wonder why there was not the same barrage of criticism when General Powell (remember him?) became Secretary of State.  Not to mention that in the country's new national security structure, the CIA is itself no longer independent or central.

The fact is that in General Hayden's official bio, the words "intelligence" and "national security" dominate a distinguished career.  So he's a general.  Nowhere is it recorded that he goes around saying stuff like "slam dunk, Mr. President," or transferring national security secrets to home computers, like two of the previous civilian CIA directors.  Nor has he been caught stuffing his pants with classified documents like a former NSA director.

We are among those who are not quite sure what Porter Goss did wrong, if anything, but we shall reserve judgment on his departure until we have more reliable information than that of the liberal press.

The real knock against General Hayden is that he has served under President Bush and was Director of the National Security Agency when its secret al Qaeda electronic monitoring program was implemented.  But wait.  General Hayden was appointed NSA Director in March 1999.  Wasn't someone else president then?  Oh poo, that's no argument.  Anyone can go to the dark side.

The liberals don't have a clue what to do about the NSA monitoring program.  When it was first disclosed, they started screaming about it.  Spying on Americans.  The president has no authority, blah, blah, blah. Then polls indicated that Americans overwhelmingly support the program (to the extent that anyone understands it) as a reasonable national security proposition.  Now the liberals are left to play the Washington version of dodge ball when pressed on the question.

They'd still like to pin the Bushy tail on Hayden during his confirmation hearings.  But he's smarter than they are, getting to be a general being harder than being elected to Congress, and he has the advantage of knowing his own program like they don't.  And in the past few days, it seems to have dawned on several liberal leading lights that throwing President Bush back into that briar patch might just be exactly what he wants.

General Hayden will be confirmed.  He'll go to the CIA.  The fear of liberals is that he will probably continue to clean the agency of wimps, simps, dupes and leakers.  He will probably continue to restore the agency to what it is supposed to do.  Supply intelligence, competently and secretly once again, to the President. That's a good thing.