Drawing on some hidden inner reserves of strength I never knew I had, I just watched the Des Moines Register Republican debate on MSNBC, moderated by the Register’s Carolyn Washburn. As always with these events, the program was not a debate. A debate, as those of us who took speech in high school know, is an organized back-and-forth between two sides, within set rules including time constraints that the contestants are penalized for violating, and most importantly on a single topic. Resolved: that . . .

MSNBC billed this presentation, in one of its crawls, “Today marks Huckabee’s first debate as a front-runner.” A nation bates its breath. The networks have comprehensively displayed some of their deepest problems by talking about front-runners. Now we know, we have plumbed to the uttermost, exactly how much the quality of news presentation on television has suffered in our time from the networks’ steady policy of hiring and promoting people who majored in communications or marketing in college because they couldn’t cut it in any other major. The simple fact is that no candidate, either Democrat or Republican, is a front-runner yet. There is no such thing as a front-runner, because no ballots have been cast. But this simple proposition, inescapably luminous though it is, seems to be beyond the capacity of any commentator on any network.

That said, there was one big development in this debate. Rudy Giuliani, semi-chastened by copious humor and criticism at his expense, spoke briefly several times without mentioning 9/11.

This time, he harped on ‘national security’ in virtually every statement. Different code, same key: hewing to the administration line, 1) guerrilla tactics are an ‘ideological battle’; 2) that battle is ‘global’; and 3) it can be won only with further billions in federal contracts to administration cronies in the military-security-surveillance sector.

Giuliani did not elucidate that third one, but it is an intrinsic part of the other two.

For the rest of the dramatic personae in this event, Romney succeeded in staying pleasant and alluded more than once to Ronald Reagan; John McCain stuck to recent form; Mike Huckabee made several good or good-sounding points; and Ron Paul was the only candidate on stage to say that we can reduce our national debt partly by ceasing to spend on empire.

 

Meanwhile, Fred Thompson also employed the national security rubric as the defining argument of our time, more convincingly since with less hyperbolic style than Giuliani. Thompson has had a good week. The national media, apparently taking Thompson’s laconic delivery as the whole story, have stepped off Thompson to rush Huckabee. And Scooter Libby’s lawyers have dropped the Libby appeal, exactly one day before the deadline for filing said appeal in the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Good move from the political perspective of Thompson, a big cheese in the Libby defense fund, not exactly a resume brightener in the coming election campaign.

In fact, the timeline would have been devastating for Thompson. Under the order laid down by the appellate court, the prosecution was required to file its response to the defense appeal filing by February 11, 2008 – during the thick of the super-heated unnaturally early primaries on both sides – with the defense required to reply to the Special Prosecutor by March 3, 2008, still during primary season.

Thus the White House and the Office of the Vice President have removed considerable heat from Thompson. Looks as though either Thompson’s the man, or they’re keeping their options open in case Romney is irretrievably damaged by Huckabee. It is virtually impossible that allies of the WH and the OVP are secretly ranging themselves alongside John McCain.