You know the GOP is in trouble when Newt Gingrich and Murdox News’ Chris Wallace pontificate solemnly about “getting to the center.”

It happened this morning, during Hillary Clinton’s round of appearances on all three networks, Fox and CNN, largely to reinforce last week’s health-care presentation.

As always, Mrs. Clinton allowed herself to be put on the defensive by interviewers including Wallace. Watching some of the presidential candidates nominated by MSNBC and CNN as ‘front-runners’ always reminds me of Jon Stewart viewing video clips of John Kerry in 2004: throwing the arms up – “NO!” – “Do you WANT to lose?”

The reason these people, basically intelligent and often well-meaning, so often do not know the right thing to say is that they either do not know what’s going on or firmly disbelieve in telling the public about it.

Take Iran, for example. A superficial ranter, Ahmadinejad, is now Iran’s president, a position of high prominence in Iran although not of greatest power. Since taking office, Ahmadinejad, who billed himself as something of a man of the people before, has largely attained worldwide notoriety by making wild statements comporting little with the welfare of Iran’s 71 million people but successfully lending credibility to Bush-Cheney-neocon saber rattling against Iran.

What nobody like Chris Wallace ever, ever, ever mentions is that the Bush administration helped the Iranian hardliner get elected. Media personnel working for Tomorrow Never Dies war-boosters never do mention it, but it's the truth: Bush's people worked behind the scenes to keep a better candidate from winning in Iran. Ahmadinejad was by no means a shoo-in for office; one figure in particular, former president Rafsanjani, possessed considerably more credibility, had more of a potential power base, and offered some appeal both to the business community – inside and outside Iran – and in general to Iranian moderates. But the Bush administration, which at the time of the Iranian election obviously harbored hopes of a military assault on both Iran and Syria, did everything it could in a quiet sleazy way to disrupt Rafsanjani’s potential for office, including rebuffs to diplomatic overtures from Rafsanjani’s people.

THAT’s what Mrs. Clinton should have said, when Chris Wallace tried to put her on the spot about Ahmadinejad’s upcoming appearance at Columbia University:

   Question: What do you think about Columbia University’s giving Ahmadinejad a forum to speak?

• [Right] Answer: Well, Chris, it was your man Bush who got the hardliner elected in Iran. Talk about giving Ahmadinejad a forum -- he wouldn’t even have been elected, if the Bush-Cheney administration hadn’t interfered behind the scenes, in another country's election, to block Rafsanjani. By rights, Ahmadinejad should have lost the Iranian election; then he’d be teaching at Columbia, or at Harvard like Alan Dershowitz.