"Being a Washington Wise Man does not require much wisdom. Baker has a "conviction", said a columnist on Sunday in the Washington Post, "that Iraq is the central foreign policy issue confronting the US". Wow. Now there's an insight. Actually, it is a nice insight into the Baker mentality - that he can apparently imagine a war that is killing young Americans by the hundreds but is not our central foreign policy issue. Baker also believes that "the only way to to address that issue successfully is to first build a bipartisan consensus". Now that is a conviction you can sink your teeth into. People like Baker always favour a bipartisan consensus. They don't really believe in politics, which is to say they don't really believe in democracy."