GOREBOT on Pander Patrol

The WSJ has the story on Gore's sucking up to the Saudis, but Taranto ends the story linked above with a sober observation:

The only consolation is that Gore likely would have done a lot more damage had he spent four years in the White House. And given the precedent set by Jimmy Carter, it isn't hard to imagine Gore as an embittered one-term ex-president giving the same speech in Jeddah.

Then comes a better story about the recently anointed Chairman of the Friendship Pipeline from his good friend Vladimir P. to his own Vaterland, the one and only Gerhard:

Frau Clinton f?r Pr?sidenten!
On the other hand, another AP dispatch tells a story from Jeddah that is purely amusing. It seems that 997 days before the 2008 election, Hillary Clinton has picked up an endorsement--but one that she may not want:

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a fierce critic of the Bush administration, said Saturday that he's pulling for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the White House.

"I'd be very pleased if Hillary Clinton would become the next American president," Schroeder said to applause from a largely Saudi audience at the Jeddah Economic Forum, which opened here Saturday. "But don't quote me too loud. I hope I'm not harming her by saying that."

"Schroeder made the statement during a discussion of global women leaders at a gender-segregated theater where a plastic barrier separated women from men."

"So here we have a founding member of the "axis of weasels" endorsing Frau Clinton and drawing cheers from a segregated Saudi audience. It would be hard for Republicans to write a better campaign commercial."

But given Hillary's resemblance to the Volkspolizei border guard [female type] template so often noted by critics of her empathy quotient, Schroeder is a good choice for her foreign policy campaign advisor. Gerhard has that weasal vibe that's appropriate for Democratic foreign policy types.