There really shouldn't be as much low farce in confirming a Cabinet appointment than was on display today as the Senate Armed Services Committee got its chance to blow off steam and posture in front of Chuck Hagel today in Washington. If it wasn't John McCain, bellowing his outrage that the world no longer recognizes his obvious geopolitical genius — even thefolks in the monkeyhouse love the grumpy old RINO today — and that the world has not rewarded him with laurel leaves and flagons of the finest mead. So he spends six minutes trying to get Hagel to admit how brilliant he was to have recommended the "surge" in Iraq. Hagel declines and McCain's fumes, probably because he'll have to wait until Sunday morning to get the kind of fluffing that's the only reason he's still in public life any more. Well, that, and a war with Iran.

But at least, McCain has a certain amount of what is at least alleged gravitas on the subject of foreign relations. Jim Inhofe was reduced to citing Jennifer (Wrong) Rubin's account of the tiny Hagels that have replaced the tiny Romneys in her tiny brain.(This is the equivalent of a clown taking singing lessons from a goat.) Later, it was time for the rookies to demonstrate that their IQ's doubled as soon as they were sworn in. Hagel's fellow Nebraskan, Deb Fischer, who less than a year ago was a noisy state legislator and the third candidate in a three-candidate primary field, pretended to be well-briefed on nuclear policy. And Ted Cruz, the Tea Party gossoon from Texas, took almost his entire opportunity to fit Hagel for a kaffiyeh. Listening to this interview on...al Jazeera! Here, let me reference the Holocaust. Why hasn't Hagel sent the committee the proof that Hezbollah's been paying his honoraria for 12 years! Listening to his cut-rate Joe McCarthy lounge actmakes me wonder about the future of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body. I think they may need HazMat suits before this guy's done.

At times, Hagel seemed thrown off-balance by the ferocity with which some of his former colleagues wielded the trivial and the non-material. (Lindsey Graham was conspicuously beset by the vapors.) He may, in fact, not done his cause any favors by trying to keep the questioning limited to what how he would advise the president on the management of the American military, which is, after all, the job he's trying to get. The primary issue seemed to be Hagel's relationship with the state of Israel — or, more specifically, the state of Israel that people like Graham and Cruz find politically useful. The structure of the argument — to say nothing of the tactics employed — was straight out of the Cold War 1950s, with Israel standing in for the Captive Nations Of Eastern Europe, and some sort of vague alliance of Islamist groups standing in for the Warsaw Pact. I half-expected one of the Republicans to ask us to offer a rosary on the behalf of the souls in chains.

It was a bizarre, devotional exercise. Hagel was not being asked for his qualifications to lead the Department Of Defense — which, it should be noted, is largely an administrative one when it comes to the country's foreign relations. He was being asked to engage in a vague kind of theological debate. He was not being asked to profess his faith to Israel so much as to recant his heresies against the policies of the United States that were produced by adherents of a certain sect. He wasn't being asked to endorse Bibi Netanyahu so much as he was being asked to recant his unorthodox opinions as regarding the good works of Bill Kristol or John McCain. He was being asked, en ensemble, by Republicans old and young, essentially the same question John McCain spent six minutes hollering into the wind.

Please admit that we were right.

No. You were wrong. You were wrong in 2003 and you were wrong in 2006 and the Iraq war was a murderous cock-up from start to finish and Hagel, at least, figured that out in midstream.

The whole hearing was nothing more than a show, and we all know that the easiest shows to sell are revivals. The Republican opposition decided to re-litigate the failures of the Bush administration in the context of the world view of Dean Acheson. It was a weird performance. It was like watching Rent performed on the set of Show Boat. And very little of it had anything to do with Hagel's qualifications to be Secretary Of Defense. Most of the questioning would seem to have been more suited to the hearings earlier this week, when John Kerry sailed through the confirmation process to become Secretary Of State. Hagel's not running to be a diplomat and, frankly, given our experience with that steaming hunk of neocon man-meat, Don Rumsfeld, I'd just as soon not have the Defense Secretary involved in the formulation of foreign policy as much as he is in making sure the grunts who have to carry it out have sufficient body armor. That, by all accounts, is what Hagel sees the job as being about. What some mullah may have mumbled about him may echo loudly among the stalagmites in Jim Inhofe's brain, but it has absolutely no relevance to the rest of us as far as Hagel's ability to run a Defense department. There is some criticism rising that Hagel was not properly prepared for his testimony. I'm not sure anybody could have been. How could anyone be properly prepared for Jim Inhofe and Ted Cruz in the same day? Those kind of mushrooms are still illegal.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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