Summer doldrums

David Brooks (New York Times) is apparently resigned to the worst case scenario: "Romney might be able to beat back the [Rick] Perry surge. In the meantime, it’s time to take Perry seriously. He could be our next president." Right. Anything is possible. So is an alien landing. Brooks is a very smart guy. But he should know better than to assign too much weight to Perry's recent poll surge. With the election over a year away, it's meaningless. At this point in the 1992 and 2008 elections, George H.W. Bush and Hillary Clinton were also surging in their respective polls. We know how both of those movies ended. It's August. It's hot. It's muggy. And Brooks probably needs a vacation. Chalk up his white flag to a patch of the doldrums, a predictable part of the passage in this summer of our discontent.