The meeting of the living secretaries of defence and state was an exercise that baffled me. No one could expect any real consultation to occur in the forum, and the photo op itself appears to be meaningless at best, cynical at worst.

If someone would have asked me what the reaction would be to the meeting, I could have predicted that the left and their media lapdogs would declare it "too little, too late". Conservatives on the other hand would simply wonder what the point was--are we upset that the Bush administration didn't consult with Madeline Albright or Warren Christopher?

Actually we all thought that was an extremely positive development.

Of course, there is that large, amorphous, barely-conscious middle in the American electorate who will have paid about five seconds attention to the whole matter, but what impression did a group photo of these illustrious gentlemen (and one woman) leave?

Well, I asked, and frankly, no one I talked to really knew what to make of it.

This is something I would expect to be coming out of Karl Rove's office, but it reeks of young, preening, energetic but clueless interns who would have been fired on The Apprentice. I hope this just means Rove was on vacation.