One of the joys of politics is that it attracts some enormously talented writers -- and if you enjoy reading the written word, the subject matter offers a world of variety.

You can read high comedy (the Clinton impeachment or low (the Dole campaign of 1996, drama (Reagan's 1987 call for Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!, suspense (the 1976 GOP national convention, romance (Howard Dean's 2004 insurgent campaign or tragedy (the 1968 Democratic convention.

And for daily political journalism, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post is a brilliant sketch writer -- on the order of Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner at the dawn of the Age of Television.

Today's classic entry is his take on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's press conference yesterday, in which she tied herself into knots while charging that the CIA had lied to her, and to Congress, "all the time."

Read it, and be thankful God gave you the politics gene.

"It's not about the policies or the politics, and it's certainly not about the principles. It's about power, and it has been for a long time."

So writes Jim Geraghty in this piece for National Review Online, explaining what motivates our 44th President.

As one who will forever bear, with Steve Schmidt, the responsibility for having to run a general election campaign against Obama -- and the concomitant frustration in trying to figure him out, and the ignominy of a wipeout at the polls -- I can attest first-hand to the depth of Geraghty's perception. It's dead on.

No, not this Jack Ryan.

THIS Jack Ryan.

Even in New Jersey -- where corruption is endemic -- voters expect their politicians to mouth the standard platitudes about fighting corruption.

It's like a New Jersey take on an old Soviet-era joke: "The politicians pretend to fight corruption, and we pretend to believe them."

So when a politician breaks tradition by publicly recognizing and thanking a guy who was convicted of conspiracy in a plan to bribe local officials to rig contracts, people sit up and pay attention.

And when that politician is governor of the state, and the crook he's recognizing and thanking publicly is a major campaign donor, it makes news.

Christine Todd Whitman -- twice elected governor of New Jersey without once winning a majority of the vote -- can always be counted on to show up in The New York Times when the Gray Lady needs someone with an (R) after her name to caterwaul about how the GOP is too conservative.

Tuesday's party-switch by Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter provided a golden opportunity.

So on Thursday, her words once again graced the op-ed pages of The Newspaper of Record.

What's interesting is not that she uses the Specter defection as an excuse to sigh over her party's turn to the Dark Side. What's interesting is the political amnesia she relies on to lay out that case.