How on earth can he manage to reconcile all this crap?

David Brooks has a column up about the Valerie Plame / Scooter Libby scandal--the only scandal in his mind being that poor Libby should be slandered and demonized by that hellish fiend, Joe Wilson. David Corn eviscerates the piece, but this part really stands out to me: David Brooks defends Libby's commutation by arguing, as Bush did, that this whole affair somehow damaged Libby's reputation and career:

His decision to commute Libby's sentence but not erase his conviction was exactly right. It punishes him for his perjury, but not for the phantasmagorical political farce that grew to surround him. It takes away his career, but not his family.

Nevermind that all the howls of outrage in Libby's defense that contradict this fantastical view of a damaged reputation--including Brooks' entire column, wherein Libby is characterized as "the only normal person" in the whole affair, and as "discreet, honest and admirable." Nor the fact that Libby--as Corn points out--got a prestigious job with a conservative think tank, which shows that his career is hardly damaged.

No, Brooks also has to end his column with this:

The farce is over. It has no significance. Nobody but Libby's family will remember it in a few weeks time. Everyone else will have moved on to other fiascos, other poses, fresher manias.

So nobody will remember it in a few weeks... which shows that Libby's reputation will have been irreversibly damaged!

It's like he just pasted together every right-wing talking point on the entire scenario that he could find without any concept of whether they form a coherent story.