Howard Dean claims the prize

Refusing to fade into moonbat obscurity, Howard Dean swoops down to claim the initial entry into the Barking Moonbat link column.

Contratulations to Howard, who had this to say on July 16 (2006):

"If you think what's going on in the Middle East today would be going on if the Democrats were in control, it wouldn't, because we would have worked day after day after day to make sure we wouldn't get where we are today. We would have had the moral authority that Bill Clinton had when he brought together the Northern Irish and the IRA, when he brought together the Israelis and the Palestinians."
(San Diego Union-Tribune)

There's just one problem, Howard.
The Democrats would probably need to be in control of Hezbollah to ensure a Middle East unlike that of today.

There's just one problem, Howard.
Bill Clinton's moral authority is a modern fiction.
"Mr. Clinton, in turn, was absolutely clear that he would if necessary take a decision to deploy. The decision is due later this year." (BBC)
"The net effect of all this micro-management and over-management has been the over-identification of the US with a potentially open-ended and very costly peace process, as well as the fraying of support for the peace process (both in the region and as a whole) and the growing sense that such over-bearing outside leadership simply cannot be sustained." (Wilson Center (.pdf))
"In the rest of the world, military action would clearly be unpopular. Although aimed at strengthening the UN's authority, the action would be perceived as unilateral. The US and UK, rather than Saddam, would find themselves isolated." (Britain's Financial Times, via the World Socialist Website)

A weak United States will tend to be more popular abroad. Clinton wasn't quite weak enough to be truly popular, but it was his relative lack of strong action in the world that helped cement the popularity he did possess--not any mythical "moral authority."