It could be one of the most informative, pleasurable, and dramatically beautiful weeks of your life. Join us from August 4 through August 11, 2010, as COMMENTARY’s first Conference of Ideas convenes aboard the Regent SS Mariner as it sails through the waters of Alaska, North America’s most dazzling natural venue. We’ll be talking about what really matters—the American political and economic situation, the 2010 elections, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, the state of the Obama presidency, and the condition of the GOP. With us will be Bret Stephens, the brilliant Wall Street Journal columnist; Elliott Abrams, former chief White House Mideast expert; the great World War II historian Andrew Roberts; the omni-knowledgeable Michael Medved, of radio, movie-reviewing, and book-publishing fame; CONTENTIONS’s own Jennifer Rubin; and the ultimate power couple, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. We’ll eat, we’ll meet, we’ll speak, you’ll have dinner with the special guests, and there will be plenty of time to rest and relax and visit this unique destination. You can find out more about the Commentary Conference and Cruise here.

Twenty years ago on “Saturday Night Live,” a sketch set in 1947 Hollywood was aired featuring Jon Lovitz as a hardboiled movie-studio chief and the late Phil Hartman as a vain actor. It went something like this:

LOVITZ: I’m lettin ya go, Johnny.

HARTMAN: Tell it to me straight, Harry.

LOVITZ: You’re washed up, I tell ya, you’re through.

HARTMAN: I can take it, Harry, you just lay it on me.

LOVITZ: You stink, Johnny, you’re the worst actor on the lot, you’ll never work in this town again!

HARTMAN: Don’t leave me hangin’ by a thread, I gotta know where I stand!

Today, for about the 300th time in the past three weeks, Iran has let the world know in no uncertain terms that it is not going to assent to the cockamamie scheme dreamed up by some UN dupe to ship its weapons-grade uranium out of the country in exchange for uranium that can be used for peaceful purposes — a plan then sold to the Obama administration, which scarfed it up like the band instruments  peddled to the good people of River City by the conman Harold Hill in The Music Man. And for about the 300th time, the media are reporting the fact breathlessly, as though the 299 other times the Iranians have made it clear they are keeping their uranium for their would-be bomb never happened. You can read this right now, on the website of the New York Times:

Iran’s foreign minister said in remarks reported Wednesday that he opposes sending the country’s enriched uranium abroad under a tentative deal negotiated with the United States and other big powers last month. The foreign minister’s remarks cast further doubt on the deal, which the Obama administration had hoped would defuse a standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, told the student news agency ISNA that Iran would consider a simultaneous swap of its nuclear fuel for other uranium. But he told ISNA, “Definitely, Iran will not send its 3.5 percent-enriched fuel out.”

Mr. Mottaki is the highest-ranking Iranian official to openly reject the deal…

By the time, this farce is over, there is sure to be a conversation that goes something like this:

AHMADINEJAD: I tell ya, Barack, there’s no deal.

OBAMA: Give it to me straight, Mahmoud.

AHMADINEJAD: It’s finished, ya get me? It’s through.

OBAMA: Don’t beat around the bush, Mr. President.

AHMADINEJAD: We’re building a bomb, Obama! We’re building a bomb and if you don’t strike our facilities and destroy them we are going to nuclearize the Middle East!

OBAMA: I can take it, Mahmoud! Say what you gotta say!

(Yes, for the record, my beloved wife works at Saturday Night Live. She bears no responsibility for this post.)

As America heads into the 2010 elections, with unprecedented turmoil and possibly revolutionary change, COMMENTARY will be convening its first Conference of Ideas from August 4 through August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Navigator as it sets sail from Anchorage and takes a week-long journey through the waters of Alaska. There will be daily sessions, speeches, meals, a chance to meet some of your favorite writers and thinkers, a chance to dine with them as well, and an unparalleled opportunity to meet fellow thinkers and readers from across the country. With us on the cruise will be Wall Street Journal global-affairs columnist Bret Stephens; COMMENTARY’s power couple, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter; the great World War II historian Andrew Roberts; talk-show host and author Michael Medved; CONTENTIONS’s own Jennifer Rubin; and former chief White House Mideast hand Elliott Abrams. We’ll talk Obama, Israel, Iran, the GOP, the Democrats, 2010, 2012, the state of the culture, the state of Western civilization, and the prospects for American recovery. I’ll be there too, playing traffic cop. And all of it will take place amid the most dramatic scenery in the Western Hemisphere, on a small and luxurious craft that is one of the jewels in the Regent fleet. Please consider joining us. You can learn more about the cruise here.

One of the most amusing tropes of the past few weeks in relation to the release of Sarah Palin’s book has been the notion that, among everything else that is wrong and terrible about her, Palin should be ashamed of herself for her ingratitude. After all, she was plucked from obscurity and made world famous, and yet she has the nerve in the course of her book to take shots at those she feels didn’t do well by her during the election campaign last year. Evidently, it seems, Palin should have been grateful to “the McCain campaign” for “the McCain campaign’s” supposed kindness toward her. Michiko Kakutani, on the New York Times website this morning, offers the most complete rendition of this:

The most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book. … [She is] thoroughly ungrateful toward the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage.

The thing is, the “McCain campaign” is not a person; it was a bureaucratic organization, and an uncommonly confused and dysfunctional one at that. Perhaps the greatest mark of that dysfunction was the stream of unnamed McCain advisers who went out of their way to criticize Palin in remarks they were too cowardly to deliver for attribution. It was, to say the least, highly peculiar for them to have acted as they did. The only conceivable defense for it was that some of them might have been working to protect John McCain’s reputation by somehow downgrading Palin by comparison; but of course, political advisers to Republican campaigns do not talk to reporters on background for such selfless reasons. They do so to hedge their own bets, to maintain relationships they want to last after the campaign is over. The best way to do that is to reflect the same cultural and theoretical priorities as the journalists to whom they speak, as a means of distancing themselves from the dysfunction and receiving kind post-mortem treatment.

The only “gratitude” Palin owed to the McCain campaign was to McCain. She owed no gratitude to campaign advisers and employees who threw everything but the kitchen sink at her — quite the opposite, in fact. By naming names and revealing the unprofessional behavior of McCain campaign staffers who were doing his election effort no favors by engaging in Palin-bashing, she has struck a blow for a greater degree of campaign civility in the future, in part by letting future potential employers in the political realm know about the poor behavior of people they might hire to help get them elected. The best way to neutralize a hostile leaker in the world of electoral politics is to let the world know that the leaker is a leaker.

As for the sudden concern about whether Palin was “ungrateful,” what Kakutani and others seem to believe is that she should act like one of those people in a T-shirt two sizes too small for them who are plucked from the audience of The Price is Right to bid on the showcase items. Palin did not have her name plucked from a hat. She was one of 22 Republican governors — and the only woman among them, and someone with a 70 percent approval rating in her home state besides.

But of course the whole ingratitude trope is wildly disingenuous. The fact that Kakutani, and others like her, are suddenly concerned with Sarah Palin’s political manners is another mark of the fact that she is being graded on a reverse curve. If she has done it, by definition, it was done wrong.

In a typically informative and original column today, my friend David Brooks takes up the 2012 cause of John Thune of South Dakota, the handsome face of small-town non-Alaskan Republicanism. Thune is not too hot, not too cold, just right. That may be, but then David offers this observation regarding the contention that the political tide has turned against the president:

Obama remains the most talented political figure of the age. After health care passes, he will pivot and pick some fights with his own party over spending. He’ll solidify his standing with independents, and if the economy recovers, he could go into his re-election with as much momentum as Ronald Reagan enjoyed in 1984.

Perhaps, but if that is so, then why does it matter whether the face of Republicanism is John Thune or Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee? Reagan won 49 states in 1984; Walter Mondale couldn’t even draw 40 percent of the vote. Perhaps Mondale ran a problematic campaign, promising tax increases and the like, but a victory like Reagan’s was so overwhelming that the world’s greatest candidate could have run against Reagan and only won a few more states.

Thune may indeed have a pleasing mien and an appropriate demeanor for 2012. But to face down a sitting president and unseat him, a party is going to need more from its candidate. It’s going to take the ability to explain why the country has gone wrong, why what’s wrong is his opponent’s doing, and what he will do to set it right. That requires passion, animation, and a profound sense of the rightness of his views and the wrongness of the views of his rivals. To judge from David’s summary of Thune’s virtues, he may be the best person to lead the GOP if it stays in the wilderness — on “first do no harm grounds” — but not to lead it to a victory that reverses the country’s ideological direction:

Republicans are still going to have to do root-and-branch renovation if they hope to provide compelling answers to issues like middle-class economic anxiety. But in the meantime, people like Thune offer Republicans a way to connect fiscal discipline with traditional small-town values, a way to tap into rising populism in a manner that is optimistic, uplifting and nice.

Optimism, uplift, and niceness are … nice. But they are minor components in a victory strategy — they are there to file off the rough edges of the party. They cannot be its leading edge.

She’s an idiot. She’s a moron. She’s unqualified. She’s bad. She’s a hick. She’s a know-nothing. She’s a liar. She couldn’t define the Reagan Doctrine. She’s mean to her daughter’s baby daddy….

And nonetheless, Sarah Palin is dominating the news once again in advance of the release of her book. Which is to say, front-page stories, the lead stories on the morning shows, all using tiny tidbits of information about the book and a few clips from Monday’s Oprah. Whatever Sarah Palin is, she is also, as all this makes clear, a huge star. With the very prominent exception of Barack Obama, she’s the sensation in American politics this decade. And a person who can make news just by opening her mouth is a person to be reckoned with, a person who is not going away, a person who is going to play a role in American politics for a long time.

It’s never too early to make plans for summer travel, so why not plan on attending the first COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas from August 4 through August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Navigator as it spends a week sailing around and about Alaska? We will spend the week discussing Israel, Iran, the 2010 elections, the 2012 elections, the Obama agenda and what it means for America, and the lessons of history for the present and the future. Speakers include former chief White House Mideast hand Elliott Abrams; the great historian Andrew Roberts; Michael Medved, talk-show host, author, movie critic, and man who knows everything about everything; CONTENTIONS superstar Jennifer Rubin; Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, who need no introduction; and me. Dine with us, meet fellow thinking iconoclasts from across the nation, and visit some of the most dazzling scenery in the world. You can learn more about the conference that’s also a vacation here.

The world’s most important issues, the world’s most beautiful setting, and some of the world’s more interesting people — that’s what’s on the agenda if you decide to join us for the First COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas from August 4-August 11 aboard the Regent Seven Seas Navigator as it sails through the waters of Alaska. We’ll talk about Iran, Israel, the 2010 elections, the state of Western culture, the condition of Western civilization, and what’s liable to pop up in 2012 with such notables as Elliott Abrams, former chief Mideast hand at the White House; the Wall Street Journal columnist nonpareil Bret Stephens; Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter; our lead blogger, Jennifer Rubin; the knows-everything-about-everything talk-show host and author Michael Medved; and the brilliant World War II historian Andrew Roberts. I’ll be there too. You’ll hear talks and panel discussions; mix and mingle with fellow thinkers from across the country; dine every night with the speakers; and have plenty of time to see the sights in and around North America’s most gorgeous terrain. You can learn more about the COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas by clicking here.

With Bibi Netanyahu and Barack Obama slated to meet this evening, the New York Times has splashed a story written in a tone of deep alarm across the front of its website: “Collapse Feared for Palestinian Authority if Abbas Resigns.”

The central theme is: He really means it this time! He’s gonna quit! And it’s Israel’s fault! The true purpose of the piece is to ensure that Obama and Netanyahu do nothing but discuss the condition of Mahmoud Abbas’s tenure as president of the Palestinian Authority. Because they have so little else to talk about. Like Iran. Nothing to talk about there.

Ethan Bronner assumes a startlingly inappropriate tone in this article — an elegiac, mournful spirit:

The prospect that the Palestinian Authority, the government in the West Bank, might fall apart loomed on Monday, as those close to its president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that he intended to resign and forecast that others would follow. “I think he is realizing that he came all this way with the peace process in order to create a Palestinian state, but he sees no state coming,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, said in an interview. “So he really doesn’t think there is a need to be president or to have an Authority. This is not about who is going to replace him. This is about our leaving our posts. You think anybody will stay after he leaves?”

Mr. Abbas warned last week that he would not participate in elections he called for January. But many viewed that as a ploy by a Hamlet-like leader upset over Israeli and American policy, and noted that the vote might not actually be held, given the Palestinian political fracture and the unwillingness of Hamas, which controls Gaza, to participate. In the days since, however, his colleagues have come to believe he is not bluffing. If that is the case, they say, the Palestinian Authority could be endangered.

Evidently the crime of the Israelis is that, as Bronner writes, Netanyahu wants “negotiations without preconditions.” Usually in a negotiation, that would be considered a good thing. But not in this negotiation, because in this negotiation, Israel is supposed to come to the table having already agreed to the creation of a Palestinian state “within the 1967 borders and Jerusalem.” Netanyahu, Bronner writes, “declined” this preposterous demand of Hillary Clinton’s — preposterous because the idea that Israel would agree to surrender parts of Jerusalem and would preemptively agree to the loss of neighborhoods like Maale Adumim even before talks commenced is to presume magic fairy dust has been sprinkled upon the land of milk and honey and caused pacific and loving feelings to swell within the breasts of both parties.

This is not an article about Abbas and the tragic possibility of his early departure along with Saeb Erekat, a mouthpiece propagandist who is a Palestinian “peace negotiator” like I am a Jewish “pentathlete.” This is an article intended by design to overshadow the meeting of the American president and the Israeli prime minister and to make the “collapse” of the ineffectual and dishonest Palestinian Authority leadership the news of the day. It has the quality of an indulgent babysitter running to a parent to report breathlessly that a 5-year-old has threatened never to eat again because it is his brother’s birthday and he doesn’t like the flavor of the cake.

Can it really be that anybody seriously believed a career Army psychiatrist would deal with the “stress” of his own deployment to a war he opposes by opening fire and shooting 43 people? Evidently, the answer is yes, as Noah Pollak and others have noted. This is a particular American madness, as far as I can tell, the invocation of ludicrous pop psychology to explain acts that can only properly be described as evil. Recall the case of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who murdered her five children? Before the world could even spend a moment mourning the children, Paula Yates herself was turned into a Rorschach test—of the perils of having too many children, of a traditional marriage, of postpartum depression. The problem is that tens of millions of women go through the same experiences and do not murder their children. Yates represented nothing but, at best, psychosis and, at worst, the face of pure evil.

And so it is with Nadal Hasan. Obviously, there are a great many people in the military who would rather not be deployed to a war zone; for whom such deployments cause stress; and who may indeed be philosophically opposed to the fight they are obliged as a matter of law and duty to wage. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that there are 10,000 such people. Only one has actually taken a machine gun and mowed down his fellow soldiers. The argument that Nadal Hasan was somehow sent round the bend by his orders is not only bizarre but also deeply and profoundly insulting to those in the military who live with all the same pressures and do good rather than evil.

The “stress did it” claim has nothing to do with Hasan anyway; it’s a cover for implicit attacks on the McChrystal strategy for deploying significant additional troops to Afghanistan. That’s the true purpose of the pop-psych analysis anyway; it’s a way of removing the singular meaning from an event and converting into something more all-purpose.

This is, perhaps, an argument that could be advanced against those who are seeing a broader issue at work relating to Hasan’s religious-ideological leanings and whether his conduct has something to do with Islamic terrorism. But that argument has nothing to do with examining Hasan’s psychic makeup, which is something no one should do without a license, but rather the ideas and convictions that he has publicly expressed. It’s hard to separate out rumor from fact, but if three-quarters of the stories we’ve been reading are true, then it’s clear Hasan was an Islamist ideologue of some sort and that the Army may have failed to police its ranks properly out of a fear of appearing anti-Muslim. Those aren’t impressionistic conclusions; they will either be proved true or false. And if true, something that could have been prevented wasn’t.

What we know about the health-care bill poised to pass on a party-line vote in the House of Representatives is this:

• The bill’s cost may run as high as $3 trillion. Let me repeat that. Three trillion dollars.
• A desperate effort to find some means of defraying that cost makes significant tax increases on the middle class necessary, and will bring back the disastrous problem of “bracket creep”—the phenomenon that held sway during the high-tax 1970s when a salary increase would cause someone to earn less money because he would be jumped into a new bracket.
• It will feature a complete reordering of American health care. The problem is that we have no idea whether the reordering will do anything to repair the jerry-rigged system we have rather than introducing more confusion, more expense, and more unanticipated consequences—as has been the case with most reforms over the past 25 years. This remarkable summary by James Capretta tells the ultimate cautionary tale in this regard: “There’s no prospect that the federal government will become more nimble overnight at managing the vast and complex health sector in the United States. To control costs in health care, the federal government will do what it always does — it will set prices. In time, that will have the predictable result of driving out willing suppliers of services, leading to queues and access problems. Call it centrally-planned rationing of care.”
• The entire effort is disingenuous in any case. The so-called “public option”—the poll-driven euphemism for health insurance run by the federal government — is the goal driving all liberal health-care-reform ideas. It is the camel’s nose in the tent. It is not a slippery slope to national health care—it is an artificial Alpine ski range that has been built and then iced over for the purpose of hurtling us into it. Only the desire to pass a bill and call whatever is passed “revolutionary” caused the Obama White House and some in the Senate to take their eyes off the prize for a little while.

If some version of the House bill actually becomes law next year, it will happen for two reasons. First, this is what Democrats generally believe, and when a party is in power, it will generally work to pass measures that consort with its ideological leanings. Second, Democrats will find themselves with a choice that isn’t much of a choice—to vote for something they think is noble, or to vote against it cravenly because they see what an electoral disaster it might represent for them. In such a circumstance, the choice to act nobly will always prevail, because there’s no way to be sure the craven move will have a positive effect.

Thus, at least, if this horror comes to pass, it will be the result of deep ideological conviction. And that deep ideological conviction may well be their undoing.  In which case, they will go down having done something they think is good. Which is nice for them, even as it may prove to be a disaster from which we are going to spend a very, very long time working to extricate ourselves.

This is what you are promised, and what you will get, if you attend the COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas from August 4 through August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Navigator. Join me, former chief White House Mideast hand Elliott Abrams, CONTENTIONS’s own Jennifer Rubin, writer and talk-show host Michael Medved, the marvelous Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens, the great World War II historian Andrew Roberts, and the First Couple of Neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, and a great many fellow thinkers for panel discussions, speeches, cocktail parties, dinner with the speakers, and some of the most spectacular scenery in the world: the waters and shores of Alaska in summer. You can find out all about the COMMENTARY cruise by clicking here.

Last night’s exciting and unpredictable election returns suggest 2010 is going to be a political year not only of enormous consequence but also very, very interesting. We’ll be discussing it, and many other things, at the COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas, taking place from August 4 through August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Navigator as it travels through the waters of Alaska. I’ll be there, and so will Jennifer Rubin, and so will Michael Medved, and so will Elliott Abrams, and so will the great World War II historian Andrew Roberts, and so will Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. There will be speeches, panel discussions, dinners with the panelists and speakers, and plenty of time to relax and take in the sights and sounds of the most dramatically beautiful area in the Northern Hemisphere. Information on the Conference and Cruise can be found here.

After spending $100 million, Michael Bloomberg is going to eke out a 4-point victory over an incredibly hapless rival, William Thompson, in a race most people expected he was going to win by 15 to 20 points. This may be meaningful. Bloomberg stretched political seemliness to its limits with this run for mayor. He seduced the City Council into effecting a change in the city’s term-limits law to make it possible for him to run for a third time, despite the fact that term limits had been made law as the result of a public referendum. He cleared the field of his most serious challengers by threatening them with his overwhelming personal money advantage. (Right now, it seems possible and even likely that had Rep. Anthony Weiner actually stayed in the race and won the Democratic primary, he would have beaten Bloomberg.) And then he used that money to run a deeply unpleasant and vitriolic personal campaign in the final weeks as his people clearly gauged the seriousness of the possibility that he might lose. So much for the notion that he is a different kind of politician with a different sort of approach. Thompson would not have been a good mayor, so perhaps this was the best possible result. It may actually humble Bloomberg a tiny little bit, and give him more of a sense that voters are uncomfortable with the ease with which he bent the rules to indulge his own ambitions.

This is a glorious day for the avoirdupoisically challenged.

It appears the exit polls in Virginia may have underestimated the Republican vote by a considerable margin. Word around newsrooms had McDonnell winning by 14. McDonnell, it appears, may have won by 20 points. Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, just cited exit poll data saying that President Obama scored a 56 percent approval rating among registered voters. Given the 33 percent discrepancy between the exit poll and the actual voting tally, one can presume that Obama has fallen considerably below a 50 percent approval rating in Virginia.

It appears turnout in the New York City mayoral race was astonishingly low. Michael Bloomberg may win with 600,000 votes. That would mean he paid $166 per vote, since he spent $100 million on the race. What does that say about us New Yorkers? At least we’re not cheap dates.

One thing we’ve been spared with a Creigh Deeds defeat in Virginia—there won’t be any “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” headlines.

…to the stable of CONTENTIONS contributors. (Her first post appears below.) Evelyn, who lives and writes in Israel, was a  columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

Iran. Israel. The U.S. midterm elections. The condition of the culture. The state of Western civilization. These will be the topics under discussion at the COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas next August, from the 4th to the 11th. Join other conservatives and concerned citizens for presentations by and roundtable discussions with former chief White House Mideast official Elliott Abrams, the brilliant Wall Street Journal columnist (and former COMMENTARY and Jerusalem Post editor) Bret Stephens, the passionate talk-show host and author Michael Medved, the great World War II historian Andrew Roberts, our lead blogger Jennifer Rubin, power couple Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, and me. The topics could not be more serious; the setting could not be more stunning — aboard the jewel of the Regent cruise line, the Seven Seas Navigator, as it journeys around the staggeringly gorgeous waters of Alaska.

There will be panel discussions, speeches, a chance to dine with the speakers, and a chance to meet up with like-minded people for a week of enlightenment and entertainment. You can learn more about it here.

We are now accepting reservations for the week-long COMMENTARY Conference of Ideas from August 4 through August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Navigator as it sails through the waters of Alaska. Enjoy stimulating discussions, speeches, and dinners with some of the most interesting and well-informed people you are ever likely to meet in the most dramatic and gorgeous setting in the Northern Hemisphere.

You will hear Elliott Abrams, the top official on the Mideast in the Bush White House, discuss the state of play between Israel, Iran, and the Palestinians. Bret Stephens, author of the marvelous “Global View” column in the Wall Street Journal and former editor of the Jerusalem Post, will offer his, well, Global View. (Bret began his career at COMMENTARY.) You will be privy to an authoritative historical overview provided by Andrew Roberts, who may be the finest living historian of World War II. The political condition of the United States will be the subject of talks by Michael Medved, the author and talk-show host, and Jennifer Rubin, COMMENTARY’s lead blogger and a contributing editor to the magazine. And of course, we’ll have the First Couple of Neoconservatism, Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, who, I can tell you with some authority, are not only among the world’s most fascinating people but delightful traveling companions to boot. I’ll be there too, playing traffic cop.

We’ve just opened up shop for this conference, so the best cabins are still available. For more information on this singular event, click here.

The most pressing issues, the most important trends, the most salient ideas — all discussed and considered in the most beautiful setting in the Northern Hemisphere. Please join me, Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, CONTENTIONS’s own Jennifer Rubin, former White House Mideast chief Elliott Abrams, talk-show host and writer Michael Medved, the great British historian Andrew Roberts, and the COMMENTARY power couple nonpareil Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter for the first COMMENTARY CONFERENCE OF IDEAS from August 4–August 11, 2010, aboard the Regent Seven Seas Navigator as it spends a week journeying through the waters of Alaska.

The year 2010 is shaping up to be among the most consequential in recent history. Iran’s nuclear crisis, the difficulties in Afghanistan, the planned pullout of American forces from Iraq, not to mention the coming congressional elections in the United States and the continuing fallout from the economic meltdown, will all be at the top of the national and international agenda. We will take up all these matters and, needless to say, others we cannot even predict. Panel discussions, lively speeches, exciting interaction with fellow COMMENTARY and CONTENTIONS readers, and nightly dinner with the speakers are part of the all-inclusive package on one of the most luxurious and intimate ships in the Regent fleet. And there will be plenty of time to relax and take in the astonishing vistas and communities of Alaska in the summer.

Information on the conference and the cruise can be found here.

We held the first COMMENTARY Forum in Los Angeles last night, and it couldn’t have gone better. The enthusiasm and passion of the crowd — more than 200 strong — were exciting and revivifying. Thanks to everyone who came. We’ll be staging more of these in cities around the country over the next two years, so watch this space.

If you are in the L.A. area, please join me, Jennifer Rubin, and Rick Richman tonight at 7 p.m. at the Skirball Cultural Center for the first COMMENTARY Forum in Los Angeles — “The Obama Challenge: Israel, Iran, and American Jews.” Admission is $10. To attend, you must register first, either by clicking here or by clicking on the ad to your right. It promises to be a lively and passionate evening, the first gathering ever in Los Angeles of the COMMENTARY community.

If you are/were listening to the Dennis Prager radio program and wish to attend tomorrow night’s Commentary Forum in Los Angeles, “The Obama Challenge: Israel, Iran, and American Jews,” featuring me, Jennifer Rubin, and Rick Richman, at 7 p.m. at the Skirball Cultural Center, please click here to register — or look to your right and click on the ad. Admission is $10. Please let me know if you come that you heard me on Dennis’s show.