Mr. Barone, it’s way too early to pull the plug on "cynical ploy" (she said without condescension).

No, it wasn't a cynical ploy U.S. News & Report

By Michael Barone

At first, Michael Barone pretends to hazard this much about the sudden de-separation of powers in the Schiavo case: Bush and both houses of Congress may or may not have acted properly, ethically, and morally, but God damn it, at least they acted, which is more than any European official or American sophisticate would do. . . . Oops, guess the pretense is over.

A lot of sophisticated people are clucking at the actions of Congress and George W. Bush that attempted to save the life of Terri Schiavo.

Personally, I never clucked. Not once. But I have been sighing. Deeply and often. Then again, I'm not sophisticated.

This was pandering to the religious right, we are told, a cynical partisan ploy by Republicans, an intervention by an activist, even ayatollah-like federal government into a state court case and a family dispute.

The thought of an "ayatollah-like federal government" never entered my mind, even during prolonged bouts of deep sighing. "Constipation" did, however. I mean, did you see that picture of the peaked Bush deplaning?

My suspicion: Bush, like Archie Bunker, can't, you know, really "go" in a strange bathroom. Apparently, Crawford just wasn't affording relief anymore and, thus, the president's rushed flight back to Washington. The bill signing was just a cover for the embarrassing and expensive use of Air Force One.

I do not put myself forward as an expert on this case, nor am I certain that Congress and Bush made the right decision or that the courts, state and federal, made the wrong one.

Doesn't that make Barone sound so forthright, so evenhanded? Don't buy it. A mere two sentences later, he proceeds to argue that Bush and Congress made the right decision and that the state and federal courts made the wrong one. The evenhanded, uncertain non-expert didn't make it past the first paragraph.

But I do think much of the criticism and condescension is misguided.

Really? Only much of the condescension is misguided? I think all condescension is misguided. I wonder why Barone is so careful about the qualifier "much" here?

And I think that the response of elected officials reflects one of the great strengths in our country: a confident belief in moral principles that stands in vivid contrast with what we see in much of Europe and in the supposedly sophisticated precincts of this country.

Now I understand the strange phrasing above: Barone had to write in an exemption for himself. His condescension -- of Europe, of the "supposedly sophisticated" -- is not misguided. Of course not. He is Michael Barone, after all.