Paradoxical representation

Condi Rice, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, on future Iraqi elections:

RICE: Depending on what happens with the structure of the elections, and we obviously favor and everybody favors if it can be done, proportional representation rather than a list system, it will --

Q: Rather than a list system?

RICE: A list system where parties simply --

Q: Proportional representation is a list system.

RICE: No, but not a list system. Not having a list system. Having representation by district --

Q: By district.

RICE: Yeah, by district. Proportional representation, constituency representation. Yes, right. But not a list system because, obviously, for -- now, it’s hard and it’s --

Sadly, they did not ask her how this hitherto unknown form of proportional representation would work.

She was also interviewed this week by CNN’s editorial board. She said that if North Korea completes the next phase of denuclearization, “the President will notify Congress that he intends to take them off the terrorism list.” Just in case you thought that the list of state sponsors of terrorism had anything to do with which states sponsor terrorism.

And she spun the fact that NK actually tested a nuke for the first time on her watch as not a dismal failure of Bush policy but one of them there clarifying moments: “The fact that they test-fired a nuclear weapon probably helped us get to where we are, because it really solidified the international consensus that this was a state that cannot be trusted with nuclear devices and with nuclear materials. And so I would say that we’re much further along than we were.” So that’s all right then.