LIAR'S POKER. I don't think Martin Sheen gets enough credit for his performance on The West Wing. Last night they showed him doing some high-stakes negotiating with the Russian President on the Hot Line. (Boy, that sentence makes me nostalgic.) When the first call, in which the President pretended a unmanned spy plane downed in Russia was only photographing "coastal erosion," fell apart, Sheen looked at the phone and said, "this isn't working," exactly as if he were regarding a defective toaster.

I thought about it today when I read this:

According to US State Department officials, the “blatant and bold” announcement that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, made to James Kelly, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs, was followed by the threat to test one.

One State Department official said that Mr Li, attending talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons programme, turned to Mr Kelly after making the claim and said: “Now, what are you going to do about it?”

I can see why folks who like him admire Bush's apparent nonchalance. You want to think confrontations like this are supervised by people who don't sweat much. Now that the people we're playing around with are not penny-ante WMD wannabes (or never-weres), but nuclear-equipped hardline Commies, let us hope he and his know more than how to play poker -- let's hope they also know what they're doing.