From In These Times, a review of Iran Oil: The New Middle East Challenge to America by Roger Howard and Iran: A People Interrupted by Hamid Dabashi. The Walter Duranty of Saudi Arabia: An article on Commentary's clueless love letter to the land of the Wahhabis. Tony Blair is the wrong man for the job: Bringing peace to the Middle East is a noble goal, but he wants to do too much, and David Rieff on The Last Interventionist. Tony Blair would do well to listen to Akbar Ahmed when he takes up his new role as Middle East envoy in earnest. Frank Luntz on how Gordon Brown is about to realise the second most important adage of politics: you cannot be all things to all people.

From Prospect, an intellectual in power: Intensive study has made Gordon Brown into one of the best-read politicians of recent times. But what is his intellectual formation and style? And how will they inform his premiership? Intellectuals have had a mixed record in British politics. Let's hope that Gordon Brown is in the tradition of Gladstone rather than of Balfour; Brown's thinking is neither cosmopolitan nor sophisticated, and he is a loner with few strong links to leading intellectual contemporaries; Brown is less of an intellectual "magpie" than he seems. He draws on both liberal and conservative Americans for good reason; Brown's new book Courage is a response to the death of his first child. He has transformed his suffering into a lesson; and recent Labour leaders have kept quiet about their religious beliefs. As premier, will Brown allow his faith to leech into his politics

From The Washington Monthly, The New Vision: Theodore C. Sorensen on the speech he wants the Democratic nominee to give. Election '08: A look at how each candidate will blow it. What do the Washington Post — and the rest of the mainstream media — have against Al Gore? Eric Alterman wants to know. Has Jonah Goldberg gone soft on Hillary? Her name's been removed from his forthcoming book's subtitle. 

From TAP, Life After the GOP: Congress Santorum, Allen, Weldon, Burns, Pombo — Where are they now? Checking up on the '06 Republican losers. An interview with Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan, authors of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth about the New Democratic Majority. Down With Plutocrats and Fat Cat Donors: Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayres on giving the rest of us money to spend on campaign contributions.