To every right-winger who's upset about that British TV movie in which Bush is assassinated -- Jeff Jacoby for instance ("...has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography? ... to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society") -- let me take you back to the summer of 1998:

LUCKY BASTARD

By Charles McCarry Random House; 385 pages; $24.95

With the news from Washington reading like a deliciously trashy sex farce, it's not so surprising to find an accomplished political thriller writer trying to turn the headlines into beach reading. But Charles McCarry's undisguised novelistic smear of President Clinton, "Lucky Bastard,'' is about as appealing as a Vanity Fair photo essay of Linda Tripp. And about as subtle as Ken Starr.

The Bill Clinton character isn't just a spineless politician with an unquenchable sexual appetite -- he's an agent of the Soviet Union! And a rapist!

The Hillary character isn't just a schemer -- she's a colonel in the KGB! And a murderer!...

In his author's note, [McCarry] modestly describes elements of the book as "prophecy.''...

Maybe in "Lucky Bastard'' McCarry is trying to be funny. But the only laugh in the book comes near the end, when the Susan McDougal character tries to assassinate the Bill Clinton character with a poisoned suppository.

McCarry, who has co-authored two books with Alexander Haig, is clearly no friend to Democrats....

(Emphasis mine.)

Gee, I wonder what that political pornography did to all our civilized boundary-markers.

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(Yes, and we wouldn't want to forget eliminationist classics by
Jesse Helms, Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter again, and Pat Robertson.)