Via James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal comes this partial transcript from The Daily Show of Clinton aide Nancy Soderberg, who was plugging her book "The Superpower Myth: The Use and Misuse of American Might".

There's some truly headshaking stuff in this...let's have a look, shall we?

Soderberg: What I argue is that the Bush administration fell hostage to the superpower myth, believing that because we're the most powerful nation on earth, we were all-powerful, could bend the world to our will and not have to worry about the rest of the world. I think what they're finding in the second term is, it's a little bit harder than that, and reality has an annoying way of intruding.

Stewart: But what do you make of--here's my dilemma, if you will. I don't care for the way these guys conduct themselves--and this is just you and I talking, no cameras here [audience laughter]. But boy, when you see the Lebanese take to the streets and all that, and you go, "Oh my God, this is working," and I begin to wonder, is it--is the way that they handled it really--it's sort of like, "Uh, OK, my daddy hits me, but look how tough I'm getting." You know what I mean? Like, you don't like the method, but maybe--wrong analogy, is that, uh--?

Maybe the wrong analogy? Oh no, I think comparing Bush to a man who beats his children and the burgeoning democratic movement in Lebanon to the abused children...yeah, that's spot-on, Jon. What the fuck?

But wait...there's more. This craziness brought to you by Soderberg:

Soderberg: Well, I think, you know, as a Democrat, you don't want anything nice to happen to the Republicans, and you don't want them to have progress. But as an American, you hope good things would happen.

...

Stewart: [Bush]'s gonna be a great--pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, "Reagan was nothing compared to this guy." Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it.

Soderberg: Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's hope for the rest of us.

What the fuck does that mean, exactly? There's hope for the rest of us? So she's hopeful that what? Bush fails with regard to Iran and they successfully develop a full-blown nuclear program, and he fails with North Korea and they either sell nukes or use them against us or our allies?

Holy fucking hell.

Stewart tries to deflect that one as a joke, but she then reiterates her hope for failure in the Middle East:

Stewart: [crossing fingers] Iran and North Korea, that's true, that is true [audience laughter]. No, it's--it is--I absolutely agree with you, this is--this is the most difficult thing for me to--because, I think, I don't care for the tactics, I don't care for this, the weird arrogance, the setting up. But I gotta say, I haven't seen results like this ever in that region.

Soderberg: Well wait. It hasn't actually gotten very far. I mean, we've had--

Stewart: Oh, I'm shallow! I'm very shallow!

Soderberg: There's always hope that this might not work.

I'm speechless.