Was struck by Phil Weiss’s compassionate and psychologically acute separate posts on Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer. One thing that “the lobby” can do quite well is enhance, or diminish, reputation, and it is striking that Mearsheimer was a regular NewYork Times contributor until, well, basically the moment he wrote an essay everyone began talking about. Walt, a Harvard dean and probably a more government-oriented type, would in the normal course of events be talked about as a key player in a future Democratic or realist Republican administration. He is not. Of course America is free country and the two haven’t been sent to the gulag or dismissed from their jobs. But if some felt it important to demonstrate that one consequence for writing a book critical of the Israel lobby is to be edged out of the “mainstream,” that mission has been accomplished.