Maybe if Republicans scream loud enough ...

GOP agitprop squads hit the streets and took to the airwaves yesterday with some of the finest dither, highest indignation and purest neocon drivel we've heard since October, 2002.

"The president of the United States is supposed to lead the free world, not follow it," fumed Lindsey Graham on ABC's "This Week" about President Obama's measured response to all things revolutionary in Iran, just as former presidential candidate Fred Thompson, on "Meet the Press," charged the White House with "fecklessness" and by comparison praised Old Europe -- yes, it's conveniently back -- for its resonant courage.

Meanwhile, on CNN's "State of the Union," Chuck Grassley was not uncharacteristically playing the whimpering puppy dog, wailing with barely perceptible sincerity that "If America stands for democracy ... and people don't think that we really care, then obviously they're going to question, 'Do we really believe in our principles?' " And John McCain, on "Face the Nation," had long since switched to autopilot, droning, "I'd like to see the president be stronger than he has been ..., I think we ought to have America lead."

By doing, additionally, exactly what? Well, that part was a trifle unclear. Congress -- especially its right sides of the aisles -- has by now chewed every feasible carpet and valiantly issued U.N.-style resolutions of condemnation (like Old Europe, remember when those were "feckless"?); but with our once-mighty Axis of Evil-battling arsenal so depleted -- see first paragraph -- words are just about all we have left, and even congressional neocons know it.

So crank up the rhetorical heat and act the toothless paper tiger that doubles as a jackass. Give Iran's oppressive regime the ideal opportunity to paint domestic resistance as the benighted stooge of imperialist dogs. Hand the regime its best possible excuse to imprison and slaughter thousands.

Yes, that's the ticket, or at least that's as clearly as I can read it.

Only the staid Richard Lugar appeared in the prattling lineup of yesterday's ill-tempered public affairs shows to evince some remnant of Nixonian realpolitik. He was asked: Once the smoke clears, and assuming the Iranian regime is still intact, should the Obama administration negotiate with it? Absolutely, said Lugar. The Supreme Leader, he intimated, can be neither supreme or much of a self-possessed leader after recent events; he is, rather, destabilized and weakened, and what better time to negotiate out of our own national interest?

Yet, as already mentioned, Lugar's was the woefully lone, steady-as-she-goes voice among the GOP's hyperventilation of Sunday a.m. and prior. I suspect much of today's Republican frenzy comes, however, not merely from raw political impulses but from a weird, impertinent kind of Obama-envy as well -- because world events, quite rapidly, are triumphantly proving the wisdom of soft power and calm reason, notwithstanding Obama's inherited messes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

To wit, as the GOPers were blathering yesterday morning about Obama's tragic timidity, I listened while simultaneously rescuing my sanity through the distraction of Hendrik Hertzberg's latest -- "The Obama Effect" -- in The New Yorker. The distant future is, obviously, unknowable and "littered with hazards," wrote Hertzberg, yet just three days after Obama's Cairo speech, Lebanon elected a "moderate coalition, routinely described as pro-American and pro-Western," although most analysts had predicted a Hezbollah victory. Later, many of those same analysts "agreed that Obama' speech, and the carefully constructed edifice of public diplomacy of which it was the keystone, was a factor in the outcome."

Looking elsewhere, Iran's election outcome was not the momentous question it now is when Hertzberg's piece went to press, nevertheless he presciently observed that "Change is in the Tehran air," adding that "the American President's openness is part of it."

And that's a claim that's hard to beat. As the New York Times, along similar lines, analyzed contemporary events in Iran -- "Could there be something to all the talk of an Obama effect, after all? A stealth effect, perhaps?" -- it noted that "some of President Obama's backers [assert] that the mere election of Barack Obama in the United States had galvanized reformers in Iran to demand change."

Furthermore, prior to Iran's election "Obama struck a conciliatory note towards Iran," argued on behalf of "different atmospherics," "removed the ban against American diplomats around the world consorting with their Iranian counterparts," "offered direct talks between his administration and the Iranian regime," and "videotaped a message directly for the Iranian people," in which he respectfully "referred to Iran as 'the Islamic Republic' " and "even went so far as to quote from the vaunted Persian poet Saadi, dead for 700 years now."

And in Cairo, Obama "accepted responsibility for America's part in the enmity between the United States and Iran."

In short, a seismic tonal break with George W. Bush and the GOP's confrontational policies of eight harrowing years. To Congressional Republicans, that contradistinction's seeming success -- it's foolish to argue that Obama's strategic "public diplomacy" played no part whatsoever in Iran's election and its circumstantial aftermath -- is most unsettling.

And when Republicans become upset and confused, they compensate with volume. It's what they do, and do best.