The Daily Digest

In Washington, white shirts and dark suites are de rigueur, but rarely do you see the three-piece ensemble—especially in mid-August. The exception is Bob Novak, who a few days ago revealed his reasoning: "It looked better on television to see a vest than a big old belly."

Bruce Bartlett welcomes William Kristol and Kathryn Lopez to the conservatives-in-praise-of-Hillary club.

Meet the First Ladies Club: Jeri Thompson (courtesy of the Post), Judith Giuliani (Vanity Fair), Elizabeth Edwards (the Post), and Michelle Obama (the Times).

"A unique chapter in White House history came to a conclusion last week," writes Fred Barnes. "Call it the Wehner era, as in Peter Wehner, the director of the office of strategic initiatives. The title is misleading. Wehner ran a one-man think tank inside the White House (with a few young research assistants) that brought scholars and thinkers to talk to President Bush and that e-mailed ideas and information to several hundred journalists and writers and intellectuals and policy entrepreneurs. His missives became known as Wehnergrams [link added], but there will be no more of them. Friday, August 3, was his last day at the White House."

But Wehner is no shrinking violet. Now using the byline of senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (like Rick Santorum), he has already penned a defense of his former boss, chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, whom Gerson's colleague, Matthew Scully, pillories in this month's Atlantic.