I guess Christie's off the Christmas card list

Christie Todd Whitman is shocked that her plea to return the Republican Party to its better, Eisenhower-like angels, is not going over so well with her colleagues.

"I expected criticism," Mrs. Whitman, 58, said last week, sitting in the living room of Pontefract, her family's gracious farm in New Jersey's hunt country. "But I'm surprised at how personal the attacks are."

The bitterness of the reaction is all the more surprising because Mrs. Whitman's book, like her public record, performs some astounding contortions to avoid criticizing the president himself.

Mr. Bush's decision to break his campaign promise to curb carbon emissions from power plants? A reasonable choice, Mrs. Whitman argues, marred by poor public relations. She asserts, without irony, that Mr. Bush is a closet environmentalist, forced to hide his inner tree hugger for fear of riling Republican extremists.

In fact, the only member of the Bush inner circle cited in the book for environmental negligence is Barney, a Scottish terrier Mrs. Whitman sold to the president, and who "christened" the carpet in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

Barney, out of all that stupid, insular clan, gets it.