As Senate committee assignments were being handed out last week, Kansas Republican Sam Brownback thought he was well placed to win the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Last Thursday, Brownback thought the deal was in the bag when Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chaffee stepped forward and asked Committee Chairman Dick Lugar, R-Ind., for the job. Chaffee never had expressed an interest in the Middle East except once last October, when he was the only Republican to vote against the War Powers Resolution authorizing the president to use military force against Iraq. (Just...