Black Box Report

It was uncharacteristic, almost spooky. Watching President Bush yesterday respond to the failure of the immigration bill was like seeing a different man. Gone was the cocky assurance, the smug banter with the press, even the petulance when things don't go his way. Over at Crooks and Liars, Steve Benen (who seems to be blogging everywhere these days) put it this way:

The president looked like a man who's been defeated. Bush had power, control, and the ability to tell Congress what to pass and when to pass it. Watching him meander, sadly, through his press statement, I kept thinking, "He's lost it all and he knows it."

The Decider can now only decide what he wants, not what he'll get.

As his second term draws to a limping close, you get the feeling that Bush sees his ability to control not just Congress, but his own legacy, slowly slipping away:

Bush emerged from reelection with four main domestic priorities for his second term, as identified by Rove and other aides: He planned to reinvent Social Security to allow investment of some funds in the stock market, overhaul the tax code from top to bottom, bring millions of illegal immigrants out of the shadows and impose tough new curbs on what he called excessive litigation. He is now almost zero-for-four.

Have I mentioned governing is hard work? And if the conservative base is not exactly feeling his pain after their rebellion on his immigration plan, Bush really isn't getting sympathy in other areas either:

The 4th or 5th defeat of the immigration bill yesterday also turned out to be the unceremonious death of President Bush's second term...Sad story, really, to see his legacy reduced to the stacking of the entire federal judiciary with lunatic ideologues and a probably decades-long commitment to occupying an unfriendly middle eastern nation in the midst of an ethnic civil war.

Yes. That is rather sad. For all of us. Sadder still is that, in addition to his legislative impotence, the pressure of his looming consignment to the dustbin of history seems to be getting to him. In a speech yesterday at the U.S. Naval War College, Bush held up Israel as a model for Iraq, as a democracy that can function with heavy continual violence.

Let me reiterate. The #1 enemy of Middle Eastern Arabs, a country that is itself home to millions of disenfranchised Arabs, is what this fledgling Iraqi democracy should strive for....

Now, just the other week, I said the following about what was, at the time, the administration's latest submission for Worst Historical Analogy Ever:

But on the bright side, we're using Northern Ireland as our template for success. When the administration starts drawing comparisons to Israel and Palestine, THEN you can really start to panic.

I swear to God, I was kidding. It was a joke! I never thought he would....

So while I hit the panic button, Josh Marshall puts words to my forehead slap:

That should go over well...We'll have succeeded in Iraq when it's like Israel. Where do they come up with these guys? Which speech writer wrote that? Sometimes stupidity rises to the level of a high crime.

If it is a high crime, can we impeach him for stupidity?

At least before he compares Iraq to, say, Somalia?