Dan Kennedy has a nice piece on how Dubya lost his groove.
MAYBE IT ALL began to go bad during Bush's State of the Union address, in January, when he declared war -- metaphorically, if not in reality -- against an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. "Axis of incoherence," sniffed Slate.
As Slate's dismissal suggests, it wasn't so much that Bush's harsh rhetoric offended the Europeans. After all, everything offends the Europeans. It was that it made no sense. It lumped Iraq, a country that may be developing nukes and that may, indeed, need to be taken out, with two other very bad countries that pose little threat to us and that may, slowly, be turning more moderate and less warlike. Bush made no distinctions and offered no guidance as to what, if anything, we are likely to do about Iran and North Korea. It was weird and puzzling.
Phillippe and Jorge chime in as well (scroll down):
Dubya goes down
Has there been a darker day in American history than when Dubya the Dumb stood there on his hind legs and was lectured by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah about how America should be behaving, never mind getting slapped around in his own house?
