Really, in this wonderful age of ours, when almost all the information in the world is never more than a few keystrokes away, it really shouldn't matter that a dying newspaper sends to Washington someone who still thinks the old rule applies: I distort, you swallow. As promised in an earlier post, what we're talking about here is Michael Gawenda's summation of the state of play with the Bush administration, which he claims "now faces problems that could destroy his presidency".
Well it's a good line, but in a country where the chief executive is elected for a fixed, four-year term, what could Gawenda possibly mean? That Bush, like Nixon, stands a fair chance of being driven early from office? That he will be dragged from the White House and hanged from a lamp post on Pennsylvania Avenue?

Other than noting that Blair visited the White House, Gawenda has managed to get ever single important fact wrong.

The charge by Bush haters that he was dumb and ignorant was always a dumb and ignorant charge, the result of hatred overwhelming rationality. Bush was smart, politically canny, had the ability to laugh at himself, and in the words of his former speechwriter David Frum, was a "risk-taker", a man with few self-doubts who was seen by a majority of Americans as a decisive leader.