A Turkey At a Turkey Dinner

Does Karl Rove lie awake nights thinking of ways to get Americans to give his boss, the Texas Air Guard's most famous deserter, George W. Bush, another presidential term? Well, Bush's Baghdad stunt certainly sounds like the kind of idea Rove would have come up with before breakfast. The cheesiness of Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Iraq was bad enough, but the showbiz soft-shoe shuffle (as the late George Harrison once said, "Watch out now - take care, beware of soft-shoe shuffle") that U.S. administrator Paul Bremer and General Ricardo Sanchez, the military commander in Iraq, engaged in to introduce Bush was pathetic.

For those who missed it, Bremer told the soldiers gathered at a Thanksgiving celebration in Baghdad that he wanted to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation, but he added that the most senior official should do so. Then General Sanchez came onstage, and they had a song-and-dance debate over who was more senior, leading Bremer to ask, "Have we got anyone who's more senior?" Then Bush Junior appeared to the astonishment of the troops and issued the proclamation.

The Dubyanistas clearly believe they've scored political points with this visit, and they may be right. But one visit to Iraq, which doesn't compensate for a failed military policy, isn't going to help Bush win re-election in 2004. Nor is this visit going to single-handedly discombobulate the Democrats. In order for the Democrats to lose next year, they will have to discombobulate themselves.

And given how they handled the Medicare reform fiasco, that could very well happen.