Bush gets good News, but no Love

President Bush finally gets some good news of consequence, an agreement from North Korea that it will take the first steps toward nuclear disarmament, but he got no love. Conservatives are beating up on Bush, some within his own administration, questioning the deal because it doesn’t crack down hard enough to guarantee North Korea will stop sponsoring terrorism. The Congress is voting against his war strategy while presidential candidates in both parties begin campaigns that will repudiate him or, at best, marginalize him in ways heretofore not known to the lamest of ducks.

Chief negotiator Christopher Hill, assistant secretary of state, called the deal “excellent,” but John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called it “a bad deal,” and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams was reportedly bewildered, e-mailing questions and criticism to fellow staff around the executive branch.

Let’s hope Dick Cheney said something nice about it behind closed doors. Bush, no surprise, said, “the assessment made by some that this is not a good deal is just flat wrong.” He knows the drill. Since Bush can conclude he can please almost no one, how can anyone make the case to him now that he should listen to the thousands of other opinions on how to proceed in Iraq since he ultimately still clearly only trusts his own?

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