"Gracefully exceed expectations"

Former Bush wordsmith Michael Gerson (you know, of "Axis of Evil" fame) loved, absolutly loved Dear Leader's SOTU address last night.

On foreign policy, the president combined subtle analysis with a blunt appeal for patience. His historical comparison of the successes of the war on terror in 2005 with the challenges of 2006, when the terrorists and dictators "struck back," and his explanation of Sunni and Shia radicalism, exceeded the usual level of State of the Union sophistication. The quietness of the chamber during this sober section was clearly attentive, not dismissive. Then he used the undeniable logic of this threat to argue for the importance of success in Iraq, concluding with a direct request for the Congress to support the military in their new strategy. Democrats did what they had to do: they applauded.

Wow. Subtle analysis, indeed.

What is most head-shaking of all is that, after four years of this war, the president once more fell short of making its case. As in the past, he said that it's very important—"a decisive ideological struggle," he called it, adding, "nothing is more important at this moment in our history than for America to succeed." And yet he also said that America's commitment to the war is "not open-ended." How can both claims be true? If nothing is more important, it must be open-ended. If it's not open-ended, it can't be all that important.

One reason he can't argue for it is that it's not clear he understands it. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," he said. "Whatever slogans they chant ... they have the same wicked purpose. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East." He still seems to view the ever-mounting violence as reflecting a struggle between good and evil, freedom and tyranny. He fails to grasp the sectarian nature of the fight. (Does he really believe that the Shiites and Sunnis are the same—or that, besides the small minority of al-Qaida, they're "totalitarian" in nature?)

If this is the ideological struggle of our time, what ideology are we fighting for in a Shiite/Sunni civil war? Bush didn't answer that last night.

And Gerson has the balls -- and by "balls" I mean lack of intellectual honesty -- to criticize Webb's response for employing "a mixed metaphor that crosses two clichés."

Gerson's just another "dead-ender" we'll have to deal with for the next two years even as Bush's support in his own party dwindles.

Well, he'll always have "pop up Joe."