Hopeless

Josh Marshall reflects on good old Jim Baker being sent off to "generate new ideas on Iraq" and the likelihood of anything good coming of it as long as the current resident occupies the White House. I think Josh hits the nail on the head:

Johnson eventually halted the bombing of North Vietnam and announced he wouldn't run for reelection. In effect, he resigned the presidency, though he remained to serve the remaining ten months of his constitutional term of office. It's probably the closest thing you'll ever see in American politics to an admission of failure followed by an intentional act of political self-immolation.

Does anyone imagine anything even remotely like that in the offing?

The president is stuck on telling us that Don Rumsfeld has done a bang up job as defense secretary.

And even with the rising chorus of retired generals calling for Rumsfeld's ouster, isn't this just displacement? Don Rumsfeld works for the president. This is the president's administration in more than just the obvious, literal sense. These are his policies. It's his denial, his indifference to the failure of his policies and the incompetence of his subordinates. As David Remnick put it recently in The New Yorker, the man in the Oval Office "does not much believe in science or, for that matter, in any information that disturbs his prejudices, his fantasies, or his sleep."

The president is accountable, not just in the sense that the president is by definition accountable, but because these failures are his failures. They stem from his weaknesses -- his inability to summon the courage to make tough decisions, his addiction to sycophants, his penchant for denial.

We'd be fools to expect any change when the president lacks the guts to recognize his failures let alone try to fix them.