A. Sullivan explains recent drop in Bush polls

Ordinarily I do not bother with Andrew Sullivan since in my experience his blog was light writing on a black background. Since that is essentially unreadable (appropriate for most conservatives, but sometime Sullivan finds an acorn) I don't bother. But Atrios offered an interesting comment, so I went to look.

Surprise, surprise. Sullivan must be getting desperate, so he offered his potential readers the langniappe of readability.

Snark aside, I find Sullivan's analysis of the reasons for Bush's drop to never before seen poll levels interesting.

It's relatively simple, I think. The president's basic rationale for the war in Iraq was debunked within a few weeks of the invasion. His second rationale, democracy, is much further away now than it was three years ago. He has, in effect, no rationale now, except preventing an even worse catastrophe, which simply reminds Americans of what a colossal misjudgment he has made. 26 percent is far too generous., I'd say. Bush asked to have his presidency judged on how he waged the war in Iraq. He has got his wish.

I suspect that there is a lot of truth to this.

So look at the last line of my last post The Central controlling idea of the Bush administration has collapsed.

That's all the Bush administration has left. Avoiding Impeachment for Bush and being able to say "We didn't leave Iraq, so we didn't fail there. The Democrats left, so they failed!"

Bush and the Republicans are perfectly willing to put up with the deaths of a hundred or so Americans per month and at least ten times that many severe casualties from now until 2009 just to maintain this talking point for the future.

I see no reason for Bush to make any effort to pull out of Iraq before the end of his term. He is resigned to the fact of the final pull-out, and only if he does not take any actions towards that pull-out himself is there any possibility that even the sad, sick positive element of an election attack line against Democrats can be won in what is otherwise a disaster that is already recognized widely as the worst foreign policy blunder in American history.

In the legislature the Republicans are on their own. Any Senator or Congressman who tries to run with Bush will face almost certain defeat, even in the strongest "red" states and districts. This will become even more clear after September when Gen. Petreaus comes back and says "We haven't won yet, but there are indications that we can win with more troops and more time."

He will say that. Count on it. It translates very closely to "There is light at the end of the tunnel." If he says "We aren't winning and we can't win." then he is fired and replaced by Bush. If he says "We are winning." it'll be less than 10 seconds later that the otherwise supine American press will be asking "Where is the evidence?" and there will be none.

The really scary part of this is the situation is like a close football game that one side is losing and does not have time to really make an effort to win. It is "Hail Mary" time. All that is really left under the control of the Bush Presidency is to start another war.

But wars cause the American people to rally around the President, and as we have seen in recent years, the utter lack of honesty and competence of the President is almost irrelevant.

Dick Cheney, William Krystol, and Norman Podhoretz will all applaud more war. Always. Watch for it. Count on it.

They don't mind war at all. They aren't going, and they aren't paying.