Punchline Politics

Extreme Mortman ponders the cool audience reception:

"Stephen Colbert is being roundly panned for his mean-spirited performance. He was big on edge, short on rib-tickling. And the audience? A tough crowd reacting with embarrassment and silence. From my table I counted three rounds of infectious yawns spreading around the room like the wave at football games. It's gotta be tough to hear silence when telling rat-a-tat jokes in front of 3,000 people. Imagine singing the Spanish Star Spangled Banner to the Minutemen. Even worse, these were mostly drunk reporters -- normally an easy mark. Colbert's editorial act quickly sobered folks up like an unwelcome buzz kill, like a newspaper's retirement buyout offer was rescinded."

And one more, from the New Republic's Noam Scheiber: "I'm a big Stephen Colbert fan, a huge Bush detractor, and I think the White House press corps has been out to lunch for much of the last five years. (Though, unlike many in the blogosphere, I don't think that's because White House reporters are lazy or stupid.) That should have made me the ideal audience-member for Colbert's performance at this weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner. As it happens, though, I laughed out loud maybe twice during Colbert's entire 20-odd minute routine. Colbert's problem, blogosphere conspiracy theories notwithstanding, is that he just wasn't very entertaining."

Not as entertaining as the conspiracy theories, at least.

I guess Bush felt that if he didn't say something about a certain three-year anniversary--it's a "turning of the tide"--that the media would mark it for him.

Josh Marshall sees a Day That Will Live in Infamy:

"Yes, three years ago, President Bush declared Mission Accomplished in Iraq.

"I think this will go down as the symbol of the Bush administration -- like Carter's malaise speech, Bush's father with the carton of milk, LBJ falling on his metaphorical sword in a nationally televised address. It captures everything. The arrogance. The dingbat personality cult. The fleeting triumph of Potemkin stagecraft over tangible accomplishment. The happy willingness to let others take care of the president's messes."

Here we go again: USA Today has Bush at "the lowest approval rating of his presidency"--34 percent--at least compared to previous USA Today polls (but not to the spate of polls in the last two months that had W. in the low thirties). How many times can a president hit the "lowest ever" without really moving?

Andrew Sullivan responds to criticism by John Hinderaker that he's become a naysayer on Iraq. First, Hinderaker:

"The fact that half of all deaths caused by terrorists last year were in Iraq is consistent with what the terrorists themselves often tell us: Iraq is the central front in the global war against Islamic terrorism. The old Andrew Sullivan would have understood that this means we should fight to win in Iraq, not cut and run. To the extent that people are being murdered by home-grown terrorists in Iraq, as opposed to Zarqawi, et al, the perpetrators are the very same Baathist thugs who, until we overthrew Saddam, controlled Iraq's government. For thirty years, they ruled Iraq through a ruthless campaign of violence that killed many thousands of Iraqis (300,000 is a number that is commonly cited) and terrorized the rest. It is obvious to the Iraqis themselves that it is a good thing that these people are now out of power rather than in power. Why isn't it obvious to Andrew?

"Well, if John has been reading this blog, he will know that I do not in any way favor a cut-and-run strategy in Iraq. He will also know that I have shed no tears, except of joy, about Saddam's demise, and only recently linked to a report showing how Saddam's sons were preparing 'martyrdom operations' in London before they were deposed. I'm just concerned, as any sentient being at this point would be, that our occupation strategy never created the stability essential for the good things Powerline and I both want for Iraq. I think it's unfair to describe me in this sense as a defeatist. I want victory. I link to any reasonable glimmer of hope I can find; and I still have not given up on a decent outcome. I'm just a realist about how far away from victory the Bush administration's war-management has taken us."