Anything between today and the presidential election is going to be seen as a tug-of-war between these two.

Bush is no longer in command the way he used to be. With Social Security, he picked the one issue that could unite the Democrats. And now most Americans think that with Iraq he was either dishonest or incompetent.

We are victims of our architecture.

He's been decisive without being provocative.

There was another war-related casualty today. The French were injured when they tried to jump on our bandwagon.

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it.