Bush's Apologists Apologize for Meeting Low Expectations

When President Bush was flying toward Asia a week ago, his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, predicted to reporters in the back of the plane that the four-nation trip would yield no "headline breakthroughs."

With the exception of that video breakthrough that we've all been watching with mixed feelings of embarrassment, humiliation and slight giddiness and forwarding on to our friends and family all over the world, so they can share the moment.

On a wide variety of issues, from trade to security to human rights, Bush won no concrete agreements from any of his summit partners.

He did however successfully con the Chinese Olympic cycling team into letting him take the lead at least once for a photo op.

White House officials said that did not mean the trip was unsuccessful,
because they never expected to bring home any major agreements in the
first place. Such trips, they said, reflect a more mature diplomacy aimed
at building relationships and achieving steady progress that will produce
gains at some later date. Yet at the same time, it means that a
politically weakened Bush returns home without anything high-profile to
brag about when he could use some good news.

Ah yes, the mature diplomacy of having your drunk-ass president stumble off the stage to the wrong doors after insulting reporters.

"I know that it's not like a deliverable or big breakthrough, but when breakthroughs are made you'll be able to point back" at the trip as paving
the way, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said. "Some of these things
aren't things that happen with the snap of a finger. What these summits do
provide is an opportunity to move forward."

Seeing him disgrace the whole country like that should, if nothing else, encourage Congress to move forward with the impeachment process, and embolden the rest of us to work on getting his loyal sycophants out of office in 2006.