Ye Olde Journalistic Baffler

Here's a paragraph from a NY Times piece on Karl Rove:

By most accounts inside and outside the administration, Mr. Rove is relentlessly cheerful, presenting himself as an optimistic face in a gloomy White House. One person who met Mr. Rove said he attributed Mr. Bush's problems more to external events, in particular Hurricane Katrina and Iraq, than to anything the White House did wrong.

Wow. The entire article is filled with stunners like that. But as remarkable as it is to report with a straight face that the Iraq war occurred independently of the administration, there's also an amazing admission from a former RNC head:

Rich Bond, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said that without the focus of a campaign, the White House had lost its edge.

"I can't imagine the Dubai ports deal occurring in the mindset of the re-election," Mr. Bond said. "I can't imagine the Cheney hunting incident being handled in the same way in the mindset of the re-election."

What that amounts to is "They can run, but they can't preside." Rove, Bush, et al., might be hell on wheels on the campaign trail, but once in office they have no idea what they're doing. Which is why Dubya's entire ouevre is 'road trip on the issue of the day,' endlessly delivering the same canned speeches at boosters-only events.