hunter s t: These are all unsatisfactory questions at a time like this. Is it possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb immediately?
All these things are possible, unfortunately, in a White House that is drowning in it's own failures. Desperate men do desperate things, and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer.

Clarke did suffer one setback in his 30-year career in high office, though he doesn't mention it in his book. James Baker, the first President Bush's secretary of state, fired Clarke from his position as director of the department's politico-military bureau. (Bush's NSC director, Brent Scowcroft, hired him almost instantly.) I doubt we'll be hearing from Baker on this episode: He fired Clarke for being too close to Israel?not a point the Bush family's political savior is likely to make in an election season.

When the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, Condi Rice, Bush's national security adviser, designated Clarke as the "crisis manager;" he ran the interagency meetings from the Situation Room, coordinating?in some cases, directing?the response.
Most pertinent, Rand Beers, the official who succeeded Clarke after he left the White House in February 2003, resigned in protest just one month later?five days before the Iraqi war started?for precisely the same reason that Clarke quit. In June, he told the Washington Post, "The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terror. They're making us less secure, not more." And: "The difficult, long-term issues both at home and abroad have been avoided, neglected or shortchanged, and generally underfunded."

Clarke writes (and nobody has disputed) that when Condi Rice took over the NSC, she kept him onboard and preserved his title but demoted the position. He would no longer participate in, much less run, Principals' meetings. He would report to deputy secretaries. He would have no staff and would attend no more meetings with budget officials.

(It is significant, by the way, that Tenet has not been recruited?not successfully, anyway?to rebut Clarke's charges. Clarke told Charlie Rose that he was "very close" to Tenet. The two come off as frustrated allies in Clarke's book.)


Some of the administration's actions have been so strange that those who reported them were initially accused of being nutty conspiracy theorists.

With 10 months left in his first term, George W. Bush has already become one of a handful of the most important presidents in U.S. history. He toppled two pro-terrorist regimes, sparing America from further incidents of terrorism; revived the economy, and now leads a defense of traditional values by initiating a constitutional amendment to prevent runaway courts from junking the multi-millennia-old concept of marriage. Any one of these actions would justify him as a memorable chief executive.