ALL MEANS, NO ENDS

We're now done with the debates that focus on foreign policy, and something occurred to me about Bush's performances.

It's been said before that the extent to which Bush wants to run on his record is that he wants people to focus on his decision-making process ("I saw a threat") and not, you know, the actual results of that process (Iraq as it stands today).

I thought his biggest challenge in the debates would be to somehow frame what has actually gone on in the context of the decisions he's made, and do so in a positive way.

Thinking back to the debates, Bush spent very little time on the rosy future of Iraq. Not much on the prospect of elections there in January. A little bit about Allawi (you'll notice he's dropped the "interim" from Allawi's title lately, that's interesting), but not terribly much.

Virtually everything he said in the debates about Iraq had to do with the rightness of his decision to invade and the size of the coalition he assembled. Practically nothing about the lack of WMD, the 1000+ dead American troops, the struggles in Fallujah, Najaf, Ramadi, Samarra, etc.

It was a tough task, but one he had to attempt if he wanted to win. Bush failed to put the results of his decisions in any sort of positive context with the decisions themselves. And that's why he will lose in three weeks.