huh?

Oh, goodie, time for the reprises. You never read William McKenzie, because he's usually not worth reading. This post makes a first, for I can't bear the lies. This time he tries to make them understandable.

It's hard to imagine today the enthusiasm built up around Mr. Bush, a candidate promising change, unity and compassion. Nine years later – to the day – his party started its storm-truncated convention not knowing what to do with him. Many Republicans still like him, but his general unpopularity, some of them fear, could leave him a drag on the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket.

It will take a long time for public anger to subside and a more complex picture of the Bush legacy to emerge on issues like education, Africa and scientific research. Recent stories in Newsweek and Foreign Policy attempted to point out what often gets overlooked in the Bush years. Mr. Bush wasn't in St. Paul, Minn., yesterday because he was trying to show Americans he had learned from the low point of Katrina, getting on the ground faster for Gustav.

But he and his supporters soon will have plenty of time to figure out what happened.

"What happened?" is a question you hear even among friendly Texas Republicans. Some are angry, disgusted and ready to move on. Others lament what happened and are weary after a presidency that didn't turn out as they had hoped.

We already know some answers to the question, like Mr. Bush failing as a CEO president by picking advisers like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld who didn't serve him well. And he failed as a communicator by not allowing more Americans to see the person many Texans knew.

There also were two key moments at which he lost control of his presidency. And they will be painful for Bushites to look back upon because he had the wind at his back each time.

The first was in those weeks after 9/11, when he had regained the public's confidence after a rocky first nine months. The world was literally with him and America. Until that is, he took that turn into Iraq.

There was a case for deposing Saddam Hussein. Even Democrats knew that. Why Mr. Bush never gave the weapons inspectors a few more months, I'll never understand. Equally troubling was how the president let the Iraqi civil war get away from his team between 2003 and the surge's beginning.

The second lost moment came in 2005, after Mr. Bush had weathered all the criticism about Iraq and won a second term by a larger margin than he won his first. He started it with towel-popping exuberance, as one aide put it.

Less than a year later, his presidency was headed into a tailspin from which it never recovered.

There were ways to avoid the truth, that right wingers hate this country and especially its people, and now these 'serious' ones will try to sort it out. It's worth a look, just for the insanity, I guess. So I give you this one. The towel-popping type. This is how they think, for want of a better term. We are so well rid of them all.