about-face!

On "The Daily Show" last night the guest was a man named Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." Bartlett is a conservative man who is evidently listened to in many conservative circles, and he's the latest among many such to realize that oh...Bush just isn't very good at his job.

I thought he came off rather well, actually, the kind of conservative you could see sitting down and talking to, with a decent sense of humor about himself. Jon Stewart was a gracious host, as he always is, and when he got off one line somewhat at Bartlett's expense-

Bartlett: Conservatives like to believe they make the trains run on time.

Stewart: So you're saying their model is Mussolini?

-Bartlett had the grace to see the humor in his ill-chosen remark.

(Quotes are approximate)

I was impressed enough to consider ordering his book from the library. Then this afternoon I find, via TGW, reminders of things you'd think I wouldn't have forgotten.

Paul Krugman:

Bruce Bartlett, the author of "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," is an angry man. At a recent book forum at the Cato Institute, he declared that the Bush administration is "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."

It's no wonder, then, that one commentator wrote of Mr. Bartlett that "if he were a cartoon character, he would probably look like Donald Duck during one of his famous tirades, with steam pouring out of his ears."

Oh, wait. That's not what somebody wrote about Mr. Bartlett. It's what Mr. Bartlett wrote about me in September 2003, when I was saying pretty much what he's saying now.

I forgot, man. I forgot. That's how insidious they are...and that's why they're going to win again. Of course, if the Democrats had listened to "the grassroots base" back then, they'd be in a lot better position than they are now.

But they didn't then, because they thought it was more important to suck up to someone that virtually the entire country now knows to be an incompetent. And they won't now, because they think it makes their balls look smaller (and I'm including Hillary) to say "You were right, and I was wrong."

Does anybody else sometimes feel like the whole world is going to hell and we're just standing by with marshmallows on our sticks?