Bush gets a pass?! As you note above, his approval ratings are the highest of any prez in their third year, the economy is rebounding and Simon Jenkins was wrong -- Baghdad didn't take 2 years to fall.

And Condi Rice a loser for not having a coherent post-Iraq plan? Huh? My goodness, we are just 8 months or so from the fall of Baghdad with pockets of resistance still floating about. I really am sick and tired of this whole "Iraq isn't a democracy yet thus the administration has no plan" crap, especially since the irritating scholars and pundits that I hear it from cannot articulate even a broad-brush alternative plan in response!! This whole "trope" (or should I say "meme") that the administration doesn't have a plan is only second in annoyance to the "unilateral" action trope.*

* I swore to myself 10 years ago when I first heard the word "trope" (in the context of an argument that Southern pig roasts are really symbolic plays to repeal civil rights and Reconstruction -- seriously!), that I would never, ever use that word. I was wrong. Woe is me.

Let me re-emphasize my point above and add to it -- Bush gets a pass (no rating) yet a Senator who had Thanksgiving in Afghanistan gets a positive rating?!! Can somebody remind me what Bush did at Thanksgiving?!

Good point--my coffee must not've kicked in yet--I didn't even notice the fact that Bush was left off. And I noticed Condi, but was too lazy to comment on it at the time.

Bush is clearly the biggest political winner of '03.