Stand by your man. Indeed.

Now if this were a political gathering, thoughtholders like this just wouldn't be admitted. Better to selectively choose your competition, then run the field:

Contrary to President Bush’s assertion that “this is not the fight we entered,” a great many people warned before the invasion of Iraq that the war would be pretty much exactly “the fight we are in” now. At the time, the president’s orchestrated minions suggested that such people were stupid, timid, defeatist and unpatriotic.

No one expects a genuine admission of error from this president, but it would be nice to at least hear him apologize to the people who were maligned for having greater prescience and common sense than his entire retinue of foreign and defense policy makers.

Charles M. Newman
New York, Jan. 24, 2007

This way, you can still pretend you're a winner. Listen to the cheerleaders, listen to the band. Never mind the critics, ain't life grand!