That scene was hilarious. Primary Colors was one of John Travolta's truly great performances.

Look, the debate Krauthammer's trying to have is irrelevant. Policy is not the question. Some of the policy decisions of the last eight years were good, most were bad, and I guarantee that only a tiny fraction of them were ever eyed directly by Bush or anyone he spoke to regularly. The federal government is a sprawling bureaucracy -- including contractors, about 14 million people -- and counting *anything* that those people did right as an automatic triumph for Bush is like saying Bob Rubin stands vindicated because the Citibank branch in Poughkeepsie got a nice new copier.

The debate you want to have is about leadership. After losing the Social Security battle, Bush more or less dropped any pretense of a relationship with the American people that involved persuasion or real communication in any way. Bush isn't the head of some agency, he's the PRESIDENT. The job of the President is to lead the people. It doesn't matter if he turns out to have had the best arctic swan migration monitoring procedure EVER -- Captain 28% is and always will be a failed president because he's a failed leader.

This reads like a Jackie Harvey column. Bill Gates? Bold text for the names? You might want to fix that first one, unless it was an intentional homage to the Onion's own entertainment correspondent.

Krauthammer thinks this way because that was exactly what the Bush wrecking crew did when they came into office. The mantra was: if Clinton did X, then we will do anti-X. There seemed to be very little consideration of whether anti-X was good policy. Rather, it was just part of the "piss off liberals" theme that motivated the entire Bush presidency.

Defense Secretary Bill Gates

Matt Yglesias, is that you?

Krauthammer dishonest and/or stupid in praise of Republicans: film at 11. Breaking news: dog bites man.

Robert Gates recommended diplomacy with Iran back when Bush was still popular. He is less pro-Bush than most Republicans, and that was even more true when he was appointed. The only dissenting votes on his confirmation came from Republicans. He was appointed shortly after the Republicans lost seats in the 2006 midterms, and many thought that they might have done better if he had been appointed before the election than after.

Asking Donald Rumsfeld to come back would be a vindication of Bush's policies. Gates? His appointment itself was basically a repudiation of those policies.

The failure by Obama to order a 180 on every policy is not necessarily a vindication of any policy, and certainly not the Bush Administration as a whole. Indeed, the process of undoing a mess is almost always incremental by its nature.

This is a good point. Krauthammer would have us believe that Obama (and by extension, all progressives) have already failed to achieve the change we set out for, when in fact, the struggle has just begun.

And I'd like to make another point. Krauthammer is massaging an old conservative theme that goes: Progressives are naive utopians who, upon getting to Washington, are confronted by real reality. Once slapped by this new reality, the inexperienced lefties can either double down on their liberalism (and they'll be marginalized like Kucinich) or they can embrace the mature, realistic policies of wise, stoic conservatives.

The whole narrative makes me sick.

I'm cautiously optimistic about what Obama will be able to achieve, but the caution is mostly because Bush has been such an astounding disaster and there are still so many Republican hacks in Congress (I'm looking at you, Steve King).

That said, progressives do need to continue putting pressure on Obama because, I'll say it again, the struggle has just begun, and we've got a long road ahead.

Yeah ? We did a 180 on Saddam in Iraq and that democratised 25 million people , promoted free elections in Palestine , freed up the distribution of coal ash , eliminated Salmon waste in Oregon and California , cut through red tape with bold clear thinking with signing statements , read the bureaucrats report . He he , Obama is going to have to get up awfully early in the morning to top these accomplishments , awfully early .

Hey Kid,

SecDef is Robert Gates.

Wow, I had no idea Bush was a socialist.

Well, he is. Bush is a left-wing radical.

"does not however imply vindication of the decisions Bush made that led to the problems in the first place."

Does too.

The post by jesse at 2.02 is great and exactly what I would have said...thanks Jesse!

If you want to know how the story ends read the book of Revelations in the BIBLE.All Hell breaks loose.Happy landings.