A Reason to Back the President? (washingtonpost.com)

Much of what Sen. John Kerry says about Iraq is consistent and reasonable. He voted for the war because, like just about everybody else, he believed that Saddam Hussein was dangerous. He criticizes it now because Hussein turns out not to have had weapons of mass destruction after all, and because the Bush administration’s handling of reconstruction has been incompetent. Had everybody known two years ago that Hussein’s weapons program had fallen apart, there would have been no convincing argument for war. By insisting in Friday’s debate that Hussein presented a “unique threat,” President Bush made himself appear blind to reality.

The following line:

Invoking Ronald Reagan in Friday’s debate, he spoke forcefully about how it is more important to be right than to be internationally popular.

deklineates the most dangerous problem that Bush embodies: the inability to admint wrong. When asked what his 3 biggest mistakes were, he instead preached with the above insistence that he’s right and the world is wrong. That wasn’t what was asked, but his response basically answered the underlying question: Bush is incapapable of admitting wrong, or he is desperate to maintain appearances. Probably both.