Countdown, Continued

This time, Paul Krugman did the work for me. Four more reasons why Bush should be tending his "ranch" instead of leading the country. In order:

Letting Osama get away.
Letting Zarqawi get away.
The situation in Iraq. And
$70 billion more.

All of these stories would be getting more play right now if it weren't for the Al Qaqaa mess. Still, one can understand why the right is so upset.

After all, Al Qaqaa illustrates in a particularly graphic way the failures of Mr. Bush's national security leadership. U.S. soldiers passed through Al Qaqaa, a crucial munitions dump, but were never told that it was important to secure the site. If administration officials object that they couldn't have spared enough troops to guard the site, they're admitting that they went in without enough troops. And the fact that these explosives fell into unknown hands is a perfect example of how the Iraq war has worsened the terrorist threat.

The story of Al Qaqaa has brought out the worst in a campaign dedicated to the proposition that the president is infallible - and that it's always someone else's fault when things go wrong. Here's what Rudy Giuliani said yesterday: "No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough?" Support the troops!

But worst of all from the right's point of view, Al Qaqaa has disrupted the campaign's media strategy. Karl Rove clearly planned to turn the final days of the campaign into a series of "global test" moments - taking something Mr. Kerry said and distorting its meaning, then generating pseudo-controversies that dominate the airwaves. Instead, the news media have spent the last few days discussing substance. And that's very bad news for Mr. Bush.

Oh, and I just saw over at DailyKos that Bush has another song controversy--seems as if "Still the One," which apparently replaced "Rock & Roll Part II" as his theme song, was co-written by John and Johanna Hall, who support John Kerry. John Hall has demanded that Bush cease using it, and I'm guessing most folks have heard about Gary Glitter's collection of photographs...

As Kos notes, "Cat Scratch Fever" might still be available.