Quote du Jour

I would never suggest that it is an easy job for a president and his administration to balance conflicting strategic, political, economic and domestic concerns, especially in this day and age. But it really is extraordinary what a hash President Bush made of things on his recent trip to India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Reed Hundt puts it into perspective at TPM Cafe:

The President has returned from visiting the region where his Administration has failed to find Osama, not suppressed the Taliban, and not curtailed the proliferation of nuclear weapons despite their manifest uselessness for any rational purpose. In this same region, it has encouraged Indian-Chinese tensions, thus stimulating military build-up in China, which could lead to disaster for Americans. It applauded dictatorship and American job loss. It discouraged treaty-based approaches to global problems. It ignored environmental, health, and poverty issues. All in all, it demonstrated that the next three years are parlous times for the Unied States, mitigated chiefly by the possibility of a saner Congress being returned in November.