Tipping point

The Carl Rove machine has adopted a prophylactic defense of the president in the face of the wave of lies, errors and outrages his administration has perpetrated on the US public and the world. Their method is simple: With the arising of each new revelation an immediate staunching counterattack is launched, as with the attacks on Treasury Secretary O'Neill, intelligence chief Clark, Ambassador Wilson and so forth. Rove knows that unless immediately righted by counterattack, his ship of state will sink.

To counter Rove's plan, the attacks on Bush's lies and misdeeds must become so pervasive, so overwhelming, that finally there are too many of them to allow righting, so that the ship becomes inalterably swamped. With the new revelations of miscalculation of terrorism attacks, the condemnation of Bush by past diplomats, the ongoing prisoner-abuse scandal, the continuing deaths in Iraq and the deterioration of the status in Afghanistan--at some time, these have to weigh too heavily on Bush to allow him, even with the compliant, correcting media, to bail himself out of his self-created political debacle.