Humpty Dumpty

From George Bush's latest stop on his series of interviews to sell his surge --

MR. LEHRER: Is there a little bit of a broken egg problem here, Mr. President, that there is instability and there is violence in Iraq - sectarian violence, Iraqis killing other Iraqis, and now the United States helped create the broken egg and now says, okay, Iraqis, it's your problem. You put the egg back together, and if you don't do it quickly and you don't do it well, then we'll get the hell out.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question. I don't quite view it as the broken egg; I view it as the cracked egg --

MR. LEHRER: Cracked egg?

PRESIDENT BUSH: -- that - where we still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg. And I thought long and hard about the decision, Jim. Obviously it's a big decision for this theater in the war on terror, and you know, if I didn't believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn't ask 21,000 kids - additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there.

But not for the first time, the irony is that it was the seeming inoccuous occasion that provided more insights into Bush's true thinking, this time his greeting of the 2006 World Series winners the St Louis Cardinals at the White House. What other losing streak might he have been thinking of when he said --

They say in baseball in order to become the World Series champ, you can't have losing streaks of over two or three games. (Laughter.) This club had losing streaks of -- one eight-game losing streak; another eight-game losing streak; and a seven-game losing streak -- which really speaks to the character of the baseball team, doesn't it? I mean, it's a team that -- (applause.) And I think it speaks to the character of the manager, Tony LaRussa, and his staff. (Applause.)

When you're on one of those losing streaks, it's easy to get down and to forget the goal. So, like, I'm sure the sports pages were a little rough on you for a while there, you know? How can they possibly endure yet another eight-game losing streak? Well, you endure it as the result of character and leadership.