President Bush's already depressing world tour hit a new low today with his "oops, is thing on?" conversation with Tony Blair.
I haven't heard dialogue this addle-brained since Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. But these aren't a pair of stoned out slackers looking to score some burgers. These are the leader of the free world and his faithful British sidekick, trying to keep the conflict in the Middle East from kickstarting World War III.
Yes, on one level, it's great comedy -- as funny as anything SNL or The Onion could come up with. "Yo, Blair!"? Bush's kindergarten insight that "Russia's big and so is China". The dripping with sarcasm frat-boy banter:
Bush: Thanks for the sweater; it was awfully thoughtful of you. I know you picked it out yourself.
Blair: Oh, absolutely!
What was next, the two of them high-fiving and yelling "Psyche!"?
But on another level, the conversation was the most dispiriting exchange I could imagine hearing at a moment like this.
Has there ever been a more feeble statement by a U.S. president than "See, the irony is what they really need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over"?
Churchill it ain't.
Indeed, it says all you need to know about how this president's disastrous mismanagement of foreign policy has undermined America's standing in the world.
The Middle East is teetering on the brink, and the President of the United States is reduced to sitting on the sidelines, helplessly ruminating on what "they" need to do to try and broker a settlement.
Even worse, he tells Blair: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make something happen."
You want irony? How about a president who has shown nothing but disdain for the UN, wistfully fantasizing about being bailed out by an organization his man John Bolton felt could lose 10 stories of its headquarters without it making "a bit of difference."
You want impotence? How about a president who is so paralyzed he doesn't even tell Kofi to make the call.