<i>New Yorker</i> Editor: "Bush Had Been Unmasked In All His Insularity, Arrogance, And Executive Incompetence"…

David Remnick, in Comment (p. 37), reports on President Bush's "Hell Week," in which he has witnessed the two thousandth military death in Iraq, the withdrawl of Harriet Miers, and the indictment of a senior member of his Administration, all in the context of rising gas prices, the failure of Social Security reform, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and a pernicious insurgency undermining every moment of progress made in Iraq. Remnick writes, "Bush had been unmasked in all his insularity, arrogance, and executive incompetence.... But the lessons that Bush is likely to derive from the complex of recent disasters will not automatically lead to a more considered, modest, and moderate Presidency." The emboldened attack Bush faced for his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court came not from the left, but from conservative ideological radicals, "leading members of the true-believing Republican Party." More than three years remain in President Bush's second term, Remnick notes, and, "in his anger, and after all his many failures, the President, quite suddenly, seems unpopular, alone, and adrift."