The World vs. The Bully

Newsday seems to get it.. The piece starts off with Bush's recent nose-dive in the polls and gets interesting right about, oh...Here:

[snip]...In recent weeks, his administration has:

* Seen its proposal for a Western Hemisphere-wide free-trade pact torpedoed during Bush's trip to Latin America. Several other of his trade initiatives are in jeopardy, too.

* Failed to persuade the U.N. nuclear watchdog to refer Iran's suspect nuclear activities to the Security Council for possible penalties.

* Ran into more obstacles in six-country talks over North Korea's nuclear agenda.

* Clashed with major European allies which, for the first time, joined other countries in supporting a move to wrest administrative control over the Internet from the United States.

"Behind the scenes, there's a recognition that the United States is tied down somewhat in Iraq and preoccupied domestically, and that this is a tough time for the Bush administration," said Kurt Campell, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific during the Clinton administration.

"It comes at a time when China's stock is extremely high in Asia as a whole. There's a growing recognition that China has taken enormous advantage of the challenges facing the Bush administration, in Iraq and elsewhere, to consolidate its gains in Asia," said Campell, now with the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

In Europe, Bush's principal Iraq war partner, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, is reeling from political woes of his own...[/snip]

Continuing a bit further down:

[snip]...Now, allies might be even more emboldened in opposing positions staked out by the U.S. And antagonistic governments in North Korea, Iran and elsewhere might be less intimidated by Bush's threats, seeing how bogged down the U.S. is in Iraq.

"I think he is less scary to them," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution.

Iran and North Korea probably are less fearful than before that Bush might use pre-emptive military force against them to accomplish Iraq-style changes in rule, and so, too, are their neighbors, O'Hanlon suggested.

"South Korea, for example, might have worried before about a war with North Korea they did not want. And I think they're probably less worried about it now," he said.

The U.S. still wields enormous influence, of course, if only because it remains the sole military superpower and has the largest economy...[/snip]

I guess you have it right there at the end of my brazen copy-and-paste job. Imagine Bush at the helm is the US did not have it's military and economic might? Now that is freakin' scary!

The presidency is broken. We were - as a nation - the last to find out about it.(sorry for the grammatical train-wreck, it sounds more effective that way)