Bush's speech the other night was a failure. I am confident that his numbers won't go up; indeed, I expect them to drop--just as they did after his speech announcing the necessity of an 87 billion dollar appropriation to fund the war. The speech was grim. Americans are yearning for hope.

The America people, as Lawrence Kaplan showed in a great piece in the New Republic 2 years ago, want victory in war. ("Willpower" New Republic, September 8 & 15, 2003.) Bush cannot deliver victory, however defined. So the poll numbers will drop. (I usually hesitate to make predictions. Historians can't agree on the past let alone predict the future. But I am confident about this prediction.)

Bush's challenge was to lift people's spirits at the same time as he answered the criticism of Democrats that he and Dick "last throes" Cheney are out of touch with events. Not even Demosthenes could have delivered a speech that addressed both concerns. They are mutually exclusive. If you recognize the ominous course events have taken it is impossible to provide hope. If you downplay the mayhem on the streets in order to provide hope people would conclude that you are out of touch.

Hence, this speech was a failure. It only helped in showing that Bush is not out of touch, which is not an achievement of which too many presidents would want to crow.

The use of 9-11 imagery to draw support for the war in Iraq was clumsy--and misguided. The well of fear he can draw on has gone dry. And in any case, more and more Americans now see clearly the difference between the wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the course of the speech President Bush engaged in the gross rewriting of history. He said that he had warned the nation after 9-11 that the war would be long and hard. But this war was not supposed to be long and hard. Paul Wolfowitz predicted it would be short as did Secretary Rumsfeld. Cheney said our soldiers would be greeted as liberators. To forget this history is to engage in the worst form of revisionism.