Staying the course; flip-flopping on the deck

Well, just one short year and-a-half after being asked by a citizen in the 2004 town hall-style presidential debate to name three mistakes he's made as president and what he did to correct them, President Bush gave a partial answer Thursday in a joint news conference/mea culpa/commitment to keeping the troops in Iraq until the job is done with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, both of whom are enjoying career-low approval numbers attributed to the war in Iraq.

... in an unusual admission of a personal mistake, Mr. Bush said he regretted challenging insurgents in Iraq to "bring it on" in 2003, and said the same about his statement that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Those two statements quickly came to reinforce his image around the world as a cowboy commander in chief. "Kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people," Mr. Bush said. "I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner."

He's apparently practicing that lesson in baby steps, but you have to start somewhere.

He went on to say that the American military's biggest mistake was the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, where photographs of detainees showed them in degrading and abusive conditions. "We've been paying for that for a long period of time," Mr. Bush said, his voice heavy with regret.

Refreshing as it is to hear the president speak as though he's rationally accepted the fact that he is not Jack Bauer, of course he's only making such statements because he can't (under current law, at least) run for re-election.

For as American voters have demonstrated, many prefer to select presidents using the same criteria they apply to select action stars they'd like to watch on TV, whom they can be confident aren't intimidatingly smarter than them and will just entertain them while singularly pursuing the bad guys with ever-righteous vengeance.

But alas, the real world is not "24"–those qualities are rarely the most conducive to effective diplomacy and policy. And sadly, most conflicts cannot be settled with torture and a magical green messenger bag full of high-tech vigilante justice. Besides, as President Bush continues to insist, timetables are just plain dirty.