Judging Bush II

Go read publius's response to the previously mentioned Saletan article as well. He(?) points out the power of "default settings" in political dialog and how many people just don't have the time to think to hard about the issues so they rely on a set of pre-programmed "default settings". Both the right and left do this, but publius argues persuasively that the right has a better mechanism for putting out new "default settings" to deal with new situations (FOX News, the TiVo network of the vast right-wing conspiracy!)

The problem with Bush is that he may be the first president in a long time (if not the first) who also works on this "default setting" model. Which makes him a great president for the interests who back him ("Just load in a new program Karl!") but not all that great for the rest of us.