Werth was underscoring a key fact about our humble president: he lacked political education. Those qualities that Bill Clinton had in spades—immersion in the game from a young age, the insane desire to step up to the plate himself, endless study of the history of our politics—well, George Bush postponed that experience out of goofy entitlement. Clinton screwed up in his own ways, but as a keen student of politics he did choose very able aides.

Bush has good political instincts and got a good political primer as Texas governor, but his responsibilities as president seemed to overwhelm him, and he knew it. Later in his speech, Werth said that being a president is a very "isolated" job, and a president is subject to the influences of those with whom he (or she?) surrounds himself. In this case, people with far more political education, like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Perle. All of whom just happened to be extremists.