Question: "How did President Bush's bosom chum, Teddy Kennedy - "one of the best legislative senators there is" - vote on the Senate proposal to pull troops from Iraq yesterday? When will The President learn to stop licking Senator Kennedy's boots, that nothing he does will ever earn him the respect and adulation of the left?" -- Cartman

Answer: Let's face it: if Bush doesn't get by now that Kennedy and the Democrats are willing to do everything humanly possibly to humiliate and destroy him -- and he doesn't -- he's never going to figure it out.

It's like at some point, Bush thinks people are going to go, the Democrats have been beating Bush into the ground for years and he's just stood there and took it. Wow, what a great guy! I really approve of what he's doing!

Meanwhile, back the real world, the last time Bush cracked 50% approval was in 2004. That's what happens in politics when you allow your political opponents to attack you at will without responding. Your supporters lose heart, your adversaries gain confidence, and your side of the story is ignored while their attacks, however untrue they may be, become the conventional wisdom.

This is what's happening to Bush and it's a big part (but certainly not all) of why the Republicans lost in 2006, why Bush's approval rating is mired in the thirties, and why the economy and war are perceived by the American public as doing much worse than any sort of rational analysis would indicate.