The Washington Post has a piece today on how things are looking up for George W. Bush:

The war in Iraq seems to have taken a turn for the better and the opposition at home has failed in all efforts to impose its own strategy. North Korea is dismantling its nuclear program. The budget deficit is falling. A new attorney general has been confirmed despite objections from the left.

However, his poll numbers remain dismal:

Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings.

Polls are a tricky thing. I too would respond with disapproval of Bush's performance if polled. He simply has not been conservative enough for me. His immigration plan, the spending, the too-few vetoes, our weak fighting of this war, all of it has soured me on the man. I had many problems with him in his first term too. I despised giving a new entitlement program to the richest segment of the population in the form of his Medicare plan, hated his signing of McCain's ridiculous Campaign Finance bill, and nearly cried when he confirmed that despite his belief in freedom for all, Taiwan is part of one China.

Despite all this, I am someone who worked to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004, and would do it again tomorrow in a repeat Bush-Kerry race. While I'd like someone fiscally conservative, who is an international badass that can maybe pronounce nuclear, the reality of the situation is that Bush was better than either of his opponents by a mile.

Bush's legacy won't be decided by his poll numbers today or tomorrow, or even the day he leaves office. Whatever he has done in his 8 presidential years, all of it will come down to Iraq in the end. It will be noted in history books that we had no further attacks on U.S. soil in the 6 years following 9/11. But if Iraq is still a disaster, that fact will only be an afterthought. As someone who supported the Iraq war when it began, and still supports it today, Bush's legacy matters to me only in so far as I want what is best for both America and Iraq. Rooting for failure in Iraq to show up Bush is unconscionable, and should be rejected by anybody with any sense of humanity.

Ultimately, current polls of the president's approval are meaningless. Only time will really tell us if the Iraq war will have been a success. For a president whose reputation rests on that result, his current legacy projection matters not at all.

I was at a fancy dinner last night, seated with notables like NPR's Robert Siegel and Jewcy's own Abe Greenwald, when I said what I always say about election 2008: I'm afraid we're going to end up with John McCain as the Republican candidate.

The reaction I got from many around the table proved to me, yet again, that McCain remains the one to watch in the Republican race. There was a multi-person gasp and then someone said "We'd be lucky to get McCain." "He supported the surge when it was extremely unpopular to do so," said another. "He's a war hero." "He's principled." "He could beat Hillary." "He's got cross-over appeal."

Oy.

What's happening here is what I imagined would happen when Rudy Giuliani, a man I admire and would love to see be president, became the frontrunner. I've been around Republican primaries in many different states, for many years, and I know that on election day Republican primary voters will not choose the pro-choice, pro-civil unions, ex-mayor of NY who has been married three times. They will pick the candidate they feel is at once most conservative and also most likely to win in the general election. I want to be wrong. I want Republican primary voters to prove me wrong. But I know the people that vote in primaries and they are just not going to choose Rudy. He's got one part of the equation; he's likely the strongest general election candidate against Hillary Clinton. That won't be enough for Republican primary voters.

Republicans who vote in primaries tend to be extremely principled and, can fairly easily be categorized as pro-life and pro-gun (despite what people believe, the gay marriage issue is hardly one at all, as no serious candidate on either side supports gay marriage). Giuliani stands on the other side of both the abortion and gun issue and no amount of "but I'm a federalist" is going to change that. These voters simply don't trust a candidate that disagrees with them so deeply on the two issues that matter most to them.

So, alarmed by Rudy, bored by Romney, suspicious of Huckabee, deflated by Thompson and running in the other direction from Paul, Republicans will begin to look at John McCain as the guy they've known all along, the one who has a "good enough" ACU Lifetime rating of 82%. In short, he'll be the Republican John Kerry. It's easy to forget that John Kerry was all but counted out of the 2004 Democratic primary. It was going to be Howard Dean, and there were no two ways about it. Dean had the "money+poll numbers=win " formula that pundits rely on to make predictions. But then John Kerry mortgaged his house and mounted a comeback. The comeback rested on the idea that Dean gave Democrats the jitters and, Kerry, deadly boring and unprincipled though he may have been, is someone Democrats knew well enough to rely on to be their guy in the general election.

Like I noted in the first paragraph, a McCain candidacy is my own personal nightmare. I am "Anybody But McCain" for the Republican nomination. I don't trust him and my anti-McCain list grows by the day. He can't beat Hillary, and he can't be counted on to support conservative positions when they actually matter. He takes convenient stances and insults the same conservative movement he claims to be a part of when it helps him. He's too in love with being the maverick and, while I like having maverick friends who are unpredictable and drag me to Atlantic City on a Wednesday, I look for stability and consistency in my presidential candidates. I would very much like to be wrong in the predictions I've made here; it will be terrifying to be right.

When Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip, we were flooded with images of crying Israeli soldiers, upset that they had to kick their fellow Jews out of their homes. I don't know if the Palestinians they were leaving behind were crying too, but it looks like they should have been.

While the EU proclaims an Israeli-Palestinian deal "doable" in six months, Gaza is disintegrating.

Roughly 75 percent of the 1.5 million Gazans now live in poverty, up more than 10 points from the summer, according to Palestinian government officials in the West Bank.

To paraphrase, only a quarter of Palestinians in Gaza live above the poverty line. It's only getting worse, too:

Economic decline has been rapid since Hamas seized Gaza by force in June and Israel closed the territory's borders in an unprecedented lockdown. Most factories have closed, tens of thousands lost their jobs and exports and most imports are frozen.

...

Gazans say they are down to their last reserves.

Supermarket owner Mohammed Abu Sultan, 30, has only two boxes of candles left, so his customers in the Shati refugee camp will soon have to sit in the dark during frequent power outages. He's also low on cleaning products, diapers and sugar substitutes for diabetics.

"By the end of the month, we will have sold everything," he said.

And then there's the violence. Seven Fatah supporters were killed this week when Hamas opened fire on them. Hamas isn't finished with Fatah either, they mean to crush them but good:

Hamas on Tuesday moved swiftly against its Fatah rivals in Gaza following a massive rally that ended in bloodshed, arresting 400 people in an overnight crackdown and promising "additional steps" against its bitter enemy.

The threat deepened tensions between the Palestinian rivals ahead of a U.S.-sponsored peace conference later this month and appeared to set the stage for Hamas to take even tougher action against Fatah.

Despite being a conservative, I am not a monster. I want what is best for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. I no longer believe that an independent Palestinian state, run by this terrorist group or that one, is the best solution. I held out hope that the Palestinians would step up and rule themselves. They have profoundly failed. I don't know what the solution is at this point to the situation in Gaza. But I do know that pulling out the West Bank will only be an invitation to chaos. It's a feel-good solution for Europeans and Americans. Big bad Israel will let the Palestinians be free, finally. Seeing what has happened with Gaza, though, we should know that that is simply not what will happen. The West Bank will crumble under the violence, mismanagement and general corruption that seems to be the hallmark of Palestinian leadership. It's been over two years since Israel left Gaza. To paraphrase a very American phrase: are they better off than they were two years ago?