If the Afghanistan campaign and the invasion of Iraq - the apprehension, dead or alive, of Osama bin Laden and the neutralizing of all those WMDs Saddam Hussein had pointed in our direction - are anything by which to judge the capabilites of a Commander-in-Chief, then I think we all have a pretty clear picture of Bush's "strategery".

Obviously neither of us knows whether Bush was expressing confidence or not. You are quite right: unscripted, the man is incomprehensible - that's what I mean about "Bring it on!" being "sound and fury, signifying nothing". Perhaps, like FDR, Bush should have been clearly expressing such confidence in our troops. Instead we got "Sis-boom-bah!" Roosevelt's "with confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain inevitable triumph" sounds like an inspiring coach with faith in his team. "Bring it on!" sounds like someone capering on the sidelines brandishing pom-poms in a game with predicted overtime running to decades.

Of course Clinton's draft-dodging is no better than Bush's draft-dodging. The difference is that one lies about it and the other doesn't; plus, as a sorta bonus, one is a deserter and the other isn't. Sorry, but - to my mind - one of these is worse than the other. Their political parties are irrelvant - unless you're trying to imply that Democrats tend to be more honest than Republicans (not necessarily my experience).