This morning on NPR's Morning Edition, Commentator Russell Roberts (of George Mason University) compared the creation of democracy in Iraq to baking a cake. His point was that even if you know the ingredients, if you don't use the right amount or in the right order, all you get is a mess. By this analogy, Roberts hopes to excuse the horrible showing that W. and his buddies have made, by implying that they simple got a step out of order or used "too much" of an ingredient (likely, given their "Father Knows Best" attitude, they would try and claim all these problems stem from "too much freedom too soon"). Roberts exhorts his listeners that we should "lower our expectations" for democracy in Iraq.

That's W's theme all right--his whole goal is that if you don't expect much from him, then it's easy to call his performance a success. But as soon as you start comparing his so-called successes to those of others, he trots out all those old warhorses, blaming the problems on Clinton (like "I inherited this poor economy from Clinton"), the CIA (like "I received poor intelligence"), or even the best bugaboo in the world, terrorism. Unlike the Truman era, on the Bush desk, the buck gets passed to whomever is handy at the moment. From the earliest debate against Gore, which was called a success for Bush simply because he made it all the way through without falling off the podium, Bush's modus operandi has been to set his high jump so low that he can step over it and proclaim that as a victory.

But let's return to that whole "baking a cake" analogy. Why has W. pulled such flattened, ugly, and uneatable cake from the Iraq oven? Because he thought that baking a cake was like Betty Crocker--you know the type, where you simply add eggs and water to the prepackaged mix. Unfortunately, Bush's Betty Crocker was the neocons, whose prepackaging was seriously lacking some cake ingredients. W and his buddies thought they had an easy baker, one cake that no one could screw up--but the rats (mainly one named Chalabi) had already been at the box.

And, for the American people,what is the lesson? As with cake, and presidents, caveat emptor.

(With props to Jill for the Betty Crocker analogy.)