Lowering Expectations

Bush is great at it -- his mere presence seems to lower expectations. They're trying to do it on the debates (Bush's people are already saying they expect him to stumble over words and mispronounce them) and of course they're doing it in Iraq.

Here's a good LA Times article about how the Bushies are lowering expectations all across the board -- on the Iraqi election, the Iraqi economy, Iraqi violence, and on and on.

Two fascinating tidbits. Everyone keeps deploring how Bush has only spent about $1.2 billion on reconstruction, when getting funds to the Iraqi people and getting them to work is crucial in most observers' eyes for making progress. But guess what? They haven't even accompished that.

"So far, only $1.2 billion has been disbursed, and so much of that has been eaten up in project overhead and payments to foreign firms that less than half of it has reached Iraqis, according to nongovernmental experts. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage told a House subcommittee Friday that only 77,000 Iraqis were employed on rebuilding projects. 'That's woefully inadequate,' he said."