This is what the decline of the regime looks like.

Laura Bush visits Jerusalem and is hated by everybody. The Israelis protest her, and the Arabs protest her. (It seems the Israeli protestors wanted to free Jonathan Pollard, a platform, which, all other things being equal, is senseless: after all, a captured spy is a captured spy. We can be confident his job description involved not getting caught.)

Now, Mrs. Bush she were a President, the fact that nobody likes what she is doing could be legitimately taken as a sign of good, or at least prudent, policy.

But First Ladies are supposed to be liked by everybody. This point is so obvious that we doubt it has ever needed to be stated until now. Even 'controversial' First Ladies are only controversial among Americans. (Eleanor, Nancy, Hillary were pretty good at either diplomacy or statecraft). Arguably, a First Lady is sometimes (yes, because of sexist, partriarchal condescension) an instrument of foreign policy.

Protesting a policymaker is one thing; protesting a First Lady is tantamount to a manifestation of the pending loss of all civilized discourse.

--We have considered that we've been rather quiet ever since the White Smoke went up. The reasons for this are simple: there was nothing to say after that; there was nothing one would say after that; there was nothing that could be said after that. And we weren't sure what to think. --

We wuz wrong

OK, we admit it: we were, like, absolutely, totally completely wrong. Worse, we were shameless optimists. Although we were very correct about the language requirement, that was only the most obvious criterion.

But a lot of people were wrong with us. The Italian Press, for instance. We heard Cokie Roberts gasped in surprise or shock when the result was announced. Most ecclesiologists were agreed that (1) the new guy will not be the favorite going in to the voting; (2) the new guy will 'not be very closely associated with the old regime.' We were all wrong.

We would tell you that we've just been drinking ourselves into a stupor for the last month as a result, but we didn't, because that's what we did for November, and it's been getting boring.

Still, we do not underestimate the power of this battlestation. Actually, when a few years ago we were discussing the coming election with a friend, we thought that Yoda was wise about these things: "Difficult to see, the Dark Side is."