I feel as if I'm always waiting for right-wingers who achieve dominance to slip up, and they rarely do. Oh, they regularly do things that make people like me (and probably you) wince (or go into a blind, stupefying rage) -- but the average Joe always seems to approve. I had a vague sense, though, that maybe, just maybe, the aircraft-carrier stunt might have been just a bit over the top -- not for fervent supporters of the war, obviously, but maybe for people (maybe just for a few soccer moms) who now wave the flag but were nervous going in.

Well, apparently it actually was over the top for the two lead bloggers on the pro-war side, Andrew Sullivan and Glenn InstaPundit. "Hubristic," says Sullivan; Insty says, "The whole leader-who-flies-jets thing seems, somehow, Third World to me." I think they've got it right. And if they thought the stunt was too much, I wonder how many average citizens thought it was infantile and self-indulgent.

By the way, I said in the early days of fighting that Bush had talked about the war as if it was all about him -- until the media took the story away from him and made it all about the soldiers and the Iraqis (in that order, unfortunately). Well, it's all about him again, isn't it? If you don't think so, check out this picture.