The headlines about the prisons look awful for the Bush administration, but I think the Bushies are going to get through this.

This moment reminds me of the moment when Enron and other corporate scandals broke. Then, as now, the Bushies elbowed their way to the front of the outrage parade -- they persuaded the American people that no one was more appalled by the crimes and abuses than they were; they boasted of multiple investigations and embraced proposed reforms.

It worked.

Remember that the Bush administration is run by businessmen, and big business has been very, very good at damage control of this kind ever since the Tylenol poisonings of 1982. The Bushies will flood the zone with mea culpas and remorse until this goes away.

We shouldn't expect a big scandal to bring Bush down all at once. Besides the Bushies' skill at damage control, a lot of people like Bush and rally to him when he seems to be under attack. What seems to damage him far more is slow, relentless, ongoing failure -- the day-to-day Iraq quagmire, ongoing job weakness, relentlessly high gas prices.