A gossip columnist at E! Online wrote earlier this month that Laura and George Bush are living apart because he's drinking again and she can't stand it. While not offering any opinion as to the truth of the rumor, Atrios says it would absolutely be news if it were true, as does Jim Henley at High Clearing.

I say: Yeah, it would be news, but would it matter?

Here's the question: Do you notice a sudden downturn in Bush's competence lately? I don't -- he seems as mind-bogglingly inept as ever. If he wasn't drinking in the first term and he really is drinking now, I can't tell the difference.

The myth of Bush is that he was a dipsomaniac who screwed up everything he touched in his career until he hit middle age, after which he became sober and competent. But he didn't become competent. He just hitched his wagon to an evil political brainiac -- and to a tidal shift in party identification in his home state that any idiot could have ridden to political success -- and from there he got one of the easiest high-profile jobs in politics, which he used as a stepping stone to the hardest. Was he ever truly competent throughout this whole period?

So if he's gone back to drinking now, I say, so what? What difference does it make?