it blowing up in his face, and not just in the opinion of liberal, but conservative commentators, too? In spite of your omniscient chin-stroking and brow-wrinkling, you have to admit Mitt fucked up big time.

Sometimes I think you give Democrats entirely too much credit as Machiavellian conspirators. They usually look their best at times like this when Republicans hand them an opportunity on a silver platter. If Romney had waited 48 hours, consulted with his advisors, thought it over carefully and put out a carefully crafted PRESIDENTIAL response, he might have really been able to cynically exploit this crisis to boost his campaign. Instead, he provided Obama a great line "he shoots before he aims". If he gets elected, let's hope he's better at running the free world than he is at managing his presidential campaign.

Except for Iraq, Obama's strategies in the MidEast have not been all that radically different from his predecessors, as you yourself have often pointed out when trying to cover up for the Bush Gang. The Arab Spring has hit the region like a tsunami, with no warning, and Obama has been doing a pretty good job so far of surfing this unpredictable wave. There's no way it could have been predicted or prepared for, and there's still no guarantee he will, or won't, wipe out. But he's still riding his board.

As far as the Conservative criticism of his middle east policy in the recent past, it has been uncoordinated, self-contradictory, haphazard, incoherent, long on generalities and rhetoric but short on alternatives and predictions. And some of it, as in this most recent Romney expectoration, has spilled in their lap and dribbled down their leg. You have to admit, this has really turned into a Wile E. Coyote moment for the Mittster.

Jimmy Carter lost an election because rioters stormed an embassy and took diplomats hostage and his military rescue mission failed spectacularly, with American casualties.

Ronald Reagan lost 250 Marines in Lebanon and nothing happened, except he invaded Grenada.

No, I don't blame either man. Neither could have realistically predicted events, and they both responded in the best way possible. But history doesn't remember it that way, and neither did the American voter.

Sometimes shit happens. And sometimes it falls where no one can smell it.