One swallow does not make a summer

Bush has been in the dark recesses of opinion polls for so long now that any chink of light is being greeted as the end of the tunnel.

An example of this is the selling of the news that Rove is not to be indicted.

"On June 12 2006, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove," Mr Luskin said in a statement.

Not enough emphasis is being put on the phrase that Fitzgerald does not anticipate seeking charges. That's hardly the cast iron get out clause that its being portrayed as. Rove's lawyers go on:

"We believe the special counsel's decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr Rove's conduct."

Okay, so while the White House and Rove's lawyers seek to make out that we have all been guilty of "baseless speculation" let's remember what we KNOW to be facts.

We now KNOW that Rove lied when he told Scott McLellan that he had nothing to do with the naming of Valerie Plame.

We KNOW that the White House through McLellan, and others, pedalled that lie publicly.

We KNOW that Bush promised to fire anyone involved in that leak and that he was obviously lying when he said that as he has singularly failed to fire Rove.

We KNOW that at the time that Bush ordered an investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's name he was well aware that he had, in fact, declassified this information with the strong possibility that this had led to her name becoming public.

They can sell this as many ways as they want, but too much muck is sticking to their walls for them ever to be able to sell this as a success.

Likewise, normally anything approaching good news emanating from Iraq is greeted with the usual cliches from the Rose Garden. "Moving forward, exporting democracy" and all that vapid nonsense.

However, the death of Zarqawi has caused Bush to do more than reiterate cliched nonsense. It's caused him to fly all the way to Iraq to reiterate cliched nonsense.

"I'm impressed by the strength of your character and your desire to succeed," the president told the new prime minister, as the officials he left behind — Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — watched via remote video link. "And I'm impressed by your strategy."

Thanks God he delivered such an important message in person. Such words of wisdom would have been diffused via video link.

There's an air of desperation in Bush's need to portray any success as a turnaround which justifies all that went before.

He, like Blair, seems unaware that his legacy has already been written and it's not a complimentary one.

Just as we have already made up our minds regarding Rove's honesty, the same is true of the Iraq war.

The killing of Zarqawi will, as Bush himself has already admitted, make no difference to the violent reality on the ground.

In both cases we are seeing a White House so desperate to get out of the darkness that every chink of light is being greeted as a rainbow.

As a man who seems to deal only in cliches, I'm surprised that Bush is not aware of Aristotle's phrase, "One swallow does not make a summer."

It's a cliche he would do well to learn. It might stop him looking, frankly, rather silly and desperate.

Tags: Rove, Bush, Iraq, turnaround, improvement,