Bush told he is playing into Bin Laden's hands: "A senior US intelligence official is about to publish a bitter condemnation of America's counter-terrorism policy, arguing that the west is losing the war against al-Qaida and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands."

NYT Review of the new Clinton biography: "As his celebrated 1993 speech in Memphis to the Church of God in Christ demonstrated, former President Bill Clinton is capable of soaring eloquence and visionary thinking. But as those who heard his deadening speech nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta well know, he is also capable of numbing, self-conscious garrulity.

Unfortunately for the reader, Mr. Clinton's much awaited new autobiography "My Life" more closely resembles the Atlanta speech, which was so long-winded and tedious that the crowd cheered when he finally reached the words "In closing . . ."

The book, which weighs in at more than 950 pages, is sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history."

One of my co-workers is a proud Canuck (we often trade fun little barbs making fun of each country), and we have nice political-related discussions (he's a polisci major at Uni of Toronto). One of the questions that was brought up was "Why are Americans so obsessed with JFK?"

Good question. As I covered in a related earlier post, Americans are obsessed with premature death; we give the dead person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their natural abilities and what they "could" of done.

Now, let's juxtapose the death of a young, charismatic leader who did accomplish a lot during his short tenure. Given our list of ineffectual Presidents, you can really see why we do obsess with JFK. He COULD of done SO MUCH.

Maybe I'm a bit harsh on the expectations of our Presidents, but I can't really think of a "great" President within our lifetime. Clinton was charismatic but ineffectual. Bush is effective but uncharismatic (with the whole "what the hell is he doing?" aspect). Bush Sr. was uncharismatic but managed to accomplish enough without stepping on too many toes a less radical version of Bush Jr. ... Reagan was the right leader for the right time and did pull the US out of its financial troubles and did lay the proper economic groundwork for Clinton to reap the rewards of the '90s... Of course before that we had Carter/Ford/Nixon... all equally boring.

What the hell? Why can't we not have good Presidents? And with our current "crop" of Presidents ... Nader, Kerry and Bush Jr., things do not look promising. You know things are bad when people are voting for John Kerry because they hate the incumbent so much.

Sigh...