THE POLITICS OF THE WAR: Bill Stuntz, writing in the Weekly Standard, says that voter dissatisfaction with the war stems as much from a sense that Bush isn’t fighting hard enough as from a sense that it’s going badly: “Voters may indeed want America either to win or get out of Iraq. But I bet they’d prefer winning to getting out. The real problem is that we aren’t doing either.” Michael Barone, however, sees some spine-stiffening among the electorate.

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus looks at reports from Iraq and comments: “One wonders if the Washington players are now so locked into the hell-in-a-handbasket Iraq story line–in large part because the polls support it–that they are incapable of grokking a promising trend in the news.”