Any doubt that George Bush is unfit to hold the office of President was resolved this week, in the aftermath of the Richard Clarke revelations. His patent inability to admit error would be the envy of any fifteenth century papist. At some point, one would hope that a more rational head in the Administration would say to His Highness that having his flacks (or as one cartoonist says, his "flying attack monkeys") use every charge in the books to assasinate the character of his critics is not only immoral, but politically counterproductive as well. I suppose that's what you get for having a President who sees himself as God's Righteous General. As William Saleton writes in Slate this morning:

It's funny, in retrospect, that Bush ran for president as a uniter. To unite a country, you have to acknowledge and reconcile differences. Bush doesn't work toward unity; he assumes it. He doesn't reconcile differences; he denies them. It's his tax cut or nothing. It's his homeland security bill or nothing. It's his terrorism policy or nothing. If you're playing politics, this is smart strategy. But if you're trying to help the country, it's foolish. The odds are that 50 percent of the other party's ideas are right. By ruling them out, you start your presidency 50 percent wrong.

Some of the resulting mistakes may be inconsequential. Some may cost 3,000 lives. Some may cost 2 million jobs. "If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years … we would not have had the kind of job growth we've had," Cheney bragged three weeks ago. That's the way this administration thinks: We do things differently. But being different doesn't guarantee you a better result—just a different one.

Taken together with Mr. Clarke's testimony this afternoon before the 9/11 Commission, in which he did something that Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al., have refused to do, which is take responsibility, it is a damning portrait.