Bushnak the magnificent

As Gen. David H. Petraeus today gets ready to present to Capitol Hill his initial assessment of the "surge" strategy in Iraq, a just-released New York Times/CBS News poll shows that most Americans trust, by a wide margin, not the President, not the Congress, but military leaders to bring the war "to a successful end."

The poll found that both Congress, whose approval rating now stands at its lowest level since Democrats took control from the Republicans last year, and Mr. Bush enter the debate with little public confidence in their ability to deal with Iraq. Only 5 percent of Americans — a strikingly low number for a sitting president’s handling of such a dominant issue — said they most trusted the Bush administration to resolve the war, the poll found. Asked to choose among the administration, Congress and military commanders, 21 percent said they would most trust Congress and 68 percent expressed most trust in military commanders.

Of course, the New York Times (being the New York Times) looked at these results and immediately smelled a Bush conspiracy:

That is almost certainly why the White House has presented General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker as unbiased professionals, not Bush partisans.

Ah, yes. The President hasn't a clue when it comes to predicting things like how Iraqis would react once their country was liberated from an oppressive regime, or the ferocity of hurricanes, but when it comes to American sentiment with respect to the conduct of a war, why, the man is positively clairvoyant!