Bush’s State of the Union address featured national security and the war on terror as one of his major topics, and he never mentioned Osama Bin Laden once. He has co-opted Iraq so successfully into the W on T that hardly anybody even calls him on it anymore.

If I didn’t have a personal stake in matters like, oh, say, the fate of our country, I might be able to step back and marvel at the way that he’s managed to bully the terms of the narrative to his liking and have the media and a good chunk of the electorate trot along behind. It’s a triumph of mass manipulation. As it is, though, I don’t marvel — I just grit my teeth and hope for the best in November.