Kudos to Jim Lehrer tonight for once again ably conducting an interview with President Bush in a professional way. The interview did not brow-beat Bush and also forcefully pushed his questions. Important questions do need to be asked – and they need to be answered.

Harping partisanship does not get questions answered or issues resolved. Praise is due to figures, such as Lehrer, who defy the general current of bitterness, suspicion, and partisanship which characterizes so much of both political parties and the media.

Praise is also due especially to David Brooks of the New York Times, who values critical thinking. Too many find it too easy to meekly submit themselves as peons for their respective partisans.

Whether 21,000 more troops is too many, too few, the wrong direction, or the right step, this nation deserves a civil and thoughtful decisionmaking process to vet the idea. Even if any troop increase were to have been a mistake, the initiative potentially indicates that Bush recognizes that “slow failure” (in Bush’s own words) is what his policy has produced and that slow failure must be put to an end.

So Bush’s new strategy is incorrect, you say? It wouldn’t be the first time for him in Iraq.

What is new is that Bush may be learning that the policy he has pursued is not working effectively. The faster that leaders can follow their learning curve, the better for the nation: when leaders learn, that saves lives.

Bush’s learning curve in Iraq is too gradual (and much too slow), you say? Sure – agreed. It took far too long – years too long – for Rumsfeld and his perspective to finally be dropped. But it did (belatedly) happen. And Bush is (belatedly) trying to repair the tragic situation in Baghdad that was created by the dearth of forces and resulting anarchy that fostered paranoia and radical militias. He does now seem to understand that allowing chaos to follow Saddam’s fall was a mistake.

Granted, it is the tip rather than the iceberg that he may currently sense; not too long ago he did not appear to see so much as an ice cube on the horizon. You can see that as a good thing or a bad thing ...depending on if the ice is half full or empty! Really, it's sort of both, because it is good that he's learning, and it is unfortunate (more than unfortunate) that the learning has been taking this long and events have been taking this path.

Domestic ambushing is unproductive because does not speed Bush on that curve. Domestic ambushing on foreign policy is generally unhelpful, no matter who is in power, or what nation is involved. Death and taxes are perpetual; let’s not let bickering be perpetual, too.