The guilty verdict in 4 of "Scooter" Libby's 5 charges come as a bit of a relief. The information which has come out regarding the Bush administration's machinations to promote its agenda has been deeply troubling. Perhaps the reasons behind the plummet in support for the war as Bush is handling it are multifold:

1. Bush's policies from the last 4 years have been, it is shown, ineffective. Not only were they ineffective, but they led to problems which should not have arisen.

2. Bush's policies have been assaulted in the popular media, partly because of their failure and partly because of the need to have news to report and the preference of exciting (if negative) headlines to stories which are less exciting (if more positive) but also have become increasingly difficult to find.

3. Bush's policies are hated because of their connection to Bush himself.

Opposition to Bush himself has come from several sources.

First chronologically, and not to be ignored, is the substantial opposition which emerged in the wake of the ugliness of the 2000 post-election, in which both sides (but I would assert particularly the Democrats) were willing to bend or ignore formal rules and established law in order to promote their own champion; the national trauma of the 2000 election was not that the election was close - rather, it was that the parties made a bitter and ugly battle of (1876, 1824, and 1800 excluded) unparalled proportion.

Also, as presidencies progress, the honeymoon ends and increasing numbers of constituents are alienated. Bush has needlessly embraced the establishment of alienated voters: the run up to war in Iraq was misstructured, the post-war was botched, and the counterinsurgency which continues today (its ultimate success still to be seen but hopes for success in doubt) caused needless alienation. The Bush administration has been wrong on and in Iraq to such a prolific degree that, when a story like Libby's comes to the fore, it becomes increasingly possible to see the administration's gaffs as being premeditated lies rather than simple mistakes. To be wrong so much would require an idiot factor in the White House to a degree which only the most vitriolic Liberals would assert. (The fact that these bitter partisans accuse Bush of both supreme idiocy and moral bile - despite the tenuous compatability of the two assertions - is annoying, too.) For many who hear a stream of mistakes mixed with a torrent of accusations of malice, it becomes challenging to continue to give the benefit of the doubt, and it is increasingly difficult to be willing to do so.