A few years ago I called in and reached my hero, Brian Lamb, on a Friday morning installment of Washington Journal. Oh, happy day! Anyhow, Brian, no doubt sensing my ecstasy, asked me a few questions, and I told him about myself and what I did (teach American history) and eventually offered up a theory of how C-SPAN represented a Jeffersonian version of democratic conversation as opposed to a Hamiltonian preference for government by elites.

As I was the last caller for the segment, Brian's in-studio celebrity pundit guest followed me directly. It was John Podhoretz, and he immediately declared the last caller from Waco an "amazing call" and went on to elaborate on my suggestion. It was at that point that I realized Podhoretz was an exceptionally astute observer of people and ideas.

In all seriousness, I like Podhoretz, and he is right on the mark today:

The lesson of the cascading crises for this administration in its second term is a simple one: These crises would have been avoided if it hadn't been for the failure to secure victory against the insurgency in Iraq.

Read the essay in its entirety here.

You may say that this is so obvious as to not warrant a column--but Podhoretz offers several salient points worth considering and this conclusion:

Bush has almost no political capital left with his own base, as the immigration debacle indicates. All his base wants is victory in Iraq.

And it's all he should have wanted, too. But he was seduced by the argument that victory in Iraq could be secured through political progress and not through force.

If you begin a war, you have to win the war. Nothing else matters. Nothing else.

I agree 100 percent. I have long said that the key for President Bush is winning in Iraq. Do that and everything comes together.

One other connected anecdote: This is obviously the week (perhaps even the day) when the worm turned for George Bush. That is, even his friends deserted him in droves this week. Such is life for a President. Such is life.

But the difference between success and failure is often pretty thin, turning on a moment or a decision or a bounce of the ball.

I am reminded of the movie Wall Street, when at the height of his success, Bud Fox listens as his sales manager assures him with a fatherly arm around his shoulder: "From the day I laid eyes on you, son, I knew there was something special about you."

Later, when the federal agents come to take Bud Fox away for illegal doings, the same sales manager spits out with vehemence: "From the day I laid eyes on you, boy, I knew you were no good."

Today it seems that the world of punditry knew from the very beginning that George Bush was no good.