Good Work, Chimpy!

Bush went off-script at the NATO meeting in Romania to push for offering membership to Georgia and the Ukraine. Some other NATO nations were not amused. Bush lost.

The world has changed. Other nations are not going to follow meekly along because Bush wants to do something. (Hell, he's even losing the ability to cow the Democrats in Congress, which is why he may now have to cut a deal on the FISA bill.) NATO is an organization that operates on consensus in the issue of admitting new nations, which means that the smart way to bring up a nomination is to do all of the hard work behind the scenes. There should only be a public mention of that when the deal has been done.

Only a rank overconfident amateur or a complete idiot would make a public announcement the first step, which is why Bush did it just that way.