Courtesy ABC News

I haven't written about President Bush for quite a while. I prefer to look toward the future. But his delusional exit interview with ABC's Charles Gibson made me pay attention again.

When Gibson asked Bush what he was "unprepared for" when he became president, Bush gave this rather stunning answer.

"Well, I think I was unprepared for war. I didn't campaign and say, 'Please vote for me, I'll be able to handle an attack.'"

What an odd, self-pitying outbreak of candor for this strange president. I'm not sure how anyone could run for president and be "unprepared" for war. The job includes the title of commander in chief of the armed forces. It's true, though, that Bush didn't campaign as someone who would quickly start two wars, and commit the U.S. to a belligerent and reckless policy of unilateral preemptive attacks on our enemies based on perceived threats, not hostile actions (that's the "Bush doctrine," in case you're reading, Sarah Palin).

This was a man who warned against nation building during the 2000 campaign, who said our foreign policy must be "humble," who seemed opposed to the Clinton administration's interventionist foreign policy whether in partly humanitarian missions like Bosnia, or defensive strikes against Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Osama bin Laden in Sudan. Few people who voted for Bush thought he was gunning to be a war president, based on his campaign rhetoric, so it was an incredible bait-and-switch when he became one. In retrospect, though, it seems clear that he arrived in the White House surrounded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other twisted neocons who were determined to topple Saddam Hussein given any excuse, or none at all.

Certainly the president was being candid in another quite concrete way: He was woefully unprepared for the Iraq war, invading with inadequate planning for the occupation and rebuilding that had to follow the fall of Saddam. Almost 5,000 Americans, and an unknown but much larger number of Iraqi civilians, have died thanks to his lack of preparation. History will prove him right on that score, but it won't be kind to him.

Bush made a second stunning admission in his interview with Gibson. "The biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq," he said. "A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess."

What a cowardly, buck-passing answer. It was his administration that was responsible for the faulty intelligence; his administration that notoriously "stove-piped" the available evidence to make the case for war, ignoring all facts that contradicted the neocons' theories, crushing any dissent in the Pentagon and intelligence establishment. His administration then sold that corrupt evidence to Congress and browbeat members into authorizing the use of military force on the eve of the 2002 midterm election, by depicting them as traitors and sissies if they raised questions. Now Bush is trying to say he was misled by the "failure" of his own intelligence leaders and Cabinet advisors? What a loser.

One last related distortion was Bush's lamenting that he hadn't changed the political tone in Washington. "9/11 unified the country, and that was a moment where Washington decided to work together. I think one of the big disappointments of the presidency has been the fact that the tone in Washington got worse, not better."

But it was the Bush administration that changed the tone. On the heels of a brief bipartisan moment after 9/11, Karl Rove and others began laying the groundwork for a 2002 midterm campaign that would use the terror attacks against Democrats, and make sure that anyone who didn't support Bush's military and intelligence policies was smeared as being on the side of al-Qaida. Like the war and the intelligence failure, Bush bears personal responsibility for the ugly tone during his administration, but once again, the buck stops somewhere else.

Bush brags to Gibson that he's proud that "I didn't sell my soul for politics" during the eight years of the presidency. If that's true, it's only because he sold it a long time ago.

Update: In letters, several readers note an additional falsehood in Bush's interview: His claim that we "had to" invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn't let weapons inspectors in. Of course, Hans Blix and his team had gone into Iraq in late 2002 for the first time since 1998, and found no evidence of WMDs. In March, 2003, Bush demanded they leave before they completed their work so he could commence the invasion. Robert Parry recounts the sequence of events here.  "Had we had a few months more [of inspections before the war], we would have been able to tell both the CIA and others that there were no weapons of mass destruction [at] all the sites that they had given to us," Blix told the Associated Press in 2004.

Obama's foreign policy and national security team, formally announced on Monday, was impressive in its genuine diversity. This wasn't faux diversity or tokenism, but a group of people who represent a refreshingly wide spectrum on ideology, gender, race, age and life experience. Three women, three African-Americans, three white men, two Republicans, or perhaps independents. It shows the world that Obama is pulling together a strong team that looks like America, but that his primary value is excellence and competence. He also made clear this now-cliché "team of rivals" will be expected to debate and even clash, but he will make final decisions and set policy.

I think this was a very smart set of moves on Obama's part. You have continuity in Robert Gates (though not continuity in the Iraq mission); you have change in Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder and Obama sounded important notes about protecting security while also protecting Americans' freedoms. "The Department of Justice plays a unique role on this team," Holder noted. "It is incumbent on those of us who lead the department to ensure not only that the nation is safe but also that our laws and traditions are respected ... We can and we must ensure that the American people remain secure and that the great constitutional guarantees that define us as a nation are truly valued." I was excited about Holder's statement, and didn't want it to get lost in the hoopla over Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

This is a team that will protect the nation's military might but bring back diplomacy, global partnership and concern for human rights. They're focused on terror, but also the global inequality that leads to terror. You look at that group onstage Monday, and while you may quibble about one choice or another, it's hard not to think Obama looks like a supremely strong leader to have assembled them.

I've already written about why I think Hillary Clinton is a strong choice for secretary of state. On Monday Obama himself made the point I made on "Hardball" two weeks ago: The foreign policy differences between them are very small, and were exaggerated for political effect during the primary. To the extent that there were differences, she liked to play the experienced hawk, while he was generally more of a voice for diplomacy, of sitting down with dictators, talking to our enemies. She didn't want him sitting down with foreign dictators with no preconditions, so she'll be in charge of setting up those meetings for him. It's a funny symbolism. I assume they'll both be getting some 3 a.m. calls.

I also think we should pay attention to what Obama praised  about Clinton: her discipline and her work ethic. He clearly sees someone who's going to work hard to advance his agenda, which he knows is also her agenda. She cannot succeed if in any way if she undermines him, and they both know that.

And while the Clintons are controversial at home, partly because of their own missteps but also thanks to an industry of professional Clinton haters, they both have a tremendous global reputation and global relationships. They stand for a time when the U.S. was more respected in the world. I think Obama is smart to annex the name and the relationships on his behalf.

I had to debate Christopher Hitchens, Clinton-hater-in-chief, on "Hardball" today. I thought I held my own, but when I watched it I caught many outright falsehoods that I missed, like his calling Saudi Arabia's Wahhabist leadership the "main clientele" of former President Clinton. Hitchens has allowed himself to be deranged by his Clinton hatred, and it's unfortunate to see a smart guy disabled by his own bias.

My bottom line is, if Hitchens is right, and Hillary Clinton is an utterly unqualified political hack who only cares about her political future and her husband's, what does her selection say about Barack Obama? Either he's naive and wimpy, and hasn't availed himself of the superior knowledge of the Clintons that Hitchens claims (or he knows and doesn't care about it); or he knows everything Hitchens does and picked her anyway for craven domestic political reasons: to get the Clintons inside his tent, not outside of it, and to co-opt a potential 2012 rival. That would be more politically venal than almost anything Hitchens accuses Clinton of doing: sacrificing our nation's global diplomatic interests to his domestic political ambitions.

So now Hitchens is extending his baseless charges of corruption against the Clintons to smear Obama. This, of course, makes me admire Obama all the more: He's taken both Clintons inside his tent because he needs them and recognizes their formidable domestic and foreign political and policy skills. He's spending political capital on them, because he thinks they're worth it, and saying a big, polite "up yours" to the Clinton haters who've made a career out of spreading this garbage. Those are my words, not Obama's, of course; he's much more diplomatic.

You can watch my debate with Hitchens here:

I was getting ready to expand on the sappy Thanksgiving post I wrote on Open Salon last night when news began to unfold Wednesday about the Mumbai attacks. We don't know enough as I write for me to say anything intelligent about this, but I found myself counting my blessings again, in a more somber way, and including Barack Obama and Joe Biden among them.

It now seems particularly ridiculous that Republicans tried to make an issue out of Biden's factual statement, during the campaign, that Obama would be "tested" by our adversaries early in his term. Of course he will, and maybe this set of attacks will be part of it, maybe it will be something brand-new after Jan. 20.

I find myself particularly grateful for Obama's calm and his clear judgment as I think about future awful days like this one. I'm glad he got a jump on his economic team this week, and I'm relatively happy with the news about his foreign policy and defense team as it emerges, particularly Hillary Clinton at State and Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador. Frankly, I'm torn about reports that Obama will keep Robert Gates as secretary of Defense. Like all Iraq war opponents and Bush critics, I'd like a clean break with the past. On the other hand, Gates was an improvement on Donald Rumsfeld, and wasn't responsible for Abu Ghraib or Rumsfeld's retaliation against war skeptics and critics in Defense.

Watching these scenes from Mumbai, I am a little more sympathetic to arguments that Obama needs experience and stability at Defense as he takes charge. But just a little. It would be wrong to let an ugly terror attack, wherever it occurs, shake our values and our commitment to a sane foreign and defense policy. We tried that seven years ago and look where it got us.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm grateful for your readership and support.

I don't know whether Barack Obama can get the economy out of the ditch, but so far his moves have been reassuring. Most important, he's inched carefully into the breach created by the lame-duck, clueless Bush administration.

But it may be too carefully. I find myself wondering whether there's more he or his team could do to change the awful terms of the Citigroup bailout, for instance. And did he have anything to say about the Fed's $600 billion plan to buy more troubled mortgage-backed securities, which even Paul Krugman can't understand?

I watched Obama's Tuesday press conference thinking he may be trying a little too hard to reassure Republicans he's concerned about "fiscal responsibility," as though Republicans have a claim to any kind of responsibility after the last eight years.  Singling out a relatively tiny program that rewards millionaire farmers, as Obama did, isn't going to reassure anybody that he's got a secret weapon for cutting pork. Nor is his promise to go over the budget line by line. Maybe these are a needed sop to people afraid of Great Society overreaching, but I'm not sure he should be worried about that. I'm most afraid of underreaching.

I have been a great advocate of trusting Obama in this transition, and for the most part, I do. It's early to second-guess his appointments, and I'm not inclined to, because they all seem sound. (I think Glenn Greenwald and other bloggers deserve a round of applause for making it politically impossible for him to appoint John Brennan to a top intelligence post. Obama's reported decision to retain Defense Secretary Robert Gates isn't surprising and probably merits its own column.) On the economy, Andrew Leonard has already laid out the reasons Timothy Geithner was a strong pick for Treasury secretary -- mainly, his relatively early (if still belated) recognition of the problems with the greed-inspired toxic phantasms of the lending industry.

And while Greenwald today sounded some valid warning notes about the kvelling over Geithner and National Economic Council chairman Larry Summers -- making the important point that both of them are implicated in the deregulation that led to the current collapse, and the overreliance on monetary policy that slowed a strong response to the crisis -- it's going to be hard to find anyone experienced in government who wasn't misguided about those things. The question is, how early did Obama's new team members realize they were wrong, and what did they do? (Two must-reads on this issue: John Cassidy's New Yorker profile of Ben Bernanke, which shows how everyone at the Fed, including Geithner, was behind the curve, and how they have tried to play catch-up; and John Judis' disturbing piece about Obama's Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer, who likewise seems to have realized too late that monetary policy alone couldn't stop the slide.)

The bigger question about Obama's economic plan is going to be whether and when he'll be able to tell the truth about how much blame the Bush administration bears for the current mess, and what it's going to take to get us out of it. Speaking today, the president-elect again talked about the need for bipartisanship in this time of crisis. Meanwhile, Grover Norquist was on CNBC blaming the crisis on Democrats retaking control of Congress in 2006 and raising the specter of repealing Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Whatever the problem, the solution for most Republicans is tax cuts for the rich, even after the Bush economic agenda brought us to the brink of ruin. Bravo to David Sirota for stating the factually true and obvious: Bill Clinton's tax increases on the wealthy after the last Bush recession helped usher in an era of prosperity.

The issue isn't as simple as tax cuts or tax hikes, and this economic downturn is much more complex and troubling than that of the early '90s. But Democrats need to say, every chance they get, that they are inheriting a crisis caused by an overdose of Republican, free-market economic policy, which tried to establish a tax-cutting, regulation-slashing, winner-take-all, loser-gets-nothing (unless he runs a big dumb corporation that took unconscionable risks driven by greed, and then he gets a bailout) paradise. I wanted Obama to say that in Chicago this afternoon.

Even as I write that, I know that's not the president we elected. As much as we on the left like to think we're his base, and like to talk about how much he owes us, Obama made a conscious decision to pitch himself as a post-partisan guy who'd appeal to centrists and even Republicans. I wrote about that during the primary season; Digby writes about it here. Now, he did hone a more populist message in the last months of the campaign, and I believe he won largely because people believed he'd deliver real solutions to the economic crisis. Obama himself noted that today, saying, "We had a decisive win, because of the extraordinary desire for change on the part of the American people."

But he then went on say that "it's important we enter into the administration with a sense of humility, and recognize that wisdom isn't the monopoly of any one party." I'm sure he's right; it just doesn't feel that way right now. As Obama speaks to the other party with respect and diplomacy, I desperately want him to remember that he'll never have a window like this one to make big economic and political change. There's actually a bipartisan consensus behind a big domestic stimulus package; next week we'll be asking experts what it should do. It's fine for Obama to talk nicely to conservatives; I just frankly hope he's listening mostly to liberals as he shapes his economic plan.

Tuesday's short press conference also gave us a window onto what reporters are concerned about: whether Obama is confusing people about who's president (if only) and whether he's going to "overreach."  Oy. That's why I'm largely inclined to give Obama a pass until he's actually president, and can do things -- rather than just talk about them, and have the media worry about problems that don't exist. Jan. 20 can't come soon enough for me.

Given the state of the economy, it's hard to cheer when any organization shuts down, but I enjoyed a Nevada newspaper's report that funder Sheldon Adelson is set to pull the plug on Ari Fleischer's silly Freedom's Watch.

Fleischer launched the conservative advocacy group, set up to support pro-war GOP candidates, with self-aggrandizing bravado, announcing, "For people who believe in peace through strength, the cavalry is coming." Describing pampered Beltway lobbyists and fat cats as "cavalry" in a time of war was bad, but it was worse when Fleischer used real disabled soldiers in his Freedom's Watch ads, but couldn't remember their names.

On Monday the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that after spending $30 million in the last election cycle, Freedom's Watch was winding down. The group's spokesman refused to give the Review Journal a list of the races where it was active, although in Las Vegas itself it ran goofy, ineffectual ads against Democrat Dina Titus, who won.

In the anti-meritocracy that is the GOP, Fleischer is sure to be rewarded with another cushy post, but let's celebrate small victories.

I find myself in a very strange position this week. When the world was overtaken by Obamamania last year, I was a late swooner. Some may recall that I even occasionally criticized the Democratic nominee. So why am I mainly happy with the way Obama's handled the presidential transition, when so many early swooners, especially in the blogosphere and mainstream media, are so critical?

Since his most controversial move is (reportedly) considering Hillary Clinton for secretary of state, it's clear my respect for Clinton has a lot to do with it. I thought she'd be an excellent president, so it's not surprising I think she'd be a good choice for secretary of state. She's smart and tough, has a lot of respect worldwide, she had an international portfolio as first lady, and she's strengthened that experience as a senator and on the Armed Services Committee. She'd also be a strong voice for women's rights globally.

But there's one qualification to my belief that she'd be a good choice: I only think so if Barack Obama thinks so. If he believes she can contribute to his foreign policy, but most important, carry it out; that she can represent him well and inform his worldview; that she can improve our standing abroad, well, then, I believe she can, too. This choice is neither a popularity contest nor a meritocracy; it's all about the person the president believes can best represent his foreign policy and America's interests in the world. He has to deeply trust the man or woman in that role.

One reason I believe Clinton could loyally represent Obama's foreign policy is that I think the differences between them were exaggerated for political reasons during the primary season. He had a political stake in portraying her as a hawk; she had one in portraying him as naive and unready. He was right about Iraq from the get-go and she was wrong, but their positions on how to get out were virtually identical. Despite their debates about how and when to sit down with dictators, I think they'd take much the same approach to dealing with both our enemies and our friends. So it makes sense to me that Obama would seriously consider her for the post.

Now, if they continue to talk and he has doubts about her capacity to loyally represent him abroad; if concerns emerge about President Clinton's global dealings; if any number of genuine troubles arise that convince Obama that despite his initial enthusiasm, it's not the right choice, I'll accept that. The only bad reason not to pick Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is the predictable media mob of Clinton haters telling him not to.

I just finished a "Hardball" debate on this with Michelle Bernard, who said it was "bordering on sheer lunacy" that Obama was considering Clinton. My friend Chris Matthews, no Clinton fan, led off the segment blaming the Clintons for the flurry of leaks about her possible appointment, although I reminded him that when NBC's Andrea Mitchell broke the news last week, she cited only Obama sources. It's clear there's more leaking from the Obama transition team -- about Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder and Tom Daschle, not just Clinton -- than there was from the campaign team. Rather amazingly, Matthews said I won him over with my argument that people who trust and believe in Obama should trust him on the choice of Clinton as secretary of state as well. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the selection of former Sen. Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services should mollify those who were beginning to wonder whether Obama was leaning too heavily on Clinton loyalists in his staff and Cabinet picks. My God, it just seems early to worry. He has a ton of appointments left. The only reason Clinton is getting so much attention is that Clinton haters are making her the top story. Who's going to be secretary of the Treasury, and how should he or she modify the bailout Henry Paulson is managing so poorly? Who's Obama's education pick, and what can that person do to improve American education, especially for low-income kids? Why aren't we debating those questions all day and night on cable news? Trust me: It's not because Bill Clinton is holding a gun to someone's head, demanding that we talk about him and his wife 24/7, no matter what Christopher Hitchens might claim.