Things have been going from bad to worse over on the other side of the Potomac.  The Bush Cheney '04 camp in Arlington seems to be suffering setbacks by the hour.  Indeed, even its best efforts, such as last night's debate, seem to slip away in the light of the next day.  The campaign seems to be drifting and running out of ideas.  The hot light of media and blog attention is rapidly dismembering its 'lie early, lie often' strategy.  As the Kerry Edwards camp continues to build up a head of steam, there seems little Bush can do right.

Take the message on Iraq.  Bush arch-satrap Donald Rumsfeld slipped Monday and deeply undercut the al Qaeda-Saddam rationale by admitting that he had not “seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two.” Even more stunning was the admission of Jerry Bremer, former CPA chief in Baghdad, that “the one thing that would have improved the situation - would have been having more troops in Iraq at the beginning and throughout."   Reporters quickly uncovered that Bremer had asked multiple times for more troops--requests that were denied by the White House.

Seemingly moments after these admissions had been fed into the news cycle, key Bush assertions about the rationale for the Iraq war were debunked by releases of phone book-sized government reports.  First, a comprehensive CIA report indicated that contrary to Administration claims, Iraq had voluntarily destroyed all of its weapons of mass destruction almost immediately after the 1991 Gulf War in an attempt to comply with U.N. sanctions.  Another CIA report stated that Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein had sheltered number-one-with-a-bullet Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could not be backed up with any conclusive evidence.  

It got worse.  Reports over the weekend also showed that the Administration was fully aware that the vaunted aluminum tubes which figured so prominently in Powell's U.N. presentation were not for nuclear enrichment purposes.

The press of events also seemed to be raining beat-downs on the Bush Administration.  As if on cue, the Iranian government admitted that it had been processing yellowcake into Uranium Hexafluoride, the first step toward enrichment into nuclear fuel which could be used in the construction of nuclear weapons.

All attempts by the previously high-flying Bush team to get their “pitch to zero” seemed to be similarly doomed.  At first take, the collective judgment had been that Vice President Dick Cheney had at least debated Sen. John Edwards to a draw, if not better.  But by morning, Cheney's claim that Edwards was so absent from the Senate that he had never met him while presiding over the senior chamber was dismantled by legions of bloggers armed with photos of him and Edwards together. 

Cheney's attempts to bolster his lies with reference to a fact checking website led to another blunder.  The Administration's resident Sith Lord erroneously directed viewers to a parked domain name by mixing up the .com and .org in the name.  Staffers at the hosting company noticed the spike in visitors and promptly directed the traffic to George Soros' new website, which screamed “President Bush Is Endangering Our Safety, Hurting Our Vital Interests and Undermining American Values.”  By evening, Newsweek's lead story was “Rewriting History: Cheney's Assertions in Debate Open to Question.”  Running right next to it at the top of the MSNBC website?  NO IRAQI WMD. Damn.

The twin parades of bad news and blunders collided with a third: The Polls.  Rasmussen's daily Prez Track poll showed Kerry pulling even with the President for the first time in weeks.  The Washington Post tracking poll had Kerry surging to within two points of Bush.  Coming on top of the weekend's Newsweek poll showing Kerry leading, the news could not be worse.

The Bush response?  As usual, more of the same.  Bush's “significant speech” designed to turn the tide was a barely-altered version of his stump speech.  Rove's lie, lie, lie and lie again strategy left Bush little room for maneuver.

Breathing room?  You know there is none.  Bush, coming off the disastrous Thursday Night Massacre, must come back big Friday night to stay in the race.  He'll need all the Klonopin in the world just to stay on the stage.

Bush's  Presidency suddenly hangs in the balance.  To echo the famous Six Million Dollar Man intro, he truly is a “man barely alive.”  Can Rove rebuild him?  Signs point to no.