The Zong

Because when you are, you can decide not to adhere to your own policies. Remember when your president said that you “don’t give timelines to dictators”? So does the New York Times.

Mr. Bush’s big worry now is that Mr. Kim is playing the administration for time. Many experts think he is betting that by the time the first big deliveries of oil and aid are depleted, America will be distracted by a presidential election.

But Mr. Bush could also end up with a diplomatic triumph, one he needs desperately. To get there, he appears to have changed course. Asked in 2004 about North Korea, he said, “I don’t think you give timelines to dictators and tyrants.”

Now he appears to have concluded that sometimes the United States has to negotiate with dictators and odious rulers, because the other options — military force, sanctions or watching an unpredictable nation gain a nuclear arsenal — seem even worse.

This isn’t really much of a gotcha, I suppose, but it seems that a lot of critics — John “Grumpy/Frumpy” Bolton among them — are not all that thrilled about the deal with North Korea, or the Country Formerly Known as a Member of the Axis of Evil. Elements of the “new” deal were brokered by President Clinton, elements that the Bush Administration actually rejected in the past.

As the White House took credit on Tuesday for what it called a “first step,” it found itself pilloried by conservatives who attacked the administration for folding in negotiations with a charter member of what Mr. Bush called the “axis of evil,” and for replicating key elements of Mr. Clinton’s agreement with North Korea.

At the same time, Mr. Bush’s advisers were being confronted by barbs from veterans of the Clinton administration, who argued that the same deal struck Tuesday had been within reach several years and a half-dozen weapons ago, had only Mr. Bush chosen to negotiate with the North rather than fixate on upending its government.

So Bush was against the deal before he was for it? I’m really glad Americans didn’t elect a goddamn flip-flopper!

- M.G.