Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner talks with Peter Hart and David Gergen about why the Republicans lost the 2006 election. The interview concludes with Peter Hart’s take how Bush will be remembered politically:

“The Bush presidency will be a the bottom of the heap, period. It will be not only a presidency without accomplishments but a presidency that put America on the wrong track. This is an administration that knew how to play politics but didn’t understand the sweep of history. The next administration and the administration after that will be digging out from everything that Bush has left us. Iraq, civil liberties, human rights, basic domestic policies — in each and every case, they played the political card rather than the American card.”

Peter Hart has done public-opinion research for thirty governors and forty U.S. senators, from Hubert Humphrey to Jay Rockefeller. You can read the entire interview in the November 30, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone. I’m still searching for a link.

What do George Bush and Dick Cheney dream about when they’re deep in REM sleep? James Wolcott wonders:

“Suppose there had been no Iraqi insurgency, no al-Sadr popping out from behind the curtain or Saddam loyalists prepped for guerrilla war, no car bombings or beheadings or roadside explosives. Or an insurgency so feeble and scattered it was swiftly squashed and swept up. Just imagine how different things would have been over the last year, how different they would be now.”