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He was in the same state he was in in early 2003, just before launching the Iraq war, when he was tired and punchy and stumbling round the country not making a case against Saddam but just droning the same phrases over and over: "He's a dictator." Smirk. "He gassed his own people." Smirk.

On Thursday, his own people seemed to have gassed him .. [Bush] said: "It's tough. It's hard work. It's incredibly hard .. It is hard work," again and again .. [But it's also] tough and .. hard doing the title number of Singin' in the Rain, but Gene Kelly made it seem blithe and effortless and graceful. And the President of the United States owes his people a performance - in wartime especially. Churchill didn't just communicate the weight of the burden that he carried but also that he had the strength to bear it.