US: On Sunday evening President Bush addressed Americans on television. It was his first primetime address since May and provided an opportunity to be Churchillian about America's struggle with evil on the week of the 9/11 anniversary, writes Conor O'Clery
After all, a good majority of Americans still approve of his decision to invade Iraq. Seven in 10 actually believe Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks, according to a Washington Post poll.
But the speech didn't work, according to a CNN poll taken afterwards. The president gave a wooden, anxious delivery, his eyes, pinpricks due to the lighting, glued to a teleprompter. The profound policy shift he detailed - that Washington needed the despised UN after all - did not make an impact, having been downplayed by the administration.
("No big news here," Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "The President has been saying this from the beginning," Colin Powell claimed.)
With his plea to Congress for another $87 billion, the speech simply left the impression that it was about a price tag, not a plan, according to CNN analyst Bill Schneider.
Indeed the percentage of voters who thought Bush had no clear plan for the war on terror rose from 54 to 59 after the speech. Approval of his handling of Iraq fell from 57 to 51 per cent. The CNN poll also confirmed a continuing slide in Bush's job approval ratings - from 59 to 52 per cent in the past week.
The last time the President was this low was on September 10th, 2001. More ominously for the White House, Bush's 12-point edge over an unnamed Democrat in a presidential election narrowed to four, in other words too close to call.
Republicans point out that Ronald Reagan had only 47 per cent approval at this stage in his first term and Bill Clinton 44 per cent, and both went on to win re-election easily. But it's cold comfort. The slide in the polls combined with the financial and human toll in Iraq, continued job losses and judicial defeats in the Senate prompted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to call it a "perfect storm" for Mr Bush.
The speech also did little to mollify the anger of some key Republican Senators such as Richard Lugar, Chuck Hagel and John McCain for the mess the Pentagon had got them into. Insiders on Capitol Hill say that Rumsfeld is being scapegoated and will be gone within months.
On the night few TV channels were impressed enough with the speech to dwell on its implications. When it ended CBS promptly switched back to its scheduled programme, a drama series called Without a Trace.
ONE home where the TV was definitely not turned in to the President's 8.30 p.m. speech was the Clinton's residence in Chappaqua, outside New York. On Sunday evening Senator Hillary and her husband were entertaining 150 people - campaign donors and spouses - who had raised $100,000 or more for the senator during the last year.
The guests arrived in giddy anticipation of picking up clues about her real presidential ambitions.
Speculation that she will become a Democratic candidate has reached such a pitch that even if the former First Lady produced a bible and three times denied she was running, she would still not be believed.
She has only herself to blame. One of the invitees said he heard Mrs Clinton speak gaily about the importance of their support "for my next campaign, whatever that may be".
Bill Clinton chatted about "another candidate or two jumping into the race", and intriguingly commented that the Democratic Party had only a couple of real stars, namely Hillary and retired Gen Wesley Clark.
Publisher Niall O'Dowd said that he left the dinner with the strong impression that "Hillary is going to jump into the race if Bush keeps going down in the polls and he's going down like a stone."
John Catsimatidis, CEO of the Gristede's supermarkets, said he thought before the dinner Mrs Clinton had ruled out a run, but "I didn't get the impression that she had pulled the trigger in her mind." Hillary later told Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, "I have said I am not running. If I knew another foreign language, I'd say it in that. I'm saying, 'I'm not going to do it'."
And then she laughed.
AS IF Hillary's big tease wasn't enough, the political world is in a frenzy over the prospect of retired four-star Gen Clark joining the nine declared Democratic candidates, or adding his name to the ticket of frontrunner Howard Dean.
The 58-year-old former NATO commander in the Kosovo campaign has been building up an impressive shadow campaign team, including top operatives like Clinton's former aide Bruce Lindsay.
The website DraftClark2004.com has organised co-ordinators to be ready in all 50 states. Speculation that he might join Dean's ticket has been dismissed by Clark's friends as a dirty trick by Dean to diminish his stature.
They say the general believes that he is the best choice to be president, not vice- president, and will run on a platform that will include abortion rights and affirmative action, and opposition to Bush's tax cuts, Iraq policy and international policy.
An announcement could come any day, in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, or in a speech at the University of Iowa next Friday.
Many Democrats believe the general's impeccable military record would be a powerful counter to Mr Bush's political advantage as commander-in-chief, an image promoted by his landing in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier to announce a premature triumph in Iraq.
"Should I run, my patriotism will be a function of what I've done, not wrapping myself in the military," Clark said.