Why can't you just say he aced it?

That sound you hear is the gnashing of teeth over at Camp Grandpa Simpson, where they were hoping against hope that the well-travelled "citizen of the world" Barack Obama would commit some sort of gaffe. Perhaps they were thinking something along the lines of, oh, say, saying "shit" while talking to the British Prime Minister with his mouth full while at a formal meal...

...or perhaps giving an impromptu neck rub to a female head of state in an attempt to show her who's the boss...

....or demanding that another head of state come to meet someone else by saying "Yo!"...

Have Republicans become so used to have the leader of their party be the First Boor that they've lost all concept that there are people out there who actually DO know how to behave in public?

And has the press forgotten as well? It would seem so, because while by any objective measure, Barack Obama's trip to Afghanistan and Iraq has been a rip-roaring success, not even the supposedly (and erroneously-labeled) "liberal" New York Times is willing to give him credit for a successful trip. First the headline:

For Obama, a First Step Is Not a Misstep

It'll kill them to say it's been a success so far, they have to call it "not a misstep." Sort of like those of you reading this, and everyone else who's alive, are "not dead yet."

Now the money quote:

The central tenet of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is suddenly aligned with what the Iraqis themselves now increasingly seem to want. Not only have the developments offered Mr. Obama a measure of credibility as a prospective world leader in a week when his every move is receiving intensive attention at home and abroad, but it has complicated Mr. McCain’s leading argument against him: that a withdrawal timeline would be tantamount to surrender and would leave Iraqis in dangerous straits.

That sure sounds like success to me -- a potential president and the Iraqis finally agree on how to proceed. But in a world where all the media have decided that John McCain must be elected, even if it means overlooking his sleazier associates, his history of philandering, his cluelessness, his ignorance of geography, his ignorance of who the Muslim sects are that he's committed to fighting in perpetuity, and the general sense you get looking at him that a McCain administration would resemble the last of the Reagan years, after the early stages of Alzheimer's had set in, you can't call it a success.

Instead a successful Middle East trip by a young Democratic contender must be branded "not a misstep."