JUST BECAUSE THE PRESS IS, ahem, overly negative on Iraq doesn’t mean that everything there is rosy. It just means that it’s hard to tell how things are going, and one of my fears has been that press negativity might actually cause the White House to start ignoring actual bad news. That doesn’t seem to be the case, as this story reports that Bush is unhappy with progress in Iraq and Afghanistan and has tasked Condi Rice with fixing things.

The good news is that the White House is responding with a change in approach. As Jonathan Rauch notes:

The fact that the Bush administration keeps adjusting its course, often contravening its own plans or preferences, is a hopeful sign. . . .

Only trial and error, otherwise known as muddling through, can work in Iraq. There is no other way. Muddling through is not pretty, but never underestimate America’s genius for it. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington never enjoyed the luxury of planning, but they were two of the finest muddlers-through the world has ever known, and they did all right.

As Rauch also says, the 2004 election is perfectly timed for the American people to judge how things are going in Iraq. I think that Bush’s presidency will, and should, depend largely on that answer. Sounds like Bush feels the same way.

The big question: Does this make a Condi Rice VP slot more, or less, likely? That probably depends on how things go, too.