My wife and I have spent the last three national elections with a Texas friend named Mark.  Two nights ago is the first one in which we felt like crawling away.  At the door Mark said, "They didn't cheat.  They didn't have great ideas.  We just lost it."

True enough. 

With both houses of Congress under Democratic control, President Bush needs to scramble--not for a legacy which feeds only ego and not to explain current policy because he's pretty bad at that.  What he needs to do is compromise in the Iraq war.  If the radical left doesn't take over the Democrat Party completely, Democrats do not want to be known for appeasement and retreat.  But they  don't want our troops left forever in the desert.  To continue "until victory" sounds like that Arab kid calling plaintively, "Lawrence!  Lawrence!" until his head sinks under the quicksand, leaving Peter O'Toole to look appropriately grim.

The Administration, therefore, has to delineate goals that are doable and that paint a picture of what Iraq looks like when it can be left to its own devices.  For example:  X percent of the Iraqi military must take over combat duties by such-and-such a date.   Y percent of the police must be on patrol by the same date.  Baghdad has to be made secure even if that means draconian martial law, and not enforced by us but by Iraqis.  Finally, Z  percent of the country's water and power should be working and a set number of key points under heavy guard.  

Such goals do not have to result in victory, but they do have to provide markers on a road for when our boys can come home relatively unscathed.  That could be the same road that eventually leads to victory.  Unfortunately, it is the road that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden have been counting on America to take.  We can only pray that they have miscalculated where it leads.