And the prize for the funniest line of the new political era goes to...

By Diane Silver

The prize goes to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Stuck behind the TimesSelect paywall, she writes:

Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they're taking it back.

It's a great line, and the first thing I did when I read it was laugh, but that chuckle covers up a huge tragedy. Our current president is an emotionally immature man-child who has most decidedly broken the presidency.

Because of that, the people of this country are paying the price in terms of dysfunctional government, a crippled FEMA and failing foreign policy, to name just a few of Bush's mistakes. These include the continuing tragedy of lives lost and lives mangled in the mismanaged, ill-conceived and counter-productive war in Iraq.

Let us hope that there will finally be change in Washington, D.C. , now that the voters have put the opposition party in both the House and Senate.

Just a tiny bit more Dowd on what Daddy Bush and Baker are doing now...

They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical.
...
The defense chief got hung out to dry before Saddam got hung. The president and Karl Rove, underestimating the public's hunger for change or overestimating the loyalty of a fed-up base, did not ice Rummy in time to save the Senate from teetering Democratic. But once Sonny managed to heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority -- as well as the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. Army -- then Bush Inc., the family firm that snatched the presidency for W. in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes.