I looked into the eyes of a corpse last night ...

It was the only thing he still had left.

Energy policy?

Screwed to death by a combination of Cheney's secretive nature and Enron's shameless manipulation of the energy market.

Terrorism?

Thanks to extraordinary rendition and torture, we've lost our moral standing in the world.

Foreign policy?

His standoffish nature, failure to understand the realities of the power structures and plain unilateral pigheadedness, the United States is now regarded with suspicion by much of the world's leaders. Not even Britain trusts us unreservedly any longer.

War in Afghanistan?

The Taliban and their allies among the tribes are resurgent, inflicting casualties and making the recovery of Afghanistan even more precarious. The people there are suspicious of foreigners to start with, and are losing faith in the Karzai government.

War in Iraq?

Most people are now convinced, as I was back in 2003, that this war was completely wrong. If this was a sane universe, the President, Vice-President and many others would have been charged with 4,154 counts of second-degree murder as well as the biggest fraud indictment in the history of the world.

Domestic policy?

Katrina. That's all I need to say.

It was the economy that Bush still had, clinging to it as a cowering child clings to its mother. As long as people were out shopping (as he urged us to do after the terrorist attacks) and money was being swapped back and forth as if it were a gigantic game - as long as Wall Street was doing well, the biggest cheerleader was George W Bush.

Who, as you'll recall, was a cheerleader when he went to school at Andover.

There was some weaknesses starting to develop as early as last year, but Bush the Cheerleader kept repeating his mantra that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong," and encouraging more people to get in over their heads in his idealized ownership society.

Ownership society.

One of the fundamentals of what is regarded as The American Dream - your own home. The groundwork had been laid as far back as the Reagan Years to make it oh-so-simple to get a home even if your credit was in the toilet.

And laissez les bontemps roulez.

And the good times did roll.

But as with every party or dance, eventually the bills need to settled, the band needs to be paid, someone has to clean up and the hangovers set in.

The economy was the last, the absolute last thing Bush actually had going his way. The last thing he could point to as a success.

And now it's gone, too.

I looked into the eyes of a corpse last night.

Lame duck?

Dead duck.