"Yesterday's Man"

Speaking at the UN, President Bush "failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting."  He has completely lost their respect, according to Der Spiegel:  " A French woman called him 'yesterday's man' over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN."

He went on and on about terrorism, and ignored what for people al over the world, including his own nation, is the critical issue of the day, economics.  Given the central role of American finance, and of his administration's lax regulatory approach, in creating the present crisis, he must have seemed not only clueless, but like a man in deep, deep denial.

His friends are deserting him, and his enemies are being taken more seriously than ever before. Bush is no longer respected, as an individual or as the American president.  It is likely that this will be his legacy:  to have diminished the authority of his office, and of his nation, in the eyes of the world.