Or nearly so...that is to say until the President realized that he'd better try to unsay the unspeakable in an interview on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia. Too late, methinks.

Q I just wanted to ask you if you could just clarify a little bit your statement this morning to OPEC. What specific action would you like them to take at their first meeting coming up February – THE PRESIDENT: I would like for them to realize that high energy prices affect the economies of consuming nations. And that if these economies weaken, those economies will eventually be buying fewer barrels of oil. And having said that, there is not a lot of excess capacity in the marketplace. What's happened is, is that demand for energy has outstripped new supply. And that's why there's high price. And I fully understand how it affects the U.S. consumer. And my point to His Majesty is going to be, when consumers have less purchasing power because of high prices of gasoline -- in other words, when it affects their families -- it could cause this economy to slow down. If the economy slows down, there will be less barrels of oil purchased.

You can practically hear echoing in the background an anonymous aide screaming into the presidential ear-piece: "No, no, no! Dammit, don't admit the Saudis have authoritá!! Oil is fungible, say it." So Bush quickly corrects the record:

Now in our case, just so the American people know, most of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico. But oil is a market, it's globalized, it's fungible. That's what I meant.

Chiz, of course that's what he meant, it makes perfect sense: High demand for oil will cause demand to plummet unless the Saudis bail out the US economy. We don't need their damned oil, not a bit of it.

Bush has been wandering around the Gulf all week trying ineffectually to boost oil production, but his mincing show in Saudi Arabia was the lowest of low points.

"President Bush is over in the Gulf now begging the Saudis and others to drop the price of oil," Clinton said. "How pathetic."

In fact, as Bush admitted in the same interview, though he'd been in the country for more than a day he still hadn't raised the matter with King Abdullah. This is the man who, during a December 1999 debate, declared that "the president of the United States must jawbone OPEC members to lower the prices."

Q Did you bring it up already? THE PRESIDENT: No, I have not. I brought it up with members of his administration, and will do so with him tonight on the farm.

Cringeworthy. And here is how members of Abdullah's "administration" reacted to the President's request:

Neither King Abdullah nor Mr. Bush discussed the matter publicly as they met for dinner inside a tentlike hall on Tuesday night, chatting instead about the unusually cold weather. But Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, appeared to rebuff the president’s appeal earlier in the day. Saudi Arabia, he said, shared the president’s concern that a downturn in the American economy could have profound effects around the world, including on the oil market. He even raised the prospect of "recession," a word Mr. Bush studiously avoided in the interview, even when pressed about "the R-word." But Mr. Naimi said Saudi Arabia would raise production only "when the market justifies it." "Presidents and kings have every right, every privilege, to comment or ask or say whatever they want," Mr. Naimi said in a news conference after Mr. Bush’s remarks. "The concern for the U.S. economy is valid, but what affects the U.S. economy is more than the price of oil."

The Bush interview from Saudi Arabia is a portrait of a man so far out of his depth that the subjects for discussion mainly involved things he could not discuss: the "R" word (recession, a term not to be uttered - even though Bush had just warned the Saudis to beware it); the over-hyped naval incident in the Strait of Hormuz (Bush still knew nothing, though he'd been briefed); the Iranian NIE (he wasn't treating it as a dead letter, but then maybe he was). And to top it all off, there was the President trying to explain why he'd decided to send Condoleezza Rice to Baghdad on short notice:

Q So is it basically to promote -- THE PRESIDENT: It's to, first of all, be there. And secondly, is to -- there's a momentum, there's a political process that has been working that is -- with some of those laws coming to fruition. Her job is to be there, sitting down with them, explaining how much we appreciate what they've done, how they need to do more. And keep moving the process.

Let me be the first to point out that as near as possible that's jibberish. Is this really the extent of George Bush's comprehension of what diplomacy entails?

Oh, wait, Bush showed us how it's done in Saudi Arabia...just 'being there'.