The foreign policy of the most powerful nation this planet has ever seen is being managed by a man who is making it up as he goes along. Witness President Bush’s interaction with NBC’s David Gregory this morning. Gregory asked the President why the new era of “Arab-Israeli peace” that the invasion of Iraq was supposed to usher in doesn’t seem to be happening.

Our President’s response:

For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm — manage calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested on September the 11th.

And so we’ve taken a foreign policy that says: On the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short run by being aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice.

And make no mistake: They’re still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for. In the long term, to defeat this ideology — and they’re bound by an ideology — you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom.

Ignoring for the moment that he never got to the “on the other hand” portion of his statement, it’s become truly terrifying the degree to which this administration seems to have no plan, no direction, and really no concern with the rapidly decaying situation across the entire Middle East. Condi plays her piano, Rummy debates vocabulary, and George just parties with the winners of a game show.

Nearly 500 are dead in Israel and Lebanon. More than 6,000 civilians were killed in Iraq in the past 2 months. And 2,571 American soldiers have died in Iraq since we invaded. We need leadership and we need a change.

UPDATE: TPMmuckraker has the full transcript. What the hell is he smoking?