“Let me talk about North Korea.

It is naive and dangerous to take a policy that he suggested the other day, which is to have bilateral relations with North Korea. Remember, he’s the person who’s accusing me of not acting multilaterally. He now wants to take the six-party talks we have — China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the United States — and undermine them by having bilateral talks. … That is a bad policy. Of course, we’re paying attention to these. It’s a great question about Iran. That’s why in my speech to the Congress I said: There’s an “Axis of Evil,” Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and we’re paying attention to it. And we’re making progress.”

–George W. Bush, in the second presidential debate

Fast-forward by four months:

In a surprising admission, North Korea’s hard-line Communist government declared publicly today for the first time that it has nuclear weapons.

It also said that it will boycott United States-sponsored regional talks designed to end its nuclear program, according to a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement transmitted today by the reclusive nation’s wire service.

Pyongyang said it has “manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration’s undisguised policy to isolate and stifle” North Korea, and that it will “bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal.”

The statement, considered a definitive policy pronouncement, said that North Korea, led by the reclusive dictator Kim Jong Il, is pulling out of the talks after concluding that the second Bush administration would pursue the “brazen-faced, double-dealing tactics” of dialogue and “regime change.” (New York Times)

Well, that worked well, didn’t it? If that’s progress, I’d hate to think what his idea of backsliding is.

Bush, focused on vital matters like dismantling social security, pushing for ineffective programs like abstinence-only sexual education, slashing vital services for veterans and the poor, and cutting even more taxes for rich people, apparently hasn’t had time for small details like nuclear proliferation in North Korea or Iran. To say the least, his eye has not exactly been on the ball in such matters; bilateral negotiations which would allow direct presidential involvement would get a hell of a lot more done as Kim Jong Il responds much better to such focused attention. But Bush avoids such involvement most likely because he’s simply too incompetent to handle such things; in pushing for regional talks and distancing himself from North Korea, Bush hasn’t accomplished one damn thing except to piss them off while they build more and more nukes. Well done, George. Now that the world is stable and safe, you can get back to your Medicare fraud and your quarterly one-month vacations.