Was it just me, or did anyone else burst out laughing when they heard our Commander-in-Chief say the following?

I spoke to President Musharraf right before I came over here to visit with President Sarkozy. And my message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform. You can’t be the President and the head of the military at the same time.

So here we have the man who was elected through the result of not one, but two disputed elections, giving advice on democracy to a man who took power through a military coup and is now extending his rule via martial law.

But that’s not why this was funny. This was funny because no president before Bush has been so damned clingy to his role as Commander-in-Chief, using his titular role as head of the military to construe criticism of him as criticism of “the troops”. His presidency is all obout being president and head of the military. He’s the first English-speaking politician to wear a codpiece since Blackadder. And obviously, he had all traces of irony surgically removed at birth.