The White House Ethics Lesson - From the Hope Springs Eternal Department

We are at -- for the time being at least -- the bargain-basement, fire-sale moment in Bush administration fortunes. The President's approval ratings have entered something close to free-fall; as the least popular U.S. president in Latin American history, he was harried across the Southern continent last week by crowds of protestors and various heads of state who insisted on beginning formal dinners after his normal bedtime; his Vice President is beleaguered; the Vice-Presidential chief of staff indicted; Karl Rove, the President's "architect," under investigation; Tom DeLay part-way down the tubes; Social Security "reform" crumpled in the corner; Senate Majority Leader Frist blindsided by a one-eyed trust; White House counsel Harriet Miers shot down by trusted allies; a seamy lobbying scandal spreading fast; the President coattail-less in Virginia; and uppity Republican Senators insisting on a no-torture amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill -- and that's just where the list begins.

The question for Washington insiders is this: Has the administration reached a "tipping point"? After all these dark months, is there a gleam of light at tunnel's end? As it happens, the first faint glow may have appeared in a story, Pentagon Plans Tighter Control of Interrogation, on the front page of my morning New York Times. Reporters Eric Schmitt and Tim Golden inform us that the Pentagon has suddenly approved a "policy directive governing interrogations as part of an effort to tighten controls over the questioning of terror suspects and other prisoners by American soldiers" -- a decision that will "allow the Army to issue a long-delayed field manual for interrogators that is supposed to incorporate the lessons gleaned from the prisoner-abuse scandals last year."